Chapter XLV: Voices

Saturday afternoon young Mitchell burst in upon Westy with the news that Lola and Mrs. Redmond had wired back. They were coming on the Sunday evening train.

“Everything’s set now, Martin,” he said excitedly. “Dad says the attorney O. K.’d opening the envelope and made an appointment to have him bring your friends to his office Monday morning.”

“That sounds good,” Westy said. “I’m glad for their sake.”

“Get up to the house early to-morrow--I’ll show you some of my things.”

The next day Westy met young Mitchell before he got halfway to their home. He was coming along at breakneck speed on a motorcycle and stopped short right by him.

“Hallo!” he greeted. “Some stunt, eh, Martin? I don’t ride this tin can very often except when I have too much surplus energy. Then I try stunts.”

“You mean you try to break your neck. I’d like to have that tin can just the same,” Westy said enviously.

“Want to hop on? I’ll show your some peachy tricks before we go home.”

Westy got on and watched him steer with a steady hand.

“See that car ahead?” he asked Westy.

“Yeh. What about it?”

“Well, just watch me cut in front of it and swerve out on the road again.”

“Yes, I’ll watch you all right. I better watch myself. It’d be just my luck to fall off. I’m no whiner though--go to it!”

Young Mitchell needed no further inducements. He got up in back of the big sedan and with a roar and lurch he speeded ahead and cut in front of the car, and before Westy knew it they were back on the road again with the sedan stalled back in the distance.

He laughed, but all Westy could do was smile--he didn’t feel that it was a laughing matter.

“Want to see me do it again?”

“I couldn’t say no if I tried,” Westy said resignedly.

“Watch me closely then and you can learn!”

By the time Mitchells had dinner early Sunday evening Westy had become quite adept in cutting motor cars with a motorcycle.

At dinner the conversation was about the expected arrivals that evening.

The Mexican butler, gliding in and out from the kitchen to the dining-room, seemed to be aware of everything that was needed, yet Westy couldn’t see that he looked at anything. He just seemed to look ahead all the time, his little beady eyes perfectly expressionless. A little man he was, with swarthy skin and shiny black hair. A perfect butler, no doubt, but Westy didn’t like him.

“Baptiste!” Mr. Mitchell addressed him as he was bending over the server on the opposite side of the room.

“Yees, sir!” His English was broken and he turned from what he was doing.

“Order the big car,” Mr. Mitchell said; “we are going down to the station to meet some guests!”

“Yees, sir!” Baptiste answered as he turned to finish his duties at the server.

“Well, that’s that,” Mr. Mitchell was saying. “We’ll get the envelope out of the tin box in the safe to-morrow and give those people what’s coming to them!”

At that juncture the butler glanced at Mr. Mitchell and left the room.

“Say, Dad, I was telling Westy it’d be good fun to have him wait here until we get back and surprise his friends. It’ll be more friendly when they come in to see him, don’t you think?”

“Certainly!” Mrs. Mitchell said.

“Go up in the library while we’re gone and read what you like. You can roam all over the house if you want to,” Mr. Mitchell added.

Young Mitchell took him up in the library and showed him what was most interesting, so five minutes after they had all left for the station Westy was comfortably ensconced in a big library chair. It was so big it completely hid him from view and he browsed to his heart’s content.

The big house was silent; the kitchen noises had stopped and he could hear the two servants padding up the back stairway to their rooms. A little later he heard them go down again--a door closed somewhere in the back and the sounds of two pair of feet stepping along the gravel driveway reminded him that Sunday night was the servants’ night.

A clock chimed the quarter of the hour and then the house lapsed into silence again.

It seemed to Westy that he must have been reading for hours, so intent was he on his book. But he wasn’t reading long at that, for the clock chimed the half hour, and he heard the padding of two pairs of shoes coming up the broad stairway.

He listened as they stopped at the open doorway of the library. The one leading must have stopped abruptly, as its follower shuffled his feet on the polished floor he stopped so suddenly.

“There ees not much time,” the first voice said, right in the room with Westy.

It was Baptiste; he knew the voice and was thankful the big chair was hiding him.

“The safe,” Baptiste went on talking, “ees right here!”