Mystery Behind Dark Windows. Mary C. Jane
it’s always got to. She thinks I’ll run it someday, when I’m grown up.”
“Would you want to?” Ellie asked.
He hesitated. “No. I don’t know what I want to do, but I know it isn’t that. Anyway, the machinery will be old and rusty by that time, and the mill will be a ruin. Mr. Joslin said so.”
Ellie’s eyes widened in surprise. Mr. Joslin was Aunt Rachel’s lawyer. He was a tall, handsome man, but so very dignified and aloof she couldn’t imagine chatting with him. “Do you mean—you talked about it with him—alone?”
Tony nodded. “He called me into his office one day last week and talked a long time. He thinks Aunt Rachel ought to sell the mill. He says the taxes she has to pay on it every year use up a big part of her income. He wants me to talk to her and try to persuade her to sell.”
“Gee, do you think it would be any use?”
He shook his head. “Aunt Rachel isn’t”—he paused —“she just isn’t reasonable about Darkwater Mill. Daddy was killed while he was on a trip to get business for the mill, you know, and Aunt Rachel has never been like herself since. And then there was the strike. She thinks it broke Grandfather Pride’s heart. She hates people in this town because of it.”
After a minute’s silence he went on sadly, “That’s why I don’t think it would do any good to talk to her. She wants to keep the mill closed. She thinks it serves the men right to be out of work and to have the town go downhill. She wants it to be that way.”
“No wonder the kids around here don’t like me much,” Ellie said. “I thought it was because I had been to private school and all, but I guess it’s because of Aunt Rachel.”
She remembered, suddenly, the sound she had heard in the big, echoing building.
“I went down the alley looking for Kim tonight, and I got an awful scare,” she said. “I heard a noise in the mill.”
“A noise?” her brother asked sharply. “What kind of a noise?”
“A door slammed,” she answered, almost in a whisper. “It sounded away up near the top of the building.”
Alarm showed plainly in Tony’s dark eyes. “Are you sure it was inside the mill?”
“Where else could it have come from? The empty mill and the warehouse were all there were on either side of me.”
He hesitated. “It could have been the wind. It’s blowing hard tonight. Maybe there was a broken window somewhere and the wind blew through it and slammed a door.”
“Maybe,” Ellie admitted. “But I don’t think so. I’ve never noticed any broken windows.”
Tony stood up. “You didn’t tell Aunt Rachel about it, did you?” he asked as he moved toward the door.
When she shook her head he said, in a relieved tone, “Well, don’t. There’s no use worrying her.”
With a yawn and a mumbled “G’night” he was off down the hall.
Ellie propped herself up on her elbows, her stubborn chin in her hands, and stared after him. Well! It certainly wasn’t like Tony to brush aside a strange happening like that slammed door and to try to make her think it was nothing. What was the matter with him, anyway?
She snuggled down in her bed again, with a sigh. “I suppose it’s because he’s so grown up, all of a sudden. He doesn’t care about the things I do any more—like playing games and stuff. I suppose he thinks he’s too big, now, to be scared by a noise in an empty building.”
As she switched off her light she whispered resentfully, “Anyway—I don’t believe it was the wind that slammed that door. I think there was a person inside the mill.”
She slept late the next morning. Tony was up before her and was ready to leave for school by the time she came down to breakfast. His school began earlier than hers, so they seldom went together any more.
It was a clear, calm day after the windy night. When Ellie stepped outdoors she found dry leaves drifted across the front porch and heaped against the wall of the house. The uneven old bricks in the walk were slippery with frost.
She paused at the gate in the iron fence to look across at the mill. It didn’t look a bit scary now. Sunlight glittered on the dark windows and streamed into the alley. Would there be time, before school, for her to walk through there and have a look for broken windows? She decided to try it.
There were certainly no broken panes at the Main Street end of the building. She walked slowly down the alley toward the river, craning her neck to scan the long rows of windows on the third and fourth floors. As far as she could see, they were all whole.
The other end of the mill was in shadow. She went on beyond it a short distance, almost as far as the bowling alley. This was a part of town she didn’t like, with its pool hall and café and rows of shabby houses, all alike, where some of the millworkers lived. She hoped nobody was noticing her as she turned to study the windows at the end of the mill.
There wasn’t a broken pane of glass anywhere. Tony had certainly been mistaken. The wind couldn’t have got into that tightly closed building. There had to be some other explanation for the sound she had heard in the night.
As she hesitated, lost in thought, a jeering voice startled her.
“What are you looking for—Christmas?”
Ellie whirled and stared at the tall, frowning boy who had spoken. She recognized him at once. He was Jeff Purdy and his grandfather was janitor at Ellie’s school. She had seen Jeff many times when he came in to work with Mr. Purdy in the late afternoons. She was quite sure he was in Tony’s high-school class.
“Oh—hi,” she said. She couldn’t think of any answer to his question so she added lamely, “Aren’t you late for school?”
“So what?” he asked, giving her a scornful glance as he strode past her up the alley. The careless swing of his shoulders seemed to make it plain that he didn’t care whether he was late to school or not. Or what Ellie Pride thought about it.
She pursed up her lips and made a face at his back. She started to say, under her breath, “Phooey to you, Jeff Purdy,” when, to her surprise, she saw him turn and glance at her.
It was a furtive look, and he turned away quickly when he saw that she noticed. But it made Ellie stare after him in surprise.
Why should Jeff Purdy care if she chose to study the windows of Darkwater Mill?
3
THE BOAT IN THE SHADOWS
IF ONLY there were someone she could talk to about the sound she had heard in the mill and about Jeff Purdy’s queer behavior! The girls at school were like strangers to Ellie. She certainly couldn’t confide in them. She realized with an odd, alarmed beat of her heart that she couldn’t confide in Tony, either. Not about this. He didn’t want her to wonder about it or try to find out.
She would have to fall back on Hank Littlefield, that was all. Hank lived across the river from the Pride mansion. When Ellie and Tony used to come home from Harris Hill School, in their summer vacations, he often rowed over to their back lawn to play with them. Both she and Tony had always been able to count on Hank.
He sat next to her at school now. As soon as she settled into her seat she turned to whisper to him. He bent his head toward her at the same moment and began to speak before she had a chance.
“Say, Ellie, did you know there were going to be two satellites passing overhead tonight at the same time? I’m going to watch for them. Don’t you and Tony want to see them? Iťs really going to be something!”
Ellie was so taken aback she stared at him blankly for a second or two. She had been thinking of something entirely different, and at first she hardly understood what he was whispering about. She had