A 513360
THE TRAP
ELIZABETH JORDAN



7228L
828











THE TRAP


By ELIZABETH JORDAN
THE TRAP
THE LIFE OF THE PARTY
DADDY AND I
PAGE MR. POMEROY
THE BLUE CIRCLE
THE DEVIL AND THE DEEP SEA
THE FOUR-FLUSHER
MISS NOBODY FROM NOWHERE
THE NIGHT CLUB MYSTERY
PLAY-BOY
RED RIDING HOOD
YOUNG MR. X


Copyright, 1937, by
Elizabeth Jordan
All rights reserved. This book, or parts
thereof, must not be reproduced in any
form without permission of the publisher.
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA


Bernah
OF Butler
:23:14:9
THE TRAP


f


CHAPTER I
Fance was beginning to feel at home in Dr. Cunning-
ham's waiting-room. He had been there half a dozen
times. He knew the pattern of the rugs and the subjects
of the pictures. He even knew the tables of contents in the
stale magazines on the reading-table. He had also estab-
lished pleasant relations with Miss Rogers, the doctor's
nurse, who presided at a flat-top desk near the door lead-
ing to her employer's private office.
Miss Rogers was young and small and reasonably at-
tractive. She had a plain, likable little face and brilliantly
intelligent blue eyes. She had also a sense of humor, but
she was a bit of a martinet in her work. No charging ele-
phant could have got past her into the doctor's private
office unless it was expected there. Few charging elephants
would have made the attempt, after one look at her. At
first her manner to Vance had been almost as stiffly
starched as her white linen uniform, but he had changed
all that. He was a big, friendly young man, with a nice
face and an ingratiating smile. She had become quite cor-
dial, so cordial that now she was introducing him to an-
other patient—a pretty girl who had just emerged from
the inner office.
Vance had risen at her appearance and started forward,
thinking his appointment was the next on the calendar.
Miss Rogers had shaken her head at him and signaled in-


2
THE TRAP
stead to the other waiting patient. This was a highly tem-
peramental, middle-aged man who had passed most of his
waiting time feverishly looking at his watch. Now he shot
into the inner room with a celerity that created a little
breeze as he passed.
"He's in a hurry," Vance commented dispassionately.
"He ought to cultivate repose, as you and I do."
Miss Rogers smiled forgivingly. As if in deprecation of
Mr. Vance's disappointment, she presented him to Miss
Alida French, who had stopped on her way to the exit.
"Miss French lives in the same apartment hotel you
do," Miss Rogers said brightly. "I noticed the coincidence
when I looked over your cards."
Vance remembered Miss French. He had seen her sev-
eral times in the elevator of the building, and once before
in Cunningham's waiting-room. She had very striking
hair, copper-red in tone, and the greenish-gray eyes and
clear complexion usually associated with such hair. She
had an air of sophistication and assurance that was much
older than her face. He decided that she was about twenty-
three. If she remembered him she did not show it as they
acknowledged the introduction. He felt snubbed and dis-
appointed. Miss Rogers was chattily easing the first mo-
ments of the meeting.
"I'm sorry you have to wait longer, Mr. Vance," she
said sincerely. "You're the last patient of the afternoon. I
crowded you in when you telephoned this morning, be-
cause it was Dr. Cunningham's last day in the office. It
has been a terrible day for us all. He's sailing for Europe
at midnight, to be gone all summer. The house will be
closed and Phillips, his valet, and I have had to put it in
order this week, besides handling the rush of patients


4 THETRAP
reminiscences of numerous patients who had been ex-
tremely inconvenienced by the affliction, had not counted
the passing minutes. Miss Rogers, half her professional
mind still centered on final services for a helpless and
much-spoiled bachelor employer, was not so unconscious
of the march of time. She finally approached the door
opening into the private office and listened there for a
moment. Her face grew grave.
"Odd that the doctor is keeping Mr. Vance so long,"
she said half aloud.
As she spoke the door opened so suddenly that she was
almost bowled over by the big young man who swung
through it. He muttered an apology, but he did not look
at her. The nurse, however, had looked at him. She reached
behind him, closed the door into the inner room, which he
had left open, and spoke to him quietly.
"What's the matter?"
The question seemed to bring the young man back to
knowledge of his surroundings. He drew a quick breath,
shook his big shoulders, and smiled with stiff lips.
"Nothing," he said. To Miss French he now tossed a
curt apology. "Sorry to have kept you waiting."
But he made no move toward her. He continued to
stand still, looking around him with an expression of
uncertainty. With the calm efficiency of one used to odd
human manifestations Miss Rogers urged him into a chair,
and simultaneously opened a drawer of her desk. She took
out a bottle and a glass, poured a little of the liquid from
the bottle into the glass, and offered it to him.
"Drink that," she ordered. She added more humanly,
"You've had a jolt of some kind."


THETRAP 5
Vance drank the liquid. It did its benign work. He stood
up, with another shake of his shoulders.
"That's better," he said. "Thanks a lot. Ready, Miss
French?"
He had really remembered her at last. Alida French
shook her head.
"I don't think you ought to go just yet," she suggested.
"Shouldn't he rest longer, Miss Rogers?"
Miss Rogers nodded, watching Vance. Then she opened
the door, apparently with an impulse to speak to the doc-
tor. The inner office was empty. The physician had evi-
dently retreated through a rear door into his study. Miss
Rogers hesitated. Vance, master of himself again, read
her dilemma.
"All right now," he assured her. "Silly of me to act like
that. Ready, Miss French?" he repeated.
He crossed the room, picked up the hat and light spring
overcoat he had left on a chair, and gave the girl a dim
imitation of a care-free smile. She wavered, looking at him
uncertainly.
"I'm afraid you oughtn't to go out yet," she repeated.
"I need the air," he assured her. "Can you drive a car?"
"Yes."
"Good. So can I, though you may not think so after my
little exhibition just now. However, we'll put you behind
the wheel." This time his smile was a real one. She turned
to the nurse, who was watching them both.
"All right?" she asked.
"I think so. Especially if you're to drive. His color is a
lot better."
Vance held out his hand.


6
THE TRAP
"Good-by, Miss Rogers. Thanks awfully. I hope you'll
have a long vacation this summer."
The nurse responded to his change of voice and manner.
"Too long," she smiled. "All summer. I'm going to find
a lodge in some vast wilderness and dig myself in. I need
a rest almost as much as Dr. Cunningham does. We've
both been overworking, and he's as helpless as a baby when
it comes to doing anything for himself. He has had Phillips
and me dancing attendance on him for more than two
years. He's spoiled."
She was walking with them through the hall to the
front door of the house. There she checked Vance's reach
for the door knob.
"Going to be home to-night?" she asked Alida French.
"If you are, I might drop in about eight. You've traveled
a lot. I'd like awfully to have your advice about where to
go and what to do with all my leisure this summer."
Miss French nodded.
"I'll be glad to see you," she said. Vance laughed shortly.
"You might let me into the conference. I'm under orders
to rest this summer, too."
Miss French's charming face brightened.
"Then that's what upset you!" she said quickly. "All
your plans to be changed at the last minute. Work under
way dropped, and that sort of thing. No wonder you
looked like a stunned gladiator."
"Did I? I must learn not to show my emotions so
artlessly."
Side by side they walked down the steps of the brown-
stone house and out to the curb, where his roadster was
waiting.
"Do you still want me to drive?" the girl asked as they


THE TRAP 7
approached it. "I usually turn all corners on two wheels.
You mightn't like that."
"I think you'd feel safer than you would feel if you were
watching me turn 'em on one."
"Do you really do that? What a bond! I had a feeling
from the first that we were congenial."
She took the wheel of the roadster without further dis-
cussion. Vance was grateful. Most girls would have argued
the point for five minutes.
"Nice little car," she remarked as she started it. Vance
glanced at the face of his wrist-watch. It was almost six
o'clock.
"Look here," he said abruptly, "don't let's go home
right away. Be an angel of mercy. Have dinner with me
somewhere now that we're properly set. I feel as blue as the
devil," he added somberly.
She was sympathetic.
"I know. It gives one a shock to have all one's plans
changed without warning. I'll be glad to dine with you, if
you really want me to."
"I really do—most awfully. If the recording angel is
properly on his job he'll give you a full page for it."
"He won't. He'll know I haven't anything else to do
to-night. I must be back by eight, of course, when Miss
Rogers comes."
"We'll manage that." Vance resented Miss Rogers. Miss
Rogers had suddenly become a nuisance.
"How about dinner out of town?" he suggested, with-
out hope. She vetoed that at once, as he had expected.
"It's too early, for one thing," she objected. "The
charms of dining out-of-doors in early April have been
greatly exaggerated. All one gets from doing it is damp-


8
THE TRAP
ness or a nasty cold in the head. Let's go to some modest
place in town, where no one will notice that I've been wear-
ing this dress all day."
At the restaurant he had selected he smiled at her across
the table.
"This is where you get your reward," he told her. "The
cooking is unusually good. If you're dieting, as most girls
are, forget it. It would be inhuman cruelty, and very bad
manners, to spoil my dinner to-night by ordering reducing
food."
"I haven't had a really good meal for two weeks," she
confessed.
"And how much have you lost in that time?" he asked
sternly.
"About a pound and a half." She gurgled. She had a
delicious laugh. Under its influence he drew a quick breath,
like a swimmer coming to the surface after a long dive.
Her mouth was made for laughter, he now observed. The
corners turned up, like a happy child's.
"Ever heard of the Lord tempering the wind to the
shorn lamb?" he asked her. "Well, that's what He's doing
for me to-night. Let's celebrate fittingly. How about cock-
tails and a cream soup to begin, broiled squab-chicken and
new peas to go on with, sauterne cup, a fresh fruit salad
with heavy mayonnaise, a peche Melba, black coffee, and
apricot brandy?"
"The only things you have forgotten," she said thought-
fully, "are potatoes au gratin. I like them very much, and
of course I'm never supposed to touch them."
Vance laughed and added the potatoes to his order. He
was coming up out of a nightmare and the sensation was
wonderful. He looked around the gay little restaurant. It


THE TRAP 9
was already well rilled though the hour was so early. He
told himself to wipe the past hour off the slate.
"You and I have lived in the same building at least a
year," he reminded Alida. "I think it was last spring I
first heard the sound of sweet music as you came into our
hotel elevator. Ever since then I've been wishing I knew
you. Do you know anything about me?"
"All the elevator man knows," she confessed. "I asked
him. Aren't you writing a play or a book or something?"
"Nothing as slight as that. My work is serious. I'm an
architect by profession. But since New York stopped
building anything I've taken up another job." His voice
sank. "I write verse," he ended solemnly.
"You mean that you're a poet?"
"God forbid! Didn't I tell you my work was serious? I
write jokes and jingles and short shorts for humorous
weeklies. I also write greetings on cards-*-Christmas,
birthdays, Mother's Day, all that sort of thing. I didn't
know I could do it, but apparently I can. I think," he added
complacently, "I write about 40 per cent of the poetic drivel
published in this country."
"Do you sign it?"
"Good Lord, no. But people are beginning to recognize
my stuff. If some Christmas verses you read last December
have been echoing in the chambers of your heart ever
since, they're mine."
"All I read were simply appalling," she murmured.
"Then they're undoubtedly mine. But perhaps I ought to
confess at this point that greeting cards are merely an out-
let for my lower nature. My real job in life is, or was
until jobs stopped, dreaming of building cathedrals and
large public structures and superb homes. Sometimes,


THE TRAP
II
obsessed. He didn't even notice that her sole responses to
his monologue were occasional smiles, occasional brief
sentences.
To make sure of this she ceased to speak at all. Instead
she took him in, in more detail than she had done at first.
He was an upstanding, clever-looking chap, with brown
hair, gray eyes so dark that at moments they looked black,
and a peculiarly engaging boyish smile. This last she saw
only two or three times, and then it was clearly forced.
But she had seen it when they met in the waiting-room.
That time it had been natural. His young face—she de-
cided that he couldn't be more than twenty-five or twenty-
six—wore an expression wholly out of keeping with the
nonsense he chattered. He was very well dressed, with the
effect of carelessness that has to be so carefully studied.
Notwithstanding his robust assertions of interest in the
dinner, he was eating very little. The waiter, to whom he
seemed a familiar and valued patron, was disturbed by this.
He approached at intervals to utter a low tribute to some
neglected dish.
Alida ate her dinner absently, her thoughts on the man
before her. This morning she had known him only as a
fellow-tenant of their apartment hotel. To-night she was
dining with him, and experiencing this odd sense of
having known him long and well. Experiencing, too, a
poignant and puzzling pity for him; for with every mo-
ment her consciousness that he was in distress grew and
strengthened.
When the fruit salad had been served she straightened,
looked him in the eyes, and spoke very gently.
"Why don't you tell me about it?"
If he had pretended not to understand she would have
r


12
THE TRAP
been disappointed in him. His note was frankness. It
looked from his clear gray eyes. It enveloped him like an
aura. Why, then, was he presenting her with this ineffec-
tive camouflage of social lightness? Probably to keep up
his courage. He confirmed this impression by a nod.
"There is something that disturbs me. I'd like to tell
you about it," he said soberly. "I may later. Not now, if
you don't mind."
She returned the nod, and promptly launched into a
monologue. Her experiment of silence had turned out as
she had expected. He hadn't even noticed it. Now at last
he, too, had stopped talking. She took this as her cue to
divert his mind, and welcomed it. She had a problem of
her own. It was a rather interesting problem and, in a way,
an impersonal one. She would like his advice.
"You're thinking something out," she began. "So am I.
I've been up against my puzzle for weeks. In fact, it's what
has led to my little bout of insomnia. I never had insomnia
before. I haven't much of it now. But I think about this
maddening problem all day. Then at night I can't sleep. I
lie awake and keep on thinking about it. The more I think,"
she added in a lighter tone, "the less I'm able to make up
my mind. It's such a weird thing."
He was interested now. She saw that in his eyes and in
the quickened expression of his smooth young face. She
saw that he was also relieved. She realized that he would
have welcomed anything that for the moment, at least, took
his mind off his own affairs.
"Let's have it," he said almost eagerly. "Perhaps I can
help," he added more quietly. "I'd like to."
"Perhaps you can. And yet—" She looked at him
thoughtfully. "In a way, I suppose, no one can help me. In


THETRAP 13
the long run, I'll have to solve the situtation myself. I
might as well make up my mind to it in the beginning."
"Perhaps," he agreed. "Just the same, I'd like to hear
about it."
"It's a rather intimate confidence," she confessed. "But
I've often found that one can talk more intimately to some
strangers than to one's close friends."
"I've noticed that, too. One reason, I suppose—" for an
instant his smile flashed out at her—"is that we're not
afraid the stranger will prattle about it to our other
friends."
"That may be it," she laughed. "Anyway, there it is.
At first glance my problem seems simple. Like you, I'm in
a profession that is almost dead for the time. I'm a maga-
zine writer. My line is special features. The first two years
I wrote it paid very well, considering that I was a beginner.
But for the last two years the magazines seem to have
stopped buying anything except a little fiction. They've
got to have that. Their special features are written in their
offices by their staffs, who are only to glad to hold their
jobs by doing such work. Besides, every magazine started
the depression period with a big stock of accepted material
it had been holding over. They're all revamping and using
that. The point is, they're not buying much of my kind of
thing. I'm not earning more than a quarter as much as I
did at first."
Vance felt rather uncomfortable.
"I'll teach you to write jingles," he suggested with a
wan smile. "They really do pay, and it's easy to learn the
knack of tossing them off."
She laughed.
"Thanks. You really are a Good Samaritan. But that


14 THETRAP
sort of thing is altogether out of my line. I must stick to
my last. Or rather I must concentrate on a new last that's
ready and waiting for me. But—it has a lot of complica-
tions."
Vance attacked the peche Melba which had just been
placed before him.
"Go on, please," he urged. "I'm awfully interested."
"It's rather an interesting situation," his guest con-
tinued. "I own an old house in a village called Quinnet. It's
on the Massachusetts coast, not far from the Cape. It was
left me by an uncle, Amos French, who disappeared four-
teen years ago. No one knows what became of him, and
that's part of the story. After he had been gone fourteen
years he was legally declared dead, and his will was pro-
bated. . . . He had left the life use of the house to an
old cousin who had been his housekeeper for a quarter of
a century. When she died this winter it became my house.
Ever since then," the girl added darkly, "that house has
been planted in the foreground of my mind like a tangible
substance. It shuts out everything else/'
"I wouldn't mind having a house in the foreground of
my mind," Vance jested, "if it existed somewhere else, too,
and I owned it."
"You would mind having this one there," his companion
said somberly. "You see, at first glance, the legacy was
quite wonderful. It's a good house, built by my great-great-
grandfather, Captain Amos French, in 1798. They don't
build houses like it nowadays. It's big and comfortable.
Uncle Amos put in modern plumbing and modern heating.
The Frenches have always lived in it. It's very nicely
furnished. Uncle Amos added some good things. He was
a successful country lawyer, with a taste for old mahogany.


THE TRAP 15
It has about ten acres of ground stretching back in the
country-side and down to the sea. There's a vegetable gar-
den, a chicken run, a fine old barn made over into a garage,
and a charming old-fashioned flower garden. The house-
keeper had the temporary use of the small income that was
left with the house. She didn't spend any of it on repairs,
so the house has grown pretty shabby during her fourteen
years there. It needs paint and a good deal of carpentry.
Theoretically, I ought to go there this spring and put it into
condition, and live in it. I could almost live on the vege-
table garden, and the chickens and the cow—there's a cow,
too—and the little income. Almost—but not quite. What
I thought when I first got it was that I might take in a few
'paying guests,' as they're so elegantly called. I might take
them for the summer—just enough of them to meet my
expenses. Then, I could stay there winters or come to New
York and go on with my own game when conditions im-
prove."
"It sounds great," Vance commented. "What's the mat-
ter with it? I don't see any problem."
"You will. There's a catch. You'll laugh when I tell you
what the catch is, but it isn't really funny." She drew a
deep breath and brought out her climax. "The house is
haunted!"
"You're joking I" Vance stared at her.
"Don't I wish I were I" She sighed. "What I mean, of
course," she hurried on, "is that it has the reputation of
being haunted. The natives have a horror of it. Even the
housekeeper who had been there so long with Uncle Amos,
wouldn't live there alone after he disappeared. She paid a
country woman to live with her. So you see my position.
The income is much less now than it was when she first had


i6
THE TRAP
it. I can't afford to live in the house alone, even if I wanted
to. I certainly can't afford to keep a maid there, even if I
could get one who would stay. I can't rent rooms or take
'paying guests,' because no one would be willing to live
there. I can't sell the house, because no one will buy a house
with such a sinister reputation. Meantime, the taxes on the
property are eating it up. I want to go there this summer. I
ought to go at once. I can't afford to stay on in New York.
But—"
"It's a problem, all right," Vance admitted soberly. The
coffee came. He drew out his cigarette-case and offered it
to her. For a moment, as they lit their cigarettes, neither
spoke.
"What's the story?" Vance asked then. "Of course
there's a story attached to the house."
Miss French sent an effective smoke-ring through her
parted lips, and then sent a small one through the first. She
had recently acquired that accomplishment and was proud
of it.
"Oh, yes, there's a story," she gloomily admitted. "Sev-
eral members of my family who lived there have disap-
peared. The cheery theory is that those who disappeared
first have come back and lured later victims into the un-
known."
"What? I don't get you."
"They disappear," Alida repeated patiently. "One day
you see them. The next day you don't—and they're never
seen again. That sort of thing. And, of course, there are
tales of horrible sounds and shadowy shapes—"
"How many have disappeared?"
Vance was staring at his guest with frank curiosity.


THE TRAP 17
This was an amazing yarn, but he thanked Providence for
it. It was making him forget. . . .
"Only four in over a hundred years, as a matter of
official record," Alida was saying. "Hardly enough to make
all the fuss about it, one would think. But they all go in
the same way. They don't leave a trace or the slightest clue
behind them. The first victim was the original owner—
Captain Amos French. He built the house. You see," she
amplified, "it has been in my father's family from the be-
ginning. As I've said, the old Captain, as they call him,
my great-great-grandfather, was the first to disappear. He
was over seventy by that time. His wife had left for a visit
to Boston the day before he vanished. His two sons were
married and living in Boston. His housekeeper was off for
the night. He was alone in the house. He had put in a big
day, the last day any one saw him. When he came home
from his voyages he always liked to work around the
place. He was around the grounds that day. A neighbor
saw him going into the house through his kitchen door
about six o'clock. It was May and broad daylight. He was
never seen again."
"Amazing," Vance repeated. "Still, he could have—"
"Of course. That's what every one thought—that he
had simply cleared out—especially as his old wife was
rather shrewish. But his ship, the apple of his eye, was
right there in the harbor. He owned the ship himself. He'd
never have left her. Besides, he had a lot of interests in and
around Quinnet, and they were all left at loose ends. Also,
the house was exactly as it was when he had last entered it.
The housekeeper had left his supper on the kitchen table.
He had eaten it. His pipe and tobacco were found on the


i8
THE TRAP
table. His newspaper lay on the floor beside his chair. His
coat and cap hung on their usual pegs. None of his clothing
was missing except what he had on when he disappeared.
There was one rather ghastly little touch. I heard the story
so often from my father when I was a little girl," she in-
terpolated. "He had slipped off the heavy boots he had
worn around the place that day, and they lay beside his
chair. He had evidently put on his house slippers—for
they were missing."
She stopped and drew a deep breath.
"There was a great deal of excitement over his disap-
pearance," she went on. "You can imagine it. But there
was never any trace of him found. Then, about fifty years
later, his oldest grandson, my grandfather, the second
Amos, disappeared in exactly the same way. He, too, was
alone in the house at the time. He, too, vanished suddenly
early one spring evening. That was too much for the na-
tives—especially as there had been tales of howls and
wails and ghosts around the house. The second victim's
wife, my grandmother, Alida French (I'm named for
her), boarded up the house after a few months and took
her two sons, my father and Uncle Amos, his older brother,
to Europe. When they came back they lived at Avalon.
All the Frenches had adored the place. Grandmother and
Amos and Father lived there peacefully till Father mar-
ried and moved to New York. Grandmother died soon af-
ter that, and Amos lived there alone, with Mrs. Quimby to
look after him. The mystery of Avalon was almost for-
gotten till fourteen years ago, when Uncle Amos disap-
peared. That revived all the excitement and the ghost-
stories."
"I never listened to a more extraordinary yarn," Vance


THETRAP 19
murmured. "But now I remember that I heard something
about that disappearance fourteen years ago. I was a cub
of eleven then, and it thrilled me."
"The newspapers were full of it," Alida said wearily.
"The strangest thing about Uncle Amos's disappearance
was that some one else vanished with him," she went on.
"The second victim was Amasa Tarwell, a Boston broker,
a pal of my uncle, who had come to spend the week-end
with him. The night he arrived, the two men went into the
ground-floor study after supper for a talk. At about ten
o'clock Uncle Amos rang for Mrs. Quimby, the house-
keeper, and ordered whiskey and hot water and lemons. It
was a terribly cold and stormy night. There was a regular
blizzard going on. Mrs. Quimby brought what they or-
dered. Then she left for a friend's cottage across the
fields, where she always spent her nights in deference to
the high moral standards of the village. She had a helper,
Comfort Folger, who also slept at home. You see, Uncle
Amos was a bachelor. Mrs. Quimby had a hard time get-
ting to her friend's house through the storm, and she got
very wet. The next day she had to stay in bed with a bad
cold. No one ever saw Uncle Amos or his Boston chum
again. When Mrs. Quimby returned to the house the sec-
ond day after the blizzard she found the whiskey bottle
and empty glasses on the table, but the two men had van-
ished into thin air. Nothing has ever been seen or heard
of them since."
"I'll say this stuff is creepy," Vance admitted with a
shiver. "No signs of murder? No blood, no stains, no new-
made graves under the barn or in the cellar? No charred
bodies in the furnace?"
"Nothing of the sort, anywhere. The house and grounds


THE TRAP
were turned inside out, of course. There was another odd
thing. The hats and overcoats of both men were still hang-
ing in the front hall. They couldn't possibly have gone out
without them, that wild night."
There was a long silence—a depressed one on the part
of the girl, a thoughtful and deeply puzzled one on the
part of the young man. Vance did not know what to say.
Neither did he know what to think or what to do, or how
much of this incredible tale to believe. He smoked steadily,
following the safe rule of preserving silence when one
does not know how to break it.
"So now you see my problem," Alida brought out at
last. "No one will buy or rent the house, even if I put it in
good condition, as Caleb Haven, my Quinnet lawyer, ad-
vises me to do. No one will board in it or lodge there, if
I take it on. I certainly wouldn't want to live alone in it
myself. Yet I think I've got to do just that, and muddle
through some way. What else can I do?" she repeated
darkly. "I can't stay in New York this summer."
"What you've really got to do," Vance advised with
sudden animation, "is to lay those ghosts. You've got to
find out what's back of all this. What's it all about? Your
house is being slandered. You've got to clear its reputa-
tion. There must be some explanation. Probably it's a
simple one."
Alida shook her head.
"Lots of people have had that idea, including plenty of
Frenches. There are family records, stories of innumerable
efforts and investigations. Uncle Amos never made any
investigations. Apparently he never gave those disap-
pearances a thought. You see, there had been only two
of them, almost fifty years apart. For almost fifty years


THE TRAP
21
nothing had happened. Even the talk about shrieks and
howls had died down. After Uncle Amos disappeared, Mrs.
Quimby, the housekeeper, lived there. As I've said, she al-
ways had Comfort Folger with her. They both slept in the
house then but neither woman would stay there alone at
night. The stories about shrieks and ghosts started up
again and got worse and worse. The neighbors wouldn't
cross the threshold of the house. It has a really frightful
reputation now."
The raconteuse stopped abruptly.
"I'm talking too much," she admitted. "That's because
I've had another letter to-day from Mr. Haven. He was
Uncle Amos's friend and partner. He's looking after the
estate. He came to New York after Mrs. Quimby's death
in January. He told me the latest ghost developments. He
says the house is going to rack and ruin and that I simply
must do something about it. I'm trying to make up my
mind to go up there and have the necessary work done and
then make a desperate effort to sell the place. Or perhaps I'll
like it enough to stay there this summer if I can manage it.
I used to visit it when I was a little girl, and I loved it. I'd
like to have a house of my own, and a garden, and chickens.
I keep reminding myself that the family had long periods
of peace there."
She broke off. "Now it's your turn to talk," she added
contritely. "Tell me your problem."
"I haven't much to decide about that," he said almost
abruptly. It was clear that his thoughts were still on her
story.
"You said you would tell me."
"I'll tell you what happened in the doctor's office, but
I'd rather not do it here. May I come home with you and


CHAPTER II
jFt became clear that they had dawdled over their dinner.
When they entered Miss French's modest three-room flat
in the apartment hotel, Lucy Rogers was already there.
She wore her sternest professional expression, which
dropped like a discarded veil as she recognized Alida's
companion.
"Now this is nice," she cried warmly. To his surprise
she again shook hands with Vance. "I wanted especially to
see you to-night," she told him. "I had made up my mind
to call on you, if you were home."
"Don't you realize how unmaidenly that would have
been?" Alida asked severely.
Miss Rogers smiled and accepted the cigarette Vance
was offering her.
"That thought never entered my mind. Besides, it
would have been a professional call."
"Really?"
Vance was uncomfortable again. He resented the sym-
pathy in the nurse's eyes, the friendliness of her manner.
He understood both. The creature knew what had hap-
pened in that consulting-room three hours ago. The doctor
must have told her, or she had consulted Vance's case-card.
Now she wanted to pity him—and pity was the one thing
for which this young man had never had either desire or
use. He met her softened gaze with grim unresponse.
"I'm awfully glad you two did this," she was saying.
23


24 THETRAP
"I hoped perhaps you would. So much better, you know—"
Vance scowled. She broke off suddenly, conscious that
she was being tactless and unprofessional. She had as-
sumed that he had confided in Miss French. He was mak-
ing it clear that he had done nothing of the sort. Alida
observed her confusion and suspected the cause.
"Mr. Vance is bored to death," she explained as they
settled down to their cigarettes before the open fire that
was the hostess's greatest extravagance. "I've been talking
to him two hundred words to the minute. I've been telling
him the story of my old house near Quinnet. You know—
the story I told you last week. Now it's his turn to talk.
Let's put our feet on the fender and listen to him. You
will be a discordant element, Miss Rogers, because you
haven't any problems. Mr. Vance and I have. We're getting
arrogant about them."
"I have too a problem," Lucy Rogers declared indig-
nantly, "I came here to-night because I had a problem. I
told you so. I want your advice about where I'm to go this
summer."
Alida shook her head at her.
"You haven't any problem," she said pityingly. "While
I was talking to Mr. Vance at dinner the answer to the
little problem you thought you had this afternoon swam
right into my mind. You're at loose ends. You say so.
You've got to go somewhere. You don't care much where
you go. All right. You're coming to Avalon. You need an
inexpensive shelter. You said that, too. I need a friend
with me. All right again. There we are. Come to Avalon
by the sea. You can pay for the food you eat, if you want
to. You won't have any other expense. It's all very simple.
So where's your problem now?"


THE TRAP
25
"I thought the name of your nearest town was Quinnet,"
Vance broke in. He thought Miss French's plan was great.
He was immensely relieved by the drift of the topic away
from himself. But he saw that Miss Rogers was a bit over-
whelmed by her hostess's suggestion. She needed time to
think it over. He would gain that time for her by bringing
up a side issue.
"It is Quinnet. The house is called Avalon. It was named
by my grandfather. He had a leaning toward poetry, and
the Idylls of the King were coming out in his day. You
know—“The Island Valley of Avalon, where falls not
rain nor hail nor any snow, nor ever wind blows loudly.' I
suppose he thought those lines could describe a country
home as well as a valley,” Alida went on. "Or perhaps he
meant the name as a warning to ghosts."
Vance smiled appreciatively. Miss French had caught
on. She was amazingly quick in the uptake—he had ob-
served that several times this evening. His admiration for
her deepened. He glanced at Miss Rogers. She was look-
ing thoughtful, but not enthusiastic. She was making it
clear that she was not a person to be swept off her feet. Just
the same she was the sort who, if she became a convert,
would be a zealous one.
"My dog, Cocktail, hasn't had his dinner yet, and he's
been alone all afternoon," Vance told the two girls. "I'll
go down to my quarters now and feed him. Then I'll come
back-if you'll let me.”
He was delighted with this inspiration. The girls could
settle their summer plans in his absence, and perhaps Miss
Rogers would be gone when he got back. He'd give her a
full half-hour. Perhaps, too—this thought came on the
heels of that fervent hope and was exactly as fervent-


26
THE TRAP
perhaps the nurse would tell Miss French about his jolt
that afternoon. If she did, he wouldn't have to. On the
other hand, she might be restrained by professional ethics
from betrayal of a patient's secrets. He must do something
about that.
Again Alida was playing up. One could count on that
girl every time.
"Bring the dog back with you, if you want to," she was
saying. "He must be lonesome. I like dogs—especially
when they're sleeping quietly in front of the fire."
Vance thanked her and turned to the nurse.
"Tell her, please," he said curtly. He caught a nod of
understanding as he turned away.
"Tell me what?" Alida demanded as the door closed
behind him. Lucy Rogers detached her mind from Avalon,
on which it had been centered, and took up her commission
with avidity. She was a humane person, but she was not
above experiencing the vicarious thrill that lies in tossing
bombshells at one's hearers. She made her bombshell
effective by hurling it with vigor and precision.
"I'm afraid Mr. Vance got something like his death
warrant in our office to-day. Dr. Cunningham thinks he
can't live more than a year or so. Ordinarily he wouldn't
tell a patient that. But lately his work has been getting on
his nerves. I'm pretty sure Mr. Vance caught on. You saw
how he looked when he came out of the doctor's office."
"Good heavens!" Alida's charming features stiffened
under the shock of the statement. "What's the matter with
him?" she added in a quieter tone.
"Heart—angina. Every one seems to be having more or
less heart trouble just now," the nurse went on. "But we


THETRAP 27
don't often find a fatal development in a splendid young
giant like Mr. Vance."
"Hadn't he—known about it?"
Alida's voice had dropped almost to a whisper. She was
trying to take in this incredible news, and to reconcile it
with Vance's manner during the past three hours. She had
known that he was disturbed, even panicky. But this. . . .
"Of course. He's been under the doctor's treatment for
weeks. He thought it was merely a temporary condition.
Evidently Dr. Cunningham didn't let him know the truth
till to-day."
"Then you mean that he blurted it out—just like that?
Oh, how could he be so cruel?"
"I suppose he thought he had to." Lucy Rogers, who
herself had been somewhat stunned by her chief's action,
hastened loyally to his defense. "You see, he's sailing to-
night. He's to be in Europe four or five months. He had to
put Mr. Vance into other hands. He had to make sure that
he understood the condition and would continue the treat-
ment. Perhaps his life can be prolonged. However, he may
go at any time, in an acute attack."
"That's simply ghastly." Alida's voice was now a whis-
per. It was as if she could not bring out the words. "That
stunning young fellow! I can't tell you how it depresses
me. There he sat, at dinner, watching me eat and listening
to my prattle—when he wasn't talking nonsense himself.
Of course I knew something was all wrong. I had no idea
it was anything like this—"
"It was wonderful that you were there to help him
through the first shock," Lucy mused aloud. "But that
sort of thing often happens. It's as if Providence gave us


28
THE TRAP
poor wretches a prop when we most need it. I've seen the
same sort of thing work out a dozen times."
She developed this theory. Alida sat silent, listening with
half an ear, following the other's points with half her
brain. She was going over those two hours at the dinner-
table. She recalled the sudden silences of her companion—
the tense moments in which, no doubt, he had felt the bony
hand of death on his shoulder and turned to meet its
fleshless grin. . . . Suddenly she buried her face in her
hands.
"It's too horrible! How can we talk to him when he
comes back ? What can we say to him?" *»
"Only the obvious things," the nurse admitted. "I don't
think he wants to talk about it. Just the same, it will be
better for him if he does, a little. I'm not above telling a
few husky lies if they will help him. In fact, I was going
to see him to-night, for just that purpose. I wanted to brace
him up. Dr. Cunningham must have been pretty abrupt—
That wasn't like him, either," she broke off to explain. "But
he's been on the edge of his nerves for a long time. He's
been half sick lately over the number of men he's had to
give their death notices to. Pull yourself together," she
added quickly, as a tap fell on the door. "Don't let him
see those tears in your eyes."
But Vance saw traces of them, and felt his unreliable
heart contract at the sight of them.
"Here's Cocktail," he said brusquely. For five minutes,
while the dog went through his sedate paces and the two
girls admired him, the talk was general. Cocktail—a
superb English setter—offered a paw to his new acquaint-
ances, and made -a dignified circuit of the strange room.
Then he selected a comfortable spot before the fire, near


THETRAP 29
the feet of his master, lay down, and went to sleep. A
short silence fell over the three who had been watching
him.
"Have you made all your summer plans?" Vance asked
lightly.
"We haven't even mentioned them."
"They're awfully good ones." Vance held to this safe
topic as a dog to a bone. "To the innocent bystander they
would seem to settle things for you both."
"It's good of Miss French to ask me," Lucy Rogers said
primly, "but, well, I'll have to give the matter a lot of
thought before I decide. I don't believe in ghosts, but
there's certainly something unpleasant in or around that
house. Those four people didn't dissolve into thin air.
They weren't all Frenches, either. One was an innocent
bystander. I'm not sure I'd have a restful summer there."
"You would have the fun of trying to get to the bottom
of whatever the unpleasant thing is," Vance reminded her.
"That would be something worth doing."
"I'm no good at that sort of thing—at least I'm pretty
sure I wouldn't be. I've never tried it—"
The nurse stopped short and stared at him. "Why don't
you come with us, if we go?" she asked quickly. "Dr.
Cunningham told me he ordered you out of town for the
summer. You could be of some use at Avalon. You could
help. For, of course, we'll pay fair rates for our rooms and
board."
Vance stared back at her, wide-eyed. There was a long
moment of silence.
"For one reason," he said at last, "our hostess hasn't
asked me. For another, I haven't had time to make any
plans of any kind."


