Free Mystery of the Sassafras Chair by Alexander Key Page A

standing beside her. Timor felt as if the roof had fallen upon him.
    Suddenly Odessa smiled sweetly. “Why, Mr. LeGrande, I’ve no idea what you heard, but you know how silly most gossip is. People can start with nothing whatever and build up the most ridiculous tales!” She managed a very convincing laugh. “Really, I wouldn’t waste any time on Timmy’s chair, if I were you. It’s just an ordinary chair.”
    â€œBut made of sassafras,” Mr. LeGrande persisted, with a slight tilt of his head. “Ah, that makes a difference! It is probably the only sassafras chair in the world. And everyone in these parts knows that sassafras isn’t like other woods. Furthermore, I understand it was made by one of the most disreputable characters in the mountains, and that it arrived here in a very mysterious manner. Surely, Miss Hamilton, you’ll have to admit that we have here the ingredients of a most extraordinary feature. It’s something everyone would enjoy reading, and of course no publicity ever hurt a rising painter.”
    â€œI—I’m afraid my father will have to be the judge of that,” Odessa answered. “Here he is now.”
    Timor, glancing past Mr. LeGrande, saw the station wagon flash over the bridge and swing to a quick stop beside the yellow sportster. The colonel got out and stalked up to them with his head outthrust.
    One look at him, and Timor’s spirits plummeted. Though it hardly showed on the surface, he knew his uncle was seething with fury.
    Mr. LeGrande was not immediately aware of this as he introduced himself to the colonel, but he soon realized it when he began talking about the chair, and mentioned taking photographs.
    â€œRequest denied!” the colonel snapped. “I’ll not have you or anyone else taking pictures of that confounded chair. I heard enough about it when I was in town. Of all the ridiculous tales! How they ever got started!” He stopped, his eyes going flintily to Timor, then he said coldly, “I’m sorry, Mr. LeGrande, but I’ll have to ask you to leave. I have private business to discuss with my family.”
    Mr. LeGrande shrugged, murmured his regrets, and departed with a faint smile on his face.
    In the cabin, Colonel Hamilton produced a folded newspaper and threw it on the table. “Read that,” he ordered in a tight voice. “The Tattler’s column.”
    The paper was folded back to the familiar column in question. Timor read it over Odessa’s shoulder:
    â€œ Here is a juicy bit that reached our desk just before press time. The story goes that a chair made of sassafras is really loaded when it comes to magic. If you don’t believe it, ask one of our young summer residents. Seems he found such a chair in his room the other evening, and it told him all kinds of things we’d rather not repeat. Might be nice to have such a chair — were it not for the doubtful characters one might find sitting in it at midnight. ”
    â€œOh dear!” gasped Odessa. “How did that ever …”
    â€œThat isn’t all,” grated the colonel. “Everywhere I went this morning, someone was talking or laughing about it. What I heard is past belief. Now I come home and find a prying newspaper hawk camped on my doorstep.”
    He glared at Timor. “Young man, you’ve some explaining to do. Let’s have it.”
    Timor wet his lips. This was a showdown, and he could think of no way of escaping it.
    â€œI—I guess it started with Brad James,” he began. “He—he’s one of the deputies at the sheriff’s office. Yesterday he overheard me telling Nathaniel Battle about the chair.”
    â€œAnd what did you tell this fellow Battle?”
    Timor swallowed. He felt a little sick. “Uncle Ira, I told him what I had to tell him. I mean, it was only the truth.”
    â€œThe truth about what?”
    â€œThe chair—and