Part 2

The driver nodded and hurried away. But he was back shortly, and five minutes later we were rolling inland. The sandy road gave place to an uneven dirt one and the smell of the sea to the mingled odors of dust and gasoline, with now and then a whiff of clover fields or flowering wayside bush. Not until we had embarked had either of us considered how we were to get back. I fondly hoped that, in case we had to walk, I would not have a case full of bottles to carry at any rate.

It proved to be quite a short ride, however, and in less than ten minutes we were climbing down at a country crossroads. When the driver had spoken of The Inn, my imagination had pictured a thriving hostelry—cars drown up at the door under a porte cochère, tables on a terrace, etc. It was with somewhat of a shock, therefore, as the bus rolled away that I perceived that there was neither a car nor a human being in sight. There were four houses, to be sure, but the nearest of these was boarded up and the others looked as if they might have been permanently abandoned.

“Quite a metropolis,” remarked Eve cheerfully. “Wonder which is the Inn?”

I picked up “Harry’s” luggage and trudged after her up one of the crossroads. In the yard of one of the houses, I perceived a woman digging dandelion greens. The sight cheered me greatly.

Over the wall, Eve inquired the way to the Inn. The woman rose from her stooping posture and surveyed us with some curiosity. “I ’spect you mean Trap’s place,” she said. “It’s the big house over on the other corner. But I wouldn’t recommend the rooms and they say the meals——”

“Oh, we weren’t thinking of stopping,” Eve assured her hastily. “It’s just—just an errand.”

From behind a damaged screen door, voices issued as we approached the side door of “Trap’s place.” Entering, we found ourselves in a narrow store. A woman sat behind the counter adding a column of figures on a brown paper bag. In the rear two men were smoking. A hurried glance told me that neither resembled the gentleman we sought.

Eve advanced to the counter and stated our errand.

“I guess likely it’s that Mr. Bangs you want,” the woman said when she had finished. I was aware as she eyed us of the same lively curiosity which had animated the dandelion digger. “He come in last night,” she went on. “I didn’t hear him say nothin’ ’bout no suitcase. Real estate’s his line, he said. He was makin’ inquiries about the old Craven House up Old Beecham way and I seen him start off in that direction this mornin’, though it’s the first I heard the place was for sale and what anybody’d want an old rattletrap like that for——”

This was rather of a facer; after we’d come all this way to find our bird flown. The woman must have seen the disappointment in our faces, for she added, “If you walked up there right away, maybe you could catch him. He ain’t been gone more’n half an hour.”

“Is it—far?” I asked weakly with a hostile glance at Mr. Bangs’ baggage on the floor at my feet.

“Not more’n ten minutes’ walk. You can leave the case here if you want.”

This seemed an inspired suggestion. And so without further delay, we set off in the direction the woman indicated. The road branched off the regular motor highway and climbed casually upward, between uneven stone walls and dusty foliage. “I never expected,” Eve remarked, “to spend the first day of my vacation trailing a barber!”

“Mrs. Trap said he was in the real estate line.”

“I know. But don’t forget the bottles of hair tonic.”

“I’m not likely to, if I have to lug them about the country much more.”

We walked for perhaps ten minutes without appearing to be getting anywhere in particular. But as we neared the brow of the hill, we spied above the trees at a distance back from the road the gray roof of a house. “This must be the place, don’t you think?” Eve said. “It doesn’t look as if anybody lived here.”

It certainly didn’t! The big front yard was a perfect jungle of coarse grass and overgrown bushes and a generally deserted and gone-to-seed air hung about the whole place. But as we paused there a moment in the dusty road surveying it, there drifted out to us a wave of delicate perfume—the scent of flowering rose bushes in the sun—which was like a gesture of welcome.

Plain but substantial and built to last, as the early settlers were wont to build them, Craven House stood staunchly waiting for what fate held in store for it. The blinds were closed and the weatherbeaten shingles showed more than one gap where the wind and weather had made headway.

Suddenly there came over me that curious feeling one has at times of having been there before. “What’s the matter,” Eve inquired. “You look as if you expected to see a ghost or something!”

“Oh, nothing,” I returned hastily. “Come on, let’s go in. Is the gate locked?”

