Mary Roberts Rinehart & Avery Hopwood Read Online Free PDF Page B

access from the terrace to the house—the door that led
into the alcove, the French windows of the living room—the
billiard-room window. On the other side of the house there was the
main entrance, the porch, the library and dining-room windows. The
main entrance led into a hall-living-room, and the main door of the
living-room was on the right as one entered, the dining-room and
library on the left, main staircase in front. "My mind is starting to
go round like a pinwheel, thinking of all those windows and doors," she
murmured to herself. She sat down once more, and taking a pencil and a
piece of paper drew a plan of the lower floor of the house.
    And now I've studied it, she thought after a while, I'm no further than
if I hadn't. As far as I can figure out, there are so many ways for a
clever man to get into this house that I'd have to be a couple of
Siamese twins to watch it properly. The next house I rent in the
country, she decided, just isn't going to have any windows and
doors—or I'll know the reason why.
    But of course she was not entirely shut off from the world, even if the
worst developed. She considered the telephone instruments on a table
near the wall, one the general phone, the other connecting a house line
which also connected with the garage and the greenhouses. The garage
would not be helpful, since Slocum, her chauffeur for many years, had
gone back to England for a visit. Dale had been driving the car. But
with an able-bodied man in the gardener's house—
    She pulled herself together with a jerk.
    "Cornelia Van Gorder, you're going to go crazy before nightfall if you
don't take hold of yourself. What you need is lunch and a nap in the
afternoon if you can make yourself take it. You'd better look up that
revolver of yours, too, that you bought when you thought you were going
to take a trip to China. You've never fired it off yet, but you've got
to sometime today—there's no other way of telling if it will work.
You can shut your eyes when you do it—no, you can't either—that's
silly.
    "Call you a spirited old lady, do they? Well, you never had a better
time to show your spirit than now!"
    And Miss Van Gorder, sighing, left the living-room to reach the kitchen
just in time to calm a heated argument between Lizzie and Billy on the
relative merits of Japanese and Irish-American cooking.
    Dale Ogden, taxiing up from the two o'clock train some time later, to
her surprise discovered the front door locked and rang for some time
before she could get an answer. At last, Billy appeared, white-coated,
with an inscrutable expression on his face.
    "Will you take my bag, Billy—thanks. Where is Miss Van Gorder—taking
a nap?"
    "No," said Billy succinctly. "She take no nap. She out in srubbery
shotting."
    Dale stared at him incredulously. "Shooting, Billy?"
    "Yes, ma'am. At least—she not shoot yet but she say she going to
soon."
    "But, good heavens, Billy—shooting what?"
    "Shotting pistol," said Billy, his yellow mask of a face preserving its
impish repose. He waved his hand. "You go srubbery. You see."
    The scene that met Dale's eyes when she finally found the "srubbery"
was indeed a singular one. Miss Van Gorder, her back firmly planted
against the trunk of a large elm tree and an expression of ineffable
distaste on her features, was holding out a blunt, deadly looking
revolver at arm's length. Its muzzle wavered, now pointing at the
ground, now at the sky. Behind the tree Lizzie sat in a heap, moaning
quietly to herself, and now and then appealing to the saints to avert a
visioned calamity.
    As Dale approached, unseen, the climax came. The revolver steadied,
pointed ferociously at an inoffensive grass-blade some 10 yards from
Miss Van Gorder and went off. Lizzie promptly gave vent to a shrill
Irish scream. Miss Van Gorder dropped the revolver like a hot potato
and opened her mouth to tell Lizzie not to be such a fool. Then she
saw Dale—her mouth went into a round O of horror and her hand clutched
weakly