Within That Room!. John Russell Fearn
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me?” Vera asked incredulously. “All because of some trifling act I performed which was considered brave enough to merit mention in the newspapers! Good heavens! I always knew the old chap was a bit eccentric and now I’m sure of it. Incidentally, what is the £100 for?”
“I have not the least idea, Miss Grantham—unless it is intended as incidental expenses. The moment your uncle died and his will had been proved, it became our duty, of course, to trace you. We managed it through the ministry of labor, who had a record of you seeking employment as a commercial artist. I reached your rooming house this morning and was turned away. I felt somehow that things were not quite as they should be, so I decided to wait.”
“And I’m thankful that you did,” Vera declared. “To think that I might have turned my back on Sunny Acres and £100 if you hadn’t been so persistent! I’m sorry if I seemed rude.”
“Considering the circumstances I can quite understand your attitude,” Thwaite said gallantly. Then for a while they continued their lunches as they thought things out. It was Thwaite who finally broke the silence.
“I feel that I should mention one condition,” he said, and Vera gave him a sharp look.
“Condition? So there are strings to it after all.”
“Hardly that, Miss Grantham: it is just a matter of a legend. I have mentioned that Sunny Acres was once a feudal castle. Well, it is considered to be haunted, so much so that no resident of Waylock Dean will go near the place. Your uncle, I believe, had quite a distressing experience with the phantom about a year ago, and the servants swear that haunting does take place.”
“Old-fashioned bogey stories don’t frighten me,” Vera replied. “Thanks for telling me, though.”
“Am I to understand, then, that you will take Sunny Acres and the hundred pounds?”
“I most certainly will! I had decided this morning to try my luck at getting a job in London—but now I have really got something to travel to! What do I have to do?”
Thwaite opened his briefcase with meticulous care and drew forth a number of legal papers.
“I have everything here, Miss Grantham, to make the business legal. All you have to do is sign. Later on the deed will be forwarded to you....”
“I see. And—er—don’t think I’m grasping, Mr. Thwaite, but what about that hundred pounds? I’m extremely short of cash at the moment.”
Thwaite smiled, drew forth a sealed envelope, handed it over. Vera opened it and peered inside at fifty one-pound notes and five ten-pound ones. Then she took her right arm between her left finger and thumb and pinched hard.
“Mmm—must be true! I’m still here!”
“If you will sign here....” Thwaite traced a finger along the bottom of one of the papers and then proffered his fountain pen.
Vera signed, and the scant scattering of diners looked on in polite interest.
She signed the documents that Thwaite replaced in his case. Then he sat back with the air of a man who has done a ticklish job well.
“And you think you will reside at Sunny Acres, Miss Grantham?” he asked.
Vera ate in silence for a while.
“Offhand, I can’t say. I don’t really see what use an old feudal castle and a couple of servants will be to me. I’m only twenty-four, unattached, and anxious to make my mark in the artistic world. I’ll probably sell the place after spending a few days in it as a sort of holiday. I’d sooner have £15,000 than a pile of old bricks and a ghost. Anyway, I’ll see.”
“Until you make up your mind I will address the mail to Sunny Acres,” Thwaite decided. “Mr. and Mrs. Falworth will be informed by telegram of your coming. I’ll send it from Crewe.”
“By telegram? Don’t tell me the moated castle hasn’t even got a telephone?”
“I’m afraid it hasn’t. Your uncle had a decided dislike for modern amenities.”
“I think,” Vera decided, “that my uncle was a queer old duck whichever way you look at it!”
CHAPTER THREE
PORTENT OF EVIL
Still feeling very much as though she had walked out of fairyland, and certainly feeling very travel stained and weary, Vera found herself alighting at the wayside station of Waylock Dean about eight o’clock in the evening. Fortunately the weather was still good. It was warm and windless with a soft June sky from which the daylight was commencing to fade.
Lugging her traveling case, Vera asked the stationmaster, “Any chance of a conveyance of some sort?”
“’Fraid not, miss. Joe knocks off at seven.”
“You don’t mean to tell me there’s only one conveyance?”
“Just the ’ack, miss, that’s all. This ain’t a big place.”
“You’re telling me. But surely there’s something? I’m tired. I’ve come all the way from Manchester today.”
The man considered. “It depends, sort of, on ’ow far you be wantin’ to go.”
“To Sunny Acres, wherever that is.”
The man stared at her fixedly. “Sunny Acres? You’re goin’ there? You won’t get nobody to take you, miss. An’ I’m sorry for you.”
“Well, that’s nice of you—and confoundedly helpful too, when my feet are too tired to carry me.”
“Nobody’ll go within a mile of Sunny Acres, miss. It’s got a ghost, it ’as!”
“Oh, nuts!” Vera said crossly, blowing a stray hair out of her eye. “I’d pay treble price to be taken there.”
“Sorry. But what a trim young woman like you wants in that hawful place I can’t think.”
Shaking his head over mournful thoughts, he turned away. Vera looked after him angrily, and then went outside and along a flower-bordered path to the main street. It ran through the center of a disordered array of small houses and cottages mixed up with shops and a post-office. A small steeple marked the church; a white globe inscribed “Saddler’s Arms” proclaimed the pub; and beyond there was nothing but a backdrop of meadows already melting into the soft mists of evening.
Vera sniffed, and put down her bag while she weighed things up. Presently the stationmaster approached her.
“Thinkin’ better of it?” he asked affably. “There be a train back to London at 9:30. You’d best take it.”
“I’m going to Sunny Acres if it kills me!” Vera retorted. “Where is the confounded place, anyway? At least tell me that!”
“There!” He pointed and she found herself looking beyond the village to a ring of trees perhaps two miles away. The mists made the view uncertain.
“I don’t see any house,” she said.
“The ’ouse be behind them trees, miss. But it ain’t an ’ouse; it be a castle, an’ it’s ’idden away from the decent light o’ day.”
Vera picked up her bag and began to walk along Waylock Dean’s main street. Just at this moment her thoughts toward the departed Uncle Cyrus were not of the sweetest. She had been tramping with increasing weariness for ten minutes and had left the village behind when the honking of an ancient motor horn made her glance round. A small car was close behind her.
She moved to one side of the road, but to her surprise the car stopped a little way in front of her. When she caught up with it a sunburned young man in shirt sleeves, his riotous dark hair tumbling round his forehead, was looking out through the driving seat window.
“Want a lift?” he asked.
Vera measured him coldly,