The Whisper on the Stair/Chapter 34
A warm, grateful glow enveloped Val as he looked upon Jessica’s slight figure standing there beside him in the crowd. There were thousands of people around them, yet the others seemed to him as shadows on a screen; he thought he and Jessica were the only realities there, the only beings of flesh and blood. Everyone else was out of focus; of two dimensions only. He felt the touch of her hand on his arm, and it thrilled him through his clothes.
So she was safe! A sigh of relief escaped him, and his whole world seemed different. Now, the fire in front of them, for instance. What a splendid bonfire the Chamberlin made! How appropriate, in this vast expanse of sea and sky. It seemed to him like a bonfire of celebration—rejoicing in the fact that he was once more together with Jessica; that she was standing next to him and he could hear the soft caress in her gentle tones.
“How glad I am to find you here!”
He said the words to himself, over and over, swiftly Truly, they rang pleasantly on the ear. She was glad to see him. That was miraculous—and yet it was as it should be. Last night she had sent him away. He contrasted her utterances with those of last night, and could not bring himself to credence in the fact that it was the same girl. It was not the same girl, he told himself. Last night Teck had spoken to him with the lips of Jessica. That was last night. This morning Jessica was speaking to him with the heart of Jessica. That was this morning—end forever.
He turned to her with shining eyes.
“Glad!” he said. “If you knew how happy I am to see you, Jessica, you would⸺”
“Of course,” she said. “I know.” Quietly, with infinite understanding.
“How do you happen to be here?” he asked, simply for the sake of talking. It did not make much difference to him what he said, so long as he stood there talking with her—saying something that would cause her to answer; that would cause her voice to ring upon his ears. In front of them the Chamberlin smoked and burned fitfully, yet they saw it not. A great crowd of people hemmed them in on all sides, but it was as though they were alone.
“It’s quite a story,” she said. He turned to her inquiringly.
She told him the story readily, apologizing for her attitude last night when he had called after returning from the old house. She told him of how Teck had made her promise to marry him to-day—and of how she had resolved to cast off his baneful influence over her by flight back to New York, there to hide herself away from him, somewhere. Of how she had discovered that Teck had anticipated such a move, and guarded against it.
After she and Elizabeth had returned to the house they had held a council of war to decide on ways and means. She had been almost ready to give up, but she was thankful that Elizabeth was made of sterner stuff. They had finally decided to wait an hour or more, and try to slip out by the kitchen window. Teck’s man could not watch all sides of the house at once, and it had seemed as though they had rather more than an even chance of making it.
And so it turned out. It happened so easily that she could scarcely understand her hesitation. They had gone through the window and merged themselves with the shadows immediately, keeping away from the road until they were quite half a mile away from the house. Then they took to the road and were in Hampton in a short time. At Hampton they found a room in a quiet hotel.
“And you intended⸺” he began.
“To leave by the first boat. Ignace would be going out to the cottage, I thought. It would never occur to him to look for me here, of course. By the time he discovered my absence I would be on my way to New York.”
He looked at her, puzzled for a moment. “Then what are you doing here now?” he asked. “Don’t you know that Teck must be here somewhere—if he sees you all your plans will be knocked into a cocked hat.”
“Why, I’m here because⸺” she flushed to the tips of her tiny ears suddenly, and was awkwardly, deliciously silent. “Why,” she began again, “because⸺”
It came to him at once why she was here. How stupid he had been not to guess. Why, she was here because he was stopping at the Chamberlin, and she was afraid something might have happened to him in the fire. Crudely he put the question to her, with masculine lack of reserve.
“You—you came to see if I was safe?” he asked, a little incredulously, a little amazed that she should do this just because of her interest in him. She did not answer, but from her expression he could see that he had hit upon the answer. She suddenly showed a great and absorbing interest in the fire.
“Where’s Elizabeth?” he asked her.
“She’s here,” replied Jessica. They turned and located Elizabeth standing about a dozen feet from them, stonily and determinedly intent on letting them have their tête-à-tête without interruption from her.
“I just came from the cottage,” announced Val. “I went out to see you⸺”
“So early,” she murmured.
“Yes,” he replied. “You see, it’s of very great importance. It’s about the missing money—I think I’ve located it.”
Her look of interest was good to see. “Really!” she said. He felt her hand tighten on his arm. It just occurred to both of them that she had not drawn her hand away. That she had left it there after touching his arm to draw his attention to her. The effect on Val was to make him absurdly happy. The effect on Jessica was to make her draw her hand away hastily—but not too hastily. There seemed a kind of reluctance in it.
“I think so,” he continued. “But this is no place to discuss it. I say, I’m awfully hungry—I could do with a little breakfast. How about you? There’s a nice little restaurant in Phœbus that I know—we could all go there. It’s still very early, and we could eat and get out to your place before Teck starts, I think.”
Phœbus is a little town immediately outside of Fortress Monroe and Old Point Comfort, inhabited mostly by old blue clad men who stand on the street comers and argue about Pickett’s charge, or the first battle of Bull Run. Men to whom the Civil War is still far more of a reality than the World War just completed.
“I’m famished,” confessed Jessica. “We can talk at breakfast—Elizabeth knows everything I know.”
“Eddie Hughes is in this with me—and we want to include him when we make plans,” said Val. “So that’s all right. Let’s go.”
They called Elizabeth, and pushed their way through the crowd to where Eddie sat in the flivver waiting for them. In three minutes they were in a quaint little restaurant, being waited on by the proprietor himself. Nobody else was in the place, the fire being a far greater attraction there than a mere meal, which one could have at any time.
