Rainbow Cottage (30 page)

Sheila had been considering. There was no point in trying to deceive a man like this. She would tell the truth.

“Yes,” she said calmly, “I have heard of such a paper. My mother told me about it, but she did not tell me what was in it. She gave me directions about it, and I have carried them out. I had that penholder, but I do not have it anymore.”

“That may be a lie, too, but anyhow, you know where it is, and that amounts to the same thing.”

“No, I do not know where it is,” said Sheila. “I was to give it to someone else, and I did so. I do not know what they have done with it.”

“Well, I do. I can figure out pretty darn well who you were to give it to, and that’s your blooming grandmother; and I have had it all figured out clear across the continent what she did with it, and that is put it in her safe in her room. I know that safe. I was here when it was built in when I was a kid. That was where she always kept her money and where your father always could find it. We knew the combination, or we could figure it out. So that’s where it is. If I hadn’t known that, I wouldn’t have risked my skin coming here where there’s a price on my head. But I’ve got to have that paper, and I’m desperate. Now, do you want me to truss you up and tie you in a chair with a wad in yer mouth, or will you go up and help me get that paper out of the safe? Your job will be to get the paper while I keep the old lady asleep, see? If you won’t do that, I’ll tie you in that chair and make short work of the old lady, for I mean to have that paper, come what will. I only gave it to your father once when he got the upper hand of me for a little while, and I mean to have it back. If you go along nicely and do what I tell you, you’ll have your dad back again soon. He’s in the can now serving time fer me. That’s the price he paid, or thought he paid, for that paper, but if you don’t do as I say, your dad can rot in prison for all I care. See!”

Sheila felt things getting dark before her vision. Was she going to faint before she could decide what to do? In that case, he would have his way, and what might not happen to Grandmother? Oh, it was just like being on the rock with the last wave coming! She tried to reach out and remember the strong arm from God and the rainbow and get her thoughts steady.

Oh, God, I can’t hold out much longer. Show me what to do! Send help! Oh, send me help!

J
anet’s toothache had been soothed to quiet by the hot-water bag she took to bed with her, and she had fallen to sleep early. But the hot water had grown cold and the tooth had started to ache again, and Janet had wakened up to misery once more. The obvious thing was to go down to the kitchen and heat more water, for if she tried to fill the hot-water bag in the bathroom she would be sure to waken the old lady, and she would come trotting out to see what was the mater. She had the ears of a detective even in her sleep.

It seemed to Janet that it must be long past midnight and that all the house would be in bed.

So Janet arose and donned her dressing gown and heelless slippers and stepped cautiously into the back hall. Every step must be guarded, and she must wait between the steps to be sure she was not heard. It was not far from her door to the top of the back stairs. Once down the top step, she would be safe from sound. The top step always creaked a bit.

But as Janet reached the doorway that led into the front hall, she saw a light coming from downstairs. Had Miss Sheila forgotten to turn out the living room light, or were there burglars in the house? Janet was always thinking of burglars because her brother-in-law belonged to the state constabulary.

She paused and held her breath and heard a man’s voice. If Miss Jacqueline Lammorelle had been here it would not have been strange, for she sat up all hours of the night with callers and made the old lady very angry. But surely Miss Sheila would never do that. Yet in a moment more, she heard Sheila’s voice and was filled with consternation. What man could be down there with her? She came a little nearer to the stair head to peer down, with the idea of clearing Miss Sheila of anything wrong she might think about her, and to her horror she saw a man with a gun pointed straight at Miss Sheila and Miss Sheila standing white and calm there before him. She glanced backward down the hall where Grandmother’s door stood open, and she could see the dim outline of Grandmother’s form under the white counterpane, lying there. Miss Sheila was down there in the living room all alone with a burglar, and something must be done.

Janet was terribly weak and frightened, but she managed to be cautious and swing herself back to the stair head and down each step of the back stairs without a sound. She crossed the pantry and opened the swing door into the kitchen, thankful that only that day she had oiled the hinges where they squeaked. Could she get the back door open without a noise? Yes, the key turned quietly, and she held the knob like a vise, so that her fingers ached when she let it go after she had closed it behind her.

Then like a wraith, she flew through the night, holding her robe close around her, flying through the deep sand by miracle, wallowing up the bank to the road, and across more sand to her sister’s cottage, dark in every window now and still as the dead.

When she reached the door and began to pound on it, her hands were trembling so that she could scarcely knock, and then it was a long time before she could rouse her sister. And after she was roused, she couldn’t seem to get her to hurry.

Her brother-in-law was out on his beat, it seemed. There was nothing to do but try to reach him by telephone, though it was almost time for him to come in. Janet telephoned wildly and managed to tell a coherent story, but when it was finished and she hung up, she sat down suddenly in a chair and began to cry. Then she sprang from her chair and ran to the door.

“I must go back!” she cried. “Miss Sheila’s all alone with a burglar!” And with that she ran out into the night again.

Grandmother had dropped into a pleasant sleep early and was dreaming of Andrew when he was a little boy in a white dress with his hair curled in a lovely golden curl on the top of his head, bright blue shoes on his tiny feet, dimples in his laughing cheeks, and stars in his happy eyes.

But Grandmother was attuned to every feature of Rainbow Cottage. She knew every creak and groan of every bit of lumber in a storm, and she could always tell when anybody went up and down the back stairs, even if they went like cats.

When Janet stepped her softly slippered foot on the top step of that back stairs, although she couldn’t hear a bit of a creak, Grandmother was wide awake and sitting up. Grandmother was that way.

