Jane Carter Investigates Episode One-Hundred and Seventeen
“Speak up!” Paul Firth commanded as Flo
and I stared at him in astonishment. “Why are you trying to get into my cave?”
“Listen to that wind!” I said,
recovering my powers of speech. I pointed at the sky.
“A tornado!” exclaimed Firth in a
stunned voice.
“And it’s coming this way,” added
Florence. “Let us down into the cave!”
Instead of stepping aside, the man came
up the stone steps. Slamming the door of the cave, he padlocked it.
“Quick! Into the house!” he ordered.
“We’ll be much safer underground,” I
protested. “That twister could easily lift a building from its foundation.”
“Do as I say!” commanded Paul Firth.
“The cave is half-filled with water. You can’t go down there.”
He ran toward the house. Flo and I
followed, overtaking him as he reached the porch.
“Get inside!” he ordered.
We scurried through the door, and he
closed it behind us. Barely had we reached shelter when the wind struck the
house in full force, fairly shaking it to its foundation. Windows rattled, a
tree bough came crashing down on the porch, and the air outside was filled with
flying debris.
As a hard object shattered a pane of
glass, there was a terrified scream from the kitchen. A moment later a girl ran
into the room. She stopped short as she saw Flo and me. It was Rosie Larkin.
“Stop that silly screeching!” Firth
ordered Rosie. “The center of the storm is passing to the south. Now get back
to your work!”
“Yes, sir,” Rosie mumbled.
Still looking at Florence and me, she
slowly retreated. However, as Paul Firth went to the window, Rosie made strange
signs to us behind his turned back. She obviously did not wish us to speak to
her, for she raised a finger to her lips begging us to keep silence.
The wind increased. A gate was wrenched
from its hinges and carried across the yard. Across the road, a tree was
uprooted with a crash. Rosie fled to the kitchen with a stifled scream.
“That stupid girl drives me crazy,”
Firth muttered. “I don’t know why I ever hired her.”
“You can’t blame her for being
frightened,” Florence said. “This is a dreadful storm.”
“The worst is over now,” said Firth.
“You’ll be able to go in a few minutes.”
Firth did not invite us to sit down. He
paced from window to window, watching the clouds. Rain came in a heavy
downpour, then slackened somewhat. The wind no longer tore at the doors.
“You’ll be able to go any time now,”
said Firth. “I can let you have an umbrella.”
“It’s still rather bad,” I said. “If
you don’t mind, I believe we’ll wait a few minutes longer.”
Firth looked exceedingly displeased
with our continued presence in his living room.
“Who sent you here?” Firth demanded.
“Why did you come?”
“My father has a cottage close by,
along the river,” I said. “We were returning from there when the storm broke.”
My explanation seemed to satisfy the
man. He shrugged and fell again to pacing the floor.
The rain ceased, and Flo and I left the
house after politely thanking the man for the protection of his home during the
storm.
As we rounded the corner of the house
there was a light tap on the window. I looked up to see Rosie’s face pressed
against the pane.
“She’s signaling for us to wait,” I
said to Flo. “I guess she wants to talk with us.”
We stepped into the doorway of a
woodshed. In a moment Rosie slipped from the house, a coat thrown over her
head.
“I hope old Firth doesn’t see me,” she
said. “Let’s get out of sight.”
Florence and I followed Rosie into the
woodshed and closed the door behind us.
“How long have you worked here?” Flo
asked.
“Ever since I met you girls on the
boat. I answered an advertisement the next morning and got this job.”
“Do you like it?” I asked. “I imagine
farm work is hard.”
“There’s nothing much in the way of
farming going on here, so the work is easy enough, but I hate the place! That’s
why I wanted to talk with you. Do you know of anyone who needs a girl? I’ll
work for very small wages.”
“I don’t know of anyone at the moment,”
I said.
“I can’t stay here much longer,” Rosie
said, a note of desperation in her voice. “Mr. Firth is so overbearing and
mean! He can’t bear noise either. If I so much as rattle a dish he berates me.”
“Does he pay you a decent wage?”
Florence asked.
“Six dollars a week. I can’t complain
on that score. But there’s something about him—I can’t explain—it gives me the
creeps.”
“Firth is a peculiar type,” I admitted.
“He didn’t act very friendly toward Florence and me. By the way, why does he
keep the storm cellar padlocked?”
“That’s something I wish you would tell
me.”
“He wouldn’t allow us to enter it even
when the storm was coming.”
“Firth always keeps the cave
padlocked,” said Rosie. “He goes there every day, too. Sometimes he spends
hours beneath ground. It rather frightens me.”
“What do you think he does there?”
“I don’t know. Once I asked him about
the cave, and he flew into a violent rage. He said if he ever caught me near it
he would discharge me.”
“He told us that the cave was
half-filled with water.”
“I don’t believe that,” said Rosie. “He
has something hidden down there.”
“Haven’t you any idea what it is?”
“No, and I don’t care very much,”
returned Rosie. “All I want to do is get away from this place. If you hear of a
job anywhere will you let me know?”
“Of course,” I promised. “Mrs. Timms,
our housekeeper, may know of a vacancy. If she does, I’ll telephone.”
“We haven’t any telephone here. Mr.
Firth had it taken out because the ringing of the bell made him jumpy. He said
the neighbors always listened to his conversations, too, on the party line.
He’s very suspicious of everyone.”
“Then I can run out in the car and tell
you,” I said. “I don’t blame you for not liking this place. I shouldn’t like it
either.”
“Thanks for everything,” Rosie said.
“You’ve been awfully good to me. I must run back now or old Firth will ask me a
million questions.”
Rosie hastily said goodbye and darted
back to the house. Florence and I walked slowly down the road while we
discussed Paul Firth’s strange actions. We were both inclined to agree with
Rosie that he had hidden something of considerable value beneath ground.
Across the road from the farmhouse, a
giant elm tree had been uprooted. A chicken house was overturned, fences laid
flat, and tangles of telephone and electric wires littered the edge of the
field.
“Even more damage must have been done farther
down the river,” I said. “I hope Dad’s new cottage hasn’t blown away.”
“Shall we go there and see?”
“I wish we could.”
For several hundred yards we followed
the road, then once more we cut across the fields toward the winding river. All
along the waterfront trees had been toppled and split. In sections, there were
wide paths cut as if by a scythe.
“The cottage is still there!” I said as
we ascended to higher ground. “I can see it.”
“Several trees are down, though. One
has fallen across the porch.”
“A beautiful birch, too,” I said.
“Anchor Jim will have a job clearing it away.”
As we neared the cottage, I called out
for the workman, but there was no answer.
“I wonder where he went?” I said to
Flo.
We rounded the corner of the cottage. A
giant birch had demolished the porch railing. A slight movement among the
leaves startled me. A hand lay limp against the trunk.
“Anchor Jim! He’s pinned beneath the
tree!”
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