CHAPTER XII
WhenJudge Peterson woke up in the morning after a night of restless tossing, and an early morning doze, he called to his wife with a voice much like his old time vigor.
“Miranda, bring me my pants. I want to try how it seems to sit up. I’ve got to get out of here and find that little girl. There’s something queer about this business and I reckon it’s up to me to study it out.”
The anxious face of Miranda Peterson that had been creased all night with tormenting fears suddenly relaxed and a gleam of joy came into her eyes. This was her old time husband back again. The visitors hadn’t done him so much damage after all, perhaps had only given him an added incentive to get well. With a spring in her step and a light in her eye she swung the old-fashioned wardrobe door open and revealed his baggy trousers hung up by their suspenders just where she had put them the night he was taken sick.
“All right, father,” she said briskly, “There they are. You have your breakfast and as soon as the doctor comes we’ll ask him if you can put ’em on. There’s ham and eggs this morning, do you feel for ham or only eggs?”
“Both!” declared the indomitable old man, “I’ve got a lot to do today and I want strength. Mother, did you ever think that Mary Massey suspected her son’s wife of not being—well—exactly loyal to the family?”
Miranda Peterson paused in the open doorway:
“Yes, I did, father. The last time I was up there before she died she kind of tried to apologize to me for asking me to close the door while we talked. She said she knew Nan wasn’t very fond of Joyce, and she didn’t want her to know we were talking about her future, it might cause jealousy. She said Nan had accused her of thinking more of Joyce than she did of her own son’s wife, as of course she did. How could she help it? But I could see she was real uneasy about how they would get on when she was gone, especially when they found out about the house. She said then she was going to explain it all to Eugene right away. But you know she took worse that night and I suppose she never did get the chance. I think myself it was a great mistake, letting the children grow up without knowing all about it, but of course Mary Massey felt she must keep her sister’s dying request, and her sister hadn’t wanted Joyce to know she had money coming to her till she was twenty-one. She said she was afraid it would spoil her. Well, she isn’t spoiled, that’s one thing certain, but it always seems to me when you work real hard to escape one trouble, you’re like as not to run head on to another that’s about as bad. Look what’s happened now. I don’t blame Joyce Radway one little mite for not standing that Nannette. She’s got a tongue like a hissing serpent, and she can wind that light-minded, weak-chinned, bull-headed husband of hers around her little finger. How that poor bag of meal ever came to be Mary Massey’s son I can’t figure, even with a husband like Hiram Massey, for Mary Massey was the salt of the earth. Talking about salt, do you want your eggs on toast? And hot milk? Yes, I know. I’ll have ’em herein the jerk of a lamb’s tail, and then you’ll be ready to talk to the doctor when he comes.”
“All right, mother. And say, send Dan down. He’s about isn’t he? Well, I want him to go an errand. Send him in.”
Dan appeared, clean shaven, kindly eyed, with a square jaw like his father’s and a determined set to his shoulders.
“Dan, we’ve got to find that little girl right away. Understand?”
“Yes, father. So I told Darcy Sherwood last night. I’ve a notion we’ll be on her track soon. Darcy gets around quite a good bit, and he seemed interested. Always thought a good bit of Aunt Mary, you know. Any danger of that poor fish of a Gene lighting out?”
“No, I don’t think so,” said the Judge, “He’s too mad. Thinks his dignity has been offended. It’s about all he’s got left of the family pride, his dignity and he’s working that for all it’s worth. He likes to be bowed down to, has ever since he was born, and he thinks his mother’s Christianity was wide enough to cover him and his fat, lazy family. I don’t want to do injustice to anybody, Dan, but I’ve a notion that chump needs a lesson or two and I’m figuring on being able to give it to him in a few days. I don’t know why good women like Mary Massey have to be afflicted with conceited puppies for sons. I suppose she loved him so she spoiled him. Women mostly do. Take your mother. Dan, you’d have been a ruined man if it hadn’t been for the lickings I gave you with the old birch rod down behind the barn when your mother’d gone to missionary meeting. You’ve never thanked me for that, Dan, but you’re a better man for it,you know. Now, Dan, just slip me those pants on the nail behind you, lad. I’m going to surprise your mother. Hurry up. I hear those ham and eggs coming!”
