“But we can’t afford—“ began Ricky.
“I gathered that money does not come into the question. The lady is rather strong-willed. So, Ricky,” he laughed, “we’ll leave you two to fight it out. But Lucy may be able to find us a laundress.”
“Which reminds me,” Ricky took a crumpled piece of white cloth from her pocket, “if this is yours, Rupert, you deserve to do your own washing. I don’t know what you’ve got on it; looks like oil.”
He took it from her and straightened out a handkerchief.
“Not guilty this time. Ask little brother here.” He passed over the dirty linen square. It was plain white—or it had been white before three large black splotches had colored it—without an initial or colored edge.
“I think he’s prevaricating, Ricky,” Val protested. “This isn’t mine. I’m down to one thin dozen and those are the ones you gave me last Christmas. They have my initials on.”
Ricky took back the disputed square. “That’s funny. It certainly isn’t mine. I’m sure one of you must be mistaken.”
“Why?” asked Rupert.
“Because I found it on the hearth-stone in the hall this morning. It wasn’t there last night or one of us would have seen it and picked it lip, ‘cause it was right there in plain sight.”
“Sure it isn’t yours, Val?”
He shook his head. “Positive.”
“Queer,” murmured Rupert and reached for it again.
“It’s a good quality of linen and it’s almost new.” He held it to his nose. “That’s oil on it. But how—?”
“I wonder—“ Val mused.
“What do you know?” asked Ricky.
“Well— Oh, it isn’t possible. He wouldn’t carry a handkerchief,” her brother said half to himself.
“Who wouldn’t?” asked Rupert. Then Val told them of his meeting with the boy Jeems and what Sam had had to say of him.
“Don’t know whether I exactly like this.” Rupert folded the mysterious square of stained linen. “As you say, Val, a boy like that would hardly carry a handkerchief. Also, you met him in the garden, while—”
“The person who left that was in this house last night!” finished Ricky. “And I don’t like that!”
“The door was locked and bolted when I came down this morning,” Val observed.
Rupert nodded. “Yes, I distinctly remember doing that before I went up to bed. But when I was going around the house this morning I discovered that there are French doors opening from the old ball-room to the terrace, and I didn’t inspect their fastening last night.”
“But who would want to come in here? There are no valuables left except furniture. And it would take three or four men and a truck to collect that. I don’t see what he was after,” puzzled Ricky.
Rupert arose from the table. “We have, it seems, a mystery on our hands. If you want to amuse yourselves, my children, here’s the first clue. I’ve got to get back to the carriage house and my labors there.”
He dropped the handkerchief on the table and left.
Ricky reached for the “clue.” “Awfully casual about it, isn’t he?” she said. “Just the same, I believe that this is a clue and I know what our visitor was after, too,” she finished triumphantly.
“What?”
“The treasure Richard Ralestone hid when the Yankee raiders came.”
“Well, if our unknown visitor has as little in the way of clues as we have, he’ll be a long time finding it.”
“And we’re going to beat him to it! It’s somewhere in the Hall, and the secret—”
“See here,” Val interrupted her, “what were you about to tell me when Rupert came in?”
She put the handkerchief in the breast pocket of her sport dress, buttoning the flap over it.
“Rupert’s got a secret.”
“What kind?”
“It has to do with those two brief-cases of his. You know, the ones he was so particular about all the way down here?”
Val nodded. Those bulging brief-cases had apparently contained the dearest of his roving brother’s possessions, judging from the way Rupert had fussed if they were a second out of his sight.
“This morning when I came downstairs,” Ricky continued, “he was sneaking them into that little side room off the dining-room corridor, the one which used to be the old plantation office. And when he came out and saw me standing there, he deliberately turned around and locked me door!”
“Whew!” Val commented.
“Yes, I felt mat way too. So I simply asked him what he was doing and he made some silly remark about Bluebeard’s chamber. He means to keep his old secret, too, ‘cause he put the key on his keyring when he didn’t know I was watching him.”
