“Certainly, m’lady.” He swung open the door and climbed out stiffly. Although he wouldn’t have confessed it for any reason, his leg had been aching dully for hours.
“Do you know,” Ricky hesitated on the first terrace step, bending down to put aside a trail of morning-glory vine which clutched at her ankle, “I’ve just remembered!”
“What?” Rupert looked up from the grid where he was unstrapping their luggage.
“That We are the very first Ralestones to—to come home since Grandfather Miles rode away in 1867.”
“And why the sudden dip into ancient history?” Val inquired as he limped around to help Rupert.
“I don’t know,” her eyes were fast upon moss-greened wall and ponderous door hewn of a single slab of oak, “except—well, we are coming home at last I wonder if—if they know. All those others. Rick and Miles, the first Rupert and Richard and—”
“That spitfire, the Lady Richanda?” Rupert smiled.
“Perhaps they do. No. leave the bags here, Val. Let’s see the house first.”
Together the Ralestones crossed the terrace and came to stand by the front door which still bore faint scars left by Indian hatchets. But Rupert stooped to insert a very modem key into a very modern lock. There was a click and the door swung inward before his push.
“The Long Hall!” They stood in something of a hesitant huddle at the end of a long stone-floored room. Halfway down its length a wooden staircase led up to the second floor, and directly opposite that a great fireplace yawned mightily, black and bare.
A leather-covered lounge was directly before them, flanked by two square chairs. And by the stairs was an oaken marriage chest. Save for two skin rugs, these were all the furnishings.
But Ricky had crossed hesitatingly to that cavernous fireplace and was standing mere looking up as her brothers joined her.
“There’s where it was,” she said softly and pointed to a deep niche cut into the surface of the stone overmantel.
That niche was empty and had been so for more than a hundred years—to their hurt. “That was where the Luck—”
“How hold ye Lome?” Rupert’s softly spoken question brought the well-remembered answer to Val’s lips: “By the oak leaf, by me sea wave, by the broad-sword blade, thus hold we Lome!”
“The oak leaf is dust,” murmured Ricky, “the sea wave is gone, the broadsword is rust, how now hold ye Lome?”
Her brothers answered her together: “By our Luck, thus hold we Lome!”
“And we’ve got to get it back,” she said. “We’ve just got to! When the Luck hangs there again, we—”
“Won’t have anything left to worry about,” Val finished for her. “But that’s a very big order, m’lady. Short of catching Rick’s ghost and forcing him to disclose the place where he hid it, I don’t see how we’re going to do it.”
“But we are going to,” she answered confidently. “I know we are!”
“A good thing,” Rupert broke in, a hint of soberness beneath the lightness of his tone as he looked about the almost bare room and then at the strained pallor of Val’s thin face. “The Ralestones have been luckless too long. And now suppose we take possession of this commodious mansion. I suggest that we get settled as soon as possible. I don’t like the looks of the western sky. We’re probably going to have a storm.”
“What about the car?” Val asked as his brother turned to go.
“Harrison used the old carriage house as a garage. I’ll run it in there. You and Ricky better do a spot of exploring and see about beds and rood. I don’t know how you feel,” he went on grimly, “but after last night I want something softer than a dozen rocks to steep on.”
“I told you not to stop at that tourist place,” began Ricky smugly. “I said—”
“You said that a house painted that shade of green made you slightly ill. But you didn’t say anything about beds,” Val reminded her as he shed his coat and hung it on the newel-post. “And since the Ralestone family have definitely gone off the gold or any other monetary standard, it’s tourist rests or the poorhouse for us.”
“Probably the poorhouse.” Rupert sounded resigned.
“Now upstairs with you and get out some bedding. LeHeur said in his letter that the place was all ready for occupancy.
And he stocked up with canned stuff.”
“I know—beans! Just too, too divine. Well, let’s know the worst.” Ricky started up the stairs. “I suppose there are electric lights?”
“Got to throw the main switch first, and I haven’t time to do that now. Here, Val.” Rupert tossed him his tiny pocket torch as he turned to go. The door closed behind him and Ricky looked over her shoulder.
“This—this is rather a darkish place, isn’t it?”
“Not so bad.” Val considered the hall below, which seemed suddenly peopled by an Overabundance of oddly shaped shadows.
“No,” her voice grew stronger, “not so bad. We’re together anyway, Val. Last year 1 thought I’d die, shut up in that awful school, and then coming home to hear—”
“About me making my first and last flight. Yes, not exactly a rest cure for any of us, was it? But it’s all over now. The Ralestones may be down but they’re not out, yet, in spite of Mosile Oil and those coal-mines. D’you know, we might use some of that nice gilt-edged stock for wall-paper. There’s enough to cover a closet at least. Here we arc, Rupert from beating about the globe trying to be a newspaper man, you straight from N’York’s finest finishing1 school, and me—well, out of the plainest hospital bed I ever saw. We’ve got this house and what Rupert managed to clear from the wreck. Something will turn up. In the meantime—”
“Yes?” she prompted.
“In the meantime,” he went on, leaning against the banister for a moment’s rest, “we can be looking for the Luck. As Rupert says, we need it badly enough. Here’s the upper hall. Which way now?”
“Over to the left wing. These in front are what Rupert refers to as ‘state bedrooms.’ “
“Yes?” He opened the nearest door and whistled softly.
“Not so bad. About the size of a small union station and provided with all the comforts of a tomb. Decidedly not what we want.”
“Wait, here’s a plaque set in the wall. Look!” She ran her finger over a glass-covered square.
“Regulations for guests, or a floor plan to show how to reach the dining-room in the quickest way,” her brother suggested.
“No.” She read aloud slowly:
“ ‘THIS ROOM WAS OCCUPIED BY GENERAL ANDREW JACKSON, THE VICTOR OF THE BATTLE OF NEW ORLEANS, UPON THE TENTH DAY AFTER THE BATTLE. ‘ “
“Whew! ‘Old Hickory’ here! But I thought that the Ralestones were more or less under a cloud at that time,” commented Val.
“History—”
“In the making. Quite so. Now may I suggest that we find some slumber rooms slightly more modem? Rupert is apt to become annoyed at undue delay in such matters.”
They went down the hall and turned into a short cross corridor. From a round window at the far end a ray of sun still swept in, but it was a sickly, faded ray. The storm Rupert had spoken of could not be far off.
“This is the right way. Mr. Harrison had these little numbers put on the doors for his guests,” Ricky pointed out. “I’ll take ‘three’; that was marked on the plan he sent us as a lady’s room. You take that one across the hall and let Rupert have the one next to you.”
The rooms they explored were not as imposing as the one which had sheltered Andrew Jackson for a night.
Furnished with chintz-covered chairs, solid mahogany bedsteads and highboys, they were pleasant enough even if they weren’t chambers to make an antique dealer “Oh!” and “Ah!” Val discovered with approval some stiff prints of mathematically correct clippers hung in exact patterns on his walls, while Ricky’s room held one treasure, a dainty dressing-table.
A small door near the end of the hall gave upon a linen closet. And Ricky, throwing her short white jacket and hat upon the chair in her room, set about making beds, having given Val strict orders to return to the lower hall and sort out the luggage before bringing it up.
As he reached the wide landing he stopped a moment.
Since that winter night, almost a year in the past, when a passenger plane had decided—in spite of its pilot—to make a landing on a mountainside, he had learned to hobble where he had once run. The accident having made his right leg a rather accurate barometer, that crooked bone was announcing the arrival of the coming storm with a sharp pain or two which shot unexpectedly from knee to ankle.
One such caught him as he was about to take a step and threw him suddenly off balance.