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“You’re all right, Ptolemy!” I exclaimed, for the first time awarding him approbation.
Out on the veranda we met Rob.
“Say, those Polydores certainly have the punch and pep,” he declared. “I’d like to have fetched the whole bunch along with me.”
“If you had,” I replied dryly, “our life’s friendship would have died on the spot.”
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CHAPTER VIIIn Which Nothing Much Happens
“Why Hope Haven?” asked Rob reflectively, when he had taken inventory of the possibilities of the resort.
“Because,” sighed Silvia, “so many hopes––vacation hopes––must have been buried here.”
Rob was of an investigating turn of mind, however, and he had heard from a native of H. H., as he had abbreviated the place, that there was a smaller lake, abounding92in fish, farther on through the forest. It was so strongly fortified, however, by the formidable battalions of sharp-shooting insects that but few fishermen had ever been able to lay siege to it.
Rob and I being poison proof decided to try our luck and pitch camp for a few days on the shores of this hidden treasure. As we had to send to town by the stage driver for the necessary supplies, we remained in H. H. the remainder of the day.
We at once paired off in Noah’s most approved style as Rob had outlined. Beth and Ptolemy went up shore, sticks and stones and rocks being no obstacles to their feet. Rob and I sought the society of the snakes, while Silvia and Diogenes, mosquito-netted, watched a game of croquet.
We dined without the pleasure of the society of Ptolemy and Diogenes, who had been invited to sit at the table with the93landlady’s children. I might state, incidentally, that the invitation was never repeated.
Beth was quite excited over her walk.
“Ptolemy and I,” she boasted, “made more of a discovery than Mr. Rossiter did. We found a haunted house, a perfectly haunted house.”
“I am not surprised,” declared Silvia. “You couldn’t expect any other kind of a house in such a region.”
“Where is it?” I asked, “and what is it haunted by?”
“Insects,” suggested Silvia.
“You go around shore about two miles, only it’s farther, as you have to make so many ups and downs over the rocks. Then you leave the shore and go through a low marshy stretch, sort of a Dismal Swamp, and then up a hill. After Ptolemy and I climbed to the top, we looked94down and saw, hidden in a clump of lonely looking poplars, a small, rudely built house. We went down to explore and had hard work making our way through a thick growth of––everything. We crawled under some tangled vines and came up on the steps. The house was vacant, although there were a few old pieces of furniture––a couple of cots, a cook-stove, table, and chairs.
“On our way home we met a woman who gave us a history of the house. An old miser lived there long ago. One night he was robbed and murdered, and his ghost still haunts the place. No one ventures in its vicinity, and she said most likely we were the first people who had gone there since the tragedy. She told us of a nearer way to reach it. You take the road to Windy Creek, and about two miles below here, turn into a lane and95then go through a grove and over a hill.”
“You don’t really believe the story, that is, the ghost part of it?” asked Rossiter.
“N––o,” allowed Beth. “Still, I’d like to. It makes it interesting. Ptolemy and I are going down there some night to see if we can find the ghost.”
“You won’t see one,” I assured her. “Ptolemy’s presence would be sufficient to keep even a ghost in the background.”
“Ptolemy’s a peach,” declared Beth emphatically.
“If he were older, you wouldn’t think so,” said Rob.
“Why not?” asked Beth in surprise, or seeming surprise.
He smiled enigmatically, and irrelevantly asked her if she wouldn’t really be afraid to go to the haunted house at night with only Ptolemy for protection.
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She assured him she shouldn’t be afraid of a ghost if she saw one, and that she shouldn’t be afraid to go alone.
Throughout the evening, which we spent in rowing, walking, and later at a little impromptu supper, I was interested in observing the puzzling behavior of Beth and my chum. I had expected that he would avoid her as much as possible and speak to her only when common politeness made conversation obligatory, and that she, a born coquette, would seek to add his scalp to her collection. Instead, to my surprise, their rôles were reversed. He appeared interested in her every remark and looked at her often and intently. He was quite assiduous in his attentions which, strange to say, she discouraged, not with the deep design of a flirt to increase his ardor, but with a calm firmness that admitted of no doubt as to her feelings.