30 THETRAP
"You're not staying in New York, are you?" Miss
Rogers asked briskly.
"No, but—"
"There's nothing else you especially want to do, I
take it?"
"No, but—"
"Then why don't you go in with us? You and I are
homeless. Miss French has a home—a nice old New Eng-
land house and grounds near the ocean, complete with
ghosts. What could be better for you? She thought of
taking some 'paying guests.' Well, here are two who aren't
to be frightened off by gossip or spooks. Why don't we
go up there with her as her first boarders."
Vance looked at Alida. Her eyes were shining.
"That would be simply wonderful for me," she mur-
mured. "It would solve the whole problem. But—I'm not
at all sure you two would get what you ought to have out
of it. You might be horribly uncomfortable."
Vance laughed grimly.
"I hate to introduce convention into this Arcadian
atmosphere," he said. "But do you two really imagine we
three could go to New England and live in that house
together this summer without starting a scandal that
would sweep the whole Massachusetts coast line?"
Alida's eyes clouded.
"I hadn't thought of that," she admitted. She added
hastily, "Of course I would have thought of it I"
"I hope you would," Vance said sedately, and grinned
at Lucy Rogers. She flushed.
"The reason I seemed so artless," she said coldly, "is
that I'm a married woman. I keep my job and use my
maiden name because my husband, Dr. Eugene Benedict,


THE TRAP 31
is in his first year of private practice. You know what that
means. He's having an awful struggle. In other words, he's
hardly earning a cent." She drew up her trim figure. "But
I am Mrs. Eugene Benedict, even if my husband can't
support me. I can use my married name this summer, and
chaperon you two perfectly well. So there!"
Vance laughed, and she turned to him again.
"Think what the plan might do for you," she said
eagerly. "Sea air, country life, a nurse in the house—"
She, who had been lukewarm when the proposition was
made to her, was suddenly the ardent convert. She seemed
to have forgotten her earlier statement that she must think
the project over. To her it now seemed settled. But she had
struck a false note in her final argument. The young man's
face darkened.
"I see you've been talking me over," he said crisply.
"That's all right. You were bound to know my condition,
and I meant to tell Miss French about it because she's been
such a trump to-night. But now I'm going to make one
thing clear to you both. I hope you won't object to my
plain speaking."
His voice softened and his hot eyes cooled.
"Don't look so guilty," he smiled. "All I want to say
is that I'm not going to be treated or petted or pampered.
I'm not going to be an invalid. I'm not going to talk about
my case. In fact, this is my last word on the subject. If
Miss French really invites me to Avalon as a 'paying guest,'
I may go. I haven't decided. If I do it will be on the express
condition that from start to finish of the experiment not
one word more is said about my health, either to me, or
about me, or behind my back. That's the only decision I
have made, and I made it before I was out of the doctor's


32 THETRAP
house. I thought I'd have to go away among strangers to
keep it. Perhaps I won't—if you two have enough tact to
cooperate with me. I understand that I'll be able to wobble
around, probably to the finish, and that probably the
finish will come suddenly. I oughtn't to be much trouble.
I've been thinking while I talked, and there's just one
question in my mind. If you two can answer it satisfacto-
rily, and if you really want me to go to Avalon, I'll go.
Frankly it would be a God-send to me to have a new
interest. I'd like to get to the bottom of the mystery up
there. It would give me something to think about. I could
do my writing there, too. But I'll only go on my own
terms."
"What is that one question, Mr. Vance?"
Alida asked her question so quietly that Vance flushed,
suddenly made self-conscious by the contrast between her
calm and his own mounting excitement. He pulled himself
together to answer her.
"It's merely this," he said. "Could you two wipe the
last four hours out of your memories? Could you forget
what Cunningham told me?"
"We could pretend to," Alida said slowly. "Even if
we couldn't really forget, we could keep from showing
that we couldn't."
"Then that's all right."
Vance glanced at the nurse. She had been looking
thoughtful. Now she spoke at once.
"You may have attacks," she said in her coolest pro-
fessional manner. "You're very apt to have them. Your
life will depend on being helped through them. The remedy
for them is simple and it works quickly. Each of us will
■


THETRAP 33
have to have that remedy with us and use it when it is
needed. We won't talk at the time. We won't refer to it
afterwards. But no power on earth," she added incisively,
"will keep me from helping you through those attacks, if
I'm near enough to do it. Alida French will have to do it,
too—or she will never forgive herself."
Vance hesitated.
"I've had some of those attacks. Will they become more
frequent?" he asked in a low voice.
"Not necessarily. There may be only a few during the
whole summer. But—the point is—we must be ready for
them."
"And forget them entirely the rest of the time?" Vance
persisted. "Not look at me anxiously or sympathetically!
I'm telling you frankly that to me the turn of the screw
would be to have any one fussing over me. What I ought
to do—and I know it—is to go away and live among
strangers."
"The first attack you had among them would give the
whole situation away to the strangers," the nurse calmly
pointed out.
"I suppose so," Vance admitted. "But, of course, I could
always get out and find more strangers. I'll hustle to the
ends of the earth before I'll stay among people that want
to nurse me and feel sorry for me. My God, what real
difference does it make," he added with sudden violence,
"whether I die now or fifty years from now?"
"Haven't you any family that will feel it?" the nurse
asked.
"Only two brothers—one in Oregon, the other in Cali-
fornia. They'll be a bit shocked when the end comes, but


34 THE TRAP
they'll get over it. If I wanted nursing and fussing over, I
could go to either of them. They both have nice wives. But
that would be plain hell for me."
"We'll try to forget all about your health, Mr. Vance.
We'll begin it from this moment." Alida spoke so quietly
that peace seemed to settle over the room with her words.
Vance drew a deep breath.
"Then that's all right," he repeated. "By Jove, but you
two are good to me! There's nothing I'd rather do than
go to Avalon, under the conditions we've agreed to. I'm
going to have a lot of fun there."
"So am I," said Lucy. "But I suppose it's about time I
mentioned that we'll have a fourth paying guest. My
husband isn't earning his rent this spring. It's understood,
of course, that he goes where I go, and does what I do."
"And promises what you promise?" Vance asked sus-
piciously.
"And promises what I promise," Lucy agreed. "You
will both like him," she added with conviction. "He's
worth while."
"There's another small point we seem to be overlook-
ing," she added more self-consciously. "I don't think any
of us has really lost sight of it. It goes without saying that
we all exchange credentials. Impressions and knowledge of
human nature are all very well. I don't think ours are
misleading us. Just the same, when there's a project under
way that will send us to a strange place and keep us together
there for months, I'm all for starting it properly."
"Right you are," Vance said warmly, and Alida nodded.
"Assuming that the credentials are all they should be,"
she said lightly, "it's a matter of On to Avalon I"
Vance and Lucy Rogers had grown serious. To both,


THETRAP 35
this suddenly seemed a serious moment. Soberly they re-
peated the slogan Alida had uttered.
"On to Avalon," they said.
Alida, too, had sobered. Now a slow chill ran the length
of her spine. Was she justified in taking this trustful pair
of strangers into the sinister atmosphere of her tragic
house? For they were strangers, even though she felt such
a sense of close comradeship with them. Miss Rogers she
had known only two months. Vance she had known some-
thing about for a year. The same roof had sheltered them.
But after all. . . .
Still, they would exchange those credentials Lucy had
mentioned, and those credentials would be the corner-
stone of their bargain. She set her teeth.
"On to Avalon!" she told her quivering nerves.


CHAPTER III
!Zhe three partners in a new enterprise looked at one
another self-consciously. Alida, who had felt very much
like an innocent bystander during the dialogue between
Vance and the nurse, suddenly decided to underline her
position in the triumvirate.
"Of course you both understand that all this doesn't
commit you to anything definite," she told them. "If you
have a sober second thought to-night, tell me about it in
the morning. That will let you off. In fact, I'd rather you
slept on the matter."
Lucy gave her a quick look.
"Does this mean that you're not very keen on the project
yourself?"
"No, it doesn't. It means that I know we have all acted
impulsively. The plan is great for me, of course. I've
practically got to go to Avalon. To have you both with me
would make all the difference. But you haven't got to go.
You might have a devil of a time if you did go. You might
regret it most awfully. I'd hate that. I'm trying to make it
clear that I'm not holding you to your altruism, if this is
altruism."
"Why should it be altruism?" Lucy asked calmly. Alida
flushed.
"There's no reason," she admitted. "That was a stupid
way to put it. I merely want to make it plain that if either
or both of you decide you don't want to go, all you need do
36


THE TRAP

is to say so. If you do go, and are sorry you went, you
needn't stay. You can get out at a day's notice—or an
hour's. I owe it to myself to make that clear."
"There's another thing you owe to yourself," Vance
casually pointed out. "You're no more bound than we are.
If, by chance, the charms of Miss Rogers and Dr. Benedict
and my own charms pall on you, or if for any other reason
you decide that you'd rather be alone at Avalon, all you
have to do is to pack us off—and no hard feelings. That's
understood, isn't it, Miss Rogers?"
"Of course it is." Lucy spoke almost crossly. "I suppose
what this all means," she went on, "is that neither of you
is quite comfortable about Dr. Benedict. You don't know
him, so you're not sure what you're letting yourselves in
"Not a bit of it," Alida protested. "Who am I to object
to as many reputable boarders as I can get? I never heard
that the landlady of a summer boarding-house demanded
personal charm from every guest, besides the usual cre-
dentials and check-books."
"Gene—Dr. Benedict, I mean, is no Apollo Belvedere."
Miss Rogers had recovered her good-humor as suddenly
as she had lost it. "On the other hand," she went on, "he
doesn't hurt the eyes, either, as you seem to think he may
do. He's a wholesome, lusty boy of twenty-seven. He's
pretty temperamental—exuberant at times, and in the
depths at other times. But life is taking some of that out
of him. I don't think you'll notice it much this summer.
He's beginning to discover that a doctor can't afford to
indulge all his moods. He has good nerves, so he won't
mind your ghosts; and he's a willing worker, so he can
team up with Mr. Vance in milking the kine and taking
for."


38 THE TRAP
care of your chickens. That sort of thing will be fine exer-
cise for them both. I expect to help around the house my-
self. Which reminds me that we'd better get down to brass
tacks. What are you going to charge us?"
Alida shook her head at her.
"No delicacy," she sighed. "No finesse. That subject
ought to be approached with rubbers on."
"I don't agree," Vance broke in. "I think with Miss
Rogers that it ought to be settled right now. I want a big
room with a working-table in it. A sizable kitchen-table
with a drawer will do. I want two big windows in the
room, preferably looking over the sea. How much am I
asked for that?"
He looked at Alida, who stared back dazedly.
"I haven't the faintest idea," she stammered. "What
do you think, Miss Rogers?"
"I think we should each pay from twelve to fifteen
dollars a week," Lucy ruled. "That's all Gene and I can
pay. We'll make it twenty-five a week for the two of us,
and share a double room—with two beds. If Mr. Vance
means to wallow in the luxury of a big room to himself,
with a sea view, he ought to pay at least fifteen dollars a
week for it. That would give you an income of forty
dollars a week from the three of us. I warn you right now
that Gene's appetite will appall you. He's capable of eating
four eggs for breakfast, if you let him. On the other hand,
as long as he has enough he doesn't care what it is. Give him
a huge bowl full of milk and cereal for breakfast and a
pot of good coffee, and he'll be happy. I'm no winged
spirit myself, when it comes to eating, but I take what I
get. Neither Gene nor I goes in for diet fads."
"Thank God for that," Alida murmured. She was feel-


THE TRAP
39
ing, and looking, rather overwhelmed. Vance grinned at
her sympathetically.
"No diet fads here, either," he said sweetly. "A simple
New England breakfast for me—ham and eggs, pancakes,
doughnuts, pie, and coffee. For lunch merely two slices of
ham, half a dozen baked potatoes and two kinds of pie.
Thick soup, thick steak, or roast beef, with three or four
fresh vegetables, and a couple of pies for dessert will do
for dinner. I ask no more."
"It's well you don't," Lucy muttered tartly. "Now be
serious for a moment. Let's settle the business proposition.
How does my suggestion strike you, Miss French? It's
understood, of course, that the two men will probably re-
paint your house and build new walks and new fences.
Give Gene a pair of overalls and a pot of paint and he'll
surprise you."
"Something tells me that Gene and I are not going to
be as congenial as I had hoped," Vance groaned. "But I'm
willing to stand below and encourage him while he's put-
ting on a new roof. What I'm planning," he added serenely,
"is to devote all my time to the ghosts. I'm going to trace
them to their lairs and lay them out flat."
"We'll ask Gene whether that's his idea of cooperation.
He's waiting for me down in the hall right now," Lucy
added lightly. "I promised him I wouldn't be up here more
than half an hour. He's already waited fifty-five minutes.
It's a wonder he hasn't telephoned. How about having him
up and looking him over? But first," she repeated urgently,
"let's settle the business matter. If we don't I'm afraid
Gene will offer you more. We can't afford to pay any more.
How about it?"
"Forty dollars a week will be fine," Alida said vaguely.


40 THE TRAP
"Probably it's too much. I don't know anything about it.
It seems as if I ought to be able to feed you on it, and pay
a cook if I can get one. Perhaps you will help me to man-
age."
"I'll do more than that," Lucy promised. "We'll have
to have a hefty village maiden for the heavy work, of
course. I'll teach her to cook, if she doesn't know how. I
do," she ended complacently.
"Heaven is certainly your home," Alida murmured.
"How about you, Mr. Vance? Will fifteen a week—"
"Suit me perfectly?" Vance interrupted. "It will—and
I'll drive you all up to Avalon in my roadster. It has a
rumble seat. We'll take turns using that. Then we'll have
the roadster all summer. That will be convenient."
He felt uncomfortable during this business discussion.
Perhaps Miss French was getting the worst of it. He was
as ignorant of prices as she was.
"It will," Lucy agreed. "We all drive, so I think you can
count on having your car pretty thoroughly worn out by
fall. That will make you feel better."
Vance smiled self-consciously. She saw through him,
then. So, no doubt, did Miss French. Girls always saw
through one. He got up.
"Is Benedict waiting in the lower hall?" he asked. "Sup-
pose I go and pluck him like a flower and bring him up
here? You can interview him by that open window," he
told Alida. "If he won't do, I'll drop him out when Miss
Rogers isn't looking."
Suddenly his spirits were soaring. It was wonderful to
be making plans, to be a part of a congenial group, headed
for an adventure. He had actually almost forgotten that
infernal doctor. He now remembered him, in connection


THE TRAP 41
with men who had lived a hundred years with heart disease.
In fact he had once been told that the way to live a hundred
years was to have a punk heart. One coddled oneself then,
and lived forever . . . not that he meant to coddle or to
live forever. Still, life suddenly seemed pleasant. . . .
Miss Rogers was describing Benedict.
"I understand," Vance told her, "I'm to look for a six-
foot Clark Gable. Music of the spheres will lead me to
him. As I approach I'll see his brain bulge. Will he let me
ride back in the elevator with him?"
He descended in the lift and glanced about the lobby.
There were only three persons in it—the man in charge of
the news-stand, another man buying an evening newspaper,
and a glum young man who was seated near the news-
stand in the shade of a rubber tree. He looked as if he had
been waiting there since the beginning of time, and was
fed up with the occupation. Vance decided that this was
the way Dr. Eugene Benedict would be looking. He ap-
proached the glum young man.
"I'm ordered to kidnap you," he blithely announced.
"Eh?"
The glum young man's gloom did not lift. It merely
took on a layer of surprise and intense disapproval of
this stranger.
"Miss Rogers and Miss French would like you to come
up to Miss French's apartment," Vance explained stiffly.
His sense of well-being had departed. He had decided on
the instant that he disliked this young man. The young
man gazed remotely past his features.
"A charming invitation," he said. "But I don't happen
to know the ladies."
Vance stared.


42 THE TRAP
"Then you're not Dr. Benedict—" he stammered.
"No, but I am—" The grinning stranger who had been
buying a newspaper had joined them. "I gather that Miss
Rogers has remembered my existence," he continued. "It's
exactly sixty minutes since she went up to the third floor
to get an address from Miss French. She seemed in a
hurry. She said she had something she wanted to talk to
me about right away. I've been waiting on the edge of my
chair ever since, with one foot well forward for a spring."
Vance apologized to the young man beside the rubber
plant. The young man smiled wanly and swallowed a few
words in response. Vance grasped Dr. Benedict's arm and
led him firmly toward the front entrance of the hotel. On
the way Benedict asked a casual question.
"Are you going out into the highways and byways to
gather in some wedding guests, or something of that
sort?"
Vance stopped, looked around him, and laughed shortly.
"Sorry," he apologized. "I was rather bowled over by
that automaton in the corner. He seemed to think I was a
gangster. I've had a good deal to think about to-night,"
he added, as they swung back toward the elevator. "Miss
Rogers and Miss French are shaping our future lives for
us—yours and mine. They've got them pretty well set."
Benedict looked apprehensive.
"Lucy can do that and be giving the best part of her
brain to something else at the same time. She's a masterful
woman. I should think, though, that settling the little
details of my life might be enough for her just now. What's
she doing to yours?"
"You'll be surprised," Vance told him. He returned the
other man's understanding grin. He liked Benedict, and


THE TRAP
43
had an odd impression that he had known him a long time.
He had felt that way about the two girls. He wondered
passingly and vaguely if this sort of thing was the result
of his undercurrent of nerve tension.
"I'll admit that when it comes to planning lives Lucy
can put circles all around me," Benedict said as they left
the elevator. "All I've done is to prove to the satisfaction
of all observers that I can't do much with my own."
His smile faded and there was genuine depression in his
keen young face.
Vance liked that face. It was dark, smooth-shaven, and
very clever. Vance decided that he wouldn't mind having
Benedict in his sick-room if he were ill. To him this was
the first test of a doctor. The fellow inspired confidence. He
was a sizable chap, too, not as tall as Vance by two inches
but at least five feet ten and with no unnecessary flesh on
his powerful young body. Yes, a good chap to have at
hand in an emergency. Vance smiled inwardly, wondering
what Benedict would make of the stories of ghosts and
vanishings at Avalon. Then he replied to Benedict's pes-
simistic outburst.
"Aren't most of us doing that sort of thing these days?"
He asked the question even as he was tapping at Alida
French's door. Benedict ignored it. The doctor was cross-
ing the threshold, was smiling forgivingly at Lucy, was
acknowledging with sudden seriousness his introduction
to Miss French. His brown eyes raced from face to face
in the little group. Lucy Benedict, he reflected, was putting
something over. These two strangers—whose looks and
manners he liked—seemed satisfied but rather sobered by
whatever she had done. He dropped into the chair Alida
offered him before the fire and simultaneously dropped


44 THETRAP
worry from his mind. This seemed a nice bunch, what-
ever it was up to, and the cigarette he had just accepted
was a good one. Vance broke the momentary silence that
had settled over the group.
"Isn't Benedict going to sing or dance or converse or
something?" he asked Lucy in a piercing stage whisper.
"How the dickens are we going to get a line on him, or
learn to love him, if he just sits there and smokes?"
"I know," Lucy agreed depressedly. "Knowing him as
I do I can see that he's in one of his receptive moods. He
thinks we ought to sing and dance for him, and let him
get a line on us."
"All right. Suppose you start the entertainment by giv-
ing him an earful about your plan."
"She will," Benedict predicted. "Don't you worry. If
Lucy has any plan of any kind in which any or all of us are
concerned no power on earth can keep her from discuss-
ing it."
Lucy sighed.
"His conversation gets more conjugal every day," she
said. "It's well I told you before he came that we're
married. But he didn't know I did—and watch him guard
my maiden reputation! Imagine the impression you would
have got if I hadn't told you. I'm going to have my mar-
riage lines framed and hung in the front hall of Avalon.
If I don't, Gene and I will be ridden out of town in a
week."
"You may be interested to know, Doctor," Vance
smoothly interpolated, "that this is Mrs. Benedict's way
of telling you Avalon is your future home—at least until
the future catches up with next fall."


THETRAP 45
"It may catch up with next fall," Benedict said gloomily,
"but it will have its work cut out to catch up with my
wife. All right, Lucy, I'll bite. Have you invested your
savings in an abandoned New England farm?"
"Nothing as tame as that," Lucy said smugly. "I've
found a summer resort for us with a big adventure thrown
in. We're to spend the summer in a lovely old house on the
Massachusetts coast—"
"Once lovely, now run-down and shabby," Alida in-
terrupted.
"And so infested with ghosts that no one else will cross
its threshold," Vance added. "You know, Miss French,"
he continued enthusiastically, "I think you have arranged
this whole matter very neatly. As I understand it, there
were four victims at Avalon. Hence there are four ghosts.
That means one ghost for each of us, which is a perfectly
fair arrangement. Four ghosts hustling together into one's
bedroom at midnight, or grinning beside one's pillow just
before dawn, might get to be a bit oppressive. I'm not say-
ing they wouldn't. With each of us having a nice little
ghost to himself, as a sort of household pet, well, there's
a situation full of simple charm. I hereby choose your
great-great-grandfather, old Captain Amos French, as my
ghost."
"All right," Alida agreed. "I'd like to take his grandson,
the second Amos French, my grandfather."
"Fine. That leaves the last Amos French and his Boston
chum for Dr. and Mrs. Benedict. There may not be much
choice, Mrs. Benedict, but something tells me that a
middle-aged Boston stockbroker might run a bit to the
heavy side in late bedroom conversations. I suggest that


46 THETRAP
you take the last Amos French. Then Dr. Benedict can
concentrate on the stockbroker and win his confidence. Per-
haps he can get some market tips from him."
The doctor leaned forward and dropped the ash from
his cigarette into the fire.
"Any time you people would like to give me a kind
word that might help in the answer," he murmured, "I'll
be all ears."
"Then here it is," Alida broke in. "What they're trying
to tell you, with their limited vocabularies, is that I'm go-
ing to spend the summer in an old house I own on the
Massachusetts coast three miles from Quinnet. It's run-
down and ramshackle. It's supposed to be haunted by the
ghosts of four persons who in some way were its victims.
The townspeople won't cross its threshold. Even delivery
men stand outside, I'm told, and make the servant or some
member of the family come out to them. Enchanted by
these rare attractions, Mrs. Benedict suggests that you and
she and Mr. Vance should spend the summer there with
me. I'll be delighted to have you—but I think she'll probably
change her mind."
"That shows how little you know her," Benedict com-
mented. "It's all over but packing our suit-cases and our
steamer-trunk. Unless you're keen on the plan, Vance, I
suggest that you run like a rabbit. Start now, and don't
look back."
Vance shook his head.
"I'm all for it, especially since you turned up. You'll be
a reassuring companion in ghost-hunts. Ghost-hunts are
my complete summer program."
"He's going to solve the mystery for me," Alida elab-
orated. "He's going to lay the ghosts and reestablish the


THE TRAP 47
good reputation of Avalon. By doing all that he's going to
give the place some financial value, which it hasn't now."
"Great fun, don't you think?"
Vance watched Benedict closely as he spoke, and waited
for his answer with unusual interest. He would be gen-
uinely disappointed now if the young doctor turned down
the project. But Benedict merely smiled noncommittally
and went on smoking, his eyes on the fire.
"That means," Lucy meekly interpreted, "that we've
got to tell him the whole story. He won't say a word till
it's finished. There are times when the man tries me sorely.
However—"
She launched into a repetition of the story of Avalon.
Vance and their hostess helped her out, or retarded her,
with reminders and comments. As she had predicted,
Benedict listened in silence. Both Vance and Alida received
a strong impression in that hour, which their later knowl-
edge of Dr. Eugene Benedict strengthened, that when
vital decisions were made in the Benedict family, it was
Dr. Benedict who made them. They also suspected that his
wife realized this. Here, too, they were right. Lucy was
leaning forward tensely, watching her husband's face. The
expression in her eyes was both eager and anxious. At the
end of the recital the doctor spoke.
"Sounds good to me," he said casually, and his wife
exhaled the breath she had been holding.
"I suppose there might even be a bit of practice up there
during the summer," Benedict went on. "Anyway, I might
take my shingle and my credentials—if you don't mind,"
he added to Alida.
"I shouldn't mind in the least," she assured him. "But
no one will come to the house."


48 THE TRAP
"Aside from that," Vance said kindly, "your chances
are fine."
The doctor laughed.
"You can't convince me that there aren't a few in-
telligent citizens in the town of Quinnet," he said. "I may
set up a modest office on Main Street."
"It isn't a summer resort, you know—" Alida hastened
to point out. "It's pretty dead, really, though several of
its factories have started up again this spring. That will
help some, of course. They employ almost a thousand men
and women. While I'm about it I may as well admit that
my own beach never was especially good for bathing. It's
narrow and pebbly. One's beyond one's depth in a few
strokes. Still, if one's a strong swimmer—"
"This one is." Vance stopped short, and shot a self-
conscious look at the nurse. "So is this one," Benedict con-
tributed, and Lucy nodded.
"We're all right, if we're good swimmers," Alida went
on, "and the beach, such as it is, will be our private one.
The harbor is at Quinnet. The natives in our region use a
beach half a mile from us."
"What I want to know," Lucy impatiently broke in, "is
whether the question is settled. I think it ought to be settled
before we adjourn this meeting."
"Always with the understanding that you may change
your minds," Alida reminded her.
"You're going to be the worst business woman on the
Massachusetts coast," Lucy mourned aloud. "You've
thrown half a dozen monkey-wrenches into this machine
since we began our talk. But the fact remains that it's a
good plan. I'm strong for it. Aren't you, Gene?"
"I think so. I'd like to know if the party is to be confined


TEE TRAP 49
to four, or if there may be others. Not that I'd object to
others," he added quickly. "I'm merely asking."
"I have no idea of adding to the original quartette,"
Alida said decidedly. "In fact, I'm terribly frightened over
the responsibility I'm taking on if you come. How do I
know I can get any cook to work in that house? How do I
know how comfortable I can make you? In fact," she
added abruptly, "I'm going to ask you to withhold your
final decision till I run up to Avalon. I'll look over the
ground and see what the place needs and how long it will
take to get it ready for use. Then I'll write you."
"All right. Of course you would want to go to Avalon
and investigate," Lucy approved. Her mind was working
along other practical lines.
"That plan of yours to have an office on Main Street in
Quinnet might be a good one," she told Benedict, "but we'll
find out. Will you look into that, too, Miss French? Ask
how many doctors there are in Quinnet, and how good they
are.
"I'll do it," Alida agreed. Benedict got up.
"Lucy and I are going home now," he announced. "If
she has railroaded you into doing anything you aren't sure
you want to do, take plenty of time to think it over."
"So should you."
"So will we. I think we're game if you are. We're at
loose ends. We've got to go somewhere. It might as well
be Avalon. That's the way I look at it. Lucy is through for
the summer. If there are any patients left in New York,
they're not paying their doctors. Not that I had enough of
them to count, anyway." He smiled a sudden flashing smile
that oddly illumined his dark face, and held out his hand
to his hostess.


50 THETRAP
"I don't take much stock in your ghosts or your disap-
pearances," he added. "The chances are that those fellows
simply lit out. I don't think the old house will give us many
thrills. But the mere fact that we're in it, and supposedly
of sound minds, and that we stay there all summer, may
help to lift the ban on it. That will be all to the good. For
the rest—I'll be seeing you. Ready, Lucy?"
Lucy wasn't quite ready, but that didn't seem to matter.
Dr. Eugene Benedict was the rare and radiant type who,
when he started to leave a room, really left it. He was
across the threshold and out in the hall before his wife,
with a protesting squawk, had found her jacket and gloves
and scuttered after him. Vance smiled at Miss French.
"I was beginning to be afraid that masculinity, as repre-
sented by my own weak person and Dr. Benedict, was go-
ing to be at a discount at Avalon this summer," he con-
fessed. "I'm feeling reassured. In fact, I'm feeling fine.
Thanks for everything. Good night."
He pressed her hand warmly, aroused Cocktail, and
hurried away as briskly as the doctor had done. Left alone,
Alida gave a moment to surprise over his departure. She
had expected him to linger a few moments after the others.
She dropped into one of the vacant chairs before the fire-
place, lit a fresh cigarette, and gazed into the dying embers.
She was a conscientious person. She decided to ask herself
some intimate questions, now that she was out of that
vital circle.
Had she been absolutely frank with these new associates?
She told herself that she had. True, she had not told them
everything about the old house, but that would have taken
more time than was given her. She had not told them of the
cedar grove on the Avalon grounds, about which so many
i


52
THE TRAP
old Cap' Amos French hisself. He was fond o' that grove,
seems though. No one knows why he put it there. But that's
the place they say he walks. It's the place they both walk-
the two that disappeared-him an' his grandson. Half the
folks in this here township 'll tell you they seen 'em there-
moonlight nights—walkin' an' tryin' to git live folks to
walk with 'em an' never come back. That's the way the
second man went—the feller name of Amos French, too,
dragged off by the old Cap'n. It's a black story, folks, an'a
black spot.”
Alida shivered and got up abruptly. Time to go to bed.
But she took to bed with her the memory of the panic in
which she had hastened to her uncle and demanded an ex-
planation. Tossing restlessly on that bed, she recalled their
interview. Uncle Amos had given her an explanation,
suited to her childish mind "and complete with laughter,"
she reminded herself. He had told her it was all nonsense
and that she must never think of it again. She had kept
away from the cedar grove after that. And, yes, to-night
she had kept away from the subject of it, even when she
had seemed to talk so frankly.
Still, on the whole, she had been frank. She had been so
frank that Lucy had accused her of throwing monkey-
wrenches into the machinery of their summer plans. If
Lucy knew the whole story of Avalon—those yarns about
the country woman and the skeleton, for example, would
Lucy still be so eager to start for Avalon? Alida was sud-
denly too tired to answer that question, Lucy and the rest
should know—she decided that much. They should know
before they made their final decision. She wanted them
with her this summer. She wanted them most awfully.


THE TRAP
53
They were her one chance. Nevertheless, if they went to
Avalon they must go with their eyes wide open.
Having made this resolution, and feeling steadied by it,
the mistress of Avalon turned her face to the wall of her
small bedroom and resolutely fell asleep.


CHAPTER IV
Jmmediately after breakfast the next morning Alida
wrote a letter to Comfort Folger. It began with a tactful
inquiry as to whether Comfort cared to work at Avalon
during the summer and, if so, how much she considered her
services worth. Alida was careful not to commit herself.
There was a strong possibility, she admitted, that she and
three friends might pass the season in the old house. The
friends were a New York physician and his wife, and a
young architect. The presence of two young men, she
artlessly hoped as she wrote, might seem to Comfort a
reassuring factor. It was all in the air. Miss French herself
would come to Avalon almost at once, to look into the
condition of the house. If Comfort was interested would
she think the matter over in the interval and give Miss
French her decision when she arrived? Would she also
recommend a helper and be ready to give the house a
thorough cleaning? Miss French, of course, would pay
the usual price for such work, which should be done
whether she occupied the house this summer or did not.
In either case the house must be kept clean.
As the family would consist of four persons, instead of
two, as in the days of Mrs. Quimby, Miss French would
expect to pay Comfort better wages than she had received
from Mrs. Quimby. That, Mr. Haven had mentioned, had
been twenty-five dollars a month. How about forty? She
54


THE TRAP
55
herself, Alida added, and Mrs. Benedict, would help with
the upstairs work.
Alida felt both business-like and gay as she sealed and
mailed this letter. It was a gorgeous day. A brilliant sun
streamed through her east windows, and there was a crisp
tang in the April air. Her forebodings of the night had
vanished. The summer at Avalon stretched before her al-
most like a prolonged picnic. What it would really amount
to, she had decided, was a sort of camping experience. The
old house might not be very comfortable. They might all
have to rough it a bit. But that would be fun, and they
were young. The ghosts of Avalon were not even dim
shadows in her mental background.
Some of this optimism she passed on to Lucy Benedict—
it was already easy to think of the nurse as "Lucy" and as
"Benedict"—when that prospective "paying guest" called
her on the telephone. In response Lucy let out her own en-
thusiasm another notch. She and Gene, she said, had dis-
cussed the plan till all hours. The more they talked the more
of a rainbow it became. That rainbow stretched its splendid
arc over the two enthusiasts this morning. All was right
with the world.
"It's lucky Mr. Vance is coming," Lucy added. "I'm
sure his being with us accounts for a lot of Gene's interest.
Gene might have felt that he couldn't take the responsibil-
ity alone."
When Alida asked a trifle coldly what particularly heavy
responsibility Gene had in mind, Lucy's flow of chatter
ceased for a moment. Then she said, "Oh, the ghosts, of
course," and laughed.
"We've got a lot of things to do," she hurried on.
"Gene has to close up his practice. That sounded grand till


56 THETRAP
I reminded him that his 'practice' consisted of one old
gentleman with asthma, who's leaving town anyway, and
a little boy with a broken leg, who's just beginning to walk
again. Of course Gene has golden opportunities right along
to help his fellow-men without getting paid for it, but he's
rather fed up with those. To-day I'm going in for an orgy
of inexpensive shopping. Have you plenty of blankets and
bedding and mosquito-netting at Avalon?"
Alida admitted with some embarrassment that she didn't
know about the bedding but would find out. She added that
Mr. Haven had told her the windows and the large porches
of the house were screened, but that the screens were in
bad condition and needed a lot of patching. The lawyer
had also warned her, during his visit to New York, that
the necessary painting and repairing of the place would
probably wipe out a large part of this year's income from
Amos French's estate. That was a sobering memory, and
Alida's face was serious again when she hung up the
receiver.
She spent the next hour making notes of what Mr. Haven
had told her about the condition of the furniture. The old
mahogany needed polishing. Well, she and Comfort could
polish it. The upholstered pieces were worn and shabby.
They would have to stay so for a time. The carpets were
worn, but not too badly. In any case, there was no present
question of replacing them. She grew cheerful again. She
would ask Mr. Haven for an estimate on absolutely neces-
sary painting and repairs. The remaining work could be
done next summer, if next summer ever came. The house,
as Mr. Haven had described it, would certainly have to be
painted outside. The sagging fences and outbuildings would
also have to be painted and strengthened. That was all she


THETEAP 57
could do. It would be fun to plan for the work of the future
—if the summer plan was successful, and if one or more
of the quartette didn't vanish into thin air.
Alida was so shocked by this intruding thought that she
thrust out a hand, as if in an effort to check it before it
found real lodgment in her mind. It took some will power
to get rid of it. Even then it remained threateningly on the
edge of her consciousness. She fought it almost fiercely.
Given entrance, it would have destroyed her sense of well-
being and youthful optimism. But there it was—an awe-
some thing ready to spring. She set her teeth. She had
never given much thought to Avalon's ghosts, after that
early panic at eight, except to resent, of late, their depress-
ing influence on real-estate values. Yet, here they were!
She sat back in her chair, laid down her pencil, and reso-
lutely fought the thing out. It was easy enough to under-
stand. She had suddenly realized that she was subjecting
others as well as herself to such risks as there might be
in the enterprise. She had not felt such deep-down appre-
hension when she considered going there alone. Now the
New England conscience inherited from her forebears was
at work. Was she justified in allowing others to join her?
At best, they would be the subjects of endless watching,
unlimited gossip, even, no doubt, of newspaper publicity,
if some enterprising reporter decided to revive the old
stories in a flamboyant special article, hung on the news-
hook of the new occupancy of Avalon.
LAST FRENCH BACK AT AVALON
MISS ALIDA FRENCH TO BEARD SPOOKS AND DEFY TRADITION
WILL LIVE IN HAUNTED HOUSE NEAR QUINNET


58 THETRAP
That sort of thing.
On the other hand, Vance and the Benedicts were adults
and worldlings, quite capable of judging for themselves
any risks involved in their actions. That reflection brought
another in its wake. Her conscience, once stirred into ac-
tion, was now working overtime. She had been going at
this situation in a selfish and inefficient way. She had ac-
tually meant to dawdle several days before she started for
Avalon. Instead, she abruptly decided, she would start to-
day. She could do it. She had hired her little apartment
furnished, and no lease held her. All she had to do was to
pack her personal possessions, pay her bill, turn in the key
at the desk, and depart. Lucy's brisk efficiency had been a
lesson to her. Lucy had assumed that all was settled. This
very hour Lucy might be in the shops buying what she
needed for the summer.
Yes, Alida would start to-day. With Comfort's help, she
would get her home ready for her new friends. She would
be on the spot at once to supervise its cleaning and airing,
to go into estimates, to investigate such important matters
as plumbing conditions. She could not promise her guests
safety, but she could and would provide elemental comfort
for them. Until the house was ready for them she would
pass her nights at the Quinnet Inn which, in the old days,
had not been a bad one.
She made these decisions instantly and with finality, and
without going further into the pros and cons of them. The
next moment she was at the telephone getting in touch with
the Bureau of Information in the Grand Central station.
Ten minutes later Lucy Benedict, just ready to start forth
on her shopping orgy, received what she assured her hus-


THETRAP 59
band was "an earful" from Miss French. Alida was tak-
ing a noon train that would get her into Quinnet that
night, after one change, and a long wait at a depressing
junction.
"In the meantime, hold everything," Alida had advised.
"I may find this whole plan of ours impracticable. Perhaps
there are weeks of work to be done on the house before we
could live in it. I'll spend all day to-morrow in it, with
Mr. Haven, and by night I'll know. If the place isn't too
impossible, I'll get right in touch with cleaners and painters
and carpenters. To-morrow is Thursday. By Saturday
morning you ought to get a letter from me telling you the
situation. Keep open minds till you hear from me, so you
won't be too much disappointed if the whole thing is a
flat tire."
Lucy tried to argue, but the suddenly energetic Miss
French had no time for that.
"It's got to be my way," she announced. "I don't know
what I was thinking of to let you sweep me off my feet as
you did last night. You must have hypnotized me. Now
I'm off for the train. Please explain to the doctor and Mr.
Vance. Don't count on coming up for a couple of weeks.
I've no idea when I can be ready. Good-by. Look for a
letter Saturday."
She hung up the receiver and turned from the telephone
with a contented smile. She was beginning her project at
the beginning now, instead of in the middle or near the
end, and she thought better of herself. Her complacent
mood lasted through the first four hours of her journey.
Then, waiting for a local train at a lonely country junc-
tion, she began to criticise herself.


