THE TYPHOON.
The three conspirators had formed no particular plan for a campaign. Mr.
Campbell was certain of only one thing: if poor Nancy Brown had foolishly
got herself involved in this business, it would be better to keep the
secret in the family, as it were.
"We'll just give the child a good lecture and take her home," he said to
himself, biting off the end of his cigar and frowning at the disquieting
thought. "Whatever she did was through innocence, I am certain of that.
She may have been flattered or cajoled into it. Who knows? The little
thing is miserable enough without being made more unhappy. I suppose I
should have sent for her and asked for a confession, but I hadn't the
nerve and that's the truth."
Several uneventful days passed after the departure of the others. It was
very hot and the girls kept indoors until after sunset. But it was a
dull, dispiriting time, and one morning they decided to take a spin in
the "Comet," leaving Mr. Campbell at home to look after things. They had
hardly gone when he was summoned to Tokyo by a messenger, and there was
no one but the servants left in the house.
The girls motored into town and spent the morning shopping. From one
curio shop to another they wandered in the quest of nothing except
diversion.
"There is no end to the beautiful things here," sighed Mary, wishing in
her heart that she could carry the most beautiful and priceless thing in
Tokyo home to her mother.
"Yes, everything is beautiful except the weather," remarked Billie,
pointing to the black clouds which had gathered while they were in a
shop. "We are going to have one of those red-letter storms, Mary. I think
we'd better hurry home as fast as we can."
But the "Comet," who never had any luck all the time he was in Japan,
proceeded to burst one of his tires and the explosion mingled
threateningly with a low roll of thunder in the distance.
"We'd better take him to a garage and go back in a 'riksha," announced
Billie, much annoyed. "Poor old 'Comet,' it wasn't his fault, but the
prologues of these storms do put one in a bad temper."
"They frighten me," said Mary. "They give me evil forebodings."
The "Comet" was accordingly left at the garage to be repaired, and the
girls were well on their way home in a jinriksha before anything worse
had happened than rumblings and strange mutterings at what seemed a great
distance away. It sometimes takes hours for a great storm in Japan to
reach a head; which, in a way, is rather fortunate, because it gives
people a chance to prepare for the struggle. A house is usually
completely closed with storm shutters. Not even the smallest opening is
left, through which the demon wind can find its way and so carry off
the roof, or even the house itself. Every detachable object out of doors
is taken inside. The gardener is seen hurrying about protecting his most
valuable plants, and by the time the storm bursts upon the scene, filled
with demoniacal shrieks and howls like an army of barbarians pursuing the
enemy, it finds its victims prepared for the attack.
When the 'riksha turned in at the Campbell gate, it had grown so dark
that only the dim outlines of the house were visible at the end of the
driveway. No one saw them arrive. The servants were probably at the back
putting on the storm shutters, which were all in place at the front.
Billie invited the 'riksha man to go around to the servants' quarters and
wait until the storm had passed, but he nodded cheerfully and took his
way down the road.
"Let's go in by the passage door," suggested Mary. "Everything is closed
up here."
Billie followed her wearily. The heat and oppression were almost beyond
endurance. She felt she might be suffocated at any moment. It was like
trying to breathe under a feather mattress or in a total vacuum, for that
matter.
"Shall we put on our kimonos and lie on the floor in the library?" she
suggested as they slipped into the passage. And this they accordingly
did without another word or a moment's delay. It was too hot to think or
sleep or eat or speak. All they desired was to stretch out on the rug in
a cool dark room and keep perfectly still.
There was a deadly quiet in the house when presently two little kimonoed
forms stole through the halls and crept to the library door. Billie felt
for the knob in the darkness and turned it. The door was locked. In the
dense atmosphere it was difficult for them to realize what this meant at
first.
"Mary, it's--it's the-what-do-you-call-'em," said Billie incoherently.
Mary nodded silently. She might have shrieked her answer aloud, for the
storm had arrived with a great howling of wind and rain, and with flashes
of lightning followed by repeated and deafening cannonades of thunder.
The rain rattled on the roof like iron and all the demons in bedlam
seemed to be besieging the house. Then a most sickening thing happened.
The floor appeared to be heaving under their feet. Doors all over the
house banged to with loud reports like revolvers shooting off. There was
a crash in the library, a loud cry from within, the door flew open and a
figure rushed past. Mary, kneeling on the floor at the threshold,
involuntarily reached out her hands and seized the flying skirts of the
apparition, or whatever it was, which disappeared like a shadow through
the passage door, leaving Mary still holding the substance of the shadow
which seemed to be the skirt she had grasped.
A second shock followed almost immediately, less violent than the first
but quite as sickening. For one instant the house tossed and pitched like
a ship on a choppy sea. Then it settled down on its foundations. Most
Japanese houses are built on wooden supports, stout square pillars
rounded off at the base and resting in a round socket of stone. This
gives a certain elasticity for resisting shocks which a firmly built
house would not endure.
The girls lay side by side on the floor of the passage, too frightened to
speak. There is a horror about an earthquake that is indescribable to
those who have never felt it; a feeling of sickening inefficiency and
helplessness.
After a while they plucked up courage to rise and totter weakly into the
library, where Billie, her hand shaking with nervous excitement, struck
a match and lit a candle. The room was in dire confusion. Chairs were
upset, books had fallen off the shelves and lay scattered about the
floor, and the iron safe had crashed over on its face. On the desk and
the floor about it were numbers of loose sheets of paper and a narrow
roll of tracing paper, which had uncoiled itself and lay half on the
desk, half on the floor like a long white serpent.