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“Your sister,” he remarked to me as we were walking down to the lake for a swim just before going to bed, “is a very unusual type.”
“Not at all!” I assured him. “Beth is the true feminine type which you have never taken the trouble to know.”
“Oh, come, Lucien! Not feminine, you know. Though she is inconsistent.”
I resented the imputation hotly, but he only laughed and said that he guessed it was true that a man didn’t understand the women in his family as well as an outsider did.
“You think,” I said, “just because she says she isn’t afraid of ghosts––”
“Not at all,” he denied. “That wasn’t the reason, but––I like her type, though I always supposed I wouldn’t. It is a new one to me––anyway. I didn’t think so young a girl as she––”
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Our discussion was cut short by the inevitable, ever-present Ptolemy, who came running up to us, clad in about four inches of swimming trunks.
“Why aren’t you in bed?” I demanded.
“I was in bed, but it was so warm I couldn’t sleep, and I went to the window and saw you coming down here, so I thought I’d come, too.”
I repeated Rob’s remarks to Silvia when I returned to our room, and she betrayed Beth’s confidences in regard to Rob.
“She says she would like him if it were not for one trait that she dislikes more than any other in a man and that it was sufficient in her estimation to counterbalance all his good qualities.”
“What can she mean?” I asked bewildered. “I don’t see a flaw in Rob, except for his being a woman-hater, and he surely hasn’t betrayed that fact to her,99judging from his manner toward her. I think he is making an effort to be nice to her on my account, and she doesn’t appreciate it.”
“I asked her what the flaw was, and she flushed and said she couldn’t tell me.”
“Well, I guess all around it is a good thing we are going off on our fishing expedition. I don’t want my friend turned down by my sister, and I don’t want my friend calling my sister a new type and unfeminine.”
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CHAPTER VIIIPtolemy Disappears and I Visit a Haunted House
When Rob and I, with our camping outfit, drove off through the woods, Ptolemy’s eyes followed us so enviously and he pleaded so eloquently to be taken with us that Rob was actually on the point of considering it.
“See here, Rob Rossiter!” I exclaimed, “This is my vacation and all I came to this God-forsaken place for was to escape the Polydores. If he goes, I stay. You101know I’ve always tried to meet issues, but this antique family has got me going.”
“All right,” he yielded.
After a drive of a few miles we came to the lake and pitched our tent. Two days of ideal camp life followed. The weather was fine, Rob was a first-class cook, and the sport was beyond our most optimistic expectation. We landed enough of the Friday food to satisfy the most fastidious fishing fiend, and the mosquitoes, finding we were impervious to their stings, finally let us alone.
I forgot all business cares and disappointments, yes, even the Polydores; but on the morning of the third day Rob began to show signs of restlessness and spoke of the likelihood of my wife’s being lonely.
“Not with Beth and Ptolemy in calling distance,” I told him.
“But they will be off together,” he102replied, “and your wife will be alone with thatenfant terrible. I fancy, too, that your sister isn’t exactly a companion for your wife.”
“Well, that shows how little you know her. She and Silvia are great friends.”
“Oh, yes, of course they are friendly, but I mean their tastes are so different, and they are so unlike. Your sister doesn’t care for domesticity.”
“Sure she does. You have turned the wrong searchlight on Beth. If you knew her, you’d like her.”
“I do like her,” he declared. “It’s too bad she––”
He stopped abruptly and quickly changed the conversation. In spite of my efforts to renew the controversy about Beth, he refused to return to the subject.
103He pleaded eloquently to be taken with us.
He pleaded eloquently to be taken with us.
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In the afternoon, when I was doing a little scale work preparatory to cooking, a messenger from the hotel drove up with a note from Silvia which I read aloud:
“Ptolemy has been missing for twenty-four hours. We are in hopes he has joined you. If not, what shall I do?”
“We’ll go back with you,” said Rob to the man. “Just lend a hand here and help us pull up these tent stakes.”
