The Red Lady

by Katharine Newlin Burt

“You are extraordinary, astonishing! Such youth! Such innocence! Bo je moe! How is it done?” He put his mouth close to my ear, and muttered something in Russian, the spitting, purring tongue which I detest. What he said, for I was able to translate it, sent me back, white and shaking into the nearest chair.

“It will not be long, eh?” the Baron had sputtered into my ear, “before the young man, too, is found with three of those golden hairs about his fingers, eh?”

I sat down and covered my eyes with my hands, an action that seemed to throw him into a convulsion of mirth. When I looked up, the abominable, grotesque figure was gone.

I went over to the window. He was walking rapidly down the driveway. As he turned the corner I saw a man step from the side of the road and saunter after him. It was one of the outside men engaged by Mrs. Brane.

I ran upstairs to my own room, and sat down at random in the chair before my dressing-table and rested my head in my hands. I sat there for a long, long time, and I felt that I was fighting against a mist. Just so must some victim dragonfly struggle with the dreadful stickiness of the spider's web. I was blinded mentally by the very meshes that were beginning to wrap round me. I knew now that I was in great danger of some kind, that I was being played with by sinister and evil forces, that, perhaps purposely, I was being terrified and bewildered and mystified. There was none whom I could surely count for a friend, no one except Mary, and how could she or any one else understand the undefined, dreamlike, grotesque forms my experiences had taken. Mrs. Brane, perhaps, was the person for me to take into my confidence, and yet, was it fair to frighten her when she was so delicate? Already one person too many had been frightened in that house. Mr. Dabney was my enemy. No matter what the feeling that possessed his heart, his brain was pitted against me. I was being made a victim, a cat's-paw. But how and by whom? This Baron had treated me as an accomplice. He had showed me a secret. He had made to me a horrible suggestion. The power that had frightened away the three housekeepers, the power that had scared Delia and Jane and Annie from their home, the power that had thrown little Robbie into the convulsions that caused his death, the power that had taken every one but me and the Lorrences—for Mary now slept near Mrs. Brane—out of the northern wing—this power was threatening Paul Dabney and, from the Baron's whispered words, I understood that it was threatening Paul Dabney through me. Was it not a supernatural evil? Was I not perhaps possessed? Could I be driven to commit crimes and to leave as evidence against myself those strands of hair? Flesh and blood could not bear the horror of all this. I would go to Mr. Dabney at once.

With this resolution to comfort me, I rose and made myself ready for dinner. It was too late to change my dress, but Mrs. Brane was not particular as to our dressing for dinner; besides, my frock was neat and fresh, a soft gray crêpe with wide white collar and cuffs. My working dresses were all made alike and trimmed in this Quaker style which I had found becoming. I thought that, in spite of extreme pallor and shadows under my eyes, I looked rather pretty. I believe that was the last evening when I took any particular pleasure in my own looks. I was rather nervous over my impending interview with Paul Dabney and it was with a certain relief that I heard from Mrs. Brane in the diningroom that our guest had gone out and would not be back that night.

“How queer it seems to be alone again!” she said, but I thought she looked more alarmed than relieved.

That night, however, in spite of her timidity, she was in better spirits than I had seen her since Robbie's death. Her listlessness was not quite so extreme as usual, she even chatted about her youth and dances she used to go to. She must have been as pretty as a fairy and she had evidently been something of a belle, though I have noticed that all Southern women see themselves in retrospect as the center of a little throng of suitors. Mary waited on us, for Henry had the toothache and had gone to bed. It was quite a cozy and cheerful meal. In spite of myself, the disagreeable impression produced by the Baron faded a little from my mind and, as it faded, another feeling began to strengthen. In other words, I began to be acutely curious about the hollow sound produced by tapping on the back of that bookcase.

“I think you made a great impression on the Baron, Miss Gale,” said Mrs. Brane teasingly as we sat at our coffee in the drawing-room; “he really seemed unable to take his eyes off you. I don't wonder. You are really extraordinarily pretty in an odd way.”

“In an odd way?” I could n't help asking.