Rim of the pit, p.2
Rim of the Pit, page 2
“Make out what he said?”
“There was a little echo, and I missed all but a few words. The only thing I could be positive of was . . . my own name.”
“Sure you remembered your father’s voice after all these years?”
Sherry bit her lip. “You don’t forget things like that. Besides, who else could it have been? There’s no one within miles of the lake this time of year. Jeff and Rogan hadn’t come. Mr. Vok was with me. You wouldn’t do a thing like that, and the other three men were all together hunting.”
She broke off and resumed her pacing. Rogan watched her for a long minute.
“There’s more yet,” he declared. “You’d better let us have it all.”
Sherry spun on her heel and flung back her head.
“All right, and it’s this that’s driving me frantic. The voice was loud enough even if it did sound far away, and I know Mr. Vok has good ears. But he didn’t hear it!”
II
She Shall Have Music . . .
Pierre!
La mort te ven querre;
Le grapaut
Te fa le traue;
Les courbasses
Te sounoun lous classes;
L’escourpioun
Te reboun.
—Chant populaire
“FRANK OGDEN shouldn’t have let you come up here.” Latham’s kindly face was troubled. “I wouldn’t have had you worried for anything.”
Sherry stared at him. “Luke! You mean you expected this?”
“Not exactly. Not surprised, either.”
“That’s it, then.” Her eyes widened in comprehension. “That’s why you came. That’s why Irene’s holding this séance. You’re trying to bring Father back!”
“We aren’t doing it for fun,” Latham protested glumly. “This was the place for it—his country. He was a sort of king in these woods. That’s why we brought him here to be buried”—he gestured with both hands—“right in the middle of his timber.”
“It’s the anniversary of his death, too.”
“Reason we picked this time to come.”
“But why are you doing this, Luke? Why is Irene doing it? She’s been married to Frank over twelve years now. I don’t think he cares much about her, but she’s all wrapped up in him. Besides, why in the name of all that’s reasonable is Frank so keen on it?”
“You ought to have been told before,” Latham admitted. “You know the business arrangements between the Ogdens and my firm, don’t you?”
“Vaguely.” Sherry moved back to the sofa. “Frank’s always looked after such things and I’ve never paid much attention. You buy most of the logs that come from our timber holdings. Your mill is really a special wood-processing plant. Frank owns a patent on the process, and you pay him a royalty. Isn’t that right?”
“Close enough—or was until recently. Now we’re in a queer kind of a jam. Part of it’s complicated as a government questionnaire. It’s all mixed up with the location of our mill, water rights, power plants—that sort of thing.” Latham hunched back on the sofa. “What it amounts to is this. All our logs come from your forests. We’re the only people who can handle your pulpwood at a profit. The combination of your kind of timber and our mill setup is what makes Frank Ogden’s patent valuable.”
“You mean each of us depends on the others. So that if one of us wouldn’t play ball, the rest would be in the soup.”
“Except that you and your stepmother own a lot of hardwood on the other side of the state. The pulp business doesn’t mean as much to you as it does to Frank and me. We’d always figured on there being enough pulp-timber to last another twenty-five or thirty years. Two, three months ago we found we were almost finished logging Swamp River. That meant we’d have to go into Onawa. Your father left Onawa to your stepmother, so we weren’t expecting trouble. We got it, though—plenty. Irene told us Grimaud willed her that property for a special reason. Said he didn’t want it logged for twenty years. Made her promise not to let it be cut sooner.”
“Sort of left you out on a limb, didn’t it? But wasn’t that a strange thing for Father to ask?”
“No. Sound sense then. All second-growth. Needed time to develop. Ogden’s patent changed that. Small logs are worth as much per board foot as big ones. Your father’s reasoning doesn’t hold any more.”
“I don’t blame Irene for not daring to break a promise she made Father,” said Sherry. “I wouldn’t have risked it myself, even if he is dead. What are you trying to do now—get in touch with Father in the other world and ask him to let you log the timber?”