With the help of Dan, Judge Peterson got into his nether garments and was sitting on the side of the bed when his wife arrived with the ham and eggs, and though a bit weak and trembly he insisted on sitting up in the rocking chair without pillows while he ate his breakfast. The old zest for work and fight had lifted him at last from his weakness back into the world again and he was determined to get right into line. Of course the doctor hustled him back to bed again when he arrived, and glad enough he was to get there, though he wouldn’t own it, but in the half-hour after he had finished the ham and eggs and before the doctor arrived he managed to get quite a number of little things started that meant business for all those who were trying to oppress any of his beloved clients.
When Dan Peterson came home for the noonday meal he was able to report that several lines of secret organizations that thread this land of ours like hidden tracery had been set vibrating with efforts to find Joyce Radway and restore her if possible at once to her home. Meantime Eugene Massey had been notified that while he would be at liberty of course to remain in the home where his mother had lived for so many years until its rightful owner could be found and should return, it must be thoroughly understood that nothing about the place must be hurt or sold or destroyed in any way.
It was all done very quietly, and nobody in town was told. Judge Peterson was friends with everybody,but he had been able to go about that town for a good many years without letting his neighbors so much as dream that he knew aught about them and their affairs, or anybody else’s, and he was not going to begin now by disgracing the family of his old friend Mary Massey. Eugene and Nannette simply were made to understand that they must walk carefully, and that they were under surveillance. Nannette grew to have a hunted, ingratiating look, and stayed at home more than had been her custom. She spent much time writing letters to Joyce and addressing them to “General Delivery” in every part of the country. She even put advertisements in the personal columns of one or two big city papers in parts of the country where her fancy thought Joyce might have wandered. She questioned Dorothea and Junior nightly on what they knew about Joyce’s friends, and habits in the village; and concerning anything that had been said to them during the day about her. They acquired the habit of being sharply alert to any scrap of news that might bear in the remotest degree upon the tragedy in their home. For even to their childish minds this that had happened in their family had assumed the proportions of a tragedy. Their mother cried a good deal and scarcely ever made desserts for dinner. Their father had locked up cousin Joyce’s room and taken the key. They were forbidden to go into the parlor and play on the piano, and anything that had been very especially nice in the way of furniture was guarded carefully. Their father explained to them that it might mean some one had to go to jail if it turned out that they had no right to things and any thing had been injured. Scarcely a night passed that their fatherand their mother did not have a wild orgy of argument ending in a fit of weeping on their mother’s part. Dorothea and Junior decided that it would have been better to have Joyce back. Besides, they were hungry for jelly roll. They even set out on one or two expeditions of their own to find their cousin, but only got into some trouble each time, and once Junior barely escaped with his life from under the wheels of an automobile.
But the worst of all to their thinking was when their father decided that they must all go to church every Sunday. Dorothea didn’t mind so much because she could wear her prettiest clothes, but Junior hated the white stiff collar his mother made him wear, and the sitting so long without wriggling, for Eugene was very strict, and the time seemed endless.
Quite respectably they filed into the church the first Sunday after Joyce disappeared, just as if they had been doing so regularly during the three years they had lived in Meadow Brook. Of course every one thought they were doing the proper thing after a death in the family, and would probably never come again. But the minister welcomed them gravely, and Nannette in her new black veil which was almost becoming, dabbed her eyes with a black-bordered handkerchief when he spoke of the departed mother who had been so faithful in her church attendance during the many years. People spoke to them sympathetically, it was not in their scheme of Christian living to do otherwise; but one or two sharp voiced sisters who believed in “speaking their minds,” asked pointedly after Joyce and wanted to know when she would be back. Nannette had by this time concocted a flexible story about her having gone to see several distant relatives of her father’s in responseto a telegram. Whereupon one keen minded sister who had a daughter in the telegraph office hastened home to acquire further details. Before night Nannette’s version of Joyce’s western visit had grown and acquired definite shape, with a definite destination and even the length of time she was to stay. It reached the minister’s wife who told it to the minister on the way home from church, and they decided to write to the minister in the town where Joyce was visiting and ask him to call on her and make her feel at home, and incidentally discover if she looked happy and all was well with her. So the ball rolled on, and Eugene, despite his ravings and rantings, was powerless to stop it.
