CHAPTER XIIIN THE SILENT NIGHT.
Dick could not take his eyes off the face of his friend, drawn, pale, stamped with the print of some vital emotion. What did it mean? What could it mean? Why had Archie stolen down here in the dead of night? Where had the money come from?
These, and a dozen other questions, equally unanswerable, flashed through his half-dazed mind in the brief interval before the fellow kneeling on the hearth could move a finger. McCormick was gazing straight at the door, and Dick half expected him to call his name. It did not seem possible that the man could be so blind as not to see who was watching him through the crack.
Then he saw that Archie was absolutely oblivious to his surroundings. His eyes were cloudy and unseeing. He was not walking in his sleep, but his mind was so concentrated on some problem that he was blind to all outward things.
Presently he uttered a shuddering sigh and reached slowly for the stone slab which lay close at hand.
Dick waited until he had replaced it over the hole and was leaning forward for a handful of ashes to dust into the cracks, and then softly made his way back to the hall and upstairs.
His first impulse had been to confront Archie then and there and get the truth from him, but now he shrank from doing that until he had had time to think. He knew that appearances were often deceptive and that there might be a perfectly reasonable explanation for the position in which he had found McCormick; but the latter had an extremely sensitive, high-spirited nature, and Dick felt that he would be likely to resent any inquiries he himself might make which could not help but show more or less suspicion.
For Merriwell was suspicious. Fight as he might against the thought, he could not help connecting what he had just seen with the robbery of the Hartford bank just twenty-four hours before.
He did not wish to believe anything against Archie McCormick. He had always known him as a perfectly straightforward, truthful fellow with a very keen sense of honor. It was incredible that he could be connected in any way with the robbery, and yet facts were facts and Merriwell could not help putting two and two together.
Archie had gone to Hartford two days before, ostensibly to see a friend who lived there. That was all right, but, unfortunately, he had reached there the very afternoon of the night in which the bank had been broken open. He had suddenly shown up in this deserted spot, and the man at whose invitation he was supposed to have come, had not yet appeared.
Dick remembered Cobmore’s very evident doubt of the story that Barry Lawrence would think of visiting the farmhouse without giving him notice.
The robbers had been tracked to Middleberry and their trail lost. Middleberry was barely twelve miles away, and it would be a very simple matter for any one to make their way unseen through the woods to the house on the shores of Cranberry Lake.
Last, but not least, was the presence of this hoard of bank notes concealed under the stone hearth downstairs. Dick felt sure that they had not belonged to the late occupant of the place. Whatever other eccentricities he might have had, Hickey was not a miser, but a very shrewd old man with a decided belief in the safety of banks. He was not the sort who would keep his savings in the house, and, besides, Merriwell had noticed that the packages of notes had been all neatly tied up just as they had come from the bank. And if they were not the spoil from the late robbery, what were they?
Lying there in the dark, Dick heard McCormick come stealthily back upstairs and slip into his room. And, after that, hour after hour passed as he thought over the problem from every conceivable point of view.
He did not wish to believe his friend guilty. Some how, he could not quite bring himself to that point, and yet every scrap of evidence was strongly against him.
He began to remember little things which he had scarcely noticed at the time, but which now, in the light of this new discovery, came vividly back into his mind.
Archie had not taken Fitzgerald’s joshing about the robbery with anything like his usual good grace. He had been palpably annoyed, and his assumption of careless laughter had seemed a little forced.
Then there was Joblots. Where did he come in? It did not seem possible that any human being could be such an absolute ass, though once or twice in his life Dick had met fellows with mannerisms of which the dapper little fellow had made a very good copy. But Merriwell had an instinctive feeling that he was nothing but a copy. For some reason he was playing a part, and Merriwell felt sure that the real man was something far different from his outward appearance. He had been interested in McCormick from the very first. All evening he had been watching him—covertly, to be sure, but none the less constantly. Was it possible that he could be following Archie?
Jellison, too, was a puzzle. The absurdity of a man’s coming alone to such a deserted spot as this and landing there late at night, simply because he wanted to take a few days’ rest, was palpable. There must be some ulterior motive, and a very strong one at that, to cause him to do what he had done; but, try as he would, Dick could not fathom it. Presently his mind left Jellison and leaped back to McCormick.