6o
THE TRAP
"I'm too impulsive," she told herself. "I must get over
the habit of going off at half-cock. It's always plunging
me into hot water."
She repeated this decision that night as she rattled over
the final stage of her journey in a day-coach, occupied only
by a tired woman, her two crying children, and a middle-
aged traveling salesman with a tendency to stare at pretty
girls. The mother and her children got off the train at
eight o'clock, while Alida went on to Quinnet. Here it
developed that the traveling man was also getting off, and
that he had acquired the only taxi-cab at the station by
superior speed in the sprint from the train. When he
grasped the situation he was full of contrition and other
human qualities. He put Alida and her traveling-case into
the taxi-cab, followed them after polite inquiry, allowed
her to share the expense of the ride without argument, gave
her two of the four sandwiches with which he had thought-
fully provided himself, and talked optimistically of ab-
stract subjects, such as business revivals. At the desk of
the Quinnet Inn he made sure that she secured the best
room in the house. That was the last she saw of him, but
his valedictory had impressed her.
"I'm only stopping in Quinnet over night," he explained,
as they shook hands in farewell. "If you're going to stop
longer and see the town don't miss the old French place.
They'll tell you some hair-raising yarns about it—creepy
ones about ghosts and vampires."
Alida had smiled wanly. The vampires were a new touch
to the tales. She thought of them in the night, and with
considerable distaste. Pleasant companions for insomnia,
she reflected. A nice polite ghost was one thing. Vampires


THE TRAP
61
were something else. But she was asleep soon after mid-
night.
When she awoke at half-past eight the next morning
the sun was again brilliant and the boom of the sea came
to her ears through the windows she had left open. The
homely song of a lawnmower added its domestic note to a
reassuring atmosphere. As she dressed she found herself
humming the latest Broadway hit. Her enjoyment of her
really good breakfast was a matter quite apart from her
reducing diet.
Immediately after the meal she called up Mr. Haven. It
was half-past nine by that time. She was eager to begin
the strenuous work of the day. He took a few moments to
recover from his surprise over her announcement that she
was in town. Then he welcomed her philosophically.
"You don't seem delighted," she pointed out. "Yet
you've been urging me to come here ever since Mrs.
Quimby died in January."
Mr. Haven mentioned that in his life delight rarely
came to him before noon.
"By that time I've got over my breakfast indigestion,"
he explained. "My lunch doesn't begin to bother me till
toward three. But I'll be glad to see you. I can't manage
it this morning, though."
Alida liked the quiet chuckle with which he began, but
she was dismayed by his climax.
"Good heavens," she gulped, "I've come up especially—"
"I know. Don't get excited. I have a young nephew in
my office. This is the first chance he's had for weeks to be
of any use. I'll send him to the Inn in my roadster and he'll
drive you to Avalon. He'll answer your questions and
-•


62
THE TRAP
take your instructions. He has been with me two years.
He ought to know something about Avalon, though I don't
guarantee it. However, make what use of him you can.
Call me up by telephone if he gets sunk. I've got to be in
my office all morning, soothing the victims of a railroad
wreck we've had up here. I'm attorney for the road, you
know. I'll come to Avalon this afternoon, if I can make it.
How soon do you want the lad to call for you? In half an
hour ? All right. His name is Casper Haven, but he appears
to be better known in Quinnet's social circles as 'Bing.'"
Alida was disappointed. She had liked Caleb Haven in
New York, after a passing wonder that one of his ad-
vanced years should brave the perils of the great city. Also,
he had been Uncle Amos's partner and best friend. As a
matter of record Haven was just sixty, and considered
himself in the prime of life. He was a college man and
something of a beau. She had liked his dignified cordiality,
and quiet sense of humor. Moreover, she had immediate
faith in him. His nephew wasn't what she wanted at all.
However, she greeted the young man with her usual
friendliness when he arrived. He was tall and thin and
hatless and coatless. He looked very much like Colonel
Charles Lindbergh. He was proud of this and heightened
the resemblance in every way he could. It did not extend
to his mental equipment and his manners. His driving was
erratic and optimistic. In five minutes the town of Quinnet
lay behind him and the roadster was racing along the
country road to Avalon, three miles beyond. To discover
how much of the Avalon gossip he knew, Alida asked
about the vampires. He frowned distastefully, and wrin-
kled a well-shaped nose.
"More town gossip," he said. "They sit up nights add-


THETRAP 63
ing horrors. Yes, I've heard of the vampires. All your
ghosts are supposed to be vampires now. They don't suck
blood, but they lure the living to their death. The town
theory is that wherever they are, they're lonesome and
want company! It's too silly to discuss. However," he
ended more seriously, "it's adding just that much more to
the bad reputation of Avalon. So I'm glad you're here and
ready to do something."
Alida dropped the little matter of vampires from her
mind.
"I hope your uncle will think my plans are good ones,"
she murmured.
"We don't know anything about your plans," young
Haven reminded her. "I suppose your being here means
that you're going to take action of some kind. That's a
good thing. You've been getting on Uncle Cal's nerves.
He hates to see a fine property going to the dogs, especially
his friend and partner's. If you don't do something pretty
quick, you know, the place will be beyond help. It's in-
credible how soon a house can go to seed when it's vacant."
"Is it as bad as that?" Alida's heart sank. She was
thinking of the cost of repairs.
"Nothing has been done for it for fourteen years. Your
uncle kept it in fine condition when he lived there. For-
tunately, he had it painted inside and outside a couple of
years before he disappeared. But Mrs. Quimby never spent
a copper on it. She used it carefully—I'll say that for her
—and she and Comfort Folger kept the lawns mowed and
looked after the cow and chickens. They practically lived
on the products of the place—chickens, eggs, milk, and
vegetables, you know. The cow and the chickens are still
there. Comfort has been looking after them. We let her


64 THETRAP
have the eggs and milk as payment. Uncle probably told
you that. It seemed the only thing to do. I guess Comfort
hasn't got much out of it. Cows are chummy creatures.
They droop in solitude, and don't yield much milk. Did you
know that?"
He didn't give her time to answer but rattled on.
"Your cow wasn't one of the contented ones we read
about. She's all right now that she can spend her days in
your field back of the vegetable garden. The chickens didn't
do much for Comfort, either. They had been laying very
well till Mrs. Quimby died. And of course Comfort has
to buy chicken food. . . . On the whole, I think she lost
on her bargain in January and February. Perhaps she's
made up some of the loss since then."
Alida was getting interested in young Casper Haven,
better known as Bing. She could not judge how accurate
his information was, but he was certainly pouring it forth
in a steady flow. Later, as she knew them better, she
learned that Lawyer Haven and his nephew, while really
devoted to and proud of each other, made a point of
steadily belittling each other's qualities. Young Bing pro-
ceeded to give her a second example of this, his uncle hav-
ing supplied the first over the telephone.
"You see," he was saying complacently, "I've had to
follow all this up myself. Uncle hates what he calls 'de-
tails.' By that he means most of the office work. His inter-
est in Avalon has been confined to grumbling because you
didn't show up. I've kept a close eye on the place," he added
smugly, "and I made old Comfort realize that I was doing
it. That didn't make her love me any more. Whew!"
"Mr. Haven warned me in New York that she's a little
difficult."


THE TRAP 65
"Difficult? Say, Comfort Folger hates the universe!
She'd go around biting the stars, if she could reach 'em."
"She'll be a cheery soul to live with at Avalon," Alida
sighed.
Young Bing whirled in his seat to stare at her. The
roadster shot toward a ditch.
"Thinking of living there?" he asked quickly, as he
swung the car back into the road.
"Yes—this summer anyway."
He whistled. "And with Comfort, too! Say you are a
glutton for punishment!"
"Would any one else work there?" Alida asked.
"No."
"There you are! How near does Comfort live to Avalon
now?"
"She's not far. Down in the hollow near the river. She's
made short-cuts through the back-fields to the vegetable
garden. She climbs the fences. I'd love to see her doing it
on a windy winter day," he added longingly. "But of
course she had to take the roundabout course during most
of the winter, when the snow was deep. I expected after
every big storm that she'd throw up her job. But she stuck
it out."
"Then she isn't working anywhere else now?"
"She is, and overtime," Bing chuckled. "She's living
with her sister, who's married and has five small children.
You know what that means. Comfort puts in about fifteen
hours of toil a day and gets nothing for it, from what I
hear. Probably all the cash she has seen since Mrs. Quimby
died came from your milk and chickens. It's a cinch that
the five youngsters drink most of the milk."
Alida was now delighted with young Mr. Haven. She


THE TRAP 67
cided—repeated the word in amazement. Bing nodded,
pleased with his effect.
"Entertainer—" he repeated, "meaning one who enter-
tains."
"But I thought—"
"And you were right." Young Haven's habit of taking
the words out of one's mouth was sometimes rather
irritating.
"No one would come to Avalon, of course," he was
explaining. "So Mrs. Quimby, who was a sociable body if
ever there was one, entertained at the Inn. She often gave
little luncheons for three or four or even half a dozen
friends, and took them to a moving-picture afterwards.
That meant return invitations, of course, and the old lady
was quite gay." The youngster chuckled.
"Luncheons, and suppers, and moving-pictures were all
she cared for," he went on, "especially the pictures. She
was a fan. She used to take Comfort with her, at night,
if there was no one else to go with. They say the pair of
them saw everything that came along. That in itself
meant some outlay. You know there's no street-car service
to Quinnet now. Only the little bus line. The fare is twenty-
five cents for a round trip from Avalon. That was fifty
cents for the two women. Add thirty-five cents each for
orchestra seats—the old lady never sat anywhere but down
in front—and you have an outlay of a dollar twenty every
time they went. They went several times a week. They went
every time Mrs. Quimby had no other engagement. She
simply wouldn't spend an evening in the house. She didn't
spend many afternoons there, either, if she could help it.
She and Comfort were up at six every morning and they
worked steadily till noon. Then Mrs. Quimby went to her


68
THE TRAP
little social affairs, whatever they were, and Comfort went
to her sister. She'd come back at six to get Mrs. Quimby's
supper and her own, if Mrs. Quimby was to be at home,
and then they were off again."
"A queer life," Alida murmured.
"Wasn't it? Mrs. Quimby was terribly cut up, to the
very end, because her friends and neighbors wouldn't cross
the threshold of Avalon. It had been very different before
your uncle disappeared. You see, all the old stories had
died down. A lot of the younger crowd hadn't even heard
them. Avalon was quite gay. Your uncle was one of our
leading citizens. He didn't entertain the ladies much, but
he gave stag dinners. He belonged to a chess club, too, that
met every Saturday night at his house. He was always
willing to let the ladies of the various churches give ice-
cream suppers or sociables at Avalon for charity, because
the parsonages were so small."
He stopped but Alida made no comment.
"There was a good deal doing at Avalon those days," he
summed up, "and Mrs. Quimby loved it all. They say that
after your uncle went she had dreams of being the first •
lady of the region, and entertaining a lot in the old place.
She started all sorts of things. She simply couldn't be-
lieve that people wouldn't come there. But even her best
pals wouldn't, so she finally reconciled herself to doing her
entertaining outside. In the summers she used to give
picnics, and invite a dozen friends, and provide the lunch-
eon herself and take her guests to the picnic-grounds in
the bus. She was quite a spender, was old Caroline Quimby.
So much so that some of her friends thought she was a
little 'touched.' I know for a fact that she was always over-
drawing her income. Uncle Cal hated that. Most New


T H E T R A P 69
Englanders don't understand that sort of thing. For be-
lieve me," the young man ended impassively, "old Caro-
line was the only person within twenty miles of Quinnet
that ever spent a nickel on worldly pleasures."
Alida laughed. She didn't need to be reminded of the
thrifty habits of her New England forebears, nor of the
reluctance with which her present neighbors spent the
little cash they had. The young man echoed her laugh.
Then, abruptly, he whirled the roadster into a private
driveway.
"Well, here we are," he announced. "I suppose we
might as well give the house the once over. You may want
to get some workmen out to-day."
Alida caught her breath. She had been so interested in
the youth's revelations that she had not been observing
the main road. Now they had left it. The roadster was
bumping along a private driveway, grass-grown, deeply
rutted, and otherwise out of condition. But it was her
driveway, and that stately grove of cedars they were ap-
proaching were her trees—the famous cedar grove of
Avalon. The unpruned trees and shrubbery on the lawns
were hers, too, and—Alida's heart dropped a beat—the big
somber house they were approaching was her house. She
had not seen it for years. She sat up, clasped her hands,
and took it in in silence. Young Bing had stopped before
its front entrance. For once his lively tongue was silent.
He seemed to realize that the new owner of Avalon was
having a bit of a thrill—as well she might have, he
reflected. He'd be glad to own such a place himself, ghosts
or no ghosts, and shabby though it was.
He waited patiently while Alida looked around her,
taking in, in turn, the spacious grounds, the outbuildings


JO THETRAP
in the rear, then the big Colonial frame house, empty and
shabby, but bearing itself, she thought, with a proud dig-
nity that held it aloof from the gossip of its detractors.
The long coast line and the sea lay in front of it. Empty
fields stretched far behind it. There were no houses in
sight around it. With its own little annex of barn, shed,
tool-house, and chicken-houses, it seemed sufficient unto
itself. It had almost the effect of basking in the brilliant,
mid-morning sun. Its shuttered eyes were unresponsive,
but there was more than a suggestion of hospitality in the
wide steps that led up to the big screened-in outdoor
living-room that ran the full length of the front of the
house. This and an equally spacious screened-in veranda
and sleeping-porch on the north side, she knew, had been
added to the house by Uncle Amos.
Now it was her house. These were her grounds, her
fields. That vast expanse of sunlit water was almost her
sea! The girl's heart rose, singing. She had never had a
real home, since her father and mother had been killed.
She had been sent to schools, changing occasionally from
one school to another at her own suggestion, and spend-
ing her holidays with schoolmates, or, rarely, with her
guardian, who had been her father's lawyer. She believed
now that the summer spent with Uncle Amos, her only re-
maining relative, when she was eight, had been his first
tentative step toward offering her a permanent home at
Avalon. But Mrs. Quimby had not liked her; and after
the revelation furnished by the driver of the sightseeing
bus she herself had not been happy. Still she had greatly
liked her uncle—and she had been shocked and grieved by
his disappearance that same year.
In this moment of full acceptance of his gift she was


THETRAP 71
passionately grateful to him for it. Avalon was her home
and the home of her ancestors. Her heart swelled with a
fierce love and loyalty for it. It was very shabby, very
much run-down. She saw now its peeling white paint, the
tell-tale sagging of the steps leading to its front door, the
decrepit look of the white picket fence that separated her
grounds from the highway. She would change all that. It
had been a fine old place. Eventually she would make it
again a fine old place. She would cut down some of those
encroaching evergreens which pressed so close to the house
and shut out more of the light than they should. She
would rehabilitate the old place—her place—even if she
had to go into debt to do it. Most briskly of all she would
rehabilitate its character. She felt a sudden throb of grati-
tude toward Vance. He was the only one of her new asso-
ciates who had been interested in doing that. The Benedicts
were artlessly selfish in their attitude. All they cared about
was shelter and food for the summer. But Vance had
harped on "laying the ghosts." Vance had felt the tragedy
of Avalon's position—innocent victim of a miasma of
stupid and perhaps malicious gossip that had poisoned
this pure air around it. He had felt it, even more than she
herself, who felt it so acutely, had done. She would have
to make up to Avalon for that.
"I must have some of these trees cut down," she mused
aloud. "On a dark day they make the place look gloomy."
"Not the cedar grove, though," young Bing asked
quickly. "You wouldn't dare touch that—or would you?"
Alida shook her head so suddenly that she herself was
startled by the action. Surely she didn't feel as strongly
about the matter as that imperative gesture would indi-
cate! She hadn't realized that she had felt strongly about
-


72 THETRAP
it at all. Still, she must have. No doubt it was the beauty
of the grove that had been its protection from vandalage.
It was a thick and sizable grove of tall old cedars, occupy-
ing the grounds beyond the garden at the south side of
the house. They were majestic, severe, even a bit spectral.
But they were really beautiful, and at this moment they
were sending her an aromatic breath of welcome. No
French had ever put an ax to one of those cedars since
the first French, Captain Amos, had planted them. This
French would never do it. Yet, as she knew, this grove
was the setting for the worst of the stories told of Av-
alon. . . .
She aroused herself from her brief trance.
"It's rather an experience to see it for the first time
since I grew up," she admitted. "I've spent a lot of time
in New England from first to last, but I haven't been here
since I was eight."
"I know."
Bing was certainly an understanding youth. His next
comment showed an unexpected grasp of another side of
the situation.
"Your uncle's plan, after your father and mother were
killed, was to have you spend your vacations here and get
fond of the place. He told Uncle Cal so. The Frenches
have always been extraordinarily fond of Avalon, it
seems, in spite of the things that have happened here.
Even old Caroline—who had no French blood in her
veins, showed a tremendous loyalty to the place. No one
dared to say anything against it when she was around.
I've only been with Uncle Cal since I graduated from Am-
herst a year ago last June. But at least a dozen times I've


74 THETRAP
that it's been neglected since Mrs. Quimby's death," he
hastened to add. "Part of Comfort's job has been to dust
and air it every week. Just the same, it's a pretty good
imitation of the old French vault in Spring Grove Ceme-
tery. Come into the living-room and I'll start a fire."
"That will be nice. But let's look at the hall first. You
see, I had almost forgotten how the house is laid out."
Alida still stood with her back to the front doors, which
Bing had closed after their entrance. The wide hall ran
through the center of the house, with rooms opening from
it at the right and left. Half-way down its length a fine
old staircase, with a beautiful mahogany handrail, led to
the second floor. A worn dark green Brussels "runner"
covered the steps, and a worn and faded carpet of the
same color lay on the hall floor. There was a square vesti-
bule between the outer and inner hall doors, with hooks
on the walls on which a woman's winter hat and heavy
coat were hanging. Below these, at the north end of the
vestibule, a mahogany rack held several excellent canes
and an umbrella. The hall proper was furnished with two
fine old mahogany tables, and two good old chairs. Aside
from the worn carpets, which still might have a few years
of service in them, nothing in the hall except perhaps its
faded wall-paper needed immediate replacing.
"This room on the north side is the card- and billiard-
room," Bing explained, as he threw open the first door.
"It used to be the old formal 'parlor.'" He crossed the
hall. "The family living-room is here on the south side of
the house. Your Uncle Amos knocked down a partition
between the old sitting-room and library and made this
big living-room. Now, come into the study."
He opened a door at the rear end of the living-room.


THETRAP 75
"This was your uncle's study," he explained. "I suppose
you remember it. To my mind, it's the best room in the
house. He spent most of his spare time in it. I understand
that Mrs. Quimby never entered it after he disappeared. I
don't know why. It's a bully room," he added enthusias-
tically.
It was a beautiful room, with a second door leading into
the rear hall. It was wainscoted in natural white pine, left
unfinished and waxed. The wood had a beautiful golden
patina of age. The north wall was paneled into three
divisions by means of graceful pilasters. Hanging on the
side panels were excellent portraits of old Captain Amos
and his wife. Walnut book-cases, evidently built in when
the house was built, were on each side of the windows on
the south and west walls. A long walnut writing-table
stood at right angles to the west window. There were
comfortable upholstered easy-chairs, two low smoking-
tables, two floor reading-lamps, and—incongruously—a
small low rocking-chair close to the empty fireplace. Alida
went to it with a little rush.
"Why, that's my chair!" she cried. "I remember the
day Uncle Amos took me downtown and bought it. He
said there wasn't a comfortable chair in the house for a
little girl. He liked to have me in the room with him in
the evenings till I went to bed, and I always sat there by
the fire. At least he said he liked to have me. I think he
really meant it. I was a quiet little thing. I used to read
while he worked and smoked. He bought a lot of books
for me, too. He even had a low table made for me, so
that the reading-lamp it held would be at the right angle
for my eyes. That ought to be here somewhere. It used to
stand right beside the chair. My books were all kept to-


76 THETRAP
gether over in that book-case. He gave me the lowest
shelves for them. Yes, here's the table and here are the
books."
As she spoke she drew two of the books from the
shelves and read their titles aloud. "Little Women. Little
Men. I was a great Alcott fan." She broke off. "He had
me write out a list of the books I wanted. I hadn't brought
any with me. He said there weren't many books in the
house that would interest a little girl. Then he bought
me every book on my list. I was never so thrilled in my
life as when the box came from Boston. Here's Alice in
Wonderland. Do you know—" there were tears in her eyes
as she turned to the young man, "after all these years I've
only just realized that Uncle Amos must have been fond
of me."
"He was," Bing corroborated. "He often talked to
Uncle Cal about you. He said he wouldn't let Mrs. Quimby
keep you out of your home if you ever wanted to live
here."
Alida nodded.
"I suppose I was a selfish little beast, but I did write
regularly to him till he disappeared. ... I remember
that he sent me a wonderful doll that last Christmas. . . .
I wish I had known he liked me. . . ."
She broke off, put the books back on their shelves, and
spoke huskily:
"I'm going to have this room myself," she announced.
"I'll make it my work-shop. I'll invite other people to
keep out of it. It's a lovely room," she repeated, looking
around. "Incidentally," she added slowly, "I suppose it's
the room where Uncle Amos and his Boston friend were
seen last."


THE TRAP
77
Bing nodded.
"This is where they had their final drinks," he said
cheerfully. "Shall I build a fire? I see there's wood and
kindling in the wood box."
"Not yet," Alida decided. "Let's make a swift round
of the house first. Then we can come back here. Let's
have a look at the dining-room."
As they walked down the front hall to the dining-room,
back of the old "parlor," the girl turned suddenly to her
companion.
"Have you any idea," she asked him, "how fascinating
it is to come into possession of a house that's all yours?
And all furnished, too? And to go about and see what's
in it and plan what changes you'll make. I can't understand
why I didn't get here sooner. Still, after all, it's only three
months since Mrs. Quimby died. I can make up the lost
time. . . ."
"Besides, Quinnet isn't really a winter resort I'd recom-
mend," Bing admitted.
He opened the dining-room door and they entered the
comfortable room. It was much larger than the paneled
study, and admirably furnished with a fine old Chippen-
dale table and sideboard, eight Chippendale chairs, and
two serving-tables. At the right and left of the big north
window were built-in cupboards containing some fine
pieces of old china, incongruously flanked by a few bla-
tantly bad modern pieces. These, and two abominably
painted still-lifes on the wall, one over the sideboard and
the other above the mantel, Alida slated for immediate
transfer to the attic.
"Odd that Uncle Amos let those things hang here," she
shuddered. "He really knew what was what."


THE TRAP 79
half-tubs we read about. Mr. Vance can have one of the
east front rooms facing the sea. He'll like that. This little
room back of mine is charming, too. One has to go down
three steps to reach it, but that won't disturb any of us."
Young Haven had made a mental list of the names. They
suggested the first details he had been given of Miss
French's summer plans. She was to have friends with her,
then. He was surprisingly glad of that. . . . Alida opened
the door into the rear room. It was a good-sized and very
attractive room. She descended the steps leading into it
and looked around it thoughtfully.
"I suppose these two rooms—this and the one opposite
it—were really meant for servants," she mused. "The
only space left in the house is the huge attic that takes up
an entire floor. I remember playing in it when I was here,
and opening old trunks. It's a wonderful storage place."
Bing did not answer. He realized that the new mistress
of Avalon was not speaking to him. She was merely think-
ing aloud—planning aloud. He felt uncomfortable and a
trifle resentful. He was a rather spoiled young man, not
used to being overlooked, even forgotten. He did not like
the experience. Almost immediately he was given a chance
to assert himself, and he grasped it with energy. They
were descending the front staircase when it came.
"Well, we've gone over the house as thoroughly as we
need to to-day," Alida decided. "Now, if you will drive to
wherever Comfort Folger lives and bring her back here,
I'll have a business talk with her. I'll wait for you in my
study," she added cheerfully.
Young Haven's eyes bulged.
"You'll wait here?" he gasped. "Alone?"
"Of course I'll wait here, alone." She looked at him


8o
THE TRAP
with almost as much amazement as he was showing in his
stare at her. "What else could I do?"
"You could ride to Comfort's with me," Bing told her
doggedly, "and have your business talk there."
"Nonsense." Miss French, who had clearly been an-
noyed by this unlooked-for attitude, recovered her temper.
She laughed, and gave him a gentle push toward the front
door.
"Don't be silly," she said with a glance at her wrist-
watch. "It's almost one o'clock and we've no time to
waste. But come to the study first. On second thought I'll
let you make a fire for me there. The house does seem a bit
damp. Then I'll sit before the fire and make out my list
of what's got to be done."
Bing followed her into the study and closed the door
when they were inside. He looked down at her, his young
face very serious.
"Miss French," he said steadily, "I'm telling you right
now that I won't do it."
Alida moved away from him and dropped into one of
the arm-chairs before the fireplace. She opened her hand-
bag and took from it a small note-book and a pencil.
"If you'll start the fire," she suggested, "it will be more
comfortable here."
He obeyed her and made a good job of the task. The
birch logs in the wood-box were seasoned. There were
plenty of papers and kindling. Within two minutes a blaze
was leaping up the wide chimney.
"That's fine. Now hurry, please," Miss French said
placidly. "Bring Comfort back here with your shield or
upon it. You ought to have her persuaded and in the
Presence within fifteen minutes."


THE TRAP
81
Bing crossed in front of her, turned his back to the
fire, and looked down at her.
"You didn't seem to get what I told you, Miss French,"
he said very quietly. "I told you I wouldn't leave you here
alone. I mean it. If I'm to go for Comfort Folger, you
must come with me."
Very deliberately, as one preparing to go into action,
Alida laid down her note-book and stood up.
"I expected this sort of thing from some of the
natives," she said icily. "I didn't expect it from Mr.
Haven's representative. Now listen to me. Are you, a
college man, really admitting that you believe the idiotic
stories about Avalon? Are you admitting that you're
afraid to leave me here alone? It's incredible. You amaze
me.
"I'm just as much amazed by you," Bing said steadily.
"You don't understand my position. You ought to. You're
intelligent enough to get it." He held her eyes as he went
on incisively. "I don't believe in the ghosts or vampires of
Avalon, any more than you do. But there's one fact that
stands out in the Avalon stories. No one doubts it or dis-
putes it. It's established. In the last hundred years or so
four different persons have disappeared in this house.
They've never been seen again. You and I know
ghosts had nothing to do with their disappearance. But
they disappeared. They were never seen again. Now, you
come into the house—the last of the Frenches. I'm in
charge of you. Between you and me, I think I'm in charge
because Caleb Haven, a hard-headed New Englander,
funked the job. That railroad conference this morning
wouldn't take more than an hour. He could have got you
here, or he could have joined us, soon after eleven o'clock.


82
THE TRAP
As I say, I think he funked it. Now you're asking me to
take the responsibility of leaving you here alone. It's an
unreasonable order, and I won't take it. There may not be
a chance in a million that anything would go wrong. But
I won't take that chance. Why should I? If anything hap-
pened I'd be a marked man the rest of my life. I'd be
looked on as a fool, or a coward, or both. You have no
right to risk putting me in such a position. If you're a
reasonable girl, you'll show it by going for Comfort with
me. Otherwise, no one goes. Have I made myself clear?"
Alida laughed and threw out her hands with a gesture
of submission.
"You're right," she said gaily. "You're so right that
I beg your pardon. We'll go for Comfort together. I
didn't think of you at all," she admitted as he crossed
the room and opened the door for her. "But that's natural.
You see, I've never taken this Avalon gossip as any-
thing much more serious than a menace to the value of
the property. I haven't realized in the least how seriously
the people here must have taken the old traditions, to
make all this gossip possible. Just now I'm so thrilled
by Avalon itself, and so excited over all I've got to do,
that I simply can't think about anything else."
They were in the roadster now, driving down a steep
back road along a small river. It was a picturesque little
stream, swollen by heavy spring rains and rushing along
its pebbly bed with an effect of noisy urgency to get
somewhere. Its banks on both sides were fringed with
willows. It was so shallow that two small boys of twelve
or thirteen were wading in midstream in high rubber boots,
optimistically busy with home-made fishing rods.
Comfort Folger lived in a one-story frame cottage


CHAPTER V
The woman who did appear seemed to Alida's suddenly
tense nerves almost like the answer to a sinister invoca-
tion. She was unusually tall, and thin to emaciation. She
had the most tragic eyes and the most ravaged and un-
happy face Alida had ever looked upon. Above that des-
pairing mask her thick gray hair was strained back from
a high and narrow forehead and fastened sternly at the
exact back of her head in a sizable "bun." She looked at
the visitors in silence, without recognition and without
interest. If she had smiled she would have suggested a
death's head, but there was no suggestion of a smile on
the thin line of her grimly set lips. And her name, Alida
was thinking, is Comfort!
"Hello, Comfort," Bing said easily. "This is Miss
French, the new owner of Avalon. She wants to talk to
you."
A wave of memory had rolled over Alida. Under its
influence she spoke eagerly.
"Don't you remember me, Comfort? I remember you
perfectly, now that I see you again. I spent two summers
here with my mother, when I was very little, and one here
alone when I was about eight. You used to let me follow
you around, and feed the chickens, the days you came to
help Mrs. Quimby. She would never let me help when she
was doing it alone. I remember you very gratefully."
The woman nodded.
84


THETRAP 85
"How be ye, Miss French? I reco'nize ye," she said.
C me in.
She turned as she spoke and led the way into a small
bare room at the right of the front hall. Alida sternly
reminded herself that here, Bing had intimated, was a
moving-picture fan. Here was one who had attended, with
her late mistress, all the moving-picture shows in town for
the past fourteen years. With that background there was
surely some human emotion in this forbidding apparition.
She could not really be, as her appearance suggested,
something that had been buried and dug up again.
"I wrote you from New York early yesterday morning,
just before I left," Alida explained. "Did you get my
letter?"
"Nope. Mails here gits wuss an' wuss, seems like."
The woman motioned to chairs. Alida and Bing sat
down and looked around the room. It contained a cotton
rug, a mission table set squarely in its center, several cane-
bottomed chairs, and a large stuffed owl on an otherwise
empty mantelpiece. Like Comfort Folger herself, it was
strikingly neat. If cleanliness was next to godliness, Alida
reflected, Comfort was well on her way to heaven. Young
Bing sat silent for once, making himself as comfortable
as his long-limbed body allowed. His blue eyes, with a
light of impish enjoyment dancing in them, moved in turn
from Alida's face to Comfort's. He was obviously getting
what he would have called "a kick" from his observation
of this first encounter of employer and handmaiden. He
was given an immediate proof of Miss French's ability to
go straight to the heart of any matter that concerned her.
"Comfort," she began briskly, "I think I'm going to
live at Avalon this summer, with three friends."


THETRAP 87
"The's full an' plenty," Comfort admitted coldly.
"Whiskey an' brandy an' sech like. Ef they wuz mine I'd
empty 'em in the sink this day. Allies of Satan, they be."
"Whiskey and brandy will suit Dr. Benedict and Mr.
Vance—the two men who may come to Avalon. Mrs.
Benedict will come, too, of course, if we carry out our
plans. You must reconcile yourself to seeing them drink
an occasional highball. But I'm sure Dr. Benedict and Mr.
Vance are not what we could call 'drinking men.' Frankly,
Comfort, I can't believe my Uncle Amos was, either."
"I ain't sayin' Amos French wuz a drunkard. I ain't
sayin' any of the Frenches wuz drunkards," Comfort
conceded. "But they looked upon licker without horror.
They drank it. They should of throwd out every bottle of
the accursed stuff. I tol' Amos French so every chancet I
got. I been 'round Avalon sense I was a young one five
year old. That's purty nigh forty years. Fust I wuz trottin'
'round the kitchen follerin' my mother when she worked
fer the Frenches. Then I wuz workin' in it m'self."
"That brings us back to the point," Alida reminded her.
"I want you to come and work there again. I want to
live at Avalon."
"Ye wouldn't be a French if ye didn't," Comfort mut-
tered. "Every French wants t' live at Avalon. That's whut
made it sound so foolish when folks said yer uncle an' yer
gran'father lit out apurpose. No French would leave
Avalon ef he didn't hafta."
Alida leaned forward.
"Why, Comfort," she cried breathlessly, "then you
must have come in a few years after Grandfather disap-
peared."
"Fifteen years after. I wuz five," Comfort repeated.


88
THE TRAP
"Just the same, you must have heard a lot of talk. Do
you remember—"
She stopped. Comfort Folger had grown rigid in her
chair. Under the icy chill of her words the temperature of
the little room sank lower.
"That, Miss," Comfort was saying, "is a subjeck I don't
discuss."
Alida flushed.
"Not even with a French?"
"Not with nobody."
"Well, that's that," Bing commented airily. "Now, sup-
pose you tell Miss French whether you're going to help
her out this summer."
"Or must I bring up some outsider from New York,
who will never care for Avalon as you and I do?" Alida
ended gently.
The woman's eyes flickered.
"I dunno. I ain't cal'clated t' work this summer," she
said slowly. "I got t' study 'bout it."
"All right. Suppose you come back to the house with
us now and help me to decide what must be done in the
way of cleaning and repairing. I'd like your advice.
Whether I come later or not, I want to get that work
started to-morrow morning."
Something that in any one else would have been a
change of expression touched the woman's forbidding
face.
"I might—seems if," she conceded.
"Good." Alida stood up and Bing hastened to open the
door for her. "Put on your hat and coat and we'll drive
you over," the girl added, as she crossed the threshold.


THETRAP 89
"Even if you decide not to work this summer you may be
willing to help me out till my friends come. Then they can
bring a housekeeper with them, if you don't want to stay."
Comfort's lip line became a trifle thinner. Alida smiled
to herself. She had read the other rightly. The possibility
of a housekeeper from New York in the offing would
amazingly quicken that slow process which Comfort Fol-
ger described as "studyin' 'bout it." Comfort left the
room. Her visitors went out to the roadster and got in.
"Is there room for her between us?" Alida asked.
"Yes, if we fold her up like a tape-measure and drop
sections of her hither and yon. But what's the matter with
putting her in the rumble seat?"
"And you a dyed-in-the-wool New Englander!" Alida
jeered. "That would hurt her feelings. It would suggest
city airs and class distinctions. Didn't you see how her
face changed when I spoke of her job as that of house-
keeper? From that minute I had her, though she didn't
realize it. It will be several days before she can admit it,
but she'll come."
In the driveway before Avalon another car blocked
their passage.
"Your uncle must be here already—" Alida began. She
stopped to stare. The big, good-looking young man in the
light spring overcoat and new Fedora hat, who stood in
the driveway, was nonchalantly holding out his hand to
help her to alight.
"Mr. Vance!" she gasped, and laughed with excitement.
"In person," Vance corroborated. "To the rescue of the
damsel, like a knight of old. Heard of your flight last
night. Left New York at dawn to stand by and hold


gO THETRAP
Avalon with you. Ready to sweep, scrub, draw water,
drive tacks, run errands, and wring the neck of a chicken
for supper. Can he do all that? I wot not."
He gazed severely at young Bing, who grinned appre-
ciatively. Alida made the necessary introductions and the
quartette trooped into the house. Her heart was singing.
This was wonderful. She was forced to discourage a
marked tendency on Vance's part to linger in the hall and
point out its beauties to his companions. The study, with
a fire still burning behind the high screen Bing had set in
place before they left the house, filled Vance with awe.
"But I thought we were coming to a ramshackle, down-
at-the-heel place," he commented.
"Wait till you've broken an ankle or two in one of the
holes in the veranda steps," Bing advised. "Then you'll
know what sort of a place you've come to."
"You two may sit down before the fire for ten minutes
and get acquainted," Alida conceded. "Smoke if you like,
if you have any cigarettes. I haven't. Meantime, Comfort
and I will make a list of the cleaning supplies and other
things we'll need right away. Is the telephone working? Is
the water connected? Is the electric light on?"
"No, ma'am, to all questions," Bing humbly admitted.
"Mr. Vance's first job will be to notify the telephone and
electric companies of those needs. I'll drive into town with
him to lend tone to the expedition. Abram can turn on the
water."
"Seems like ye've a mind to stay the summer, Miss,"
Comfort commented, "ef yer goin' right ahead thisaway."
"If she doesn't I'll stay here alone," Vance announced.
"But I'll drive to New York and bring back the others
when you're ready for 'em," he promised Alida. "Mrs.