“This is not the place for a rest cure,” her brother observed as he started to scrape and stack the dishes.
“First someone unknown leaves his handkerchief for a calling card and then Rupert goes Fu Manchu on us. To say nothing of the rugged and unfriendly son of the soil whom I found bumping around the garden where he had no business to be.”
“What was he like anyway?” asked his sister as she dipped soap flakes into the dish-water with a liberal hand.
“Oh, thin, and awfully brown. But not bad looking if it weren’t for his mouth and that scowl of his. And he very distinctly doesn’t like us. About my build, but quicker on his feet, tough looking. I wouldn’t care to try to stop him doing anything he wanted to do.”
“My dear, are you describing Clark Gable or someone you met in our garden this morning?” she demanded sweetly.
“Very well,” Val retorted huffily into the depths of the oatmeal pan he was wiping, “you catch him next time.”
“I will,” was her serene answer as she wrung out the dish-cloth.
They went on to the upstairs work and Val received his first lesson in the art of bed-making under his sister’s extremely critical tuition. It seemed that corners must be square and that dreadful things were likely to happen when wrinkles were not smoothed out. This exercise led them naturally to unpacking the remainder of the hand baggage and putting things away. It was after ten before Val came downstairs crab-fashion, wiping off each step behind him as he came with one of Ricky’s three dust-cloths.
He paused on the landing to pull back the tapestry curtain and open the windows above the alcove seat, letting in the freshness of the morning to rout some of the dank chill of the hall. Kneeling there, he watched Rupert come around the house. His brother had shed his coat and his sleeves were rolled up almost to his shoulders. There was a streak of black across his cheek and a large rip almost separated the collar from his shirt. Although he looked hot, cross, and tired, more like a day-laborer than a gentleman plantation owner whose ancestors had always “planted from the saddle,” his stride had a certain buoyancy which it had lacked the day before.
With an idea of escaping Ricky by joining his brother, Val hurried downstairs and headed kitchenward. But his sister was there before him looking over a collection of knives of various lengths.
“Preparing for a little murder or two?” Val asked casually.
She jumped and dropped a paring knife.
“Val, don’t do that! I wish you’d whistle or something while you’re walking around in those tennis shoes. 1 can’t hear you move. I’m looking for something to cut flowers with. There don’t seem to be any scissors except mine and I’m not going to use those.”
“Take that. Miss ‘Chanda.” A fat black hand motioned toward the paring knife.
Just within the kitchen door stood a wide, a very wide, black woman. Her neat print dress was stiff with starch from a recent washing, and round gold hoops swung proudly from her ears. Her black hair, straightened by main force of arm, had been set again in stiff, corrugated waves of extreme fashion, but her broad placid face was both kind and serene.
“I’m Lucy,” she stated, thoroughly at her ease. “An’ this,” she reached an arm behind her, pulling forth a girl at least ten shades lighter and thirty-five shades thinner, “is mah sistah’s onliest gal-chil’, Letty-Lou. Mak’ yo’ mannahs, Letty. Does yo’ wan’ Miss ‘Chanda to think yo’ is a know-nothin’ from th’ swamp?”
Thus sternly admonished, Letty-Lou ducked her head shyly and murmured something in a die-away voice.
“Letty-Lou,” announced her aunt, “has come to do fo’ yo’all, Miss ‘Chanda. I learned her how to do fo’ ladies. She is good at scrubbin’, cleanin’ an such. I done train’d hermahse’f.”
Letty-Lou looked at the floor and twisted her thin hands behind her back.
“But,” protested Ricky, “we’re not planning to have anyone do for us, Lucy.”
“That’s all right. Miss ‘Chanda. Yo’s not gittin’ a know-nothin’. Letty-Lou, she knows her work. She kin cook right good.”
“We can’t take her,” Val backed up Ricky. “You must understand, Lucy, that we don’t have much money and we can’t pay for—”