The Step In The House

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 483, 12 October 1928, Page 5

The Step In The House

By

Rina Ramsay

CHAPTER XII.— (Continued) “Well, we won't fight/' she archly, as he didn’t answer. ‘Sit flown and have tea with me; you can imagine you’re in your own house, and I suppose you are. But I feel sure you are going to relent, and consider my disappointment." Mrs. Price had slipped out of the room, she probably had her orders. He felt grimly annoyed at the whole idea. He had been inveigled into her presence ana again made to feel the unfairness of the situation. If he left her abruptly with her say naif finished she would probably shriek and have hysterics, and Mrs. Price would rush in and spread a story that he had bullied her, if not worse. Well, he would be equal to her. She looked at him as he remained silent. “But you need your tea, I. am sure." He went to the door and called, “Mrs. Beamish!" She did not answer. But she was in the house he knew, for he had heard her voice somewhere. He would make her bring in his tea, and then, under her ample wing (absurd it all was) he would make his retreat. There was a suggestion of hysterics latent •bout this woman. He made his way down to the kitchen. Perhaps the old woman was in the garden getting parsley. He lifted the latch of the back door, but could not open it; it was bolted. Bolted, at half-past five; There was the crash of a dish in the pantry, and the old woman’s face looked out at him, really scared. “Oh, it’s you, doctor," she said, as if hardly believing in him. “I am pleased! lam pleased! My heart was in my mouth when I heard a man that wasn t Sam in my kitchen." “Why on earth do you keep the back door bolted?" he said. Mrs. Beamish looked foolish. “I done it ever since the detective was prowling about," she said. "Seems as if there must he something unlawful about that garden. And I'm not easy in my mind about that man Peter Harrison. He’s been threatening me again." The doctor started. “Has he?" he said. “Any but he," said Mrs. Beamish, “I’d laugh in his face. But he’s a queer oae. That nephew of mine was going his Hilda, and the boy got to know of her fits, and he didn't like it. And the chemist’s young man was after her, too, and it made the boy jealous, 1 m afraid he’ll go back to her, fits and all; but the other one’s dropped

off like, and old Peter says he saw me go Into the chemise's shop for a bottle of liniment, and he says I’m a wicked old parrot ruining his girl’s life. As if I’d no work to do but warning young men! But that man has had a grudge against me for forty years. And he has a queer look in his eyes. There are times I’m frightened.” “Well, you’ll be all right,” said the doctor, consolingly. “You have got. Sam to protect yu.” Mrs Beamish looked doubtful. “Oh yes.” she said grudgingly. “I've got Sam. but he’s that good natured. Nobody that wanted to do anybody a mischief would be afraid of Sam!” She broke off with a sudden recollection. , „ “So it’s you owns us now, doctor, she said, “it’s a queer house this. It’» belonged to the one and the other, and now they say it's yours. But don't you give in to that one—-she wheedle you all she can; she s a greedy one, not like Missie. And whatever they say about her, she has a guilty mind." Did she mean anything, that old woman? He looked at her sharply, hut she had her face turned from him, pouring boiling water into the teapot. “Don’t you take your tea with her, she grumbled. “She’d poison you with it as sure as not, and say it was me. That’s her sort. She has that Price woman sleeping in her room to keep off the spirits. Aye, she got what she asked for when she asked me for ghosts —sighs and moans and steps on the lauding.” “Did vou tell her about the step I heard on the night of the murder?” said Richardson. He didn’t know why he said that. i'You heard?” said Mrs. Beamish. Her fat, red face was chalky as she turned round. ”W hat sort of a step. she said in a hushed voice. He nearly laughed. Was she bitten by the ghost idea she had herself called up to punish the person she in her crabbed way considered an interIO “No ghost. I’m afraid. If there was anything it would be the murderer, Mrs. Beamish.” She saw the amusement in his eyes and her own twinkled. “I’m a poor old fool, doctor," she said. “What’s that?” . A shriek echoed through the house; and then the shrill screaming of a woman in hysterics. They could hear Mrs. Price running heavily downstairs from her post of retirement; as they hurried along the