But Eve had not stopped to discover. Already as I spoke she was halfway over the wall. I followed her, dropping down into a thicket on the other side that fairly reached to my waist. I pointed silently to a dingy sign nailed to a tree. “No Trespassing,” it said.

“Oh, never mind,” said Eve lightly. “We’ve got to find the elusive Mr. Bangs, haven’t we?”

“But where is he? I don’t see him anywhere about. Maybe this isn’t the place after all,” I added, stooping to detach a rose branch from my stocking.

“It’s the place all right,” Eve returned. “Look, here’s a letterbox on the gatepost!” CRAVEN, I read the faded lettering. I wondered how many years it was since the mail carrier had left a letter there.

But Eve was now forging impatiently ahead. We crossed the yard and made our way through a forest of bushes around the corner of the house. In the rear, the ground sloped gradually down to what had once evidently been a quite elaborate garden. The outlines of paths and flower beds were still discernible. And half hidden among the bushes, I caught sight of a stone urn and of a blackened stone figure on a pedestal. And in the middle of it all, was the leaf-filled bowl of a fountain. The scent of honeysuckle mingled with that of the roses. How sweet it was, but sad too!

Suddenly I felt Eve gripping my elbow. “There he is!” she whispered. “Look! There on the other side of that stone thing—creeping on the ground!” She gave a stifled giggle. “Seems to be one of the quaint customs of the country!”

Creeping! Yes, she was right, I saw him now. A small, intent, bent-over figure of a man, on his hands and knees in the tall grass.

“He seems very busy,” I murmured. “Perhaps we ought not to interrupt him.”

“Nonsense, you want your suitcase, don’t you?”

Mr. Bangs did not see us approaching. He was, as I have said, very much absorbed. But it was not until we were nearly upon him that we saw that the thing over which he was bending so intently was a tape measure. For a full minute, I should say, we stood and watched him. His lips were moving as if he were making calculations.

Then without warning, he jumped to his feet, dusting his hands on his trousers. It was then that he saw us.

Well, of course nobody likes to find that he has been watched when he thought he was alone. Still I did not think that this alone was enough to account for the convulsion of anger which darkened his face. His knobby Adam’s apple began to work up and down in a really frightful manner, and for a moment I thought he was going to choke.

It was Eve’s velvety voice that broke the rather appalling silence. “I’m afraid we startled you, Mr. Bangs,” she said easily.

A sort of cackling gurgle issued from the man’s throat, which presently formed itself into words. “Ain’t you seen the sign on the post?” he snapped, “where’t says ‘No trespassin’’? This here’s private property.”

“I know,” returned Eve gently. “And we’d never have thought of coming in if we hadn’t been looking for you. It’s about the suitcase, you know—the one we took by mistake.”

At these words, I was relieved to see the convulsive twitching of the man’s face subside somewhat. “So,” he snarled, “you’re the party that run off with my baggage! Well, what you done with it?”

“It’s down at the Inn,” I answered. “It’s rather heavy to lug around and besides I’m tired.”

“Well, I ain’t ast you to lug it, have I?” he retorted. “’Twas your own doin’. Say, what’s your game anyway?” he added suspiciously. “I could have you arrested, I s’pose you know, for ’propriatin’ goods that don’t belong to you.”

“Could you?” inquired Eve, sniffing at a white tea rose. “But of course you wouldn’t since you’ve got it back all safe. By the way, where is ours?”

He glared at her for a moment as if he could not at all make her out. Then with a shrug he turned away. “It’s standin’ in the hall down to Trap’s,” he said over his shoulder. “And the next time you go travelin’ round the country without a nurse, I advise you to look sharp and see whose bags ’tis you’re grabbin’.”

“We certainly will,” returned Eve cheerfully. “It has taught us a lesson, I’m sure. And thank you so much, Mr. Bangs. We’re awfully sorry to have put you to all this inconvenience—without your hair tonic and all!”

Though the last words were uttered in a half whisper, instantly the man’s right hand shot upward to his head. And it was then that I noticed for the first time that the hair that covered it was thin and graying. But his only answer was another shrug and a grunt as he walked away.