“What’s Ptolemy to me or I to him?” I asked with a groan, “can’t we give him absent treatment?”
“You’re positively inhuman, Lucien,” protested Rob. “The boy may be at the bottom of the lake.”
“Not he! He was born to be hung.”
All this time, however, I had been active in making preparations for departure, as I knew that Silvia would feel that we were responsible for Ptolemy’s safety, and her anxiety was reason enough for me to hasten to her.
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Rob was quite jubilant on our return trip and declared that the fish came too easily and too plentifully to make it real sport, but I felt that I had another grudge to be charged up to the fateful family.
We found Silvia pale from anxiety, Beth in tears, and Diogenes loudly clamoring for “Tolly.” We learned that the afternoon before, Silvia and Beth had gone with the landlady for a ride, leaving Diogenes in Ptolemy’s care, but on their return at dinner time, Diogenes was playing alone in the sandpile.
Nothing was thought of Ptolemy’s absence until bedtime, and they had then sent out searching parties to the woods and the lake shores. Finally it occurred to Beth that he might have gone to join Rob and me, so they sent the messenger to investigate.
“He must be lost in the woods107somewhere,” said Beth tearfully, “and he will starve to death.”
Rob actually touched her hand in his distress at her grief.
“Ptolemy is too smart to get lost anywhere,” I declared. “He knows fully as much about woodcraft as he does about every other kind of craft. He’s one of his mother’s antiquities personified. But haven’t you been able to find anyone who saw him after you went for your ride?”
“No; even the hotel help were all out on the lake.”
“And he left Diogenes here, absolutely unguarded?”
“Well!” admitted Silvia, “he tied Diogenes to a tree near the sandpile.”
“Then he must have gone away with malice aforethought,” I said, “and Diogenes is the only one who knows anything about his last movements.”
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I lifted the child to my knee, and speaking more gently to him than I had ever done, I asked:
“Di, did you and Tolly play in the sandpile yesterday?”
He was quite emphatic in his affirmative.
“Well, tell Ocean: Did Tolly go away and leave you?”
“Tolly goed away,” he confirmed.
“Oh, Lucien!” protested Beth, laughing. “He’s too little to know what you are talking about or to remember.”
“Lucien’s ruling passion strong in death,” murmured Rob. “He can’t help cross-examining the cradle even!”
“Which way,” I resumed, ignoring these interruptions, “did Tolly go––that way?” pointing towards the woods.
“No! Tolly goed––” and he trailed off into his baby jargon which no one could understand, but he pointed to the lake.
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“What did he say when he went away; when he tied the rope around you?”
“Bye-bye.”
“What else?”
Diogenes’ intentions to be communicative were certainly all right, but not a word was intelligible. As he kept picking at his dress and pointing to it, I finally prompted:
“Did Tolly pin a paper to Di’s dress?”
“‘m––h’––m.”
“Bravo, Lucien!” applauded Rob. “They say you can induce a witness to admit anything.”
“What did Di do with the paper?” I continued.
The word he wanted evidently being beyond his vocabulary and speech, he made a rotary motion with his fist. The gesture conveyed nothing to our minds, but was instantly recognized and interpreted110by the landlady’s little girl, who said he meant a windmill such as she had sometimes made for him.
“What did Di do with the windmill?” I asked.
He pointed to the sandpile, which I investigated and found a stick planted therein. I pulled it up and saw a pin sticking in the end of it. Further excavation revealed a crumpled piece of paper on which was written in Ptolemy’s round hand:
“Want to see kids. Am going home. Tell Beth I bet she dasent go to the haunted house alone at night. Ptolemy.”
“Want to see kids. Am going home. Tell Beth I bet she dasent go to the haunted house alone at night. Ptolemy.”
“Poor Huldah!” sighed Silvia.
“I thought he was having the time of his life here,” said Rob.
“He was sore,” declared Beth, “because you and Lucien wouldn’t take him with111you on the fishing trip. He was moping by himself all the morning.”
“Trying to think up some new deviltry,” I theorized, “to make us feel bad.”
