Rim of the Pit : A RH Mystery, page 2
He put a fresh log on the fire.
“Can’t blame a man if a thing like that turns his brain. Peyton Ambler says people who live in the farm districts in France, and never see a decent-sized town more than once a year, develop a queer streak. It came out in Grimaud, queer—and cruel. Some ways he was sharper than ever. Started to make money by the bankful. But he hated Sherry because she’d killed her mother. Six months after she was born, he married again. Couldn’t believe it at first, but when I saw Irene I knew why. She’s starting to fall to pieces now, but in those days she was the image of Ellen. Only difference was she had brown eyes. Ellen’s were gray. Character was different, too. I don’t think Grimaud even noticed that. Irene wasn’t Ellen. That was enough for him. Almost from the start he held it against her. He began drinking, too—raw brandy. I never told Sherry, but I think that’s why he couldn’t find his way back to camp the time he got killed.”
Rogan grimaced. “You haven’t picked a very pretty ghost to raise.”
“I said it was Hell. No other way out. Million and a half tied up in my business. Won’t be worth a counterfeit dime. Irene doesn’t dare disobey Grimaud. Can’t say I blame her.”
“What are you going to do if your séance scheme doesn’t work?”
“Go bust. Jeff and Frank Ogden were in Quebec trying to get logs from the other side of the border at a price we can afford.”
“Doesn’t Ogden have faith in the séance plan?”
“More than I have. He doesn’t know Grimaud. Matter of fact, Frank felt the Quebec trip was a waste of time. That’s why he quit and came back yesterday. Jeff kept plugging till last night. No go.”
Rogan eyed his host shrewdly. “I don’t suppose you’ve thought of fixing things yourself so you’ll get the right answers?”
“Fake Grimaud’s ghost, you mean?” Latham’s voice rose in surprise. “Hell’s clinkers, man! I’d be afraid to. He wasn’t the sort to fool with while he was alive. Only an idiot would risk it now he’s dead!”
Sherry came down the stairs. Whatever she might be feeling, her outward poise had returned. She stood before the fire and stretched, fully aware of how the gesture displayed firm, round breasts under the yellow sweater. Then the gray eyes clouded again. She turned to Kincaid.
“Do you mind going home with me? It’s only a three-minute walk, but I don’t think I’m quite up to facing the woods alone now that it’s growing dark.”
Latham rummaged in the closet and returned with a pair of ski boots, which he tossed to Rogan.
“These are Jeff’s. Better wear ’em. Shoes’ll get full of snow. Take Thor along. He needs a run. Maybe he can help you drag Jeff away from this prospective niece of mine. It’ll take some doing. I’ve seen her. Tell Jeff he’s got to come back here to the lodge and help cook dinner.” Latham turned to Sherry. “Thought we could pick up a guide in Lynxhead, or a cook. No luck. All gone with hunting parties.”
He bade them good-by and they set out, with Thor stalking majestically ahead. The long New England twilight had set in, and Gothic elms cast lean shadows over the snow. Sherry slipped her hand through Rogan’s arm and drew her body close to him.
A man of cities, Kincaid found this winter-struck wilderness disquieting. The gray light, the naked trees—black against the snowshrouded earth—the wind whispering in the dry branches, were all alien. Even the small wild things seemed unfriendly.
His uneasiness had begun that morning when Jeff turned off the main highway some twenty miles the other side of Lynxhead, and had increased with every slap of the chains against the mudguards. The woods suggested menace—menace that was no less disturbing because he knew it to be unreal. That he could find no basis for his misgivings only made matters worse.
Danger was the breath of life to Kincaid, but he liked odds that could be calculated. Here he was out of his element. Experience had taught him a healthy respect for his instincts, but he knew they were only mental short cuts, treacherous unless they could be tested by reason. In his normal surroundings he made such a test automatically. Always he found what he sought—the shadow, the trick of voice, the flicker of movement that had set his nerves on guard. Here in this gray-lit landscape he found nothing. He knew only that his whole being was braced against an attack that might come at any moment and from any side.
