CHAPTER VI
THE YELLOW HOUSE AND WHAT THEY FOUND AT IT
It was after midnight when Stanley Ingham stopped his car and yielded upthe steering-wheel to Herrick. Besides themselves their car carriedthree of Kane's detectives and they were followed by the sheriff and aroadster full of armed men.
The detectives had a secondary mission. At the last minute Kane hadreceived a message from a much concerned elderly cousin of JoePatrick's. This cousin was a waiter at "Riley's," a roadhouse which wasnot only a cheap edition of the aristocratic Palisades, whence Christinahad disappeared, but was kept by a brother-in-law and erstwhile partnerof the Palisades' proprietor. The waiter at Riley's declared that adrunken taxi-driver had just turned up with a note from the Palisadesurging Riley's to keep him over night. This man was quite drunk enoughto talk about having lost his place through obliging the Palisades andJoe's cousin volunteered to keep an eye on him till the arrival of thedetectives. These were to return to New York with their prisoners of theyellow house not from Waybridge, but from Benning's Point, stopping onthe way to that station at Riley's and telephoning thence all news toKane.
At Waybridge they had been fortunate in finding the sheriff up andstarting forth after some marauders who were reported to have robbed astill burning post-office at Benning's Point; the station agent whomthey found with him had seen Nicola, that morning, meet a lady with thatold car of his that he had painted black when there was so much talkabout those New York Guinees having a gray one; the agent was sure thelady had taken no return train.
From both him and the sheriff it was evident that the Pascoes asforeigners, had been contemptible, but not disliked. The unpopularperson was a boarder they had; a woman with red hair who stayed outthere to write novels and thought she was so much too good for otherpeople that she never so much as passed the time of day with anybody.Friends of hers did come out from the city to see her sometimes. Goingor coming from the city herself she was tied up in one o' thoseautomobile veils--might 'uv been her come back this morning, only shelooked kind of shabby-dressed. The sheriff added that there was old Mrs.Pascoe, Nicola's mother, as nice a little woman as you'd want to see;real neat, trim, gray-haired lady, an American lady. Herrick suddenlyturned and stared.
But now they were within half a mile of the Pascoe house. Stanley andthe detectives crowded into the sheriff's car. They had been instructedto send Herrick on alone; he was to attempt an entrance by a message ofurgent and friendly warning, endeavoring to get the lay of the land andto make his presence known to any watchful captive, but otherwiseawaiting reinforcements. One of the detectives said to Herrick, "If theywon't let you in, just leave your message. And let them hear you driveoff. Then we'll get together."
Herrick ran the car slowly along the unfamiliar road. This was stillclogged and rutted with mud, which had begun to stiffen since the rainhad stopped; a high wind shouldered the clouds in driving masses. Hisdestination was the second house on his left; and, as he peered alongthe roadside, the deep excitement, the terrible questions which glowedin that dark night, worked in him with a fearful gladness. Certainty wasat hand! A bitter exultation rode within him nearer and nearer towhatever stroke Fate stood to deal him in the yellow house. A hundredvisions of Christina shone and darkened before him, leaping along hispulse, and his blood sang in him with a kind of madness.--The secondhouse on the left! There it rose, a blot on the blackness! Dark as astone, it somehow struck cold on his hot hopes.
He brought up the car before the gate and flung a falsely cheerfulhalloo upon the wind. Nothing answered. The gate yielded to his hand; ashe went up the path a fragrance greeted him like Christina'spresence--the cold, moist air was filled with the sweetness ofold-fashioned, garden flowers. His fingers missed the bell; but,lighting on the brass knocker, sent loud reverberations through thehouse. Nothing within it seemed to stir. But the silence echoed horriblyand swung, quaking, in his breast. Of a sudden he knew that house wasempty.
Nothing else mattered. Discretion ceased to exist. He drew back andscanned the vacant, shuttered windows; he ran round the house; there wasstill no light; he tried the kitchen door and drew back to listen; itwas as though within the house he could hear silence walking and herstep was ominous. He put his shoulder to the kitchen door and burst itin.
