That Affair at Elizabeth by Burton Egbert Stevenson (book club suggestions TXT) 📕

I was still in bed; I could scarcely believe that I was not really shivering behind the hedge, staring across at that lighted window and the dreadful drama it revealed. I was bathed in perspiration and yet felt chilled to the very marrow.

Indeed, my teeth were chattering as I groped my way to the light, turned it on, and looked at my watch. It was nearly one o'clock. The night was clear and pleasant, with a faint breeze stirring. There was no moon, but the stars were shining so brightly that one looked for it instinctively.

I knew it was no use to return to bed until my nerves were quieter; and, indeed, that vision had banished all desire for sleep; so I filled my pipe, lighted it, drew up a chair and sat down by the open window. The street below was deserted; and for an instant I found myself wondering that it was not thronged with people, roused by the scream which had awakened me. Then I remembered that there had been no scream, that I had simply dreamed it.

But I had only to close my eyes to see again that lighted window and the shadows on the blind. It seemed even clearer to me than it had been in the dream. I could see every detail of the struggle, and I opened my eyes abruptly so that I might escape the end. There was something supernatural about it; I had never dreamed a dream like that before—a dream which, waking, I could rehearse at pleasure. Perhaps it was not wholly a vision; perhaps it had some foundation in reality, some telepathic origin. I had read of such things, sceptically; but some of the phenomena of thought transference had, I knew, been accepted, reluctantly enough, even by the scientific world.

Was it not possible that Marcia Lawrence had been lured to the Kingdon cottage or taken there against her will? Who could say how that old injury done the Endicotts would flower and fruit? Who could say what hatred, what desire for vengeance, rankled in the hearts of the Kingdons? I remembered how the face of the maid had darkened with malice, how her eyes had blazed with infernal joy, as she stood there in the door of the library, thinking herself unseen. Her sister I knew nothing of, but if they resembled each other as sisters usually do, I could well believe them capable of any cruelty. Was it not possible that Marcia Lawrence was in their hands? Was it not possible that my dream possessed a basis of reality? I had been thinking of her all the evening; I had gone to sleep with the problem of her disappearance still on my mind; I had been studying her photograph—I was, in a word, in spiritual touch with her, responsive to any suggestion emanating from her—we were tuned to the same pitch. Such, I fancied, was the explanation of the phenomena which a telepathist would give. She had sent that cry into the night, and I, being en rapport with her, had heard it—had witnessed the tragedy which called it forth. Perhaps the struggle was not yet ended; perhaps, even at this moment——

I sprang to my feet, hurried into my clothes, caught up my hat, opened my door and ran noiselessly down the stair. I would solve this problem to-night, if it could be solved. I had been wrong in turning away from the Kingdon cottage the evening before; I should, at least, have made an effort to discover if Marcia Lawrence were really there. But it had not occurred to me then that she could be in any danger. I had thought too much of what Curtiss would wish me to do; too little of what the necessities of the case required. Well, I would not make that mistake a second time.

As I look back upon my frame of mind at that moment and consider the impulse which sent me forth from my room at that hour of the night, I realise how overwrought I was. At a distance, in cold blood, it seems an absurd thing to have done; yet, under the same conditions, I should no doubt behave again in much the same way. And even admitting its absurdity, I am not prepared to say, in view of the event, that there was not back of it some instinct worth following. There are forces in nature not yet explained or recognised, and I am still inclined to think that it was one of these which drew me forth upon that midnight errand.

In a very fever of impatience, I hurried along the street, under the trees, meeting no one except a patrolman. I heard him stop, as I passed him, and knew that he was looking back after me, but I kept on without pausing, and heard him finally start on again. In a minute more I reached the Lawrence place, and stopped in the shadow of a tree for a look around. The house loomed through the darkness grim and gloomy, with no light showing anywhere. I leaped the fence, assured that I was unseen, and pushed my way forward through the grove toward the path which led to the cottage.

Beneath the trees, the darkness was absolute and I could go forward but slowly; yet, starting from the library steps, I found the path without difficulty, and felt my way cautiously along it, until I came to the hedge which marked the limits of the Kingdon place. I examined the house with care, but there was fronting me no lighted window upon which a tragedy could be pictured. Indeed, I saw no vestige of a light and was about to conclude that my midnight pilgrimage had been in vain, when my eye was caught by a faint glimmer near the ground. At first, I was not sure it was a light at all; then I decided that it was a reflection of some sort, or perhaps a phosphorescent glow. But as I stared at it, with eyes contracted, it suddenly took shape in the darkness, and I saw that the light proceeded from a small ventilator set in the foundation of the house.

Trembling with excitement, I softly opened the gate and entered the grounds. Here, with nothing between me and the stars, I suddenly found myself in what seemed a veritable blaze of light. I was seized with panic lest I be seen and scurried into the shadow of the house, then dropped beside the ventilator and examined it.