passage toward the sitting-room they could see, in the gathering* dusk that made the house dark while it was not yet dark outside, that the house door was a little open. It had been closed before, but it was an old-fashioned door with no spring latch; when it was not locked and the bar not down it could be opened from without by turning the big brass handle. Had somebody come in? The languishing woman Richardson had left on the sofa was sitting up screaming, trying to keep off some vision with her hands. "But you’re dead —you’re dead!" she was crying between her shrieks. As the doctor came into the room she sprang off the sofa and hurled herself upon him, clutching at. him as if beside herself with relief at holding on to a living person “It’s'her ghost!” she panted. “Doctor, save me—don’t let her look at me so!" And Richardson, staring beyond the frantic heap in his arms, saw standing before him, clear in the last crimson gleam of the setting sun, the girl who had disappeared. CHAPTER XIII. She was just as he remembered her; just as he had seen her last when lie had left her in his house, and lost her. Only she was angry now; white with anger, and her eyes, blue and fierce, were burning. She looked almost like an avenging spirit in the strange twilight of the room. “Kate," she said, “Do you know me?” That terrible young voice pierced through the other woman’s screaming. She shuddered violently in the doctor’s hold. “Don’t touch me!" she panted. “Don’t let her touch me! Keep her off!" It was absurd that such a belief, such panic, should affect him also. He felt the woman shuddering as she hid her face in his coat, and he stared hard in the deepening dark. He was almost shaken. “Elizabeth," he said, calling her by the name he used when thinking of her—" Elizabeth, is it you?" "Ask her,” she said, in that thrilling, accusing voice. Every note of it seemed to strike the other woman •with fresh terror. "Yes," she said. "It’s little Elizabeth, it’s her ghost!" "And you are Kate Shaddock, who worked in Abraham’s store." “And I’m Kate Shaddock," repeated the woman in terrified obedience The little rigid, relentless figure softened. The furious tide of anger, that had upheld her in her impetuous journey back from wherever she had found refuge, ebbed as she began to

realise the terror she had inspired. For the first time she looked at the man who stood gazing at her, just within the door. (Behind him, Mrs. Beamish peeped, with her mouth open.) Her eyes met his above the panic-stricken woman. “You see,” she said, "I wasn’t a cheat. Can you—can you make her quiet?" The doctor tried. But the woman was too badly scared to heed him. She clung to him and went on babbling, deaf to whatever he might be saying to her. "She’s dead, 1 tell you. They took her to hospital witl/ the fever. It was I who put the sheets on her bed, but she needn’t have died of it. I didn’t mean her to die of it! I only wanted her out of the way because Mr. Abraham had seen her and I was jealous. He would do nothing but talk of her

and we called her the English Madam. Haughty little thing, I hated her all the time. - Look at her there, she’s followed me, followed me!" Tier voice rose to a shriek, and dropped again to a choking gabble. "Six of them had fever at the store," she said, "and three in my cousin’s house. It was raging all over the town. I said to myself FJI be rid of her —and I put the sheets on her bed." She lifted a blotched, panic-stricken face. The > girl had moved a little and there was emptiness where she had been standing first. “She’s gone,” she said, in a whisper. “Gone!" The doctor tried again to control her. He put his hands on her shoulders, griping her and shaking her slightly. “That will do," he said. "Pull your-

