Andre Norton: The Essential Collection (239 page)

"Goodness, what have I strayed into?" Charity Biglow stood in the lower hall staring at the younger Ralestones as they came through from the kitchen. They had both changed into their oldest and least respectable clothes. Ricky, in fact, was wearing a pair of Val's slacks and one of Rupert's shirts, and they were burdened with a broom which was long past its youth, several smaller brushes, and a great bundle of floor-cloths.

"We've found a secret room—" began Ricky.

"As one door has been in plain sight since the building of this house, it could hardly be called a secret room," Val objected.

"Well, we didn't know it was there until Satan found the back entrance for us. And now we're going to clean it out. It's full of furniture and boxes and things."

"Don't!" Charity held up a paint-streaked hand. "You will have me drooling in a moment. I don't suppose you could use another assistant? After all, it was my cat who found it for you. If you can provide me with a set of those weird coverings which seem to be your house-cleaning uniforms, I would just love to wield a broom in your company."

"The more the merrier," laughed Ricky. "I think Val has another pair of slacks—"

"That's right, dispose of my wardrobe before my face," he commented, balancing his load more carefully in preparation for climbing the stairs. "Only spare my white flannels, please. I'm saving those for the occasion when I can play the country gentleman in style."

Upstairs he braced open the hall door of the storage-room. The open windows had cleared the air within but they were too high and too small to admit enough light to reach the far corners. It would be best, they decided, to carry each box and piece of furniture to the hall for examination. With the zeal of treasure hunters they set to work.

Some time later, when Val was coaxing the second box through the door, they were interrupted.

"And just what is going on here?" Rupert stood at the end of the hall.

"Oh," Ricky smiled sweetly, "did we really disturb you?"

"Well, I did think that there was a troop of elephants doing tap dancing up here. But that isn't the point—just
what
are you doing?"

"Cleaning house." Ricky flicked a gray rag in his direction freeing a cloud of dust. "Don't you think it needs it?"

Rupert sneezed. "It seems so. But why—? Miss Biglow!"

Charity, extremely dirty—she had apparently run dusty hands across her forehead several times—had come to the door of the storage-room. At the sight of Rupert she flushed and made a hurried attempt at smoothing her hair.

"I—" she began, when Ricky interrupted her.

"Charity is helping us, which is more than we can say of you. Go back to your old den and hibernate. And then you can't look down that long nose of yours when we turn up the papers that'll save us from the poorhouse."

"That's telling him," Val murmured approvingly as he fanned himself with one of the cleaner cloths. "But perhaps we had better explain. You see, Satan went hunting and found work for idle hands," and he told the tale of the sliding panel behind the bed.

When he had finished, Rupert laughed. "So you are still determined on treasure hunting, are you? Well, if it will keep you out of mischief, go to it."

"Rupert," Ricky faced him squarely, "don't be utterly insufferable. If you had one drop of hot blood in you, you'd be just as thrilled as we are. Just because you've been around and around the world until you got dizzy or something, you needn't stand there with that 'See-the-little-children-play' smirk on your face. You don't really care whether we lose Pirate's Haven or not, do you?"

Rupert straightened and the color crept up across his high cheek-bones. His mouth opened and then he closed it again without speaking the words he had intended, closed with a firmness which tightened his lips into a straight line.

"Don't stand there and glower at me," Ricky went on. "Why don't you say what you were going to? I'm just about tired of this world-weary attitude—"

"Ricky!" Val clapped his black hand over her mouth and turned to Charity. "Please excuse the fireworks. They are not usual, I assure you."

"Let me go!" Ricky twisted out of his grip. "I don't care if Charity does hear. She ought to know what we're really like!"

"Speak for yourself, my pet." The red had faded from Rupert's face. "You do have a nice little habit of speaking your mind, don't you? But on this occasion I believe you're at least eight-tenths right. I have been neglecting my opportunities. Suppose you let me get at that box, Val. And look here, if you are going to unpack these, why not move them down to the end of the hall and turn them out on a sheet?"

Charity and Ricky suddenly disappeared back into the room and were very busy whenever Rupert crossed their line of vision, but Val was heartily glad of his brother's help in lifting and pulling.

"Better not try to take this bedstead and stuff out," Rupert advised when they had the three boxes out in the hall. "We have no need for it now, anyway."

"I believe—yes, it is! A real Sergnoret piece!" Charity was industriously rubbing away at the head of the bed. Rupert knelt down beside her.

"And just what is a Sergnoret piece?"

"A collector's item nowadays. François Sergnoret was one of the greatest cabinet-makers of New Orleans. See that 'S'—that's the way he always signed his work."

"Treasure trove!" cried Ricky. "I wonder how much it's worth?"

"Exactly nothing to us." Rupert was running his hands across the mahogany. "We couldn't sell anything from this house until the title is cleared."

As Val moved around to the opposite side to see better, his foot struck against something on the floor. He stooped and picked up a box with a slanting cover, the whole black and smooth with age and the rubbing of countless hands.

"What's this?" He had crossed to the door and was examining his find in the light.

Rupert's hand fell upon his shoulder. "Val, be careful of that. Charity, he's got something here!" He pulled her up beside him, not noting in his excitement that he had broken out of the formal shell which seemed to wall him in whenever she was around.

"A Bible box! And an authentic one, too!" She drew her fingers down the slope of the lid.

"And just what is it?" Val asked for the second time.

"These boxes were used in the seventeenth century for writing-desks and later to keep the large family Bibles in. But this is the first one I've ever seen outside of a museum. What's this on the lid?" She traced a worn outline. Val studied the design.

"Why, it's Joe! You know, that grinning skull we have stuck up all over the place to bolster up our superiority complex. That proves that this is ours, all right."

