Kitabı oku: «Marjorie Dean at Hamilton Arms», sayfa 9
CHAPTER XIX
A STRANGER IN THE HOUSE
Next day Leslie repeated the visit to her home. The second expedition to it was made in a small black car which she boldly requisitioned from a garage located not far from her father’s offices. There he kept several cars, immediate to the use of himself and one or two of his lieutenants.
The call Leslie had made at her father’s offices had proved advantageous to her. She had not only gained important information from Mr. Carrington, she had also received a fresh supply of temerity to bolster her for further daring deeds. She knew the manager of the garage to which she went only slightly. He had treated her request with the respect due Peter Cairns’s daughter. She calculated there was small possibility that the proprietor and her father would ever discuss her visit to the garage. She preferred that risk to the annoyance of being watched by a curious taxicab driver.
On the second occasion she was free to park her own car. She made one deliberate patrol of the block. Then paused before the gates. From a pocket of the leather motor coat she wore she pulled a heavy medium-sized brass key suspended from a brass ring. Without an instant’s hesitation she fitted the key to a fat brass padlock which secured the gates against intruders.
“Whuh-h-h!” Leslie blew a breath of relief. “Easiest thing I ever tried to do,” she murmured with satisfaction. “Wonder who’s home, or if anyone saw me?” She drew the key from the open padlock, fastened it in place from the inside of the gates through which she had just triumphantly passed and snapped it energetically back on guard. “This time,” she laughed her silent selfish laugh, “I’m on the inside, looking out.”
In spite of her bold manner and ready laughter Leslie was experiencing a certain amount of trepidation. She fought it down with all the sternness she could summon against herself. The night before, long after Doris and Mrs. Gaylord had retired, Leslie had sat at a little table in her room arranging the peculiar expedition to which she had now committed herself. She had drawn a sketchy little plan of the first and second floors of her home. With a lead pencil she had lightly traced on the plan precisely the course by which she would proceed when she had once passed through the vestibule of her home and had set foot in the great entrance hall with its lofty ceiling and grand stairway.
Knowing her father’s secretive nature she was reasonably sure that such of the servants as might be in the house knew nothing of the strained relations between herself and her father. Parsons, the steward, might be there, possibly the second cook and two or three of the maids. The others had probably been sent to the country house on Long Island which was never closed. When in or near New York, summer or winter, this was her father’s favorite haunt.
Leslie had resolved to brazen matters out, if, when she entered the house, she should suddenly encounter any of the servants. Her objective was a certain room on the second floor. It held something she wanted; needed; must have.
“Go to it,” she mutteringly encouraged the reluctant side of her brain. With this spur to action she sauntered away from the gate and up to the short drive which soon curved to the left and continued on to the garage behind the house. She left the drive for the wide stone walk leading up to the deep, central pillared veranda. Her cool, self-possessed manner, her walk, indifferent, swaggering, was at variance with the excited beating of her heart and her private distaste for the visit she was about to make. This distaste was not of moral persuasion. Leslie was merely afraid that her father might have changed his mind about going west at the last minute. It was “Peter the Great,” not the servant she dreaded encountering. If her father were afterward to learn from any of the servants whom she might encounter of her visit to the house, it would show him that she was a force not easy to control.
To gain access to the house itself would be a simple matter since the doors and windows had not been sealed. Leslie had several latch keys on a special ring which fitted various doors of her stately home. She was well prepared, but chose to use the main entrance for the sake of appearances, should she be observed.
She stepped presently into the great rosewood reception hall with its vast crystal sheet of mirror, occupying the whole lower end of the apartment; its two grim guardian Norman suits of armor. A richly cushioned bench extended the length of one side of it. Leslie paused beside the bench, listening for sounds of human presence other than the thump of her heart and the excited sigh of her own breath. Not a sound disturbed the church-like quiet which pervaded the hall.