It seemed the moment for us to depart. Looking back, I saw that Mr. Bangs had again fallen on his knees in front of the stone figure.

As we turned back toward the house, I noticed that the back door stood ajar. The real estate agent had evidently been taking a look around before entering into his mysterious calculations in the garden. “Let’s take a peek inside,” I suggested. “He’ll never see us.”

“All right,” Eve agreed. “I’ll bet there are plenty of perfectly good family spooks living there!”

“Ghosts,” I retorted, “are out of date.”

The door led directly into a big old-fashioned kitchen. The air smelled damp and more than a little stuffy. One look around was enough for me. “Oh, it’s just an ordinary old place,” I said. “Let’s not go in after all. We must get back in time for dinner, you know.”

“Nonsense, we’ve got loads of time,” Eve said. “Come on, I want to see what the front part is like. I adore old houses, they’re so full of atmosphere!”

“Nasty dank atmosphere, I call it!” I followed reluctantly as she led the way into the hall. It was a big wide hall, running the full length of the house, and I could well imagine that with the doors wide open and the sunshine and fresh air pouring in, it might have been attractive. But it was anything but that now, and I shivered in spite of myself as our feet echoed on the bare boards. Why in the world had I ever suggested coming in here!

“This must be the parlor,” Eve was saying with her hand on a door at the right of the hall.

“Oh, never mind if it is,” I urged. “Don’t let’s bother now.”

“It’s now or never, I suspect,” Eve returned coolly. “What’s the matter with you, Sandy, haven’t you got any curiosity?”

“I don’t like old houses when nobody lives in ’em,” I confessed. “They give me the creeps.”

Eve seemed to think this funny, and the sound of her laughter echoed back from the wide stairway. It was uncanny—as if somebody else had laughed. And now she was opening the door and stepping across the threshold into the room which she had correctly guessed was the parlor.

It was a wide, bare room. The windows were shuttered and at only one place, where some of the slats of the blind had been broken, did any light come in. This was just enough for us to see by, though in truth there was little to see. An old horsehair sofa and chairs, a low carved cabinet in front of a broad fireplace, and above the fireplace, a gilt and white mantle. The wallpaper showing a pattern of faded rosebuds was warped and ragged in many places.

“I guess probably people have had lots of good times in this room!” Eve murmured dreamily.

“A good place for a funeral, if you ask me!” I retorted crossly. “Oh, do let’s get out, I don’t like the place a bit.”

“Oh, all right,” she said, turning toward the door. “Though I should love to take a look around upstairs,” she added with a glance toward the stairway. “I think it’s a love——”

The sentence was never finished. A sound suddenly broke in upon the stillness. It came from the direction of the kitchen. A sound like the closing of a door. As we stood there in the middle of the hall, hardly realizing what was happening, it was followed immediately by another more ominous one—the unmistakable click of a key as it turned in a lock.

Then Eve was speeding down the hall. Across the kitchen, and pounding on the closed door. “Mr. Bangs!” she called. “Oh, I say, wait—wait!”

But there was no answer and no sound from without. Our jailer’s retreating footsteps were already deadened in the thick grass outside!

IV

Prisoners

EVE looked at me and I looked at Eve. “The front windows,” I whispered. “Maybe——” I raced back down the hall as I spoke, back to the big front parlor. The only place from which the outside world was visible was the broken front blind I have mentioned. I applied my eyes to the hole. But what I saw only made my heart sink several fathoms deeper: it was the round-shouldered back of Mr. Bangs already making good progress down the road. “He’s g-gone!” I faltered, my voice ragged.

Eve didn’t answer for a minute. I guessed she was getting hold of herself. “I disliked that man the moment I set eyes on him,” she said at last.

“But wh-what,” I demanded weakly, “are we going to do?”

“Get out, of course. There’s always some way, a cellar window or something.”

“But suppose there isn’t? S’pose they’re all nailed fast like these? Suppose we have to—to spend the night here!”

Eve did not seem to have heard me. She was now hurrying back down the hall to the cellar door. I listened with my heart in my throat—if that was locked too! Then with a scraping noise, I heard it open.

