Suddenly, with a smothered cry of surprise, Eleanor sat up. She seemed
to have recovered full consciousness and sensibility with an
instantaneous effect comparable only to that of electric light abruptly
flooding a room at night. A moment ago she had been an insentient atom
sunk deep in impenetrable night; now she was herself--and it was broad
daylight.
With an abrupt, automatic movement, she left the bed and stood up,
staring incredulously at the substance of what still wore in her memory
the guise of a dream.
But it had been no dream, after all. She was actually in the small room
with the low ceiling and the door (now shut) and the windows that
revealed the green of leaves and the blue and gold of a sun-spangled
sea. And her coat and hat and veil had been removed and were hanging
from nails in the wall behind the door, and her clothing had been
unfastened--precisely as she dimly remembered everything that had
happened with relation to the strange woman.
She wore a little wrist-watch. It told her that the hour was after four
in the afternoon.
She began hurriedly to dress, or rather to repair the disorder of her
garments, all the while struggling between surprise that she felt rested
and well and strong, and a haunting suspicion that she had been tricked.
Of the truth of this suspicion, confirmatory evidence presently
overwhelmed her.
Since that draught of champagne before the roadside inn shortly after
sunrise, she had known nothing clearly. It was impossible that she could
without knowing it have accomplished her purpose with relation to Alison
Landis and the Cadogan collar. She saw now, she knew now beyond dispute,
that she had been drugged--not necessarily heavily; a simple dose of
harmless bromides would have served the purpose in her overtaxed
condition--and brought to this place in a semi-stupor, neither knowing
whither she went nor able to object had she known.
The discovery of her handbag was all that was required to transmute
fears and doubts into irrefragable knowledge.
No longer fastened to her wrist by the loop of its silken thong, she
found the bag in plain sight on the top of a cheap pine bureau. With
feverish haste she examined it. The necklace was gone.
Dropping the bag, she stared bitterly at her distorted reflection in a
cracked and discoloured mirror.
What a fool, to trust the man! In the clear illumination of unclouded
reason which she was now able to bring to bear upon the episode, she saw
with painful distinctness how readily she had lent herself to be the
dupe and tool of the man she called her father. Nothing that he had
urged upon her at the St. Simon had now the least weight in her
understanding; all his argument was now seen to be but the sheerest
sophistry, every statement he had made and every promise fairly riddled
with treachery; hardly a phrase he had uttered would have gained an
instant's credence under the analysis of a normal intelligence. He could
have accomplished nothing had she not been without sleep for nearly
twenty-four hours, with every nerve and fibre and faculty aching for
rest. But, so aided--with what heartless ease had he beguiled and
overreached her!
Tears, hot and stinging, smarted in her eyes while she fumbled with the
fastenings of her attire--tears of chagrin and bitter resentment.
As soon as she was ready and composed, she opened the door very gently
and stepped out into the hall.
It was a short hall, set like the top bar of a T-square at the end of a
long, door-lined corridor. The walls were of white, plain plaster,
innocent of paper and in some places darkly blotched with damp and
mildew. The floor, though solid, was uncarpeted. Near at hand a flight
of steps ran down to the lower floor.
After a moment of hesitation she chose to explore the long corridor
rather than to descend at once by the nearer stairway; and gathering her
skirts about her ankles (an instinctive precaution against making a
noise engendered by the atmosphere of the place rather than the result
of coherent thought) she stole quietly along between its narrow walls.
Although some few were closed, the majority of the doors she passed
stood open; and these all revealed small, stuffy cubicles with grimy,
unpainted floors, grimy plaster walls and ceilings and grimy windows
whose panes were framed in cobwebs and crusted so thick with the
accumulated dust and damp of years that they lacked little of complete
opacity. No room contained any furnishing of any sort.
The farther she moved from her bedroom, the more close and stale and
sluggish seemed the air, the more oppressive the quiet of this strange
tenement. The sound of her footfalls, light and stealthy though they
were, sounded to her ears weirdly magnified in volume; and the thought
came to her that if she were indeed trespassing upon forbidden quarters
of the mean and dismal stronghold of some modern Bluebeard, the noise
she was making would quickly enough bring the warders down upon her. And
yet it must have been that her imagination exaggerated the slight sounds
that attended her cautious advance; for presently she had proof enough
that they could have been audible to none but herself.
