CHAPTER SEVEN

Julia felt her blood turn to ice. She pressed herself hard against the door, unable to breathe, unable to think. She was trapped. This was the end. She was finished, she thought

“Who are you? Who’s there?” the voice asked again.

Something in its tone told Julia it was a child asking.

“It’s Julie...Julie Carson,” she ventured, thinking she recognized the familiar voice of one of the children she’d been responsible for at one time. She strained to see through the dark. “Is that you, Meg?” She looked in the direction from which she thought the little voice had come. “Where are you?”

“Oh, Julie. Yes, it’s me, Meg. I’m over here by the stack of apple baskets.”

Julia found little Meg cowering against a stack of empty baskets which were used in the fall to collect the apples from the trees in the south orchard.

“Meg, honey. Why are you being disciplined?”

The fruit cellar was a favorite place for establishing discipline. Meg was not the first, nor would she be the last, frightened child to be locked up for the night in order to meditate about how bad she’d been. It was often difficult for the children to reflect on their badness when nothing bad had been done by them. But those in authority thought otherwise, and cared little about the terrible consequences a child might suffer from a terrifying night of being locked in a black hole without hope of release.

“I dropped my dinner tray and spilled everything all over the floor,” the little girl sobbed. “Oh, Julie, did you come back to take me with you?”

Julia felt for the girl and the moment she touched her, Meg leaped from where she cowered and flung herself against Julia, wrapping her arms tightly around Julia’s neck. The frightened child broke into uncontrollable crying.

“There, there, little Meg. Everything is going to be all right.”

“I’m so afraid,” the girl sobbed. “Take me away, Julie. Take me away from here. I want to go away with you.”

How desperately Julia wished she could take little Meg out of the terrible place. How she wished she could take all of them away. Too vividly she remembered her own childhood with its thrashings, the work punishments, the nights without dinner, the solitary confinements. She had been no bigger than Meg when she was first thrust into this horrible cellar and left to the terrors only a small child’s mind is susceptible to. Time, of course, hardened her to the evils of the place. She became indifferent to the sadistic treatment, as Meg someday would. She learned to endure and to bide her time until she was old enough to be sent out on her own. And the only reason they ever allowed any of the girls to leave the orphanage was because the state did not pay for the orphan’s maintenance after age eighteen.

Yes, Julia thought as she cradled the crying child in her arms, little Meg would grow hard and bitter and callous. She would have to or she would never survive. Poor Meg wasn’t pretty enough for anyone to want to adopt her.

Julia heard footsteps outside the door—the night watchman making his rounds. She would have to get out of her predicament somehow. She couldn’t bring herself to go back; that would accomplish nothing. Perhaps she should return tomorrow on the chance that the fruit-cellar door would be unlocked. But chances were she’d be seen and reported and they’d make trouble. No, time was of the essence. She was inside the orphanage now and she felt she had to make the best of it.

Julia eased little Meg away. “Stop crying now, darling, and let me see if I can’t get us out of here,” she said.

The child allowed Julia to put her aside. She sat back against the baskets, wrapping her arms around her knees, and laid her face on her arms. She sat there in the dark listening to Julia fumbling with the door latch.

“I can’t see the hall light through the keyhole,” Julia said, “so the key must be still in the lock on the other side.” She sat there thinking for a moment, then snatched up her handbag and pulled out the half-eaten sandwich Mr. Petticord had made for her. “Are you hungry, Meg?” she asked.

“Oh, yes,” the little girl said.

Julia fitted the sandwich into the child’s hands. She took the wax paper in which it had been wrapped and flattened it out. Carefully she fitted it under the bottom edge of the door, directly beneath the latch. She searched in her purse for a pencil. Using the eraser end as a battering ram she jabbed the pencil into the keyhole and butted it up against the key that was lodged there. It took a few minutes to work the key loose but after several attempts, Julia heard the heavy key drop with a soft clang onto the wax paper. Carefully she withdrew the paper from under the door.

The key came with it.

With a thankful sigh she fitted the key into the latch and turned it as slowly and as quietly as she could. The rusty lock balked at first, but then the key turned and the lock clicked open. Julia let herself relax for a moment. She could feel the perspiration on her forehead and the dampness in her palms.

She sat quite still for a second or two, gathering her wits about her. If she’d heard the watchman at this end of the building, she figured, then he was just finishing his rounds and heading back to his quarters. She’d have to act fast.

But what was she to do about Meg? It would be impossible to take her away, yet it would be equally impossible to lock the child up again inside the dark, damp cellar. Julia bit down on her lower lip and tried to think.

