FullReads

Harry, according to all local tradition–for he frequently motored out to Warden Koopf, the Van Warden country-seat–and, according to the newspapers, was a devil of a fellow and in no sense cold or unsociable. So far as the Keeps read of him, he was always being arrested for overspeeding, or breaking his collar-bone out hunting, or losing his front teeth at polo. This greatly annoyed the proud sisters at Warden Koopf; not because Harry was arrested or had broken his collar-bone, but because it dragged the family name into the newspapers.

“If you would only play polo or ride to hounds instead of playing golf,” sighed Winnie Keep to her husband, “you would meet Harry Van Warden, and he’d introduce you to his sisters, and then we could break in anywhere.”

“If I was to ride to hounds,” returned her husband, “the only thing I’d break would be my neck.”

The country-place of the Keeps was completely satisfactory, and for the purposes of their social comedy the stage-setting was perfect. The house was one they had rented from a man of charming taste and inflated fortune; and with it they had taken over his well-disciplined butler, his pictures, furniture, family silver, and linen. It stood upon an eminence, was heavily wooded, and surrounded by many gardens; but its chief attraction was an artificial lake well stocked with trout that lay directly below the terrace of the house and also in full view from the road to Albany.

This latter fact caused Winnie Keep much concern. In the neighborhood were many Italian laborers, and on several nights the fish had tempted these born poachers to trespass; and more than once, on hot summer evenings, small boys from Tarrytown and Ossining had broken through the hedge, and used the lake as a swimming-pool.

“It makes me nervous,” complained Winnie. “I don’t like the idea of people prowling around so near the house. And think of those twelve hundred convicts, not one mile away, in Sing Sing. Most of them are burglars, and if they ever get out, our house is the very first one they’ll break into.”

“I haven’t caught anybody in this neighborhood breaking into our house yet,” said Fred, “and I’d be glad to see even a burglar!”

They were seated on the brick terrace that overlooked the lake. It was just before the dinner hour, and the dusk of a wonderful October night had fallen on the hedges, the clumps of evergreens, the rows of close-clipped box. A full moon was just showing itself above the tree-tops, turning the lake into moving silver. Fred rose from his wicker chair and, crossing to his young bride, touched her hair fearfully with the tips of his fingers.

“What if we don’t know anybody, Win,” he said, “and nobody knows us? It’s been a perfectly good honeymoon, hasn’t it? If you just look at it that way, it works out all right. We came here really for our honeymoon, to be together, to be alone–“

Winnie laughed shortly. “They certainly have left us alone!” she sighed.

“But where else could we have been any happier?” demanded the young husband loyally. “Where will you find any prettier place than this, just as it is at this minute, so still and sweet and silent? There’s nothing the matter with that moon, is there? Nothing the matter with the lake? Where’s there a better place for a honeymoon? It’s a bower–a bower of peace, solitude a–bower of–“

As though mocking his words, there burst upon the sleeping countryside the shriek of a giant siren. It was raucous, virulent, insulting. It came as sharply as a scream of terror, it continued in a bellow of rage. Then, as suddenly as it had cried aloud, it sank to silence; only after a pause of an instant, as though giving a signal, to shriek again in two sharp blasts. And then again it broke into the hideous long drawn scream of rage, insistent, breathless, commanding; filling the soul of him who heard it, even of the innocent, with alarm.