Half-way down the corridor she came unexpectedly to a second staircase;
double the width of the other, it ran down to a broad landing and then
in two short flights to the ground floor of the building. The well of
this stairway disclosed a hall rather large and well-finished, if bare.
Directly in front of the landing, where the short flights branched at
right angles to the main, was a large double door, one side of which
stood slightly ajar. Putting this and that together, Eleanor satisfied
herself that she overlooked the entrance-hall and office of an
out-of-the-way summer hotel, neither large nor in any way pretentious
even in its palmiest days, and now abandoned--or, at best, consecrated
to the uses of caretakers and whoever else might happen to inhabit the
wing whence she had wandered.
Now as she paused for an instant, looking down while turning this
thought over in her mind and considering the effect upon herself and
fortunes of indefinite sequestration in such a spot, she was startled by
a cough from some point invisible to her in the hall below. On the heels
of this, she heard something even more inexplicable: the dull and hollow
clang of a heavy metal door. Footsteps were audible immediately: the
quick, nervous footfalls of somebody coming to the front of the house
from a point behind the staircase.
Startled and curious, the girl drew back a careful step or two until
sheltered by the corridor wall at its junction with the balustrade. Here
she might lurk and peer, see but not be seen, save through unhappy
mischance.
The man came promptly into view. She had foretold his identity, had
known it would be ... he whom she must call father.
He moved briskly to the open door, paused and stood looking out for an
instant, then with his air of furtive alertness, yet apparently sure
that he was unobserved and wholly unsuspicious of the presence of the
girl above him, swung back toward the staircase. For an instant,
terrified by the fear that he meant to ascend, she stood poised on the
verge of flight; but that he had another intention at once became
apparent. Stopping at the foot of the left-hand flight of steps, he laid
hold of the turned knob on top of the outer newel-post and lifted it
from its socket. Then he took something from his coat pocket, dropped it
into the hollow of the newel, replaced the knob and turned and marched
smartly out of the house, shutting the door behind him.
Eleanor noticed that he didn't lock it.
At the same time three separate considerations moved her to fly back to
her room. She had seen something not intended for her sight; the
knowledge might somehow prove valuable to her; and if she were
discovered in the corridor, the man might reasonably accuse her of
spying. Incontinently she picked up her skirts and ran.
The distance wasn't as great as she had thought; in a brief moment she
was standing before the door of the bedroom as though she had just come
out--her gaze directed expectantly toward the small staircase.
If she had anticipated a visit from her kidnapper, however, she was
pleasantly disappointed. Not a sound came from below, aside from a dull
and distant thump and thud which went on steadily, if in syncopated
measure, and the source of which perplexed her.
At length she pulled herself together and warily descended the
staircase. It ended in what was largely a counterpart of the hall above:
as on the upper floor broken by the mouth of a long corridor, but with a
door at its rear in place of the window upstairs. From beyond the door
came the thumping, thudding sound that had puzzled Eleanor; but now she
could distinguish something more: a woman's voice crooning an age-old
melody. Then the pounding ceased, shuffling footsteps were audible, and
a soft clash of metal upon metal: shuffle again, and again the
intermittent, deadened pounding.
Suddenly she understood, and understanding almost smiled, in spite of
her gnawing anxiety, to think that she had been mystified so long by a
noise of such humble origin: merely that of a woman comfortably engaged
in the household task of ironing. It was simple enough, once one thought
of it; yet ridiculously incongruous when injected into the cognisance of
a girl whose brain was buzzing with the incredible romance of her
position....
Without further ceremony she thrust open the door at the end of the
hallway.
There was disclosed a room of good size, evidently at one time a
living-room, now converted to the combined offices of kitchen and
dining-room. A large deal table in the middle of the floor was covered
with a turkey-red cloth, with places set for four. On a small range in
the recess of what had once been an open fireplace, sad-irons were
heating side by side with simmering pots and a steaming tea-kettle.