She sat still for an instant and listened, and then she became aware of low voices in the living room. What had happened? Had somebody come in to call, and wasn’t it as late as it seemed?

Softly she stole to the head of the stairs and listened. Grandmother could walk like a feather, and she knew the creaking boards in her floor as well as Janet.

She heard a word or two that Buck said, and she knew his voice at once. She did not need the second glance she took, leaning down cautiously at the side of the railing to get a good look and to see her precious Sheila facing that awful gun.

Like a feather, she stole back to her pillow and took from beneath it her trusty weapon, a heavy metal flashlight. It was the biggest and brightest flashlight she had been able to find in the city of Boston, and its light would travel far. She had seldom used it, for there had not been need, but she had put it to test once or twice, and it worked well.

Like a feather, she floated over to her window and sent her light flashing far up the back to where she knew a state policeman lived. Several times she flashed it into the windows of the little house, and it traveled like a great yellow pencil across the beach and lit up the windows of that little cottage by the road. She flashed till she saw a light appear in the cottage and someone at the window moving around. Someone was looking out the window, and then she turned the light on and waved it around in circles. Would they know that that was a cry for help?
Oh God, make them understand!
her heart cried out as she tiptoed lightly across the hall to the yellow room and flashed her signals again toward the north, straight into window after window up at The Cliffs. Yes, a light appeared there, to her joy. She knew that in one window at least it must have traveled into the face of some sleeper, for the bed in that room was directly opposite the window. She waved her silent signals violently again and then floated back to her own room and, going to her closet, took out a great pair of Indian clubs that had belonged to Andrew in his college days. She had kept them there ever since he left, hidden way back behind her garments, and these now she grasped in her left hand. But it took all her courage to open her bedside table drawer and take from there her last resort—a tiny revolver that her son Maxwell had insisted upon her possessing if she was going to stay alone in the cottage by the sea.

Grandmother was terribly, terribly afraid of that gun, even though it contained only blank cartridges and there wasn’t a single bullet in the house. But she now stealthily tiptoed to a spot of the bare floor by the window that was directly over where Buck Hasbrouck stood. She raised her left arm high. Letting the clubs fall and roll around with tremendous uproar. At the same instant, she shot off the revolver out the window, all six cartridges. She slid her feet into shoes, and with the heaviest tread she could muster, she marched toward the stairs.

The Israelites conquered Jericho with lamps, pitchers, and trumpets, marching around the city seven days. Grandmother fought for her dear girl with flashlight, revolver, and Indian clubs, tramping her hardwood floor valiantly. Just as she felt her strength was at an end and she was going to fall all the way down the stairs, she heard the sound of motorcycles coming like great comets through the night, and up from the road there came the sound of horses’ hoofs, beating on the asphalt—the state constabulary! And behind them a car shot down the road from The Cliffs.

Grandmother’s barrage had lasted no more than ten seconds, and then she descended in all the glory of her pink flannel nightgown, her lovely white curls floating out behind her, her gun in one hand, her big flashlight burning before her, and an Indian club bumping down the stairs ahead of her. Buck Hasbrouck, hardened criminal though he was, turned white at the strange, unwonted sounds. With his gun ready for action, he was stealthily, rapidly backing toward the door as Grandmother spoke.

“Bucknell Hasbrouck, put down that gun. There is a man waiting at the back door and two more at the front, and it’s too late for you to try to get away.”

Grandmother wasn’t ever quite sure whether she said that before she saw the handcuffs snapped around Buck’s wrists. But when it was all over and he was led away between two state police, she branded him once more with his true identity, by crying out his name, and then dropped down suddenly and weakly on the stairs, the flashlight and the other Indian club rolling together down into the living room, recalling a policeman to see if another burglar had turned up.

After things had quieted down and Malcolm Galbraith and Betty, who had dashed down to see what Grandmother’s light-signals meant, had gone home again, Janet brought up a tray with milk toast and a bit of chicken breast and coffee, and then they had to tell the whole story over again. They were all so excited it was no use to try and go to sleep again right away, and besides, the East was already showing a streak of pink.

“But you know,” said Grandmother thoughtfully, after everything they could think of was told and Janet had gone back to bed again, “he couldn’t have found the paper, anyway, for it wasn’t in my safe.”

“It wasn’t?” said Sheila. “How wonderful! How did that happen?”

“Why, I sent it the very next day by Angus Galbraith down to the Hazen Bank, and they have it in their vault. That was what I was talking on the telephone so long about. I had the president on the long-distance line. That paper will convict Buck Hasbrouck and clear the name of my boy, Sheila. Oh, how good God has been to us!”

Sheila was still a minute, and then she said, “How I wish that my mother could know.”

“Perhaps she does,” said Grandmother thoughtfully.

“Oh, do you think so?” said Sheila softly, her eyes starry bright. And then she added sorrowfully, “But where is my father?”

“Perhaps we’ll find that out someday,” said Grandmother hopefully.

A
ngus Galbraith had had a long journey and passed through many strange experiences trying to carry out his mission to that far-western spot. He had passed as a prospector, cattle owner, investor, anything that happened to fit the necessity, and he had hung around strange people and strange places listening to men talk.

He had luncheoned at the counter where Sheila used to serve, eaten apple pie and drank coffee such as Buck had ordered from her, and fitted the tales Ma Higgins had to tell to the shy, sweet girl he had met by the sea. And she had come to be enshrined in his heart.

He had even been to the cabaret where Moira used to sing and found those who had heard her and heard how they often recalled her singing. “Like the angels,” some of them said and sighed, knowing there would be very few angels in the rest of their way.