HARBOR STREET, Fishers Haven, runs north and south. On your left, as
you walk up it, you can see a line of blue across green meadows and
hear the faint roar of the surf. Everything looked washed and clean;
the little houses white with green shutters, set in tiny green yards.
Eve said it was a picture village out of a scouring powder
advertisement.
We were walking up from the bus stop. There was no railroad in Fishers
Haven. It seemed good to stretch our legs after the all-day train ride.
I was carrying my suitcase, which was pretty heavy, but I didn’t mind.
The bus driver had directed us: “Turn the corner at the drug store,
it’s the third house.”
There it was! White like the others, with a small front yard, bordered
on two sides by a neat hedge. A brick walk led up to a narrow front
stoop. Our eyes were lifted anxiously to the door as we mounted the
steps. It had, I could not suppress the thought, a very closed look. I
lifted the knocker with some trepidation; it seemed like an intrusion
to make a noise in so silent a place.
It was a feeble knock, but no sooner had it died away when we heard a
window raised above us and a voice called, “Go round to the back and
wipe your feet on the mat.”
Eve giggled. How I loved her for it!
The grass in the side yard had been freshly mowed and smelled
deliciously. “Syringas, too!” Eve inhaled rapturously. “I’m going to
sleep out in that lily-of-the-valley bed,” she whispered, “and pretend
I’m a dryad!”
“Hush! Here she is.”
A small woman in a big white apron was standing on the back porch. Her
eyes were dark and very bright, and her nose had a kind of pinched-in
look as if she were smelling of something. Her expression was—well,
speculative.
“So here you are!” she said, holding out a bony, work-worn hand. “I
guess you’re Sandra. You’ve got the Hutton nose.”
“Have I?” I laughed. And, moved by an impulse for which I was quite
unable to account, I stooped and kissed her where her hair was parted
flatly on her forehead. “This is my best friend, Eve Fordyce,” I said
before she had recovered from her surprise at my salutation.
Eve smiled devastatingly. “Pleased to meet you,” said my relative.
“It was awfully sweet of you to let me come along with Sandy,” Eve
said. “I hope we aren’t going to be a lot of bother.”
“Well, I guess everybody’s a bother when it comes to that,” returned
Aunt Cal not too ungraciously. “It’s a good deal of bother to live
anyway, what with three meals a day winter and summer.”
“Do you know I’ve often thought of that very thing myself,” agreed Eve.
“If it wasn’t for eating, what loads of spare time we’d have to do a
lot of extra exciting things.”
Aunt Cal looked as if precisely this view of the matter had not
occurred to her before. But all she said was, “Come in, supper’s on the
stove.”
The kitchen was small and painfully neat; the same scrubbed look was
everywhere. We washed our hands at the sink at Aunt Cal’s direction, as
supper, she said, had already stood about as long as it could, and sat
down at a blue and white oilcloth covered table. It was a good supper,
though plain, as Aunt Cal had warned me. Baked beans, bread and butter,
tea and applesauce. Eve and I chattered about our trip, while Aunt Cal
drank strong tea and said little.
It was nearly dark by the time we had finished eating everything that
was on the table. The noisily ticking alarm clock on the kitchen shelf
said ten minutes past eight. “I expect you’ll want to go to bed early
after your long trip,” Aunt Cal remarked as she began to clear the
table. She took one of the shining glass lamps from the shelf and,
though it wasn’t yet dark enough to light it, led the way upstairs.
“This is the spare room,” she said with some pride, throwing open a
door at the end of the short passage. It was not large, but its prim,
cool order presented so pleasant a contrast to the clutter of departure
that we had left behind us that morning that we both heaved an
involuntary sight of relief. “Oh, it’s lovely,” Eve breathed. “And that
bed looks big enough for six giants.”
A faint look of dismay flitted across our hostess’ countenance at the
suggested picture. “I guess it’ll hold two your size,” she said dryly.
And added, “Breakfast’s at seven sharp. Goodnight.”
As the door closed, I sank weakly upon the bed. “I feel somehow,” I
said, “as if there’d been a death in the family.”
Eve laughed. And the familiar ring of it made the strange room seem
less strange. “Oh, Evey darling,” I cried, “I’m so glad you’re here.
Promise you won’t go and walk out on me now.”
“Heavens, no! Why should I? I think Aunt Cal is a treasure—only she
doesn’t know it. I’m going to pretend she’s my aunt too. She’s so
different from Aunt Margery, and I think a variety in relations is very
broadening. The thing we’ve got to do, Sandy, is to make her glad we’re
here.”
“I suppose so,” I said. It was like Eve to look at things that way.
Well, maybe I’d feel more optimistic in the morning, I thought. I found
the key to my suitcase and went to unpack.
“Bother this lock!” I exclaimed after a few minutes of fumbling. “The
key just won’t go in!”
Eve, who had already finished emptying her bag while I had been
struggling, came over to help me. “Why, Sandy,” she said, “this can’t
be the key, it’s too large.”
“Well, it’s the key I locked it with this morning,” I retorted
impatiently. “My trunk key is flat and I haven’t any other.”
Eve shook her head puzzled. “You’d better look through your handbag
anyway,” she said. “This simply can’t be the key.”