THETRAP 91
Benedict is a bit up-stage. She says you've spoiled the
whole thing for the rest of us by sneaking off alone. We
wanted to meet the first ghost with you. Here you'll be
on the most intimate terms with all four of 'em by the time
the rest of us are settled in."
Alida looked at Comfort's resentful mask and realized
that she must persuade her well-meaning companions to
keep off the subject of Avalon's mysteries. Such airy per-
siflage as this would make no hit in their new environ-
ment. She drew Comfort into the kitchen and the serious
discussion of the day began. Fifteen minutes later Com-
fort was at work, and Alida was back with the two young
men.
"If you will go to Quinnet and get the telephone and
electric light service started it will be a big help," she told
them. "While you're on Main Street buy the things that
are on this list. Here's the money. When you start back
pick up the town's best painter, Pat Donnelly, if you find
him, and bring him along. It might be well to round up
your uncle, too. I may need his advice about the estimates,
though Comfort seems to remember the exact cost of
everything that was ever done here. She knows a carpenter
who will repair the porches and fences and chicken-
houses."
Bing nodded.
"She means Abram Parsons," he said. "He's her best
young man. He's worked around Avalon all his life, too.
He's exactly a year older than Comfort is. The general
theory is that a lark of love has been singing in their
hearts for thirty years. If it has, no one else has ever heard
it. They played together when they were babes, and they
go to church and prayer-meeting together every week


92 TEE TRAP
when Abram is sober. That routine is followed if the
heavens fall. Even old Caroline never dared to interfere
with it. She wasn't a religious woman, but she had to go
to church, too, because Comfort went, and Caroline was
afraid to stay at home alone. Mrs. Quimby always had to
make sure of an engagement with some friends Wednes-
day evening, too, because Wednesday was prayer-meeting
night."
"But why haven't they married, all these years?" Alida
wanted to know.
"Because Abram is an unregenerate son of Satan, an'
'a drinkin' man.' " Bing grinned. "He goes to church with
Comfort, but he's never formally joined the church. He
loves 'licker' better than he does Comfort, and she's never
been able to make him give it up. He goes on a binge a
couple of times a month. It doesn't amount to much. No-
body but Comfort thinks much about it. But you know
how Comfort is—or you will know in time. 'The lips that
touch "licker" shall never touch mine.'"
"You're telling me more now than one person can un-
derstand," Alida broke in. "Please go downtown and do
these errands, if you really want to help."
"What are you going to do?" Bing asked suspiciously.
"Sit here?"
"I don't expect to sit down again for a week. Can't you
realize how much needs to be done? But Comfort and I
will have most of the housecleaning done by the time you
get back."
Alida wasn't really much good at actual housecleaning.
After regarding some of her first efforts in the kitchen
with dispassionate eyes Comfort Folger told her so.
"Better git down the chiney from one o' them closets,"


THE TRAP 93
she advised, "an' wash it. That ain't been done sense Mrs.
Quimby died, seems though. When ye git it all down I'll
wash out the closet an' ye kin put it back. Then ye kin
empty the other chiney-closets. Them's nice ladylike jobs.
They wun't hurt yer hands."
Alida looked at her suspiciously. In that instant was
born a conviction that haunted her all summer. Some-
where, buried far down under the cement of Comfort
Folger's nature, there must be a thin stratum of humor.
"I'm going to send half a ton of that awful modern
china up into the attic," she told Comfort, "and a few
dozen pieces of Battle Creek furniture that have crept into
the house. I'll let Mr. Haven and Parsons, the handy man,
carry it upstairs. I want those pieces out of the way before
we begin to clean in earnest."
She went into the dining-room and began the indicated
task. As she entered she informed Comfort, in a voice a
trifle firmer than necessary, that she expected her to bring
an extra woman cleaner with her the next morning. Com-
fort nodded. Her expression made it clear there was no
question in her mind that another real worker would be
necessary.
The two young men were back in an hour and a half,
bringing with them, in the order of importance, the clean-
ing supplies, the painter, and Caleb Haven. Mr. Haven
came into the house close behind his nephew and the
painter. He showed a tendency to cling to them, even
while he was greeting his client. His thin, narrow, close-
shaven face was pale, and he hesitated perceptibly in cross-
ing the threshold of the familiar study. Once inside the
room, however, and in the reassuring company of three
other men, he became more like the genial country lawyer


94 THETRAP
Alida had found him in New York. He congratulated her
on the fire, which had been replenished and was doing its
full duty as an effective foreground. He recognized at a
glance the child's rocking-chair to which the girl called
his attention. But for some time he took little part in the
general conversation. Instead, he seemed to be renewing his
memories of the attractive old room and its familiar fur-
nishings. His scholarly face was grave and thoughtful. He
shook off his abstraction, however, when the question of
painting and repairs came up. During the second and more
thorough inspection of the house he had become a creature
of the day and the hour, listening to the suggestions of
Pat Donnelly, the painter, with uplifted brows and eyes
of warning sternness.
"This isn't going to be a fancy job, Donnelly, make up
your mind to that," he said firmly, after Donnelly's first
contribution to the symposium. "Don't mention any lump
sum you can live on for the rest of your life. Miss French
will pay only the lowest possible price for a first-class job.
If you can't change your present ideas, we'll get some
more estimates."
On that hint Donnelly relinquished his dream of gold,
and everything went smoothly. He mentioned a price
Haven thought was fair. Alida rushed out to the kitchen
to consult Comfort and reported that she agreed. Donnelly
could begin the painting of the house the next morning,
and promised to do so. A general atmosphere of cordiality
prevailed. When Donnelly had departed Comfort brought
in the carpenter and odd-job man.
"This is Abram Parsons," she announced. "Him an'
me has gone over the outside an' inside of the house. He
knows whut's wanted. He's figured his price."


THETRAP 95
Abram, thin, grizzled, looking older than his reported
forty-six years but moving with surprising lightness and
agility, remotely mentioned his prices. He seemed only
vaguely interested in the matter. Mr. Haven nodded. Alida
was relieved by the gesture. She had grasped the fact that
Abram Parsons's estimate was fixed and final. There would
be no bargaining. Evidently Mr. Haven knew this, too.
Parsons, also, could begin his work the next morning.
The surprisingly low prices asked, Alida knew, had their
explanation in a past winter of unemployment for both
men. The matter of the chicken-houses was settled with
equal ease. They would need repairing. So would the
fences. Abram agreed to do those, also. Abram, Mr.
Haven now mentioned, was an expert workman and a good
hand at odd jobs. "He'll keep the lawns cut, too, if you
like," Haven suggested, "and help in the vegetable garden
—at fifty cents an hour."
Alida agreed and turned to Comfort. She had insisted
that bread, tea and butter should be added to the supplies
purchased downtown. Now she knew what had been in
her mind when she did so. Comfort had disapproved.
"What's the use?" she asked darkly. "You ain't goin'
to be here fer no meals this week. I ain't goin' to be here
when you ain't—less'n Mary Pulaski, that I aim to bring
t'morra, is here. Her an' me will have to go home t'
eat."
Remembering this, Alida put her question timidly.
"Comfort, it's five o'clock," she announced. "We're all
tired and hungry. Mr. Casper and I haven't had any lunch.
Do you think you could get us some hot tea and toast?
There must be a spirit-lamp around, and there's alcohol
with the new supplies. It would be awfully nice, if you don't


96 THE TRAP
mind the trouble. You could make some at the same time
for yourself and Abram."
Comfort nodded. Her expression did not change, but
Alida was sure the suggestion was not out of order. Com-
fort stopped at the threshold, looking back at the fire and
the little group before it. For a moment she took in the
picture. Then she made an unexpected comment.
"Seems kinda good to see folks settin' 'round again in
this house," she muttered, and departed. Bing whistled.
"By Jove, that's so!" he exclaimed. "We're the first
neighbors who have been in Avalon for fourteen years.
Do you realize that, Miss French? It must seem mighty
queer to Comfort."
Alida never forgot the tea-hour that followed. For one
reason, it was her last really care-free period for weeks.
For another, her companions were unexpectedly gay. Even
Caleb Haven cheered up at the prospect of tea. The two
young men had already established an understanding that
expressed itself in a spirited rivalry in "wise-cracking."
Comfort's tea and hot buttered toast were good. On her
own initiative she had added a jar of strawberry jam,
from a well-stocked preserve closet in the cellar.
Alida felt the tense nerves of her young body relax. She
had been on the edge of those nerves for three months,
worrying over her responsibility for Avalon; worrying
over her decreasing income; worrying over the general
uncertainty of a future that had looked so promising a
year or two ago. Now, as she glanced around the com-
fortable room, on whose mellow paneled walls the firelight
flickered, she felt that her troubles were almost over. Cer-
tainly the taboo against Avalon had been effectively
broken. The thresholds which had not been crossed by the


98 TEE TRAP
late what he had done, threw his cigarette stub into the
fire and got up with a confused murmur.
"Time we were going, young fellow," he told his
nephew, and offered a hand and an apologetic smile to his
hostess.
"The best of luck for the new plans," he said. "Call on
me any time I can help you. Call on Bing, too, if you're
optimistic enough to imagine he can be of any use."
"What he means," Bing explained, "and what I advise
myself, is to call on me when you want practical help.
Uncle Cal will be great in the domestic tableaux—the end
of a perfect day, and so on. I'll say for him, too, that he
can h—i—r-uu—mph more impressively when he's puz-
zled than any other lawyer I know. But perhaps you don't
like h—i—r-uu—mphs," he added anxiously.
"He might give us a sample," Vance suggested.
Alida went with them to the front door. Vance accom-
panied her, looking patriarchal.
"I'll take you back to the Inn any time you're ready,"
he told her, after uncle and nephew had gone. "I'm not
stopping at the Inn, you know. In delicate consideration
for your reputation, I'm putting up at, and with, Healy's
Tavern. I lunched there this noon. The food is appalling.
I'd better dine with you at the Inn, and then take you to
see a moving-picture. How soon will you be ready to
leave?"
"I'll ask Comfort. I can see right now," Alida added
as she started for the kitchen, "that my activities at Ava-
lon are going to depend very largely on hers."
Vance followed her into the kitchen. They found Com-
fort with her hat and coat on, ready to leave. There was
no sign of Abram.


THETRAP 99
"I wuz jest comin' in t' tell ye I'm goin'," Comfort ex-
plained. "I'll take the key o' the side door with me so's
Mary Pulaski an' me c'n git in to-morra' mornin', ef ye
ain't here."
"Of course I'll be here. What time do you expect to
come?"
"'Bout seven."
"Oh, well—in that case—you'll certainly need the key,"
Alida admitted. "I'll be around about nine. By the way,
I hope you've made up your mind to stay on with me.
I'll sleep better to-night, if that's settled."
"I'll stay till the cleanin's done. I wun't promise to stay
no longer till I see the folks that's comin' in."
"You've seen one of them, Comfort," Vance pointed
out. "The other two are right up to this superb sample.
A handsome young doctor and his wife. She's a trained
nurse. Think of the care you'll get when you're sick!"
"I ain't never sick." Comfort vanished through the side
door. They heard the lock turn from the other side, and
then the sound of her firm steps as she departed.
"Something tells me the association of Comfort and
myself will never ripen into love," Alida sighed. "She's
certainly a good worker though, and clean. Those are the
things that count."
"I wouldn't like to meet her in a cemetery on a dark
night, with her ascension robe on. See here!" Vance
stopped, struck by an idea. "Why don't you have Comfort
frighten away the ghosts?"
"She's had years to do that, but she hasn't put it over."
Alida felt depressed again as they left the house. Twi-
light was falling and the encroaching evergreens around
them looked dim and mysterious. So did the cedar grove,


roo
THE TRAP
at which she cast a hurried glance over her shoulders as
she descended the steps leading to the driveway. She was
glad to see Vance's neat roadster parked beside the foot-
stone. It seemed the only normal object in sight. She was
struck by the bad condition of two of the steps as she
descended them. They would have to be repaired at once.
She must speak to Abram about that in the morning. She
also observed, with eyes from which a veil seemed to
have fallen, the big spots where the paint had peeled off
the entrance doors and the front of the house. It was as
if the advance shadows of the coming night were bringing
out all the imperfections of the house. She stopped with
her back to the roadster and called Vance's attention to
the phenomenon.
"Avalon looks now exactly the way I expected it to
look when I got here," she confessed. "It didn't, this noon
in the sunshine. It looked comfy and homey. I loved it.
Now—don't laugh—I'm almost afraid of it!"
Vance stood beside her, hands in the pockets of his light
overcoat, staring up at the house. His expression was
thoughtful and deeply interested. He looked a most re-
assuring companion, but his words were startling.
"It does look a bit odd," he said slowly. "As if it were
trying to sneak back out of sight. As if it might not be
here at all, a few hours from now. As if it had its own
life apart, at night. As if—oh, well, as if it were one of
those enchanted houses we read about in fairy stories,
when we were kids—if you know what I mean."
"I know exactly what you mean," Alida said in a low
voice. "It makes me feel the same way. I didn't get that
impression this afternoon, even when we were in the
house."


THE TRAP
IOI
"Nor I."
For a moment they looked at the house in silence.
"I've always had an idea that houses have their emana-
tion—their aura—whatever you please to call it—just as
human beings have." Alida was thinking aloud. "I don't
like the aura that's around Avalon to-night. What does
it mean?"
Vance took her arm and turned her toward the road-
ster.
"It means that our imaginations are over-working," he
told her as he helped her into the car. "It means that we're
tired and hungry. Toast isn't very filling. We need our
dinners."
He got in after her, seized the wheel, and started the
roadster. Alida nodded, but she did not speak. Instead, as
the little car raced down the curving driveway, she looked
back. She could barely see the old house now. It was en-
compassed by its trees and shadows, drawing closer as if
to hide it. A slow chill ran the length of her spine. The
sensation was as unexpected as it was disturbing. Uncon-
sciously she drew closer to Vance, comforted by the touch
of his arm.
"Something's wrong," she thought. "Perhaps the old
house is sick. Perhaps things have happened in it that it
can't get over. But I love it, just the same. If anything in
it or about it is wrong, it's up to me to make it right.
And I will!"


CHAPTER VI
Comfort's new recruit proved almost as good a worker
as Comfort herself. But an annoying development at-
tended her labors. Not only did Mary Pulaski coldly re-
fuse to remain in the house alone, as Alida had expected,
but she firmly refused to be alone in a room. Cleaning a
room in which she was sustained by Comfort's austere
presence, Mary Pulaski warbled at her tasks and carried
on according to the highest traditions of her race as a
worker. She was a wholesome creature, still in her twen-
ties and as strong as a Polish pony. Dirt and dust disap-
peared before her. Shining cleanliness and order followed
in her wake. In her way, she was an artist. She gloried in
the effects she secured. Even Comfort could find no fault
with her, though she earnestly tried to do so.
But let Comfort leave for one single moment the room
in which they labored together, let her even step into a
connecting store-room or a linen-closet, and Mary Pulaski
was at her heels, wild-eyed and panic-filled. Useless to
point out to Mary Pulaski that Miss French herself was
working alone on another floor. The whereabouts of Miss
French was a matter of complete indifference to Mary
Pulaski, except on those occasions when payments were
due her. She insisted on receiving these from Miss
French's hand at the close of every day's work, a con-
dition that lent a distressing uncertainty as to her reap-
pearance the next morning.
102


THE TRAP I03
There was a mild crisis with Mary on Monday, the
fourth day of her activities, when the recurrent shocks of
Comfort's brief sorties into closets and cellar became too
great a strain on the Polish girl's nervous system. She re-
signed with tears, and was only prevailed on to remain by
Comfort's promise not to leave her alone at any time for
any purpose. Under other conditions Alida would have
been amused by the spectacle of this enforced association.
As it was, she was greatly annoyed. Observing the smoul-
dering lights in her gray-green eyes, Comfort made a dis-
covery and passed it on to Abram.
"She's got a temper," she told him. " 'Twan't fur nuthin'
she's got the red head of the Frenches. Not that I blame
her. Mary Pulaski's the cross thet's agoin' to git me my
crown. I say to Mary, 'Don't act dumber'n ye be,' an' the
nex' second she lets out a yowl becuz I take a step toward
the pantry."
Simultaneously Alida was making a confidence to
Vance.
"The Siamese twins were nothing to Comfort and
Mary," she told him. "It's getting on my nerves. I can
see that it's getting on Comfort's, too, though she's really
a trump about it. It's interfering abominably with the
work. She minds that as much as I do."
Already, notwithstanding Miss French's earlier fore-
bodings, she and Com foft were on the road to a high com-
mon regard. In the first stages of their association she had
impressed Comfort not only by frequently asking her ad-
vice, but by taking it when it was given. Comfort was won
over by this rare tribute. Alida's manner to her helpers
was exactly what it should be—simple, informal, and
friendly. She and Comfort worked together as partners


104 THE TRAP
in a new enterprise. Also, the new mistress of Avalon was
a French, and ever since her babyhood Comfort Folger
had unconsciously regarded the Frenches as a race su-
perior and apart, notwithstanding her disapproval of the
men's drinking habits.
All this Alida understood. What she did not yet realize
was that her biggest hit with Comfort was her genuine
interest in Comfort's nephew—Nat Folger. Nat was
seventeen, the orphan son, Alida was told, of Comfort's
only brother. He lived with Comfort and her sister, but it
was Comfort who had brought him up. The boy was a
lanky and tousle-headed lad, with the wistful and ingrati-
ating friendliness of a lost puppy. Awkward as he looked,
his movements were surprisingly light. He went about like
a swift shadow, and the spirit and intelligence that blazed
in his bright blue eyes were rather breath-taking. Alida
had engaged him to look after the chickens, the cow, and
the vegetable garden. He was already doing it with a high
efficiency. When he was not at work he was absorbed in
some book. He knew the name and habits of every bird
and animal that touched New England. He wrote weekly
articles on birds, and very good ones, for the local news-
paper. He was wholly fascinated by Amos French's study,
and by his books, which were not all law books. He handled
the volumes as only the true book-lover does, and Alida,
who was a lifelong book-lover herself, recognized a hun-
gry mind and a kindred spirit. Nat's dream was to have
a college education.
"You may read any of the books you like," Alida told
him. "I can see that you will handle them carefully, and
put them back where they belong. I'm going to send for


THE TRAP I05
a box of my books to have up here this summer. You may
read those, too."
"Gee, Miss French, that's awful good of you!" The
boy's voice was husky as he thanked her; but his real
thanks were in those brilliant eyes.
"That's an extraordinary youngster," she said to Com-
fort, a little later, and for a second saw a surprising trans-
formation in the woman's tragic mask. Here was Comfort
Folger's one weakness.
"M-m-m. I cal'clate t' give him an edication," Com-
fort said. "He aims to be a scholar."
"He will be. I'll help him all I can," Alida promised,
and with the words took a lasting place in Comfort's good
graces.
Vance, too, was interested in young Nat. He also came
promptly to the rescue of Mary Pulaski. He had nothing
special to do, he assured Alida. He was around the house
most of the time. He was also writing most of the time,
but he passed lightly over this point. He said he would
stand at Mary's right hand and hold the Avalon bridge
with her, whenever Comfort had to go into the cellar or
upstairs. He found a bell for Comfort to ring on these
occasions. Alida, working in the upper regions, was
amused by its frequent tinkle and the sound of Vance's
obedient feet, hastening down the back stairway.
"What do you do with Mary when you get there?" she
once asked. "Hold her hand?"
"No, I just supply moral support. I keep a book in my
pocket. I take it out and read it till Comfort comes, unless
there are some nails I can drive, or something. Mary goes
on with her work, and giggles."


io6
THE TRAP
Both Vance and Alida had almost forgotten their first-
night impressions of Avalon. The old house was full of
life and youth and activity. It seemed to enjoy the atten-
tions it was receiving. Alida had decided that the outside
renovations should be made first, as the visible sign to all
observers that Avalon was entering a new phase of exist-
ence. So Donnelly was painting the house and Abram was
repairing the fences and chicken-houses, as well as the
front porch and the wire screens of both porches. Both
men were frequently in and out of the kitchen. Hearing
the sounds of their cheerful voices and their heavy boots
Alida marveled that Mary Pulaski should ever experience
a moment of solitude. Alida had established what Vance
called a "diet kitchen," that she might supply Comfort
and Mary, Nat, Abram and Donnelly, with a simple noon-
day meal. It was not an economical plan, but it made a hit
with the service end. The atmosphere of the old kitchen
was actually cheerful when the five workers were taking
this meal. Vance and Alida, who considered themselves
the hardest workers of all, ate their luncheon in the dining-
room and gave a luxurious hour to it. The fare was mo-
notonous, but Comfort was a good cook and ran pleas-
antly to stews, hash, muffins and hot biscuits, and strong
tea.
Alida was amazed to discover what could be done to a
house in a few days, with half a dozen willing workers
doing it and fair weather helping the paint to dry. She
had broken the news to Lucy that she and Dr. Benedict
would not be welcome till the end of the present week—
ten days after her own arrival. She knew she would be
ready for them then. Her important part of the recon-
, struction was to select and send to the attic numerous


THE TRAP
I07
dishes, bits of bric-a-brac, pictures and pieces of- furniture
she called "eye-sores." Her one rift with Vance came when
she refused to let him help to carry these articles to their
new home. Abram and Nat did this, with occasional help
from Donnelly on large pieces.
Perhaps the feature of her new life that appealed to
Alida most strongly was the tact of her helpers. With the
exception of Mary Pulaski, none of them intimated by
word or manner that there was anything unusual in the
character or reputation of their environment. They may
have talked of these things among themselves, though
she doubted it. Donnelly, who was a chatty person, was
certainly passing on bulletins of progress and personal
ancedotes to friends and neighbors avid for such details.
But no one mentioned ghosts or tragic disappearances in
her hearing. Tradesmen coming to deliver orders entered
the old kitchen with confident feet and exchanged "wise-
cracks" with Mary Pulaski, who was always greatly re-
freshed by such encounters.
"It's exactly as I thought," Alida told Vance. "All these
yarns about Avalon were cooked-up gossip. Now we're
here there won't be any more of them."
She was surprised, and rather annoyed, by his non-
committal nod. Perhaps he felt that she was jumping at
conclusions too quickly. After all, no one was yet passing
the night at Avalon; and in a ghost-ridden house the pass-
ing of undisturbed nights would be the real test. She did
not again mention the matter to Vance, nor to any one
else.
It was not surprising that the first serious discord in
the domestic harmony was supplied by Mary Pulaski. No
nervous spasms had shaken Mary's soul for two days.


io8
THE TRAP
Alida was congratulating herself on an atmosphere now
so normal that she had almost forgotten anything else.
But on the Wednesday evening following Mary's arrival,
and after almost a full week of work, Mary Pulaski, as
Vance resentfully expressed it, was moved to do her stuff.
Donnelly, Nat, and Abram had ceased their labors for
the day. Mary and Comfort were still collaborating on a
thorough overhauling and rearrangement of the store-
rooms, which had taken longer than they had expected.
Alida and Vance were waiting for them to finish, before
themselves starting for Quinnet and the Inn. The evening
was unseasonably cold. Dusk had fallen, and the electric
switches of Avalon had been turned on. The eyes of the
old house, so long bleakly shuttered, were again brilliant.
There were lights in both upper and lower halls, in the
study, in the kitchen, and in Alida's upstairs room, where
she had left her hat and coat. No place for ghostly visitors
at Avalon this night, it would have seemed. Yet it was
then that Mary Pulaski, having first uttered a series of
shrieks that might well have appalled human ears in Quin-
net itself, was picked up unconscious just outside the door
of Avalon's century-old barn.
She had gone out to take to the chickens the remaining
scraps of a light repast she and Comfort had just enjoyed.
The empty plate and the scattered food were near her as
she lay. Nothing else was or apparently had been near her.
But Mary was unquestionably in a bad way.
The doctor, hastily summoned by telephone, worked
over her almost half an hour before she recovered enough
consciousness to shriek again and promptly go off into a
second swoon. In passing, she raved of ghosts. Something,
she howled, had come toward her from the cedar grove,


no
THE TRAP
Mary Pulaski was shrieking again. She wanted to be
taken away from this place. She called on heaven to wit-
ness a vow that she would never enter it again. She sat
up and struggled frantically in the doctor's grasp. Vance
spoke with matter-of-fact cheerfulness.
"If we can get her into my roadster I'll take her home,"
he suggested. "It will be a relief to all hands. Shut up, and
stand up, Mary. We'll be on our way."
The doctor shook his head.
"I've got a five-passenger sedan," he said. "We'll put
her in that and take her to the hospital for the night. If
we took her home in this state she'd have her whole
family, and probably all the neighbors, tied up in hard
knots by morning."
Mary Pulaski made a spectacular exit. Still gurgling
incoherently, but now on her feet and plainly blind with
terror, she groped her way out of the kitchen. Supported
by Vance and the doctor she reached the sedan and was
hoisted into it. She kept both hands over her eyes and
howled while the car was inside the Avalon grounds. Sit-
ting beside her in the tonneau, while the doctor drove,
Vance administered such encouragement as he could. In-
wardly his spirit raged. He was full of sympathy for
Alida. On Friday—the day after to-morrow, he was to
have gone to New York for the Benedicts, bringing them
to Avalon Saturday. The inside of the house was ready
for them, swept and garnished. They and he and Alida
would settle at once into their new quarters and the sum-
mer program would be under way. Now Mary Pulaski
seemed to have upset the apple-cart with her infernal danc-
ing skeleton. Comfort, too, had acted very strangely. He
had been almost as much amazed by her as by Mary


THE TRAP
III
Pulaski. In her different way Comfort had been as ter-
rified as Mary Pulaski was. It had been a nasty experience
to see that gaunt body of Comfort's shaking with fear,
and to see panic added to the tragedy in her hollow eyes.
In his absorption he spoke aloud.
"What the devil is this all about, anyway?" he muttered.
Mary Pulaski let out another notch of her hysteria. The
doctor turned and made a gesture of impatience, directed,
Vance suspected, at them both. But in the hospital, an hour
later, when Mary Pulaski had been put to bed in a private
room, with a nurse in charge of her for whose attentions
Miss French would have to pay, Dr. Shepard proved un-
expectedly communicative.
"I've done this for Miss French's sake, not for Mary's,"
he explained as he drove Vance back to Avalon. "Amos
French was a friend of mine. I've done what I could for
his niece. If I had let those Poles get together to-night this
whole region would be in a ferment by morning. They're
worse than the 'Portygees,' as the natives call them. As it
is, no one will know anything about Mary's experience ex-
cept the hospital doctors and nurses, and I've asked them to
keep mum. By morning we may be able to put the fear of
God into Mary and make her hold her tongue. I'll tell her
folks she was frightened by white sheets flapping on a
clothesline in the dark. That's probably what it was. I'll
hint to her father that there may be a libel suit against her
if she starts any gossip. It would be hard luck for Miss
French to have a fresh attack of local hysteria come on
just as she gets started here."
Vance thanked the doctor for his understanding.
"Just the same," Shepard went on, "sooner or later, it's
bound to leak out. If Miss French brings a suit against


112
THE TRAP
every one who talks about Avalon's ghosts and skeletons
she'll be suing the whole community. The curse of Avalon
and its ghosts is our best local topic."
"Is there a special story about the skeleton? I don't
think I've heard that one."
"You've heard of the four disappearances, haven't
you?"
"Yes, I know about those."
"Well, the first to go was old Captain Amos, the chap
that built the house a hundred and thirty or forty years
ago. His recreation between voyages was carpentry work.
He built some of the house himself. He planted that grove
of cedars, too, and made a tradition of it. It was sacro-
sanct. No French must ever put an ax to it—that kind of
thing. The story is that after he disappeared, died, what-
ever you choose to call it, he reappeared in the grove in the
form of a sea captain and lured people to their death. He
has a ghostly companion—his grandson, the second vic-
tim. The skeleton is another ghost—supposed to be the
third victim. He also haunts the cedar grove, and has a
shadowy companion. A lot of folks through recent years
have sworn they saw the skeleton, and have run for their
lives.
"Those yarns started because, as the story goes, Com-
fort Folger did see him, about thirteen years ago. She fol-
lowed him—God knows why—and all but lost her life.
The theory has developed that if he gets close enough to
a living person he exercises a sort of spell. One is hypno-
tized. One has to follow him. Anyway, Comfort followed,
from the barn into the grove. As soon as she got there
both she and the skeleton disappeared. It developed later
that earlier in the day Comfort and Mrs. Quimby had had


THETRAP 113
a little row. That wasn't unusual. So Mrs. Quimby thought
Comfort had gone to her sister's to sulk, as Comfort did
on these occasions. Mrs. Quimby herself hustled off to
spend the night with a neighbor. She stayed away the next
day, too. Thought she'd give Comfort time to cool off, she
said afterwards."
The doctor stopped, but Vance waited in silence and he
went on with the unction of the raconteur.
"People passing that way that night heard the howls
and shrieks we still hear so much about, but they simply
meant ghosts to them. They believed all the stories about
Avalon, for this was only a year or so after the last Amos
French disappeared. But the next afternoon a stranger in
the region heard the outcries when he was passing Avalon
in his roadster. He knew nothing about ghosts there, so he
stopped his car and investigated the noises. They were
pretty faint by this time, but he followed them to an old
well near the center of the grove. That well had been given
a stout wooden cover sixty or seventy years before and
forgotten for half a century. Several feet of earth had
covered it and grass had grown over it. No one alive knew
it was there. But the wood had slowly rotted. When Com-
fort stepped on the crumbling earth and rotting wood she
went through. Luckily for her the well was empty. But
it was thirty feet deep. She had been at the bottom of it,
half buried in the mud and slime there and with a broken
arm from the fall, for twenty hours before she was
rescued."
"But—man—that may be where they all—"
"That's what we all thought before we stopped to figure
it out," the doctor said patiently. "Of course an investiga-
tion was made right away. But there was nothing in the
s


114 THETRAP
old well but Comfort Folger—no bodies, no bones, no
watches, in short, no souvenirs of the sort human beings
leave when they depart this life in a hidden place and
slowly disintegrate."
Vance was wondering why Alida had not told him and
the others this episode.
"Of course it started a brand new crop of stories," the
doctor went on. "That well was one of the skeleton's traps
for his victims—that sort of thing, you know. They
think he had led Amos and his Boston broker to a different
trap, but one even more effective—one no one has ever
found. Naturally, the old well was immediately filled up.
Caleb Haven saw to that."
"It's a cheery story," Vance's voice was flat. All this
was, as the doctor had intimated, hard luck for Miss
French.
He found her and Comfort waiting for him impatiently
at Avalon. It was characteristic of all three of them, he
now realized, to have seen no reason why the two women
should not be left there alone. He and Alida drove Com-
fort home, and then went to Quinnet and the Inn. On the
way he repeated the story of Comfort and the well. The
girl was obviously stunned.
"Worse and worse," she sighed. "Comfort kept on
working at Avalon. But this is the end of Mary Pulaski.
She'll never cross our threshold again."
"Perhaps not."
"Neither will any other Polish girl come to us," Alida
went on gloomily, "and they are the best workers we have.
Mary was a wonderful cleaner." She broke out irrepressi-
bly, "Oh, what devilish luck it is to have this happen now!
I was afraid for a little while that Comfort wouldn't stay,


THE TRAP
"5
either. But she's a great old girl. It merely brought her to
the point. She told me off her own bat that she will work
for me this summer. That seems stranger than ever—now
that I know—"
"It's a gleam of light in the gloom," Vance muttered.
"Isn't it? It's my one comfort. So I'm going to ask you
to go back to New York Friday, exactly as we planned,
and bring up the Benedicts Saturday. By the mercy of
heaven the inside cleaning is practically finished. I'd have
kept Mary till the end of the week, but we can get Abram
for the final touches. We're all ready for Lucy and the
doctor. They can come straight to the house and go to
their rooms. We'll all have supper here. The new life will
really begin from the time they get here. But, of course,
you must tell them about these episodes."
Vance nodded. He knew all that was contained in that
final sentence. From the corner of an eye he had been tak-
ing Alida in as she talked. How lovely she was, how alive,
and how gallant! He realized how disastrously to-night's
upheaval had crashed into her plans, yet she had ridden
the disaster as a good ship rides a storm. She was in dis-
tress but she was steadily holding to her course. She wasted
no pity on herself and she asked none from others. A wave
of sympathy for her submerged him so suddenly that he
caught his breath. Was it sympathy alone? Surely no
sympathy could be as soul-shaking as this. He set his eyes
on the road before him, and inwardly registered a vow.
At the Inn the clerk gave Alida a message from Mr.
Haven asking her to call him by telephone as soon as she
arrived. There was comfort in hearing his pleasant voice
when she had done so.
"Bing and I have just heard about the new outbreak at


n6
THE TRAP
Avalon," he said. "We think you had better come and
take pot-luck with us to-night. The whole town will be
talking its head off. You won't want the waiters at the
Inn pointing you out to thrilled strangers in the dining-
room, and the local reporters interviewing you. Can you
get in touch with Vance and tell him to come along?"
"Yes. Thanks most awfully. He's right here—standing
by as you and Bing are. It's terribly good of you."
Alida's voice shook. It was almost worth while going
through this hideous experience, she was thinking, to
discover how kind one's friends can be. "How soon do
you want us?" she ended.
"In fifteen minutes, if that's convenient. It's after half-
past seven now. By the way, you'll be having supper, not
dinner. Can you stand that?"
"I can bear even that." Alida put back the receiver with
a lighter heart. When she told Vance of the invitation he
showed an unexpected concern.
"What I'd like to know," he muttered, "is how the
story got out so soon. Dr. Shepard had muzzled Mary
and the people at the hospital, or he thought he had. No
one else knew what happened except Comfort and our-
selves. Who leaked, do you suppose?"
"Some one always leaks. And you must admit that
there's something especially intriguing about a skeleton
that wants a dance with Mary Pulaski," Alida added dole-
fully.
Vance laughed and advised a brisk start if they were
not to keep the Havens waiting too long. It was pleasant
to drive up to the lighted entrance of the old Haven house
and find one's self in its safe and comfortable shelter. The


THETRAP 117
reflection touched the surface of Alida's mind and was
swiftly banished. She felt a sense of guilt over harboring
it even for a second. That was disloyalty to Avalon! Just
the same it was nice to be in a house with so comfortably
matter-of-fact an atmosphere. Both the Havens, serene in
their bachelor establishment, greeted their guests with the
special enthusiasm of hungry men. The quartette started
for the dining-room even as the middle-aged maid uttered
her brief announcement that the meal was ready. Bing
hastened to the sideboard and triumphantly held up a
glass shaker.
"Cocktails," he announced. "All ready for us. Thought
we needed cheering up."
He served the cocktails and the four drank them stand-
ing by the sideboard. Alida swallowed hers absently and
declined a second. Bing brought the shaker to the table.
"What's that for?" Vance asked. "Dutch courage?"
He drank two cocktails. His mind was still concerned
with the problem of the dancing skeleton and the well. If
it had really occurred, why was Comfort Folger ready to
remain at Avalon and risk another such encounter? He
decided to bring up the matter when they were all back in
the living-room.
The chatter at the supper-table was animated but im-
personal. The middle-aged waitress took a hectic interest
in it. It was clear that she had already heard the story of
Mary Pulaski's experience. Her pale eyes, avid with
interest, rarely left Miss French's face when she was in
the room. Vance enjoyed his hot oyster stew, his cold
meat, and the excellent cake and preserves that made up
the New England evening meal. Alida was giving a lively


n8
THE TRAP
acount of the week's work at Avalon. The attic, she said,
was bulging with discarded furniture, dishes, and pictures
that Abram and Nat had carried up there at her direction.
"It has become a chamber of horrors," she said and bit
her lip. "But all the rooms are charming," she added
hastily, "now that the clutter and the alien elements are
gone."
"It's enough to make your grandmother turn in her
grave," Bing said, and cursed himself for a tactless fool.
They were all self-conscious tonight, he reflected. "Though
from all I've heard Mrs. Quimby was the lady who added
most of the horrors," he went on.
"Yes," his uncle agreed. "Amos cherished his mother's
still-lifes as a matter of sentiment, but they worried him
just the same—I could see that. You noticed that he had
nothing in his study that detracted from the beauty of that
white pine paneling with its beautiful tone of age. The
original Amos must have been a beauty-lover, too. But
there are queer stories about him. He was supposed to be
something of a smuggler."
"That study is perfect," Alida said. "I haven't changed
the least detail, and I never shall."
Over their cigarettes in the living-room the Havens
asked for and were given an authentic description of the
episode of the evening. Vance brought up again the matter
of Comfort and the old well. Both the Havens nodded.
Alida looked rather sick.
"What she must have suffered!" she murmured. "All I
knew about that episode was that some woman had a
horrible experience in the cedar grove," she said. "I never
heard the details and I never even dreamed it was Com-
fort. I thought it was a country woman making a short-


THETRAP 119
cut through the cedar grove to the fields and the river
back of Avalon."
"It was Comfort, all right," the elder Haven said. "It
must have been a pretty stiff experience. She's never been
the same woman since. Her tragic face dates back to that
time." She was said to be fair looking in her youth. But
there are a dozen different stories about what really hap-
pened. What was the doctor's yarn, Vance?"
Vance told the story in the doctor's words as nearly as
he could remember them. Haven nodded.
"That's about the right of it, I reckon," he said.
"And yet Comfort has worked at Avalon ever since
and is willing to keep on working there," Alida repeated
thoughtfully. "She told me so to-night. To-night's affair
seemed a sort of call to her sporting spirit. She looks even
worse than she did before, but equal to tackling anything.
I felt almost sorry for the skeleton."
"You will all need a sporting spirit," Bing predicted.
"What I mean is, there's going to be a lot of publicity,
about this. Sunday specials in the Boston newspapers.
Pictures of the dancing skeleton, dancing all over the front
pages. It will put Quinnet on the map again, but it will
be damnably annoying."
"Shut up, you young idiot," Haven ordered. Alida
nodded gloomily. A dancing skeleton was a poor thing
compared to the dancing imaginations of young reporters
who would hurry to Quinnet for that story.
"And the Benedicts will get there in the midst of it,"
she groaned.
"They'll love it," Vance predicted. "So shall I. In fact,
if you hadn't furnished something of this sort about this
time, we'd all be feeling a bit let down. We were promised


120
THE TRAP
specters. All right. Now that everything else is ready, here
they are. Or at least, here's one of 'em. A fine and lively
start, I call it."
He raised his coffee-cup.
"To the dancing skeleton," he said gaily, and drank the
last mouthful of coffee.
Bing grinned and followed his example. Haven put
down his coffee untasted. Alida, staring into the dancing
fire, did not even seem to hear the toast. She was thinking
of the look of terror in Comfort Folger's eyes, and of
the unconquerable will that controlled it


CHAPTER VII
The publicity which broke over Avalon the next day was
all that Bing had predicted. Newspaper reporters are not
afraid of ghosts. The only thing each unit of the small
army that encamped at Avalon was afraid of was that
some one else's story would be more dramatic than his or
hers. Singly and collectively they haunted the old house
and its grounds. They took pictures of every part of it and
of every human being in it. Even Donnelly, the painter,
and Abram Parsons, handy man, had their lineaments in
the newspapers and thus achieved local immortality. Com-
fort Folger, heroine of the adventure of thirteen years be-
fore, was as much in the public eye as Alida, last of the
old French family. The story of Comfort's experience was
re-told in a dozen different versions. Nat Folger, dis-
covered as a local writer and nephew of the victim, was
offered a hundred dollars to supply his exclusive account
of it. He consulted Miss French.
"Aunt Comfort and I don't want I should do anything
you wun't like," he anxiously assured her. But his blue
eyes were electric lamps. That hundred dollars would buy
a lot of books. Alida laughed grimly.
"Do it," she said. "I'll be glad to feel that some one is
getting something worth while out of this infernal affair."
Nat wrote his story. It was a good one—a forecast of
the work the rising young naturalist was to do in the
future. He dismissed the theory of specters, and gave his
121


122 THE TRAP
readers a plausible explanation of the skeleton his aunt
had seen, which had to do with night mists and rain and
wind. An artist of the Boston newspaper that bought the
story outdid himself in a highly imaginative sketch of a
mist-made specter that looked enough like a wind-swept
skeleton to please any one. Nat was enchanted with it. He
was also convinced that, between them, he and the Boston
artist had solved the whole problem of the apparition.
The first delegation of press-workers arrived the morn-
ing after Mary Pulaski's adventure. Vance had departed
for New York a day earlier than he had planned to go.
He needed the additional day in town for affairs of his
own. Neither he nor Alida had realized what hordes of
special writers would descend on Avalon. By ten o'clock
there were more than a dozen lighthearted newspaper men
and women snap-shotting in the grounds, overworking the
electric bells, or waiting in the living-room for interviews
with Miss French. Each of them also desired to interview
Comfort Folger, but that little matter settled itself without
much discussion. Comfort had to answer the door-bell,
and thus bear the first charge of the shock troops. Her
answer to every reporter was the same as her answer to
her mistress had been when Alida had asked Comfort to
tell her all about the episode of the well.
"That," Comfort repeated, "is a subjeck I don't dis-
cuss."
Every word was an ice pellet. Alida looked at the tight
lines of the speaker's jaw and the thin line of her lips,
and accepted the statement as one of those that end a
conversation. Eventually, the representatives of the press
showed equal insight.
From the first Alida let the reporters collect in the living-


124 THE TRAP
French added, she was convinced that those disappearances
were either the results of accidents or that they were
voluntary. The first two Frenches had been strong swim-
mers, taking their daily dips on their treacherous beach.
Each had disappeared on a warm night, and in the summer
time—one in June, one in August. Wasn't it reasonable to
assume that each had gone out for a night's swim, had
experienced a cramp or a vertigo, and had been swept to
sea by the swift current, or caught and held in some sea
trap?
As to the affair of Uncle Amos and Amasa Tarwell,
the Boston broker, fourteen years ago—well, yes, that
dated back to a wild January night. But the men were life-
long friends and companions, both were comfortable finan-
cially, both were unmarried. Who knew what was in their
heads or what plans they had made? It was conceivable at
least that they had started off on an adventure—that
packed suit-cases, extra overcoats and hats, and an auto-
mobile, were waiting for them, so to speak, just around the
corner. Neither left behind him any one who would suffer
deeply over his disappearance. Both, if such a notion had
seized them, would have the advantage of the old stories
of French disappearances to explain their going. Certainly,
Alida ended, that theory was less absurd than the prevail-
ing idea that the two men had disappeared into thin air.
The reporters listened with interest and understanding.
They liked Miss French and her open fire and her coffee
and her cigarettes and her pluck. She was a dramatic
figure. She was also young and very pleasant to look at.
They did their best for her. Almost without exception they
published her interview in full, stressing her contempt for
ghosts and her tolerant scorn of Mary Pulaski's hysteria.


