Ralestone Luck | Page 5

next to you."
The rooms they explored were not as imposing as the one which had sheltered Andrew
Jackson for a night. Furnished with chintz-covered chairs, solid mahogany bedsteads and
highboys, they were pleasant enough even if they weren't chambers to make an antique
dealer "Oh!" and "Ah!" Val discovered with approval some stiff prints of mathematically
correct clippers hung in exact patterns on his walls, while Ricky's room held one treasure,
a dainty dressing-table.
A small door near the end of the hall gave upon a linen closet. And Ricky, throwing her
short white jacket and hat upon the chair in her room, set about making beds, having
given Val strict orders to return to the lower hall and sort out the luggage before bringing
it up.
As he reached the wide landing he stopped a moment. Since that winter night, almost a
year in the past, when a passenger plane had decided--in spite of its pilot--to make a
landing on a mountainside, he had learned to hobble where he had once run. The accident
having made his right leg a rather accurate barometer, that crooked bone was announcing
the arrival of the coming storm with a sharp pain or two which shot unexpectedly from
knee to ankle. One such caught him as he was about to take a step and threw him
suddenly off balance.
He clutched at a dim tapestry which hung across the wall and tumbled through a slit in
the fabric--which smelled of dust and moth balls--into a tiny alcove flanking a broad,
well-cushioned window-seat under tall windows. Below him in a riot of bushes and
hedges run wild, lay the garden. Somewhere beyond must lie Bayou Mercier leading
directly to Lake Borgne and so to the sea, the thoroughfare used by their pirate ancestors

when they brought home their spoil.
The green of the rank growth below, thought Val, seemed intensified by the strange
yellowish light. A moss-grown path led straight into the heart of a jungle where sweet
olive, banana trees, and palms grew in a matted mass. Harrison might have done wonders
for the house but he had allowed the garden to lapse into a wilderness.
"Val!"
"Coming!" he shouted and pushed back through the curtain. He could hear Rupert
moving about the lower hall.
"Just made it in time," he said as the younger Ralestone limped down to join him. "Hear
that?"
A steady pattering outside was growing into a wild dash of wind-driven rain. It was dark
and Rupert himself was but a blur moving across the hall.
"Do you still have the flash? Might as well descend into the lower regions and put on the
lights."
They crossed the Long Hall, passing through another large chamber where furniture
huddled under dust covers, and then into a small cupboard-lined passage. This gave upon
a dark cavern where Val's hand scraped a table top only too painfully as he went. Then
Rupert found the door leading to the cellar, and they went down and down into inky
blackness upon which their thread of torch-light made little impression.
The damp, unpleasant scent of mold and wet grew stronger as they descended, and their
fingers brushed slime-touched walls.
"Phew! Not very comfy down here," Val protested as Rupert threw the torch beam along
the nearest wall. With a grunt of relief he stepped forward to pull open the door of a small
black box. "That does it," he said as he threw the switch. "Now for the topside again and
some supper."
They negotiated the steps and found the button which controlled the kitchen lights. The
glare showed them a room on the mammoth scale suggested by the Long Hall. A giant
fireplace still equipped with three-legged pots, toasting irons, and spits was at one side,
its brick oven beside it. But a very modern range and sink faced it.
In the center of the room was a large table, while along the far wall were closed
cupboards. Save for its size and the novelty of the fireplace, it was an ordinary kitchen,
complete to red-checked curtains at the windows. Pleasant and homey, Val thought rather
wistfully. But that was before the coming of that night when Ricky walked in the garden
and he heard something stir in the Long Hall--which should have been empty--
"Val! Rupert!" A cry which started valiantly became a wail as it echoed through empty
rooms. "Where are yo-o-ou!"

"Here, in the kitchen," Val shouted back.
A moment later Ricky stood in the doorway, her face flushed and her usually correct
curls all on end.
"Mean, selfish, utterly selfish pigs!" she burst out. "Leaving me all alone in the dark! And
it's so dark!"
"We just went down to turn on the lights," Val began.
"So I see." With a