I self together. There’s nothing here but the living.” “Nothing?” she said, with a gasp. "You are sifre there’s nothing?” The girl looked at Richardson, and he nodded. “She is not dead,” he said, quietly, clearly. The woman was still shivering violently, in the doctor's grasp. But she was beginning to recover her senses. She looked up at him stupidly. Her tongue ran on. “But my cousin went to see her burned. I —l couldn' go. I was frightened. I thought I would get the fever. I stole forty dollars out of my cousin’s drawer when she went up to the funeral with the others—and I stole the leather bag she had left in her charge with her mother’s rings and the papers—and I took the train to Vancouver. And after a while I thought what a fool I was not to use the papers, and so—and so I came on here.” She paused, and began shuddering again. “I tell you,” she said, “my cousin went to see her buried. Why does she want to punish me? I’m not the only one. There was that cunning French one, Jeanne Laritte, she had got to know all about Elizabeth and her uncle. She came over, too, and she got here first. Jeanne is worse than I am—Jeanne is a real devil! I would never have murdered that poor old man.” There was a short silence in the darkening room, a silence broken only by the woman’s panting breath. And then the girl spoke in an unnaturallv 6teady voice. “They made a mistake at the hospital, Kate,” she said. “It "wasn’t I who was buried, it was Jeanne.” The woman lifted her head at that, stared a moment fixedly at the dimmed corner from which that voice came, and went off into a fit of hysterical. high-pitched laughter. Mrs. Beamish pushed into the room and seized her arm. “I’ll see to her now,” she said. “Put her down on that sofa, and leave her to me. Mrs. Price, you fetch me a jug of water.” Mrs. Price, speechless in the background, was amazed enough to comply. “I made the tea,” said Mrs. Beamish over her shoulder. “It’s out there. You and Missie better go In my kitchen, doctor, and make a cup for’yourselves. Wherever she sprung from she’s tired out.” Richardson blessed the old servant's sense. They went along to the kitchen, he and she, and both were shy He put her into the old woman’s straight-backed wooden chair with the red cotton cushion. Seriously, carefully, he took hold of the brown tea-

pot and poured her out a cup of tea. While she tried to drink it, he went out into the back kitchen and washed his hands and dried them on the roller towel; then walking into the pantry he found a loaf and a pound of butter and a plate and carefully cut her three pieces of bread and butter. She watched him with a quivering lip, and shook her head when he offered it. “I couldn’t eat,” she said. “You must,” he said. “To please me/’ and she tried. He turned the cat out of Sam’s seat on the other side of the hearth and sat down himself facing her. The fire flickered and sparkled between them, and the kettle sang. He kicked aside the flatiron that propped the* door open for Mrs. Beamish, and shut it—shut out the noise that was dying down at the other end of the passage. “You didn’t believe that of me?” she said suddenlj'. “I saw it in the papers, and I nearly went mad. I didn’t know who it was until I came.” Richardson smiled. “No,” he said. “I couldn’t. I believe nothing of you but what you tell me.” She gave a quick sigh. “I love this kitchen.” she said impetuously, and looked round at the shining copper pans over the chimneypiece and the bright china on the dresser. The cat had settled himself on the rug and purred. “I love this kitchen,” she repeated. “I would like to sit here for ever.” “Well,” he said, “w’e can; —we’re at home here. It is our kitchen, Elizabeth.” « His tone was significant. Colouring, she looked at him with parted lips. “The old man did manage to make a will,” he said. “It’s been found. I think he must have known what would happen to us. He wouldn’t say it. But he must have guessed that what was mine would be yours some day.” He spoke very softly, very tenderly. She understood some of it.

! “It was a will in your favour?” sue said. “Oh, I am glad, I am glad.” He stood up, and came over to her. She wasn’t so tired now. she. was rested, and he could speak, his time had come. “So am I,” he said. “I'm a sordid chap, am I not? Look up, Elizabeth, look at me; you’ll hurt your pretty eyes staring into the Are. I am glad of it, darling child, because there's nothing now —no silly -false pride to stop me when I ask you to marry me." She gave a little gasp. “Oh- —I didn’t know you would say that,” she said. “It's what I have been to say very nearly from the first minute I really saw you,” he said. “But I didn’t dare. I said to myself I'd got !to serve you somehow and be your j friend, and only in my heart your lover, until I had the chance to make you care for me as I did for you—until you loved me so much that there was | no risk of you saying to yourself—- ! what other people would certainly j say.” “What?” she said perplexed. Richardson laughed. There was no tear of it now. For two reasons, and one of them was the dear look in her dark blue eyes. “That I wanted your uncle’s money," I he said shortly. She laughed then with him, in utter j scorn. j “You,” she said. But she slipped ' out of his arms as he bent to clasp | her. “It was cowardly, wasn’t it?” he i said. “But I didn’t dare to risk you i doubting me for a minute—and then : you ran away from me, foolish child. I was a fool to make the money a bar between us. But it’s my money now, and there’s nothing ” She held him off piteously, the smile i dying out of her eyes. “Yes,” she said, “yes, there is something—l’d rather you didn’t kiss me.” (To be Continued)