She dropped down on the bench and carefully restored to a small leather handbag the latch key she had just used and which she still held in one hand. For as much as ten minutes she sat still, watching, waiting, listening, hoping no one might come. During that time her eyes roved ceaselessly about the hall and from the magnificent archway, lightly draped with velvet of a rosewood tint, to a lower smaller arch at the rear of the hall which stood open into a sun parlor.
She rose, at length slipped silently as an Indian to the grand archway and made a comprehensive survey of the French salon beyond the arch. Satisfied that no one was there to spy upon her she next inspected the sun parlor. There her father always established himself in the morning, when at home, with the morning papers. The long mahogany library table was stacked with an orderly array of newspapers and magazines. That in itself was significant proof to Leslie that “Peter the Great” was “missing from the show shop.”
Without pausing to explore further the main floor of the house she turned and darted noiselessly back into the hall and up the grand stairway. Straight as an arrow she directed her steps on reaching the second floor landing to a wide solid looking door of black walnut which stood part way down a short wide corridor hung on both sides with nothing but marine paintings. It was Peter Cairns’s famous marine collection; the pride of his heart. Leslie ran her fingers up and down one side of the knobless black walnut door. Silently it slid to the left, disappearing into a space cleverly designed to receive it. She was across the threshold in one long step and the door was moving back into place again.
This time she indulged in a burst of silent merriment as she collapsed into an immense leather arm chair. She “had got away with it.” She was now safe from any possible intrusion of servants. She was in Peter the Great’s own den. No one other than they two knew the secret mechanism of the walnut door. When she left the house it would be by a private stairway leading directly to a side veranda which no one but herself and her father ever used. She had not been able to enter by this means. There was only one key to the veranda entrance to the stairway and this was carried by the financier. The long room behind the walnut door, furnished comfortably rather than luxuriously, was Peter Cairns’s den. In it were his rarest books, a collection of priceless ancient coins, one of cameos, and numbers of unique treasures picked up in all parts of the world. Leslie could open the door from the inside by manipulation of a little steel knob, like that of a safe. The door would close after her, securing itself automatically.
When her flash of victorious amusement had subsided she let her gaze travel slowly about her. Quickly her features changed to a somber cast. She was once more in the good old “playroom” of happier days. It was in this very room that she had best learned to understand her father. Peter Cairns had then treated her more as though she were his son instead of his daughter. Her grotesquely plain little face and lawless domineering ways as a youngster had appeared to please and entertain him. He had called her his “ugly little beauty kid” and “the boss” and “Cairns II.” He had, as she had grown older, and come home from prep school, then college, spent long hours with her in the den. Sometimes they had played chess or backgammon of which they were both fond. Again he would talk freely to her of his financial operations. It was a school into which the maxims of Brooke Hamilton would not have fitted. Peter Cairns had made Leslie’s mind up to his own way of living as he was one day to learn.
Realizing the flight of time she gathered herself together for the final episode of her surreptitious errand. She rose, crossed the room to where a rare etching hung and lifted it from its hook. The space thus left vacant showed the indentation of a wall safe. Leslie manipulated the tiny knob with sure fingers. She next pulled open the safe’s door and moved a tiny switch inside the cavity. A bright light flooded it. She ran a finger down a stack of small, black, leather-bound notebooks, bindings out, lettered in gilt, A to Z. She drew the third book, I to M, from the little pile and sat down with it in the nearest chair.
“So that’s his name – Lavigne! It sounds French, but he looked more like a dago. He’s probably forgotten his real name,” Leslie mused satirically. “All right, Anton. I’ll proceed to tell your fortune. You are going to receive a visit from a dark woman who knows all about you.”
Leslie copied the address from her father’s very private directory into a note book of her own. She replaced the little black book, closed and locked the safe and made business-like preparations to depart. She purposed to call at the address she had obtained that same afternoon. It was not yet four o’clock. She could reach Anton Lavigne at the Central Park West address in good season if she started promptly. If he were not at home she would leave a note of appointment with him for ten o’clock the next morning.
