Unexpected Night by Elizabeth Daly Page A

noticed. Carrie Gootch stayed on to answer the telephone. Here, Carrie!”
    Miss or Mrs. Gootch trotted out of the kitchen, tray in hand. She placed it on one of the tables, and began to distribute cups and plates. Sanderson watched her hungrily.
    â€œCarrie, these people want to know about a telephone call that came in about eight o’clock last night from—where did you say, Mr. Mitchell?”
    â€œHarbour Inn, Portsmouth.”
    Carrie advanced down the length of the barn. “I sent it along down,” she said, peering through her glasses.
    Mitchell gave a deep sigh. “So that’s that. Now, ma’am, I’d be obliged if you’d give me an idea what he said.”
    â€œWhat did he say?” she meditated, while tension gripped the ‘Pottery Pig.’
    â€œYou write ’em down, don’t you?” Mitchell restrained himself with difficulty from leading the witness. “Think. Young feller in a hotel, trying to get a message—important message—to Mr. Arthur Atwood.”
    â€œIt wasn’t so very important. Let’s see. I and the help had washed up, and she had went home; we both live down the street. I fooled around, dusted the china animals and the pig, and sat down to read and wait for ten o’clock.”
    â€œYou were leaving the place at ten?”
    â€œWe take the receiver off the hook then, and don’t it make the Oakport operator mad! Well, about eight, the bell rung.”
    Everybody, including the two painters, held their breath.
    â€œYoung feller says: ‘This where they take calls for Seal Cove?’ I sez: ‘Yes, it is.’ He says: ‘It has to git there to-night.’ I sez: ‘It will if I can find a boy.’ He sez: ‘I’ll hold the line till you find one.’ So I went out back and hollered to Mis’ Brown at the ‘Jolly Little Shop.’ Her boy come running. He does all the odd jobs for us round here, and he takes stuff down to the Cove. I sez to the feller on the phone: ‘Here’s the boy; now what?’ He says: ‘Write it down. It’s for Arthur Atwood, from Amberley Cowden.’ And he spelled it all out for me.”
    â€œToo good to be true,” said Gamadge to the roof beams. “Things don’t happen like this. There’s a catch in it, somewhere. It wasn’t in code, or anything, was it, Miss—er—Mrs.—”
    â€œMrs. Carrie Gootch. There wasn’t no code, and there wasn’t no catch.”
    Mitchell was jubilant. “Go right ahead and tell us what it said, ma’am. This young feller here has codes on the brain.”
    â€œâ€˜Mis’ Gootch,’ he sez. ‘Tell him Amberley Cowden’s been sick, and we’re layin’ up for a couple of hours at the Harbour Inn, Portsmouth. Tell him we’re goin’ to start not later than ten, and we’ll git to Ford’s Beach to-night. Tell him, plans unchanged.’”
    There was a long and painful silence, made still more painful by Gamadge’s attempt to hum. At last Mitchell enquired anxiously: “You sure that was all?”
    â€œEvery last word.”
    â€œBut you couldn’t be expected to remember it all. If you thought it over—”
    â€œI don’t have to think it over. He spelled out most every other word, like as if I was deaf, or something; and I had to repeat it back to him twice.”
    â€œNot a thing about what those plans were, that he wasn’t going to change?”
    â€œNot a thing.”
    â€œAll right. Thanks.”
    â€œYour dinner’s ready. You ain’t goin’ to let them waffles cool off, be you?”
    â€œNo. Think you can get hold of that Brown boy for us?”
    â€œI kin try.” She left by the side door, and the party sat down at their table. Conversation lapsed while they consumed food and coffee, Gamadge merely observing gloomily: “There certainly was a catch, and