There was a rich aroma of cooking in the air, somewhat tinctured by the
smell of melting wax, but in spite of that madly appetising to the
nostrils of a young woman made suddenly aware that she had not eaten for
some sixteen hours. The furnishings of the room were simple and
characteristic of country kitchens--including even the figure of the
sturdy woman placidly ironing white things on a board near the open
door.
She looked up quickly as Eleanor entered, stopped her humming, smote the
board vigorously with the iron and set the latter on a metal rest.
"Evening," she said pleasantly, resting her hands on her hips.
Eleanor stared dumbly, remembering that this was the woman who had
helped her to bed and had administered what had presumably been a second
sleeping draught.
"Thought I heard you moving around upstairs. How be you? Hungry? I've
got a bite ready."
"I'd like a drink of water, please," said Eleanor--"plain water," she
added with a significance that could not have been overlooked by a
guilty conscience.
But the woman seemed to sense no ulterior meaning. "I'll fetch it," she
said in a good-humoured voice, going to the sink.
While she was manipulating the pump, the girl moved nearer, frankly
taking stock of her. The dim impression retained from their meeting in
the early morning was merely emphasised by this second inspection; the
woman was built on generous lines--big-boned, heavy and apparently
immensely strong. A contented and easy-going humour shone from her
broad, coarsely featured countenance, oddly contending with a suggestion
of implacable obstinacy and tenacious purpose.
"Here you are," she said presently, extending a glass filmed with the
breath of the ice-cold liquid it contained.
"Thank you," said Eleanor; and drank thirstily. "Who are you?" she
demanded point blank, returning the glass.
"Mrs. Clover," said the woman as bluntly, if with a smiling mouth.
"Where am I?"
"Well"--the woman turned to the stove and busied herself with coffee-pot
and frying-pan while she talked--"this _was_ the Wreck Island House
oncet upon a time. I calculate it's that now, only it ain't run as a
hotel any more. It's been years since there was any summer folks come
here--place didn't pay, they said; guess that's why they shet it up and
how your pa come to buy it for a song."
"Where is the Wreck Island House, then?" Eleanor put in.
"_On_ Wreck Island, of course."
"And where is that?"
"In Long Island Sound, about a mile off 'n the Connecticut shore.
Pennymint Centre's the nearest village."
"That means nothing to me," said the girl. "How far are we from New
York?"
"I couldn't rightly say--ain't never been there. But your pa says--I
heard him tell Eph once--he can make the run in his autymobile in an
hour and a half. That's from Pennymint Centre, of course."
Eleanor pressed her hands to her temples, temporarily dazed by the
information. "Island," she repeated--"a mile from shore--New York an
hour and a half away ...!"
"Good, comfortable, tight little island," resumed Mrs. Clover, pleased,
it seemed, with the sound of her own voice; "you'll like it when you
come to get acquainted. Just the very place for a girl with your
trouble."
"My trouble? What do you know about that?"
"Your pa told me, of course. Nervous prostration's what he called
it--says as you need a rest with quiet and nothing to disturb
you--plenty of good food and sea air--"
"Oh stop!" Eleanor begged frantically.
"Land!" said the woman in a kindly tone--"I might 've known I'd get on
your poor nerves, talking all the time. But I can't seem to help it,
living here all alone like I do with nobody but Eph most of the time....
There!" she added with satisfaction, spearing the last rasher of bacon
from the frying-pan and dropping it on a plate--"now your breakfast's
ready. Draw up a chair and eat hearty."
She put the plate on the red table-cloth, flanked it with dishes
containing soft-boiled eggs, bread and butter and a pot of coffee of
delicious savour, and waved one muscular arm over it all with the
gesture of a benevolent sorceress. "Set to while it's hot, my dear, and
don't you be afraid; good food never hurt nobody."
Momentarily, Eleanor entertained the thought of mutinous refusal to eat,
by way of lending emphasis to her indignation; but hunger overcame the
attractions of this dubious expedient; and besides, if she were to
accomplish anything toward regaining her freedom, if it were no more
than to register a violent protest, she would need strength; and already
she was weak for want of food.
So she took her place and ate--ate ravenously, enjoying every
mouthful--even though her mind was obsessed with doubts and fears and
burning anger.
"You are the caretaker here?" she asked as soon as her hunger was a
little satisfied.