She let herself out of Peter the Great’s den by a curtained door at the back of the room. It also had a spring lock, its key was also in the financier’s possession. The stairway was in darkness but Leslie knew her way without switching on a light at the head of the stairs. Sure-footed, she quickly made the descent and went cautiously onto the veranda. Still no one in sight.
Leslie kept as close to the house as she could until she reached its front. There she crossed a strip of frozen lawn to the drive and hurriedly followed it to the gates. She could hardly believe as she got back into the car that she had spent over an hour in the show shop without having seen sign of a servant. The house was in perfect order. She was confident that Parsons was still caretaker. She had seen signs of the steward’s expert domestic management as soon as she stepped inside. She moodily wondered when she would see home again. She afterward brightened a little under the dogged determination to “make things come her way.”
When she reached the somewhat garish apartment hotel which housed Anton Lavigne she was of the opinion that her good fortune had held. She received the cheering information that Mr. Lavigne was in and was soon shaking hands with the dark-faced, suave, but keen-eyed foreigner. He came downstairs to the lounge to greet her and conduct her to the family apartment on the fifth floor. He inquired with the courtliness Leslie so well remembered in him for her father. He had not seen or heard from him in some time. He waited with admirable reserve for Leslie to state her errand.
“My father is away from New York at present,” Leslie began when he had ushered her into a small reception hall furnished in a manner which suggested its use as office as well. “I am through college now and starting a business career for myself.”
“Indeed,” Lavigne raised polite commendatory brows. “May I ask, how long you have been engaged in such an enterprise. You American girls are so amazing. The English girls, too, for that matter. In France every woman is a business woman, so we say, but American girls are the business adventurers. They plan business on a large scale, and really accomplish what they plan.”
“I hope I shall,” was Leslie’s fervent reply. “My father isn’t helping me at all. I don’t wish him to do so. I am using my own money, and he isn’t giving me a word of advice. All I claim from him is a free use of some of his most private successful methods. That is why I am here. I know you can be as useful to me as you have been to him.” She suddenly fixed her eyes on Lavigne with an expression startlingly like that of Peter Cairns, though she bore small physical resemblance to him.
“You speak with great confidence – with frankness.” Lavigne’s thick dark brows drew together. “I knew when you were announced that you wished something out of the usual. Only your father, Mr. Peter Cairns, and a few of my special friends have this address.” He gazed steadily at her as though waiting to hear a certain assurance from her which his foreign mind toward caution demanded.
“I have just come from the house on Riverside Drive. I took your address from its usual place. Do you get me?” Leslie spoke in the best imitation of her father she could muster.
“Ah, yes.” There was relief in the response. “I understand the situation, I believe. What can I do for you, Miss Cairns?” It had long been known to Lavigne that Peter Cairns’s greatest interest in life was his daughter. Such a calamity as an estrangement between the two would have seemed impossible to this man who had been one of the financier’s ablest allies for many years. He now believed that his best interests lay in serving Leslie.
Leslie could tell nothing of the man’s thoughts by watching his face. No expression or emotion contrary to Lavigne’s will was allowed to appear on his dark features.
“My business operation is the building of a garage not far from the campus of Hamilton College. Hamilton is my – er – the college I went to.” Leslie always stuck at the words “Alma Mater.” “I had a good deal of trouble obtaining the site, due to the underhandedness of a crowd of would-be welfare students who tried to make me give it up to them. They wanted it for a dormitory.”
Lavigne smiled with heartening sympathy and made a gesture of understanding regret for Leslie’s troubles.