THE TRAP 125
But they also did their best for their readers, and they
did more than justice to Mary Pulaski's imaginings. The
Boston artist who collaborated with Nat was not the only
one whose fancy took bold flights.
The outstanding facts in every story were that there
had been four unexplained disappearances at Avalon, one
near-death, hundreds of hectic rumors, and—almost re-
gretfully the young things made this clear—dozens of
ghost scares, all certified to by leading citizens who
claimed to have seen the ghosts. The ghosts were even
described in detail, by certain citizens who were inter-
viewed. These citizens, not leaders of thought in the com-
munity, had heard shrieks and howls in and around Avalon
for years. They had seen unexplained lights and spectral
shapes. Most terrible of these was the skeleton, which
haunted the cedar grove and charmed its victims into fol-
lowing it into some bourn from which, save in one in-
stance, that victim would never return.
There was also an unearthly white owl, too large and
active to be real. His ghostly cries might account—as
Alida had hastened to point out when the spectral bird was
called to her attention by the reporters—for the stories
about shrieks and howls. Nothing, she reminded them,
could shriek and howl worse than a screech-owl could. She
herself had heard a gifted screech-owl since she came to
Avalon—
The admission was her one mistake. She had to stop
and let the sensation that followed run its course. Yes, the
owl she had seen was white. Yes, it was in the cedar grove.
But the owl was not abnormally large, she hastened to
add, and there was nothing abnormal about his screech nor
about his clumsy movements when he took his leisurely


126
THE TRAP
departure. Also, her young assistant at Avalon, Nat Fol-
ger, who was a recognized local authority on birds, had
traced this owl to his home in some woods just across the
river. From a hollow tree in those woods he sallied forth
every night to hunt for field mice and other delicacies. Nat
had watched him. The owl had an eye on the chicken-run
at Avalon, and had undoubtedly made way with some
chicks. But these final details were not underlined in the
newspapers. Instead, there were impressive head-lines:
MISS FRENCH SEES SPECTRAL OWL AT
AVALON1
The pictures of the owl showed him a ghostly creature,
huge in size, and terrible of beak and claw. Alida laughed
without mirth and gave up the struggle. They would do
their best for her, these young sensation-seekers, but they
would lay no ghosts. She made them welcome, repeated
her recitation to each fresh group as it collected, and re-
turned as philosophically as she could to her final prepara-
tions for the Benedicts, who were due Saturday night. The
rain had stopped the outdoor painting, but Abram had
mended and painted the porch before the rain began. Now,
in the downpour, he was stolidly repairing the fences. In-
side, the old house was hourly taking on additional com-
fort and charm, despite the still-life effects of paint-pails
in the front hall, which were removed later that day.
The Benedicts seemed very near to Alida on Saturday
morning, when she did her marketing for their first meals.
They were already, she assumed, on their way. She would
begin to look for them about four or five that afternoon.
They would arrive bursting with sympathy. Vance would
have told them of the Mary Pulaski incident and its after-


THE TRAP 129
Benedict spoke with professional cheerfulness, his hand
already on her pulse, his eyes on her face.
"I must have fainted," the woman murmured weakly.
"Do you feel any pain?"
"Yes, a little—here."
The doctor nodded.
"You must have been flung forward against the wheel.
I don't think much harm has been done. But we'll get you
to a hospital and find out."
The woman sat up straighter and spoke weakly but with
decision.
"I won't go to a hospital. I loathe hospitals. Besides, I'm
sure I don't need hospital treatment. There's nothing much
the matter."
"Well, where do you live? Perhaps we can take you
home."
"No, we're from" California." The woman spoke more
weakly now, as if her recent outburst had exhausted her.
"We're touring, you know. I—I—suppose we'll have to go
to a hotel near here."
Vance spoke for the first time. He was in a nightmare
of shock and remorse. The fear in that lovely young girl's
eyes was pulling at his heart-strings.
"We're only about nine miles from Avalon," he brought
out huskily. "It she can stand the ride perhaps we can
take her there—for the night, anyway. I think Miss
French would want us to."
The woman closed her eyes again.
"I won't go to a hospital," she repeated.
"We can get her to Avalon all right, if she wants to
go," Benedict said with sudden decision. "I don't think


I3O THE TRAP
she has anything more than a broken rib or two. But she
will have to be looked after, and so will this young lady."
He turned sympathetically to the girl. Her eyes were
full of tears and her lips were trembling. In the back-
ground, he now observed, Lucy was suddenly giving some
sort of a dose to Vance, who had abruptly collapsed on the
running-board and was looking as gray as the woman
looked.
"I'm Dr. Eugene Benedict, of New York," Benedict
briskly told the strangers. "The lady who is ministering to
our friend Mr. Vance is my wife. We're on our way to
an old house about nine miles from here, beyond Quinnet.
It's on the sea. The lady who owns it is taking us in for
a while. I think she might take you and your daughter
for a few days—till you're all right again. You needn't be
anxious. Your color is coming back already. I'm sure
you're not badly hurt. Or if we pass an attractive Inn, we
can leave you there. It's just as you say."
"Is this place you speak of an Inn?"
"No, it's a private house called Avalon, three miles be-
yond Quinnet. The lady who owns it is taking us as pay-
ing guests. In the circumstances, you might stop and look
it over and exchange references with her—"
"We might like it much better than a hotel. At least,
we'll go and look at it, if you will drive us there."
"Just a moment."
Benedict returned to the roadster. Vance was sitting
on the running-board with Lucy ministering to him. Bene-
dict looked him over, and nodded.
"You're all right. Get into the roadster and let Lucy
drive you. I'm going to take these women to Avalon—if
we find that both cars will go."


THE TRAP 133
He did not see why he should not grasp this professional
opportunity. If he left her at the Inn, the Dr. Shepard of
whom Vance had spoken and who lived at the Inn, Vance
had said, would almost certainly get the job. There was
nothing unethical about Benedict's preference to keep
it himself. Also, he thought it would help Miss French.
It would give her a larger income. But, of course, he would
play the game according to the best rules.
He was out on Main Street now, looking for a news-
boy. A moment later he handed Mrs. Kirkpatrick the
local newspaper, his forefinger indicating its flamboyant
head-lines. »
"That's the place we're headed for," he briefly told her.
"Read this, and probably you and your daughter won't
care to go there."
He went to the side of the roadster and explained the
situation to Lucy and Vance. Mrs. Kirkpatrick, first set-
ting a pair of business-like shell-rimmed spectacles on her
handsome nose, read the Gazette's revelations. She read
them carefully. Benedict, watching her from the corner
of an eye, realized that she was giving herself time to
think. She would be left in no doubt, however,' as to Alida
French's character and position. His glance at the head-
lines had shown him that the social position of the last
French was fully emphasized. Lucy's expression of dis-
approval had given way to one of deep thought. Benedict
grinned again. She was not usually slow in the uptake, he
reflected. But she had been physically jolted and bruised.
He could tell that by the stiffness of her movements. He
knew that she was also anxious about Vance. He watched
Mrs. Kirkpatrick's careful reading of the newspaper by
the light of the Inn's effulgent street-lamps. The girl had


134 THE TRAP
left the rear seat and was standing behind her mother in
the tonneau, reading the story over the other's shoulder.
Mother and daughter exchanged a few low-voiced com-
ments.
Benedict strolled back to the sedan.
"Well, what's the decision?" he asked lightly. "Here
we are, right at the Inn, if you want to stop. Miss French
lived here for a week, till her house cleaning was finished.
She says it's not bad. If that newspaper stuff worries
you—"
Mrs. Kirkpatrick eliminated the Gazette's leading fea-
ture with an indifferent wave of a hand.
"This, of course, is rank nonsense," she said briskly.
"It merely means that fool of a girl has had an attack of
hysteria. It doesn't frighten my daughter or me. As to
taking us in, Miss French should decide that. I haven't a
copy of our family Bible with me, and I can't hand her
a letter from our pastor. I don't carry such things when
I'm traveling. All I can do is to tell her who we are and
refer her to my bankers in San Francisco and New York.
She can telephone the New York bank Monday morning."
"That ought to be enough," Benedict smiled. "Besides,
Miss French and I have just been talking you over on the
telephone. I've mentioned my knowledge of human nature.
I think a few minutes' chat will satisfy you both."
Mrs. Kirkpatrick nodded.
"I assumed that you had discussed us," she said in-
differently. "Shall we go?"
"Gladly."
Benedict resumed his place behind the wheel. His spirits
were soaring. He was convinced that he had done a good
little job for himself, for the Kirkpatricks, and for Miss


THE TRAP 135
French. Two more paying guests—and guests who, by all
appearances, could pay handsomely—would help her out.
His own financial situation was one he had not dared to
think much about. As it had stood, Lucy would have had
to draw on her savings for his expenses as well as her
own. That situation was intolerable to a self-respecting
man. Now, however brief Mrs. Kirkpatrick's visit to
Avalon might be, he could at least pay his way there for
a week or so, and by the time she left he hoped he would
have found some sort of an opening in Quinnet.
He made himself agreeable to Mrs. Kirkpatrick, who
philosophically met him half-way, though she was obvi-
ously in some pain. He learned that her daughter had just
returned from Europe, where she had been taking a
special course at a French school. She had had the "flu"
over there. Simultaneously she had been stricken by acute
homesickness, and had impulsively sailed for America two
months earlier than her mother had planned. Mrs. Kirk-
patrick had come on to New York to meet her. She had
bought the sedan there and suggested a motor trip in the
East before returning to California. Vance's unfortunate
"side swipe" had interrupted this, but the delay was not
serious. They had no urgent plans.
All this was increasingly reassuring. Benedict's spirits
soared even higher—held in check only by the sober re-
flection that Mrs. Kirkpatrick's improvement might be
even more rapid than he had expected. However, the sedan
was limping. It would need repairs before the owner could
put it into active service again.
The outer aspect of Avalon, as the two cars drove into
the grounds, was even more reassuring. The big house was
alight from first floor to attic, and through the lower win-


I36 THE TRAP
dows the new arrivals saw the comforting gleams of open
fires. Alida met them in the front hall. After a warm wel-
come to Lucy and Benedict she gave her full attention to
the strangers, who had been assisted out of the sedan and
into the house. The mistress of Avalon found herself
looking into a pair of unexpectedly cold eyes, which sof-
tened suddenly as they met hers. Then Mrs. Kirkpatrick
dropped onto the davenport in the hall and wearily closed
her eyes, as if that last effort of getting into the house had
been too much for her.
"I promise not to be a nuisance," she told Alida, "but
I'm pretty badly knocked up. I wonder if I could go right
to bed."
"I insist on that," Benedict said promptly. "If there's
any rib trouble, as I fear, we must keep you there, after
I've strapped you up. Fortunately, my wife is a trained
nurse," he told the patient. "She can look after you, if
you're in for a few days of inactivity."
"That will be wonderful."
Mrs. Kirkpatrick drew a deep breath. Her keen and
clever face had brightened amazingly. "I'm worse off than
I seem," she now admitted. "I'm in a good deal of pain.
But with a doctor and a trained nurse in the house I've
certainly landed on my feet. If you will both take me in
hand I shall be very grateful."
"Lucy and I will get her upstairs and into bed at once,"
Benedict announced. "After I've made an examination,
and put her into plaster, if she needs it, she can have a
light supper."
"The light supper is waiting for you all this minute,"
Alida contributed. "I hope it isn't spoiled. You see, you're
several hours later than I expected you. Now I'll take you


THE TRAP 137
to your rooms. Come down when you're ready. In the
meantime, Comfort will try to keep things hot."
She started toward the wide front staircase, but Bene-
dict stopped her.
"I suppose there are short back-stairs," he suggested.
"Lucy and I will take Mrs. Kirkpatrick up that way. It
will be much easier for her."
Alida nodded and slipped ahead of them to the rear hall.
She admired the looks of the Kirkpatricks, especially those
of the young girl; but she was not at all sure she wanted
two extra guests at Avalon at this crisis. However, she
had acted impulsively and there was nothing to be done
now but stand by her guns. She reached the head of the
back stairway and watched the doctor and nurse bringing
up their patient, with the latter's daughter rather deject-
edly following them. Mrs. Kirkpatrick's lips were set as
if in pain, and she moved with seeming difficulty. But her
color was now excellent. Alida felt an immediate convic-
tion, which she could not shake off and which seemed
absurd on the face of it, that the lady was making the
most of a slight discomfort.
Alida led the Benedicts and their patient into the second
room at the left side of the front hall window. This room
had a huge bay window, taking up most of its south wall.
It looked out over an expanse of garden and lawn, leading
to the cedar grove.
"I meant to give you two this room," Alida told the
Benedicts. "But for the time I think we'd better let Mrs.
Kirkpatrick have it. Its rear door opens into the family
bath-room, off the back hall. That's the only bath in the
house except a microscopic private one in my own room,
made from an old closet. You and the doctor can have the


THE TRAP I39
kitchen, where she repeated her forebodings to Comfort.
Comfort nodded dourly. She had forebodings of her own.
In rebutting these, Alida found comfort for herself. Of
course the Kirkpatricks would not stay long. She drifted
into the dining-room, already lighted and ready for its
first guests in fourteen years. There was an open fire on
the hearth, and a glowing reflection of its light on the
old silver and mahogany. It was a heart-warming room,
now that it had been cleaned, its dark woodwork polished,
and its hardwood floor rewaxed. Its rug was a soft green
Axminster, whose worn and faded spots did not show in
candlelight and firelight. She crossed the rear end of the
hall to the study—Uncle Amos's room, now hers, and her
favorite spot in the house. Through its south window she
saw the heavy rain and the dark outlines of the cedar
grove beyond the garden. Her lips set. The cedar grove
was conspicuous from every window on the south side of
the house. Both Mrs. Kirkpatrick and the Benedicts would
have an excellent view from their bedroom windows of
any specters that turned up there. . . .
She drifted back to the kitchen. Comfort, whose dark
mask suggested increasingly that she had her opinion of
this delay, was trying to keep her biscuits hot in the oven
over the stove.
"They'll be down in a few minutes now," Alida as-
sured her, without real hope. But they were. The Bene-
dicts were a highly efficient couple. In exactly half an hour
they had got their patient into bed, examined, plastered
and reassured. Two ribs were broken. Nothing else was
wrong except over-wrought nerves. The Benedicts had
also freshened their own appearance after their motor
journey. Mrs. Benedict was especially immaculate in the


I40 THE TRAP
nurse's uniform she had assumed as the outward evidence
of her new duties. Hearing their voices in the upper hall,
Vance and Miss Kirkpatrick had joyously emerged from
their rooms, where they had tactfully lingered after their
own freshening processes. The four trooped downstairs
together, and burst into admiring outcries when Alida met
them at the dining-room door.
Lucy went on into the kitchen for her patient's tray.
The other three took their places at the table—Benedict
at Alida's right, Miss Kirkpatrick next to him, Vance at
the right of Lucy's still vacant chair, opposite her hostess.
Comfort, in a black uniform with white cap and apron,
brought in the hot soup. Alida smiled inwardly. She and
Vance were now used to Comfort's appearance, but she
could imagine the effect this cadaverous vision would have
on the Benedicts and Miss Kirkpatrick. The cream soup,
however, diverted their attention. There was a moment of
happy silence as her guests drank their first spoonfuls.
Then Lucy came in and took her place at the table, and
Avalon received its tributes.
The Benedicts were enchanted with it. So was Miss
Kirkpatrick. The girl had one of the most charming little
faces Alida had ever seen. It was a sun-and-shadow face,
taking its lights and shades from every shift in the young-
ster's moods—and these shifts were incessant. Her bobbed
hair was a golden bronze and naturally wavy, her eyes were
deeply and brilliantly brown, and her small perfect mouth
was upturned at the corners in a perpetual smile or an
approach to one, even when her eyes were clouded. Study-
ing her now, in the first leisure she had for that diversion,
the hostess of Avalon marveled. It was hard to connect
this eager and unsophisticated young thing with the highly


THE TRAP 141
sophisticated worldling who was her mother. Miss Kirk-
patrick had an especially alluring dimple in her left cheek.
Vance had observed it and was keeping it well in play.
Listening to the exchange of wisecracks between the two
—for Spring Kirkpatrick had mastered the elements of
this modern social art even in Europe—Comfort Folger's
frozen mask warmed a trifle as she came and went. These
city folks liked her cooking, too, and said so with engaging
heartiness. It was good to have the old place seem natural
again.
Against the double north window directly facing Alida
the cold spring rain that had been falling for three days
pounded tiny ice pellets borne on a rising wind. But these
sounds seemed merely pleasant accents of the inner warmth
and comfort of the candle-lit and fire-lit room. The last
of the Frenches felt her nerves relax. She was proud of
her home. It was a wonderful sensation to be sitting for
the first time at her own table, in her own house, with
friends around her. The faces of these friends reflected
her sense of well-being. They, too, were happy in her
maligned Avalon.
It was at this inopportune moment that, raising her
eyes to the long wide window facing her, she saw the
figure that was later to become so familiar. She dropped
her eyes from the thing and with a pounding heart briefly
considered it. At first it had seemed merely a shadow
outside the window and some distance from it—one of
those low-hung bits of fog, perhaps, on which she had
discoursed so eloquently to the reporters—the sort of
thing that rises from damp ground. But as she raised her
eyes and looked again it took shape—vague and nebulous,
at first, then more definitely outlined in its swift move-


142 THE TRAP
ments. There was form there now—a head, arms, eyes—
extraordinarily large and brilliant circles of light. For
an instant her own met those eyes; then once more hers
dropped while her spine seemed turning to ice. What was
the thing? It danced away from the window as she looked.
From the first it had moved with incredible rapidity.
But in that second whirl it had stopped for an instant
close to the window-panes, its head just below the shade
that stopped several inches above the middle sash. For a
second it was quite distinct. Then it vanished. But she had
seen what it was. A skeleton—the skeleton! She sat mo-
tionless, her eyes on her plate. Try as she would, she dared
not look again at that window. She was remembering that
Comfort had seen that thing, had followed it, and had
almost been destroyed by it. She gave barely a thought to
Mary Pulaski. Mary Pulaski was a fool. Comfort Folger
was not a fool, and Comfort was not imaginative. That
reflection seemed to mean something, if she could clear
her mind to a degree that would take in its meaning. An-
other clearer reflection followed it. My God, she thought,
am I really imagining that my Uncle Amos, or any of
my people, would come back from the grave to torture me
and my friends, happy together in the home of the
Frenches? My ancestors were good and kind men. All the
traditions say so. All the Frenches were kind and friendly!
Suddenly it was as if she became really conscious for
the first time of the strange trend of her thoughts. Well,
they had brought her to her senses. Later she and Vance
and the Benedicts would look into the matter of that
skeleton. To-night she found herself vowing it should not
interfere with the comfort of her friends. Not to-night.
Not ever! Alida French's jaw set. Not for nothing did she


THE TRAP 143
have the red hair of the French clan. There was something
back of all this, and it was something devilish. That was
plain enough. But it was something human, too, and one
could cope with human things. It behooved her, as a
French, to get to the bottom of what it was all about.
She raised her eyes and looked steadily at the window.
There was nothing there. It was, she told herself in the
relief of the moment, as if the Thing outside had not cared
to meet French eyes again.
In his chair at her right Dr. Benedict was watching her.
"What's the matter?" he asked in an undertone. "You
looked ghastly for a moment."
"Nothing." Alida managed a smile. "I've just been
wondering if the rain is really beating in at this north
window, as it seems to be. Please don't let me disturb
anybody. This is merely the busy housewife impressing her
guests."
Before the men could anticipate the action she rose,
went swiftly to the window, and pulled the shade down to
the bottom of the sill. As she did so she cast a quick
glance out into the night. There was nothing there. She
went back to the table.
"The window looks water-tight," she said, "but there's
a draught. I suppose it needs new weather-strips. That's
something I forgot all about. You see, as a householder
I'm only ten days old."
She spoke rather stiffly, her jaw-line set. Her fighting
blood was up. If she had lost her head, she was reflecting,
if she had cried out, as for one instant she had thought
she must do, she and her new family would have had a
very inauspicious opening of their vacation season. Her
jaw-line grew sharper. Her heart was again beating nor-


144 THE TRAP
mally. Spring Kirkpatrick, watching her with the fas-
cinated admiration a flapper has for poise and sophistica-
tion, suddenly decided that Miss French was older than
she had thought. She might even be very old—almost
thirty! Catching Spring's eyes, Alida smiled and the little
flapper, radiantly returning the smile, promptly changed
her mind. She had been right at first. Miss French was
really young.
Around them the others were talking. Benedict was
saying something pleasant about the ten-day-old house-
keeper's ability to serve a capital dinner. Alida forced
herself to answer and her voice sounded natural. In reply
to some one's question Spring described her school ex-
periences in Tours. Rather dull, she had thought them,
but there had been some jolly little jaunts to Paris. The
Benedicts had never been abroad. Alida and Vance had
crossed the Atlantic several times. Both knew Paris well.
Alida grasped the subject as if it had been a life line and
clung to it until the meal ended. Then she led her com-
panions along the hall and into the living-room. Here,
too, the shades were half drawn, but the wind was quieter
on this south side of the house and the open fire was
leaping up the chimney. She drew down the shades, and
even pulled together the worn silk curtains at the sides of
the windows. To-night, at least, there should be peace.
The war between her and the disturbers of Avalon could
wait.


CHAPTER VIII
^Spring immediately went upstairs to see how her mother
was getting on. She did not linger long over this filial
duty, but the half-hour she was gone gave Alida her chance
to tell Vance and the Benedicts of her dinner-table ex-
perience. To them, she knew, it would merely add a fillip
to the evening's program. The Kirkpatricks might have
taken it seriously. The three listened without comment
till she finished. Benedict spoke first.
"A nice homey ghost, standing beside one's bed or
clanking its chains across one's floor, would seem rather
jolly compared to this sort of thing," he said. "But of
course you imagined it."
"Do you really think so?" Alida asked eagerly. Simul-
taneously she shook her head.
"I'd like to think I did—and my imagination is hard-
working."
"Well, if you didn't," Vance suggested, "there's some
natural explanation for it. All we've got to do is to find
the explanation."
Alida looked at his lighted eyes and shook her head.
All he was thinking of, she told herself, was the excite-
ment of a ghost-hunt. She was already conscious that in
his two days of absence he had made some sort of read-
justment. He was with their group but not wholly of it.
As to his relation with her, he had retired to some inner
fastness. He would be interested, cooperative, but imper-
sonal.
i45


I46 THE TRAP
"No," she brought out vehemently, "it won't be natural.
That Thing, whatever it is, has been hanging around here
for years. I've heard plenty about it these last two days."
She added with an irrepressible shiver, "The natives in-
sist that it's my poor Uncle Amos. Yet he was the flower
of our flock—public-spirited, generous, and very popular.
Now he's represented as a vampire at the worst and as a
menace to the community at the best. I won't stand for
that," she added passionately. "I simply won't have the
dead men of my family slandered any longer. I've got to
get to the bottom of all this."
"We're going to," Vance told her. Alida met his eyes
and her hot anger cooled. He had come back to her, all
the way—if only for a moment!
"Thank you," she said, "and forgive me for losing
my temper. I'm apt to lose it when I'm pushed too far.
That Thing outside the window first appalled me and then
infuriated me. I don't know which feeling was stronger."
Her voice changed. "We mustn't tell the Kirkpatricks
about the skeleton unless we have to. Spring is a darling,
but she's inclined to be chatty. I don't want any new
stories started."
Benedict nodded. Alida looked at Lucy. It was odd, she
reflected, as she had done before, how content Lucy was
to remain in the background, now that she had Benedict
here, and let him make all the decisions.
"Speaking of the Kirkpatricks," Benedict was saying,
"it's my duty to report to the lady of the house that an
odd development has come up to-night in connection with
them."
Alida threw up one hand in a gesture of despair.
"From the minute I saw that woman go up the back


THE TRAP 147
steps," she admitted, "I've had a hunch that she isn't what
she seems to be. I shall get in touch with her bankers the
first thing Monday morning, and ask for her references."
"You won't find anything wrong with her bank ac-
count," Lucy said unexpectedly. "She simply oozes af-
fluence. Everything she has is the best that can be bought.
She wants to know if you have a safe in the house where
you can put away her jewelry and five or six hundred
dollars she carries around in that gold mesh-bag of hers.
The bag is worth a small fortune. So are all the rings she
wears.
"But she's not newly-rich and she's not vulgar," Lucy
went on, when Alida had promised the use of a safe in
the wall in her study. "She's a well-educated, well-bred
woman. I don't like her for some reason, yet she strikes
me as a good sort. I liked especially the way she took that
newspaper yarn Gene showed her. I like even better what
she said about it to me while I was undressing her. She
doesn't take the specter stories seriously for a second—
and she's very understanding about the nuisance they must
be to you."
"That is decent of her." Alida was touched.
"Just the same," Benedict broke in abruptly, "there's
something else, and I think you ought to know it. The
lady has no real injuries at all aside from those two broken
ribs, and they're slight. She has a few bruises, of course,
and I suppose her nerves got a little jolt. But she's a per-
fectly healthy specimen. She could continue her motor
trip in a few days if she had to. There isn't even very
much wrong with her car, though I rather hoped there
would be. But just the same—and here's the big idea—
she wants to stay with you a month and take a rest cure!


I48 THE TRAP
She put the thing up to me while I was making my ex-
amination and Lucy was unpacking her traveling-cases."
"But, good heavens—" Alida began.
"I know. Don't turn it down till you've thought it over.
Let me put the whole thing to you before you interrupt.
She was very business-like about her proposition. She says
she was already on the edge of a break-down when her
daughter's cable came a fortnight ago, saying she was
sailing for home that day. You see, Spring didn't give
her time to object. She had to start East at once to meet
the youngster. She's been rushing ever since. The motor
trip isn't a big success, it seems. Spring doesn't care about
motoring except to get somewhere. The place Spring
wanted to get to was home—California. Now Mrs. Kirk-
patrick is sure Spring would be willing to stay here a
while, since her mother needs the rest cure. It seems that
Spring approves of us, especially of Miss French and
Vance. Lucy and I don't count, being married. Mrs. Kirk-
patrick wants me to tell Spring it's absolutely necessary
for her mother to stay put for a while, in a place where
she won't have any cares."
"But who is she?" Alida interrupted wearily.
"It seems she's a widow with no other children, but she
has a big house and a lot of responsibilities. As a matter
of cold fact, she doesn't need a rest cure any more than
I do. I don't mind mentioning, though, that it would mean
a lot to Lucy and me to earn what she would pay us. It
would help you, too. She offers to pay you Sanitarium
rates. Money seems to be nothing to her but something
to spend. She evidently has a lot of it. She's planning to
play the invalid for all she's worth—bed, trays, medicines,
doctor and nurse in attendance. She says she'll pay you


THE TRAP 149
fifty dollars a week for herself, and twenty-five for
Spring, not counting Lucy's salary and my fees. She says,
and she's right about this, that she would pay a hundred a
week for the two of them at a fashionable hotel and not
get the atmosphere she wants. In fact, she has been paying
that and more. She says it was God's mercy that she fell
into such a place as this, with a doctor and a nurse on
the premises. She says it will save her from a complete
collapse. Mind you, she's not fooling me. She's merely
trying to put over some purpose of her own. My point,
and I'm underlining it, is that I'd like to get some of the
money she's ready to throw to the ravens, and I'd like to
see you get what's coming your way. Seventy-five dollars
a week extra, for a month, would help a lot toward paying
for the painting and repairs here. The woman is obviously
all right and her daughter is a charming girl." He shot
his climax at Alida like a bullet. "Would you mind having
them stay here if their references stand investigation
Monday morning?"
"Not if I had an ordinary house, with the ordinary
amount of help in it," Alida admitted. "As you put the
plan, it sounds great. But I haven't the ordinary house
and the average help, and I can't get help. Things may
happen. You may all want to leave long before the month
is up. Besides, frankly, I don't like Mrs. Kirkpatrick's
pose as an invalid, if she isn't one. Why is she putting
it up? I'd feel more comfortable if she and her daughter
were ordinary boarders, paying the usual rates."
"Her pose and her reasons for it aren't our business,"
Benedict pointed out. "If she wants a rest cure why
shouldn't she have it, even if she doesn't need it? She may
be one of these imaginary invalids, though I don't really


150 THE TRAP
think she is. Anyway, she will be in her room all the
time, she says, and Lucy and I will carry her trays up and
down."
Lucy entered the argument as if her cue had been given.
"For the rest," she suggested, "why not pay young Nat
ten dollars a week and let him help us out, leaving most
of the outside work to the man you call Parsons? The
money will be a god-send to Nat, and he's a first-rate
worker. I watched him while I got the tray ready in the
kitchen. Let him help with the dishes and the serving, and
do all the heavy cleaning. He can do it all right. The
laundry, of course, will be sent out. Under that system
your domestic routine ought to work to perfection."
Alida looked at Vance. She realized that she usually
looked at him when any new question came up. He re-
sponded, but only after a little mental journey back to
her. He had been away again!
"You need that money," he reminded-her. "If I were
you, I'd grab it. This whole thing seems to me in the
nature of an answer to prayer. I can't see any possible
objection to it. For, of course, if Mrs. Kirkpatrick be-
comes a nuisance you can turn her out, any time."
Alida still hesitated.
"I don't know why I'm holding up the plan," she ad-
mitted. "I suppose I have one of my hunches. Still, I can't
be right and everybody else wrong. So I agree, since you
all want it that way."
The remainder of the evening was a cheerful one.
Spring came back to the circle, and Lucy left it to devote
herself to her patient.
"This new job isn't going to be all beer and skittles
for me," Lucy had confessed to the others, before Spring


152 THE TRAP
acquaintanceships, had not been Miss Kirkpatrick's idea
of a satisfying tour.
Hearing music and laughter and the chatter of youth
coming from the living-room of the old house, as she
worked in her kitchen, Comfort Folger's dark mask soft-
ened once more.
"Folks," she muttered to Abram, who was reading his
Gazette at the kitchen-table. "Young folks talkin' an'
alaughin'! Strange sounds in the old house."
Abram, man of few words, looked at her over the top
of his newspaper.
"T'wun't last," he predicted. "Flyin' in the face o'
Providence, I call it." His voice dropped. "They wun't
like it," he underlined, and returned to his newspaper.
Any one who knew Comfort Folger, with the single
exception of Abram Parsons, would have expected an
outbreak after that speech, and would have heard one.
Abram neither expected nor received it. Comfort's mask
settled over her face again, as definitely as if she had
adjusted it there. She moved about the kitchen with soft
steps, unconsciously adapting her usual bustling progress
to Abram's presence. It had been a triumph to get Abram
into the kitchen of late, and to keep him there in the eve-
nings. Abram had been one of those who for fourteen
years had ostentatiously boycotted the inside of Avalon.
Propped against her pillows in her comfortable upstairs
room, Mrs. Kirkpatrick heard the care-free sounds below
and smiled contentedly. She was making out a list of the
books she intended to read in the coming month. It held
eighty per cent of fiction to twenty of travel and bi-
ography. The fiction was of a high quality. Lucy, herself
a reader, thought well of the list.


