The Andre Norton Megapack - 15 Classic Novels and Short Stories

Val. Last year I thought I’d die, shut up in that awful school, and then coming home to hear—”
    “About me making my first and last flight. Yes, not exactly a rest cure for any of us, was it? But it’s all over now. The Ralestones may be down but they’re not out, yet, in spite of Mosile Oil and those coal-mines. D’you know, we might use some of that nice gilt-edged stock for wall-paper. There’s enough to cover a closet at least. Here we are, Rupert from beating about the globe trying to be a newspaper man, you straight from N’York’s finest finishing-school, and me—well, out of the plainest hospital bed I ever saw. We’ve got this house and what Rupert managed to clear from the wreck. Something will turn up. In the meantime—”
    “Yes?” she prompted.
    “In the meantime,” he went on, leaning against the banister for a moment’s rest, “we can be looking for the Luck. As Rupert says, we need it badly enough. Here’s the upper hall. Which way now?”
    “Over to the left wing. These in front are what Rupert refers to as ‘state bedrooms.’”
    “Yes?” He opened the nearest door and whistled softly. “Not so bad. About the size of a small union station and provided with all the comforts of a tomb. Decidedly not what we want.”
    “Wait, here’s a plaque set in the wall. Look!” She ran her finger over a glass-covered square.
    “Regulations for guests, or a floor plan to show how to reach the dining-room in the quickest way,” her brother suggested.
    “No.” She read aloud slowly:
    “‘This Room Was Occupied by General Andrew Jackson, the Victor of the Battle of New Orleans, upon the Tenth Day after the Battle.’”
    “Whew! ‘Old Hickory’ here! But I thought that the Ralestones were more or less under a cloud at that time,” commented Val.
    “History—”
    “In the making. Quite so. Now may I suggest that we find some slumber rooms slightly more modern? Rupert is apt to become annoyed at undue delay in such matters.”
    They went down the hall and turned into a short cross corridor. From a round window at the far end a ray of sun still swept in, but it was a sickly, faded ray. The storm Rupert had spoken of could not be far off.
    “This is the right way. Mr. Harrison had these little numbers put on the doors for his guests,” Ricky pointed out. “I’ll take ‘three’; that was marked on the plan he sent us as a lady’s room. You take that one across the hall and let Rupert have the one 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