“No,” asserted Silvia, “I think he really misses the boys. The Polydores, for all their scrappings, are very clannish. But how do you suppose he got down to Windy Creek?”
“He could catch plenty of rides along the way, but what is puzzling me is how he got the money to pay his fare.”
“He seemed very well provided with cash,” informed Rob. “I tried to pay for his ticket down here, but he insisted on buying it himself.”
Silvia worried so much about what might happen to him en route that after dinner I motored to Windy Creek with some tourists who had stopped at the hotel in passing.
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I called up long distance and after some delay got in communication with our house. Ptolemy himself answered and assured me he had arrived all “hunky doory”, that Huldah, who was out on an errand, was “hunky doory”, and that the kids were all “hunky doory.” In fact, his cheerful tone indicated that the whole universe was in the beatific state described by his expressive adjective.
I was really ripping mad at his taking French leave and so giving Silvia cause for her anxiety, but I forbore to reprimand him by word or tone, lest he get even by “coming back” literally. I did tell him how the loss of the note for twenty-four hours had caused a general excitement, but he felt no remorse for his share in the situation, blaming Diogenes entirely and bidding me “punch the kid’s face” for unpinning the note.
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On my return from Windy Creek I was fortunate enough to fall in with a farmer who lived near the hotel. He was driving some sort of a machine he called anautoo. He was an old-timer in the vicinity and related the past, present, and pluperfect of all the residents on the route. I had a detailed and vivid account of the midnight visitor of the haunted house.
“I’d jest naturally like to see what there is to it,” he said. “Not that I am afeerd at all, only it’s sort of spooky to go to a lonesome place like that all alone. If I could git some one to go with me, I’d tackle the job, but I vum if every time I perpose it to anyone they don’t make some excuse.”
“I’m on,” I declared. “I don’t dread ghosts near as much as I do some living folks I know.”
“Right you air,” chuckled the old man. “If you say so we’ll go right off now jest114as sure as shootin’. We may be ghosts ourselves tomorrow.”
I assured him I was quite ready to encounter the ghost, so he jubilantly turned the machine from the road into a grass-grown lane. We zigzagged for some distance and then got out and went on foot through a grove. The moon and the stars were half veiled by some light, misty clouds, so that the little house didn’t show up very clearly, but as we came to the top of the hill, we saw something that shook even my well-behaved nerves.
From a window in the roof-room extended a white arm and hand, with index finger pointing threateningly and directly toward us.
My farmer friend turned quickly and fled toward the grove. I followed fleetly. “What’s your rush?” I asked, when I had overtaken him.
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“I just happened to remember,” he explained gaspingly, “that there’s a pesky autoo thief in these ’ere parts. Bukins had his stole jest last night.”
The lights on his machine must have reassured him as to its safety when we emerged from the woods into the open, but he didn’t lessen his speed. We got in the “autoo” and soon said good-by to the lane. At one time I believed it was good-by to everything, but at last we gained the highway, right side up.
“Well!” I said, when we were running normally again on terra firma, “that was some little old ghost,––beckoned to us to come right in, too!”
“You seen it then!” he exclaimed excitedly. “I’m mighty glad I had an eyewitness. Folks wouldn’t believe me.”
“They probably won’t believe me, either,” I assured him. “I am a lawyer.”
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“You don’t tell me! Well, it did jest give me a start for a minute. I’d like to hev gone in and seen it nigh to, if I hadn’t happened to think of this ’ere autoo. You see I ain’t got it all paid for yet. I’m jest clean beat. You don’t mind my takin’ a leetle pull at a stone fence, do you?”
“I guess not,” I assented somewhat dubiously, however. “That was a rail fence we took a pull at back in the lane, wasn’t it? Of course, if we shouldn’t happen to clear the stone fence as well as we did the rail fence, it might be more disastrous.”
“Oh, land!” he said with a cackling laugh, “I ain’t meanin’ that kind of a fence. I mean the kind you––Say! You ain’t one of them teetotalers, be you?”
“Only in theory,” I replied, “but this stone fence drink is a new one on me. What’s it like?”
