CHAPTER IV
July ended, and somehow August dragged away. Half the houses on Third Street were shuttered up and the families off somewhere in search of cooling breezes. September arrived, still hot with breathless nights, relieved by thunderstorms.
The strain of the heat had left its mark on the boys, each in a different way. Bill was still sunny, but lacked his old-time bounce. He was nearly always to be found in the room of the Wireless Club, studying the code or testing the wires. Dee haunted the club room too, and brought his books and boned up on math and a couple of subjects that he wanted to pass in as soon as school opened.
Dozens and scores made their way to the courts each day, and languidly batted the balls. Eddie showed the strain. He was thinner, and dark circles showed under the once dancing eyes. His sister Virginia went to Atlantic City. Bill’s mother took her beautiful self down to visit the three Aunts, and Mr. Wolfe and Frank and Bill kept bachelors’ hall, protected by a couple of black and tan dogs weighing about a pound apiece.
Dee saw less of his father than ever. Night and day he spent in the laboratory and occasionally Dee could hear the tinkle of glass when a retort broke. But he had ceased to care what was in the making in that mysterious room. Several times he had asked his father if he might come in and help him, only to be told that it was impossible. Zip was with him; Zip helped him. Quite often Mr. De Lorme preferred Zip as a staff on his three-lap walk around the Park. Dee found that he had reached the dangerous place where it was possible for him to analyze his feeling for his father, and to his lasting grief he found that no love existed between them. A strange new feeling oppressed him. He felt as though in some queer way he was being used as a tool. All through the vacation Dee had been made to attend lectures at the Y.M.C.A.; he had been urged to go to church, and to call at the houses of the various boys he knew. It seemed as though Mr. De Lorme was showing him off. Yet no one came to the De Lorme house except the same ill-favored night-birds and the suave gentlemen of the daylight visits. And now, with a great many new interests and pastimes, Dee missed most of these. Indeed he made it a point to be away all he could, while the feeling of distrust and dislike for his father grew until he could scarcely bear the touch of the half blind man or guide him around the Park.
Anna, the old cook, noticed his lack of appetite, and tried with all her art and skill to prepare good things to tempt his palate.
Dee caught her watching him through narrowed lids at every meal. It might have annoyed him had he had less on his mind. One day, as he was eating a hasty meal all by himself, Anna came and rested her old hands on the table before him. He looked up, and she nodded.
“I was in Siberia,” she said. “The mines. Cold. The keepers are cruel. See?” She rolled up her sleeves and showed lines of white welts on her arms. “I hate and hate, but I like you. There is trouble brewing. Here! Perhaps your fodder get tired of you. Suppose?
“Here is a key. Unlock the trunk it fits. It was your mother’s, just as she left it when you were three. Anna never looked, and your fodder don’t know it here. He always leave moving to Anna. Better see what is in that trunk. Your mother said letters for you. Don’t tell. Go late, dark night.”
She turned and went noiselessly from the room, leaving Dee clutching the key in a hand that shook a little.
Well, there could be no better “late, dark night” than the one just closing down.
Dee went to his room and examined his flashlight. The attic where the trunks were stored was electrically lighted, but he was afraid to use so large a light. Zip was always prowling around and some deep sense told him to use all the precautions possible, although he could see no reason why he should not have the letters or anything else belonging to his mother.
He went up to the Wireless Club as usual, and came home at about a quarter before ten. As he went whistling up to his room, his father stepped through the double door of the laboratory and stood in his way.
“I have had my walk,” he said. “I shall work all night possibly. I expect some men here. Lock your door, so they will not enter it by mistake. You know you do not like my honest friends.”
