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Page 32

"It's about Jimmy," she said. "I don't know what's got into me,
but I've forgotten for three days. It's a good bit more than time
for a letter."

"Great Scott!"

"Both yesterday and to-day he asked for it and to-day he fretted
a little. The nurse found him crying."

"The poor little devil!" said Peter contritely. "Overdue, is it?
I'll fix it to-night."

"Leave it under the door where I can get it in the morning. I'm
off at seven."

"The envelope?"

"Here it is. And take my candle. I'm going to bed."

That was at midnight or shortly after. Half after one struck from
the twin clocks of the Votivkirche and echoed from the
Stephansplatz across the city. It found Peter with the window
closed, sitting up in bed, a candle balanced on one knee, a
writing-tablet on the other.

He was writing a spirited narrative of a chamois hunt in which he
had taken part that day, including a detailed description of the
quarry, which weighed, according to Peter, two hundred and fifty
pounds, Peter being strong on imagination and short on facts as
regards the Alpine chamois. Then, trying to read the letter from
a small boy's point of view and deciding that it lacked snap, he
added by way of postscript a harrowing incident of avalanche,
rope, guide, and ice axe. He ended in a sort of glow of
authorship, and after some thought took fifty pounds off the
chamois.

The letter finished, he put it in a much-used envelope addressed
to Jimmy Conroy--an envelope that stamped the whole episode as
authentic, bearing as it did an undecipherable date and the
postmark of a tiny village in the Austrian Tyrol.

It was almost two when Peter put out the candle and settled
himself to sleep.

It was just two o'clock when the night nurse, making rounds in
her ward in the general hospital, found a small boy very much
awake on his pillow, and taking off her felt slipper shook it
at him in pretended fury.

"Now, thou bad one!" she said. "Awake, when the Herr Doktor
orders sleep! Shall I use the slipper?"

The boy replied in German with a strong English accent.

"I cannot sleep. Yesterday the Fraulein Elisabet said that in the
mountains there are accidents, and that sometimes--"

"The Fraulein Elisabet is a great fool. Tomorrow comes thy letter
of a certainty. The post has been delayed with great snows. Thy
father has perhaps captured a great boar, or a--a chamois, and he
writes of it."

"Do chamois have horns?"

"Ja. Great horns--so."

"He will send them to me! And there are no accidents?"

"None. Now sleep, or--the slipper."

CHAPTER VIII

So far Harmony's small world in the old city had consisted of
Scatchy and the Big Soprano, Peter, and Anna Gates, with far off
in the firmament the master. Scatchy and the Big Soprano had
gone, weeping anxious postcards from every way station it is
true, but nevertheless gone. Peter and Anna Gates remained, and
the master as long as her funds held out. To them now she was
about to add Jimmy.

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Books | Photos | Paul Mutton | Mon 22nd Dec 2025, 0:48

The Street of Seven Stars by Mary Roberts Rinehart