“She—she has never owned up to that.” Una’s lip corners drooped—there was almost a squint in the soft dark eyes which gazed down at the spot where that tool shed had stood. “How the blaze could have started otherwise I—I don’t know,” quiveringly. “But she has confessed to father that when she came back to these mountains, after living in one big city after another, it was, really, because she was lonely and wanted to see me—see how I had grown up. But she was so bitter against father and mother that she wouldn’t even let them know that she was alive—so she kept spying upon me invisibly—trying to influence me. As for her mad idea of kidnapping me—carrying me off—I think it grew out of frantic resentment against mother.”
“But think how she went about it, the slyboots!” cried Pemrose. “Of course she must have found it awfully hard to waylay you; you were so—so ‘peerie-weerie’,” laughingly; “so seldom beyond the garden, alone!”
“Yes, and so she maneuvered with some of the tricks she played upon the simple mountain folk!” said Una. “Her cabin was all wired for electricity; at half-a-dozen different points, by touching an unseen button with an elbow or foot—some part of her anatomy—she could set invisible tuning forks vibrating—or some other—musical device. From that it was an easy step to playing upon my curiosity—in the rôle of ‘Magic Margot’ she carried some of her paraphernalia around with her, I suppose,” with a catch of the breath, half sob, half laughter.
“Yes, besides her radio equipment.” Pemrose’s black eyebrows drew together. “Did she—did she confess how she managed to overcome you the night of the fire?”
“Father drew it out of her, bit by bit; she rubbed something on the handle of the bucket, when it rolled away from me—you see she was waylaying me then—some strong acid, so that when my fingers touched the handle again it stung me—burned, prickled! Ugh!” Una lifted her fingers as she had raised them, long ago, in the sun parlor and looked at them. “There was a little drug mixed with the acid, so that when I rubbed my fingers to my lips—as she guessed I would do—I got just enough of that to stupefy me—at least, make me powerless to resist her. If that hadn’t ‘worked’ I suppose she’d have tried some other means, but she didn’t want to hurt or frighten me.”
“Well, of all the crazy cunning!” The other girl simply gasped. “I suppose there was some of the same concoction on the little bunch of wild flowers that fell at your feet in the wood.... And I—I wouldn’t believe you that anything happened—anything unusual that morning! Sometimes—” Pemrose slowly shook her head—“sometimes, Daddy says, I’m as wilful as an acid,” laughingly, “an acid eating into salt—and it doesn’t do to be that way, eh?” The blue eyes were mischievous, the lip corners penitent.
“But You! It was you who saved me. You won out against her—with radio,” cried the victim of that unbalanced cunning. “It was you—you who picked up my message—how I ever ticked it off, I don’t know—remembered enough to tick it off! But you found out where I was.” Una’s lip was trembling now—she dashed her hand across her eyes, one bright drop, dislodged, fell upon the mountain grass. “It was when Andrew saw your signal, your creamy sweater, waving from the tree on Little Sister that he knew I was somewhere on that mountain. Immediately he thought of that awful bank, that washout, in the road—then he caught sight of us and climbed—oh! it was an awful climb, too, right through the stream’s bed, for a short cut—was just in time to head us off!”
“I know-ow.” Pemrose’s tone was very low. She caught an April cowslip in the leather loop of her riding crop—there was silence for five minutes. “But you—you yourself, were the real wonder,” she said, then in the same low, thick voice. “Treff—Treff has never got over talking of the way you came through—the clues you left behind you—bits of your habit!”
“I carved them out with a knife I found—and she never saw me!”
Was it a new Una: the mischief, shrewdness—young strength—leaking out of the eye-corners?