“I found out what their scheme was and managed to get into touch with the owner of the property before they did. Before he closed with me they let him know they wanted the site and he charged me sixty thousand dollars for what I should have paid not more than thirty-five or forty thousand. When they discovered I had won out over them they made a great fuss. They circulated very hateful gossip about how dishonorable I was, and so forth. A rich old crank at Hamilton, the last of the Hamilton family, sided with these students against me, though she’d never met me, and presented them with a dormitory site right next to the property I had bought. Can you beat that?” Leslie had forgotten dignity in slangy disgust for the way the matter had turned out.
“Incredible, yet true.” Lavigne lightly raised a hand. “But proceed, Miss Cairns. I am deeply interested.”
Leslie went on to explain regarding the old houses standing on both pieces of property. “These students have the advantage of the services of the only builder and architect of ability in that part of the country. He knows the labor situation there. He has had plenty of men since the start. I have a New York firm on the job and they are slackers. They claim they can’t get the laborers. My ground hasn’t been cleared off yet. My garage building isn’t started. The old dormitory is half up. I must do something about it. Two-thirds of those laborers are Italians, from an Italian colony outside Hamilton. I want them to work for me. I’ll pay them double, triple, if necessary, to quit the other operation.”
She stopped. Not for an instant did her gaze leave Lavigne’s face. He was now looking at her very shrewdly, an odd gleam in his black eyes. Leslie thought they twinkled. It put her on her mettle.
“This isn’t a schoolgirl quarrel I’ve had with these other students, Mr. Lavigne,” she said a trifle sullenly. “If you want to know the secret truth it’s a fight between another student and myself for – to bring about a certain result. I have as much right to the use of these men as she – as they – these students have. I don’t care what I pay you to have you help me. I have a large fortune in my own right. I can soon prove it to you. This business is really a race to see which side wins. I’ll win, if you’ll help me. No one need even suspect you of being concerned in the matter. I want you to engineer it. That’s the way you’ve always worked for my father, isn’t it?” Leslie asked the question with innocent ingenuousness. She understood, however, precisely how much depended upon it.
“Your father’s and my transactions have always been conducted with great discretion,” was the indirect admission.
“I know that. I know all about certain deals between you and him in the past. If I didn’t, would I be here now? It’s not simply a question of the garage operation with me. I’m fighting to assert myself. I’m going to follow my father’s methods. They’ve been absolutely successful. What I want I intend to get, if those who can give it to me are willing to sell out.” Leslie asserted boldly.
“Of course, of course. You are like your father. You are not a minor, Miss Cairns?” Lavigne inquired tentatively.
“Hardly.” Leslie smiled. “And you don’t have to consult my father. He has told me to do as I pleased with my own money. I’ll ask you to observe absolute secrecy in the matter. When the battle is won, then he is to be told.”
“You may trust me to serve you as best I can, Miss Cairns,” Lavigne declared with flattering sincerity. “In a few days I will go to Hamilton and look over the situation. I can tell you then what ought to be done. Where shall I address you?”
“At the Essenden until day after tomorrow. Then I’m going back to Hamilton. My address there is the Hamilton House.” Leslie rose to conclude her call. She was reminded that her father’s interviews with others were always brief. She was experiencing all the sweetness of vengeful exultation. At last she was going to “get back at Bean.”
CHAPTER XX
MARJORIE’S CALLER
“I thought you were never coming back, Jerry Macy!” Marjorie dropped into the depths of the near-by arm chair with a weary little flop. “I’ve worked like mad for as much as an hour getting up my share of the eats for Ronny’s birthday spread.” She poked out her red under lip and tried hard to look aggrieved. The sparkle in her eyes contradicted the pretence.
“How could you harbor such disloyal thoughts of me, Beautiful Bean? You are beautiful, even if your lip is away out of place,” Jerry tenderly assured.
“Being beautiful doesn’t make me feel rested.” Marjorie still searched for cause to complain. “For why did you stay away so long, Jurry-miar?”
“There’s the cause of my lingering longering.” Jerry held up a good-sized pasteboard box tied with stout string. “Just wait till you see it. I had to toddle all around Hamilton in search of a cake. When all seemed lost we bumped into this glorious, scrumptious cocoanut layer cake.” She set the box on the table and untied the string.
