The Bandbox by Louis Joseph Vance (read novels website .txt) 📕

She could have wept, but wouldn’t; the emotion that oppressed her was not one that tears would soothe, her plight not one that tears could mend.

Her sole comfort resided in the fact that she was apparently to be let alone, free to wander at will within the boundaries of the island.

Sunset found her on a little sandy hillock at the western end of Wreck Island—sitting with her chin in her hands, and gazing seawards with eyes in which rebellion smouldered. She would not give in, would not abandon hope and accept the situation at its face value, as irremediable. Upon this was she firmly determined: the night was not to pass unmarked by some manner of attempt to escape or summon aid. She even found herself willing to consider arson as a last resort: the hotel afire would make a famous torch to bring assistance from the mainland. Only ... she shrank from the attempt, her soul curdling with the sinister menace of vitriol.

The day was dying in soft airs that swept the face of the waters with a touch so light as to be barely perceptible. With sundown fell stark calm; the Sound became a perfect mirror for the sombre conflagration in the west. The slightest sounds reverberated afar through the still, moveless void. She could hear Mrs. Clover stridently counselling her Ephraim at the house, the quarter of a mile away. Later, she heard the hollow tramp of two pair of feet, one heavy and one light, on the plank-walk; the creak of rowlocks with the dip and splash of oars; and, after a little pause, the sudden, sharp, explosive rattle of a motor exhaust, as rapid, loud and staccato as the barking of a Gatling, yet quickly hushed——almost as soon as it shattered the silences, muffled to a thick and steady drumming.

Eleanor rose and turned to look northward. The wood-lot hid from her sight both dock and mooring—and all but the gables of the hotel, as well—but she soon espied the motor-boat standing away on a straight course for the mainland: driven at a speed that seemed to her nearly incredible, a smother of foam at its stern, long purple ripples widening away from the jet of white water at the stem, a smooth, high swell of dark water pursuing as if it meant to catch up and overwhelm the boat and its occupants. These latter occupied the extremes of the little vessel: Ephraim astern, beside the motor; the slighter figure at the wheel in the bows.

Slowly the girl took her path back to the hotel, watching the boat draw away, straight and swift of flight as an arrow, momentarily dwindling and losing definite form against the deepening blue-black surface of the Sound....

Weary and despondent, she ascended the pair of steps to the kitchen porch. Mrs. Clover was busy within, washing the supper dishes. She called out a cheery greeting, to which Eleanor responded briefly but with as pleasant a tone as she could muster. She could not but distrust her companion and gaoler, could not but fear that something vile and terrible lurked beneath that good-natured semblance: else why need the woman have become his creature?

“You ain’t hungry again?”

“No,” said Eleanor, lingering on the porch, reluctant to enter.

“Lonely?”

“No....”

“You needn’t be; your pa’ll be home by three o’clock, he says.”

Eleanor said nothing. Abruptly a thought had entered her mind, bringing hope; something she had almost forgotten had recurred with tremendous significance.

“Tired? I’ll go fix up your room soon ’s I’m done here, if you want to lay down again.”

“No; I’m in no hurry. I—I think I’ll go for another little walk round the island.”

“Help yourself,” the woman called after her heartily; “I’ll be busy for about half an hour, and then we can take our chairs out on the porch and watch the moon come up and have a real good, old-fashioned gossip....”

Eleanor lost the sound of her voice as she turned swiftly back round the house. Then she stopped, catching her breath with delight. It was true—splendidly true! The rowboat had been left behind.

It rode about twenty yards out from the end of the dock, made fast to the motor-boat mooring. The oars were in it; Ephraim had left them carelessly disposed, their blades projecting a little beyond the stern. And the water was so shallow at the mooring that the man had been able to pole in with a single oar, immersing it but half its length! An oar, she surmised, was six feet long; that argued an extreme depth of water of three feet—say at the worst three and a half. Surely she might dare to wade out, unmoor the boat and climb in—if but opportunity were granted her!

But her heart sank as she considered the odds against any such attempt. If only the night were to be dark; if only Mrs. Clover were not to wait up for her husband and her employer; if only the woman were not her superior physically, so strong that Eleanor would be like a child in her hands; if only there were not that awful threat of vitriol ...!

Nevertheless, in the face of these frightful deterrents, she steeled her resolution. Whatever the consequences, she owed it to herself to be vigilant for her chance. She promised herself to be wakeful and watchful: possibly Mrs. Clover might nap while sitting up; and the girl had two avenues by which to leave the house: either through the kitchen, or by the front door to the disused portion of the hotel. She need only steal noiselessly along the corridor from her bedroom door and down the broad main staircase and—the front door was not even locked. She remembered distinctly that he had simply pulled it to. Still, it would be well to make certain he had not gone back later to lock it.

