Lost Lake House Read Online Free PDF Page B

group at the drugstore corner hailed her
noisily, scolding her for being late. “I’m sorry—I almost got
caught,” Dorothy gasped, catching hold of the street lamp and
holding onto it as she recovered her breath. “I had to wait till he
passed by.”
    “Who, your father?”
    Dorothy answered without thinking. “No, the
police chief. He was—”
    “He’s got the chief of police out after
her!” cried Sadie merrily. “Nobody in your family does things by
halves, do they, Dolly.”
    “No, it’s not that,” said Dorothy, who had
been jolted out of the mood to appreciate a joke. “I know what he
was there for. Dad’s been—”
    “Will you come on? Half the night’s
gone already!” said the young man who was Kitty Lawrence’s
particular property that night, and they all hustled down the block
and into the waiting cars. Amid the clamor, Dorothy was still
thinking back. The police chief’s visit might well carry some
significance for the Lake House crowd—but she found it hard to
break into their conversation with any serious subject.
    “Dad’s got the city to offer a reward, you
know,” she managed to say to Kitty at last, when they were both
perched on the back seat, elbowed up against each other to make
room for the crush of fellow-passengers.
    “For you?” Kitty laughed.
    “No, for information about speakeasies.
Didn’t you tell me about one at the—”
    “What are you doing, training for a race?”
Sadie shrilled at the car’s driver as they swerved around a bend in
the road.
    “No, making up all the time Dolly lost.
Never fear, we’ll be there by nine!”—and with a roar from the
engine they took a corner at dangerous speed, with shrieks and
whoops from the passengers. Dorothy clutched the door-handle and
twisted to look over the side of the car—the second automobile in
the party, taking its cue from them, surged up alongside, its horn
blaring and dust and gravel spitting from beneath its tires. The
drivers were trying to race; the other one wanted to pass on the
narrow road—and Dorothy suddenly remembered that there was a bridge
across a stream around the turn just ahead.
    They flung round the turn and there it
was—the car wrenched sideways at the last moment, stalled and
sputtered, and the other car screamed past onto the bridge with so
little room to spare that one of its wheels scraped the first car’s
bumper.
    “Look out! ” shouted Dorothy, half
rising from her seat: less with fear than with a sudden
adrenaline-surge of anger at the carelessness with so many lives
and limbs. But no one heard her; the air was filled with jesting
abuse hurled at the driver, who was trying to get the car back onto
the road. Dorothy plumped back into her seat, tugged down the hat
she had almost lost and blew a stray curl out of her eyes. She
spent the rest of the ride seething, and had never been so glad to
pull off into the gravel lot above the ferry at the end of it.
    Now, poised in the ballroom doorway, she
surveyed the scene, a little on tiptoe and with her hands clasped
in front of her. Dorothy still retained the air of a young girl at
her first dance. But conversely, she had found herself popular at
first, then a little overlooked as time went on, instead of the
other way around. The rest of the number was accomplished, and
still she stood in the doorway, watching a little more soberly as
no partners appeared to invite her into it.
    When the music ended, she walked, setting
her light feet precisely on the marble floor, to the nearest sofa
and sat down upon it. She felt the change, but did not yet realize
the reason for it. On her first visits to the Lake House she had
had plenty of partners; her natural prettiness and enthusiasm for
dancing were enough to ensure that. But gradually she had realized
that she didn’t like some of the young men she danced with: the
ones whose voices were too loud, or whose jokes she didn’t like, or
who tried to hold her a little too tight. Instinctively,