Rebecca's Promise Part 13

Almost immediately there were steps in the hall, and a man stood in the doorway. He did not look unlike an ogre for he was short and fat and had a round red face which was topped with a shock of grizzled hair and bisected by a bristling grizzled mustache. Between the hair and the mustache were two piercing blue eyes which seemed to bore right into Granny and Rebecca Mary and Joan. Behind the short fat man were two tall slim young men, who seemed very much surprised and pleased to find that guests had arrived so unexpectedly. The short fat man looked angry as well as surprised, and he showed no pleasure at all.

"My country!" he growled, still playing very realistically the role of Father Bear. "Where did you come from? How the d.i.c.kens did you get in?

And what the deuce do you want?"

Granny did not answer him because she never had been spoken to in quite that tone and manner. Men always approached Mrs. Peter Simmons of Waloo with courteous deference, and this isolated case of gruff rudeness left her speechless. Rebecca Mary could not speak because a hot indignation clutched her by the throat and made it impossible for her to utter a word. It was Joan who mastered her tongue. She looked fearlessly up at the frowning ogre and answered his last question to the best of her knowledge.

"We want a young heart and a big payment on a memory insurance and my daddy," she announced clearly and somewhat peremptorily, as if she were accustomed to receive what she wanted.

If Joan had not mentioned her daddy the ogre would have thought they were all three mad, but he could understand a daddy if he could not comprehend a young heart or a big memory insurance payment.

"My country!" He breathed heavily and looked first at the young man at his right shoulder and then at the young man at his left shoulder. But they never looked at him at all. They were staring at Rebecca Mary in her crumpled white frock and her pink sweater.

"How did you get in here?" demanded the ogre, and it was plain to each one of them that he would have an answer, an intelligent answer, at once or know the reason why.

Granny drew herself up and looked at him with cold disdain. She did not like his manner, and as he wore big round gla.s.ses he must have seen that she didn't.

"We don't know," she told him in a very frigid voice.

"Don't know?" he repeated, almost sure now that they were mad. Surely an old woman and a young woman would know how they had entered a house if a child didn't. He excused Joan on account of her age but he did not excuse Granny nor Rebecca Mary. "You must know!" he told them with that unpleasant dictatorial impatient voice, although the man at his right touched his arm suggestively.

"Don't say 'must' to me!" Granny rather lost her temper. There is no doubt that bad manners are contagious. "Where is Mr. Cabot? I will make my explanation to him, although I think he owes me an apology." The ogre might have been but a speck of dust on the threshold from the way she looked beyond him.

"Mr. Cabot isn't here." The ogre's high and mighty manner began to slip from him.

"This is his house," began Granny, as if a man were always to be found at home.

"Not now----"

"He hasn't sold it?" Granny couldn't wait for him to put a period to his sentence. "Joshua Cabot never would sell his great-grandfather's house."

She was so sure that he wouldn't that she stopped being indignant or cold and was just frankly curious.

The ogre looked as if he were not sure that it was any of her business what Joshua Cabot would do before he made a grudging explanation. "No, Mr. Cabot hasn't sold Riverside, but he has turned it over to us. We are making a very important experiment for the government and we cannot be disturbed."

Granny's manner changed at once. It became quite friendly. "In that case I shall tell you how we happened to disturb you." And she did tell them that she and Rebecca Mary and Joan had left Waloo in their automobile the night before and this morning they had found themselves in a shed at Riverside. But she never said a word of Rebecca Mary's dream.

"But that's a ridiculous story," objected the ogre. He didn't believe a word she had said, for he had his own reasons for being suspicious of strangers at Riverside. "You must know who brought you here. Why should any one bring you? How did you pa.s.s the guard at the gate?"

Granny looked at Rebecca Mary questioningly, but as Rebecca Mary only seemed bewildered, she shrugged her shoulders. It was not for her to explain the whys of other people. "I am Mrs. Peter Simmons of Waloo,"

she said with great dignity. "And people believe what I tell them."

"Mrs. Peter Simmons!" The ogre found it hard to believe that was who Granny was. "My country!" he muttered under his breath. "Mrs. Peter Simmons--of Waloo?" Granny nodded stiffly. "Mrs. Peter Simmons!" He didn't seem able to make himself understand that she was Mrs. Peter Simmons, and his voice grew more like the voice of a human being with every word. "My country! Mrs. Simmons, of course. I don't doubt the truth of what you say," he stumbled on, "but this is strange, very strange. I can't understand why----" He stopped abruptly and no one said a word. It was so very plain that he could not understand. "I am surprised to see you, Mrs. Simmons." He made a fresh start, and no one questioned the truth of that statement, either.

"Have you had your breakfast? Ben will make you some fresh----" His voice choked again and he had to swallow hard before he could bring it up from his boots. "I am Major Martingale of the engineer corps of the United States Army," he announced explosively. That was the only fact he was sure of just then, and he made the most of it.

Granny was not of the type which bears malice and the strawberries had not conformed to her old-fas.h.i.+oned idea of what a breakfast should be nor satisfied her appet.i.te, so she accepted the white flag which he was holding out so ungraciously.