THE TRAP
153
"There's a new young man downstairs," she told Mrs.
Kirkpatrick. "I recognize his voice. He's the nephew of
Miss French's lawyer."
"Spring will be enraptured," the patient said briefly.
"In Spring's opinion, the only things better than a new
young man are two new young men. I shall have no
trouble in persuading her to linger here a month or two.
Besides, I'll have the satisfaction of knowing who the
young men are that she meets, instead of watching her
pick them up in hotel corridors and elevators."
Lucy was unimpressed. Brief as their acquaintance was,
she had already learned that Mrs. Kirkpatrick was not to
be hampered by facts when she had a point to make. Lucy
did not believe Spring was the sort of girl to pick up
young men in hotel corridors or elevators, but she sym-
pathized with a mother's natural apprehension over the
pageant of strange young men who turn a hungry eye
on a pretty girl as they pass.
The woman's present preoccupation with her list gave
Lucy her first good opportunity to study her. Erect against
her pillows, her prematurely white hair and wholesome
freshness of skin set off by a flame-colored silk jacket,
her plucked black eyebrows a thin curved line above her
brilliant gray-black eyes, the patient made an arresting
tableau. Her expression was concentrated as she con-
sidered her list, amused and tolerant as she turned from
it at intervals to listen to some youthful yelp of laughter
from below. Tolerant amusement seemed indeed her habi-
tual expression, though earlier in the evening Lucy had
seen it give way to the thin-lipped and steely-eyed look
of a born ruler determined to rule or die. The nurse was
inclined to think she preferred that look to the one of


154 THE TRAP
tolerant amusement. The latter subtly suggested that her
patient was laughing at her. This reflection prompted her
next speech, when she had crossed the room at nine o'clock
and taken her patient's temperature.
"There's no sense in keeping this chart," she said
brusquely as she entered the record. "Your pulse and
temperature are perfectly normal. They've been normal
ever since you entered the house. When Dr. Benedict took
your blood pressure before dinner he found it one hundred
and thirty-seven. You couldn't ask anything better than
that. I don't think one woman in ten thousand could show
a finer record at your age."
"Probably not, at my age," the patient agreed. "That's
why I take care of myself. I'm in the pink because I've
done that. But when fate has been making a football of
me, and when careless young men bang their cars into
mine, I feel that a halt by the wayside is indicated. That's
sound, isn't it?"
The tolerant smile had disappeared. The thin-lipped,
narrow-eyed expression of the ruler had settled over the
keen face. In that moment, and she knew it, Lucy Bene-
dict was given her opportunity to play this woman's game
with her, and profit by it, or to find herself courteously
but firmly dropped out of that game. She surrendered,
and the surrender was final.
"It's very sound," she cheerfully agreed. "Very wise,
as a matter of fact. So few of us have sense enough to
take care of ourselves that it's always surprising to find
some one who does it."
From the corner of an eye, as she finished the entry
on the chart, she caught the return of the tolerant smile.
"Now that's settled," Mrs. Kirkpatrick suggested,


THE TRAP 155
"you'd better run downstairs and amuse yourself with
your friends. I shall not need you till I'm ready to turn
out the lights. That won't be till eleven. My plan is to
sleep nine or ten hours every night. You will surely ap-
prove of that. You can be sleeping at the same time."
"It's the best suggestion I've heard yet," Lucy agreed
warmly. The two women exchanged a look of smiling un-
derstanding. Then Lucy went to the window to draw
the faded chintz curtain forward over the window-panes.
As she looked out into the rain-washed darkness she
thought she saw something large and white and motion-
less perched in a near-by tree, but she was not sure.
Neither was she greatly interested. Nat had certainly
removed any spectral qualities from the Avalon owl and
his habits.
"If he hoots all night," she reflected, "Mrs. Kirkpatrick
will lose some of that sleep she's counting on."
Her patient spoke sharply.
"What are you looking at?"
"An owl, I think," Lucy said indifferently. "He's quite
near. I was just hoping he wouldn't be moved to perform
and keep you awake."
"I hope not." The other spoke absently. She had re-
turned to her list and was wondering whether to add to
it an improving work she had successfully avoided for
two years.
"Before you go," she directed, "please get from my case
a French novel you will find there. I'll rest my intellect
with it before I drop off. But keep it out of sight in the
daytime, please. I don't want it to fall into the hands of
my innocent child. She has probably read it in France,"
she added, as she took the book from Lucy's hand, "but


156
THE TRAP
she thinks I still read E. P. Roe. We mustn't dispel her
illusions. By the way, the doctor needn't look in on me
again to-night. Two visits a day, I think—one in the
morning and one in the afternoon—ought to keep me
alive."
Her tolerant smile widened again as she spoke. Lucy
Benedict could have shaken her. Instead, she nodded,
smiled, and faded out of the room, wondering why she
disliked the woman so intensely.
Down in the living-room Lucy found Bing overworking
his social charm. He had, it appeared, the best sail-boat on
the coast. He kept it in the harbor at Quinnet, and during
the normal spring weather which had preceded the present
storm he had had it over-hauled and put into commission.
Also there was at the harbor a local institution known as
Captain Bijah's motor-boat. Bing suggested a sailing party
for the first clear day. Did Vance or Benedict know the
difference between the bow and the stern of a boat? They
did, but this was about all they knew. Surprisingly, Spring
knew more. She had spent summers in England with
friends who were nautical-minded.
"Life is good," Bing said devoutly. "In fact, it's almost
too good. I'm beginning to be afraid something will
happen."
He turned on the vocalion again, seized Spring, and
swung her into a tango. Benedict joined the dancers with
Alida. He had hoped to have a few words with her about
that visitant at the dining-room window, but she swung
away from his opening lead and he dropped the subject.
"While you and Vance were talking, and our infants
were dancing earlier in the evening," he began, "I heard
Miss Kirkpatrick telling the story of her life to young


THE TRAP 157
Haven. It seems to have been an odyssey of Europe. She
has been to half a dozen schools there—several in France,
two in. Switzerland, one in England. She didn't come home
for vacations. If she wasn't invited to pass them with
schoolmates—and she usually was—her mother came over
and took her on European tours to improve her mind.
She has only been in America once before. That was one
summer when she was a small girl. Her mother was taking
one of her numerous rest cures—it seems she has the
habit. The kid spent that summer as a paying guest on a
Wyoming ranch. This year, it seems, Spring simply took
the bit in her teeth. She was fed up with knowing nothing
about her own country. She sailed for home and cabled
her mother the first day out that she was on her way.
Rather unusual, wasn't it? One gets the impression that
her society was not indispensable to Mama's happiness."
Alida agreed without great interest.
"Everything is so unusual just now," she pointed out,
"that it's only the usual that surprises one. I must admit
that with this attitude I haven't had many surprises
lately."
"You're going to have one now," Benedict predicted.
"Everything is going to run beautifully. Mrs. Kirkpatrick
is the type of woman whose jaw-line terrifies me; but
she's also the type that's perfectly good as long as it is
having its own way. You won't have any trouble there.
Vance's absorption in you made me think Spring might
have a rather dull time of it. But here comes Bing, like
young Lochinvar, especially created for the role of enter-
tainer to young girls."
Alida smiled at him.
"You're not very observant," she murmured, as she


158 THE TRAP
followed his expert lead past the pieces of furniture the
young men had not taken the trouble to push out of the
way.
"Just what do you mean by that?" He was interested,
as any man is when the talk turns on him.
"If you had been observant," Alida explained, "you
would have noticed that Mr. Vance, delightful as he is,
is really interested in exactly one human being—himself."
Benedict nodded.
"I had noticed that he's rather self-absorbed," he ad-
mitted. "I thought perhaps you hadn't."
"I had—almost from the first. Much of his self-
absorption, of course, is caused by the jolt Dr. Cunning-
ham has given him. He's a young man playing a game.
He doesn't care much for the game, but he's got to do
something to divert his mind, so he plays it—hard. He
flirts and chatters and makes himself agreeable. All the
time he hardly knows we're on earth. In a way, he's in-
terested in Avalon and its ghosts. He wants to get to the
bottom of the ghost-scares. Well, I'm with him there. I
want him to. But as to doing it for me, or being absorbed
in me, as you said, that's a million miles from the truth.
He's too absorbed in his own emotions and his own re-
actions to give much thought to anybody."
"Right you are, except as to his feeling for you," Bene-
dict agreed. "Lucy and I have made the same diagnosis.
We thought you were taking the surface view. Now, I'm
a bit afraid of you. I'm afraid you see through us, too."
Alida laughed—not very gaily.
She had made some discoveries about the Benedicts.
She had learned that in the young doctor the fires of am-
bition blazed with a steady white flame. He was deter-


THE TRAP l6l
near-by trees, now haunted a tree close to her bay window
and gazed in at her with bright and interested eyes. In
the intervals of these informal visits he retired to the
cedar grove and screeched.
There was no denying that his voice and his presence
were unpleasant. Mrs. Kirkpatrick did not like them and
said so. But she accepted the fact that Avalon and its
cedar grove had long been his haunts, and that he could
not be expected to forsake them merely because she was
taking a rest cure. There was nothing really spectral about
him, if one looked closely, and the Avalon household
looked very closely indeed, every time its members had
an opportunity. He was, as tradition had claimed, un-
usually large. His color was a very light gray, rather than
white, and he was extremely awkward in his movements.
He came three nights in succession, and screeched at vary-
ing distances from the house. Then, to every one's relief, he
temporarily disappeared. But to Alida's horror his cries
were then replaced by more human ones, of which the
household could not find the source. They were scalp-
prickling outcries—uttered in hoarse, strangled voices.
Vance was enchanted by them, but intensely annoyed be-
cause he could not discover their origin. Spring began to
look rather serious when they were heard or discussed.
The Benedicts and Mrs. Kirkpatrick tried to ignore them.
Alida was openly upset by them, as an annoyance to her
household.
Like the owls, they had a special schedule. They began
soon after midnight, or very early in the morning, near
the break of dawn. Sometimes two voices seemed crying
out together. It was possible to regard them as coming
from shacks down by the river, inhabited by several bib-


162
THE TRAP
ulous Polish and Portuguese citizens. To this theory
Alida and the Benedicts resolutely clung, though no one
could be found there who could explain them. The Poles
and Portuguese themselves, on whom Alida made several
personal visits, called passionately on heaven to witness
their innocence. They maintained that they themselves
were extremely inconvenienced by the noises, and they
obviously held Miss French in some way responsible for
them. Indeed, the wife of one of the Portuguese was so
plainly afraid of the caller, and so convinced that she had
the evil eye, that Alida mercifully shortened the inter-
view between them.
"In the old days my neighbors would have hanged me
me as a witch before this," the girl ruefully told Vance.
She was giving much of her time to running down noises
and rumors, and the task was telling on her. The noises
never came from the places they seemed to have come
from and the rumors were convictions for which those
who uttered them seemed willing to die. Instead of offer-
ing apologies, even the old fishermen and boatmen and
their wives repeated the yarns to Alida with unction.
Several times she made personal investigations of the
noises late at night, or toward dawn, accompanied only
by Nat. She was not willing to disturb the repose of Bene-
dict or Vance. Discovering this, both young men were
alarmed and reproachful. They made Alida promise not
to go out at night again. They, too, had investigated, and
just as vainly. She promised, because she had already
realized that she could discover nothing.
The outcries kept up for a week. Sometimes there were
only a few of them. On one occasion they were repeated
at close intervals during an entire night. When, after


THE TRAP
163
eight nights, they ceased, Vance was so disappointed that
Alida took him to task for it.
"You don't consider my position in this matter at all,"
she said more sharply than she had ever spoken to him.
"I think you might, instead of regarding it as a Roman
holiday. And I think you might let me go with you, when
you sneak off at night to investigate alone."
Vance looked guilty. It was quite true that he had not
considered her position. He defended himself lamely.
"We've got to get to the bottom of those noises," he
pointed out. "It's a big job. Perhaps it's a dangerous one.
From all we hear those rackets have been going on for
years, like all the other manifestations. Besides, the skele-
ton is at large pretty frequently. Have you seen him?"
"Often."
"So have I."
Irrepressibly, Vance voiced his inner grievance.
"It's darned queer that we haven't seen or heard any-
thing unusual in the house itself," he brought out. "I've
been looking and listening for that ever since we came."
"And wouldn't you be delighted if you found it!" Alida
muttered resentfully. "You wouldn't care if it emptied
the house, so long as it gave you a new interest."
"That's not so," Vance said feebly. But it was so, and
he knew it. There were certain thoughts, not alone those
about his health, that he wished to banish.
Alida regretted her outbreak. She was letting her situa-
tion get on her nerves, and this she had definitely decided
not to do. She glumly told herself she ought to be glad
Vance was finding at Avalon at least a bit of the new
interest he had frankly admitted he sought there. But it
was very hard to think of Vance as an invalid. His color


164 THE TRAP
was excellent, and his eyes were clear. His appetite was
good and he claimed to be sleeping well. He had now
been at Avalon almost three weeks, yet with the excep-
tion of the slight attack following the accident, and which
Lucy and Benedict had so clearly considered unimportant,
he had been as well as the rest of them.
"If he could see the skeleton peering into his window
as I did in the study last night, he'd feel that he was
getting something for his money," Alida thought. At the
mere memory of that experience she shivered.
The household had shaken itself into a routine. The
painting and carpentry were at last finished. The old
house, restored to some of its former dignity, seemed to
be folding sheltering arms around its inmates. It was,
Alida had once thought, as if it would not tolerate an-
noyances within its sturdy walls. Vance had begun sys-
tematic work again and passed at his desk the hours
between the family's eight o'clock breakfast and one
o'clock luncheon. Lucy was housed with Mrs. Kirkpatrick
most of the time. Benedict, in the intervals of looking
after his patient, was calling on local doctors. Incidentally
he was planning to share an office on Main Street with
two of them—Dr. Shepard and a physician attached to
one of Quinnet's factories. Benedict had registered with
the State Board; had "contacted" the local doctors and
the hospital; he was ready for such practice as might
come his way. His third of the low rent would be neg-
ligible, and both the doctors were busy, Shepard at the
hospital and the other man with his factory cases. They
were not ebullient over the prospect of Benedict's sharing
their office, but they were at least acquiescent. There was


THE TRAP
his visits. She evidently found the excursions pleasant.
Saturday afternoons and on Sundays she sailed with him
on his beloved boat, The Banshee, a diversion for which
as yet the others had not found much time. Mrs. Kirk-
patrick, after a few searching inquiries as to the young
man's standing and habits, seemed content to let this
close association continue. It was already clear that neither
mother nor daughter felt a passionate urge for the other's
society. They seemed hardly well acquainted. Alida, whose
interest in the girl was steadily growing, had once tried
to get from Spring an idea of her mother's favorite
dishes. She was indifferently assured that Spring "had no
idea" what they were.
"You see, we've lived apart all our lives," Spring
added. "We hardly know each other, really. I do know
she'd rather stay in bed and read than do anything else.
She used to do that even in London and Paris. Fancy
reading in London and Paris!"
Mrs. Kirkpatrick knew very well, however, her personal
preferences in the matter of food. Next to bed and books
she liked her meals, and again Alida was grateful for
Comfort's excellent cooking. She was also grateful for
other things. Comfort never warmed to more than a tepid
personal temperature, but she was loyal and amazingly
efficient. Once, and only once, Alida won an interesting
confidence from her.
"Comfort," she asked abruptly, "you have often seen
the skeleton, haven't you?"
"That's a subjeck I—"
"'Don't discuss.' I know. But tell me just one thing.
Why did you follow him that time?"
Comfort looked at her with deep reproach.


168
THE TRAP
on books and 'rest cures,' as she calls them, what other
rich women spend on theaters and operas and entertain-
• »
mg.
"She manages to buy a few clothes, too," Alida re-
marked drily, and both smiled. Their patient's wardrobe
—her trunks had been forwarded now from New York—
would have done credit to a royal bride. Spring's ward-
robe was almost as large, but, like her mother's, in perfect
taste. Mrs. Kirkpatrick was very generous. She had a way
of presenting to others garments of which she was tired
after wearing them a few times. She was too wise to
offer such gifts to Alida, but she gave Lucy a handsome
Japanese kimono, a dress, and a pair of superb pajamas,
which the nurse promptly accepted. She also tipped the
household workers in amounts that were fabulous to
them. Nat, Abram, and Comfort each received a five-
dollar banknote at the end of every week.
"You see, I'm making them all a lot of extra work,"
Mrs. Kirkpatrick mentioned, when Alida questioned this
largess.
"It won't last, remember," Alida warned her helpers.
"Mrs. Kirkpatrick is only here for a month. After that
we'll all have to get right back to our simple and eco-
nomical New England life. So save your money!" The
advice was unnecessary. The Benedicts were saving their
money religiously. Apparently Comfort and Nat never
spent a penny.
In this benign atmosphere a few disturbed nights, a
few howls and shrieks which might have emanated from
tipsy neighbors, could not be taken too seriously. Comfort
Folger grew a trifle more tight-lipped over them. Vance
spent afternoons wandering in near-by woods and along


170 THE TRAP
Alida's thoughts were so far away from the cedar grove
that for an instant she merely stared.
"What kind of men?" she asked and added hastily, "I
suppose it's two of our neighbors, taking a short-cut
across my grounds from the main road to the river. They
do that sometimes, Comfort says."
"Oh." Mrs. Kirkpatrick's voice was doubtful.
"I don't see why they should go through the grove,
though," Alida went on, thinking it out. "Comfort says
people usually cross the garden to the back of the barn,
skirt the vegetable garden, climb the fence, and make a
short-cut over the fields."
Mrs. Kirkpatrick shook her handsome head. Spring had
found a fairly good hairdresser for her in Quinnet, and
the patient now had her white hair carefully marceled and
dressed twice a week, by an up-to-date artist who came
to Avalon for the purpose.
"They didn't look as if they were making a short-cut,"
she argued. "And they certainly weren't in a hurry. They
were strolling in the grove, near the edge of it, side by
side."
"How were they dressed ?" Alida's steady heart-beats had
quickened.
"In queer, old-fashioned suits. The older man wore a
pea-jacket, with brass buttons and a nautical cap. It was
their faces that were queer. They turned toward us just
once."
"What did they look like?"
The question came out almost harshly under the
speaker's effort at self-control.
"Well," Mrs. Kirkpatrick hesitated, "one was white-


THE TRAP 171
haired. The other looked younger. He had dark hair.
Their faces were terribly white."
"Miss French, they were simply ghastly I" Spring broke
in. "They were simply awful! Of course we couldn't see
any features at this distance—just those horrible white
faces."
"How long were they there?"
"Only a minute or two. I think they must have seen us
watching them, and that frightened them away," Mrs.
Kirkpatrick contributed. "Spring saw them first and called
me. I got up and went to the window. They were on the
edge of the grove nearest us, just inside the nearest line
of trees. They were peering out, and looking up at the
house. It was hard to see them, for it was almost dark.
I'm sure they saw us standing here, though, for they both
slid back into the shadows of the grove."
"Did you see them again?"
"No, and I don't want to. There was something un-
pleasant about them. That's why Spring called me. They
gave us both an odd feeling. I got back into bed. I admit
I was startled by their faces and their actions. That
peering and staring up at the house— There's no hospital
or insane asylum around here, is there?"
"No."
"I watched till now," Spring explained, "but they didn't
come back. I think they must have gone through the grove
and down to the river. I ran downstairs and asked Com-
fort who they were. They looked so different from any
one we've seen before. But Comfort was in the store-room
getting out her supplies for dinner. She hadn't seen them
at all. She wouldn't answer any questions about them,


172 THE TRAP
either. She just turned her back and muttered something
about 'foolishness.' There was no one but Comfort and
ourselves in the house, as it happened." Spring ran on,
"I suppose that's why we felt a little nervous."
"I'll have Abram and Nat look into the matter when
they get back," Alida promised. "They may know the
men. What books have you been reading?"
The question diverted the patient's mind as it always
did. She had received a big package of new books from
Boston that day. They were spread all over her bed. She
was not as bad as Dr. Johnson, who cut the leaves of
new volumes at the table with knife-blades smeared with
butter and gravy, but she had his airy indifference to the
care of books. She separated uncut leaves with her fingers,
and dog-leaved the pages, and indifferently presented the
books to any one near her, as soon as she had read them.
When Nat brought up wood for her open fire, or carried
her trays to her, as he sometimes did, she had discovered
his love of books. She gave him all the histories and biog-
raphies she read. She now begged Alida to accept half a
dozen new novels she had finished that week, and Alida
took them down to the library. She was glad to get out
of the room. She was also glad to find Nat in the kitchen,
helping Comfort. She called him into her study and re-
peated the Kirkpatricks's story.
"Comfort won't say a word about these things," she
added. "But I expect you, Nat, to tell me what you know."
Nat hesitated.
/ "I guess Aunt Comfort don't want you should worry,"
he said at last. "She told me not to talk 'bout Them."
Unconsciously his voice capitalized the last word. Alida
pounced on it.


THE TRAP 173
"What do you mean by Them, Nat? I'm your em-
ployer. I'm asking you to help me."
Nat wriggled unhappily.
"Why," he stammered at last, "the queer things that
come 'round here. You see," his voice dropped, "those two
fellas ain't like the owl. It ain't so easy to explain them."
"Have you ever seen them?"
"Yes'm. Often, at night in the grove. I chased 'em,
too. Leastways, I tried to. But—well, they jest wan't
there, any more." He repeated his original statement al-
most doggedly, "They're differ'nt from the owl. So's the
other two—the skeleton and his friend."
"I suppose," Alida brought out, "that according to the
gossip here they're supposed to be the old Captain and his
grandson, and Uncle Amos and his Boston chum."
"Yes'm. That's whut they say. They say they look like
'em, too. They don't look like anybody, when I see 'em.
Jest white faces. But they never let me get near enough to
see plain." He brought out his last sentence defiantly.
"None of 'em looks like folks!"
"Nat I" In her excitement Alida caught the boy by the
shoulders and almost shook him. "You're not admitting
that you think those figures are ghosts!"
Nat slipped out of her grasp, and she let him go.
"I swan I don't know what to think," he said almost
sulkily. "You talk like Aunt Comfort. She tried to shake
me, too, when I saw 'em. She loves this house like it was
a human being. She wun't listen to anything that'll hurt
it. Jest the same, I know she's seen those fellas lots of
times, an' been scared by 'em. But she wun't talk 'bout 'em.
She wun't talk 'bout none o' the things 'round here that
needs explainin'. But there's one thing," he added eagerly,


174 THE TRAP
"they ain't been 'round so much sence you came, as they
was—were, I mean, last year." Even in his embarrass-
ment Nat was trying to remember his grammar.
"That's one good thing," Alida said grimly. "All right,
Nat. I won't keep you from your work any longer."
Nat looked at her in silence. Her voice and her shoul-
ders had dropped together. Her eyes were discouraged.
"Whutever they are, it's a damn shame!" he brought
out explosively, and hurried from the room. Alida called
after him.
"Go and ask Dr. Benedict if he will come down and see
me in the study."
Vance was also in the house now. She had heard his
car enter the grounds. But she had no impulse to call him.
She longed for sympathy and understanding and practical
suggestions. She would get none of those things from
Vance. He would see in the episode only another thrill,
another hunt.
Benedict came at once. He glanced at her face, dropped
into a chair beside her desk, and nodded.
"Get it off your chest, whatever it is," he invited. He
listened to her tale in silence but with growing indignation.
"This may frighten the Kirkpatricks away," he mut-
tered.
"They will be leaving soon, anyway," Alida sighed. So
Benedict, too, was failing her. All he was thinking of
was his interest. But now, misunderstanding her depres-
sion, he leaned forward and put his hand on her arm.
"On second thought, I'm not sure of that," he told her.
"Take it from me, the old girl won't let herself be fright-
ened away till she's ready to go."
"But what is it, Doctor? What are those figures?"


THE TRAP 175
His face grew serious.
"It's something devilish enough to come from an unholy
grave," he admitted, "but it's really nothing supernatural.
I needn't tell you that."
"Of course not. But what is it?" she repeated passion-
ately.
Benedict threw up his hands.
"God knows. It's malignant, anyway. We may as well
admit that. No practical joker is staging this stuff. And
remember," he added impressively, "it's been going on for
years!"


THE TRAP 177
muttering something about "sech foolishness." Even
Vance had joined the game of "hide-and-seek" in the
cedar grove. There was quite a thrill, as Bing pointed out,
in not knowing whether the hands that clutched one there
were a friend's or the old Captain's.
There were other surprises at Avalon. Alida discovered
them as the days passed.
The first lay in the realization of Abram Parsons' peri-
odical lapses from sobriety, as indicated by the empty
bottles. No one had warned Alida of the frequency of
these lapses, but she now realized that they accounted for
Comfort's simultaneous attacks of black gloom.
"I'll say they do," Bing Haven agreed when she ex-
pressed this theory. "They account for the silence of the
wedding bells, too. She's a fanatic on 'licker.' They say
Abram used to try to reform, but he couldn't make the
grade. When the urge overcomes him—and it does pretty
often—he goes off at a moment's notice and foregathers
with kindred souls at Quinnet. Every time this happens
Comfort gets a little more remote, if you know what I
mean."
Alida knew. She also learned the extreme inconvenience
of Abram's lapses. They were as sudden as mid-summer
thunder-storms. One hour he was hard at work. The next
he was gone, leaving his tools or paints in confusion be-
hind him. At such times Nat philosophically took over his
jobs so far as he could. It was all very trying.
Another and a greater surprise was the continued re-
moteness of her Quinnet neighbors. Meeting them on Main
Street or in the shops of Quinnet she found them more
than cordial. Entire strangers, both men and women,
confidently introduced themselves to her as old friends of


I78 THE TRAP
her uncle or even, on a few occasions, of her grandfather.
Their eyes were kind, their handclasps firm and close. In
the first days after her arrival Alida had been touched
and pleased by these greetings. They made her feel like
a wanderer who has come home. In later meetings on
neutral grounds her fellow New Englanders were equally
cordial. But the brief contacts never ripened into closer
association. Not one of these kindly men and women
crossed her threshold.
She had expected them to call, when they realized that
Avalon's renovations were over and that her household
had shaken down to a routine. The fact that they did not,
made for a certain stiffness on both sides in their later
Quinnet encounters. Here, her neighbors at once realized,
was no Mrs. Quimby. The last of the Frenches would not
visit the homes of those who refused to cross her thresh-
old and who, by doing so, added to the difficulties of her
situation. Young Bing Haven appeared joyously for
luncheon or dinner whenever he was asked. Very fre-
quently he appeared when he had not been asked. Almost
every day the telephone brought Spring his invitation,
"Come on, woman, let's go places!" His uncle accepted the
two dinner invitations Alida gave him, but she had more
than a suspicion that he was not really happy in her house.
She did not immediately invite him again; though of
course she would do so, she decided, at reasonable intervals.
She needed no explanation of all these phenomena, but
she received one. This came from Quinnet's undisputed
social leader, Mrs. Haverford Tucker, a gallant old lady
in her eighties, and wife of the president of Quinnet's
largest bank. Mrs. Tucker herself had been president of
the town's leading woman's club. She was still chairman


THE TRAP I79
or member of its hospital and charity boards. With arthri-
tis at its malign work of stiffening her venerable joints,
she was steadily lessening her activities. She had been
one of the first of Quinnet's residents to welcome Alida
French as a neighbor.
"You will forgive me for not calling on you, my dear,"
she explained one day when they met at the local florist's.
"I never go anywhere except here. I can hobble here and
to the hospital with my canes, for my house is just around
the corner. But I can't get into my automobile without
the greatest discomfort, so my friends come to me. I'm
at home Thursday afternoons. Will you come next Thurs-
day? I'd like to talk to you about your grandfather. He
and I were half in love with each other when I was in my
teens, though he was almost forty. He was thinking me
over, so I might have been your grandmother. But while
he was deliberating—I suppose he thought I was too
young—he went to Boston on a visit. A girl there, Alida
Emerson, grabbed him, as well she might. I hear you
were named for her. Your grandfather was a handsome
devil," the old lady went on, "and no better than he should
be, though he was very generous and immensely popular.
Your grandmother was pretty gay, too. I was fascinated
by the tales of their goings-on. Perhaps I had a narrow
escape. But Amos and his wife seemed very happy for
years, until—until—" she stopped and flushed.
"Until he disappeared," Alida finished for her. "Grand-
mother was on a visit to Worcester at the time, with her
two sons—Amos, the older one, and my father."
Moved by the contrition in the old eyes that were watch-
ing her, she added impulsively, "Mrs. Tucker, may I ask
you a question?"


THE TRAP
181
much of Vance again. He gave her and her errands most
of his afternoons. Nevertheless, she rarely felt that he was
wholly with her, except when the subject of Avalon's
mysteries came up. At other times, under his inconse-
quential chatter, half his mind seemed on the work he had
done that morning or on his physical condition. She was
increasingly convinced that his health was better than he
thought it. She now repeated her interview with Mrs.
Haver ford Tucker and saw him wake up.
"What do you care whether they call or not?" he asked.
"You didn't come to Avalon for social diversion. Even if
you did, look at what you've got. Bing Haven and me as
court jesters, Spring Kirkpatrick to look at, Lucy to tell
your troubles to [so he had noticed that], Benedict and
Mrs. Kirkpatrick as studies in human character. Mrs.
Kirkpatrick alone would keep me interested, if there wasn't
another soul here. Believe me, there's more to that dame
than meets the eye. For additional human interest, you
have Comfort, Nat and Abram—fit subjects for the micro-
scope, every one of 'em. What more do you want?"
Alida, he had long since discovered, had a disconcerting
way of keeping to her subject.
"I don't mind the residents not calling," she admitted.
"In fact, I'm glad to be spared the nuisance of calls just
now. What I do mind is the insult to my family and my
house. We don't deserve it. I mind that—terribly."
Vance looked at her curiously.
"Getting fond of the place, aren't you?" he commented.
"Haven says all the Frenches were—unusually so. That's
supposed to be why they can't keep away from it, even
after they're dead. A passion that lives beyond the grave—


THE TRAP 183
"You must never feel that way," he said in a low voice.
"But I do. How can I help it? Only the other night you
all turned a necessary search into a game. Well, it's a life-
and-death game to me, if it isn't to any one else. I won't
rest till I've won it."
Vance whirled the car over to the roadside, sheltered it
under an elm, and stopped it. Then he laid his hand on
Alida's and spoke seriously.
"Look here," he said, "we're going to have a show-
down right now. First of all, answer one question." He
met her eyes and held them as he went on. "Did you really
imagine that we were going to come up here and solve in
a few weeks a problem that has been up in one form or
another for a hundred years?"
"No, I didn't," Alida admitted. "But I thought we'd
make a start on it. I thought—" her voice shook "—I
thought we'd take it seriously." She drew her hand away
as she spoke, but he recaptured it and held it in a firm
grasp.
"We have made a start, and we are taking it seriously.
Alida, look straight at the situation. Don't you realize that
there must have been dozens and dozens of searches and
inquiries and investigations? The mystery of Avalon goes
deep. We're not going to solve it in an hour or a day or a
month. But sooner or later, I feel sure, we will solve it.
The cooler and steadier we can keep in the meantime, the
better. Get me?"
"Yes."
"Satisfied?"
"Yes."
She was, for now the real Vance was talking.
"If you will stand by—" she began.


184 THE TRAP
"I'll stand by for all I am, and with everything that's
in me." He pressed her hand, dropped it, started the car
and drove on. Alida sat up and looked around her. It was
a beautiful day, she suddenly discovered.
"As if all these elements of interest weren't enough for
you," Vance was saying conversationally, "we have a
brand new one. Bing and Spring have fallen in love—and
it's the real thing."
Alida experienced another of the surprises she had pre-
dicted. Vance had been observing Bing and Spring, too.
However, this last discovery of his was shared by most
of the household.
"You notice a lot of things, don't you?" she said ad-
miringly.
"I notice everything."
"Do you?" Alida smiled. "I wonder."
She didn't want Vance- to talk about Spring and Bing.
If he did he might drift away again. She must keep him
close, if she could, and if only for a few minutes longer.
Strange how wonderful life had suddenly become. All
around her she saw beauties she had been blind to on the
little run to Quinnet earlier in the afternoon. The cloudless
May sky was a hyacinthian blue. On the other side of the
old stone walls they passed were cowslips, hypaticas, dog-
tooth violets, and wild iris. There must be anemones down
near the murmuring brook in this meadow, and that bird
singing his heart out was certainly a bobolink.
A later surprise was Dr. Eugene Benedict's success
as a local practitioner. He had moved into his new office,
with a second-hand but impressive-looking flat-top desk,


THE TRAP
a cabinet, a swivel chair, a comfortable chair for patients,
much charm of manner, and a growing optimism. He had
established office hours from two to four daily. Almost
from the first, patients had dropped in. They liked his
cheerfulness and his looks. They soon realized that he was
a good doctor. They came again and yet again.
"Part of it is due to curiosity," he confessed to Alida,
with his illuminating smile. "They want to know what sort
of friends you've got with you at Avalon. One of the
first to drop in was your friend Mrs. Haverford Tucker.
It's a good thing we have an elevator in our building.
She's a great old girl. I like her and I'm going to help her
if it's the last thing I do. Besides, she can send me a lot
of patients if she's a mind to."
Alida was amused. Benedict was becoming more native
than the natives. He absorbed and repeated every col-
loquialism he heard them use. He "had a mind to," he
"went up street," he "wanted you should" do this and
that. The family at Avalon jeered at him but he kept it up.
"I'm thinking of settling here. I'd like to send my
roots deep into Massachusetts and found a fresh New
England line. It's time we did something toward counter-
acting the Portuguese and Polish influence," he explained.
"Hear that, Lucy? It behooves us to get busy."
They had been at Avalon a month. Mrs. Kirkpatrick
had recovered sufficiently to sit up in her large bay window
several times a day. She expressed her approval of Uncle
Amos's foresight in adding that excrescence to the archi-
tecture of Avalon. Through it she could watch the high-
way. She could gaze approvingly over the garden and
the surrounding landscape. Twice more, at night, she had
seen the two white-faced figures in the cedar grove. Twice


THE TRAP
187
though none confessed it, was upheld by the attitude of the
rest and by the comforting sense of solidarity that filled
them all. Even Spring played up, though once or twice,
when the night calls could not be explained by the white
owl's presence, Alida had awakened in the morning to
find the connecting door between their bedrooms open.
"I opened the door about four. They were getting pretty
spooky," Spring confessed. "You don't mind, do you?"
"Not a bit. Wake me, any time you feel nervous. You're
being a mighty good sport, Spring," Alida added im-
pulsively. She had become very fond of Spring.
"Mercy, I don't mind it," Spring said. But she looked
as if she had received an accolade.
One day a shining new automobile rolled up to the
entrance of Avalon. Mrs. Haverford Tucker descended
from it, with much assistance from her chauffeur and ac-
companying maid. With their help she also successfully
negotiated the short flight of steps leading to the veranda
and front door and arrived, triumphant but flushed and
breathless, in the hall of Avalon. Alida met her there,
cooed over her, made her comfortable in the living-room,
and gave her tea.
"You behold the triumph of mind over matter, my
dear," the old lady explained when she could speak. "My
husband has had a new car made to order for me. All I
need, to get in and out of it, is a derrick and a small army
of assistants. But at that it opens new roads to adventure.
The last time I got into the old one they thought they'd
have to take it to pieces to get me out."
She remained an hour. At the end of her call she in-
sisted on inspecting the entire ground floor and passing
on the changes.


THE TRAP 189
with Donald Vance. The apparitions now appeared more
rarely. Vance had retreated to his tower, but she felt sure
that she could bring him back. What she was considering
was how much longer the Kirkpatricks would remain at
Avalon. Their month was more than up, but Mrs. Kirk-
patrick showed no sign of leaving. Neither did she release
Lucy and Benedict from their duties. She assured them
both, with her tolerant smile, that they had added twenty
years to her life. She continued to demand and pay for
all of Lucy's time and for one visit a day from the doctor.
She assumed that she was in an Inn, and that she alone
would decide the length of her stay in it.
One midnight, around the middle of May, Alida was
nervous and wakeful. She had not been able to use her
sleeping-porch at all this spring because the north window
of Vance's room overlooked it. She resented this increas-
ingly as the weather grew warmer. When the Kirkpatricks
left she meant to move the Benedicts into Mrs. Kirk-
patrick's room, and move Vance across the hall into the
room they now occupied. The sleeping-porch would be
lovely these nights. That was another reason for getting
rid of Mrs. Kirkpatrick. This night there was bright
moonlight, which must be shining directly into her room,
for she was conscious of the rays. There was a cool soft
breeze. She got up, slipped a dressing-gown over her
pajamas, and looked out of her north window.
At first she saw only the north lawn and its familiar
trees and shrubs. Then, down below her, a shadow stirred.
She had seen it before—a tall dark figure, clearly defined
in the moonlight. It wore what looked like a dark uniform
and a nautical cap. It stood in the dimness of a clump of
small trees, and looked up at the house. Its face was very


THE TRAP 191
entered. No one was anywhere, in the grounds or in the
house, though Benedict, a light sleeper, heard their low
voices and came downstairs to help in a thorough search.
"But it's inside the house now," Alida said with stiff
lips.
Benedict raised his eyebrows and she broke out irrepress-
ibly, "Don't tell me I imagined it! I know better. Both
Don and I saw it in the grounds. Then I saw it come to
the back of the house and I heard the kitchen door close.
That door closed, all right, so the thing that closed it is no
ghost. But what is it? It moved like a black shadow in the
lower hall. All I saw was something like a white face,
looking up at me. Something like a face!"


THE TRAP 193
have some purpose of their own. I suspect that they know
this house a whole lot better than we do."
"What the devil do they know about it?" Vance snapped.
"What is there to know? Theoretically, it could be full of
secret doors and secret panels and mysterious hiding-places.
But since we came here you and I have gone over it from
attic to cellar. We've done it singly and we've done it to-
gether. We'll do it again to-morrow. We haven't found a
damned thing, except that the house was built magnif-
icently, with walls as thick as those of a fortress."
"Did you notice that it even has a few witches' win-
dows left in it?" Alida asked dully. "Why was that, do
you suppose?"
"Yes, I found one in Spring's room and another in
Comfort's. But that was sheer swank on your great-
great-grandfather's part. I think he put those windows in
because they amused him. Massachusetts wasn't worrying
much about witches in the seventeen nineties—which, as
I understand it, was about the time he built this house."
"You say you think there's some special purpose back
of all these appearances," Alida reminded him. "What
can that purpose be?"
Vance shook his head.
"If we knew that, we'd have the key to the whole thing.
Or would we?" he added. "Have these appearances, as
you prefer to call them, anything to do with the disap-
pearances? Or have they developed since your Uncle Amos
went? We've no authentic record of them before that.
We've plenty of record of howls and shrieks in and around
the house. They cover the last hundred years. But sailors
and skeletons are new. They came when Amos went. That
means something, if we could get hold of it."


THE TRAP I95
hours toward dawn, strikes me as much more serious than
any number of ghosts."
Alida shivered again and Benedict gave Vance a glance
of warning.
"Don't be as depressing as you can," he advised. "But
now that we all agree there may be some usurpers here,
the next step is to find them, and oust them."
Vance's eyes kindled.
"A real man-hunt!" he exclaimed eagerly. "That's more
like it! We'll start soon.after daylight. Those lads are
showing themselves entirely too much."
Alida uttered a sound that was meant to be another
sigh, but was half a groan.
"I can't take much stock in that theory," she admitted.
"If they're here, though, I suppose they have to come up
from their holes for air. Perhaps that's why we usually
see them in the grounds."
"Or they may have their hiding-places somewhere in
the grounds, or in the woods back of you, or down by the
river." Benedict got up. "Let's get to sleep," he suggested.
"It's almost three o'clock. Have you noticed that there are
strong bolts on the inside of all the bedroom doors?
They're an unusual precaution in a house like this, but I
suggest that we begin to use them."
"And see a secret panel in one's bedroom slide open at
two in the morning and the skeleton come out of it?"
Alida shuddered. "I haven't considered myself a quitter,
but if you two are right, I'm almost ready to close Avalon
and go back to New York. I should feel that we're all in
real danger—and I haven't had that feeling before."
Vance nodded, but his eyes were brilliant with interest.
"Sit tight," he advised. "We'll get busy the first thing in
s


196 THE TRAP
the morning. We'll go through this house again from attic
roof to cellar floor."
Alida was almost herself again. She had not imagined
the sailor in the grounds; but wasn't it possible, she was
asking, that, after all, she had not seen the shadow in the
lower hall?
"I'm having a few ideas of my own," she confessed as
they separated on the upper landing. "While you two are
going about with hammers, tapping the walls, I think I'll
do a little sleuthing, too."
The next morning she watched with interest the prepa-
rations of Vance and Benedict for another systematic
search of the house. They were to begin with the attic, and
methodically work their way down to the cellar, exploring
every wall and nook and corner as they went. Equipped
with tools and flash-lights they mounted the attic steps
immediately after an early breakfast. To Alida's relief
both were very serious. This was to be a serious business.
Benedict, who had really evolved his theory half-heartedly
the night before, had now almost convinced himself that
he was right. Vance felt that Benedict's theory was at least
as plausible as any other that could be offered.
Alida did not go to the attic with them. Instead, stand-
ing at the top of the back staircase, she called Comfort up
to her room. The woman came at once and stood facing
her as the girl sat at a small writing-desk near the room's
north window.
"Sit down, Comfort," Alida invited. "I want to talk
to you about something very important."
Comfort obeyed in silence. Her dour face had its most
shuttered look. She sat very still, looking past her young
mistress at the swelling acorns on the branches of the oak


202
THE TRAP
"No one knows it but me an' you," Comfort said again.
There was a sharp warning in her suddenly harsh voice.
"No one else oughtn't t' know it. How long d' y' spose
'twould be a secret suller ef all the folks in this house
knowed it? It'd be over the hull town. It'd be in the noose-
papers an' thieves'd break in an' steal. Mr. Amos he said
they'd be no keepin' 'em out ef any one else but him an'
Mrs. Quimby an' me knowed 'bout that suller. He said the
likker in it's wuth thousands o' dollars."
Alida nodded. Comfort was right. It wouldn't take such
a story long to spread, and there would be definite danger
to Avalon and its inmates if news of such a treasure there
got out.