I didn’t really like the idea of the cellar at all and I liked it even less as I watched Eve’s figure disappear into the cobwebby dimness. But I had no mind to stand waiting alone in that awful empty house. So gathering what shreds of courage I possessed, I plunged down after her. It was worse even than I had imagined. The floor was dirt under our feet and the dampness which hung about the upstairs seemed intensified a hundredfold. I was sure it would choke me in a minute.

But Eve was pushing ahead. I could just make out the outline of two smudgy windows above what was probably a coal bin. But they were miles above our heads and looked as if they had not been open for years.

We made a tour of the rest of the cellar. I was clutching Eve’s hand now, half paralyzed with fright, I might as well admit. Once a cobweb brushed against my face and I screamed. In a particularly dark corner where Eve climbed onto a barrel to examine a nearby window, I distinctly heard a rat scurry away into the shadows. “Oh, do let’s go back!” I cried at last with a shudder. “I’m positive there’s no way out down here.”

Eve was still tugging at the window. “Nailed fast,” she announced. “This place is sure burglar proof!”

All the rest of them were the same. Finally we went back upstairs. Eve had a smudge across one cheek. At any other time I would have laughed. “Well,” she said quite cheerfully, “there are still the upstairs’ windows.”

“Eve,” I said, “have you thought of this? No one knows we’re in this house. Not even Mr. Bangs. What I mean is that when they start looking for us, they’ll never think of looking here!” Already I was imagining searching parties and headlines in the newspapers. There would be descriptions of our appearance: “Eve Fordyce, brown eyes, short wavy hair, when last seen was wearing a blue cotton skirt and white slipover blouse; Sandra Hutton, green eyes, lightish hair, wearing faded gingham dress——”

“Mrs. Trapp or whatever her name is knows we came up here,” Eve was saying. “And Mr. Bangs saw us outside.”

“You can’t depend on him for any help,” I declared emphatically. “Oh, Eve, do you think they’ll broadcast us among the missing persons on the radio?”

“Of course not! Oh, do cheer up, Sandy. Think what an adventure we’ll have to tell the girls about next fall. Why, it’ll go over big. Especially,” she added calmly, “if we spend the night here.”

This view of the situation did not serve to cheer me in the slightest degree. I was not concerned with the dim and distant fall but with what was going to happen to us right now. The thought of the night coming on, of the darkness catching us there in that big echoing house already sent shivers running up and down my spine. “Oh, dear, why did we ever come in at all?” I wailed. “It serves me right for being so snoopy.”

“It was more my fault than yours,” Eve declared consolingly. “At least it was my fault that we stayed so long. Now I’m going to take a look round upstairs. Very likely they weren’t so particular about fastening those windows.”

But even if we did find one unfastened, how were we going to get down to the ground? As I remembered the spacious lines on which the house was built, I felt that escape that way was hopeless from the outset. Still there was nothing else to do so I again followed Eve, this time up the broad curving stairway.

We found ourselves in a square hall from the rear end of which ran a narrow passage. At our right was a large bedroom, containing a big double bed, minus mattress or coverings. Instead of springs, there were wooden slats. “Fancy sleeping on those!” said Eve.

“We may come to it!” I returned miserably.

The blinds were closed as they had been below, and the two windows in the bedroom were nailed fast. The windows in the other rooms—there were five in all—were the same. Whoever had been assigned the task of closing up the old Craven House had made a thorough job of it.

We returned finally to the large front room. I slumped down on a wooden rocker by the window. My legs felt extraordinarily weak and if I had been fasting for a week, I could not have been hungrier. I was amazed to see by my wrist watch that it was only a little after two. I had thought it hours later.

Eve had gone back to the window. I watched her dismally as she fussed with the fastening. “I’m going to look for a hammer,” she announced presently.

“Hammer?” I repeated dully as if I were unfamiliar with the implement.

She nodded. “You’ve noticed of course the difference between these windows and the ones downstairs?”

“I noticed that they’re all nailed down—isn’t that enough?”

“Yes, but the ones below are nailed from the outside but these are done from within. Consequently the nails are all in plain sight.”

“You mean——” I jumped up. She was right. “How clever of you to notice that,” I exclaimed. “But do you think we can ever get ’em out—they look awfully deep in and they’re rusty besides?”