“It’s a funny way of doing business,” Latham confessed. “But we were in a funny fix. Had to find some way out. Frank thought of using Irene’s powers as a medium. We tried in town. No luck. Then I suggested coming up here. Your hearing your father’s voice makes me think I had a good idea.”
“Maybe. Anyhow, it convinces me that Irene had a right to be scared to death.”
In the past, Rogan had found the aberrations of his spiritualist friends mildly amusing. This was different. Calling back the dead to clear up a commonplace business arrangement was like trading in a second-hand magic carpet on the price of a new Ford. Nevertheless, if the spiritualistic premise were granted, the idea was as logical as a demonstration in geometry. The thought was unwelcome. In Mr. Kincaid’s experience, logic applied to fantasy meant danger for someone.
“I don’t know that what you’ve told me is any more comforting than the idea I came with,” Sherry said. “But at least it isn’t bottled up inside me.” She took a compact from her pocket and started to powder her nose. “Good heavens, my hair’s like the inside of a mattress. Why didn’t one of you tell me?”
Rogan grinned. “I like ’em tousled.”
“Quiet, you.” Sherry stuck out her tongue at him. “Can I borrow a comb, Luke?”
Latham patted his bald head. “What would I do with a comb?”
“I have one,” Rogan offered. “Shall I get it, or would you rather use it before a mirror?”
“The mirror, please. I can only see one eye in this thing.”
“Second door on the right. The comb’s on the bureau.”
When she had disappeared at the head of the stairs, he turned to Latham.
“That was quite a testimonial to the father.”
The older man nodded somberly. “Grimaud Désanat was a queer fish. French. Son of a shoemaker. Emigrated to Canada when he was eighteen. Picked up an education from his parish priest. Drifted across the border. Like Sherry said, he was a natural woodsman. Couldn’t have learned that in France. It wasn’t only finding his way. I’ve seen him take a million feet out of country no other logger would touch. Sherry’s mother was Irish—Ellen O’Hara. When Grimaud married her, she looked just like Sherry does today.”
Latham stared into the fire and his round eyes grew reminiscent.
“Ellen was the sort of woman you only meet once in a lifetime, and Grimaud knew it. Built Cabrioun for her—place we’re having the séance tonight. Sherry was born there, first winter they were married. Ellen only had an Irish woman and a couple of habitant servants to look after her. It had started to snow. Grimaud left in plenty of time to fetch the doctor from Lynxhead. That’s six miles. People around here still talk of that storm. Took Grimaud and old Doc Nesbit four days to get back. When they did, Ellen was dead.”
He put a fresh log on the fire.
“Can’t blame a man if a thing like that turns his brain. Peyton Ambler says people who live in the farm districts in France, and never see a decent-sized town more than once a year, develop a queer streak. It came out in Grimaud, queer—and cruel. Some ways he was sharper than ever. Started to make money by the bankful. But he hated Sherry because she’d killed her mother. Six months after she was born, he married again. Couldn’t believe it at first, but when I saw Irene I knew why. She’s starting to fall to pieces now, but in those days she was the image of Ellen. Only difference was she had brown eyes. Ellen’s were gray. Character was different, too. I don’t think Grimaud even noticed that. Irene wasn’t Ellen. That was enough for him. Almost from the start he held it against her. He began drinking, too—raw brandy. I never told Sherry, but I think that’s why he couldn’t find his way back to camp the time he got killed.”
Rogan grimaced. “You haven’t picked a very pretty ghost to raise.”
“I said it was Hell. No other way out. Million and a half tied up in my business. Won’t be worth a counterfeit dime. Irene doesn’t dare disobey Grimaud. Can’t say I blame her.”
“What are you going to do if your séance scheme doesn’t work?”
“Go bust. Jeff and Frank Ogden were in Quebec trying to get logs from the other side of the border at a price we can afford.”
“Doesn’t Ogden have faith in the séance plan?”
“More than I have. He doesn’t know Grimaud. Matter of fact, Frank felt the Quebec trip was a waste of time. That’s why he quit and came back yesterday. Jeff kept plugging till last night. No go.”