Just to satisfy her, I dumped the contents of my bag on the blue and
white counterpane of the bed. There was the key to my trunk, half a bar
of nut fudge wrapped in tin foil and bearing unmistakable evidences of
having been sat on, my address book in which all the girls had written
their summer addresses just last night, a vanity case, two rubber
bands, a stub of a pencil, and a handkerchief. That was all.
“You see,” I said, “it’s just got to be the key. It can’t be anything
else.”
“Then,” said Eve most surprisingly, “this isn’t your suitcase!”
“What!” I wheeled about and looked at the case on the chair. It was
black and had once been shiny. It surely looked like mine, scratches
and all. But wait—what was that gouge in the fabric near the hinge? I
didn’t remember that.
Then Eve did a funny thing. She leant over and sniffed it. “Tobacco!”
she exclaimed.
I went to sniff too; the odor was unmistakable. I took the case up and
felt its weight again. “I remember thinking it was awfully heavy on the
way from the station,” I mused. I was looking the case over more
carefully now and the more I looked, the more unfamiliar it became.
Could it be possible that Eve was right and that somehow or other I’d
contrived to walk off with somebody else’s baggage? I could not
understand it.
“But how could it have happened?” I cried. “I had it with me all the
way on the train and in the station in Boston and on the bus after we
left Berkshire Plains.”
Eve had dropped onto an old sea chest which stood under the window. She
seemed to be thinking deeply. Finally her face lighted up. “I’ve got
it!” she cried. “’Member that little, bow-legged man in the funny
clothes who stopped the bus out in the country quite a while after we
left Berkshire Plains? It wasn’t even at a crossroads and I said, ‘How
convenient!’ or something.”
I nodded. I did remember the man. He had taken a seat just in front of
us and, having nothing better to do, I had observed him rather
particularly.
Eve was going on. “He had a suitcase, a black one like this. He must
have placed it in the aisle next yours and when you got out—don’t you
see—you simply picked up his instead of yours.”
“Of all the imbecile performances!” I cried.
Eve grinned impishly. “Oh, you can laugh!” I stormed. “But I’d like to
have you tell me what I’m going to do now?”
“Wonder what’s in it?” Eve’s curiosity, I’ve frequently told her, will
get her into trouble some day. She had taken up the case and was
shaking it gently. “Not quite heavy enough for a bootlegger’s,” she
mused, “still pretty full of something.”
“What does it matter!” I snapped. “I’m not in the least interested in
what stringy little men are carrying about the country. What I’m
interested in is what has become of my second best nightie and my
Japanese kimono and my toothbrush.”
“Oh, well, there’s no use worrying about ’em now,” Eve said
practically. Her finger was toying with the catch of the intruding
baggage. Suddenly there was a snap and it sprang open. The case wasn’t
even locked!
I watched Eve lift the lid gingerly as if she expected something to
spring out at her. Maintaining my pose of indifference, I did not move.
But of course I could not help seeing when the lid fell back, revealing
a pile of men’s clothing with a folded newspaper on top. The paper
fluttered to the floor as Eve poked the clothes aside. “There might be
an address,” she remarked.
Underneath the clothes, we discovered a collection of small jars and
bottles. “Harry’s Hair Restorer,” Eve read. “And what’s this—‘Harry’s
Scalp Salve,’ ‘Harry’s Magic Lotion for Baldness.’” She giggled. Then
meeting my disapproving eyes, she said: “All right, Sandy, you’re right
of course, I am a snoop. But I did think we ought to look for a name or
something to go on.”
“Aren’t there any letters?” I asked.
“Don’t see any.” She was putting the bottles back. “I guess we’ll just
have to take it back to the bus station in the morning and see what
they can do for us. But don’t worry, darling, you’ll surely get your
things back. They wouldn’t do ‘Harry’ any good, you know!”
“But what about Aunt Cal?” I inquired anxiously. “Shall we tell her,
d’you think?”
“I don’t see why not. After all, everyone makes mistakes.”
“Ye-es,” I agreed doubtfully, “I suppose so.” I was thinking of that
speculative look in my relative’s sharp eyes and I was quite certain
that not even in the most unguarded moment of her life would she have
done anything so stupid as to appropriate baggage which did not belong
to her.
It was quite dark before we had finished discussing what had happened
and were at last ready to settle down for the night. Eve was already in
bed when I blew out the light and went to open the window.
I poked my head through the dotted Swiss curtain into the cool sweet
night. The only light spot anywhere was the strip of sandy road beyond
the fence. “Tomorrow,” I thought, “we’ll explore that road and all the
others. We’ll go down to the beach and see how cold the water is
and——”
“What _are_ you looking at?” Eve called impatiently.
I turned and came toward the bed. “There’s a man creeping along the
grass on the other side of the hedge!” I said.
“Creeping?”
“Creeping is what I said!”
“Oh, dear,” Eve sighed. “I just can’t bother with any more mysteries
tonight.” She snuggled deeper into her pillow. “Do come to bed. No
doubt he’s—just—catching fireflies—or—or—hunting bird’s nests—or
something——”
Her voice trailed off into nothingness. And without another word, I
climbed into bed and pulled the covers close about me.
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