“I’m going to try anyway,” she returned. “Let’s go downstairs and take a look for some tools.”

For the first time since I had heard that back door close, I felt a faint glimmer of hope. In a little room off the kitchen filled with all manner of household odds and ends, we found a tool box and in it a hammer, brown and rusty with disuse, but still a hammer.

Well, it was exactly a quarter of three when Eve set to work on those nails. It was five minutes past before the first one even budged. And it was nearly four before we got the second one out. Then followed a long struggle with the window itself. “I’ll bet those old Cravens never did have any fresh air,” I panted. “No wonder they’re all dead—” I was pounding the sash with my fist in an effort to loosen it.

“How d’you know they’re all dead? Here, let me have another try.” Eve pushed me aside.

At last with a groan of protest, it moved—an inch, two. I reached through and unfastened the blinds and the sweet warm air rushed in. My, how good it smelled!

The window opened onto the gently sloping tin roof of a narrow side porch. After we had succeeded in raising it far enough, we climbed through. It was not at all clear to either of us what we were going to do next. But anything, we felt, was better than staying cooped up in that house any longer.

Making our way cautiously to the edge of the roof, we saw that it was, as I had anticipated, a goodish drop to the ground. Moreover, there were no adjacent tree branches or any of those convenient trellises that are always so handy in the story books.

We sat down with our feet braced against the gutter to consider the situation. “Marooned on a tin roof!” giggled Eve. The spirits of both of us had risen enormously with our escape from the house. Some one was bound to pass along the road sooner or later, we decided. And though the house stood a considerable distance back from it, still our lung power was good.

The road to Old Beecham, however, was off the main artery of travel and so far as we could see from our perch, there was simply no sign of life anywhere. “I can’t think,” I said, “why anyone should want to build a house way off here, unless he was a hermit or something. I tell you, Eve,” I added with conviction, “those Cravens were a queer lot!”

“Oh, I don’t know,” Eve returned musingly. “It’s awfully peaceful and sort of—well, self sufficient. And I shouldn’t wonder if, when the leaves are off the trees, you could get a glimpse of the sea off there somewhere.”

“Um—maybe.” I was wondering what Aunt Cal was thinking by now. Any remaining shred of character which I might have still possessed in her eyes, must quite have vanished by this time. And if we did not get home that night—well with a woman like Aunt Cal, I just couldn’t imagine what would happen. It was within the realm of possibility that she might send us both packing after such an escapade!

V

John Doe, Esquire

THE minutes ticked into an hour and still no one passed. The sun was already behind the house and a little breeze was rustling the tall grass and bushes below us. I shall never smell syringas again without thinking of those hours on that tin roof. For it was nearly two full hours before we saw anyone!

Then at last we heard, not the hum of a motor for which we had been listening, but the slow rattle of wheels. It was a farm wagon, coming from the direction of Old Beecham, and it was drawn by a team of horses and driven by a boy in overalls and a blue shirt. His head was bare and we could hear him singing lustily to himself as he drove.

At our first frantic shout, however, he turned his head and gazed up at the house. We both stood up and began to wave wildly.

“Whoa-o.” We could hear the boy’s voice as he brought the horses to a stop. The sound brought cheer to our hearts. Another minute and he was vaulting over the stone wall and coming toward us. His brown face only a shade lighter than the shock of hair above it was expressionless. “Anything the matter?” he drawled as he came within earshot.

“Well, you don’t think we’re sitting on this roof for pleasure, do you?” Eve giggled.

“I haven’t thought anything about it,” retorted the boy. “But from the yell you let out just now, I judged somebody was being murdered.”

“We had to make you hear,” Eve explained sweetly. “We’ve been sitting here for two hours!”

“Why don’t you try sitting somewhere else then if you’re tired of it?”

“Better view of the scenery from here,” she told him. “By the way, you don’t happen to have a ladder in that wagon of yours, do you?”

“What do you think I am—the hook and ladder company?”

“Well, I just thought I’d ask.”

I felt that we weren’t getting anywhere. “Look here Mr—er——”

“Doe,” the boy supplied glibly. “John Doe.”

Eve giggled.

“Well, Mr. Doe,” I continued, “to put the case briefly, what we want most just now is to get down from this roof.”