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He stopped the “autoo” and pulled a bottle from an inner pocket.
“You kin taste it better than I kin tell it,” he declared. “Take a pull––a condumned good one.”
I rarely imbibed, confining my indulgences to the demands of necessity, but I thought that the flight of Ptolemy, the ghostly encounter, and my Mazeppa––wild ride all combined to constitute an occasion adequate to call for a bracer in the shape of a stone fence, or anything he might produce.
I took what I considered a “condumned good one” from the bottle and it nearly strangled me, but I followed the aged stranger’s advice to take another to “cure the chokes” caused by the first one. On general principles I took a third and then reluctantly returned him the bottle.
“Here’s over the moon,” he jovially118exclaimed as he proceeded to make my attempt at a “condumned good one” appear most niggardly.
“May I ask,” I inquired when my feeling of nerve-tense strain had vanished, and I felt as if I were treading thin air, “just what is in a stone fence?”
“Well, what do you think?” he asked slyly.
“I think the very devil is in it,” I replied.
“Well, mebby,” he admitted. “It’s two-thirds hard cider and one-third whisky. It’s a healthy, hearting drink and yet it has a leetle come back to it––a sort o’ kick, you know. But this is where I live,” pointing to a farmhouse well back from the road, “but I am goin’ to run you on to your tavern though.”
The hotel was dark, save for a light in my room. I invited him in, but he was anxious to “git hum and tell the folks”,119so I gave him some cigars and went in to “tell my folks.”
I found them in the room waiting for me. That is, Beth was in the room, sitting by the table and pretending to read. Silvia and Rob were out in the little balcony. They came inside as soon as they heard my voice.
“Oh, was he there?” asked Silvia anxiously.
“Yes,” I replied. “He answered the telephone himself.”
I was feeling quite exhilarated by this time. My wife looked a perfect vision to me. Beth, I thought, was some sister, and Rob the best fellow in the world. Even the Polydores at long range, and under the ameliorating influence of stone fences, seemed like fine little fellows––rather active and strenuous, to be sure, but only as all wholesome children should be.
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Silvia was relieved at the announcement of Ptolemy’s safety, but very much disappointed that I did not succeed in interviewing Huldah and finding out something about domestic affairs.
I assured her that everything was “hunky doory” at home, praised the telephone service, my expedition to town, and painted my return ride with “the honest farmer” in glowing terms. I was suddenly halted in my eulogy by becoming aware of an amazed expression on my wife’s countenance, a most suspicious glance in Beth’s wide-open eyes, and a very knowing wink from Rob.
“Lucien,” said Silvia severely, “I believe you’ve been drinking. I certainly smell spirits.”
“Maybe you do,” I replied jocosely. “I certainly saw spirits. I went to the haunted house on my way back.”
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“I thought Windy Creek was a dry town,” remarked Rob innocently.
“It is,” I assured him, “but I rode home with an old man––a farmer.”
“Does he run a blind pig?” asked Rob.
“It was more like a pig in a poke,” I replied.
“Lucien,” exclaimed Silvia reproachfully, “you told me two years ago, after that banquet to the Bar, that you were never going to touch wine or whisky again. What did that horrid old man give you?”
“A stone fence. That’s what he said it was anyway.”
“It’s a new one on me,” commented Rob.
“There was a new toast went with it. He drank to ‘over the moon.’”
“You must have gone there all right and taken all the shine from the moon-man,” said Rob.
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“Lucien,” asked Beth, “did you really go to that haunted house?”
Again I was moved to eloquence, and I told of the farmer’s yearning, the fulfillment, the beckoning hand and the beating of the retreat at length.
“Are you sure,” asked Rob, “that you didn’t take that stone fence before you visited the haunted house?”
“I know,” I replied, loftily, “that a lawyer’s word is worthless, but seeing is believing. We will all visit the haunted house tomorrow night and I’ll make good on ghosts.”
This plan was unanimously approved, and then Silvia suggested that she thought I had better go to bed. I had no particular objection to doing so.