Archie’s only brother had been sentenced to two years in State’s prison. He had been at liberty for six months. To be sure, both Archie and his brother swore that the latter had been wrongly convicted, that some one high up in the bank had in reality stolen the money and then succeeded in weaving such a web of false evidence around the innocent man that he had been convicted and sentenced, the thief himself escaping scot-free.
That was possible. It was also possible that both men had lied. They might have inherited a single bad streak—an irresistible tendency to steal, perhaps. Such things had been known. Jim might have committed the actual robbery and Archie helped him get away with the spoils.
So Merriwell tossed about through the long hours of the night, struggling between his innate loyalty and devotion to his friend and the evidence of his eyesight and his common sense. At last, toward morning, he fell into a troubled sleep and dreamed strange, fantastic dreams in which Archie and Jellison and Percy Joblots were mixed up in a vague, shadowy, perfectly idiotic manner with a fountain of silver dollars which spouted out of the stone hearth of the dining room and filled the whole house.
He awoke when the first beams of the morning sun streamed through the open window and slanted across the bed. He was on the floor in a twinkling, dragging the blankets off Brad and causing the Texan to awake with a grunt and a shiver.
“Come out and take a plunge,” Dick invited him. “It’ll clear the cobwebs out of your brains.”
To tell the truth, he felt more need of that process than did his chum; for his cogitating of the night before had brought no satisfactory solution to the problem which was perplexing him, and he was in quite as much of a quandary as ever regarding the stand he sought to take.
“B-r-r!” chattered Buckhart. “I reckon I might as well, pard. I couldn’t be much colder than I am now. Come on.”
Slipping off his pajamas, he snatched up a blanket, and, wrapping it around him, started downstairs.
Dick lingered long enough to arouse the others, and then followed. Together they raced across the grass, silvery with hoar frost, and, without a pause, dashed into the icy water.
Both of them let out a yell which raised weird echoes from across the silent lake, and then settled down to a brisk swim. Presently the other three fellows appeared and took the plunge with even more vociferousness, and five minutes later they all trooped back to the house, glowing from head to foot and feeling ready for anything which the day had to offer.
Joblots, dragging on his clothes with shivering haste, chattering teeth and fumbling fingers, was horror-stricken when he found out what they had been doing.
“My grathiouth thaketh!” he gasped. “How could you do it? I thould have perithed of the cold. My conthtitution would never thtand the thtrain.”
Brad slapped him on the back with a powerful hand which caused Percy to wince and step back.
“Do you good, kiddo!” he grinned. “We’re warm as toast now, and you’re blue with the cold. Better try it.”
“No, thankth,” Joblots returned hastily. “I’ll be all wight ath thoon ath I get my clotheth on.”
When the Yale men got downstairs they found him trying to crawl into the chimney, while Jellison had departed to the woodshed for material with which to build up the fire.
Dick had decided to take no steps in any direction regarding his discovery of the night before. A little delay would do no harm and might be productive of infinite good. The money was safe enough for the present, now that he knew it was there, and while he hustled around getting breakfast ready he kept a keen watch on McCormick.
There was no mistaking the fact that Archie had something on his mind. Always light-hearted and prompt to join in with any joshing or bantering give-and-take which might be going on, he seemed decidedly serious as he helped Dick with the breakfast. More than once Merriwell caught him gazing absently out of the window, and once when he spoke to him suddenly the fellow gave a sudden start and the dish he was holding slipped from his hands and crashed in pieces on the floor.
“I don’t know what’s the matter with me,” he said regretfully as he stooped to pick up the pieces. “I didn’t sleep very well last night.”
“What was the trouble?” Dick asked carelessly. “Didn’t you feel well?”
“Oh, yes, I felt all right. Strange bed, I suppose.”
“You didn’t happen to get up, did you?” Merriwell inquired, as he broke an egg into the frying pan.
McCormick gave a slight start and darted a keen look at Dick, but the latter’s countenance was as free from guile as that of a child-in-arms.