CHAPTER XII
*She silently followed Comfort down the back stair-
case and into the study. There, before the north wall, the
woman stopped and stared at the mellow patina of the
old wood.
"I ain't been down in this suller fer more'n fourteen
years," she said under her breath, "but I ain't forgot
where to press."
She touched the wood tentatively, and fumbled a few
moments with her work-worn fingers. Suddenly she
uttered a grunt of content. A hidden door had slowly and
rather gratingly swung toward her, revealing a dark open-
ing and a flight of steps.
"Needs oilin'," Comfort muttered.
Alida picked up a foot-stool and wedged it in the open-
ing between the door and the wall.
"I've no idea of getting caught down there," she ad-
mitted. But Comfort had disappeared through the study
door which opened from the west wall into the back hallway.
She returned at once.
"I got two strong flash-lights," she said. "You better
take one of 'em." She took in the barricading foot-stool
and again her lips twitched, this time almost in a smile.
"We alius closed the door after us," she said. "They's
a spring on t' other side to open it. But do as you've a
mind to."
"I will," Alida drily assured her.
203


204 THE TRAP
She gripped die flash-light in her hand so tightly that
the metal hurt her palm, as she followed Comfort across the
threshold. On the other side she stopped to adjust the
foot-stool more firmly. Now Comfort was preceding her
down the staircase. Alida experienced a moment of panic.
After all, what did she know about this woman? There
were those who considered Comfort Folger a bit "teched."
What might she not do down in the square black space that
confronted them? But Comfort's voice and manner were
reassuring.
"Here 'tis," she said almost cheerfully, when she
reached the bottom step. It was increasingly plain that she
was vastly relieved to be off the subject of Avalon's ap-
paritions. "They's enough likker here to destroy the souls
of a hundred men," she added austerely. But her manner
was actually prideful. In her strange way she was proud of
this Avalon stronghold "When we filled the wine closet
we hed to kerry the bottles up through the study an' int'
the kitchen an' down the suller stairs leadin' from the
kitchen," she went on. "Mr. French, he alius locked all
the outside doors b'fore we done it. Then no one could
come in an' s'prise us. I better go up an' do that now."
Alida caught her arm.
"No, you won't," she said quickly. "I'm not going to
stay down here alone."
Comfort accepted the ruling with a shrug of her thin
shoulders. She was flashing her light around the walls.
"We alius brought lamps when we come fer more
licker," she explained. " 'Twas a big job. It took the three
of us a long spell t' do it. But to-day these lights is 'nuff."
Alida looked around her. The secret "wine suller" was
disappointing in itself. It was merely a room about sixteen


THE TRAP 205
feet square, whose four plastered walls were lined from
top to bottom with built-in shelves. On these shelves a
vast number of bottles lay on their sides in close-fitting
nests. The ceiling was festooned with cobwebs. The floor
was solidly packed earth covered with dust.
"What kind of liquors are here?" she asked curiously.
"Every kind they is, I reckon. Mr. Amos he knew jest
where every kind was kep'. He could go right t' the spot
and git whut he wanted. Mr. Amos took a lot o' comfort
in this suller. He said some o' this likker wuz a hundred
years old."
As if she suddenly realized the smugness with which
she was speaking, Comfort's voice changed to the grating
quality of her normal speech. "He wuz a drinkin' man,"
she intoned.
"I suppose all the shelves were full once. Now the west
wall shelves are partly empty. Did he drink all that was
in those empty shelves?"
"M-m-m. Him and t'other Frenches."
Alida had spoken with amusement. She could picture
Uncle Amos gloating over his store, which would certainly
have impressed any "drinkin' man." Her nervousness had
left her. The "suller" was a cul de sac. Cobwebs and grime
covered walls and bottles. The earthen floor was inches
deep in dust. Everything about the place testified that no
feet but hers and Comfort's, which were even now leaving
their sharply defined trail, had been on it for many years.
"Since we're here," Alida mused aloud, "we'll take some
bottles upstairs with us. Mr. Vance and the doctor will be
delighted. They'll have earned them, too, by their search
to-day. And Mrs. Kirkpatrick may be pining for some
cocktails."


THE TRAP
She walked around the space, lifting and examining a
few bottles on the lower shelves of the northwest corner.
"These must be Uncle's favorites," she mused. "He has
emptied so many of the nests here." She selected a bottle
each of whiskey, brandy, rum, claret, vermouth, and white
wine, and two bottles of gin. Comfort, raising her apron,
wrapped her share of the bottles she was to carry in the
crisp gingham. Her expression was stonily disapproving.
"Mr. Amos he said some o' these wuz wuth their weight
in gold," she muttered.
"I've no doubt of it. But I'll give my friends an oc-
casional drink, just the same," the mistress of Avalon
cheerfully assured her.
The open space at the head of the staircase showed a
cheering panel of light as they went up the steps with their
burdens. Back in the study again Alida raised the guardian
foot-stool and Comfort swung the grating door back into
place.
"Now show me how it works," the girl directed.
She watched, experimented, and eventually, after several
failures, worked the mechanism of the door, both inside
and out, as easily as Comfort did. While she was experi-
menting the woman again disappeared.
"It needs oilin'," she repeated on her return. "It ain't
been oiled fer fourteen years."
She oiled the mechanism, while Alida watched her with
interest. Then they carried the dust-covered bottles into
the store-room, and Alida made her choice of those she
would need for the evening. The remaining bottles she put
away in a closet of which Comfort had the keys.
"I'll have Donald make some cocktails before dinner,"
she reflected cheerfully. She was feeling cheerful. The


208
THE TRAP
Now that she was up and about, she surely would dis-
miss her nurse, and probably her house physician.
Benedict found Alida alone in the living-room half an
hour before dinner. She had started Vance on his cock-
tails, and his cheery whistling came from the dining-room.
Benedict's anxious face brightened.
"I came down early," he said hurriedly. "I want to
talk to you. But some one may interrupt us here. Can we
go into your study?"
Alida led the way without comment. She had been right.
Dr. Benedict was worried about something. She dropped
into the comfortable chair at her desk. Benedict pulled a
chair close to her and began to talk at once. His voice was
urgent, as if he had much to say and little time in which
to say it.
"I've got to get something off my chest," he confessed.
"I've known it several days. I've been trying to find a
chance to tell you about it, but there didn't seem to be
any. Now that Mrs. Kirkpatrick is up and around I've
simply got to spill it. I've—" he gulped, "well, I've found
out something about her."
"Yes—"
Alida looked at him and waited.
"Yes," Benedict repeated doggedly. He hesitated, then
plunged again. "I'd better tell you the whole thing. You
see, it's this way."
He looked at her almost imploringly, but she did not
respond to his unspoken plea for a lift or a lead.
"After I had attended Mrs. Kirkpatrick for a while,"
he went on, almost desperately, "I began to suspect some-
thing. So did Lucy. There was nothing tangible, you
understand. Just a sort of atmosphere. We were with her


THE TRAP 209
so much that—well, I suppose she dropped her guard, at
times. Anyway, I wrote to a man I know in San Fran-
cisco, and asked him to find out who she was and all about
her. He's a newspaper editor, and I knew he could do it.
He did," he ended grimly. "He got an earful."
He stopped again, but still Alida said nothing.
"It's pretty bad," Benedict admitted. "Her name isn't
Kirkpatrick, but she uses that name and several others at
her banks, and when she travels. She is known in San
Francisco as Mrs. Geraldine Favorsham. For twenty years
she has been the mistress of Henry Morris Faulkner, one
of the richest and most important financiers in the West.
Spring is their daughter, but Faulkner can't marry Mrs.
Kirkpatrick—we'll still call her that—because he has a
wife who's a chronic invalid. He's fond of the wife, it
seems, and he's devoted to their only child—Henry Junior,
a chap of thirty-four. Old Faulkner—he's over sixty—
has a gorgeous place for his wife and son—near San
Francisco. It's one of the show places of California. Mrs.
Kirkpatrick's place is in the country, twenty miles out.
That's almost as fine in its way as the Faulkner place.
Spring has never seen either of them. She was taken away
when she was a baby, and she has been at schools abroad
ever since, as we know. She has no idea of anything ir-
regular in her mother's life. She thinks Mrs. Kirkpatrick
is a rich widow. Now we know why the mother has kept
the girl away, and why she has been hiding her for the
past six weeks. Spring announces that she's back to stay.
Her mother has been playing for time, to think of some
way out."
He sat back and drew a deep breath.
"Well, I've got it off my chest. You understand what


2IO
THE TRAP
I've done. I've posted that kind of a woman on you. I
didn't know a thing about her, of course. But I needed
the money and I took a chance. That's bad enough, but
the worst is to come. Young Haven and Spring are crazy
about each other. They want to get married. You can see
the complications there, can't you? For the worst thing
about it all is that, though Mrs. Kirkpatrick has been de-
voted to Faulkner all these years, my friend says, her
life before Faulkner met her wasn't all it should have been.
And a lot of people know that!"
Benedict drew a handkerchief from his pocket, and wiped
his face.
"Now you know the whole infernal mess," he groaned.
"If you kick Lucy and me out of the house to-morrow it
won't be any more than I deserve. Of course you can
send the Kirkpatricks on their way at the same time."
Alida shook her head.
"It isn't as simple as that. It's something that must be
thought out. How about Bing and Spring?"
But Benedict's thoughts were now on the immediate
present.
"Shall you mind having Mrs. Kirkpatrick at the table
to-night?" he asked anxiously. "Of course she has no idea
that we've found out her little story. She's going to come
down looking like a municipal Christmas tree, Lucy says.
I have no doubt that Lucy's hanging strings of diamonds
on her this minute. She asked Lucy to help her to dress.
That's really why she has been having a trained nurse.
She has evidently forgotten how to lift a finger to help
herself. But I will say for her that she has protected
Spring as well as she could. She thinks, of course, that
none of us suspect anything." He repeated his question in


THE TRAP
211
a different form. "Do you mind having her at the table,
just this once?"
Alida stood up.
"What difference would it make if I did?" she asked
wearily. "We've got to go through with it. What I'm
thinking about is poor little Spring. What's all this going
to mean to her? Altogether, life at Avalon is getting a bit
too complicated."
She walked to the door leading into the living-room,
and Benedict hurried after her to open it.
"I feel like a yellow dog," he confessed.
"Don't. I can't see that you're to blame. Besides, we've
all had a generous slice of Mr. Faulkner's money," Alida
added bitterly. Seeing him flush under the words, she put
a hand on Benedict's arm.
"I shouldn't have said that," she admitted. "It was
catty. But with everything that's going on here I'm just
about at my wit's end."
"And no wonder," Benedict groaned.
They went into the living-room together. Spring and
Bing were already there, standing side by side in the huge
bay-window Amos had added and which corresponded to
the one in Mrs. Kirkpatrick's room directly above it.
Spring had evidently been ordered to make a special toilet
for dinner that night. Bing also was in evening clothes.
He hurried forward to greet his hostess.
"Awfully good of you to ask me," he jerked out. "I'm
crazy to meet Mrs. Kirkpatrick. Do me a favor, Miss
French," he added urgently. "Fix things so I can ^alk to
the old lady right after dinner." He turned on Alida the
look an imploring little boy gives his mother. "Where can
she and I be alone?"


CHAPTER XIII
DINNER in the closely curtained dining-room-Alida
had made sure that it was closely curtained—was a cheer-
ful meal. Bing sat between Spring and her mother, giving
each his attention almost impartially. Spring was rather
pale, but she had never looked more lovely. Feather-
brained youngster though she seemed, she was evidently
anxious about the result of Bing's talk. Geraldine Kirk-
patrick was almost as unknown to her daughter as she
had been to her associates at Avalon. Nevertheless, Spring
had faith in her lover, and her young heart was singing.
Bing's sang with it. Together they radiated a youthful
hope and passion to which each person at the table re-
sponded in different ways.
Mrs. Kirkpatrick's worldly eyes held a new expression
as they rested on the pair. Their look of incessant watch-
fulness had given way to another kind of tension. Alida
knew the woman feared the coming interview. Lucy's
professional mask had been wholly dropped. She watched
"the children” smilingly. So did Benedict, though he, too,
was plainly anxious. Alida was now frankly sentimental
as well as apprehensive. In the hall, on the way to the
dining-room, she had caught Spring by the shoulders and
kissed her. Tears had come into the girl's eyes as she re-
turned the caress. Spring had had very little love in her
life, for so exquisite a young thing. Alida rejoiced that
she was to have it now. ... Even Vance had lost his
213


THE TRAP 215
coffee, their liqueur glasses, and a small carafe of apricot
brandy.
She thought, they will both need a glass of that before
their talk is over.
In the study young Bing was going through his social
paces. He led Mrs. Kirkpatrick to Alida's most comfort-
able chair. He poured her coffee and her liqueur. He of-
fered her a cigarette and held his lighter to it. All the
time he was conscious of a lump in his throat. So much
depended on this woman! Suppose she didn't like him?
Suppose she considered a young country lawyer too in-
significant a suitor for her daughter? Suppose she had
big social ambitions for the girl? He was impressed by
her elegance, by the beauty of the jewels she wore. What
had he in common with the daughter of such a bird-of-
paradise? But the boy had courage. Also he had now a
desperate desire to get the interview over. When Mrs.
Kirkpatrick's cigarette was drawing perfectly he drew a
chair in front of her, sat down, cleared his young throat,
and spoke huskily but firmly.
"I brought you in here to tell you that I love Spring,"
he began. "I suppose you've guessed that. Spring says she
loves me. We want to be married."
He sat back in his chair and looked at her anxiously.
Mrs. Kirkpatrick continued to smile. He saw with
amazement that the hand which held her cigarette was
shaking, and that under her make-up her face was gray.
The discovery both stunned and steadied him. She was
nervous, too! Still, she spoke almost casually.
"Suppose you tell me something about your creden-
tials," she suggested. "I know that you are an Amherst
graduate, and that you belong to a good family. I know
s


2l6
THE TRAP
you are in your uncle's law office. But can you support a
wife?"
Bing had been ready for this. He rushed eagerly into
assurances.
"I talked that over with my uncle," he told her, "as
soon as Spring and I knew we cared. My uncle is an old
bachelor in his early sixties. There isn't much chance that
he'll marry. He says he never will. He likes Spring aw-
fully. He told me to tell you I'd have all he's got some
day, but not for a long time. He said the day after I was
married he'd make me a partner in our firm. That doesn't
mean a great deal financially; but with what my father
left me I'll have several thousand a year. That goes pretty
far in a town like Quinnet, especially as Uncle Caleb
wants us to live with him. He's got a nice old house with
enough room in it for a battalion. It would cut him up
badly if we insisted on living anywhere else. He really is
devoted to Spring."
"And to you," Mrs. Kirkpatrick still smiled, but her
lips were stiff. "It all sounds satisfactory, especially as
Spring's father made a good settlement on her when she
was born. But—" the fixed smile disappeared, and she
brought out her next words almost harshly. "But—" she
repeated, "there are some handicaps on Spring's side to
be considered."
"Handicaps?" The boy looked at her in bewilderment.
It was her manner, not her words, that disturbed him.
"Yes." Geraldine Kirkpatrick, like her would-be son-
in-law, knew how to take a hurdle. She went on deliber-
ately.
"One handicap is that Spring is illegitimate. The other
is that I myself am not—well, let us say not quite the


THE TRAP 217
pillar of society I hope I have seemed. I am what I think
is called in this community 'a kept woman.' I have been
'kept' by Spring's father for twenty years. He couldn't
marry me because he was already married when we met.
His wife is a hopeless invalid, but he is very fond of
her. If she dies he will marry me—at least he says so.
He will never leave her while she lives. I have no doubt
that she will live on for years."
The lump in young Haven's throat was troubling him
again. It had grown larger. For a moment he could not
speak.
"I'm sorry Spring is illegitimate," he brought out at
last, "if she minds it. It doesn't matter to me. I mean—
it hasn't anything to do with us."
"It doesn't matter to Spring, either," Spring's mother
said calmly. "She doesn't know about it. She needn't know
it, ever."
"That's fine—for her sake."
"There's the second handicap," Mrs. Kirkpatrick re-
minded him.
Her color was still gray. Against it her rouge stood
out cruelly. But her voice was steady. Something in it,
a forced note perhaps, underlined the boy's first realiza-
tion that for her, too, this was a hard interview. Hereto-
fore he had thought only of Spring and himself.
"Spring doesn't know anything about that, either," the
woman was saying. "She thinks I'm a widow, in com-
fortable circumstances and of good social position. She
thinks her father died when she was a baby."
"She needn't know about that," Bing said almost under
his breath. "At least—I mean—she'll never hear about
it from me."
s


THE TRAP 219
Mr. Vance," she added indifferently. "Perhaps you will
take Spring away for a little honeymoon. I shall leave here
right after the wedding—the same day. As soon as Spring
is home from her honeymoon, and settled, there will be
a regrettable accident in California. I shall be killed."
Bing sprang from his chair.
"Good God," he cried, "you don't mean— I won't hear
of it—"
Mrs. Kirkpatrick's tolerant smile flashed out again.
This time it was the real thing.
"I don't mean suicide," she explained. "I'm not as un-
selfish as that; and I'm not in the least melodramatic. I
simply mean that Spring will get a letter from my lawyer
saying I'm dead and buried. He will tell her he had
thought she was still in Europe, and that he had only
just found her new name and address among my papers.
She doesn't know the name I use in California. Sup-
posedly there will be a Mrs. Geraldine Kirkpatrick killed.
My lawyer is a clever man. He understands all the con-
ditions. He will do everything very efficiently. I thought
it all out several years ago. There will even be a lot
and grave with a headstone in a certain cemetery near
San Francisco in case— But I advise you never to let her
visit them."
"But—" Bing was stammering incoherently "—is all
that necessary? It seems horrible to me."
"It is necessary. It is the only wise course. In your
heart you know you agree. Spring isn't really very fond
of me, but she would always feel that she had to go
through the motions our relationship demands. She would
think we had to write, and visit, and be visited. You
understand. Eventually the truth would be sure to come


THE TRAP 223
the height of the frivolity Benedict again appeared at
Alida's side with an expression so conspiratorial that she
had observed it across the room. This time it was Vance's
health he had on his mind.
"He ought not to be doing that," he muttered, discon-
tented eyes on Vance and his partner. "We ought to stop
it."
"He won't do it very long. He doesn't talk about his
heart and he won't be talked to about it. Just the same he
takes very good care of it," Alida pointed out. "Haven't
you noticed that?"
"I've noticed a lot of things," Benedict said modestly.
"Among others, I've noticed that he is desperately in love
with you."
"That's nonsense." Alida spoke curtly, but her breath
caught.
"It's true. He thinks he mustn't let you know because
of his health. That's clear enough. But I've a notion—"
the doctor was still watching Vance closely, with the
eyes that twenty years later belonged to one of New
York's leading diagnosticians—"that he's better than he's
supposed to be. This isn't a medical opinion," he added
hastily. "It's more a hunch than anything else. It's in-
credible that a man like Cunningham should blunder. . . .
Just the same ... I haven't had a chance to examine
him, or even to ask questions . . . I've simply used my
eyes. There are a lot of little indications—" Alida realized
that he was thinking aloud.
"I know. I felt that way, too, from the first. But he
thinks he's a dying man. It's having an odd effect on him.
He's fading out like a picture on a screen. Not physically,
but mentally. At this moment he seems the life of the


CHAPTER XIV
ucy came to the study after breakfast the next morn-
ing to say that her patient requested the honor of an
interview with Miss French at half-past twelve o'clock.
"She's up and dressed and she's going to Mr. Haven's
office for an eleven o'clock appointment," Lucy explained.
"Settlements and things, I guess. After that, I suppose
she wants to find out how much you know about her, and
how much longer you will let her stay here."
Alida had formed the habit of passing an hour or two
in the study after breakfast, going over her mail, plan-
ning her meals, and giving Comfort her orders for the
day. Her "paying guests," as she sardonically called them
—she loathed the silly pretentiousness of the title
—had also formed the habit of dropping in to consult
her there on affairs of their own. She had been opening
a letter when Lucy entered, and had continued the task
with a murmured apology and a hospitable gesture toward
a chair. She and Lucy were now close allies, and beyond
formalities. She saw no reason, however, why she should
not let Lucy realize that this visit was an interruption to
a domestic routine. As she had told Bing, she was trying
to teach her boarders to respect the privacy of her study
—the only place, except her bedroom, where she had any
privacy at all. Spring, Vance, and the Benedicts lived
all over the house. Spring had even formed the habit of
dropping into Alida's bedroom, both day and night.


THE TRAP 227
of." Lucy's plain, likable little face brightened. She got
up to go. "But you're not happy, Alida," she added sud-
denly. "You're not the same girl you were when we came
here. I can't bear to see you so changed."
She stood back of her friend, looking down at her
bent head, a hand on Alida's shoulder. Under the touch
and words Alida straightened as if she had been struck.
She flushed hotly.
"I'm disappointed and worried," she said hastily.
"You're all good sports, and you've taken this situation
of Avalon in your stride. But we can't claim that it's a
haven of rest and repose."
"We didn't expect rest and repose when we came here,"
Lucy reminded her. "We expected new experiences. We're
getting them. We knew there was something—"
"But we didn't know how much," Alida interrupted
grimly. "We don't know yet." Her blush had faded, and
she spoke with her usual assurance. She was convinced
that she had put Lucy off the track her mind had been
following. "You have my permission to depart now," she
added cheerfully. "Tell Mrs. Kirkpatrick she may enter
the Presence at half-past twelve."
When Lucy had gone she did not return to her letters.
Instead she sat motionless, staring down at her desk.
Those observant eyes of Lucy Benedict had been full
of sympathy and understanding. That understanding was
the worst of it. If she had reached the point where the
Benedicts knew she was eating her heart out, how long
would it be before all those around her knew it—even
Vance! Again the slow flush stained her face. She was
proud, and she was being pitied by Lucy, and probably
by Lucy's husband, because she had fallen in love with
*


228
THE TRAP
a man who was definitely on the defensive against her.
Dispassionately and for the first time, she looked her
situation in the face. It had come about naturally enough.
“Pity is akin to love." She knew better than that. But
Vance's tragic situation had thrust him dramatically into
the foreground of her life, and had centered her thoughts
on him from the first. In the end-she might as well
admit it—that situation had also centered her heart on
him.
It was all natural enough. She couldn't blame herself,
and she wasn't blinded. She saw Vance exactly as he was
-easy-going, charming, indolent, self-obsessed. Above
all, self-obsessed, and increasingly so. Friendly? Yes.
Willing to do anything for her-once his attention was
called to the need. He hadn't consciously exercised his
charm. He was too indolent for that. He was merely mak-
ing himself agreeable to every one, as no doubt he had
always done and would continue to do as long as he lived.
He had a way of making one feel that one meant much
to him. That was part of the charm. She had succumbed
to it. She had seen the Benedicts succumb, too, and Bing
and Spring. But he was, and would always be, on his
guard against her. He had decided to have no other com-
plications in his life, at this stage. Her mind caught and
held the vital point. How short his "always" was! She
set her teeth. The thought was unendurable.
As if her reflections had invoked him, there was a
light tap on the door leading into her study from the
living-room. The door opened and his brown head appeared
around the side of it.
“Busy?” he asked smilingly.
“Yes.”


THE TRAP
233
needs advice? She's so young and so inexperienced! I
don't suppose you're more than twenty-two or three your-
self, but you're a woman of the world. I'd love to feel that
you were back of Spring in her new life."
Unconsciously, her fingers were digging into Alida's
arm. Realizing this, she fushed deeply and withdrew
her hand. There was something in the sudden self-
consciousness of the action more eloquent than anything
she had said. Alida was touched.
“Indeed I will,” she said quickly. “You may count
on that.”
“And you won't let her alienate you by some foolish-
ness or selfishness or temporary neglect ?" the mother
persisted. “I know she's devoted to you now. But-girls
are so silly! Spring doesn't know a thing. She will need
friends—terribly."
"She'll always have me,” Alida promised. “That won't
mean much. But I'll interest Mrs. Haverford Tucker. She
will be a real help to Spring. Mrs. Haverford Tucker is
Quinnet's social arbiter. She's a great old girl, eighty-
four and pure gold. She's sure to take a fancy to Spring.
In any case she would welcome her, on Bing's account.
The Tuckers and the Havens have been friends for a
hundred years. Spring will be gathered right into the
younger set. From all I've heard they're a worth-while
lot—with a few standards 'in their midst.'”.
She had been talking against time. Incredibly, the
woman beside her was beyond speech, and must be given
a few minutes to get herself in hand.
"I'm acting like a fool,” Mrs. Kirkpatrick snapped.
She straightened, and wiped her wet eyes with a fierce
gesture. "I ought to be singing hosannas. I shall be, for


THE TRAP 235
problems are solved." She stood up. "I won't try to
thank you."
"Please don't."
Alida got up, too. For a few seconds they stood facing
each other uncertainly. Then Mrs. Kirkpatrick went to
the door, opened it, and left the room without another
word.


THE TRAP
237
"Young love makes its appeal even to their buried
hearts," Vance suggested, and immediately begged Alida's
pardon for the reference to Them. There were no shadows,
no shrieks, no howls around Avalon that week. Even
the big white owl did not show up. The members of the
family slept blissfully eight hours a night and the younger
group scurried down to the private beach every fine
morning, for their rather chilly sea baths. They were
forcing the season, but the sky was cloudless and the
early breeze not too nipping.
"I almost miss that owl," Mrs. Kirkpatrick confessed.
"He did so enjoy sitting in the spruce just outside my
window and watching me get ready for bed."
Mrs. Kirkpatrick was now, as Benedict put it to Alida,
"doing her great impersonation of the ideal mother and
the perfect house-guest." She played the roles admirably.
From the first moment to the last of this final week of
her appearance on the Avalon stage, there was no more
reference to the past, or to the future, nor was there
any display of sentimentality.
Alida's tact was in demand once or twice to meet some
problem that arose. The sailing and motor-boat parties
offered one of these. To Bing, in love, the fine weather
meant Spring and boat excursions. Uncle Caleb turned
a lenient eye on the boy's absences from the law offices
this last week, and both Spring and Bing were surpris-
ingly willing to have "the family" with them on their
cruises. Benedict could not often join these various ex-
cursions. His office hours interfered with his pleasures,
he told Bing. Mrs. Kirkpatrick put in several days of
shopping in Boston, leaving early in the morning and
returning late at night with her repaired sedan filled


THE TRAP 239
matched pearls to the woman's radiant face, and got a
revelation. Mrs. Kirkpatrick had spoken truly when she
declared that she would not change her life if she could.
Like her daughter, Mrs. Kirkpatrick was deeply and
permanently in love.
Spring and Bing had decided that their honeymoon
should be spent on their boat.
"Don't get too many 'dress-up' things," Spring urged
her mother. "Bing's an outdoor boy. He's crazy for camps
and boats and motoring, and so am L We'll just about
live in the open air—that is, in Bing's free time," she
added hastily. "So make my outfit principally sport clothes,
won't you, darling?"
Mrs. Kirkpatrick didn't quite do that, but there were
plenty of sport clothes in the trousseau. While Mrs. Kirk-
patrick was selecting these, the Benedicts, Vance, and
Alida took advantage of the halcyon days to be out in
the open. Inevitably they paired off. Vance and Alida
returned for the first time to the close intimacy of their
initial evening together, when she had dined with him
and had helped to keep out the black beasts of his
thoughts. Now he seemed in good spirits, due in part, he
admitted, to the contagion of the youngsters' efferves-
cence. One afternoon when Mrs. Kirkpatrick was still
shopping and the rest of the Avalon party were sailing,
Vance was moved to serious conversation.
"Benedict gives us a lot of hot air about settling down
in Quinnet," he told Alida with the understanding that
had ceased to surprise her. "He'll never do it. He's a born
doctor, cut for success. It will be worth-while success,
too. He'll work for it like the devil, and win it fairly. Bing's
different. He'll stay in Quinnet all his life, and be devoted


THE TRAP 241
of futures, and you're predicting them for others, you
might predict mine."
He looked at her with increased seriousness.
"You're a good sort," he said. "You've learned an
amazing independence. I don't know what's going to
become of you. I wish I did. Do you know," he added
cheerfully, "if things were different with me I'd ask you
to marry me."
Alida was silent for a moment.
"And why, Mr. Bones, would you ask me to marry
you?" she asked at last. "You're not hinting that a secret
love has been consuming you all these weeks."
"No, I'm not. I admit that at first I was desperately
afraid it would consume me. That would have been
awkward. But I've learned something about myself this
spring. If I lived a hundred years I'd never have anything
like the emotions that are now sizzling in Spring and Bing.
That's all right. I don't want 'em. But I do like com-
panionship. You're the sort of girl that would be an
ideal pal for a man—steady-going, serene and understand-
ing. You would give a fellow a quiet, ordered life."
"And he could have his emotional excitements else-
where? That's the idea, I suppose."
Alida looked out over the sea, giving herself time to
control the anger that filled her. And she had considered
this young man understanding! Or was he merely bluffing?
The chances were that he was. Very well. She would join
him in that game. The Banshee was skimming along the
water like a bird, a light breeze swelling her sails. Over-
head the May sky arched richly blue and almost cloudless.
At the tiller Bing sat, his left arm around Spring. For


242 THE TRAP
once the young things were not talking. Their faces ex-
pressed a fatuous happiness.
"No, it isn't." Vance spoke sharply. He looked con-
fused and rather shocked. "What I meant—"
"What you meant was what you said. But don't say
it to other girls," Alida continued, "unless you want to
be awfully unpopular. No girl, however 'steady-going'
she may seem," she quoted ironically, "cares to be re-
garded as a domestic sofa pillow."
"Oh, come now, that isn't fair I" Vance flushed. "You're
deliberately misunderstanding me. You're a bit difficult
to-day."
"I'm bored," Alida admitted. "You're not your usual
sparkling self. I've rarely seen you serious before. I don't
think I like it. I'm going to talk to the Benedicts."
Vance heard her opening remark and Benedict's re-
sponse.
"Don says I'd make a steady-going, serene and under-
standing wife for a man."
"My God, has the fellow no perception at all? Ever
since you and I met, Alida, I've been trying to distinguish
you from Popocatapetyl."
Alida waved Lucy to one side and sat down between
her and her husband.
"It's wonderful to be understood," she sighed. "Talk
to me some more, Gene. I've a yen for intelligent con-
versation this afternoen."
Vance's look brooded on her darkly for a moment.
He had gone too far in his pose of detachment, and she
was furious. However, she'd get over her annoyance. He
stretched himself comfortably in a deck-chair, pulled his
cap over his eyes, and dozed.


244 THE TRAP
accompaniment of ecstatic yelps. Her brown eyes shone
like electric lamps. She fell rather than jumped out of
the roadster, babbling.
"It's mine!" she cried. "I always wanted one. She
wouldn't let me have one in Europe, so I can't drive. But
I'm going to learn right away. Bing, look at it! Isn't it
the loveliest thing you ever saw? And look at all the gad-
gets inside. It's so powerful Nat says it would climb up
the side of this house. Oh, Mother!"
The necklace, also supposed to be the gift of Mrs. Kirk-
patrick, had called forth no such outburst as this. Bing
looked rather sober. The others read his thoughts. But
he played up nobly and lent himself to intense admiration
of the car.
"Now we have a car of our own," Spring was remind-
ing him. "So Uncle Caleb can use his again. He told me
yesterday he hadn't been in it for ten days—the poor
darling!"
"Something tells me," Benedict whispered to Alida,
"that the pickle-dish Lucy and I selected in Quinnet's
leading Emporium this morning will seem small potatoes
to Spring after this."
"We didn't buy her a pickle-dish," Lucy corrected ab-
sently. Her plain little face shone with pleasure over
Spring's delight. "Don't you believe him, Spring," she
added. But Spring didn't even hear her. She was showing
Bing and the rest the decorations and gadgets of the
beautiful little car—the traveling-trunk on the back, the
side pockets and card-cases and cigarette-lighters inside,
the two spare tires in their handsome sheaths.
Comfort appeared at the front door.


THE TRAP 245
"Tea's gettin' cold," she briefly announced. But her
somber eyes held a reflection of the "purty thing's"
pleasure. •
Spring's wedding day satisfied even Bing, who was
exacting in his demands for his fiancee. The weather con-
tinued perfect and the grounds of Avalon were at their
loveliest, as if to make up for their late blooming. The
wild plum trees on the place were in blossom. So were
the apple and cherry and pear trees. Patches of the
ground were covered with blue and white violets. There
were even some blossoms left on two gnarled old haw-
thorn trees. Alida and Lucy ruthlessly stripped both trees
and shrubs of their blooms, and filled the old house with
color and fragrance.
The wedding ceremony was performed at high noon in
the bay window of the living-room. Spring and Bing,
in their traveling clothes, were as radiant as the flowers
around them. They had modified their plan. They were
leaving for Boston immediately after the wedding break-
fast, in the new roadster. They would "tour" a week, and
Spring would learn to drive her car. Then Captain Bijah
would take The Banshee to Hail Harbor to meet them
there, and they would cruise for a second week.
"After that," Caleb Haven had announced with some
firmness, "we'll all try to realize that Haven and Haven
have a law practice, and that the junior partner owes it
a little of his attention."
The wedding breakfast was Alida's gift to Spring.
Gently but very firmly she had insisted on this. She added
to the banquet some of the secret cellar's choicest cham-


246 THE TRAP
pagne. The Rev. Jared Tucker, grandson of Mrs. Haver-
ford Tucker and now pastor of Quinnet's most fashion-
able church, performed the ceremony and stayed on for
the breakfast. He was an engaging young man with a
twinkling eye and a care-free smile. He banished both of
these during the impressive marriage ceremony, to which
robins and wrens in the old garden twittered an accom-
paniment.
Alida had never accepted the theory that most women
cry at a wedding.
She now discovered with surprise that her eyes were so
full of tears she could not see Spring's beautiful little face.
Next to her, Lucy was crying, too. Even Comfort, stand-
ing in the background between Abram and Nat, seemed
moved. Mrs. Kirkpatrick stood like a statue till she gave
her daughter away. Then, for just a moment, Alida had
a glimpse of twitching features and a moist handkerchief.
Through the short ceremony the woman's eyes had rested,
not on her daughter's face, but on the flowers above
and around the bride, and on the background of the
beautiful old room. Alida wondered what her thoughts
were. Upstairs Geraldine Kirkpatrick's trunks were
packed, strapped and waiting. She was leaving for Cali-
fornia that afternoon.
"Spring's father will be glad to have me home," she
had said to Alida that morning. "He's very dependent on
me for such an independent man." She spoke as if hold-
ing fast to the one rock in the high sea of her life.
She was very gay at the wedding breakfast. Every
one was. The champagne helped. Then Spring and Bing
went off in their new car, with rice in Spring's wavy


THE TRAP 247
brown bob. A sudden flatness fell upon the company.
Almost before the roadster had whirled the young couple
out of Avalon's grounds, Mrs. Kirkpatrick went to her
room.
"I'll have to leave, too, in half an hour," she said. "I'd
better get ready."
But there was nothing more for her to do. She put on
her hat and gloves and sat with folded hands till she
heard the wheels of her own car, driven by Nat, in the
driveway before the house. She left several persons a
trifle overwhelmed. She had given handsome supplemen-
tary checks to the Benedicts and to the servants. She was
greatly interested in Nat and had promised to put him
through college. To Miss French she again showed her
tact and wisdom by repeating her former admission.
"I can't even try to thank you," she said at the door.
"I needn't add that I shall never forget you."
They shook hands warmly and she entered her waiting
car. The next moment it was whirling down the driveway.
"She certainly moves fast," Benedict remarked. "But
she'll have to go even faster than that to outrun her
memories."
Alida went slowly upstairs. She was experiencing the
flatness that follows the successful completion of a worth-
while job. Now she and Vance and Lucy and Benedict
were back where they had started. A new system must
be put into effect. She must cut down her expenses, es-
tablish a different schedule.
Supper that night, made up, as Alida confessed, of
"wedding baked meats," was a silent affair. Every one
missed Spring and the exuberant Bing, who had been at


248 THE TRAP
the house almost constantly during the past week. The
Benedicts went to their room soon after leaving the
table. Vance looked at Alida with raised eyebrows.
"A game of Russian bank?" he suggested.
"Not unless your little heart is set on it. I ought to go
to my study and do some work. It's a chance to find out
just how I stand financially. I know I'm rich beyond the
dreams of avarice, but I haven't the exact figures yet."
"Can I help with the bookkeeping?"
Alida laughed.
"There isn't any. 'Math' was never my strong point.
I get my results by the simplest methods. I add up all I
spend for household supplies and wages. Then I add up
all I've received from my boarders. I subtract the ex-
penses from the income and there I am, with a superb
and staggering result—thanks to the affluent Mrs. Kirk-
patrick."
"It's a simple method, but sufficient. I don't see how
you could better it."
"What worries me—and I am worried," Alida con-
fessed, "is the source of my wealth. I suppose it's my
New England ancestry that suggests I oughtn't to take
those wages of sin, if that's what they are. But I didn't
know where they came from till this last week, so I've
salved my conscience by spending on Spring's wedding, and
my present to her, this week's payment from her mother.
Is that morbid, or is it just plain silly? Or is it New
England conscience?"
"It's all three," Vance said promptly. "You gave Mrs.
Kirkpatrick all she was paying for. There was no hotel
that could have given her greater comfort or better meals
or more privacy. You had nothing to do with the question


THE TRAP 249
of her income except to let her pay what she owed you.
I'm glad you spoke of this," he added kindly. "I'm a
great little trouble-solver, as well as an authority on
ethics. Never hesitate to bring your problems to me. To-
night my brain is bulging with poetic felicitations to
brides. I'll go upstairs and write 'em down while inspira-
tion sizzles. Good night."
Alida went into her study and sat down to her figures.
She was not quite as casual in her methods as she had
intimated. She methodically went over her household
books and checkbook stubs, and found her bank balance
even larger than she had expected it to be. It would meet
the cost of her painting and repairs and still leave her a
comfortable margin for the summer. She could keep Nat
at work, as she had resolved to do in any case. She could
even avail herself of Abram's sporadic services. Abram
had his redeeming points. But Abram had already taken
the evening bus for Quinnet, and she suspected that
Avalon would not be graced by his presence for several
days to come.
She put down her pen, got up, and went to the window
for a casual look at the night sky. Comfort had predicted
a change in the weather. Now the sky was Overcast and
the wind was rising. Alida looked out over the garden
she had ravaged for Spring's wedding. Her glance traveled
beyond it to the cedar grove and stopped. Just inside the
first row of trees she saw two dim figures. They were
standing quite still, their ghostly faces turned up toward
the Benedicts' lighted windows. Almost as she discovered
them she heard Benedict's feet flying down the rear
staircase and out into the garden. The figures vanished.
She saw him rush across the garden and into the grove.