It was of the ordinary type—a plate of iron some six or eight inches square, perforated with holes perhaps half an inch in diameter, and set in the foundation about six inches from the ground.

I applied an eye to one of the holes and endeavoured to see what lay beyond. For a moment, I saw absolutely nothing; then I perceived in front of me a stretch of clay, which ended abruptly at a distance of six or eight feet. A few inches above the level of my eye were the beams supporting the floor of the cottage. But it was only a glance I gave to these details, though I found them afterwards photographed upon my brain; it was the space beyond which fixed my attention—the space where the clay bank before me dropped abruptly to what was no doubt the cellar of the cottage.

It was from this space that the light proceeded, but of what lay within it I could see almost nothing—only enough, indeed, to fire my curiosity. For from time to time a shadow moved between me and the light—a shadow which showed that the cellar was not empty. The light, I judged, had been placed on a stool or table on the opposite side of the cellar. From the way it varied, now bright, now dim, I decided it was a candle, and that the motions of the person working near it caused the flame to flicker. These motions would continue for a time with considerable regularity; then they would cease while the worker evidently stopped to rest, and then begin again.

Who was this person and what was this work which must be done at such an hour? In vain I sought an answer. I pressed my ear to the ventilator, but could hear nothing; nothing, at least, beyond the faintest of faint sounds, which gave me no clue to what was happening within. I peered through the little orifice moment after moment, until the shadows grew confused and blurred and my eyes ached under the strain.

I rose to rest myself. Then it suddenly occurred to me that the cellar must have a window. Skirting the house cautiously, I at last came to it. But it was closed and curtained so effectually that only a faint glimmer here and there betrayed the light within. I listened, but could hear no sound.

Fairly nonplussed, I returned to the hedge and sat down against it to consider. The shadow had given me no indication of whether the worker was man or woman; yet to the first question I had asked myself there could be only one answer. It was one or both of the Kingdon women who were working in the cellar—both, I finally decided, since it was improbable that one could spend the night there without the knowledge of the other. But what were they doing?

To this I could find no answer. It was not merely an errand, because the light remained. Minute after minute I sat there, until I heard a clock somewhere strike two, and still the light remained. I crept forward to the ventilator and peered through again. The shadows were moving backward and forward, just as they had been an hour before. There was something uncanny about them, and I shivered as I watched. It seemed to me that they were made by some person alternately rising and stooping, but why should any one do that for hours at a time? Some subtle association of ideas brought before my eyes the vision which had confronted Jean Valjean on that night when he had peered through the grated window into the Convent of Little Picpus—the dim light, the vast hall, the motionless figure on the floor before the cross. Was some such explanation to be sought here? Were these long-continued risings and stoopings a series of genuflexions before some shrine—a penance, perhaps, imposed for some transgression? The thought seemed absurd. But I could think of no other explanation of these singular motions.

At last, weary with long staring, I went back to my seat beside the hedge and waited. Half an hour passed, then I saw the glimmer at the ventilator suddenly disappear, and a moment later, a light gleamed through the kitchen window. It went on toward the front of the house, and I saw the shadow of a woman's figure on the blind as it passed the window in front of me. Only one shadow—there was only one woman in the house, or, at least, only one awake and moving about. There had been only one in the cellar.

My resolution was taken. I went straight forward to the door at the side of the house and knocked sharply. At the same instant, the light vanished. I waited a moment, then knocked again, more loudly.

"Who's there?" called a voice, so harsh, so fierce, that it fairly startled me.

"Open the door," I said. "I wish to see Miss Lawrence."

"This is not Miss Lawrence's home," cried the voice.

"I know it; but she's here."

"She's not here!" and the voice rose to a scream. "Be off, or I'll fire through the door!"

What sort of fury was this, I asked myself, and I stepped to one side to be out of range of a possible bullet.

"Be off!" screamed the voice again. "I'll fire, I swear it! The law will justify me."

There could be no question of that; it would be worse than folly to attempt to force an entrance with this fury opposing me, so I retreated again to the hedge and sat down to see what would happen. But nothing happened, and deciding at last that Miss Kingdon, or whoever it was had answered me, had gone to bed, I turned my steps toward the hotel just as the dawn was tingeing the east with grey.

And one thing I determined on—I would purchase a revolver. Only a fool ventures unarmed into the tiger's den.

CHAPTER XI An Old Acquaintance

I arose betimes in the morning, despite the fact that I had been up most of the night, for I was determined to gain entrance to the Kingdon cottage and force an interview with Marcia Lawrence before I went to my appointment with her mother. Day had taken from my dream nothing of its vividness, but my nerves were normal again, and I could approach the task with a