“Did you hear any one?” Archie countered evasively.
“I awoke some time during the night and thought I heard some one walking around downstairs,” Dick explained easily.
“I did get up and go down,” McCormick said, after a moment’s hesitation. “I was restless and finally got up and took a walk through the rooms down there. It was plagued cold, too, I can tell you.”
Merriwell did not ask any more questions. He had given Archie plenty of opportunity to explain what had taken him down to the dining room if the fellow were so inclined, but apparently he did not propose to do any explaining.
Despite McCormick’s absent state of mind and Merriwell’s preoccupation, breakfast proved to be a jovial meal. Fitzgerald was quite lively enough to keep things going, and Buckhart and Baxter were good seconds. Even Percy Joblots, now that he was warm again, piped up now and then with some foolish remark which sent them all into roars of laughter, while Jellison seemed to have recovered from his grouch of the night before and was absolutely genial.
Neither of the two strangers, however, made any mention of leaving the farmhouse that morning. They could not decently stay there much longer, and Dick rather expected them to announce their departure directly breakfast was over. But they did not.
Instead, Jellison took a comfortable seat in front of the fire in the dining room, and, opening a newspaper, which he had brought with him the night before, became instantly absorbed in its contents. Joblots hung around the kitchen while the dishes were being washed, fluttering helplessly about, but really accomplishing nothing.
McCormick evidently had something he wanted to say to Dick, but seemed to find rather difficult. Several times he started a remark, only to break off abruptly; but at last, when he was drying the last plate, he made the break.
“I don’t believe I’ll go out with you fellows this morning,” he said, in a low tone. “I’ve got to go to Middleberry for something special. I’ll be back by noon, though, and perhaps I may run across Barry somewhere. I can’t imagine what’s become of him.”
Dick did not reply at once. He wondered what this unexpected move could mean. What sudden business could take Archie to Middleberry? However, he could think of no plausible objection, and so long as the money remained safely under the hearth McCormick was not likely to stay away permanently.
“Just as you please, Mac,” he said quietly. “You’ll miss some good sport, though. The first day may be the best. I don’t want you to feel that you’re in the way, or that we don’t want you, simply because you didn’t start out with our party.”
“Oh, no, it isn’t that,” Archie returned promptly. “It’s just something which I have got to attend to this morning. I’m sure I’ll be able to get back by lunch time.”
“Well, if you don’t find us here, you’ll have to trace us by the guns,” Dick remarked, drying his hands. “We’ll take some sandwiches with us and probably won’t come back until night.”
A sudden, worried look flashed into McCormick’s face. He glanced swiftly through the open door at Jellison, who sat reading before the fire. Then his eyes returned to Dick’s face.
“Dick,” he whispered softly, “take him along with you, won’t you?”
He made a quick, almost imperceptible motion of his head toward the other room.
Merriwell’s eyes narrowed.
“Jellison?” he asked in the same low tone.
Archie nodded.
“Yes. Don’t let him stay in the house alone. Give him my gun, if you want to. I can’t tell you just now why I ask this, but it’s very important to me.”
“But he’ll be leaving this morning,” Dick objected.
“No, he won’t,” McCormick returned positively. “You mark my words, he’ll ask if he can’t stay through the day. Tell him yes, and ask him to go out with you. Will you do this much for me, Dick?”
Merriwell looked keenly at the face of the man before him, and Archie returned his gaze steadfastly. His eyes were anxious and pleading, but Dick could see no signs of guilt in them. Either the fellow was innocent, or he had amazing powers of dissimulation.
“Why can’t you confide in me, Mac?” Merriwell asked quickly.
Archie looked distressed.
“I’d like to, but I can’t—now,” he said, in a low tone. “Won’t you take me on faith?”
Dick shrugged his shoulders.
“I’ll have to, I reckon, Mac,” he returned. “All right. I’ll do my best to help you out.”
He walked into the other room where the Yale men were busily engaged in putting together their guns, filling cartridge belts with shells, and making general preparations for the day’s sport. Joblots stood watching them, a look of awed admiration on his face.