“Lucien,” she said solemnly, when we were alone, “I want you to promise me something. I want you to give me your123word that you will never take another stone wall.”
I did this most readily.
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Chapter IXIn Which We See Ghosts
The next morning Rob tried earnestly and vainly to drive a wedge in Beth’s good graces, but she treated him with a casual tolerance that finally put him in an ill humor which he took out on me with many a gibe at my “stone fence spirit.”
Men of my profession who have to deal with facts rather than fancy are not believers in the supernatural. I was sure that the extending arm and the beckoning125finger were there, but belonged to no ghost. It might have been a curtain blowing out the window or a fake of some kind. But I knew that unless there was some kind of a showing in a ghostly way that night, I should never hear the last of my stone fence indulgence, so I resolved to make a preliminary visit alone by daylight and rig up something white to substantiate my spectral narrative.
I didn’t find an opportunity to escape unseen until late in the afternoon, when I went, ostensibly, for a solitary row on the lake.
I landed and came by a circuitous route to the haunted house. The calm security of sunshine, of course, prevented any shivers of anticipation such as I had experienced the night before. On passing one of the windows on my way to the front entrance, I glanced in, stopped in sheer fright, stooped126and backed to the next window, which was screened by a labyrinth of vines through which I peered. I am sure I lost my Bloom of Youth complexion for a few moments. I babbled aimlessly to myself and then managed to pull together and beat it to the lake with as much speed as my farmer friend had shown in his retreat. I made the127boat and the hotel in double quick time.
I felt no misgivings now as to the promise of a sensation that night, and that sustaining thought was all that propped my flagging spirits throughout the day, but I resolved to keep my little party at safe distance from the house.
“Say we keep our nocturnal noctambulation under our hats,” proposed Rob.
When this proposition was translated to Silvia, she entirely approved, so, committing Diogenes to the Polydores’ Providence, we left the hotel at half past eleven for a row on the lake by moonlight.
When we descended the slope leading to the House of Mystery, I cautioned silence and a “safety-first” distance.
“Ghosts are easily vanished,” I informed them. “They don’t seek limelight, and I want you to be sure to see this one.”
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As we came to the untrodden undergrowth we heard a weird, wailing sound that would have curdled my blood had I not glanced in the window that afternoon and so, in a measure, been prepared for this––or anything.
“Look!” whispered Beth. “The arm!”
Silvia looked at the roof window and with a stifled shriek of terror turned and fled up the hill, Rob chivalrously pursuing her.
Beth was pale, but game.
“What can it be, Lucien?” she whispered. “Do we dare go in to see?”
“I wouldn’t, Beth,” I vetoed quickly. “Maybe some lunatic or half-witted person has taken up abode here.”
“Lucien!” called Rob peremptorily.
I turned quickly. He was at the top of the hill, half supporting Silvia. I ran toward them, followed by Beth.
“It isn’t a ghost, of course, Silvia,” I129said soothingly, and then repeated my supposition about the lunatic.
“Of course I don’t believe in ghosts,” said Silvia shudderingly, “but it’s an awful place and those sounds are like those I have heard in nightmares.”
“We’ll hurry back to the hotel and forget all about it,” I urged.
I rowed the boat and Silvia sat opposite me. Beth and Rob were in the stern and I had to listen to their conversation.
“Of course I felt a little creepy,” she admitted, “but then I like to feel that way, and I wasn’t afraid.”
“No, of course, you wouldn’t be,” he replied somewhat ironically. “You’re the new woman type.”
“No, I am not,” she denied. “I wish I were. Silvia’s really the strong-minded type.”
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“She didn’t act the part when she saw the ghost,” he retorted.
“It’s very unusual for her nerves to give way. Silvia’s quite a surprise to me this summer, but I think those funny Polydores have upset her more than Lucien realizes.”
I wondered if she were right, and once again murderous wishes toward the Polydores entered my brain, and I made renewed vows about disposing of them on our return home.
One thing, however, had been accomplished by our expedition. Silvia was more lenient in her judgment on my indulgences of the preceding night.