"Reckon you might call us that, me and Eph; we've lived here for five
years now, taking care of the island--ever since your pa bought it."
"Eph is your husband?"
"That's him--Ephraim Clover."
"And--doesn't he do anything else but--caretake?"
"Lord bless you, he don't even do that; I'm the caretaker_ess_. Eph
don't do nothing but potter round with the motor-boat and go to town for
supplies and fish a little and 'tend to the garden and do the chores
and--"
"I should think he must keep pretty busy."
"Busy? Him? Eph? Lord! he's the busiest thing you ever laid your eyes
on--poking round doing nothing at all."
"And does nobody ever come here ...?"
"Nobody but the boss."
"Does he often--?"
"That's as may be and the fit's on him. He comes and goes, just as he
feels like. Sometimes he's on and off the island half a dozen times a
week, and again we don't hear nothing of him for months; sometimes he
just stops here for days and mebbe weeks, and again he's here one minute
and gone the next. Jumps round like a flea on a griddle, _I_ say; you
can't never tell nothing about what he's going to do or where he'll be
next.... My land o' mercy, Mr. Searle! What a start you did give me!"
The man had succeeded in startling both women, as a matter of fact.
Eleanor, looking suddenly up from her plate on hearing Mrs. Clover's cry
of surprise, saw him lounging carelessly in the hall doorway, where he
had appeared as noiselessly as a shadow. His sly, satiric smile was
twisting his thin lips, and a sardonic humour glittered in the pale eyes
that shifted from Eleanor's face to Mrs. Clover's, and back again.
"I wish," he said, nodding to the caretaker, "you'd slip down to the
dock and tell Eph to have the boat ready by seven o'clock."
"Yes, sir," assented Mrs. Clover hastily. She crossed at once toward the
outer door. From her tone and the alacrity with which she moved to do
his bidding, no less than from the half-cringing look with which she met
his regard, Eleanor had no difficulty in divining her abject fear of
this man whom she could, apparently, have taken in her big hands and
broken in two without being annoyed by his struggles.
"And, here!" he called after her--"supper ready?"
"Yes, sir--quite."
"Very well; I'll have mine. Eph can come up as soon as he's finished
overhauling the motor. Wait a minute; tell him to be sure to bring the
oars up with him."
"Yes, sir, I will, sir."
Mrs. Clover dodged through the door and, running down the pair of steps
from the kitchen stoop to the ground, vanished behind the house.
"Enjoying your breakfast, I trust?"
Eleanor pushed back her chair and rose. She feared him, feared him as
she might have feared any loathly, venomous thing; but she was not in
the least spiritually afraid of him. Contempt and disgust only
emphasised the quality of her courage. She confronted him without a
tremor.
"Will you take me with you when you leave this island tonight?" she
demanded.
He shook his head with his derisive smile. She had discounted that
answer.
"How long do you mean to keep me here?"
"That depends on how agreeable you make yourself," he said obscurely.
"What do you mean?"
"Merely that ... well, it's a pleasant, salubrious spot, Wreck Island.
You'll find it uncommonly healthful and enjoyable, too, as soon as you
get over the loneliness. Not that you'll be so terribly lonely; I shall
be here more or less, off and on, much of the time for the next few
weeks. I don't mind telling you, in strict confidence, as between father
and child, that I'm planning to pull off something pretty big before
long; of course it will need a bit of arranging in advance to make
everything run smoothly, and this is ideal for a man of my retiring
disposition, not overfond of the espionage of his fellow-men. So, if
you're docile and affectionate, we may see a great deal of one another
for some weeks--as I said."
"And if not--?"
"Well"--he waved his hands expressively--"of course, if you incline to
be forward and disobedient, then I shall be obliged to deny you the
light of my countenance, by way of punishment."
She shook her head impatiently. "I want to know when you will let me
go," she insisted, struggling against the oppression of her sense of
helplessness.
"I really can't say." He pretended politely to suppress a yawn,
indicating that the subject bored him inordinately. "If I could trust
you--"
"Can you expect that, after the way you treated me last night--this
morning?"
"Ah, well!" he said, claw-like fingers stroking his lips to conceal his
smile of mockery.
