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Page 54
Then Cordelia quoted Scripture in a burst of sobs and laughter.
"Behold, I was shapen in iniquity; and in sin did my mother
conceive me," she cried out. "If I ain't done wrong, mebbe them
that's come before me did, and when the Evil One and the Powers of
Darkness is abroad I'm liable, I'm liable!" Then she laughed loud
and long and shrill.
"If you don't hush up," said David, but still with that white
terror and horror on his own face, "I'll bundle you out in that
vacant lot whether or no. I mean it."
Then Cordelia was quiet, after one wild roll of her eyes at him.
The colour was returning to Adrianna's cheeks; her mother was
drinking hot tea in spasmodic gulps.
"It's after midnight," she gasped, "and I don't believe they'll
come again to-night. Do you, David?"
"No, I don't," said David conclusively.
"Oh, David, we mustn't stay another night in this awful house."
"We won't. To-morrow we'll pack off bag and baggage to Townsend
Centre, if it takes all the fire department to move us," said
David.
Adrianna smiled in the midst of her terror. She thought of Abel
Lyons.
The next day Mr. Townsend went to the real estate agent who had
sold him the house.
"It's no use," he said, "I can't stand it. Sell the house for what
you can get. I'll give it away rather than keep it."
Then he added a few strong words as to his opinion of parties who
sold him such an establishment. But the agent pleaded innocent for
the most part.
"I'll own I suspected something wrong when the owner, who pledged
me to secrecy as to his name, told me to sell that place for what I
could get, and did not limit me. I had never heard anything, but I
began to suspect something was wrong. Then I made a few inquiries
and found out that there was a rumour in the neighbourhood that
there was something out of the usual about that vacant lot. I had
wondered myself why it wasn't built upon. There was a story about
it's being undertaken once, and the contract made, and the
contractor dying; then another man took it and one of the workmen
was killed on his way to dig the cellar, and the others struck. I
didn't pay much attention to it. I never believed much in that
sort of thing anyhow, and then, too, I couldn't find out that there
had ever been anything wrong about the house itself, except as the
people who had lived there were said to have seen and heard queer
things in the vacant lot, so I thought you might be able to get
along, especially as you didn't look like a man who was timid, and
the house was such a bargain as I never handled before. But this
you tell me is beyond belief."
"Do you know the names of the people who formerly owned the vacant
lot?" asked Mr. Townsend.
"I don't know for certain," replied the agent, "for the original
owners flourished long before your or my day, but I do know that
the lot goes by the name of the old Gaston lot. What's the matter?
Are you ill?"
"No; it is nothing," replied Mr. Townsend. "Get what you can for
the house; perhaps another family might not be as troubled as we
have been."
"I hope you are not going to leave the city?" said the agent,
urbanely.
"I am going back to Townsend Centre as fast as steam can carry me
after we get packed up and out of that cursed house," replied Mr.
David Townsend.
He did not tell the agent nor any of his family what had caused him
to start when told the name of the former owners of the lot. He
remembered all at once the story of a ghastly murder which had
taken place in the Blue Leopard. The victim's name was Gaston and
the murderer had never been discovered.
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