Skeleton Key Read Online Free PDF Page A

Professor had begun a garden.
    That was a curious place for a flower-bed, hemmed round with bushes so tall that it could be seen only from this spot directly above. There were no other windows that overlooked it, for the living-room wall below was blank at that spot. There wasn’t even a path leading to it.
    It was a cleared space of earth, recently cultivated so that no weed marred its slightly mounded surface, and it was about six feet long and three feet wide. There was just one thing it resembled: a freshly made grave. The old man couldn’t have meant that, about the Death Ray?
    He was joking, I know he was! Georgine told herself fiercely, clutching the window-sill, unable to avert her gaze from the spot below. People simply don’t murder other people and bury ’em in the back yard. They don’t! Probably if I were down on the level ground, that patch would look quite different. It’s just being so far above it that makes the thing look so uncanny. That must be it .
    She withdrew slowly from the window. Her fingertips ached from digging into the sill, and it took an effort to erase the frown that tightened her brows.

CHAPTER TWO
Everyone on Edge
    I N THE LATE AFTERNOON , it seemed, Grettry Road came to life, for the living-room of the block warden’s home, thirty yards up the street, was respectably full ten minutes before the meeting began. Mrs. Blake, who had walked up with Georgine, withdrew in great dignity to an isolated corner. “Hired help,” she explained serenely, “ought to sit by itself.”
    â€œDoesn’t anyone else have help?”
    â€œThey used to,” said Mrs. Blake. A look of melancholy pleasure came over her ebon face. “They had Japs.”
    The warden was not yet on hand. Georgine had gathered that he was a bachelor; the woman with the genuinely golden pompadour, who was arranging blinds and showing people their seats with a proprietary air, was only the next-door neighbor, Mrs. Gillespie; her husband, a large, handsome, sleepy-looking man, was also on hand and rather sulkily assisting her.
    The golden lady must have been ravishingly pretty, ten years before. The beauty was still there, but beginning to go soft around the edges like an ice-cream shape left too long on the plate. Georgine thought she looked wistful, as if anxious for people to like her; and this impression was carried out when Mrs. Gillespie, sitting down beside Georgine on a large chesterfield, was distantly greeted by the woman on the other end.
    â€œCouldn’t you call me Mimi, Mrs. Devlin?” she asked with rather touching shyness. “I mean, all we neighbors know each other so much better, now there’s a war on.”
    Politely, but with no enthusiasm, Mrs. Devlin repeated “Mimi,” and thereafter returned to the formal mode of address. She was a large bony woman with the face of a saintly horse, and for the first few minutes she was surprisingly cordial to Georgine.
    â€œYou’re the Professor’s temporary secretary, Mrs. Wyeth? How very interesting. Rather eccentric, isn’t he?”
    The check rustled in Georgine’s pocket. She felt constrained to say nothing, but to smile vaguely.
    â€œHow boring for you,” said Mrs. Devlin, “to be dragged to this utterly pointless meeting. We’ve been perfect martyrs to Mr. Hollister’s whims. Don’t you think this talk about air-raids is a pack of nonsense?”
    â€œNot quite that,” Georgine said. “If there really were an air-raid it’d be a big help if we knew what to do.”
    Mrs. Devlin lost interest in her at once, and turned aside to get the best light on a large square of needlepoint work. “Mrs. Wyeth, this is my little boy,” she murmured.
    The little boy, who was about six feet tall and looked at least seventeen, flushed painfully at this title. He hastily told Georgine that his name was Frederic, only everyone called him Ricky.