Suddenly the black dog stiffened. Sherry’s grasp on Rogan’s arm tightened. Then she relaxed with a little laugh.
“I should know better than to jump. Thor probably smells rabbits.”
“More likely it’s bears. A hound that size couldn’t even work up an appetite over a rabbit.” The incident annoyed Kincaid. I’m like the dog, he thought—sniffing something I can’t see.
No hint of his mood was allowed to reach the girl. She saw nothing in the snow but its beauty. As they walked, the wind brought the color back to her cheeks. The pressure of her body against Rogan’s no longer indicated a need for support, but became a token of intimacy.
She had, she told herself, no illusions about this man. A friend had pointed him out in a Palm Beach hotel the previous winter.
“He’s not exactly a beauty, my dear, but so interesting-looking, don’t you think? I met him five years ago in Egypt. Out there they tell the most frightful tales about him. Apparently he just travels around the world and makes his money by gambling. A Captain Everitt I knew in Cairo said he’d seen Mr. Kincaid kill a man in a brawl in Shanghai, or some such place. Apparently this Kincaid just bent the other man backward over the bar until his spine snapped. The captain said the dead man was a Japanese army officer and a famous jujitsu expert. But of course I don’t believe that.”
Sherry believed it. The next night she had witnessed a demonstration of a very different facet of Rogan’s prowess, when she had visited a swank gambling house outside the city. She had noticed Kincaid as he entered and stood for a few seconds in the doorway. Then he had strolled to a poker table and pulled out a chair. One of the men already seated had jumped to his feet, proclaiming loudly that he had no intention of playing with a crooked cardsharp. Remembering Captain Everitt’s story, Sherry had expected mayhem at the least. Instead Rogan had merely nodded and said:
“If you’re quitting, you’d better leave the cards you’ve been holding out. I like to play with a full deck.”
With that he had extended his hand and twitched two aces from under the other’s vest.
Sherry never knew whether the man had really held out the cards, or whether she had witnessed some bit of legerdemain on Rogan’s part, but she felt he would always be like that—invulnerable, ready with the one perfect counterstroke for any attack that might come.
She knew there could be no constant companionship with such a man. Yet his physical nearness was an exhilarating experience. The week in Florida . . . the promise of the next few days up here. . . . Sherry had once seen a giant engine in a steel mill and had held her hand so that the great connecting rod, at the extreme end of its outward lunge, had tapped her fingers as lightly as a kitten. The nearness of that tremendous and perfectly controlled power which, had she moved an inch nearer, would have flung her across the room without noticing it, had held something of the same thrill—the same feeling of excitement.
It was working in her now. The fear that had filled her since morning was draining away. When they branched from the wagon track onto a footpath, a sudden glimpse of the lake brought a surge of remembered terror. But the moment passed, and by the time they rounded a huge pine and came within sight of her house she was almost gay.
“That’s Cabrioun.”
Like the lodge, it was a two-storied structure built of logs chinked with graying mortar. However, where Latham’s house was low and rambling, Cabrioun was compact and vertical. Its eaves hung within ten feet of the ground, and its steep roof climbed past shallow dormers to loftly ridgepoles set in the form of a “T”. The hint of medieval France given by its lines was obscured by a boxlike structure—obviously the kitchen wing—that had been built on the end from which Rogan and Sherry approached.
The house stood in a clearing swept bare even of the smallest bushes, as if the guide, Madore, had felt it his duty to protect it from the encroachment of the forest. The wind, racing over this empty space, drove the dry snow before it in thin sheets like gauzy skeins of blown cobweb. This drifting had filled any earlier footprints, so that the place had a deserted look broken only by a feather of smoke from the main chimney.
“It looks pretty grim from here,” the girl confessed, “but inside it’s quite comfortable—furnace and everything. Coming this way we sort of sneak up on it from behind because it faces the river.” She led the way through a storeroom, which served as a vestibule, and into the kitchen. There they found Jeff and Barbara stirring a custard with an unnecessary amount of collaboration.
Sherry winked at Rogan.
“It must be love.”
