For All Your Life by Emilie Loring

Author:Emilie Loring [Loring, Emilie]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Publisher: Lume Books
Published: 2019-03-10T00:00:00+00:00

XV

Anne did not know what sound had awakened her. Her heart was leaping and pounding, her eyes were wide open, staring into the darkness. She held her breath, listening.

The big house seemed to have come alive in the night. She had a keen awareness of people moving about somewhere near her. But the only sound she could clearly distinguish among the stirring and crackling of old timber common to any aging house, was a sharp clear tap like a woman’s high heel on an uncarpeted floor.

Don’t get panicky, Anne, she told herself. You’ve got to think. Where—where—I’ve got it. There are scatter rugs in the bedroom of that nurse-companion’s suite I occupied my first night here—ten days ago! Someone stepping on the bare floor.… I’m glad I’ve taken to locking my door at night, though it seems ridiculous in my own house. But I feel safer. Only a little longer and Griffith Trent will be back. I’ll ask his advice. The grating! If someone really is in that suite—

She stretched out her hand in the darkness. It touched the grating beside the head of her bed. Groped for the button and pressed it. In a moment a light glowed red. The current was on.

Then, as though someone were standing beside her bed, she heard the voice. A woman’s voice, low-pitched and lovely. A voice she had never heard before.

“What are you doing here?”

For a moment Anne thought the question was addressed to her and she nearly answered.

Then a man said, “That’s funny, coming from you. What are you doing here?”

“Please go away before you cause me any more trouble,” the woman pleaded.

The man laughed and the woman said “Sshh!” in a tone of alarm.

“Why don’t you call for help?” he taunted her.

The woman’s voice was soft, pleading. “I thought you loved me.”

“I did,” the man said gruffly.

“Then why don’t you help me?”

Anne held her breath, listening eagerly. Who on earth were these people and how had they got into the house? Before going to bed she had made the rounds with Dodge herself, to make sure that doors and windows were carefully locked. What was going on at Mountain Lodge?

“Don’t worry, Miss Kendrick,” Dodge had said, looking grimmer than ever with the bruise on one cheek, “I’ll make sure this house is locked up like a jail every night.”

Anne had believed him. Since his encounter in the woods—and there had been an encounter; she was sure of that in spite of his denials—he was worried and uneasy.

But two people had managed to break into the house, unknown to each other until they had met by accident in the nurse-companion’s vacant rooms.

“Help you? That’s a laugh!” the man said roughly.

“I could make trouble for you,” the woman warned him. “I don’t want to but I could.”

“How?”

“You stole that ten thousand dollars.”

“My, my, aren’t you smart?” he jeered.

“And you took Old Soc, the parrot.”

“You’re wrong there,” he said. “I don’t know any more about the parrot than the man in the moon.”

“But you do know about the ten thousand dollars,” she said quickly.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.