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Hemlock Avenue Mystery

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<h4>CHAPTER X</h4> The first thing to do was to see Kittie Tayntor. Lyon had received from his kind-hearted friend in Columbus a glowing endorsement, which he had mailed to Miss Elliott, with a formal request that he might be permitted to call upon Miss Tayntor. In reply he had received a polite note, authorizing him to present himself the following Wednesday. This was encouraging, but it hardly prepared him for the more than encouraging reception which awaited him when he had duly sent up his card. A tall girl, with a fluff of light hair and eyes so dazzling that he really could not tell what color they were, came down to meet him with a pretty impetuosity. "Oh, Cousin Percy! I'm so glad to see you! It took you the longest time to find out I was here, didn't it? I made up my mind I would never send you word to the end of time! I just thought I'd have a good joke on you when you did come around at last." "I--I beg your pardon,--" stammered Lyon. "Oh, I don't mind I We'll make up for lost time. I have so many things to tell you about home. When were you there last? I know you don't write often,--men never do, Aunt Meg says,--so I don't suppose you know that Cousin Jennie is engaged? To Dr. Whitman. Did you know him? No, I think you were in the east when he was there. We all like him very much." "I'm afraid you are mista--" Lyon tried to put in, but she swept on, with the charming hurry of a breathless little brook. "And I want to know all about your work. It must be just awfully interesting to write for the papers. I don't see how you can think of things to say! I told Miss Elliott that maybe you would help me with my compositions." "I should be delighted, but I must--" "She said that since you were my cousin," Kittie ran on, with a subtle emphasis, and a momentary widening of her wide eyes, "that she would be very glad to have me submit my compositions to you and get your suggestions. It is very fortunate that you are my cousin. You know if you were not, you wouldn't have been allowed to call on me at all. That's one of the rules of the school." "Oh!" said Lyon, with sudden illumination. "I didn't know that. I'm afraid I never mentioned our relationship to Miss Elliott. I did not know that it was necessary." "Oh, I made it all straight. I explained it to her," Kittie said, clapping her small hands inaudibly, and fairly beaming her joyous thanks upon him. "Would the rules of the school permit you to go out for a walk with me? If I tread on dangerous ground without knowing it, you will have to put me straight. It is a glorious day, and a brisk walk would do you a lot of good." "I don't know," Kittie murmured. "Some time, maybe,--" "No time like to-day," said Lyon, firmly. With his best air he approached the lady who, in the far end of the reception room, had been absorbed in a volume of British Poets. "Would there be any objection to my taking my cousin out for a walk?" "I think not," the lady said, somewhat hesitatingly. "Then run up and put on your hat, Kittie," said Lyon, coolly. "I'll guarantee to have her back at any time you set." "I don't quite know what Miss Elliott would say," hesitated the timid lady, "but I think you'd better be back in half an hour." Kittie threw her arms around her neck. "You're just an angel. Miss Rose!" And she flew up to her room, while Lyon devoted himself to Miss Rose so successfully that she looked upon young men as a class more hopefully from that hour. "Now, Cousin Kittie," said Lyon, as soon as they were outside. "You needn't keep that up," she interrupted. "Yes, I do," he said, firmly. "I mustn't get out of practice for a minute, or I might slip up some time. Now talk fast and tell me all the things that I really have to know." She shot a shy glance at him under her lashes. "It was awfully nice of you to catch on so quickly." "It was interesting, but difficult. But you are a courageous girl! Suppose I hadn't caught on?" "I know! Wouldn't it have been awful? Or suppose you hadn't been--nice, you know! But I had to take some chances. You don't know how dreadful it is to stay shut up inside of walls like that, and never to go outside unless we go with one of the teachers, and never to see any callers unless they are relatives. And I haven't any relatives at all except Aunt Meg and Uncle Joe and Cousin Jennie at Columbus, so I never had the excitement of going downstairs to see some one in the reception room, while the girls hung over the banisters to see what he looked like when he went away." She stole a gratified glance at Lyon's straight figure and good clothes. "When Miss Elliott came to tell me about your letter, I was just wild to think that I should have to miss this splendid chance, just because you hadn't said you were a relative, so--so--" "I see." "Do you think it was very awful?" "If it had been anyone else but me, it would have been awful, but since it was I, and since you are never going to do it again for anyone else,--" "Oh, never, never!" "I think I was in great luck," said Lyon simply. And certainly the words were well within the limit of his feelings on the subject. He had barely hoped to establish some sort of an entrée to the school. That the Miss Kittie whose name he had selected at random from the catalogue should be so pretty, so funnily absurd, so unusually entertaining, was pure gratuity on the part of Fate. And what a daringly reckless child it was! Modest as Lyon was, he couldn't help recognizing that it was luck for Kittie as well as for himself that it was he and not some one else who had been admitted