"You lied to me, drugged me, robbed me of the necklace, brought me
here...."
"Guilty," he said, yawning openly.
"Why? You could have taken the necklace from me at the hotel. Why must
you bring me here and keep me prisoner?"
"The pleasure of my only daughter's society...."
"Oh, you're despicable!" she cried, furious.
He nodded thoughtfully, fumbling with his lips.
"Won't you tell me why?" she pleaded.
He shook his head. "You wouldn't understand," he added in a tone of
maddening commiseration.
"I shan't stay!" she declared angrily.
"Oh, I think you will," he replied gently.
"I'll get away and inform on you if I have to swim."
"It's a long, wet swim," he mused aloud--"over a mile, I should say.
Have you ever swum over a hundred yards in your life?"
She was silent, choking with rage.
"And furthermore," he went on, "there are the Clovers. Excellent people,
excellent--for my purposes. I have found them quite invaluable--asking
no questions, minding their own business, keen to obey my instructions
to the letter. I have already instructed them about you, my child. I
trust you will be careful not to provoke them; it'd be a pity ... you're
rather good-looking, you know ..."
"What do you mean by that?" she stammered, a little frightened by the
secret menace in his tone. "What have my looks to do with ...?"
"Everything," he said softly--"everything. Not so far as Ephraim is
concerned; I'll be frank with you--you needn't fear Ephraim's hurting
you, much, should you attempt to escape. He will simply restrain you,
using force only if necessary. But Mrs. Clover ... she's different. You
mustn't let her deceive you; she seems kindly disposed enough; she's
pleasant spoken but ... well, she's not fond of pretty women. It's an
obsession of hers that prettiness and badness go together. And Ephraim
_is_ fond of pretty women--very. You see?"
"Well?"
"Well, that's why I have these people in so strong a hold. You see,
Ephraim got himself into trouble trying to pull off one of those
bungling, amateurish burglaries that his kind go in for so extensively;
he wanted the money to buy things for a pretty woman. And he was already
a married man. You can see how Mrs. Clover felt about it. She--ah--cut
up rather nasty. When she got through with the other woman, no one would
have called her pretty any longer. Vitriol's a dreadful thing...."
He paused an instant, seeming to review the case sombrely. "I managed to
get them both off, scot free; and that makes them loyal. But it would go
hard with anyone who tried to escape to the mainland and tell on
them--to say nothing of me.... Mrs. Clover has ever since been quite
convinced of the virtue of vitriol. She keeps a supply handy most of the
time, in case of emergencies. And she sleeps lightly; don't forget that.
I hate to think of what she might do if she thought you meant to run
away and tell tales."
Slowly, step by step, guessing the way to the outer door, the girl
backed away from him, her face colourless with horror. Very probably he
was lying to frighten her; very possibly (she feared desperately) he was
not. What she knew of him was hardly reassuring; the innate, callous
depravity that had poisoned this man beyond cure might well have caused
the death-in-life of other souls. What he was capable of, others might
be; and what she knew him to be capable of, she hardly liked to dwell
upon. Excusably she conceived her position more than desperate; and now
her sole instinct was to get away from him, if only for a little time,
out of the foetid atmosphere of his presence, away from the envenomed
irony of his voice--away and alone, where she could recollect her
faculties and again realise her ego, that inner self that she had tried
so hard to keep stainless, unspoiled and unafraid.
He watched her as she crept inch by inch toward the door, his nervous
fingers busy about his mouth as if trying to erase that dangerous, evil
smile.
"Before you go," he said suddenly, "I should tell you that you will be
alone with Mrs. Clover tonight. I'm going to town, and Ephraim's to wait
with the boat at Pennymint Point, because I mean to return before
morning. But you needn't wait up for me; Mrs. Clover will do that."
Eleanor made no reply. While he was speaking she had gained the door. As
she stepped out, Mrs. Clover reappeared, making vigorously round the
corner of the house.
Passing Eleanor on the stoop, she gave her a busy, friendly nod, and
hurried in.
"Eph'll be up in half an hour," she heard her say. "Shall I serve your
supper now?"
"Please," he said quietly.
The girl stumbled down the steps and blindly fled the sound of his
voice.