“It’s a white splendor.” Marjorie stood beside Jerry peeping at the cake as her chum removed the box lid. “I’ve made the sandwiches.” She nodded toward a side table carefully covered with a snowy lunch cloth. “I cracked the walnuts for the brown bread ones and also my thumb.” She ruefully put the injured member in her mouth.
“How you must have suffered!” Jerry solemnly exclaimed. Both girls began to laugh. “Leila was in one of her fine frenzies because we couldn’t find a real cake or any stuffed dates.”
“I was that,” notified an affable agreeing voice from the opened door. “Did not the people of Hamilton all have their mouths set for sweet cakes today?” Leila closed the door and joined her chums. “We could find nothing we wanted.”
“Until in despair we went over to a new bakery on Gorman Street that just opened yesterday. The woman who keeps it is German. She has yellow hair and looks just like a pound cake,” Jerry described with enthusiasm.
“And our dream of a cake was in the window!” exclaimed Leila. “We thought we would eat it ourselves and tell no one, but we have such honor about us. We could not bear to think of those who would have no cake.” She smiled broadly upon Marjorie.
“You are a pair of fakes. You’ve been out having a fine spin while I’ve been in working hard. The minute dinner’s over you two may make the fruit salad. That will be your job,” Marjorie sternly pronounced sentence on the buoyant, hilarious pair.
“I will make forty fruit salads to please you, Beauty, though I do not know how to make one. Behold in me a helpful Harper.”
“You mean a harpful helper,” corrected Jerry.
“If you mean I am a harp, then I must tell you you are right. I do not know how you guessed it.” Leila gazed at Jerry in mock admiration.
“Dinner won’t mean much to us tonight,” commented Marjorie as she proudly raised the lunch cloth to allow the girls to see the tempting generous stacks of small, three-cornered sandwiches, the relishes and various other toothsome viands always welcomed by girlhood at a spread. “Remember, we are to take nothing but soup at dinner. It’s to be cream of celery. I asked Ellen.”
“Oh, Marjorie, I almost forgot to tell you,” Jerry suddenly cried out. “Something has happened to the Hob-goblin’s Folly.” This was Jerry’s pet name for Leslie’s garage enterprise.
“Happened?” Marjorie’s question contained little interest.
“Yep. There’s a new gang of men at work on the garage. Leila and I noticed them when we went to town. They were gone when we came back, but it was after five-thirty. There were as many as your gang on the dormitory. I think they were Italians. Don’t you, Leila?”
Leila nodded. “They must be a new addition to the Italian quarter,” she surmised. “Signor Baretti said last fall that nearly all the men of the quarter were working on the dormitory. He said they had refused to work for Leslie Cairns’s builders. They would not pay them enough by the day. Perhaps the new ones are glad of the work. But how can I judge when I am no boss of Italians, or of any one but Midget. I shall certainly give her a tart and terrible lecture when I see her again. I left her entertaining Gentleman Gus. Now I believe they have eloped.”
Leila’s dark suspicion of Vera set the three girls laughing. Gussie was the tallest girl at Wayland Hall and Vera the tiniest. The elopement of the pair was a joy to contemplate.
“I haven’t been near the dormitory for three whole days,” Marjorie confessed ruefully. “I’ve been so busy since we came back from Sanford trying to make up for a lot of things I let slide before I went that I’m a no good manager. Robin is coming early tonight, so she’ll know what has been going on over there. We may thank our stars we have such a splendid manager as Mr. Graham to look after the dormitory for us.”
“And such a Marvelous Manager as Bean to look after the sandwiches for us,” supplemented Jerry, imitating Marjorie’s tone.
“I thank my stars they’re made, and made without your help, Jeremiah Macy.” Marjorie waved a finger before Jerry’s face. “There’s Robin now, I’m sure.” She sprang from her chair and ran to the door.