“They are all right, sir, I only thought they might shave,” said Dee. Mr. De Lorme turned away, and Dee closed the door of his room. He wondered why his father had suggested his locking his door. He wondered if it was to keep others out or to keep him in. In either case it looked very mysterious. More than ever he felt the necessity of getting whatever might be in that trunk for him. If his father wanted to keep him in, someone had tampered with the lock so that an alarm would not find Dee tearing out into the hall. Dee determined to find out. He remembered the balcony outside his window. He stepped out and found that the corner just reached the window of the next room—an empty room half full of rubbish. The night was densely dark. Dee tried the window and found it unlocked. It slid up noiselessly and, satisfied, the boy returned to his own room and noisily turned the key in his door. With a sick feeling that the house was full of intrigue Dee dropped his shoes noisily and hopped into bed, thanking his lucky stars for the squeaky springs, off which he instantly rolled on the floor. Creeping across the room to the door, he listened intently and presently made out the sound of breathing on the other side of the panel. Someone was listening. Dee’s own breath was nothing but a light flutter as he strained his ears.
At last there was the sound of unshod feet retreating. Dee crept back to the window, where he waited for the hour of his own adventure.
Dee made no move until the luminous dials of his wrist watch showed the hour to be one; then he cautiously pushed up the screen and stepped through his window. Getting into the next room was the work of a moment. Fortunately the floor did not squeak, and he made his way with the most infinite care to the attic door.
Up there in the dust a dozen trunks and packing boxes stood about, and Dee found his mother’s little trunk without difficulty. Opening it he saw piles of clothing; things that had been hers. He lifted them out carefully. Down at the very bottom was what he sought, three packets of letters tied with pink string. They were thin little packets, and Dee hastily shoved them into his pockets and continued his search. But there was nothing more, nothing of the least value. So he repacked the clothing with hands that trembled a little. When he re-entered his own room, it did not seem as though he had been out of it at all, but the letters pressed his pockets and there was attic dust on his shirt and trousers.
Creeping noiselessly to the door, he turned the knob and smiled to himself in the dark. It was as he had thought; the lock was caught, and he could not get out! He wondered who had been clever enough to fix it so it would stick. He wondered why it had been necessary to keep him prisoner.
Arranging his electric reading lamp under a sort of tent made of his blanket, he settled himself to read the letters.
It seemed a prying thing to open and peruse all the closely written pages that had belonged to his mother. He only hoped they were not love letters.
They proved to be letters from his mother’s sister and mother. At first the letters were ordinary accounts of the immaterial happenings about home that would interest a member of the family who was far away. Then the tone of the letters changed to a veiled pity, and there were many suggestions that she should come home for a visit, and at last Dee opened a letter that had evidently been many times read. And it was spotted as though by tears.
“Dear Sister:
“Your last letter, although not wholly unexpected, was such a shock to me that I have delayed answering it until I could believe myself in a calmer frame of mind.
“Oh, Mary, my dear, dear sister, to think that you should be in such trouble! Yet your letter is very vague. You say, 'I have discovered that my husband is a fiend; a fiend in human guise,’ yet you do not tell me what has led you to this opinion. And you continue by assuring me that I must not worry over your welfare as Mr. De Lorme always treats you with the greatest respect and affection. What can you mean, my dear sister?
“Come home, Mary, and let me hear all. If for any reason you feel that you must be guarded in expressing yourself in a letter, you know I will keep your secret with my life.
“Come home, and bring Marion. If this thing is as dreadful as it appears to you, I cannot be too glad that Marion is not Mr. De Lorme’s son.
“Poor little boy! It is a sorry fate for him, losing his own father before he was born, and the second marriage which you fondly thought would be such a great benefit to the child turning out badly and so soon! I hope that your husband is not unkind to Marion.
“Well, my dear, you have a home with me as long as I live, and afterwards you know this farm is yours. Three hundred acres all under cultivation in the best part of the state. It is a goodly inheritance. It will help the boy.”
With many tender assurances of love, the letter closed.
There were seven letters in all that touched on the terrible knowledge that had come to Dee’s mother, but not a hint of the nature of the disgrace, if disgrace it was.
Dee, stifling under the blanket and unaware that streams of perspiration were running down his pale face, was wholly puzzled. He knew his father, as he always thought him, was a queer sort, wrapped up in his experiments, handicapped by his blindness, caring nothing for the world or its movements. But Dee had never seen anything that would call forth the letters that lay scattered around him. Certainly he had never seen his father in a rage. All his temper was expressed in a cold and biting sarcasm. He did not drink anything but the distilled water that came every week. There was but one thing to think. His father must be a drug fiend. Although Dee had never seen anything peculiar, he determined to watch.
