CHAPTER V
Before going to investigate the knocking in the dining-room, Kenwickpicked up the loaded revolver which he had brought down with him fromthe upstairs sitting-room. He felt himself so completely at adisadvantage against any chance invader that only such a weapon couldeven the score. Besides, there was the sick woman upstairs. He had herto protect. He hobbled across the hall, making as little noise as hecould. But the process of getting into the dining-room took considerabletime. There was plenty of time, he reflected, for the intruder to becomediscouraged or emboldened as the case might be.
As he crossed the room an icy blast struck him from the open window, andhe told himself savagely that he wished he had left it alone. Youcouldn't expect a furnace to heat a house with a gale like that blowinginto it. He had dragged himself to within a few feet of the pane whenall at once he stopped. Two wide boards had been nailed across theaperture. It was a clumsy job, hurriedly done. Kenwick stood theregazing at it. So it was only for this that he had made the painfuljourney from the den! And the carpenter was gone. The customary deathlystillness prevailed.
He stood there listening for the sound of retreating footsteps but itwas another sound that caught his ear. What he heard was the far offchugging of an automobile engine. He remembered now that the place wason a corner; that he had walked what had seemed miles after turning thatcorner before he had come to the iron gate. He was thinking rapidly.This was his one hope. If he could manage to get out to that gate by thetime the motor-car reached it, he could get help. How ill the womanupstairs might be he could not guess, but they were both terribly inneed of aid. At any cost he must get out to the road.
He laid the revolver upon a grim, high-backed chair and threw his wholesix feet of strength against one of the wide boards. It gave under thepressure with a long tearing noise and hung outward dangling from itssecure end. Kenwick took up the revolver again, worked himself outthrough the ample opening, and landed cautiously upon the gravel walkbeneath the window. Clutching at the branch of a giant oleander bush hecalled up to the patient upstairs; "I'm going out to the gate. I don'tknow what will happen to me before I get back, and I don't care. But I'mgoing to get help or die trying."
There was no response. He wondered, as he started along through theblackness, whether the woman could be asleep. How could any one sleep inthis ghastly place. Some people didn't seem to have any nerves. But shemight be dead. The thought brought him to an abrupt halt. But in thatcase it was more imperative than ever that he toil on.
The rain had stopped now and the lawn under his feet was soggy andwater-beaten like a carpet that has been left out in a storm. He thankedfortune that it was not slippery but gave beneath his staggering treadwith a resilience that aided progress. It was impossible for him toproceed at anything faster than what seemed a snail's pace. The machinemust have passed the gate by this time, but there would be others. If heever reached that distant goal he would stand there and wait.
Across the circle of lawn, around the arc of drive, he made hislaborious way with clenched teeth. And so at last he came to where thetall gate loomed black and forbidding through the darkness. The heavychain still swung its sinister scallop before it, seeming more like aprison precaution now than a warning against invasion. As he looked atthe stone fence, stretching away from it on both sides, and recalled theagony with which he had scaled it, courage fled. He'd rather die, hedecided, than attempt to struggle over that parapet again. So he stood,supporting himself by one of the iron rods of the gate, listening forthe sound of an engine. It came at last, growing louder as the carturned the corner a quarter of a mile away. It was evidently travelingslowly in low gear. The reason was soon apparent. Its engine was missingfire.
On through the darkness it came, its lights blazing a path for itsfaltering progress. There was a noise of violently shifted gears andthen the heavy, greasy odor of a flooded carburetor. Behind the lightsthere slid into view almost opposite the tall gate a high-poweredroadster. A man wearing huge glasses that gleamed through the dark likethe eyes of some superhuman being sprang out and wrenched open theengine hood.
For a moment Kenwick watched him, dreading to speak lest the strangervanish and leave him solitary as the gardener had done. And thenabruptly he sent his voice hurtling through the night. At sound of it herecoiled. Only those who have suffered in solitude the agony of anameless terror know the ghastly havoc that it can work upon the humanvoice. Kenwick's held now a harsh, ugly tone that had in it somethinglike a threat. The man at the engine wheeled about and leveled his hugeeyes at the spot from whence the summons came. "What the devil----?" hebegan.
And then explanations tumbled through the barred gate in an incoherenttorrent. They left the motorist with a confused impression of anautomobile tragedy, a bed-ridden woman, a feeble-minded gardener, and ahaunted house.
In sheer perplexity he began drawing off his heavy gantlet gloves asthough to prepare for action. "Take it slower," he advised. "I don't getyou." And then he noticed that the man on the other side of the gate washatless and without an overcoat. "My Lord!" he cried anxiously. "You'llfreeze out here, man!"
"Then for God's sake come in here and help me!" Kenwick entreated. "Idon't know whose place this is but it ought to be investigated. There'sa woman in here who's ill, and somebody has locked her into her room.I'm not able to do a thing for her or for myself. Do you know what housethis is?"
The stranger shook his head. "No, I'm just out here on a visit." Kenwickgroaned. There flashed into his mind the stories of some of his friendswho had toured California and who were unanimous in their conclusionthat everybody in the southern part of the state was merely a visitor."But whom do they visit?" Everett Kenwick had once inquired and nobodycould supply him with an answer.
"Then you don't know where the Raeburn house is?" the man inside thegate asked hopelessly.
The motorist shook his head again. "I'll tell you what though," hesuggested. "You get back into the house out of this cold and I'll sendsomebody back here. I'm having engine trouble and I've got to get intotown."
Kenwick was fumbling with numb fingers in the pocket of his coat. Hestretched an oblong of white paper through the bars of the gate. "Ifyou're going in town, take this," he pleaded. "It's a message I want tosend to my brother in New York. Kenwick is the name and the address ison the outside."
The stranger stopped on his way to the gate and a curious expressioncrossed his face. And just at that moment Kenwick caught the sound ofanother voice speaking from inside the car. He couldn't catch the words,for the coughing of the engine beat against his ears. The man in thegoggles climbed to the seat and the next minute the machine was movingjerkily away.
Cold desolation seized Kenwick. But he felt certain that the strangerwould return. There was nothing mysterious nor uncanny about him. Buthow long would he have to wait there on the drenched gravel before helpcould get back to him? It wouldn't do to catch cold in that leg and adda fever to his other troubles. He must get back into the house. Outthere on the bleak road he thought longingly of its warm comfort.Everything that he had done since he came into it seemed now to havebeen the wrong thing. A horrible sense of incompetency, the first thathe had ever known in all his vivid, effective life, surged over him. Andadded to this was a curious sense of having lost something. Was itMarcreta Morgan's picture that he missed? He told himself that it was,but he was only half satisfied with this assurance.
Arguing the matter with himself, he had covered half the distance aroundthe driveway when suddenly a sharp reverberation rang through the air.It was the report of a gun. Almost immediately this was followed by awoman's scream.
Kenwick stood still, balancing himself unsteadily upon his well foot.The sound had come from the direction of the house. Did it herald atragedy or was it merely a signal? Scarcely knowing why he did it,except to relieve the physical tension and to make his presence known,he gripped his own revolver and fired two answering shots upward intothe night.