“Were you at the dormitory today?” Her lips framed the question before Robin had more than stepped into the room.
“No-o.” Robin’s tone was one of self-accusation. “It’s neglectful in me, but I’ve not been there since day before yesterday. I must turn over a new leaf tomorrow. What about you, Dean? I know you’ve done better than I.”
“But I haven’t,” Marjorie protested. “I’m a day behind you, Pagie. Jerry and Leila saw Leslie Cairns’s builders have at last gathered up a supply of workmen. The girls noticed them today when they drove to town.”
“Her garage will be about as successful there as it would be in Thibet,” predicted Robin scornfully. “It’s too far from the campus to be convenient.”
“I wonder if she intends to run it herself?” remarked Jerry. “I can see the Hob-goblin proudly marching around her own car roost.”
Conversation about Leslie Cairns came to a halt with Jerry’s remarks. None of the Travelers liked to discuss her. When they did it was because of some way in which her affairs chanced to touch theirs.
The lively entrance into the room of the “elopers” who had gone for a ride in Vera’s car, and returned at the last minute before dinner, brought a welcome diversity of subject.
“What do you care whether we have dinner or not? Think of the spread we have for Ronny.” Jerry reminded them. “You may have only soup for dinner. We’re going to have the eats soon after the party begins so that nightmares won’t be popular along the hall tonight.”
“You try to be kind-hearted, don’t you, Jeremiah?” said Vera, with a patronizing smile.
“Oh, yes, I try,” mimicked Jerry. “It’s not my fault if my kindheartedness doesn’t register. Some people are positively thick, and – ”
The ringing of the dinner gong sent Vera and Gussie scurrying to their rooms to remove their wraps. Marjorie, Jerry, Leila and Robin made leisurely way down stairs to the dining room. Dinner began and ended with soup for the Travelers. The ten original Travelers were invited to the spread, as were also Phil Moore and Barbara Severn. Marjorie had invited both of the latter to come over early to “soup.” Both had nobly refused in favor of study so as to be free to spend the evening at Wayland Hall without including “unprepared” in next day’s vocabulary.
“The first thing for us to do to start the party is to move the eats into Ronny’s and Lucy’s room.” was Marjorie’s brisk decision, as she and Jerry returned to Room 15 from the dining room.
Robin had strolled down the hall to see Ronny and give her a birthday present of a curious, vellum-bound book in Spanish, which she had commissioned her dilettante uncle to buy for her in Washington at a fancy price.
“We might all heave-ho and lug the table into the other room with the eats on it,” proposed Jerry dubiously. “On the other hand, there might be a grand heave-ho-ing of eats on the floor. I don’t like to take such a risk, Bean. Think of my goloptious, celostrous cocoanut cake.” Jerry had added “goloptious” to her new vocabulary of one word.
“Think of my scrumptious, splendiferous sandwiches,” retaliated Bean with promptitude.
“I’m thinking about them,” Jerry said mournfully. “I could eat one now, if I had it. So near and yet so far.” She lifted the lunch cloth and made eyes at the stacks of sandwiches. “This is the result of only soup for supper. I yearn to gobble the spread.”
“I’ll feed you a sandwich with my own hand.” Marjorie proffered a nut sandwich, Jerry’s favorite kind, to her hungry roommate.
“Thanks, kind lady. I wasn’t – ”
“I know all about you,” cut in Marjorie with an unsympathetic laugh. “Hurry up, and eat that sandwich. Then help me move the eats; by hand; not by table.”
Marjorie went to the door and opened it. She came back to the table, picked up two plates of sandwiches and started with them for Ronny’s room. Part way to it she encountered Annie, one of the maids.
“Oh, Miss Dean, I was just coming after you.” The maid’s broad good-humored features broke into a pleased smile. “There’s a gentleman down stairs in the living room wants to see you.”
