A Family Affair. V. J. Banis

have been able to stop the car. She had scarcely gotten her foot to the brake pedal before she hit the stream. A sheet of water dashed across the windshield, blinding her completely. Seized by panic, she felt the car slide out of control before it shuddered to a stop in the center of the stream.

      For a long time she could only sit motionless, clenching the steering wheel tightly in her hands, and trembling. At last she said aloud, “Of all the fool things. You’d think they’d have heard of bridges, even here.”

      The sound of a voice, even her own, restored her to some semblance of calm. She pressed on the accelerator, and realized for the first time that the motor had stopped. Her attempt to start it again produced nothing more than a sputter and a whine. With each successive attempt, the whine grew fainter, descending in pitch. Finally, her efforts caused nothing but a clicking noise, and she realized that the battery was dead.

      CHAPTER THREE

      For a full moment she fought off the urge to throw her face into her hands and cry.

      “Hysteria isn’t going to get me anywhere,” she insisted to herself, at the same time admitting that she was not sure just what was going to get her anywhere—certainly not her car. Cautiously she opened her door and peered out. The water was not very deep. At least she would not be trapped in her car, where she would have to wait for days to be rescued.

      Just what was she to do, though? The business of making decisions was a new one for her, and one that she was not finding to her liking. In the past, her mother would have told her just what she should do, and probably it would have been exactly right for coping with the situation. It would certainly be easier if her mother were in the car just now to take charge.

      “Well, she isn’t here,” she told herself angrily. Her annoyance with herself added to her annoyance with the journey and the irritation of finding herself stranded in the middle of a stream. With a determination fired by anger, she slipped off the low shoes she had worn for driving, dropping them into the oversize handbag beside her on the seat.

      The water was icy cold on her bare foot, causing her to shudder involuntarily. With stubborn resolution, she grabbed her purse and slid off the seat, standing almost knee deep in the cold water. But despite its depth at this point, the water was slow-moving, and she was in no danger at all of being swept away in the current. She lifted her skirt and waded to the opposite side of the creek, nearly falling when she stepped on a slippery rock. She paused on the bank to put her shoes on and contemplate her predicament.

      There was nothing for it but to leave the car and her luggage and start walking. Heaven alone knew how far she would have to walk before finding Kelsey House, or any other house for that matter. In the morning there would be time enough to worry about the car and her luggage. Surely there would be someone at Kelsey House to retrieve them for her.

      She started stubbornly down the road. Without the comforting beams of the car’s headlights, the road seemed darker. She found herself frighteningly aware of its narrowness and of the tall trees towering over her on either side, like threatening sentinels. The air was filled with the sweet scent of pine and sage and juniper. What had seemed at first to be silence was not silence after all, but a sighing of leaves and branches in the breeze, and the whisper of birds overhead. There was another sound too, a faint rustling in the underbrush that might have been the breeze again, or that might have been someone moving stealthily through the woods beside her.

      She walked carefully down the middle of the road, casting frequent glances about. She remembered the stories she had read as a child, stories of roving bandits who hid in the forests and leapt out to accost unwary travelers.

      “There aren’t any roving bandits these days,” she reminded herself aloud, without in the slightest allaying her fears. One could hardly live in the world today without being aware that there were all kinds of people just waiting to do horrible things. And for all she knew, in a place so forlorn and isolated as this, where they did not even know enough to put bridges across streams, there might just still be roving bandits.

      The road sloped uphill, leveling off just before it disappeared around another curve. She reached the flat ground again and began to walk more swiftly. The determination that had carried her away from the car had been more than anything else a product of her anger. As her distance from the relative comfort of the car increased, she found both her anger and determination waning.

      She was halfway around the curve when she saw the man standing in front of her, a short distance down the road. She stopped dead in her tracks, fighting the temptation to turn and run. There could be no doubt of it, he had seen her; he was, in fact, watching her.

      “Don’t be a ninny,” she told herself without much resolve. You’ve been wanting to see some sign of life and unless there’s some horrible mistake, this certainly is one.

      “Hello,” she called aloud, not moving from the spot where she stood. “Can you direct me to Kelsey House?”

      There was such a long pause before he answered that she half wondered if he had heard her at all, and was about to call again when he finally spoke.

      “You must be Miss Jennifer,” he called back, quite as though she had just opened the door of her home to find him there waiting to greet her, rather than having met him along an isolated country road at night.

      The fact that he knew her name startled her at first. It was an incongruous spot in which to find someone who could address her by name.

      “Miss Kelsey said I should bring you up to the house,” he went on as he drew nearer.

      Jennifer let out the breath she had been holding in a great sigh of relief. Of course, she chided herself for her stupidity. He was a servant that her aunt had sent out to watch for her. After all, they did know she was coming, they were expecting her, and she was considerably later than she had indicated in her letter. They had grown concerned, which was nice to realize, and had sent this man out to see if anything had happened to her.

      “Oh, thank Heaven,” she said aloud. “I had all but given up hope of ever finding the place.”

      “She thought you might need some help. People coming from outside can’t see the place without help,” he said.

      “It must be very isolated,” she said, thinking his remark strange. But the trees around her were very high and thick, and she could well understand that a house would be difficult to spy if it were shielded from the road.

      The man had stopped directly in front of her, studying her intently but with no sign of either pleasure or displeasure at what he saw.

      “Are you Mr. Kelsey?” Jennifer asked. He did not act very much like a servant. She had not, as it were, had much experience in such matters, but he did not act as she would expect a servant to act; not even, she thought fleetingly, as she had acted toward her mother.

      The man chuckled, a fact which Jennifer regarded as rude. There was not, so far as she could see, anything humorous in her question.

      He grew abruptly sober. “No,” he said. “Mrs. Kelsey did him in a long time ago.”

      What exactly did one say to such a comment, Jennifer wondered? He was a strange one, that was for sure. Under any other circumstances, she would probably have brought him down a peg or two. Unfortunately, this was neither the time nor the place to take exception with his manners. He was not Mr. Kelsey, but he might be a relative, or a friend of the family; or he might, after all, prove to be a servant, and a very rude one. Whatever he was, she promised herself, she would inform her aunt of his peculiar remarks and his rather rude manner. It was hardly what ought to be due a guest who had just arrived, and was in addition a stranger here.

      Since he had made no attempt to indicate the way, she asked, “Is it far to Kelsey House?” She had spent quite enough time on this silly road for one night, and was eager now to be at her destination.

      “No, we’ll take the path,” he said. “Save some time.” He turned and started toward the woods.

      She had seen no sign of a path, and her first thought was that he was somehow