so confidently to this fascinating intimacy. A dawning sense of responsibility for this irresponsible new cousin made him defer the real object of his inquiry to extend the field of his acquaintance with Kittie herself. "How long have you been at school here. Kittie?" "I came last September. Why?" "Oh, I think I ought to know. Do you like it?" "Oh, it's rather good fun," she said, cheerfully. "We have lots of spreads in our rooms and Miss Elliott has rules about everything, and that keeps us busy. Rules always make me want to go right to work to break them, just to see if I can." "And can you?" he asked, with interest. She looked demure. "Oh, maybe there might be some that I don't know about yet that I couldn't break." "What are some of the rules of the school?" That was a point on which he particularly wished to post himself. "Oh, everything. Miss Elliott won't ever let me go out walking with you like this again. Miss Rose is a new teacher. She has just come, and she didn't know." "But I may come and see you?" "Only on Wednesdays. But that will be quite exciting. There are very few girls who have some one come to see them every Wednesday. But maybe some Wednesdays you will be busy?" she added politely. "Of course, if you are busy, I shouldn't expect you to come. Some of the girls sometimes have flowers sent to them." "I'm glad that's allowed," said Lyon, with an inward smile. He was trying mentally to figure out how he was going to keep in touch with Mrs. Broughton's condition if he was only allowed to visit the school once a week. That would not suit him at all. There was now only a week or eight days before the meeting of the Grand Jury, and if Mrs. Broughton's information was going to do any good at all, they must have it very soon. He must try to draw Kittie into his scheme at once, while he had this opportunity. "Kittie, I want you to help me out about something. There is a lady visiting Miss Elliott--" "Oh, do you know her?" "I know who she is. And I have met her once." "Isn't she perfectly beautiful? I should rather be like her than anyone else in the world." Lyon smiled inscrutably, but his tongue was discreet if his eyes were not always. But instead of explaining to Kittie that Mrs. Broughton, beautiful as she was, could never hope to be as delightful as Miss Tayntor, he held himself strictly to the matter in hand. "Mrs. Broughton is very ill, and Dr. Barry says that I must not disturb her by talking business. Now, it is very urgent that I should have a chance to talk business with her as soon as she is able to stand it,--at the very earliest moment possible. I was wondering if I could find out through you how she is getting on. I am afraid to trust Dr. Barry, you see. He will want to keep me off, and it may be too late to do any good by the time he is willing. At the same time I don't want to force myself upon her before she really is strong enough to stand it. You understand?" "Oh, yes, indeed. I'll explain it all to her, and then she can say herself when she wants you to come." "Are you allowed to go in to see her?" asked Lyon in surprise. "Every evening. She likes to have me rub her head and put her to sleep." "Oh, that's very fortunate. I thought no one was allowed to go in at all." "No one else is. No one even goes into those halls, and we mustn't laugh or talk so that she can hear it. But the first evening when we came back after vacation, I naturally wanted to know who it was in those rooms and why she was shut up with a trained nurse and why we had to keep so specially quiet for her, so I just waited around till the nurse went down to get her supper and then I slipped in. The door wasn't locked, so it was perfectly easy. And there I found the most perfectly beautiful woman I ever saw outside of a book. You can't think how fascinated I was. I knew it was good for my education to see a lot of her, because she had such lovely manners, and I was wild to think they would come and order me out and make a rule that I must never go In again, so I just made myself as interesting to her as I possibly could. I had to hurry a lot because there wasn't much time. The nurse was liable to come back any moment." "How interesting can you make yourself when you really give your mind to it?" asked Lyon, with lively curiosity. "Oh,--interesting enough. It worked all right, too, because when the nurse came back, Mrs. Broughton just insisted that I should stay a little longer. She said it did her good, and she would be nervous if they didn't let me stay, and that she liked to have me there, and she got so excited that they got scared, I guess, because the nurse finally said, 'W-e-11,--' like that, you know, and so I stayed, and I was good for her, too, so ever since that they let me go in for an hour in the evening, while the nurse is having her supper." "Good. Nothing could be better. Then you can let me know the first minute that she is strong enough for me to come and see her, and particularly whether she is planning to go away. Would you be sure to know that?" "Oh, yes. I'd see. I always see things." "And you could send me a note?" Kittie looked doubtful. "Miss Elliott reads all our letters, you know." "No, I didn't know." "That wouldn't matter, because I could write it so that she wouldn't understand, although it would be perfectly plain to you, but I am not sure she would let me write to you at all. You see, you are a rather new cousin, and if you are going to come to see me every week,--" "She would think that was enough. I see. Well then, what can we do?" But Kittie had a plan already evolved. "I know. My room is the corner one at the back of the house,--you can see it from this corner of