Over the breakfast, which was an excellent one, they discussed the affair. Val told them the events of the last night. How he had come alone to the cottage and found Teck there, and had continued on alone to the old house. He described vividly to them the struggle there and how he had awakened, bound, in the dilapidated living room. He told of the blood dripping through the ceiling, and of the woman’s scream he had heard ringing through the night.
“That was me,” admitted Jessica.
“You!” echoed Val in amazement. She nodded.
“Why, how on earth did you come to be there at that time of night, alone, and⸺”
“It was rather a crazy idea,” she dimpled. “You see, after Ignace left—the first time—he came back later, you know—and still you did not appear, I decided that it was quite possible you had gone on alone—so I went after you. When I got there the door to the living room downstairs was locked. I could not see you in any of the other rooms, and thought you might be upstairs. Oh, how frightened I was, all alone in that old house, with the storm pounding so! When I got upstairs above the living room I saw a body lying on the floor in the dark, and I thought it was you—that was the first thing that occurred to me.” She said this frankly, as though it were quite natural that she should think of him first. “My nerves were all unstrung, with the dark and the storm and the lightning and thunder, and being alone there, and I lost control of them completely for a minute and screamed. That’s the scream you heard. At that moment Ignace and another man seized me and dragged me out. I hardly knew what I was doing—they took me back to the cottage. The storm was making so much noise I guess you couldn’t have heard us.”
So that cleared up another mystery, Val thought. But there was still another he was thinking of—the mysterious man who had appeared to him in the flash of lightning; Val rather thought that it was that same man who had cut him loose. Who was he?
He told them about the incident, and described the man carefully.
“It could be anybody around here,” said Jessica. “Half the men down here wear that kind of hat and have goatees. I don’t know who it could have been. Why should he come in and cut you loose—if it was he?”
Val shook his head. “I give it up,” he laughed. “Do you know, for awhile he seemed to me like a ghost. I’ve never seen a ghost, but I suppose I came as close to seeing one last night as I’ll ever come. Why, he had that unearthly look when I saw him at the window⸺”
“That’s funny,” broke in Elizabeth, who had hitherto taken no part in the conversation, but had listened with rapt attention. “That’s very funny.”
“What is?” asked Val and Jessica.
“Why, about a ghost, you know,” said the old woman. “You know, Germinal said he saw a ghost—said that graveyards were yawning and graves giving up their dead. He was as scared as I ever seen a nigger or anyone else be. He trembled like a leaf.”
“I wonder if he could have seen the same—ah—thing—that you saw,” Jessica turned to Val.
“I don’t know,” said Val, “but last night was certainly the right kind of a night to see such things, I’ll tell the world. If ever there was a stage set for the appearance of things that don’t belong with the living, there was one set last night.” He shivered involuntarily, and smiled immediately. “When I think of that old house in the dark, with the rain pounding on it like on a drum . . .”
He trailed off into a silence, lost in the wonder of Jessica’s eyes; he could almost feel himself falling . . . falling . . . falling . . . into their deeps, losing his identity in them, drenched with their loveliness. He brought himself back with a jerk, just before the silence became awkward.
“But I was telling you about where the money is,” he said, coming back to the business on hand. “Do you know where Mount Monroe is?” he inquired of Jessica.
She nodded. “Why, that’s on our property—it’s not really a mountain, you know. Just a hill, about a hundred and fifty or two hundred feet high, at the most. Heavily wooded—over the east end of our place. Why?”
“Do you know a secret cave there? One known to only yourself and your father?”
Her eyes lighted up with remembrance. “Of course!” she declared. “Away up, near the top. The front of it is covered with brush and stones, so that you’ll never guess there’s a cave there. What great times I used to have playing there when I was a kid—I discovered it, you know. I never told anybody about it but my father—it was our secret. And the money⸺”
“Here,” said Val, handing her the memorandum Eddie had written at his dictation the night before.
“Go unto Mount Monroe, to the secret cave known only to Jessica, my daughter. To her, my sole relative and heir, is left all that is there contained.
Peter J. Pomeroy.”
Her face lighted up in comprehension.
“Of course!” she exclaimed. “If that isn’t just like my father—dear old man. That’s just the very place he would have thought of. I’m surprised it never occurred to me. How did you discover all this?” she asked Val.
He told her how he had located the information desired in the Bible—the book which had traveled so often between the two factions in this affair. “Your father died so suddenly, Jessica⸺”
“Yes, I was in Europe at the time. If he had had time, he would surely have told me where to look for the information. It’s just the kind of a thing he would do, you know. He was mad on the one idea of conserving his money, poor father. And to think I never saw him in life again.”
There was a deep silence, in reverence for a memory of the departed. It was Jessica herself who broke the silence at last.
“And now⸺” she queried on a rising voice.
“And now,” said Val, “if we’re all through eating, I move that we all go out to Mount Monroe just as quickly as that old flivver can jerk us out there, collect your money—and go back to New York.”
“And Ignace⸺” objected Jessica.
“He won’t know where we are, I think,” said Val. “We don’t have to go near the cottage to get to Mount Monroe, do we?”
“No—we can get to it from the other direction,” said Jessica—“from the side on which the old haunted house stands.”
“All right,” directed Val. “It won’t take long—we can go right out, get the loot, and get back here probably in an hour.” The party rose simultaneously, while Val laid a bill on the table to pay for the meal.
Suddenly he saw Jessica grow pale; the mask of fear crept over her countenance again as she stared, fascinated, at the door. Instinctively, everybody turned to the door, drawn by her fixed look.
Bulked in the doorway, smiling upon them pleasantly, was the great figure of Ignace Teck.