25O THE TRAP
. . . Fifteen minutes later he came back, walking slowly
toward the house. She met him at the side door and he
shook his head.
"I thought I'd get them that time." He was still a
trifle winded. "I went to the exact spot where they had
been. I marked it by those two tall cedars that top the
rest. I even saw branches still moving where they'd passed.
I'll swear I did. But there was no sign of the creatures.
It was as if they had dropped into the earth. I went all
through the grove," he continued, as she did not speak.
"Looked everywhere and at everything. Those two fellows
are flesh and blood men, all right. But they certainly van-
ished as if they were spirits."
"We'll hear them howling about midnight," Alida
bleakly predicted. "I'm sure it's they who make the noise.
Gene," she added suddenly, "I've just learned that there's
a hospital for shell-shocked veterans within a mile of
Avalon. Could it be—"
Benedict laughed.
"Impossible. The patients escape occasionally, but they're
usually recaptured in a few hours. The same two couldn't
get out periodically, to call on us."
"Of course not. But one thinks of everything—"
"One certainly does. Don't think of anything more to-
night, though," he added kindly. "Go to bed and get a
good night's sleep. Want a sleeping tablet?"
"No, thanks. But I'll take your advice."
They went into the hall together and up the front stair-
way. At the door of Alida's room they stopped. Benedict
shook his head at her.
"They're human," he repeated.
"I'm sure they are. But they're malignant, too. You


THE TRAP 25I
said so yourself. And what—oh, what in God's name—
are they trying to do to us?"
"That's what we're going to find out. But not to-night.
Go to bed."
He held out his hand—an unusual demonstration from
him. She took it gratefully. Inside her own room she stood
still for a moment, looking at the heavy bolt on the door
she had just closed. She did not draw it. On the other
side of the door were Vance and Benedict to call on. She
dared not be locked in alone. She shot the bolt of the door
leading down to Spring's room, however, and gave a
tender thought to "the purty thing" as she did so. Spring
would wander in and out of her bedroom no more, but
Spring would remain in her life. Her heart warmed at the
thought.
She went to sleep almost at once and slept heavily.
Toward morning she was awakened by the outcries she
had expected. They were not loud. They were choked and
strangled sounds, very unpleasant to the ear. They seemed
to come from the grounds on her side of the house. She
did not even get up to look out of her window. Instead
she turned, drew the bed covering over her ears, and
buried her head deeper in her pillow. She was no longer
frightened by these manifestations. Instead, she was in-
creasingly angry every time she heard them. To-night she
had an odd feeling that matters were approaching a
crisis.


CHAPTER XVI
J. he restless night at Avalon which followed Spring's
wedding day proved merely a forerunner of a week of
annoyances. All four of Avalon's "specters" appeared
not once but several times, while the white owl hooted
eerily and for hours on end in his pet cedar. It was as if
the brief respite the family had experienced were being
made up for by special persecution. The situation was
almost unbearable.
Unbearable, too, to Alida, was the fact that neither
the fleet-footed Benedict nor the strategic Vance could
capture the disturbers. It was, in very truth, as if the
latter sank into the earth or vanished into the air the
instant the pursuit began. She was glad Spring was no
longer at Avalon to be harassed by the nuisances. The girl
had shown pluck, patience, and surprising philosophy, but
the situation had been getting on her nerves. She was
well out of it.
Alida held to what she hoped was an even way. She
kept her domestic routine moving smoothly. She estab-
lished her new schedule, cutting down the luxuries she
had provided for the Kirkpatricks and which her other
guests had naturally shared. She had no wish to make
a profit on Vance and the Benedicts. Indeed, there were
times when she thought she ought to harbor them free
of charge, or even pay them for the inconveniences they
were enduring and the moral support they gave her; but
she must not be extravagant.
25a


254 THE TRAP
and discharged him. WeH try it again, if yoo like, bat
I've no hope well get anywhere.*'
They tried it again and got nowhere. The skeleton
appeared twice to the new man, dancing near the vegetable
garden. The detective's expression, when he mentioned
these episodes, was made up of disgust, embarrassment,
and incredulity. "But I swear I seen him," he muttered.
Alida put in much time going over the contents of the
big attic more carefully than she had been able to do
during the house-cleaning. She discovered a few lovely
pieces of old Colonial furniture, tucked away in corners
under the accumulations of the years. These pieces she
decided to have repaired and polished. When this task
was finished she looked about for others. She must divert
her mind, and boating and fishing with Captain Bijah did
not do it . It was, as it happened, the first day of June,
when another inspiration came to her.
"Comfort," she suggested that morning, "let's put in
this afternoon in the secret wine cellar, making an in-
ventory. If the supply down there is worth what Uncle
Amos told you and Mrs. Quimby it was, I might as well
sell a lot of it. I'll keep enough, of course, for my friends.
We'll need some if the time ever comes when any one but
Mr. Vance and the Benedicts will cross our threshold. But
I might get quite a lot for part of it. Anyway, I'll make a
careful list of what's there, and show it to Mr. Haven.
We can trust him, and perhaps he can find some one to
buy it. It's a fine day for the job. The Benedicts and Mr.
Vance are planning to go sailing."
She stopped. Comfort was looking dour.
"I cal'clated I'd go up street," Comfort muttered coldly.
"I ain't been outta this house fer a month, seems if."


THE TRAP 255
"And this is Thursday! I forgot!"
Alida spoke with contrition. Every Thursday was sup-
posed to mean an afternoon off for Comfort, but she had
taken it only twice since Avalon was re-opened. "Go up
street, by all means," Alida hurried on. "I can get along."
"You aimin' to stay in the house alone an' do it?"
Comfort looked severely disapproving.
"Comfort, the one thing I won't stand is the suggestion
from anybody that I can't be alone in my own house."
Alida spoke crisply. "As to the inventory, I don't often
have a day to myself. In fact, I got rid of the family so
I could make it to-day. Abram's off, too, isn't he? You and
I can take down the small step-ladder, and a small chair
and table, and one of the lamps you and Uncle Amos
used. I can't do the inventory in one afternoon, of course,
but I can make a start."
"'Tain't wise, seems if—with so much reachin' an'
stretchin' an' all," Comfort added hastily. "I better stay
by. But one of my sister's young ones is sick. She wants I
should look him over."
"I won't hear of your staying in. I'm all set, so I'll go
ahead. You go to your sister's. We'll finish the job to-
gether this week."
Comfort still hesitated, but Alida had her way. They
carried the lamp, chair, table, and ladder down into the
"wine suller" just before Comfort left the house. The
pocket of Alida's enveloping linen smock held a note-book
and a fountain-pen.
"Nat'll be weedin' in the vegetable garden, down near
the west field," Comfort explained. "But I don't want
even Nat should know 'bout that suller. Abram might git
it outta him."


256 THE TRAP
"I don't think 111 need Nat," Alida said. "But if I
want an errand done, I can go to the vegetable garden and
find him. He needn't know where I've been, or what I've
been doing."
When Comfort had gone Alida touched the hidden
spring and opened the secret door in her study. As al-
ways, she was impressed by her great-great-grandfather's
ingenuity. The three panels of the north wall were sep-
arated by slender pilasters. It was the central panel which
was part of the hinged secret door that opened directly
on the staircase to the wine cellar. But study it as one
would, even in the light of knowledge of it, there was ab-
solutely no outward evidence of that door's presence there.
Alida crossed the threshold with her electric flash-light
in her hand, and drew the door back to within an inch of
closing. There she wedged it open with a strip of wood
she had selected for the purpose. She had no idea of go-
ing down into that pit without having provided for a
quick and easy exit, even though she was now thoroughly
familiar with the mechanism of both sides of the panel.
It was about one o'clock. Comfort had filled and lit the
lamp and its heartening light was visible from below as
Alida descended the flight of steps.
In the cellar she put her note-book and fountain-pen on
the table and prepared for work. First, however, she cast
an appreciative backward glance at the sliver of light com-
ing through the narrow opening of the door at the head
of the stairway. She had dressed for the work to be done
in a room full of dust and cobwebs. Her dress, too, was
linen, and her big smock covered it from neck to the
bottom of the skirt.
She walked around the room wondering where to be-


THE TRAP 259
wall. She needed both hands here. She tossed her note-
book at the step-ladder and it landed near the sketch on one
of the steps. Very carefully, disturbing them as little as
she could, she drew out the bottles one by one, close
enough to her eyes to examine the labels more easily. She
was now working on the west bay of the south wall.
Suddenly she started, and withdrew the hand she had
thrust into a nest. Her groping fingers had struck a small
piece of metal at the rear of the wall and far under the
shelf. It seemed no larger than a thumb-nail. The startling
thing about it was that under the inadvertent pressure of
her finger the little thing had moved. So it wasn't a hook
or a peg. Besides, what would hooks or pegs be doing
there? She had drawn several bottles forward from this
particular nest. Now she drew out another to give her
hand more room, and touched the metal again. She could
not see it at all, even by lowering her head and looking
upward. It was very close to the bottom of the shelf above
it. She could only investigate it by feeling it. Tiny as it
was, it was hollowed out, like the bowl of a spoon, and
her finger fitted into it.
She experienced her first thrill at this point. The metal
catch was an old-fashioned thumb-latch. There were sev-
eral of these at Avalon, one of them between Spring's
bedroom and her own. This one meant, must mean, that it
was in a door—that on the other side of the door was a
closet or even a larger space.
Cautiously, Alida pressed the little thumb-latch. Some-
thing moved, gave. Very slowly, a narrow section of the
wall, shelves, bottles and all, came toward her.
This time she had a bigger thrill. Mechanically, to free
her hands, she replaced in their nests the bottles she had


THE TRAP
She picked up the small chair and set it in the opening
as a wedge to keep the secret door from closing behind
her. Then, flash-light in hand, she stepped over the thresh-
old, past the chair, and into the low corridor. She had
had at first no idea of going farther alone. But the re-
assuring beam of the lamp was just behind her. She would
at least see what the corridor led to.
It was low, not more than five feet high, and it seemed
not more than ten feet long. There was a black opening at
the far end. She hesitated, and glanced back into the wine
cellar. The warming beam of the lamp still came through
the open door. She stood motionless for another moment,
a battle-field of impulses. Did Comfort know about this?
Did any one know about it? She turned to step back into
the lighted wine room. Then curiosity, and perhaps a bit
of the spirit of the adventurous Frenches, stirred in her.
She would take the half dozen steps between that door
and the end of the low corridor. She would flash her
powerful search-light into what lay beyond. She would not
enter the place alone, whatever it was, however great the
temptation. But here were light and safety and an open
way back to the upper floor and her study.
It was clear, even in the corridor, that no foot but hers
had passed that way for many, many years. Cobwebs hung
thick about her. Dust whitened her shoes. The close air
lay against her lungs like a substance.
Head low, she groped her way to the end of the cor-
ridor. There, black space gaped before her. She dared not
go close to it, but she leaned forward and flashed the
search-light into the darkness. In the first instant of
illumination what she saw seemed merely to be another


262
THE TRAP
room. It was about the size and shape of the wine-room,
but it had white, plastered walls. The next instant she saw
something else. . . .
She started back with a cry of horror that echoed hol-
lowly in the heavy air. Turning to rush into the wine-room
she struck her elbow sharply against the plastered wall.
The flash-light was knocked from her hand. As it fell she
heard it roll and heard, too, another sound—the fall of a
chair. The blessed light toward which she had been rush-
ing was blotted out. She saw the last glimmer of it as the
secret door settled back into place.
Frantically she groped through the darkness feeling the
wall for a latch or spring. There would be, of course, a
rat-tail latch on the other end of that thumb-latch. Noth-
ing but the plastered wall met her touch. There was no
slightest suggestion of a catch or a door, though she
seemed to feel a minute hole. She put her eye to it but
saw nothing but blackness. She knew exactly where the
door had been. It seemed there no longer. Merely the un-
broken wall was there.
She straightened as much as she could, stood still for a
moment, and called on her soul for strength. Then she
dropped to her hands and knees and felt her way along
the corridor, groping on the floor for the flash-light. Her
fingers touched first splintered glass, and then the bulk of
the flash-light itself. With a pounding heart she found and
pressed the contact button. No light came. She pressed
again and again, knowing the hopelessness of the effort.
The most complete darkness she had ever known drew
closer around her.
Abruptly, the last vestige of her nerve gave way. She
shrieked again and shrank from the hollow echo of her


THE TRAP 263
own outcry. The full realization of her position swept over
her. The house was empty. Vance and the Benedicts were
sailing with Captain Bijah and would not be home till
after six. Comfort would return about the same time to
get supper. Nat was somewhere in the far end of the
grounds. It could not be much more than three o'clock
now. She and Comfort had taken a sandwich lunch at
twelve that Comfort might get off early. Would the sti-
fling air in that living grave keep her alive three hours or
more? Would she go mad in the interval?
She shrieked again, and beat her hands against the
unresponsive walls. She had found the secret of Avalon.
Others had found it before her. . . . She had discovered,
in that one glimpse of the connecting cellar, that she was
not alone.


THE TRAP 265
Grumbling, she opened the door far enough to let her-
self through. On the other side of the opening she closed
it again to the point of the wooden wedge, in deference to
her mistress's dislike of being shut into the vault-like
cellar. The lighted lamp welcomed her. She descended the
stairway with the beginning of a protest on her lips.
At the bottom of the steps she stopped and looked
around. The lamp was burning brightly, but the wine
cellar was empty. West of the center of its space lay an
over-turned chair—the small kitchen chair she and Miss
French had carried down to the cellar that afternoon.
It was not until she saw the chair that Comfort's nerves
uttered their first warning. Even then it was not a sharp
alarm they sent her. The girl's note-book and fountain-pen
lay on one of the steps of the step-ladder she and Comfort
had also brought downstairs. Comfort walked over and
looked at them. She was not naturally an imaginative
woman, but her imagination had been stimulated by her
lifetime service at Avalon. Her heart-beats quickened and
she felt an unfamiliar sensation at the roots of her hair.
Still, she was not greatly alarmed. She would not have
given even a casual question to the situation if it had not
been for that over-turned chair. It wasn't like Miss French
to go back upstairs and leave an over-turned chair behind
her. She was the sort that went around a house picking
up and straightening things. Comfort had observed that
habit of hers from the first. It wasn't like her to go away
without her note-book, either, or to leave the lamp burning
—unless, of course, she had rushed upstairs to get some-
thing, meaning to come right back. Then another theory
occurred to Comfort. Her relief over it was so definite
that she realized she had been anxious for an instant.


266
THE TRAP
"Land suz," she muttered. "Gittin' foolish in my old
age, I be!"
She was quite sure that her new theory was correct.
For some reason Miss French had decided to go into the
little wine closet that opened off the main cellar. Probably
she wanted—what was it she had called it ?—an inventory
of the licker in that, too. To go there, of course she would
have to go upstairs and down the regular cellar steps lead-
ing from the kitchen to the main cellar.
The haste with which Comfort Folger shot upstairs to
look into this theory was the only outward evidence she
gave of anxiety. In less than a minute she was in the kitchen.
Here she offered unconscious proof that she was not
sure of the correctness of her theory. She stopped to pick
up another flash-light, that lived on a shelf above the sink.
It was needed. The entire cellar was dark. There was no
Miss French in the cellar or in the wine closet. Comfort
stood still and reflected, her heart pounding. Then she
went back upstairs and swiftly but methodically looked
into every room in the house. By the time she had finished
her heart was hammering so hard that breathing was
difficult. She began to talk to herself, a habit of hers when
she was disturbed or excited.
"She's went some place, looks like," she muttered. But
a few seconds later she brought out a new reflection and
repeated it over and over.
"An' I lef' her alone in this house I" she reiterated, while
her face grew gray.
It was at this point that she went back to the ground floor
and called Nat to her assistance. He came, running. The
sound of her voice and one look at her face, when he
reached her at the side door, frightened him.


THE TRAP 267
"What's the matter?" he gasped.
"Did I say an'thing wuz the matter? I cal'clate t' ask
Miss French 'bout supper. Come in late, I did. She ain't
in the house. I wisht you'd see if she's anywheres in the
barn 'r the chicken-run 'r the summer-house. Look ev'ry-
wheres. Hurry!"
Nat looked into her eyes and his own showed panic.
"Mebbe she's gone up street—or somewhere," he fal-
tered.
"Don't ack dumber 'n ye be," Comfort snapped. "She
ain't agoin' nowheres off'n these grounds in them close
she wuz wearin'. Hurry!"
Nat was off, running his best. Comfort made a second
round of Avalon. This time she called aloud as she went.
Her calls echoed eerily in the big silent house.
"I s'pose I'm a plumb fool," she muttered between these
outcries. She was now making her second descent from
the attic. She heard Nat's step in the kitchen and hurried
down the back stairs for his report. She got it from the
look on his face.
"I been ev'rywheres," he said huskily. "Aunt Comfort,"
he brought out, "I thought things only happened at Avalon
at night. Folks don't—don't go in the daytime, do they?"
"The fust an' second Amoses that went done it in
daylight," Comfort muttered. "The las' Amos and his
friend, they done it at night. Come t' whut she calls her
'study,' " she added. "I aim t' tell ye somethin'."
She showed him the secret door, still held open an inch
by Alida's wedge, and explained what it led to.
"Yer goin't' keep yer mouth shet 'bout it till yer dyin'
day," she ended. "Now we'll look through that suller
again."


THE TRAP 273
little and so carefully that it's actually hard to tell which
she touched, or whether she touched them at all. I suppose
she was thinking of the . . ."
He broke off. Nat had swung the step-ladder away from
its original position and planted it under a shelf too high
for him to reach.
"You infernal young idiot, don't you know better than
that?" Vance yelled furiously. "That step-ladder may have
marked the spot where she was working last—where she
dropped the note-book. We need to know that. Now you've
dumped your damned bottles on mine, too. I think you'd
help us more by getting the hell out of here!"
"Don't mind him, boy," Benedict said gently. "He's
almost off his head. But of course each person must keep
the bottles separate, and as close as possible to their origi-
nal positions."
Vance did not hear him. He was profoundly dis-
couraged.
"Nothing here," he muttered. "All right. Start on this
south end—but carefully and toward this west corner.
She's been working here, I think."
For a time he worked in silence, while the others
worked and shouted. Then he stopped and looked down at
the over-turned chair, near the west bay of the south wall.
"What the devil does that mean?" he asked Benedict.
"It means something. It doesn't mean a scuffle. The dust
is thick around here. It hasn't been disturbed enough for
anything like that. Only one set of footprints here—
Alida's. If she upset the chair wouldn't she have picked it
up—or would she?"
No one listened. Nat was shouting again. Vance con-
tinued his work with the bottles. In later years, when he


274 THE TRAP
recalled that hour of nightmare in the old cellar, the thing
he remembered most vividly was the incessant shouting—
that, and the sudden feel, against his groping fingers, of a
small metal object under a shelf he had just emptied. His
heart stopped.
"By God," he shouted, "here's something. But it's loose
—it's broken inside. Hold on. Don't touch it," he added
as Benedict reached forward. "I know something about
those old-time gadgets. ..."
There was utter silence in the cellar. Around him the
little group now huddled breathless.
"By all the gods, you've got it," Benedict said in a
shaking voice. His body, too, was shaking. The wall,
shelves and all, was moving. Vance slipped his hand into
the widening opening and pulled at it with a sound in his
throat that was like a sob.
"Stand back, you fools," he cried as they crowded
closer. "Give me room." He stared into the black open-
ing for an instant and added with the gulp of a little boy,
"She's here, all right. Thank God, she's here!"
Benedict pushed the others back. He himself stood
close beside Vance till the latter stepped across the high
threshold into the black space beyond and gathered up into
his arms the unconscious burden that lay there.
"She instinctively got as close to the door as she could
to get any possible air from this room," Benedict mut-
tered as Vance recrossed the threshold with his burden.
The doctor's fingers felt for the girl's pulse.
"Get her upstairs," he ordered. "Don't lose a second."
Caleb Haven, looking like a very old man, slipped back
through the open door above and into the study again
to let the little procession pass him.


CHAPTER XVIII
Three nights later Vance and Benedict sat alone at the
dinner-table, smoking and lending themselves to the sense
of well-being that filled them. Lucy had gone back to her
now convalescent patient. The two young men were grasp-
ing their first opportunity for a real talk.
"You're sure Alida will be all right now?" Vance asked
again, as he had asked several times during the meal. Bene-
dict answered a trifle wearily:
"My dear fellow, I told you this morning that all danger
was past. I promised then that you could see her to-night
and you shall. She's absolutely on the up and up. But
we'll have you on our hands if you don't pull yourself
together. I don't mind telling you, old man, that for the
last three days you've been a damned nuisance. If I called
in all the specialists you wanted there wouldn't have been
room for them in the house. Haven't you any faith at all
in your resident physician and the best nurse that ever
came out of the Medical Center?"
Vance flushed.
"I know I've been a pain in the neck," he admitted.
"But I seemed to be going off my head. If Alida had died
in that hell-hole, or after we'd got her out, I'd be in a
padded cell this minute. You see," he ended humbly, "I
hadn't fully realized all she meant to me."
"Well, you evidently do now," Benedict murmured.
"Incidentally, you've made all the rest of us realize it. I
276


THE TRAP 277
don't mind telling you that you've been getting on our
nerves. That's why I sent you and Haven down into the
hell-hole again this afternoon—to divert your mind. Now
tell me what you found there. All Haven said before he
hustled off, looking sick, was that you had solved the
mystery, or rather, that Alida had. All right. What's the
answer? Of course we knew that Alida found the four
skeletons in there and raved over the experience for thirty-
six hours afterwards. But how did they get there? How
the devil did it all happen? That's what I'm wanting to
know."
"It's very simple, really," Vance said thoughtfully.
"One has only to build it up from the evidence, the way
they do it in detective tales. To begin, old Captain Amos,
the first of the Frenches, built those cellars himself and
kept the fact to himself. He was evidently a great old
pirate, and I'm inclined to think he brought home from his
voyages a lot of stuff he had no right to. He must have
made most of his money that way. But he was careful.
He didn't sell too much after any one voyage. He always
had an accumulation. There's a neat little fortune down
there in rare wines and liqueurs, ivories, and bronzes, and
loot from old temples. Not to speak of the little hoard of
twenty-dollar gold pieces the old chap had. There's noth-
ing sensational about the value of the stuff—but Haven
thinks it ought to come up to thirty or forty thousand dol-
lars at a conservative estimate."
"Which will be a nice little nest egg for Alida," Bene-
dict commented. "How did you finally get Haven down
there?" he added.
"He didn't like it at first," Vance grinned. "But I'd
worked myself into such a state about Alida that I had


to do something or go crazy. As soon as you reported that
she was out of danger, I simply forced the old fellow to
go down with me and take a look. Of course we all knew
what it was that had given Alida such a shock and caused
her delirium, aside from the blackness and lack of air.
Just the same, I wanted to make sure. Haven backed and
filled for an hour or two before he'd go. He finally con-
sented though, and we went down together. Lucky we did,
for Haven was mighty useful. I had an awful time getting
him into the inner chamber. He wouldn't stir till I posted
Nat at the secret door to hold it open all the time we were
in there. I thought for a minute that Haven would pass out
when we found those four skeletons—or rather, two per-
fectly good skeletons, with belt buckles and snuff boxes
and watches and other proofs that they wef^ the first
Frenches. Amos and his chum, naturally, were in better
shape. What was left of their clothes was still on them.
But it was a ghastly exhibit! Alida must have seen it be-
fore she broke the flash-light. After that, of course, she
couldn't see anything. But she could imagine plenty!"
"It will take Alida a long time to get over that ex-
perience," Benedict muttered. "But she's got a lot of
nerve. The first thing she said, after she began to talk
rationally, was that she was going to have a formal
funeral for the three Frenches as soon as she recovered,
and put them in the family vault with appropriate services.
Minister, music, and all the rest of it. Think of that
for drama! Those venerable bones in three coffins. But
tell me how you explain it all," Benedict repeated urgently.
"Very easily. The old Captain probably used that se-
cret store-room as regularly and almost as casually as
Alida will use the regular cellar hereafter. But in the end


28o
THE TRAP
the house was empty. No one was in it to hear the death
howls and discover and open the trap, as we did—by the
grace of God. All those poor devils must have howled
themselves black in the face."
For a moment the two young men were silent.
"That, of course, was what started the ghost stories,"
Vance continued. "Something must have been heard by
passers-by. We can't ask Alida any questions yet, but she
had her flash-light with her. It's clear that she saw those
four skeletons and remnants before she fainted. In faint-
ing she must have smashed the flash-light. Still, she
couldn't have been unconscious three or four hours. . . .
She must have had an experience that doesn't bear think-
ing about, while she was slowly suffocating." There was
another moment of silence.
"I'm pretty sure that we'll find on investigation that
the old Captain had the two secret rooms ventilated by
louvers under the front or side porch," Vance finally
summed up. "The lattice work and the shrubs below the
porches hid all signs of them. As the years passed dust
and debris clogged up the louvers for the inner room."
Vance leaned back in his chair and clasped his hands
behind his head in a gesture of complete relaxation.
"It's all over now, thank God, and the mystery of Ava-
lon is solved. All Alida has got to do is to sell the booze
and the old Captain's treasures to connoisseurs, and live
happily at Avalon ever after."
"Alone?" Benedict asked quietly.
"You know damned well it's got to be alone, so far
as I'm concerned," Vance muttered. "As to the question
you're beginning to think about now, and that you're go-
ing to ask when you get around to it," he continued, "the


THE TRAP 283
you. But, darling, how can I help speaking after what
we've just gone through? I love you. Let me take care
of you—as long as I can."
"While I'm—what was it—a serene and steady-going
wife?" Alida asked, with a tremulous smile.
Benedict, who had been tactfully talking to Lucy at the
other side of the room, interrupted. He had heard the last
sentence. He remembered when he had heard it before.
"She'll do," he told Vance. "Clear out now, old man.
Lucy's going to stay in Alida's room all night. I'll be on
call but I won't be needed. Neither will Lucy, really. Alida
will sleep—and she'll be pretty normal in the morning.
Will you go to sleep now?" he asked Alida.
"I will—now," she emphasized, and looked up at Vance
with another smile. He bent and kissed her again.
"Do I really have to be serene all the time?" she asked.
Vance laughed with a catch in his throat, and left the
room in response to the doctor's imperative gesture. Bene-
dict, hurrying after him, took his arm and pressed it as
they walked along the hall to Vance's room.
"You've done a good day's work, old man," he said.
"I'm a cad," Vance groaned. "I never meant to let that
girl know I loved her. I've actually been rude to her since
I realized the danger. I've kept out of her way, too.
Lately, I was thinking seriously of leaving Avalon before
I could make a fool of myself. Now—well, look at me.
A dying man prating of love. It is to laugh!"
He turned on his heel, swung into his room, and shut
his door with a bang.
The next morning after a breakfast of toast and coffee
the mistress of Avalon firmly announced her intention of
getting up.
■


THE TRAP 285
sists that she can't produce that effect before an audience."
Alida laughed and then sighed.
"I feel fine this morning, but life's duties are certainly
pressing upon me," she admitted. "Mr. Haven here at
ten, Comfort's story at eleven. It's almost too much.
Would you mind mentioning once more that you love me?
It might help."
Alida, pale and impressive, was stretched on the daven-
port in the living-room by ten o'clock. She received Caleb
Haven as soon as he arrived and was surprised and
touched by the tears in his eyes as he bent over her and
took her hands. Also, she was shocked by the change in
him.
"This has been hard on you," she said at once. "Dr.
Benedict shouldn't have sent you and Don down into that
place yesterday. But you needn't tell me anything about
it. I—I know. The thing I want to say again is that of
course I'm going to have my great-great-grandfather and
my grandfather and Uncle Amos laid away with all fitting
ceremony in our old family vault at Spring Grove Ceme-
tery, if it takes my last cent to do it. I want the vault and
the French lot put in order right away. Will you attend
to that? I think we'd better have the three funerals Sun-
day morning. Will you make arrangements for them, too?
Don will help you. I'd like young Mr. Tucker to conduct
the services here at the house, of course. And I want his
church quartette to sing the hymns."
"Everything shall be as you wish, my dear. But will you
feel up to all that so soon? Nothing has leaked out yet,
but when it does there will be an immense amount of pub-


THE TRAP 289
"He'll tell it." Comfort indicated Vance with a nod.
"He's goin' to be master here, so it's right he sh'd know.
Mr. Haven's gotta know, too. But me an' Abram ain't got
the words."
"I'll make it as short as I can," Vance began briskly.
His deliberately casual tone banished the rising tension
in the atmosphere. "I suppose we ought to have suspected
the truth sooner. Each of us had fleeting suspicions, but
they seemed too incredible, so we ignored them. Given
all the conditions, the situation isn't incredible at all. It's
just—well, I suppose it's poor weak human nature. To
put the whole thing in a nut-shell, Alida, Abram is the
old Captain, dressed for the part. Abram is the skeleton,
in black tights with white stripes painted on them to rep-
resent bones. He was assisted in these impersonations by
his pal, Hank Barlow of Quinnet."
"Another son of Satan," Comfort groaned.
"Abram and Barlow were the old Captain and his
grandson—the white-faced pair that haunted the cedar
grove," Vance continued. "Abram was also the skeleton
of your Uncle Amos, and Barlow was his shadowy com-
panion."
"Abram!" Alida could not keep back the word. She
sat up and stared at Abram, who gulped but did not raise
his gaze from the floor. Alida lay down again, weakly.
"Abram," Vance emphasized, "Abram and his pal.
Abram drunk and Abram sober, but usually Abram drunk.
I'll say for Abram that he was pretty clever about the
whole business. He deceived us all, including Comfort
and Nat. Neither of them had any more suspicion of
who the ghosts were than we had. In fact, Abram Parsons
has fooled the whole country-side for fourteen years. As


29O THE TRAP
I've said, he was clever. So, in a lesser degree, was Bar-
low. Barlow had been a vaudeville actor in his best days.
He's over sixty now and has been out of work for years.
He has done odd jobs when they were not too strenuous.
He helped Abram with the make-up and impersonations.
Abram was too clever to go in for fancy stunts, you will
remember, except his dancing and the pair's ventrilo-
quistic effects. Barlow was quite a ventriloquist, and he
trained Abram. They could make those howls and out-
cries come from any place they chose. For the rest, they
contented themselves with merely appearing—just being
around, looking up at the house, peering out from the
grove, peering in at the windows. The quiet way they
came and went was really quite artistic.
"But Abram's cleverest stunts were the sneak-holes he
made," Vance went on. "He has sneak-holes all over the
place, and I defy any one to find them—hollow tree-
trunks with painted slides inside of them; barrels buried
in the ground, with lids covered with artificial grass or
underbrush; chutes into the cellar behind the coal, through
two windows always kept open but hidden on the outside
by the thick rhododendron bushes; and a really amazing
dugout far under the old barn, where he and his pal could
change their clothes and their roles."
He stopped but no one spoke.
"Abram had duplicate keys for all the outside doors,
of course," Vance continued. "It was very easy for him
or his pal to slip in and out. They didn't dare to do
much of that after we came, but they did a lot of it in
the past. There's a nice little secret panel you don't know
anything about, Alida, in the rear hall closet. It covers
a space just large enough to hide in briefly. They could


THE TRAP 293
they'd rest for weeks, and then go at it again. It was
always in the offing, as a diversion, when they wanted it."
He stopped a moment.
"Go on," said Comfort stonily. "Don't skip nothin'."
"The worst is yet to come," Vance admitted. He went
on more seriously.
"A few years ago a new idea came to Abram. Comfort
was still adamant about marrying him, for he was still
drinking. He wasn't making any progress with her. I
infer that the first fine careless rapture of the experience
was also beginning to fade. He was almost ready to drop
the whole thing. Then, one day, he heard some one say
that if the Avalon ghosts kept up their little vigils the
old French house would eventually be on the market for
a song. The property was being allowed to run down.
The last of the French family, a girl, lived in New York.
It was assumed that she'd never be willing to live at
Avalon, and that she would sell the old place for anything
she could get for it to avoid paying the heavy taxes."
Vance's voice took on a sudden edge.
"The canny thought came to Abram Parsons that he
could combine business with his little pleasures. He has
a few thousand saved up after his lifetime of work. He
never spends anything except for booze. If he could wreck
Avalon's reputation thoroughly enough, he could force
a sale of the old place and buy it in for a trifle. Then,
of course, all the ghost-scares would stop. Comfort loves
the place. He was sure she would marry him to be mis-
tress of it."
"I don't think I can ever forgive him for that," Alida
reflected aloud.
"It's the worst phase of the mess, as I've said," Vance


294 THE TRAP
admitted. "That's why the last year of poor old Mrs.
Quimby's life was so hectic. Abram called on all his twelve
cylinders. He's an energetic worker when he gets going.
The desire to own Avalon had become an obsession with
him. Combined with his drinking, I think it sent him a
bit off his head." \
Abram Parsons leaped to his feet, his thin features
twitching with fury.
"Don't you say that," he shrieked, his voice rising to
a shrill falsetto. "I wun't let no man say I'm crazy. What
I done I done. I ain't denyin' it. But I got my side of
this here thing, too. Ain't I ben a man 'thout no home?
Ain't my son ben kep' from me an' not let know I wuz
his father? 'Tain't Comfort I wuz after. I wanted my
boy! I wanted the place fer him, too."
He turned to Nat, gaping up at him, white-faced and
shaken by this outburst. "Well, I be yer father, an' it's
time ye knowed it. It's time the hull town knowed it—an'
they're agoin' to."
Comfort jumped up and literally hurled herself at him.
She seemed a woman distraught. She caught his arm,
dragging at it fiercely and trying to push him back into
his chair.
"Set down, ye fool," she choked, "an' shet yer mouth.
Yer outta yer head, like Mr. Vance says."
Vance called out sharply before Abram could reply.
"Pipe down, you two," he ordered. "We can't have
this excitement. It's bad for Miss French."
The reminder brought Comfort to her senses. She
pulled herself together. She turned to Alida and spoke
quietly, but with strong feeling.
"The good Lord knows I'm a sinful woman. I made


3<X) THE TRAP
"We'll see to it," Haven promised. "Your Uncle Amos
was a major in the World War, you know, and your
grandfather was a Captain in the Civil War. There ought
to be military services at the cemetery."
"Yes," Alida agreed, "strictly private family services
here at Avalon, and 'taps' at the cemetery."
Haven breathed more easily and exchanged a meaning
look with Vance. That would make it possible to get in
■ the local militia and be prepared for the probable rush of
vandals and morbid sight-seers which he dared not yet
predict. Mercifully, the girl before him had not realized
what a rabble that funeral might draw to the cemetery.
Now the rabble could be held within decent limits.
"I'll ask for a guard of policemen at Avalon day and
night till after the funerals," Haven added. "This after-
noon we'll move most of the liquor down to Hingley's
warehouse, and put it under guard till it's sold. We'll make
it clear to the public to-morrow morning that there's
nothing left in Avalon to lure the underworld here. o.k.?"
"o.k.,1 Uncle Cal. I can't thank you enough. You're
wonderful."
Haven bent over and took both her hands.
"Thank you, Alida. With you and Spring in my life
from now on, I'm going to be a mighty happy man."
Vance went with him to the front door, and then hurried
back to Alida.
"Tired?" he asked.
"Not too much so. They gave me a strong sedative be-
fore I came downstairs. But I admit I'm overwhelmed by
all this."
Vance drew a deep breath.


302 THE TRAP
various doctors his patients rushed to after he sailed. Do
you remember the man just ahead of me that day? He
left the office as if he'd been shot from a cannon. Well,
he was Harvey Vanderhoof, quite a big gun financially.
He thought there was something queer about Cunning-
ham's manner, so he went straight to another specialist.
So did other patients of Cunningham. Now the whole
story is coming out. Lucy's chum wrote it as general news,
knowing Lucy would be interested. It's mighty big news
to us. But there's more."
"Don—don't stop. Hurry. Talk fasti"
"For a poised young person, Miss French, with a serene
nature, you get very temperamental at moments. However,
here's the rest of it. I knew perfectly well I had some form
of heart trouble. That's what sent me to Cunningham, a
heart specialist, in the first place. That's why I swallowed
his diagnosis so easily. I'm told that doctors can't diag-
nose angina definitely unless they've seen the patient dur-
ing an attack. Of course I was too much of a little gentle-
man to have attacks around Avalon, and that cramped
Benedict's medical investigations. You may remember that
I put on an attack after the collision with the Kirkpatricks.
Benedict saw that: it didn't amount to much. But the
other night, after your accident, I put on a real show for
him. I waited patiently till toward morning, when you
were sleeping the sleep of the drugged. I'd been up all
night, naturally, getting bulletins from your room, when
it seemed to be touch and go with you. We all thought
you were in for a losing fight. Toward five in the morn-
ing I must have felt free to put on my performance. Any-
way, I collapsed in the hall outside your door and passed
out of the picture. Then Benedict and Lucy, who had been