"Perhaps—" Ricky's eyes were round with excitement, "perhaps it belonged to Pirate Dick himself!"

"Perhaps it did," her younger brother agreed.

"Lift the lid." She was almost hopping on one foot in her impatience. "Let's see what's inside."

"No gold or jewels, I'll wager. How do you get the thing undone?"

"Here, let me try." Rupert took it from Val's hands and put it down on one of the chests, squatting on the floor before it. With the smallest blade of his penknife he delicately probed the fastening sunken in the wood.

"I could do a faster job," he remarked, "if you didn't all breathe down the back of my neck." They retreated two inches or so and waited impatiently. With a satisfied grunt he dropped his knife and pulled the lid up.

"Why, there's nothing in it!" Ricky's cry of disappointment was almost a wail.

"Nothing but that old torn lining." Val was as disgusted as she.

Rupert closed it again. "I'll rub this up some and put in another lining. This is too good a piece to hide away up here," and he put it carefully aside at the end of the hall.

Their investigations yielded nothing more except great quantities of dust, a mummified rat which even Satan refused to sniff at, and a large collection of spider webs. Having swept out the room, they went to wash their hands before unpacking the well-wrapped boxes.

When their swathing canvas and sacking was thrown aside, the boxes stood revealed as stout chests banded with iron. Charity paused before one. "This is a marriage chest, late seventeenth century, I would judge. Look there, under that carved leaf—isn't that a date?"

"Sixteen hundred ninety-three," Rupert deciphered. "That crest above it looks familiar. I know, it belonged to that French lady who married our pirate ancestor."

"The first Lady Richanda!" Ricky touched the chest lovingly. "Then this is mine, Rupert. Can't it be mine?" she coaxed.

"Of course. But it's locked, and as we don't have any keys which would fit the lock, you'll have to wait until we can get a locksmith out to work on it before you will know what's inside."

"I don't care. No," she corrected herself, "that's wrong; I do care. But anyway its mine!" She caressed the stiff carving with her fingers.

"What's this one?" Val turned to the second box. It, too, was fashioned of wood, but it was plain where the other was carved, and the iron bands across it were pitted with rust.

"A sea chest, I would say." Rupert touched the top gingerly. "By the feel, it's locked too. And I don't care to play around with it. The men who made things like these were too fond of having little poisoned fangs run into your hand when you tried to force the chest without knowing the trick. We'll have to leave this for an expert, too."

"What about the third?"

Charity laughed. "After your two treasures I'm afraid that this will be a disappointment." She indicated a small humpbacked trunk covered with moth-eaten horsehair. "No romance here. But the key is tied to the clasp beside the lock."

"Then open it before I expire of pure unsatisfied curiosity," Ricky begged. "Go on, Rupert. Hurry."

"Oh," she said a moment later, "it's full of nothing but a lot of books."

"What did you expect," Val asked her, "a skeleton? Do you know, I think that Rick's ghost, or whatever influence presides over this house, has a sense of humor. You find a room, or a trunk, or something which makes you feel that you are on the verge of getting what you want, and then it all fades into just nothing again. Now, by rights, that writing-desk should have contained the secret message which would have told us where to find a hidden passage or something. But what is in it? A couple of pieces of lining almost completely torn from the bottom. I'll wager that when you open those chests you'll find nothing but a brick or 'April Fool' scrawled across the inside. This isn't true to any fiction I ever read," he ended plaintively.

"Good Heavens!" Charity was staring down at what lay within a portfolio she had opened.

"Don't tell me you have really found something!" Val exclaimed.

"It can't be true!" She still stared at what she held.

Ricky looked over her shoulder. "Why, it's nothing but a picture of a bird," she observed.

"It's a genuine Audubon," Charity corrected her.

"What!" With little regard for manners, Rupert snatched the portfolio from her hands. "Are you sure?"

"Yes. But you must take it in to the museum and get an expert opinion. It's wonderful!"

"Here's another." Reverently Rupert raised the first sketch and then the second. "Three, four, five, six," he counted.

"Was Audubon ever here?" Charity looked about the hall, a sort of awe coloring her voice.

"He might easily have been when he lived in New Orleans. Though we have no record of it," answered Rupert. "But these," he closed the portfolio carefully and knotted its strings, "speak for themselves. I'll take them to LeFleur tomorrow. We can't allow them to lie about here."

"I should hope not!" Charity eyed the portfolio wistfully. "Imagine actually owning six of those—"

"They won't pay our bills," said Ricky, practical for once in her life. Treasure to Ricky was not half a dozen sketches on yellowed paper but good old-fashioned gold with a few jewels thrown in for her own private satisfaction. The portfolio and its contents left her unmoved. Val admitted to himself that he, too, was disappointed. After all—well, treasure should be treasure.

Rupert carried the portfolio into his bedroom and locked it in one of his mysterious brief-cases which had somehow found its way upstairs.

The two chests they moved out farther into the hall and the trunk was placed back against the wall, ready for further investigation.

"Mistuh Ralestone, suh," Letty-Lou, standing half-way up the back stairs, addressed Rupert, "lunch am on de table. Effen yo'all doan come now, de eatments will be spiled."

"All right," he answered.

"Letty-Lou," called Ricky, "put on another plate. Miss Charity is staying to lunch."

"Dat's all ri', Miss 'Chanda. I'se done done dat. Yo'all comin' now?"

"You see how we are bullied," Ricky appealed to Charity. "Of course you're going to stay," she swept aside the other's protests. "What's food for, if not to feed your friends? Val, go wash up; your hands are frightful. I don't care if you did wash once; go and—"

"This is her little-mother-of-the-family mood," her younger brother explained to Charity. "It wears off after a while if you just don't notice it. But I will wash though," he looked at his hands, "I seem to need it."