THE HOUSE IN THE CEDARS
Less than half a mile back, along the main road, Laurie found a country garage, in which he left his car. It was in charge of a silent but intelligent person, a somewhat unkempt and haggard middle-aged man, who agreed to keep the machine out of sight, to have it ready at any moment of the day or night, and to accept a handsome addition to his regular charge in return for his discretion. He was only mildly interested in his new patron, for he had classified him without effort. One of them college boys, this young fella was, and up to some lark.
Just what form that lark might take was not a problem which stirred Henry Burke's sluggish imagination. Less than twenty hours before his seventh had been born; and his wife was delicate and milk was seventeen cents a quart, and the garage business was not what it had been. To the victim of these obsessing reflections the appearance of a handsome youth who dropped five-dollar bills around as if they were seed potatoes was in the nature of a miracle and an overwhelming relief. His mind centered on the five-dollar bills, and his lively interest in them assured Laurie of Burke's presence in the garage at any hour when more bills might possibly be dropped.
While he was lingeringly lighting a cigarette, Laurie asked a few questions. Who owned the big house back there in the cedar grove, on the bluff overlooking the Sound? Burke didn't know. All he knew, and freely told, was that it had been empty ever since he himself had come to the neighborhood, 'most two years ago.
Was it occupied now? No, and Burke was sure of that. Only two days before he himself had driven past it and had noted its continued closed-up, deserted appearance. It was a queer place, anyhow, he added; one couldn't get to it from the main road, but had to follow a blind path, which he himself had blundered into by chance, when he was thinking about something else. He had heard, he now recalled, that it was owned by some New Yorker who didn't like noise.
Laurie strolled out of the garage with a well-assumed air of indifference to the perplexities of life, but his heart was racked by them. As he hesitated near the entrance, uncertain which way to turn, he saw that behind the garage there was a tool shed, and following the side path which led to this, he found in the rear of the shed a workman's bench, evidently little used in these cold January days. Tacitly, it invited the discoverer to solitude and meditation, and Laurie gratefully dropped upon it, glad of the opportunity to escape Burke's eye and uninterruptedly think things out. But the daisied path of calm reflection was not for him then.
Theoretically, of course, his plan would be to wait until night and then, sheltered by the darkness, to approach the house, like a hero of melodrama, and in some way secure entrance. But even as this ready-made campaign presented itself, a dozen objections to it reared up in his mind. The first, of course, was the delay. It was not yet two o'clock in the afternoon, and darkness would not fall until five, even unwisely assuming that it would be safe to approach the place as soon as darkness came. In three hours all sorts of things might happen; and the prospect of marking time during that interval, while his unbridled imagination ran away with him, was one Laurie could not face.
On the other hand, what could he do in broad daylight? If he were seen, as he almost certainly would be, Shaw, careless now, perhaps, in his fancied security, would take precautions which might make impossible the night's work of rescue. That, of course, assuming that Shaw was still at the house among the cedars.
Was he? Laurie pondered that problem. Undoubtedly he had personally taken Doris there, he and the secretary. But the chances seemed about even that, having done this, he would leave her, for the day at least, either in charge of the secretary or of some caretaker. In that case—in that case—
The young man sprang to his feet. He would waste no more time in speculation. He would know, and at once, who was in that house with Doris. He swung back to the garage with determination in his manner, and entered the place so unexpectedly that Burke, who had fancied him a mile away, started at the sight of him. Then, with a contented smile, he stilled his nerves and kept his eyes on the bill the visitor held before him.