“But Una—Una—you don’t think—” Pemrose was catching at her throat now.
“Well—when I told my old Dad about that ‘elfin music’ we heard on the old mountain—how we showed it up, played ‘choir invisible’ with tuning forks—his lips worked for quite a while silently—you know he was a terror at queer tricks himself—then he turned a sly cheek on me and said: ‘That may have been no crank of a musician, boy, out testing bird-songs, or pine-songs—or pipes o’ Pan—or any of the rest of it. If this queer little figure is Margaret Deane and she’s lonely—longing to see Una, the baby she so worshiped, and thinks the parents won’t let her, she would be quite likely to work upon Una’s curiosity—or her “hifalutin” imagination—in some fantastic way ... if only to pay your Aunt Carolyn out. Or, perhaps, to get the girl off by herself into the woods. She would have done it even when I knew her—and she isn’t likely to have gathered balance, “a rolling stone.”’”
“But—but you don’t think—he doesn’t think—that she would go the length—the length of carrying Una off—doing anything to her?” Pem’s voice rose to a shriek now.
“I can’t help feeling that she has something—something to do with it.” The boy choked. “Dad was frightened, too, when I woke him—told him. He said for me to tear right over here— he’d follow when he got his car out of hospital.”
“But how could she—even in the confusion of the fire? The last Dorothy saw of Una her bucket had rolled away.”
“She managed to stupefy her in some way, slide something into her—perhaps rubbed it on the bucket.” The boy was roughly pacing the floor. “Got her, in a dazed state, on her horse.”
“But why—why ... such a hor-ri-ble thing—”
“Brooding resentment, perhaps,” said Treff moodily, “to get even with her parents. Maybe a wild yearning to get Una to herself for a while. Maybe because she has become quite unbalanced—Dad says people of her temperament generally do.”
“But Una—” Pem was fairly screaming now, her hands clutching at the pale air, opening, closing—“Una—why! she’ll go mad herself, carried off like that—by a strange, wild woman—away from us all. And she’ll be so helpless,” it was a choking sob, “any other girl, Madeline, Naomi, Frances—even Dorothy—might think of something to do—but Una—”
“No-o, the bottom will be out of everything; she’ll just drop through.” Treff stared gloomily out of the window. “But we’ll find her—together.” He caught at Pemrose’s hands. “Oh-h! there isn’t cover enough on the old mountain, nor kinks enough in the brain of that crazy creature, to prevent.... Gosh! Automobile wheels on the road below—her father! I—I’d rather crawl through an air hole, five thousand feet up, than have to tell him this!” The young aviator’s neck writhed in its khaki collar. “He idolizes Una—and his sister ... always a sore subject, Dad said!”