Part 2 (1/2)

The boy did not return, and Kenwick made his way back to the den. It was mid-afternoon now and a heavy rain had begun to fall. He made no further attempt to read, but lay on the upholstered window-seat trying to find some position that would be bearable. He cursed himself for having used the leg so much. Had he remained quiet all day he might by now have been able to get away from this uncanny place. But the woman upstairs! He couldn't throw off an absurd sense of responsibility concerning her.

From all that he could gather she was as helpless a puppet in the hands of fate as he. But of course she might have been lying to him. As he lay there on his back gazing out at the needles of rain driven aslant into the dank ground, he felt distrustful of the whole universe. Could there be any way, he wondered, of getting a message out of this house? There must be a rural delivery, and if so, at the gate would be a letterbox.

But that gate----It seemed tortuous miles away.

A search through the empty drawers of the desk revealed several loose sheets of tablet-paper and the stub of a pencil. With this equipment he wrote out a telegram to Everett. The mere wording of it seemed to reinstate him somehow in the world of affairs. The problem of getting it into the office could be solved later.

At six o'clock he forced himself to go out to the kitchen again and prepare supper. The thought of eating revolted him, but the woman upstairs, liar, decoy, or invalid, must be fed. Dangling close to the pantry window was the white-knotted towel rope with the bucket on the end. He put into it the last of the loaf of bread and some boiled eggs.

Then he called to her to pull it up. When the bucket had begun its erratic climb, he leaned out of the narrow opening and spoke with defiant triumph. ”Did you hear me smash that window this afternoon? I was trying to get the attention of the gardener. And I'm going to get it too if I have to smash up everything on this place.”

If she made any reply he did not catch it. The rain was falling fast now and there was the growling sound of approaching thunder. Back in the den again he turned on the reading-light, more for companions.h.i.+p than illumination. Could it be possible that he would have to spend another night in this ghostly house? The idea was intolerable, and yet there was no relief in sight.

Another hour pa.s.sed, and darkness enveloped the world in a shroud-like mantle. The bandage with which Kenwick's leg was wrapped was a torture now. He unwound it and began to ma.s.sage the badly swollen limb using the long firm strokes that he had learned from the athletic trainer during his university days. They seemed to ease the pain somewhat and he continued to rub until his arms ached with the effort.

Then all at once there came to his ears a sound that made him halt, every muscle tense with listening. It was a sharp incisive knocking and it seemed to come from the dining-room. He sat motionless, afraid to move lest it should stop. But it came again, a clear unmistakable knocking that had the dull resonance of metal clas.h.i.+ng against metal. To Kenwick it was perfectly obvious now that someone was trying to gain entrance at that broken dining-room window. He tested his unbandaged foot upon the floor and drew himself stealthily to a standing position.

And then he turned himself slowly in the direction of the darkened dining-room.

CHAPTER IV

The Morgan home on Pine Street was a rambling old house; the only s.h.i.+ngle structure in a block of modern concrete apartments. To the elder Morgans it had been the fulfilment of a dream; a home of their own in San Francisco. Clinton Morgan had lived only a year after its completion, and his widow, in spite of the pressure of hard times and the inadequacy of the income which he left, had resisted all tempting offers to sell the old place and had brought up her son and daughter with a reverence for family tradition as incongruous to their environment and generation as was the old s.h.i.+ngle house among its businesslike neighbors.

And then, eight years after Clinton Morgan's death, oil had been discovered in his holdings over at Coalinga, and the last year of Sarah Morgan's life had been spent in affluence. But she had never parted with the old home. At the end of that year she had called Clinton, Jr., then a young instructor in chemistry at the university, to her bedside and laid a last charge upon him.

”Clint,”--Her voice held that note of unconscious tyranny that approaching death gives to last utterances. For in the moment of dissolution there is not one among us but is granted the crown and scepter of autocracy. ”Clint, don't let the old place go. Fix it over any way you and Marcreta like, but keep it in the family as long as you live.”

”Yes, Mother.”

”And Clint, there is something else.”

”I know, Mother. It's Marcreta. But you needn't worry about her.”

”I don't believe in death-bed promises. It's not right to try to tie up anybody's future. But----You see, if she were strong and well, I wouldn't be anxious; I wouldn't say anything but----”

”You don't need to say anything, Mother. I'll always look out for her.”

A white, blue-veined hand stretched across the counterpane groping for his. A moment later Marcreta was holding the other and brother and sister faced each other alone.

It was about a year after this that Clinton Morgan brought home with him to dinner one night a young college fellow, just on the eve of graduating from the University of California. The friends.h.i.+p between the instructor and this undergraduate, five years his junior, had begun in the fraternity-house where Clinton dined occasionally as one of the ”old men.” And temperamental congeniality and diversity of interests had done the rest.

”He's slated to be one of those writer freaks.” Thus he introduced the guest to his sister. ”But he's harmless at present and he's far from home, so I brought him along.”

Roger Kenwick looked into Miss Morgan's grave blue eyes and became suddenly a man. His host, surveying him genially from across the meat-platter, found himself entertaining a stranger. The gay persiflage which he had known over at ”the house” was completely submerged under a maturity which he had suspected only as potential. In vain he tried that form of social surgery known to hosts and hostesses as ”drawing him out.” He mentioned a clever poem in the college magazine of which Kenwick was editor. He began a discussion of the approaching track-meet in which Kenwick was to support his champions.h.i.+p for the hundred-yard dash. He tried university politics in which his guest was a conspicuous figure. To all these leads his fraternity brother made brief, almost impatient response. And Clinton Morgan was resentfully bewildered. He experienced that cheated feeling known to any one who has brought home exultantly a clever friend, and then failed in the effort to make him show off.

But he couldn't complain that Kenwick was tongue-tied. He was talking earnestly, but it was about future, not past achievement. Inspired by Marcreta's sympathetic interest, he unfolded plans of accomplishment of which until that moment he himself had been in densest ignorance.

Clinton had seen other men change, chameleon-like, in the presence of his sister, and he found himself wondering now as he watched Kenwick take his headlong leap into the future, whether it was Marcreta's regal beauty which inspired their admiration or her physical disability which appealed to their chivalry.