“My grathiouth!” he exclaimed. “I with I could do that ath quick ath you do. It taketh me about an hour to fixth my gun wight.”
Fitzgerald grinned.
“I guess you haven’t had much practice with a gun, have you?” he inquired slyly.
“Not much,” Joblots returned sadly. “I with I wath going with you thith morning. I’d learn a lot.”
“Mac’s got to go in to the village,” Dick announced. “Anybody want him to get anything?”
There was a general negative, and Dick turned to Joblots.
“Perhaps you’d like to stay with us this morning and shoot?” he suggested pleasantly.
His tone was quite casual, but he had a distinct object in giving the invitation.
The dapper little fellow seemed suddenly to experience a change of heart.
“Thank you very much,” he returned hastily, “but I think I’d better not thtay. I’d better be getting back, and it will be pleathanter having thome one to go with.”
“Just as you please,” Dick said carelessly.
But he turned away with a feeling of distinct satisfaction. He had found out what he wanted to know. Joblots was evidently determined not to let McCormick out of his sight. And now arose the question: Why was he following Archie? Dick’s thoughts were suddenly broken in upon by Andrew Jellison.
“Perhaps, since Mr. Joblots doesn’t wish to shoot,” he said, in the pleasantest tone of voice, “you wouldn’t mind if I took his place for the morning. I am very fond of shooting, and I don’t suppose you will object to my staying here until this afternoon when I can start back in time to get the last train to the city?”
So Archie was right. Jellison did want to stay, after all.
“No objection whatever,” Merriwell returned. “You can take McCormick’s gun, for he won’t use it till afternoon.”
“Thanks very much,” Jellison said. “You are most kind. Now my little holiday will not be spoiled after all.”
Without further delay, Archie departed, striding across the field toward the woods with Joblots trotting after him, taking short, quick, mincing steps which set Fitzgerald off into a paroxysm of laughter. He at once pranced across the room in a very lifelike imitation of the dapper little fellow, but the exhibition came to an untimely end when he stumbled over one of the spreading claw feet of the mahagony table and nearly fell.
“Drat the thing!” he exclaimed crossly. “What in thunder does any one want to have table legs all over the room for?”
“Peace, brother!” droned a sanctimonious voice from the doorway. “Blessed is he who speaks from a pure heart, but the curser and reviler is an abomination.”
Fitz gave a gasp and whirled round, while the other fellows looked up in astonishment.
Standing on the threshold was a most extraordinary figure of a man. He was very tall and very thin, his lank garments of rusty black clinging to his skinny frame in a manner that gave him a ludicrous resemblance to a scarecrow. His face was long and pointed like a razor edge. His hooked nose curved over his thin-lipped mouth like the beak of a bird, and was of a distinctly fiery hue, especially toward the end. His long hair straggled down from under the broken brim of an ancient silk hat which had weathered the storms of many winters. His eyes were rolled piously upward so that little but the whites could be seen, while both hands were clasped over the handle of a grayish-green umbrella of extraordinary size.
The Yale men gazed at him for a moment in petrified silence.
“Well, who are you?” Fitzgerald inquired presently, in a choking voice.
The strange man slowly withdrew his eyes from the ceiling and looked at the little fellow disapprovingly.
“A rebuker of iniquity,” he returned ponderously, “moved by a direct intervention of providence to bring you to a full perception of the error of your ways.”
“Humph!” snorted Fitz. “I like your cheek. What’s the matter with my ways, I’d like to know? They suit me all right.”
“Confirmed in sin,” murmured the stranger. “Wallowing in profanity. A sad case—very sad.”
Buckhart chuckled gleefully.
“Ah-ha, Fitzy!” he grinned. “I knew you’d sure be pinched some day with your thundering cussing.”
A look of pain came into the face of the tall man and he lifted one thin hand reprovingly.
“Hush, I beg of you,” he said severely. “First search out your own heart and find whether it be clean before you venture to reprove a brother.”
Fitzgerald chortled joyfully.
“That’s right!” he exclaimed. “Go for him, old duck. Pick out your own beams, you Texas steer, before you go hunting for my moats.”