the street. There, do you see the two windows with the curtains clear up? Well, so long as I leave the curtain in the right-hand window up the way it is now, it means that she is too ill to be disturbed, but if I pull it down she is getting better, and the more I pull it down, the better and stronger she is until when I pull it way down she is quite well. The other window, the one in the corner, will tell about her going away. If I see signs of her getting ready to go, I'll pull it part way down, and if it goes as low as the middle sash it means you must hurry if you want to see her, and when I pull it quite down, she has gone!" "Kittie, you are a genius!" "And you don't mind that it is breaking rules,--only they aren't made into rules, because nobody thought that they would be needed? I thought just a little that you didn't quite like it a while ago!" Lyon laughed. "You are quite right, and I mustn't be superior any more. But it is very important that I should have a chance to see Mrs. Broughton,--important to other people than myself." She gave him a demure, sidelong glance, and then dropped her eyes. "Is it about Mr. Lawrence?" she asked, ingenuously. "You amazing young lady! What do you know about Mr. Lawrence?" "Mrs. Broughton told me about him." "Did she?" he asked alertly. "What did she tell you?" "Oh, she has talked about him a great deal. He was an old friend of hers before she was married, and, just think, she had seen him only the day before all this happened." "Did she tell you where she saw him, or what they talked about?" "No. But she is very grateful to him for something he did for her. She says he is like a knight of old. I think if he could know she said that, he would feel proud, don't you?" Lyon frowned thoughtfully. Mrs. Broughton's sudden sense of gratitude toward Lawrence seemed uncalled for. "What else did she say to you?" Kittie reflected. "She said that they would never, never hang Mr. Lawrence, because nobody saw him kill Mr. Fullerton, and they couldn't hang him unless somebody swore they saw him. Is that the law?" "I don't know much about the law, myself." "And she says that it isn't so bad for him to be locked up for a little while, when they will have to let him go in the end, as it would be for some one to be hanged. I think that is true, too, don't you?" In spite of the need he felt to explore her mind, the words on her lips shocked him. "Mrs. Broughton shouldn't talk to you about such things," he said impatiently. She lifted astonished eyes to his. "But then I should never have known anything about it! Miss Elliott doesn't allow us to read the papers ever, and I want to know Life." "Time enough," laughed Lyon. "Oh, I'm not a child. I can understand. It has been a great thing for me to know Mrs. Broughton." "She is a beautiful woman," Lyon conceded, somewhat coldly. Secretly he thought Kittie might have been as well off without that intimacy. But before he left the subject there was one point on which he wanted to get light, if possible, without betraying the point of his interest,--Mrs. Broughton's possible acquaintance with the loose panel in the protecting wall of the school yard. "Do you know if Mrs. Broughton has been here before?" he asked. "Oh, yes. She always stops here when she comes to Waynscott. She was one of Miss Elliott's first pupils." "Then she knows the house and yard, pretty well?" "Oh, of course." "By the way, I notice that your back yard is fenced in. There is no way of getting in except by the front door, of course." Kittie looked at him with surprise. "When you say 'of course' in that careless way, it makes me think you mean just the opposite," she said, suspiciously. He had to laugh at her penetration. "Then is there any other way in?" he asked. She hesitated, and then said with an exaggerated imitation of his own "careless" manner, "Oh, of course not!" "Does Mrs. Broughton know about it, do you think?" She pursed up her lips and nodded her head violently. "She belongs to the Immortal Few Society. It has always been one of the things the Immortal Few learned at initiation." "Has she spoken of it to you?" "No." "No, she wouldn't be apt to," Lyon reflected. Then somewhat violently he changed the subject. "Come, we won't talk about her any more. Tell me about our family, so that I won't make mistakes." She spent the rest of the time coaching him about his newly acquired relatives, and they parted at Miss Elliot's door with mutual satisfaction. There is no game so trying to the nerves as a waiting game. Lyon was cool by temperament and self-controlled from experience, but he found it necessary to call on both his native and acquired composure to enable him to face the situation without wanting to do something, anything, to force Fate's hand. To wait, just to sit still and wait for Mrs. Broughton to recover, while all the time Lawrence was drawing nearer and nearer to the day that would blast his career even if he escaped with his life,--it was nerve-racking. And all the time Bede was working, like a mole in the dark, undermining the wall of silence which Lawrence had thrown up. Heaven knew what he might feel bound to discover for the credit of his profession! It might prove, of course, that Mrs. Broughton had nothing bearing upon the subject to tell, but until he knew that to be the case he would hold the hope that somehow, in some way, she might clear matters up. Yes, he must wait. And then, as he was dropping off to sleep, he woke himself up to murmur quite irrelevantly, "Anyhow, I'm glad she didn't say that she would be a sister to me!" <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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