Rogan eyed his host shrewdly. “I don’t suppose you’ve thought of fixing things yourself so you’ll get the right answers?”
“Fake Grimaud’s ghost, you mean?” Latham’s voice rose in surprise. “Hell’s clinkers, man! I’d be afraid to. He wasn’t the sort to fool with while he was alive. Only an idiot would risk it now he’s dead!”
Sherry came down the stairs. Whatever she might be feeling, her outward poise had returned. She stood before the fire and stretched, fully aware of how the gesture displayed firm, round breasts under the yellow sweater. Then the gray eyes clouded again. She turned to Kincaid.
“Do you mind going home with me? It’s only a three-minute walk, but I don’t think I’m quite up to facing the woods alone now that it’s growing dark.”
Latham rummaged in the closet and returned with a pair of ski boots, which he tossed to Rogan.
“These are Jeff’s. Better wear ’em. Shoes’ll get full of snow. Take Thor along. He needs a run. Maybe he can help you drag Jeff away from this prospective niece of mine. It’ll take some doing. I’ve seen her. Tell Jeff he’s got to come back here to the lodge and help cook dinner.” Latham turned to Sherry. “Thought we could pick up a guide in Lynxhead, or a cook. No luck. All gone with hunting parties.”
He bade them good-by and they set out, with Thor stalking majestically ahead. The long New England twilight had set in, and Gothic elms cast lean shadows over the snow. Sherry slipped her hand through Rogan’s arm and drew her body close to him.
A man of cities, Kincaid found this winter-struck wilderness disquieting. The gray light, the naked trees—black against the snow-shrouded earth—the wind whispering in the dry branches, were all alien. Even the small wild things seemed unfriendly.
His uneasiness had begun that morning when Jeff turned off the main highway some twenty miles the other side of Lynxhead, and had increased with every slap of the chains against the mudguards. The woods suggested menace—menace that was no less disturbing because he knew it to be unreal. That he could find no basis for his misgivings only made matters worse.
Danger was the breath of life to Kincaid, but he liked odds that could be calculated. Here he was out of his element. Experience had taught him a healthy respect for his instincts, but he knew they were only mental short cuts, treacherous unless they could be tested by reason. In his normal surroundings he made such a test automatically. Always he found what he sought—the shadow, the trick of voice, the flicker of movement that had set his nerves on guard. Here in this gray-lit landscape he found nothing. He knew only that his whole being was braced against an attack that might come at any moment and from any side.
Suddenly the black dog stiffened. Sherry’s grasp on Rogan’s arm tightened. Then she relaxed with a little laugh.
“I should know better than to jump. Thor probably smells rabbits.”
“More likely it’s bears. A hound that size couldn’t even work up an appetite over a rabbit.” The incident annoyed Kincaid. I’m like the dog, he thought—sniffing something I can’t see.
No hint of his mood was allowed to reach the girl. She saw nothing in the snow but its beauty. As they walked, the wind brought the color back to her cheeks. The pressure of her body against Rogan’s no longer indicated a need for support, but became a token of intimacy.
She had, she told herself, no illusions about this man. A friend had pointed him out in a Palm Beach hotel the previous winter.
“He’s not exactly a beauty, my dear, but so interesting-looking, don’t you think? I met him five years ago in Egypt. Out there they tell the most frightful tales about him. Apparently he just travels around the world and makes his money by gambling. A Captain Everitt I knew in Cairo said he’d seen Mr. Kincaid kill a man in a brawl in Shanghai, or some such place. Apparently this Kincaid just bent the other man backward over the bar until his spine snapped. The captain said the dead man was a Japanese army officer and a famous jujitsu expert. But of course I don’t believe that.”
Sherry believed it. The next night she had witnessed a demonstration of a very different facet of Rogan’s prowess, when she had visited a swank gambling house outside the city. She had noticed Kincaid as he entered and stood for a few seconds in the doorway. Then he had strolled to a poker table and pulled out a chair. One of the men already seated had jumped to his feet, proclaiming loudly that he had no intention of playing with a crooked cardsharp. Remembering Captain Everitt’s story, Sherry had expected mayhem at the least. Instead Rogan had merely nodded and said:
“If you’re quitting, you’d better leave the cards you’ve been holding out. I like to play with a full deck.”