Mechanically they began to put things to rights. Mary gathered up the
books and set them back on the shelves and Billie stood the chairs on
their legs and collected the papers. They were not important ones, she
knew, only decoys, as her father had called them. In the mean time the
house rocked in the clutches of the storm.
"I don't know why we bother to do this," said Billie laughing
hysterically. "We may be flying through the air any minute ourselves
along with the chairs and papers and everything else."
"The storm at Nikko was mere child's play to this; just an infant babe in
arms," answered Mary, weeping softly while she worked.
It seemed better to be doing something than to sit still and listen to
the terrifying fury of the tempest, as again and again it hurled itself
against the house.
"It wouldn't have done any good even if we had caught the thief or spy or
whatever he is," observed Billie after a while. "There would have been no
one to help us."
Suddenly Mary's perturbed mind harked back to what had happened in the
hall.
"Billie," she cried, "it wasn't a man; it was a woman. That skirt I
caught--that--that something--where is it?"
"What are you talking about, Mary?"
"I tell you I caught hold of something. It came off in my hands."
She ran into the hall and, groping about on the floor, presently found
what seemed to be a long coat. Rushing back she spread it on the desk.
Billie held the candle high and the two girls stood gazing at it for some
moments without speaking. Then Billie slowly placed the candle on the
desk and sat down.
"I don't understand, Billie," said Mary, clasping and unclasping her
hands in her excitement and surprise, "it's Nancy's blue raincoat,
but--but I don't understand."
Billie covered her eyes with one hand as if she would like to hide from
Mary what they might tell of her feelings and thoughts. There was
nothing to say. It _was_ Nancy's blue raincoat, but she refused to think
what the explanation might be.
After a long time, it seemed, O'Haru came into the room. She was amazed
to find the girls in the library until they explained how they had just
escaped the storm.
"Oh, much terrible," ejaculated the housekeeper. "Much terrible more
worse than since," from which they gathered that it was one of the worst
storms ever seen in Tokyo. O'Haru brought in lights and presently
returned at the head of a procession of maids with trays of food; though
whether it was luncheon or supper time it was impossible to tell. The
clocks had all stopped in the earthquake and it was still as black as
night. It might have been midnight or midday for all they knew.
The girls preferred to remain in the library, which seemed to them more
protection than the other rooms, and O'Haru drew up three tables and
arranged the trays with great deftness and celerity.
"Papa didn't come?" asked Billie, noticing the third table.
"No, honorable lady."
"For whom is the other tray, then?"
"Mees Brown," answered O'Haru, rather surprised.
"But she is in the mountains," said Billie, growing very red and uneasy.
"Oh, Nancy, Nancy," she groaned inwardly, "could it have really been you
and are you out there in the typhoon?"
"Pardon grant," said O'Haru. "Mees Brown arriving at morning. Mees Brown
within."
"I think not, O'Haru," said Billie.
"Her honorable rainy coat," said Onoye, pointing to the fated blue
mackintosh.
"Mary, what shall I say?" asked Billie in a low voice. "I don't know what
to do."
"Ask them questions," said Mary.
From Onoye they gathered that Miss Brown had arrived soon after Mr.
Campbell had left the house, and had gone straight to her room. She
was very tired, she said, and would lie down until lunch time. Then she
had gone to the library. Just before the storm they had tried to go in
and close the shutters, but had found the door locked.
Billie formed a resolution to protect Nancy no matter what was to pay.
"It wasn't the real Miss Brown," she announced firmly. "It was some one
dressed like her. The real Miss Brown is far away from here in the
mountains."
The two Japanese women withdrew presently, and if they felt any curiosity
about Nancy's strange appearance at the villa, they were careful to hide
it.
The storm lasted all night and many times the two girls lying side by
side on Billie's bed were prepared for the house to fall on top of them
or to be carried away on the wind like chips of wood. But toward morning
the wind died down and while the rain continued to flood the earth, they
knew the worst was over. Billie drew back the bolts of their storm
shutters and the fresh air came pouring in to revive their drooping
spirits.
"Mary," she said, creeping back to bed, "I'll never believe it was Nancy.
No, never, never."
At last they went to sleep, and when they waked the rain had ceased
altogether. The lawn in front of the house was a muddy lake and many
trees lay prone on the ground. It was a scene of devastation that greeted
Mr. Campbell as he hurried home at daylight in a 'riksha. He had
dispatched a messenger in the night, paying a large fee, to see if the
girls were safe at home and had spent the night in Tokyo with Mr. Buxton.
It was not until much later in the day that Billie plucked up courage to
inform her father of what had happened.
"Why on earth didn't you tell me about it immediately?" he exclaimed.
"The best way to settle that, is to telegraph to Cousin Helen right off."
But with the "Comet" in town and Komatsu in the mountains this was not so
easy to manage, and it looked as if Mr. Campbell would have to walk back
to Tokyo. He had got half way down the drive, in fact, when a messenger
appeared running at full speed as fast as a horse; such is the endurance
of a Japanese runner. He had been sent with a telegram from Mr.
Campbell's office, but it had been written in Japanese and had to be
translated.
Mr. Campbell hurried back to the house and called Onoye:
"Read this for me if you can," he ordered.
Onoye looked at the strange script a long time. Then she read slowly:
"'O'Nainci San gone Tokyo. No honorable telling before for why she make
those journey--'"
There were a few more words, but Onoye had reached the limit of her
knowledge of the English language.
Mr. Campbell sighed. Billie was the only girl in the world who wasn't any
trouble, he thought.