"Thank you, we should like some toast and coffee and perhaps a fresh egg. I rather think we ate your strawberries. We should have eaten the rest of your breakfast if Ben had answered the bell."

"Ben went over to the farmhouse with a message to Erickson," ventured the young man at the left of Major Martingale, glad to have a chance to speak. "You didn't find any one to answer the bell, did you?" He seemed quite grieved that he had not been there to answer it.

"Not a soul. It was most mysterious. I dare say it was all right but I should never approve of leaving unlocked a house with as many valuable things in it as this house has." Granny glanced around the room with its many souvenirs of pioneer days. "The front door stood wide open. I am sorry if we disturbed you, but if you will give us something more substantial than strawberries to eat we will go on and leave you to your experiment."

Major Martingale tugged at his mustache and looked at her in surprise.

"That's the trouble, you know," he rumbled. "You can't go on."

"Can't go!" Rebecca Mary found her tongue, and the men behind Major Martingale smiled pleasantly. They liked Rebecca Mary's voice as soon as they heard it. They thought it harmonized with her eyes. "Why can't we go? Is there anything the matter with the car?" She wouldn't be surprised if there was. She never had driven a car alone by moonlight over a country road before. Perhaps she had done something to it.

"I don't know anything about your car," fussed Major Martingale unhappily. "But you should have known, the guard at the gate could have told you, that no one is allowed to enter Riverside now without a permit, and no one who enters is allowed to leave. No one!" He exploded again.

Granny and Rebecca Mary stared at him and then at each other. They didn't believe him. It sounded too ridiculous.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "DO YOU MEAN TO TELL US THAT WE CAN'T GO?"]

"Do you mean to tell us that we can't go when it isn't our fault we're here? We didn't mean to come here. We wanted to go to Seven Pines!"

exclaimed Rebecca Mary when she could speak, which wasn't for a full second.

"I mean just that." Major Martingale's voice sounded as if it were made from the best adamant and was warranted to withstand any pressure. It would be useless to coax or to cry. "I told you we are making a most important experiment here for the government." Surely they could understand the government. "A most important experiment," he repeated, swelling proudly. "One that will mean a great deal to the whole world.

Germany has heard something about it and has been trying, is still trying, to get hold of the inventor and his idea. If she could it would go a long way toward giving her back her place in the commercial world, for it will be a vital necessity for every country. And we don't propose to let Germany have it. That is why we came down here to work and why we have a guard at the gate and why we forbid any one who comes here to go away. German propaganda hasn't stopped. Any one who employs labor will tell you that, and the socialists, the I. W. W. and the other agitators are fighting a new war for Germany. We chose a few loyal workmen, men whom we could absolutely trust, and brought them down here where they can't be influenced and coaxed away by any agitator or German spy. You are an American, I suppose, Mrs. Simmons, but your companions, what are they?"

Granny was about to exclaim indignantly that they were Americans, too, when she glanced at Joan. Just what was Joan? Joan answered for herself.

"I must be an American," she said slowly, "for I'm honest and brave and true and free and equal. And that's what Americans are. My daddy said so."

"And he's dead right," murmured the man behind Major Martingale's right shoulder.

Major Martingale only snorted. "We shall try and make you comfortable as long as you are here," he promised with a groan. "But you can see we aren't going to take any chance of a leak. You'll have to stay until we are through with our work."

"Fiddlesticks!" exclaimed Granny with more force than elegance. "We'll finish our breakfast, and then I'll telephone to Joshua Cabot and ask him if we can't go to Seven Pines."

"You can't use the telephone," Major Martingale told her sharply.

"Evidently you don't understand that Riverside is cut off from the world at present."

Granny stopped on her way to the dining room. "Does he actually mean that? Is he telling us the truth?" She appealed to the two young men, but they only nodded their heads. "Mayn't I even telephone to my maid for clothes?" Granny asked almost feebly.

"You may not." Major Martingale was glad that she was beginning to understand. "You may give me any message, and if I consider it safe and necessary I may send it on. While you are not actually prisoners you can't leave Riverside, and you can't communicate with any one. It isn't my fault," he added hurriedly. "I didn't bring you here. I don't want you here! Mr. Simmons shouldn't have let you come!"

"Mr. Simmons doesn't know anything about it."

"He doesn't!" The major was all suspicion again. "I'll send him word.

I'll----"

Granny caught his sleeve. "No, you shan't send him word!" she exclaimed quickly. "He'd--he'd laugh at us," she explained stumblingly, and a red flush crept into her cheeks. "You see we started for our country place.

Mr. Simmons always said women couldn't be trusted and he'd tease us so.

Please don't tell him. We'll be model prisoners if you won't, won't we?"

She appealed to Rebecca Mary. "If you do tell him you may wish you had never been born," she prophesied with a smile, but there was something behind the smile which made Major Martingale mop his brow and look unhappy.

"So long as you obey orders I'll keep still," he promised unwillingly.

"I can't say more than that. Mr. Marshall, will you see that these ladies have breakfast. I can't waste any more time. I shan't wait for breakfast. I've lost my appet.i.te." And he waddled away before any one could say a word.