Lib Knox suddenly began to cultivate Dorothea’s companionship industriously, using her own peculiar methods for so doing. She brought Dorothea a handful of tulips which she had stealthily extracted from one of the finest gardens in town, and she offered her five minutes’ lick from her all-day sucker. Now, although Lib was somewhat of a social outcast, much sneered at by the children who were not in her clique, Dorothea was nevertheless flattered by the unusual attention given her by this notorious outlaw, and was presently deep in the ecstasy of an illicit friendship with a child whom respectable mothers tabooed. Not that Lib at the age of eight had reached any depths of wickedness beyond most, but she had no respect for age and class, she did as she pleased without regard to clothes and manners, and she could sling a fine line of truth uttered in purest Saxon language at any one who dared attempt to interfere in any of her plans. “Not a nice little girl” was what the mothers met in social conclave said about her, and she early knew it and delighted to distress them bycultivating their young hopefuls and leading them into bypaths of mischief where only her guiding hand could lead them safely out again. Lib cultivated Dorothea until Dorothea was as wax in her hands, and no foreign spy or diplomat could have used advantage with keener skill than did little Lib Knox of the dancing bronze curls and the wicked green eyes. What she did not extract of facts from unsuspecting Dorothea’s soul was not worth extracting.
The high school professor felt keenly annoyed. He trusted his intuitions violently, and to have the opportunity to prove them taken away from him by so simple a thing as a girl going on a visit was not to be thought of. In the first place it was not like a girl with a face like that one to suddenly fly up without any reason and go off on a series of visits to distant relatives, right in the midst of important examinations which he had all reason to suppose she had worked hard for and was anxious to take. In fact, the members of the school board whom he consulted all agreed in his judgment of Joyce’s character and the things they said about her showed that she had every reason to wish to pass her examinations well and get a position to teach. There must be something behind all this and he meant to ferret it out.
So he put aside his stacks of examination papers and took his hat and went for the third time to interview poor Nannette. But Nannette saw him coming and fled to the attic, locking herself in, and keeping quiet as a mouse till he grew discouraged knocking and went back to his papers once more. But he did not give up. He searched out Eugene’s city address and got him on the telephone,grilling him for fifteen expensive minutes as to the cause of Joyce’s leaving, and why he couldn’t reach her by telephone or wire if he tried every place that she had expected to visit. Eugene was reduced almost to a state of distraction and came home that night in a worse temper than ever.
That night four men sought out an old haunt where they had been accustomed to meet and sat in dark conclave. They were big, husky fellows and three were dark-browed with heavy jaws and hands that could break an iron bar or crush a lily, but one had bright red hair and unclean eyes, with a voice that had continually to be hushed by his companions.
“Well,Isay there’s askirtsomewhere in all this,” he bellowed forth as he raised a glass of ill-smelling liquor to his lips.
“You spilled a mouthful!” hissed out one they called Bill. “He never cleared out alone. D’you know who the dame is, Tyke?”
“I got my ideas,” boasted the red-haired one mysteriously.
“Whaddaya know, Tyke? Spit it out. This ain’t no Deef Mute Club. You’ll get in the same class with him if you go around keepin’ things ter yerself, an’ you know what that means, Tyke! We ain’t to be trifled with. Can’t swing that game with us the second time. It’s mates or hang, and you understand. Now, let her fly. Whaddaya know?” A heavy hand came down on his shoulder and Tyke shivered in his long length like a serpent taken unawares.
“Take yer hand off’n my shoulder you, Taney, ur ya don’t get a word outen me.” He shook the rough grip off and shuffled into another position. “You fellers go off like powder. Ef you don’t quit yer suspicions I’m outta this fer good, and then where’ll ya be? I got brains, an’ I know a thing er two, an’ when I say I got ideas I ain’t sayin’ I know it all, but I got a line on it. I think I can foller it up.”
“Meanin’?” The heavy hand came down once more upon his shoulder.
“Meanin’—well—boys, I seen a girl in the graveyard that night. Splashed my flashlight full in her face oncet. I think he seen her too—”
A low mutter from Bill as he took another drink in big gulps.
“Know who she was?” asked Cottar, the man who had not spoken yet.
“Nope. I don’t live around these diggin’s you know, but I’d know her again ef I seen her, I swear I would. She had eyes you don’t forget.”
The man drank in silence and watched him.
“Get it all off’n yer chest Tyke—” said Bill at last. “There’s more comin’.”
Tyke edged in his chair uneasily. He dropped his voice to a whisper:
“She slep’ in a hammock that night. I seen her. I follered after he went back to the village. I made an excuse an’ cut across to the station. Remember? But I come back after you all left an’ went down the road a piece. I think I could find the house again. I seen her in a hammock underneath the trees.”
The men bit hard on their pipes and watched him in silence piercing him through with little narrowed eyes in the smoke haze of the room, grilling his soul to see if it were true.
