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“About me making my first and last flight. Yes, not exactly a rest cure for any of us, was it? But it’s all over now. The Ralestones may be down but they’re not out, yet, in spite of Mosile Oil and those coal-mines. D’you know, we might use some of that nice gilt-edged stock for wall-paper. There’s enough to cover a closet at least. Here we are, Rupert from beating about the globe trying to be a newspaper man, you straight from N’York’s finest finishing-school, and me—well, out of the plainest hospital bed I ever saw. We’ve got this house and what Rupert managed to clear from the wreck. Something will turn up. In the meantime—”
“Yes?” she prompted.
“In the meantime,” he went on, leaning against the banister for a moment’s rest, “we can be looking for the Luck. As Rupert says, we need it badly enough. Here’s the upper hall. Which way now?”
“Over to the left wing. These in front are what Rupert refers to as ‘state bedrooms.’”
“Yes?” He opened the nearest door and whistled softly. “Not so bad. About the size of a small union station and provided with all the comforts of a tomb. Decidedly not what we want.”
“Wait, here’s a plaque set in the wall. Look!” She ran her finger over a glass-covered square.
“Regulations for guests, or a floor plan to show how to reach the dining-room in the quickest way,” her brother suggested.
“No.” She read aloud slowly:
“‘This Room Was Occupied by General Andrew Jackson, the Victor of the Battle of New Orleans, upon the Tenth Day after the Battle.’”
“Whew! ‘Old Hickory’ here! But I thought that the Ralestones were more or less under a cloud at that time,” commented Val.
“History—”
“In the making. Quite so. Now may I suggest that we find some slumber rooms slightly more modern? Rupert is apt to become annoyed at undue delay in such matters.”
They went down the hall and turned into a short cross corridor. From a round window at the far end a ray of sun still swept in, but it was a sickly, faded ray. The storm Rupert had spoken of could not be far off.
“This is the right way. Mr. Harrison had these little numbers put on the doors for his guests,” Ricky pointed out. “I’ll take ‘three’; that was marked on the plan he sent us as a lady’s room. You take that one across the hall and let Rupert have the one next to you.”
The rooms they explored were not as imposing as the one which had sheltered Andrew Jackson for a night. Furnished with chintz-covered chairs, solid mahogany bedsteads and highboys, they were pleasant enough even if they weren’t chambers to make an antique dealer “Oh!” and “Ah!” Val discovered with approval some stiff prints of mathematically correct clippers hung in exact patterns on his walls, while Ricky’s room held one treasure, a dainty dressing-table.
A small door near the end of the hall gave upon a linen closet. And Ricky, throwing her short white jacket and hat upon the chair in her room, set about making beds, having given Val strict orders to return to the lower hall and sort out the luggage before bringing it up.
As he reached the wide landing he stopped a moment. Since that winter night, almost a year in the past, when a passenger plane had decided—in spite of its pilot—to make a landing on a mountainside, he had learned to hobble where he had once run. The accident having made his right leg a rather accurate barometer, that crooked bone was announcing the arrival of the coming storm with a sharp pain or two which shot unexpectedly from knee to ankle. One such caught him as he was about to take a step and threw him suddenly off balance.
He clutched at a dim tapestry which hung across the wall and tumbled through a slit in the fabric—which smelled of dust and moth balls—into a tiny alcove flanking a broad, well-cushioned window-seat under tall windows. Below him in a riot of bushes and hedges run wild, lay the garden. Somewhere beyond must lie Bayou Mercier leading directly to Lake Borgne and so to the sea, the thoroughfare used by their pirate ancestors when they brought home their spoil.
The green of the rank growth below, thought Val, seemed intensified by the strange yellowish light. A moss-grown path led straight into the heart of a jungle where sweet olive, banana trees, and palms grew in a matted mass. Harrison might have done wonders for the house but he had allowed the garden to lapse into a wilderness.
“Val!”
“Coming!” he shouted and pushed back through the curtain. He could hear Rupert moving about the lower hall.
“Just made it in time,” he said as the younger Ralestone limped down to join him. “Hear that?”
A steady pattering outside was growing into a wild dash of wind-driven rain. It was dark and Rupert himself was but a blur moving across the hall.
“Do you still have the flash? Might as well descend into the lower regions and put on the lights.”
They crossed the Long Hall, passing through another large chamber where furniture huddled under dust covers, and then into a small cupboard-lined passage. This gave upon a dark cavern where Val’s hand scraped a table top only too painfully as he went. Then Rupert found the door leading to the cellar, and they went down and down into inky blackness upon which their thread of torch-light made little impression.
The damp, unpleasant scent of mold and wet grew stronger as they descended, and their fingers brushed slime-touched walls.
“Phew! Not very comfy down here,” Val protested as Rupert threw the torch beam along the nearest wall. With a grunt of relief he stepped forward to pull open the door of a small black box. “That does it,” he said as he threw the switch. “Now for the topside again and some supper.”
They negotiated the steps and found the button which controlled the kitchen lights. The glare showed them a room on the mammoth scale suggested by the Long Hall. A giant fireplace still equipped with three-legged pots, toasting irons, and spits was at one side, its brick oven beside it. But a very modern range and sink faced it.
In the center of the room was a large table, while along the far wall were closed cupboards. Save for its size and the novelty of the fireplace, it was an ordinary kitchen, complete to red-checked curtains at the windows. Pleasant and homey, Val thought rather wistfully. But that was before the coming of that night when Ricky walked in the garden and he heard something stir in the Long Hall—which should have been empty—
“Val! Rupert!” A cry which started valiantly became a wail as it echoed through empty rooms. “Where are yo-o-ou!”
“Here, in the kitchen,” Val shouted back.
A moment later Ricky stood in the doorway, her face flushed and her usually correct curls all on end.
“Mean, selfish, utterly selfish pigs!” she burst out. “Leaving me all alone in the dark! And it’s so dark!”
“We just went down to turn on the lights,” Val began.
“So I see.” With a sniff she looked about her. “It took two of you to do that. But it only required one of me to make three beds. Well, this is a warning to me. Next time—” she did not finish her threat. “I suppose you want some supper?”
Rupert was already at the cupboards. “That,” he agreed, “is the general idea.”
“Beans or—” Ricky’s hand closed upon Val’s arm with a nipper-like grip. “What,” her voice was a thin thread of sound, “was that?”
Above the steady beat of the rain they heard a noise which was half scratch, half thud. Under Rupert’s hand the latch of the cupboard clicked.
“Back door,” he said laconically.
“Well, why don’t you open it?” Ricky’s fingers bit tighter so that Val longed to twist out of her grip.
The key grated in the lock and then Rupert shot back the