Tranquillity House/Chapter 8

CAME as near having a case of nerves that evening before getting back to Connie, as I shall ever hope to come. Somehow the thing we were planning to do had got me all unstrung and I was ready to jump at nothing at all. Even Mother noticed it, for I caught my breath and started when Ralph dropped his spoon on the floor at supper, and couldn’t suppress a little shriek of protest when Daddy rattled his paper suddenly and violently.

“You’re completely used up, Elspeth,” she declared. “All this has been to much for you. Perhaps you had better stay here to-night, if you can manage Baby, and I’ll go over and stay with Connie.” But I protested so violently against this (for reasons she couldn’t guess, of course!) that she finally consented to let me go. But she fussed about me so, upstairs, where she had followed me, that actually I didn’t even have a chance to get the thing I wanted from my bottom bureau drawer. I had to let it go and get all the way downstairs and then pretend I’d forgotten something and rush up after it, before I could get a moment to myself.

But at last I had the letter safe, hidden in my blouse, and was streaking down the road toward Tranquillity. I felt like all kinds of a criminal, but had to admit that there didn’t seem to be any other way out of the difficulty as far as we could see. It was a bright moonlight night and, with the light fall of snow, everything was almost as clearly to be seen as in the daytime. As I looked over toward the house, standing up on its slight eminence among the dark cedar-trees, somehow it had never appeared more utterly lovely and calm and serene; yet I knew that in reality it had never been less so. It didn’t seem as if “Tranquillity” would ever become its rightful name again! And if I had realized what an ordeal was in store for me when I entered, I should probably have run home again—and stayed there.

As soon as I got in, Connie whispered to me excitedly that Mr. Cookson had come back and had asked Miss Carstair if he could see me for a few moments when I returned after Supper.

“Look out, Elspeth!” she warned. “He’s got something up his sleeve; he wants to see if he can get some information from you. Don’t you let him know a thing—not a thing—even if you have to keep as dumb as an oyster! Do you hear?”

Naturally this wasn’t a very good preparation for facing what I knew was sure to be an ordeal, but I had no time to consider the matter, for Miss Carstair came in just then and asked me if I would go down to the library, where Mr. Cookson wished to speak to me a moment. I went without more ado, my knees shaking with foolish fright, but with an absolute determination in my heart to keep our secret at all cost. As I was soon to discover, we were only too correct in our guess.

Mr. Cookson was pacing the library in what I could see was a very ferment of nervous excitement. His eyelids twitched continually and he rumpled up his stiff gray hair with one hand till his head looked as if he’d been having a shampoo. If things hadn’t been so serious, I could almost have giggled at his appearance. He hardly knew how to begin, for he hemmed and hawed a moment before opening the attack. Then, tapping the table with his forefinger, he charged into the matter:

“Ahem! I just want—ah—just want to er—ask you a question or two—ah—about the day your sister—er—had her accident,” he stammered. “A very important—er—matter hinges on it!” He stopped short and stared at me after this, as if expecting me to say something. And in my own mind I thought, “Aha! so this is the line you’re going to take!” But aloud I said not a word, only returning his gaze gravely and silently. If he could have known how my knees were quaking under me, he would have been braver himself; but fortunately he didn't!

“Do you happen to—ah—know whether, when your sister fell, she did—er—er—any damage to the woodwork under the window seat? That is—ah—made a hole in it, for instance?”

I had expected this, as soon as I saw how he opened the attack, and saw no harm now in answering that I believed she had made something of a hole but that Tomkins had fixed it nicely. He replied hastily:

“Ah—yes, yes! No doubt. But did you—er—do you happen to know whether any one—er—looked into that hole before it was fixed? Whether anything was found in that hole?”

“Why, what a strange question, Mr. Cookson!” I parried. “What on earth could there be in that hole! Or who would think of looking into such a place!” I couldn’t have made a more fortunate reply, for he straightway began to flounder.

“Oh, er—ah—yes, of course!” he stuttered confusedly. “It must—er—seem extremely queer. Nevertheless—er—a very important—ah—yes, a vital matter hangs on this very curious—er—question I’m asking.”