Once again, as on that night in August, a dark room lay waiting; thedarkness seemed to breathe. He had matches in his pocket and once againthe light discovered only emptiness. But he remembered what, that othertime, the inner chamber had revealed. He found a candle and then a lamp,and, lighting that, crossed the dining-room and then the hall into theliving-room. All prettily upholstered, all in order, and vacant as theeye of idiotcy. His soul knew there was nothing living in that house;and yet it seemed to him there would surely be a step upon the stair,that a voice behind him or an opening door would certainly reveal somefateful presence. There in the hall, under the stairs, a door was openand he paused to look into a closet.
It contained a sink with running water, gardening tools, wraps hangingupon nails, and, on the floor, a big silk umbrella without a handle, therod recently broken. There were also some old flower-pots, two of themhalf full of earth. Nothing else.
At the foot of the stairs he called out, "Christina!" and stood andlistened while his voice went dying about the empty house."Christina--it's I--Bryce!" and then "Nancy Cornish! Can you hear me,Nancy Cornish?" But no face leaned over the balusters to him. He wentupstairs. But his step was heavy, and up there the silence weighed onhim, like silence in a vault. Two rooms on the left told him nothing.But in a room on his right he found a small forgotten slipper. Thatslipper had fitted the slim foot of some littler maid than Christina!Holding the lamp high, he was struck to see the transom covered withpoultry-wire. He went at once to the windows. Yes, there were the holesin the woodwork; even, here and there, a nail. There had been poultrywire over the windows, too. In this room some one had been held aprisoner. They had taken her away; and in such haste that they hadforgotten to strip the transom and they had forgotten her slipper. Atone side of the room a desk lay open, all its drawers pulled out andempty; he snatched at the waste basket; there was a crumpled sheet ofpaper in it and a handful of torn-up scraps. He shook the scraps intohis handkerchief and, setting the lamp on the desk, he bent above thecrumpled sheet. There leaped before him, in an illiterate, but very firmhand, an opening of such unimpeachable decorum as to stagger his pryingeyes.
Mrs. Hope,
Honored Madam,
There was no date or other heading. The note ran:
Mrs. Hope,
Honored Madam,
Would say don't come here or send. You can tell where by knowing my handwriting. She is not here. Where she is now I got no idee on earth. I surmise she will be heard from.
There was no signature. Why had the letter not been sent? It hadevidently been volunteered upon some early intimation of Christina'sdisappearance. "Perhaps they found out, later, that Mrs. Hope had goneaway--" Then he heard Stanley hailing him from the road.
The sheriff's party, taking advantage of his house breaking, were withhim immediately. They examined the place from the small, bare,air-chamber into which Stanley, mounting on Herrick's shoulders, stuckhis head, to the cellar; where only a coal-bin, almost empty beneaththeir flinching quest, an ice-box, and an admirable array of preservesconfronted them.
Upstairs, clothes had been found in all the closets--the clothes ofworking people for the most part; but in one, the long, slim,sophisticatedly simple gowns of a pretty woman. In that room they hadforced another desk, which kept them busy for a while with tradesmen'sbills, all made out, regularly enough, to Nicola Pascoe. Nowhere wasthere a letter, no significant writing nor any other name. In the barn acouple of trunks disgorged only some winter coats and a smell ofcamphor; the tools in the shed were in empty order, and when,considerably soiled and stuck about with lint and hay, they met again inthe composed and pretty living-room, there on the mantelshelf the
faceof Christina Hope smiled mockingly at them from a silver frame.Indifferent to prayer or scrutiny, it had nothing to tell them. Andit seemed to ask if they, on their part, had anything to say.
Nowhere was there a letter, no significant writing norany other name.]
Herrick never knew what instinct took him back to the closet under thestairs. He could not bear to leave it; there was a little broken glasson the floor and a sudden wavering in his lamp suggested that this camefrom a break in one of the minute panes in a small window over head. Hetried to reach this window to see if it were fastened and found itnailed down, with outside shutters that were closed. But in getting nearenough for this he knocked over one of the flower-pots. "Find anything?"Stanley cried, bounding forward.
The smashed flower-pot lay at their feet. "No, only broken something!"Herrick instinctively picked it up and the loosened earth parted in hishand. "Yes, after all," he said, "I think I have." There had beenburied, smooth and deep in the flower-pot, the diamond necklace.