Though the man’s appearance and manner were amusing enough, Dick wanted to get started with the guns, and he felt that time was being wasted.
“Might I ask who you are?” he inquired, struggling to repress a smile, “and what your business here is?”
The stranger glanced at him critically.
“You may, sir,” he returned at length. “I am pleased to observe that you do not appear to be steeped in sin. At least, your language is not sprinkled with the oaths which have cut my sensitive nature to the quick. I am the Reverend Jeremy Pennyfeather, a preacher and expounder of the Word. On my morning ramble through the clean, sweet, dewy world, I chanced to pass this house, and finding the door ajar, I entered, seeking a moment’s rest, and, perhaps—er—a little—er—sustenance, without which these poor carnal bodies of ours cannot uphold the burdens of life.”
Dick gazed at him in astonishment. He certainly did not speak as if he were quite right in the head.
“Your morning ramble?” he repeated. “You live somewhere near here?”
The Reverend Pennyfeather hesitated.
“At the moment I am without a—er—fixed charge,” he explained. “I travel about carrying the Word and doing what little good I can by the way. It sometimes happens, as in the present instance, that I am temporarily without a roof over my head or—only for the moment, I assure you—the necessary fuel to keep this poor machine of mine—er—going.”
Dick’s face cleared. The fellow was some wandering preacher, possibly crack-brained, and apparently little better than a tramp. He had simply come in there for breakfast.
“Oh, I see,” he said quickly. “You want something to eat. Just come out to the kitchen, will you?”
The man followed him slowly, with majestic steps, but there was no mistaking the hungry glitter in his eyes or the suppressed eagerness with which he fell to on the simple fare which Dick laid before him. He certainly ate as if he were half starved, and Merriwell was far from regretting the time wasted in waiting until he had finished.
When there was nothing more left in sight, Pennyfeather arose with a sigh.
“Young man, I thank you,” he said sonorously. “Has it ever occurred to you what a degrading thing it is that these frail bodies of ours cannot long exist without carnal food?”
Dick smiled.
“I can’t say it has,” he returned promptly. “I have a decided partiality to good things to eat, especially when I come in after a day’s tramp through the woods, with an appetite like a horse.”
“But what a shame it is that our soaring, ethereal spirits should be tied to earth by such carnal bonds,” persisted the preacher. “Were it not for the baleful necessity of food and drink what might not man accomplish!”
He rolled his eyes in ecstasy and then slowly lowered them to Merriwell’s face.
“A painful affliction which I have carried uncomplainingly from the cradle of childhood, compels occasional recourse to—er—stimulant,” he said blandly. “Periods of faintness, you know, from which nothing else seems to revive me. If, by any chance, you have something of the sort at hand——”
The pause was expressive. Dick glanced swiftly at the thin man’s hushed nose. It would seem that the periods of faintness had been more or less frequent.
“Sorry,” he said shortly, “but I haven’t.”
The Reverend Pennyfeather sighed and clasped his hands together resignedly.
“Ah, well, perhaps ’tis better so,” he murmured. “No doubt I shall get along without it. So far none of the attacks have been fatal. Perhaps you have no objection to my resting for a while before I resume my way.”
Dick had a very decided objection. Enough time had been wasted already with this humbug.
“You can take a chair out on the porch and sit there as long as you please,” he said shortly. “We are just leaving the house for the morning, however, and I want to lock up.”
“That will do very nicely,” returned Pennyfeather quickly. “I hope, however, you will allow me a scant five minutes in which to bring to a realizing sense of the evil of their ways, the two very profane young men whom I first talked with.”
He moved swiftly through the dining room as he spoke, with Merriwell at his heels, but when they reached the sitting room, it was found to be quite deserted. Evidently the fellows, scenting a probable continuance of the stranger’s moral lecture, had decamped.
“The wicked flee when no man pursueth,” breathed Pennyfeather. “What is so tormenting as a guilty conscience, my dear sir? I should have liked one more chance to plead with them, but life is full of disappointments, which are always discipline for the soul, sir—discipline for the soul. This chair will do nicely.”