“Vital—to whom?” I couldn’t help querying. Now that I had plunged into the thing, I rather enjoyed seeing his discomfort, and I was gaining courage every minute.

“Why, to—ah—to Mr. Benham, of course!” he retorted, and I mentally added, “No doubt—and to you also!” But he went on: “I thought possibly, as—er—you were there at the time, you might have known whether anything—er—was discovered in—in the hole so made. If so, I’d be glad to know it.”

Here was just the inquiry I was most dreading, but somehow, when it came at last, something gave me the courage and ingenuity to make the following reply:

“Well, I’m sorry, Mr. Cookson, that I can’t give you any information on the subject. You see, I was so busy with Connie just then that I couldn’t be expected to know anything about that hole she made—or what was in it. I had so many other things to think about and attend to. I'm afraid you’ll have to ask Tomkins when he comes back. He’ll know more about it, perhaps.”

When I told Connie afterward about my last answer, it just tickled her to pieces. She insisted that she couldn’t have done any better herself (which at first I resented a good deal; but, after all, Connie is quicker at a clever reply than I ever was or shall be!) and said that without telling the slightest bit of a falsehood I had thrown him completely off the track. I imagine it did just that, for regarding me with a rather baffled expression, and thanking me not very graciously, Mr. Cookson began to shuffle some papers on the library table, and I gathered that the interview was over. No one will ever realize with what relief I hurried out of the room and back to Connie. And we spent a good deal of time thereafter speculating as to what he might have been doing after he left the house with the chest, and how thoroughly angry he must have been when, after all his trouble, he found it empty. No doubt his session with me was a final desperate effort to learn what had become of its contents. And it hadn’t been successful!

At last Miss Carstair, after an interminable number of false starts, left us alone for the night, and, with only the bedside reading light going, we settled down to the task of reading the letter.

“You read it, Connie,” I said, “for somehow I just can’t. I hope we’re doing right, and that Uncle will think so, if he ever knows of it, but I’m just silly enough not to want to be the one to do it!”

But Connie had no such qualms, now that she was sure we were right, and she opened the letter and spread it out.

“It’s rather long,” she announced, glancing over it, “and I’m not sure it contains any information that will help us, but here goes!” And she plunged into the reading. I have it by me now and will copy it as it stands:

At this point, Connie stopped short and looked up at me. “That’s all!” she finished quietly. “The rest is missing!”

“It can’t be!” I cried. “I brought every part that belonged to it. The letter was in an envelop, wasn’t it? Then how can any part of it be missing?”

“Well, it is!” she declared. “Perhaps you didn’t put it all together that afternoon when you picked it up from the floor at Uncle's feet.”

“But I did! I did!” I continued to insist. “I remember distinctly that all the other things were documents in their own envelops and this was the only thing lying open or scattered around. It was on two big sheets of thin paper, just as you have it, and that’s all there was of it!”

“Then some one else has lost or destroyed the rest of it,” declared Connie. “But oh, Elspeth, Elspeth, what have we stumbled upon? There’s some awful mystery here!”

“There certainly is!” I agreed in an awed voice. “Did you ever hear of anything so queer, Connie? But it explains one thing, at least—how he came to disappear so completely and why he was never heard from again. But it doesn’t explain why Uncle stopped searching for him so suddenly, after a day or two.”

“Why, yes it does!” asserted Connie, scrambling to a sitting position in bed and thereby giving her ankle a fine twinge. “You’re pretty stupid if you can’t see that! Uncle must have discovered about that time the loss of the chest and naturally thought his brother had taken it with him—dishonestly, of course. And then he was no doubt so shocked and disappointed and disgusted, and at the same time probably so concerned lest it be found out and his brother dishonored, that he simply shut right down on the whole matter and decided never to mention it or have it mentioned again. Isn’t that simple?”

“Yes, since you explain it so, it certainly is. But Connie, there are about forty mysteries that we can’t explain. How about the finding of the chest through your accident, and this secret passage he talks about, and where does old Cookson come into it all, and—”

“There’s one thing,” interrupted Connie, “that’s worrying me more than all these things. It’s this: did Uncle know of this letter before the other day? And what became of those poor little children if he didn’t?”