“Meg,” she said finally, “I’m going to open the door. There is a little light in the hall that will dispel the darkness. Will you be a real good girl and sit here with the door ajar and wait for me to come back for you?”

“Where are you going?” Meg asked, finishing off the sandwich.

“I have something I must find,” Julia told her. “It’s in Miss Marshall’s office.”

“Oh, but you mustn’t go in there,” Meg said. “They’ll lock you up in that other terrible place and they won’t feed you for days and days.”

“I know, darling, I know,” Julia said, embracing the child. “But I must take that chance. It is very, very important.” She smoothed the child’s hair. “Will you wait here for Julia? When I come back we’ll figure out some way of getting you out of here.”

“You’ll take me with you?”

“We’ll see, sweetheart, we’ll see,” Julia said, feeling sick at heart for having to encourage the child.

“I’ll wait, Julie. I’ll wait,” Meg said happily, as she hugged Julia.

Julia swallowed the lump that caught in her throat. She eased the child away and turned the knob. The door opened with a creak. The light from the hall was dim and yellow but, nevertheless, it was light; it cut a dull streak across the cellar floor.

“Now, you sit here in the light, honey,” she said. “Julia won’t be very long.”

“All right, Julie.”

Quietly Julia slipped off her shoes and went out into the hall, shoes in hand. She strained to pick up any possible sound. She heard nothing but her own heart beating wildly in her breast. She pressed herself close against the wall and went down the corridor. At the end she glanced back. Meg was sitting with her anxious little face peering out at Julia through the crack in the door. Julia held up crossed fingers and stepped around the corner. A long stairway led upward, at the top of which was Miss Marshall’s private office, next to which was the record office where she must begin her search.

As she climbed the stairs, being careful to put her feet at the side of the step closest to the wall, she again felt that someone was directly behind her, following in her footsteps. She thought for a moment that it might be little Meg, but when she turned she saw nothing...nothing at all. She tried to push the feeling out of her mind, but the sensation of being shadowed persisted.

She made her way to the door of the records office. She remembered that there was a burglar-alarm mechanism attached to its door. It was an invisible beam of light that passed across the threshold about twenty-four inches from the floor. She glanced down at the tiny beam glinting dully, which meant that the mechanism was in operation.

Julia pushed the door inward and eased her shoes and purse under the alarm beam. Then she lay flat on her stomach and—keeping her head low—crawled beneath the beam into the office. She made her way quickly toward the row upon row of file cabinets, but in the darkness of the room she could see none of the labels.

Hurriedly she went back to where her handbag lay and rummaged inside it for a possible book of matches. Her hands were shaking and she almost spilled the entire contents of her bag onto the floor in her anxiety to find something to provide her with light. She had no matches, no cigarette lighter, nothing to illuminate the labels. She stood there trying to figure out what to do. Her eyes traveled toward the door that connected the record office with Miss Marshall’s private office. Miss Marshall smoked cigarettes, Julia remembered.

Quickly she went into the private office and began rummaging through the top drawer of the mahogany desk. She felt around until her fingers touched upon a half-empty pack of cigarettes. Next to it was a lighter.

The first cabinet she came to was marked current. Beside it was row upon row of cabinets arranged according to the letters of the alphabet. Just in case they hadn’t gotten around to transferring her records from the current files, Julia checked the “C” drawer but found no file for Julia Carson.

Across the room, arranged under the windows, was another row of files. Julia saw the tag reading closed. The night outside faintly illuminated the room, and being careful of not having the flame of the lighter seen by an alert pair of eyes from outside, she clicked out the lighter and strained to read the names in the drawer marked “C.”

“Mia Carson,” she whispered as she hurriedly pulled her file from its place. Her heart was beating faster. She carried the file away from the windows to a table in the center of the room. With unsteady hands she flipped it open. There were sheets and sheets of departmental records, maintenance figures, school grades, work data. She riffled through the papers. The flame from the lighter was faltering, growing smaller and dimmer. She read through the file papers as hurriedly as she could but found nothing but useless information. The very last paper at the bottom of the file was half the size of the other papers. It was almost missed by her as she finished flipping through the sheets. Luckily she noticed it before closing the file.

She held the flame closer to the paper. It was nothing more than a large-size index card. One glance told her it was what she was searching for. She saw her name printed in bold black letters at the top. Beneath her name there was a space marked “Date of Admittance” which was filled in with a date.

The flame from the lighter spat and flickered and threatened to snuff itself out.

Julia ripped the card out of the file. She was sure this was what she had come to find.

The cigarette lighter refused to work. She’d have to chance the desk light in Miss Marshall’s office, she decided. But her decision was thwarted by an unexpected calamity.

The burglar alarm went off.