His sudden change of subject was due to a glimpse of Dick’s impatient face as he stood significantly by the door, gun in one hand, ready to be gone.
With a swift judgment which had little of the spiritual in it, the preacher picked instantly the most comfortable chair in the room, and proceeded to roll it out to the veranda with considerable expedition. Dick closed and locked the door behind him, thrusting the key into his pocket.
“Rest yourself as long as you please,” he said briefly, leaping to the ground. “Nobody will disturb you.”
Without waiting for a reply, he started across the open at a brisk pace to join the fellows who were waiting for him at the edge of the woods.
“Blessed is he who sits on a tack, for he shall rise again,” intoned Fitzgerald, rolling his eyes heavenward and drawing down the corners of his mouth.
“Did he start in to give you a jawing, too, pard?” Buckhart inquired, with a grin. “Hope you didn’t say ‘dash it’ in his highness’ presence.”
“What’s he doing in that chair on the porch?” Teddy Baxter asked curiously.
“Resting,” Dick explained. “He’s subject to spells of faintness which need—er—stimulant. Painful affliction from childhood, you know. Nothing else helps. When he found there was nothing doing in that line, he asked for a chair upon which to rest his weary limbs and recover from said spell, so I let him take it. He can’t get away with that. It weighs about a ton.”
“Dotty, isn’t he?” Fitz asked, as he leaped down from the fence rail.
“I guess so,” Dick returned. “Either that, or just plain faker. Come on, let’s get busy. We’ve wasted enough time.”
Leaping the fence, they at once plunged into the woods and started in a northerly direction toward the wilder, rocky country beyond, where Farmer Cobmore had told them the partridges were remarkably thick this fall. Already they were planning to get up with the dawn next morning and try for wild ducks at their feeding ground at the upper end of Cranberry Lake.
Andrew Jellison, carrying McCormick’s gun, seemed to be thoroughly enjoying himself. He was pleasant and genial, entering into the conversation now and then in a perfectly natural way, while not thrusting himself forward too much, and was, in short, so totally different in every way from what he had been—ill-tempered and overbearing of manner—the night before, that he scarcely seemed the same man.
It was almost as if a great load had been removed from his mind and the reaction made him as light-hearted and free from care as a boy. Merriwell wondered at the change. Perhaps he had misjudged the man when he credited him with an ulterior motive in intruding upon them. Possibly the man’s nerves really had been worn to a shred and he had wanted nothing more than a little while in the peaceful quiet of the wilderness to brace him up.
There was no question of his ability to handle a gun, nor of his interest and enthusiasm in the pursuit of game. To him belonged the credit of the first bird bagged, and throughout the morning he kept up to the good record he made at the beginning.
For a time they all kept pretty well together. Then, little by little, they split up, each man taking the route which he thought most favorable, having planned to meet at a certain point about twelve o’clock for lunch.
About eleven Dick started up a covey of birds and became so interested in their pursuit that he forgot all about the time and was consequently late reaching the point of meeting.
When he came out of the bushes to the broad, rocky spur of the low mountain, he found the others seated near at hand busily engaged in devouring sandwiches.
“Better hustle, Richard, if you want anything,” Fitzgerald admonished, rather indistinctly. “We were so hungry we couldn’t wait another minute.”
Merriwell came forward and dropped down on the rock.
“How many?” Buckhart asked.
“Nine,” returned his chum.
“Great! That beats the record so far.”
“Where’s Jellison?” Dick asked suddenly.
He had been conscious of something or some one missing ever since he came out of the thicket.
Fitzgerald shrugged his shoulders.
“Search me,” he returned airily. “Haven’t seen him since we split up.”
There was a little furrow of anxiety on Dick’s brow. He was thinking of McCormick’s very evident worry lest Jellison be left alone in the house. The fellow had come with them that morning quite of his own accord, but that did not prevent his hurrying back there as soon as he could do so without attracting attention. What had Mac to fear from him, anyway? Was it possible that the man knew what lay under the hearth?
As Dick puzzled over the problem, all his doubts and fears and perplexities returned in full force, and did not add in the least to his pleasure in their little outing.