AS soon as William had passed out of the shop, June stood a moment to gather nerve and energy for the task before her. Feeling considerably tossed, above all she was devoured by a horrible form of excitement whose effect was like nothing so much as a bad dream. But this was not a time for dreams. The situation was full of peril; not a moment must be lost.
The picture was her immediate concern. She set herself at once to the business of moving the oak chest aside. This presented no difficulty, for there was nothing in it; but the loose board beneath it did. Fingers unhelped could not prise it up; they must have a chisel. She knew that such an implement was to be found in one of the drawers of the desk, but she had stealthily to open three or four before she came upon the right one.
While all this was going on, she could hear the voices of William and Uncle Si in the room next door. It seemed that no matter what her caution or her haste, she would almost certainly be interrupted before she was through with her task. But luck was with her. She was able to lift the board, take forth the picture, replace the chest and return the chisel to its drawer without the voices coming any nearer.
Picture in hand, she tiptoed out of the shop as far as the stairs. Through the open door of the inner room the back of Uncle Si was visible as she crept by. It was taking a grave risk to attempt the stairs at such a moment, but she was wrought up to a point when to go back and wait was impossible. She must continue to chance her luck.
Up the stairs she crept, expecting at every second one to hear a harsh voice recall her. To her unspeakable relief, however, she was able to gain sanctuary in her own room without hindrance. She bolted the door against the enemy, although so far as she was aware, he was still in the room below in total ignorance of what had happened.
Shivering as if in the throes of fever, she sat on the edge of her narrow bed. The treasure was hers still. She held it to her bosom as a mother holds a child; yet the simple act gave rise at once to the problem of problems: What must be done with the thing now? There could be no security for it under that roof. And not to the picture alone did this apply, but also to herself. Anything might happen as soon as the old man found out that the Van Roon was not, after all, to be his. Meanwhile, the future hardly bore thinking about; it was like a precipice beyond whose edge she dare not look.
One act, however, did not admit of a moment’s delay: there and then the treasure must be smuggled out of the house and put in a place of safety. Rowelled by this thought, June rose from the bed, took a piece of brown paper and some string from her box, and proceeded to transform the picture into a neat parcel. She then slipped off her dress, which was considerably the worse for contact with the dusty interior of the Hoodoo, performed a hasty toilette, put on her walking-out coat and skirt and changed her shoes. Finally, she put on the better of the only two hats she possessed, slipped her mother’s battered old leather purse into her coat pocket, and then, umbrella in one hand, parcel in the other, she turned to the hazard of stealing downstairs and making good her escape.
In the middle of the twisty stairs, just before their sharpest bend would bring her into the view of persons below, she stopped to listen. The voices had ceased; she could not hear a sound. Two ways lay before her of reaching the street: one via the parlour to the kitchen and out along the side entry, the other through the front door of the shop. Either route might be commanded at the moment by the enemy. With nothing to guide her, June felt that the only safe course just then was to stay where she was. In the strategic position she had taken up on the stairs she could not be seen from below, yet a quick ear might hope to gain a clue to what was going on.
She had not to wait long. From the inner room, whose door opposite the foot of the stairs was still half open, although its occupant was no more seen, there suddenly came the strident tones of Uncle Si. They were directed unmistakably kitchenward. “Boy, you’d better get the tea ready. Seemin’ly that gell ain’t home.”
“Very good, sir,” came a prompt and cheerful response from the back premises.
June decided at once that the signs were favourable. Now was her chance; the way through the front shop was evidently clear. Deftly as a cat she came down the remaining stairs and stole past the half-open door of what was known as “the lumber room,” where, however, old chairs were sometimes fitted with new legs and old chests with new panels.
Uncle Si was undoubtedly there. June could hear him moving about as she passed the door; indeed she was hardly clear of it when she received a most unwelcome reminder of this fact. Either he chanced to turn round as she crept by, or he caught a glimpse of her passing in one of the numerous mirrors that surrounded him. For just as she reached the shop threshold she heard his irascible bark: “That you, niece?”
The road clear ahead, June did not pause to weigh consequences. She simply bolted. Even if the old man was not likely to guess what her neat parcel contained, it would surely be the height of folly to give him the chance.
Never in her life had she been quite so thankful as when she found herself in the street with the treasure safely under her arm.