Jeff looked up and grinned. “Hello, you two. Come in and watch me being housebroken.”
He was a large young man with ‘ex-tackle’ written all over him. His face had once presented a collar-ad type of male beauty, but a kindly Princeton halfback had stepped on it. Jeff had wisely refused to have his nose set, so it now resembled an island of William Bendix entirely surrounded by Robert Taylor. He waved a hand in introduction.
“Miss Daventry, this is Rogan Kincaid. Take a good look so you can avoid him in the future. He’s a professional heartbreaker.”
Barbara licked the custard spoon meditatively, blue eyes on Rogan.
“He might be fun, though.”
“Try it,” Sherry dared her, “and come spring they’ll be dragging the lake for a yellow-headed corpse.”
The Dane put his front paws on Barbara’s shoulders and regarded her solemnly. She frowned at him.
“Thor, you have a mean and hungry look, like Julius Caesar or somebody.”
She vanished into the storeroom and returned bearing a huge bone, which she tossed on the floor. Thor growled politely and set to work with relish.
“There goes tonight’s soup,” Barbara remarked wistfully. “And now that the subject of tonight has been brought up unobtrusively, Sherry, do you mind if I inject a touch of humor into the séance? Nothing coarse. Just a few quiet shrieks, and perhaps a pool of blood in the center of the table so the fun won’t be over when the lights come up.”
Jeff groaned. “Barbara Daventry, the poltergeist of the north country.”
She jerked a thumb at him. “Jeff’s an old fuddy-duddy and won’t play. Personally I think games in the dark with more than two people go best with youthful jollity.”
Jeff groaned again. “Sherry, you’ll have to talk this wild woman out of her ideas. I’ve tried to remind her she’s your stepmother’s guest, but the girl has no social conscience.”
“Pooh,” said Barbara, “just because Jeff’s mother was scared by a prohibitionist or something isn’t any reason the rest of us should pass up a chance for innocent merriment. Can you gibber, Mr. Kincaid? Or take off your head? Surely you have some talent that will put everyone at ease and help the evening pass smoothly. Sherry lamb, I have your part all worked out. You’re to make bloodcurdling squeaks on the accordion.”
“Is that a crack?”
“Of course not, darling. You play divinely, but you could make squeaks if you wanted to, couldn’t you?”
“But I don’t want to,” Sherry assured her. “Irene’s bad enough when she’s her sweet, silly self. With hysterics she’d be more than I could bear.” She stood. “Whew! These ski clothes are hot in here.”
“Then why don’t you take them off, my pet?” Barbara advised. “It’s a shame to hide such lovely legs.”
Sherry said, “I think so myself,” and vanished.
Barbara twinkled at Rogan. “You can’t blame her at that.” She turned back to Jeff. “You ought to be glad to help me get a little fun out of this séance. You’ve read up on these things. Maybe we could even kid your uncle out of believing in spooks. You know you don’t like the idea of his getting business advice from the spirit world.”
“I’ve told you a dozen times,” said Jeff patiently, “there’s no way to cure a believer. Uncle Luke’s a great guy, but once a man gets to be a sucker for spooks you can’t laugh him out of it and you can’t talk him out of it. Even if his favorite hant turns out to be five yards of phosphorescent gauze, he swears it’s an ‘apport’ brought by unfriendly spirits to discredit the medium. Look at Conan Doyle. He used to explain Houdini’s tricks by saying Houdini was a medium and didn’t know it. Houdini spent the last ten years of his life telling the world that the things he did were tricks and nothing but tricks, but he couldn’t pound any sense into Doyle.”
“Oooh,” exclaimed Barbara, “you’ve given me another lovely idea. We can make Thor a set of terrible teeth out of grapefruit rind and he can be the Hound of the Baskervilles.”
Rogan stood. “The Hound of the Baskervilles seems to have finished his bone. So I’d better break the news that Latham sent us to tell Jeff to come home and get dinner.”
