Page:Weird Tales v41n04 (1949-05).djvu/65

Rh Why, the poor kid! Lying there alone all day with no one to talk to, and crying all night with hunger. Lucy’s gorge rose against the hard efficiency of Mrs. Renner. How could a mother bear hearing that pitiful pleading? As if some relentless intuition pushed her into explanation, Mrs. Renner’s voice came huskily.

"Listen at her! Oh, my little Kathy! I just can’t bear it. I can’t get at them tonight but tomorrow I’m going to take out that honeysuckle!”

Lucy’s gray eyes roved across the room to rest with puzzlement upon a tail vase of yellow-blossomed honeysuckle dimly seen in the half light on one shelf of the old bureau between the two south windows. She had thought it pleasant that her landlady brought them in fresh daily, for their high perfume was sweet and they seemed part of the country life to which she had given herself for a two-week vacation from her new and responsible buyer’s position in the linen department of Munger Brothers in Philadelphia.

"Don’t do it, missus. You’ll just be sorry if' you do. Don’t do it!” Sharp protest in old Aaron’s querulous voice. "You know what happened with that other gal. You can’t keep that up, missus. If this one goes, it won’t be like the first one and then you’ll have double trouble, missus, mark my words. Don’t do it! Accidents are one thing; on purpose is another. Let me get a sharp stake, missus—?”

"Hush! Get back to bed, Aaron. Leave this to me. After all, I’m Kathy’s mother. You’re not going to stop me. I’m not going to let her go hungry. Get back to bed, I tell you.”

"Well, her door's locked and there’s honeysuckle inside. You can’t do anything tonight,” grudgingly acceded Aaron.

Footsteps receded, softly down the corridor. The old Pennsylvania Dutch farmhouse out in the Haycock sank into silence, save only for that plaintive moaning from the child’s room.

"Mom! I’m hungry! Mom!”

UCY lay long awake. She could not compose herself to sleep while that unhappy whimper continued. Against its eerie background her thoughts went to the reason for her stay at Mrs. Renner’s out-of-the-way farmhouse in Bucks County. It had begun with the non-appearance of Cora Kent, Lucy’s immediate superior in Munger Brothers’s linen department. Cora had not returned to work at the expiration of her vacation period and inquiries only emphasized the fact of her disappearance. She had left for the country in her coupe, taking a small table loom and boxes of colored thread.

Lucy had liked Miss Kent as a business associate and felt reluctant at taking over her job. Somebody had had to assume the responsibility and Lucy stood next in line. Her vacation had come three weeks after Miss Kent^s and she had insisted upon taking it as a partial preparation for taking over the job. In her heart she determined to scout about the country side to find if she could find some clue to Cora Kent’s mysterious disappearance. She felt that Cora would not have gone far afield and so she took up her headquarters in Doylestown, county seat of Bucks, while she carried on her self-imposed detective work.

In the Haycock region outside Quakertown, where many isolated farms were located, she came upon a clue. She had learned at the Doylestown Museum the names of weavers and inquiries had taken her to Mrs. Renner’s farm. On the third day of her vacation Lucy had come to an agreement with Mrs. Renner for a week’s board and weaving lessons. In the upstairs front room that was to be hers, Lucy exclaimed with enthusiasm over the coverlet on the old spool bed, at the runners on the wash-stand and the antique bureau with its tall shelves and drawers, on either side of the high mirror. A stuffed chair upholstered in material that Mrs. Renner said was woven by herself caught Lucy’s attention and the antimacassar pinned on the back caught her eye particularly. Mrs. Renner said with a certain uneasiness that she hadn’t woven it herself and her eyes evaded Lucy’s shiftily. Lucy offered to buy it and Mrs. Renner at once unpinned it.

She said shortly: "Take it. I never did like it. Glad to be shut of it.”

When Lucy went back to Doylestown to pick up her belongings, she wrote a brief note to Stan’s mother and enclosed the