With that he had extended his hand and twitched two aces from under the other’s vest.
Sherry never knew whether the man had really held out the cards, or whether she had witnessed some bit of legerdemain on Rogan’s part, but she felt he would always be like that—invulnerable, ready with the one perfect counterstroke for any attack that might come.
She knew there could be no constant companionship with such a man. Yet his physical nearness was an exhilarating experience. The week in Florida . . . the promise of the next few days up here. . . . Sherry had once seen a giant engine in a steel mill and had held her hand so that the great connecting rod, at the extreme end of its outward lunge, had tapped her fingers as lightly as a kitten. The nearness of that tremendous and perfectly controlled power which, had she moved an inch nearer, would have flung her across the room without noticing it, had held something of the same thrill—the same feeling of excitement.
It was working in her now. The fear that had filled her since morning was draining away. When they branched from the wagon track onto a footpath, a sudden glimpse of the lake brought a surge of remembered terror. But the moment passed, and by the time they rounded a huge pine and came within sight of her house she was almost gay.
“That’s Cabrioun.”
Like the lodge, it was a two-storied structure built of logs chinked with graying mortar. However, where Latham’s house was low and rambling, Cabrioun was compact and vertical. Its eaves hung within ten feet of the ground, and its steep roof climbed past shallow dormers to loftly ridgepoles set in the form of a “T”. The hint of medieval France given by its lines was obscured by a boxlike structure—obviously the kitchen wing—that had been built on the end from which Rogan and Sherry approached.
The house stood in a clearing swept bare even of the smallest bushes, as if the guide, Madore, had felt it his duty to protect it from the encroachment of the forest. The wind, racing over this empty space, drove the dry snow before it in thin sheets like gauzy skeins of blown cobweb. This drifting had filled any earlier footprints, so that the place had a deserted look broken only by a feather of smoke from the main chimney.
“It looks pretty grim from here,” the girl confessed, “but inside it’s quite comfortable—furnace and everything. Coming this way we sort of sneak up on it from behind because it faces the river.”
She led the way through a storeroom, which served as a vestibule, and into the kitchen. There they found Jeff and Barbara stirring a custard with an unnecessary amount of collaboration.
Sherry winked at Rogan.
“It must be love.”
Jeff looked up and grinned. “Hello, you two. Come in and watch me being housebroken.”
He was a large young man with ‘ex-tackle’ written all over him. His face had once presented a collar-ad type of male beauty, but a kindly Princeton halfback had stepped on it. Jeff had wisely refused to have his nose set, so it now resembled an island of William Bendix entirely surrounded by Robert Taylor. He waved a hand in introduction.
“Miss Daventry, this is Rogan Kincaid. Take a good look so you can avoid him in the future. He’s a professional heartbreaker.”
Barbara licked the custard spoon meditatively, blue eyes on Rogan.
“He might be fun, though.”
“Try it,” Sherry dared her, “and come spring they’ll be dragging the lake for a yellow-headed corpse.”
The Dane put his front paws on Barbara’s shoulders and regarded her solemnly. She frowned at him.
“Thor, you have a mean and hungry look, like Julius Caesar or somebody.”
She vanished into the storeroom and returned bearing a huge bone, which she tossed on the floor. Thor growled politely and set to work with relish.
“There goes tonight’s soup,” Barbara remarked wistfully. “And now that the subject of tonight has been brought up unobtrusively, Sherry, do you mind if I inject a touch of humor into the séance? Nothing coarse. Just a few quiet shrieks, and perhaps a pool of blood in the center of the table so the fun won’t be over when the lights come up.”
Jeff groaned. “Barbara Daventry, the poltergeist of the north country.”
She jerked a thumb at him. “Jeff’s an old fuddy-duddy and won’t play. Personally I think games in the dark with more than two people go best with youthful jollity.”