“I can see there’s no use appealing to your chivalry,” Barbara observed wisely, “but sometimes a bribe works wonders in such cases.” She pointed. “Go through there into the dining room. Sherry’s door is on the left. Knock before you enter, ’cause according to my computations she’s just about reached the pinksilk- pantie stage.”
“And,” Jeff added, “if you see something queer wandering around, don’t let it scare you. It’s a friend of Mr. Ogden’s.”
“That man can haunt a house without any help.”
Barbara gave a mock shiver. “If a ghostly hand touches me at the séance tonight I won’t know whether it’s Mr. Vok or Jack the Ripper. What’s more, I won’t care.”
Kincaid drifted into the dining room. From behind the door on the left came Sherry’s voice, raised in a song that made up in piquancy for what it lacked in decorum.
Mais oui,
But yes!
Of course,
Monsieur.
He decided that the knock Miss Daventry had recommended would be a mere formality. Nevertheless, it is well to be punctilious in these matters. He knocked.
The song stopped. A moment later Sherry opened the door just enough to display one eye and half the opulence of the yellow sweater.
“You disappoint me,” Rogan informed her. “The little girl next door said you’d have reached the pink-silk-pantie stage.”
Sherry, realizing he was alone, pulled the door wider and stepped into the opening.
“I have.”
He nodded approval. “Evidently you began at the bottom and worked up. I confess the sweater lends an unexpectedly provocative note.”
She flirted her hips at him. “I’m glad you like the effect. Only you’d better go now because somebody might walk through the dining room, and that would be just too bad.”
Rogan sighed. “And I had hoped for a private viewing.”
Sherry winked. “That might be arranged.” She kissed him. “But later. Off with you.”
Mr. Kincaid was smiling as he walked through the broad archway into a living room that ran the full width and height of the house. Whatever it might be like in the full light of day, the place was gloomy now. Dusk seeping through small windows illuminated only the lower half, so that the hand-hewn roof timbers slanted up into darkness.
The gambler made a practice of examining any place in which he found himself, with the eye of a general surveying a possible field of battle. It was one of the reasons he was still alive. A stair climbed the wall that separated the living room from Sherry’s bedroom. In the wall opposite there were two doors. He opened them. One led to the vestibule, the other to a closet—its floor littered with boots. Deep window seats flanked the doors. A great fireplace of smooth stones rose against the wall to the right. The ancient musket and powder horn which decorated it were hung so high they were nearly lost among the soot-stained shadows.
The log walls, dusty with neglect, were covered with a motley array of Indian relics, faded snapshots, and the paraphernalia of northern sports.
Behind him he heard Sherry singing,
Mais oui,
But yes!
Of course,
Monsieur.
He strolled over and looked at the photographs. Obviously they represented Sherry’s father and his friends, but the dim light made it impossible to see more.
The girl’s husky contralto had given way to accordion music. It was strange that he had not noticed the instrument in her bedroom. True, his eyes had been occupied, but they had not missed much of the room’s furnishings. An accordion is not an easy thing to overlook.
Besides, this accordion was behaving very oddly. It played a snatch of Sherry’s tune and then interpolated a few notes of another melody—a melody as eerie as the little song had been insouciant. There was no connection between the two. The effect was like opening first one booth and then another in a record shop.
Before he had time to guess at the reason for this, Sherry’s door banged open and she came running in.
“Rogan!” She stopped at sight of him and her hands twisted in the folds of her skirt. “Weren’t you playing?”
“I thought you were. Shhh!” He held up his hand. “It’s stopped.”
There was a cupboard under the stair landing. Sherry turned to this and pulled open the door. A swift step brought Kincaid to her side and they peered in. She pointed to an awkwardly-shaped black case and whispered:
“Open it.”
He dragged it from the cupboard and pressed the catches. The lid fell open to reveal the chromium and plastic of the accordion.
“Nobody could have played it while it was locked in the case.” In the dim room her upturned face was white as a moonflower, and her whole body trembled. “That was Father’s tune.”
Shuffling footsteps sounded on the landing above. The girl drew out of Rogan’s arms with a little cry. He needed no word from her to tell him that the man who peered down out of the gloom was Svetozar Vok.