“Well, whaddaya figger?” Taney asked at last.
“Ain’t figgerin’ yet. Gotta find out more. Gotta find that girl. Gotta find him. Ef they’re both gone, they’re gone together. You all didn’t think fer a little minute that guy told a straight story, did you? You all didn’t believe he’d give up a business that was rollin’ in the money hand over fist jest fer what he called conscience, did ya? Just because he thought it wasn’t a nice, pretty little business? Not on your bottom dollar he didn’t.”
“Mebbe he got cold feet,” suggested Cottar.
“Cold feet? That guy get cold feet? Nope, you don’t know him. Nothin’ couldn’t ever make him get cold feet. I know that guy. I seen him in France. He’d walked right outta the dugout just after his bunk had been shot away an’ smoke a cigarette as cool as if he was takin’ a ride in a pleasure park. Nothin’ didn’t never faze him. He’d just eat up danger. He thrived on it. No, sir, the only thing he’d ever fall fer was a skirt, an’ it’s a skirt that’s done it this time fer sure ur I don’t know nothin’. No siree, he’s got that last cache all salted down somewheres, good and rich you bet, an’ he’s throwed us off’n the track an’ thinks we can’t find out where he got it from ner where he’s sold it to, but we’ll show him we’re too smart fer him. I ain’t got red hair fer nothin’. I wouldn’t ha thought he’d a lied to me, we was like brothers, we was; in France, I took him back to the base when he got his, an’ he brang me a drink when I had the fever an’ was lefton the field with the little love messages comin’ over constant from the enemy all around me, he just walked out calm as you please, just like he always is, an’ said, ‘Tough luck, kid, but we’ll pull you outta here—’”
“Cut that!” said Bill sharply, “We ain’t hearin’ any soft soap. We come here to get fair play an’ justice. He’s a sharper he is! He’s a slick robber! He promised us a big deal when we went into this here dangerous business, an’ he’s went back on his word. He let us take all the risks, an’ he hung round in the bushes. An’ then here he comes along after he gets the business goin’ fine to suit him an’ pays us a couppla hundreds apiece an’ says he’sdone. That he’s decided toleave off. Now—Tyke, you there, you just might ez well understand what I’m sayin’, we ain’t takin’ no soldier boy blarney about this guy at all. He’s turnedyaller, an’ tookall the dough! Bought us off with a trifle, an’ skipped the country! Left us here to face the music while he skips out with a dame an’ spends his thousands. No, sir, I ain’t no fool. Drink o’ water ain’t in it. Get him a knockout. That’s what he needs, an’ we’re here to do it, d’ya hear, Tyke?”
“Oh, shure, I’m with ya boys, I was only tellin’ ya, he ain’t no bloomin’ coward, an’ don’t ya reckon on that. He’ll take his medicine with a smile if we ever catch him to feed it to him, an’ don’t you ferget it.”
“Well, I’m a goin’ to knock that there bloomin’ smile off his pretty face,” declared Bill. “Get me?”
“Here too!” declared Tyke lustily. “But we gotta find the skirt.”
“We gotta make one more try fer the boodle,” declared Bill, “an’ that we’re goin’ to do t’night. I beenfiggerin’ we ain’t looked carefully down at that first place we went, out near the point ya know. There’s a spot down behind some hazels—” he lowered his voice and looked around the room at the hazy groups around the tables and finished his sentence in a whisper.
A door opened across the room, a face shone with a white pallor through the blue haze of smoke, and a low, sibilant voice uttered a single sentence:
“Cop’s comin’.”
A soft shuffle of feet on the sawdust floor, and the gray figures in the room melted like mist from a breath, as if the rushing in of the outside air had blown them all into rings of smoke and carried them away. Mysterious doors opened and closed as if they had not been, and the room was quiet and deserted, the proprietor and his assistant reading the sporting pages with their feet on a table when the cop swung along and looked in:
“Business pretty poor t’night, Jake,” he said with a significant look around.
“Yas, Cap’n, pretty poor. Beats all how a man’s goin’ to live ef this here prohibition keeps up. Have a glass o’ sody, Cap’n? Sorry I ain’t got nothin’ better to offer ya.”
Out in the night gray figures melted into black shadows, and a low voice murmured: “Behind the hazel—”
And out at sea a revenue cutter paced the coast, and a little black boat with a silent crew and no lights, dropped down after a long wait behind the horizon and stole away, hovered back to watch, and stole away again just before the dawning.