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Read Ebook: Whispering Walls by Wirt Mildred A Mildred Augustine
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Ebook has 1285 lines and 33345 words, and 26 pages
Penny caught his arm. "No, Salt! We've already overstepped our rights. We mustn't damage the Rhett property."
"Well, someone is making a monkey of us," the photographer grumbled. "It burns me up!"
"There's more to it than meets the eyes, Salt. Even the atmosphere of this place is sinister."
"You say that, and yet you're willing to turn your back on an unsolved mystery? How times have changed!"
She thrust her wrist watch beneath Salt's nose. He looked at the moving hands and muttered: "Jeepers! We've got just thirty-five minutes to catch our deadline! Let's go!"
Hurriedly, they went up the path toward the mansion and the road. As they approached the house, the rear door swung open and Lorinda came out on the flagstone terrace.
"There she is now!" Penny murmured in an undertone. "I don't believe she could have been the one who whispered the warning at the cottage! It must have been someone else."
"Is she the Rhett girl?" Salt demanded, starting to adjust his camera. "Maybe I can get a shot of her after all."
Lorinda came directly toward the pair, but she raised a hand squarely in front of her face as she saw that Salt meant to take her picture.
"Please don't!" she pleaded. "I can't pose. I only came to ask you to leave. Mother is so upset. The telephone is ringing constantly, and we expect the police any minute."
Lorinda obviously was on the verge of tears. Salt lowered his camera.
"I do want to help you," Lorinda hastened on. "That's why I am giving you this. Mother doesn't know about it, and she will be furious."
Into Penny's hand, she thrust a small but clear photograph of a middle-aged man who wore glasses. His left cheek was marred by a jagged though not particularly disfiguring scar.
"Your stepfather!" she exclaimed.
"Yes, this is the only picture we have of him. He never liked to have his photograph taken. If you use it, please take good care of the original and see that we get it back."
"Oh, we will!" Penny promised. "This photograph should help in tracing Mr. Rhett."
"Please go now," Lorinda urged again. She glanced uneasily down the path toward the thatched-roof cottage, but if she knew what had transpired there, she gave no sign.
Elated to have obtained the photograph, Penny and Salt hastened on to the parked press car. Starting the car with a jerk, Salt followed the winding river road.
Penny cast a glance over her shoulder. Through the trees she could see only the roof-top of the thatched cottage in the clearing.
The estate was bounded by a wooden rail fence, in many places fortified with dense, tall shrubbery. The fall weather had tinted many of the bushes scarlet, yellow or bronze. Gazing toward a patch of particularly brilliant-colored leaves, Penny detected movement behind them.
For a fleeting instant she thought she had seen a large, shaggy dog. Then she became certain it was a man who crouched behind the screen of leaves.
"Salt!" she exclaimed sharply. "Look at those bushes!"
The photographer slowed the car, turning his head.
"What about 'em, Penny?"
"Someone is hiding there behind the fence! Perhaps it's the person who whispered a warning at the thatched cottage!"
"Oh, it's just a shadow," Salt began, only to change his mind. "You're right! Someone is crouching there!"
So suddenly that Penny was thrown sideways, the photographer swerved the car to the curb. He swung the door open.
"What are you going to do?" Penny demanded.
The photographer did not take time to reply. Already he was out of the car, running toward the hedge.
As Salt ran toward him, the man who crouched behind the bushes began to move stealthily away. From the car Penny could not see his face which was screened by dense foliage.
"Salt, he's getting away!" she shouted.
Salt climbed over the fence. His clothing got snagged and by the time he had freed himself and struggled through a tangle of vines and bushes, the man he pursued had completely disappeared.
"Which way did he go, Penny?" he called.
"I lost sight of him after he ducked into a clump of shrubbery," she replied regretfully. "It's useless to try to find him now."
Salt came back to the car, and starting the engine, drove on.
"You didn't see who it was?" Penny asked hopefully.
"No, I think it was a man. Maybe the Rhett's gardener or a tramp."
"Whoever it was, I'm sure he stood there watching us drive away from the grounds," Penny declared.
Until the car was far down the street, she alertly watched the Rhett grounds. However, the one who had crouched by the fence now was well hidden and on guard. Not a movement of the bushes betrayed his presence.
As the Rhett mansion was lost completely from view, Penny's thoughts came back to the story which she must write. Nervously she glanced at her wrist watch.
"What's the bad news?" Salt asked, stepping hard on the gasoline pedal.
"Twenty-five minutes until deadline. Can you make it?"
Salt's lips compressed into a grim line and he concentrated on his driving, avoiding heavy traffic and red lights as they approached the center of town.
Editor DeWitt was talking on a telephone, and, all about him, reporters were tapping typewriters at a furious pace.
Editor DeWitt held his hand over the phone mouthpiece and fixed Penny with a gloomy eye. "Time you got here," he observed. "Anything new? Did you get the pictures?"
Penny produced the photograph of Mr. Rhett which the editor studied an instant, then tossed to his assistant, with a terse: "Make it a one column--rush!"
Knowing that with a deadline practically at hand Mr. DeWitt was in no mood for a lengthy tale, Penny told him only such facts as were pertinent to Mr. Rhett's disappearance.
"So the family won't talk?" DeWitt growled. "Well, play up that angle. We've already set up everything you gave us over the phone. Make this an add and get it right out."
Penny nodded and slid into a chair behind the nearest typewriter. An "add" she knew, was an addition to a story already set up in type. It was easier to write than a "lead" which contained the main facts of all that had happened, but even so, she would be hard pressed to make the deadline.
For a moment she concentrated, but the noises of the room distracted her somewhat. Editor DeWitt was barking into the telephone again; a reporter on her left side was clicking a pencil against the desk; the short-wave radio blared a police call; and across the room someone bellowed: "Copy boy!"
Then Penny began to write, and the noises blanked out, until she was aware only of the moving ribbon of words on the copy paper. She had written perhaps four paragraphs when DeWitt ordered tersely: "Give me a take."
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