Then his thoughts raced back to the one great sentence, “I cannot be too glad that Marion is not Mr. De Lorme’s son.”
Marion drew a long, deep breath. He was not Mr. De Lorme’s son! That was why he felt so little affection, so small a sense of duty. But there must be a reason why the chemist always claimed him as his own.
The boy determined to keep silence, and watch. He skimmed rapidly through the third packet, mostly clippings. At last he found it. A notice of the wedding of Mrs. Mary Seaton Clay to Dr. Oscar De Lorme. And the town was a well-known village near Lexington.
The last paper read, Dee packed them up, slipped them under his mattress and extinguished the light, emerged from the stifling blanket and got into bed. The time had flown, for the east was commencing to show streaks of red. As Dee lay thinking, he heard footsteps. Several people seemed to be walking with the greatest care down the long hall from the room at the back that had been fitted up for the laboratory. There was one squeaky board half way down the stairs. Dee heard it squeak seven times. The front door opened, and presently closed, but there was no sound of feet on the asphalt sidewalk. Dee decided that the visitors had gone around the house. He listened intently and soon the throb of a high-powered engine came from the garage in the rear. The De Lormes did not own a car.
Dee did not move and before long the tell-tale board squeaked again. Someone came upstairs, and directly to his door. Then Dee heard a slight click as though someone was tampering with the lock, and all was still.
Dee did not get up to see what had happened. He knew he would find out in the morning. He was dead tired and sleepy. The night had been a hard one.
It was eight o’clock before he woke, and the house was silent and empty. Mr. De Lorme had breakfasted early and had returned to his workroom. Zip had gone out.
Dee ate his breakfast, took his precious letters (which he had done up in a parcel and sealed) and went off to find Mr. Wolfe. He asked him to keep the package for him, then went out with Bill to find Eddie.
Eddie was not waiting to be found. He was sprinting down the street, having detached himself from a group standing near the railroad.
“Say! I bet you can’t guess what!” he called. Then as they met, “We have had the excitement up our end of the block! Fellow killed by the midnight express, and the night watchman found him just a little while ago, as he was coming home.”
“Who was he?” asked Bill.
“No one knows,” said Eddie. “I got there in time to see him. You couldn’t tell. He was scattered all around. Tore his coat all to pieces.”
“Let’s go to see the place,” suggested Bill hopefully.
They walked back, and studied the non-committal ground. Dee walked along the polished rail, and at a frog stooped and picked up a small book.
It was full of small, queer characters that Eddie declared must be Chinese or Turkish.
“Anyhow it belonged to the man,” said Eddie. “See the blood on the edge of the pages?”
“When have I seen writing like that?” mused Dee, turning the book over and over.
“Wish you could read it,” said Bill.
Dee’s face lighted. “I have it!” he exclaimed. “Anna, our cook, gets letters written like that.”
“Perhaps he was her beau,” said Eddie mournfully.
Dee chuckled. “You never saw Anna, did you? I thought not. But before we give this up, I am going down to show this to Anna and find out what it all means.”
“Perhaps he was a spy,” offered Eddie.
“You will never get over that spy stuff, will you, kid?” said Bill.
Dee, hurrying to Anna with the notebook, found himself baffled again.
“That is nothing,” she said. “Some foolish one has written nonsense. What does it say? Nothing but something about young shivering maples and eyebrows and a nose and mouth and the swift running river. A child’s book. Throw it away!”
“It is not mine,” replied Dee. “I shall have to return it. I wish you would tell me just exactly what it says.”
For answer Anna shrugged her shoulders and laughed. But after Dee had gone back to the boys, Anna frowned and shook her head.
“I wonder what they meant, those words,” she whispered to herself in a strange tongue. She shook her old head, and shivered. “Danger; danger! God grant it does not touch the boy!”