Escape the Night by Mignon G. Eberhart Read Free Book Online Page B

said Amanda rapidly. “Good-bye, darling. I must hurry. Take care of each other,” she added, and ran out of the room and along the veranda.
    Aunt Luisa Condit said, shortly and rather disconcertingly, “See you later,” and stumped away, too.
    Serena finished her breakfast slowly. She was queerly, sharply disappointed because Jem wasn’t coming. Something of the warmth seemed to go out of the morning as later, after she’d showered and unpacked and dressed, it seemed to go out of the day, for clouds came up from the sea and eventually blanketed the sun with a thick, opaque, fleecy gray.
    She began to have an odd feeling of anti-climax. She arranged her clothes, and her gayly bottled-and-boxed cosmetics; wrote a note or two; had lunch with Luisa before the windows in the long living room. Luisa had turned on the radio loudly and listened doggedly while Serena looked at what she could see of the cloud-banked mountains. After lunch Luisa took up her knitting and disappeared. Amanda didn’t return; Sutton didn’t turn up at all, and Jem neither telephoned nor came. There began to be too much time to think; to reflect rather chillingly that, after all, she wasn’t the only girl Jem had kissed and to remember a little too clearly Leda’s words about Jem and Amanda.
    She remembered all at once the angry whispering in the patio of the previous night. Funny she hadn’t asked Jem questions about it—or had she? It must have been Jem. Yet why would he whisper like that? And to whom? Nagging little questions, not very pleasant somehow.
    She was glad when, about four, Luisa came out where she sat in the patio and invited her to take a walk. “You need to stretch your legs,” she said abruptly, her pale blue eyes fixed upon Serena. “Get a jacket and come along. Have you tasted the sea air yet? Of course not. You’ve not had time. We’ll walk down that way.”
    It was, Serena thought, an excellent idea. She got a crimson sweater and tied a matching ribbon round her hair. When she got down to the patio again Luisa was waiting, with a small blunt-nosed Pekingese who evidenced a reserved and panting pleasure. “I’ll have to carry Pooky home,” said Luisa shortly. “His legs are so short, it takes twice as much effort for him to walk. Ready?”
    It was definitely cloudy by that time, the sky gray with a cloud-like mist over the mountains. The sea below was gray also and extremely quiet, and blended with the sky so nearly that Cypress Point and Point Lobos were obscure. They took the road along which the car had come the night before, which descended gradually to the main highway.
    Before they reached it, however, Luisa turned along a rocky path. “It’s a cut-off down to the sea,” she said, stumping ahead, a bright green scarf twisted around her neck, her hands thrust into the pockets of her coat. “Then we can cross the road again and go out on a little point of rocks there. It’s rather nice.”
    “Isn’t Dave Seabrooke’s house somewhere in this direction?” asked Serena, panting a little from the pace Luisa set. Pooky at her heels was snuffling and trotting happily along but already beginning to gasp.
    “Yes,” said Luisa over her shoulder. “If you want to call it a house. It’s more a laboratory than anything else. Jem Daly’s going to have to clean house and fix it up when he takes over. If he does stay on.”
    “How long has he been here?” asked Serena.
    “A month, this time. Too long, if you ask me. Here’s where we cross the highway.”
    Serena drew alongside Luisa as they waited for a car to pass. The Pekingese sat down, exhausted, and Serena picked him up. Across the highway they plunged again into a rocky path, but a narrow one this time, going precipitously out on a point directly above the sea, for suddenly Serena could hear the clamor and clash of waves. Her nerves tightened a little; the wild rocks all around, the twisted, bent black cypress trees, the sound of the waves were