Strolling idly, with a casual air of utter ennui—assumed for the benefit of her gaoler in event she should become inquisitive—Eleanor went round the eastern end of the building to the front. Here a broad veranda ran from wing to wing; its rotting weather-eaten floor fenced in by a dilapidated railing save where steps led up to the front door; its roof caved in at one spot, wearing a sorry look of baldness in others where whole tiers of shingles had fallen away.

Cautiously Eleanor mounted the rickety steps and crossed to the doors. To her delight, they opened readily to a turn of the knob. She stood for a trifle, hesitant, peering into the hallway now dark with evening shadow; then curiosity overbore her reluctance. There was nothing to fear; the voice of Mrs. Clover singing over her dishpan in the kitchen came clearly through the ground-floor corridor, advertising plainly her preoccupation. And Eleanor wanted desperately to know what it was that the man had hidden in the socket of the newel-post.

Shutting the door she felt her way step by step to the foot of the staircase. Happily the floor was sound: no creaking betrayed her progress—there would be none when in the dead of night she would break for freedom.

Mrs. Clover continued to sing contentedly.

Eleanor removed the knob of the post and looked down into the socket. It was dark in there; she could see nothing; so she inserted her hand and groped until her fingers closed upon a thick rough bar of metal. Removing this, she found she held a cumbersome old-fashioned iron key of curious design.

It puzzled her a little until she recalled the clang of metal that had prefaced the man’s appearance in the hall that afternoon. This then, she inferred, would be the key to his private cache—the secret spot where he hid his loot between forays.

Mrs. Clover stopped singing suddenly, and the girl in panic returned the key to its hiding place, the knob to its socket.

But it had been a false alarm. In another moment the woman’s voice was again upraised.

Eleanor considered, staring about her. He had come into sight from beneath the staircase. She reconnoitred stealthily in that direction, and discovered a portion of the hall fenced off by a railing and counter: evidently the erstwhile hotel office. A door stood open behind the counter. With some slight qualms she passed into the enclosure and then through the door.

She found herself in a small, stuffy, dark room. Its single window, looking northwards, was closely shuttered on the outside; only a feeble twilight filtered through the slanted slats. But there was light enough for Eleanor to recognise the contours and masses of a flat-topped desk with two pedestals of drawers, a revolving chair with cane seat and back, a brown paper-pulp cuspidor of generous proportions and—a huge, solid, antiquated iron safe: a “strong-box” of the last century’s middle decades, substantial as a rock, tremendously heavy, contemptuously innocent of any such innovations as combination-dials, time-locks and the like. A single keyhole, almost large enough to admit a child’s hand, and certainly calculated to admit the key in the newel-post, demonstrated that this safe depended for the security of its contents upon nothing more than its massive construction and unwieldy lock. It demonstrated something more: that its owner based his confidence upon its isolation and the loyalty of his employees, or else had satisfied himself through practical experiment that one safe was as good as another, ancient or modern, when subjected to the test of modern methods of burglary.

And (Eleanor was sure) the Cadogan collar was there; unless, of course, the man had taken it away with him; which didn’t seem likely, all things considered. A great part of the immense value of the necklace resided in its perfection, in its integrity; as a whole it would be an exceedingly difficult thing to dispose of until long after the furore aroused by its disappearance had died down; broken up, its marvellously matched pearls separated and sold one by one, it would not realise a third of its worth.

And the girl would have known the truth in five minutes more (she was, in fact, already moving back toward the newel-post) had not Mrs. Clover chosen that moment to leave the kitchen and tramp noisily down the corridor.

What her business might be in that part of the house Eleanor could not imagine—unless it were connected with herself, unless she had heard some sound and was coming to investigate.

In panic terror, Eleanor turned back into the little room and crouched down behind the safe, making herself as small as possible, actually holding her breath for fear it would betray her.

Nearer came that steady, unhurried tread, and nearer. The girl thought her heart would burst with its burden of suspense. She was obliged to gasp for breath, and the noise of it rang as loudly and hoarsely in her hearing as the exhaust of a steam-engine. She pressed a handkerchief against her trembling lips.

Directly to the counter came the footsteps, and paused. There was the thump of something being placed upon the shelf. Then deliberately the woman turned and marched back to her quarters.

In time the girl managed to regain enough control of her nerves to enable her to rise and creep out through the office enclosure to the hall. Mrs. Clover had resumed her chanting in the kitchen; but Eleanor was in no mood to run further chances just then. She needed to get away, to find time to compose herself thoroughly. Pausing only long enough to see for herself what the woman had deposited on the counter (it was a common oil lamp, newly filled and trimmed, with