By the time we pulled in at the landing, Silvia had recovered her equilibrium.
“Lucien, what the devil do you suppose was in that house?” asked Rob, when we were putting up the boat.
“Loons and things,” I allowed.
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“But what was that white arm?”
“Some fake thing the village wag has put up to scare the natives.”
Next morning’s stage brought some new arrivals, and among them were two college students who at once were claimed by Beth. She played tennis with one and later went rowing with the other. Rob smoked and sulked, apart.
My farmer friend had been garrulous and rumors of the ghost and the haunted house had come to the ears of the hotel inmates, thereby causing a pleasurable stir of excitement. A number of them announced their intention of visiting the place. They asked me to be their guide, but I refused.
“It was interesting,” I said, “but I think it would be a bore to see the same ghost twice.”
“I am sure I don’t care to go again,” was132Silvia’s emphatic reply when asked to be one of the party.
“Ghosts are scientifically admitted and explained,” growled Rob, “so I don’t see anything to be excited about.”
Beth accepted the offer of escort of one of the students, so Silvia, Rob, and I remained at home. The night was quite cool, and we played cards in our room. When the party returned, Beth joined us. She looked rather out of sorts.
“Oh, yes,” she replied in answer to Silvia’s eager inquiry. “We saw the ghost. I don’t know whether it was the same little old last night’s ghost or a new one. He showed more of himself this time though. He had two arms and a veiled head out of the window. As soon as our crowd glimpsed it, they all fled quicker than we did last night. Those two students fell all over each other and left me in the lurch.”
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“What could you expect,” asked Rob, “from such ladylike things? They ought to be kept in the confines of the croquet ground. If they are a fair specimen of the kind you have met, no wonder you––”
He stopped abruptly.
“No wonder what?” she asked quickly.
“Nothing,” he replied glumly.
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When I came down to breakfast the next morning, the landlady in tears waylaid me.
“Oh, Mr. Wade,” she began in trouble-telling tone, “this affair about the ghost is going to hurt my business. Some of those folks say they are going home, and they will tell others and––”
“I’ll fix the ghost story. Just leave it to me!” I assured her optimistically, as we went into the dining-room.
There were only enough guests to fill one long table, and every one was excitedly dissecting the ghost.
I took my seat and also the floor.
“I hate to dispel your illusions,” I said cheerfully, “but the fact is, I made a daylight investigation of the haunted house. First I looked in the window and I saw––”
“Oh, what did you see?” chorused a dozen or more expectant voices.
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“A lot of––mice.”
“Oh!” came in disappointed and skeptical tones.
“But, the ghost, Mr. Wade?”
“Yes! The arms and the head?”
“A fake figure put up by some practical joker for the purpose of frightening timid people and encouraging the credulous. I didn’t want to spoil your little picnic, so I kept still.”
“Those sounds, Lucien!” reminded Silvia.
“Were from a cat chorus. They were prowling about the house.”
“You’re sure some lawyer, Mr. Wade,” doubtfully complimented my grateful landlady, as we went out of the room after breakfast.
“Lucien,” asked Robsotto voce, joining me on the veranda, “why don’t the cats you speak of catch that lot of mice?”
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Fortunately Beth came up to us, and I didn’t have to explain.
“Oh!” she said with a shudder. “I’ll never go near that awful place! I’d rather see a perfectly good ghost, or a loon, or a lunatic any day than a mouse.”
“You’re surely not afraid of a mouse!” exclaimed Rob.
“Why not?” she asked coolly as she walked on.
“I told you she was feminine,” I reminded him.
He shook his head.
“I can’t understand,” he remarked, “why a girl who is afraid of mice should be––”
“You don’t understand anything about women,” I interrupted.
“You’re right, Lucien. I don’t, but your sister is surely the greatest enigma of them all.”
I rented the stone fence farmer’s “autoo”137and took Silvia and Diogenes to a neighboring town that afternoon. We didn’t get back to the hotel until dinner time.
“What have you been up to all day, Rob?” I asked.
“Numerous things. For one, I strolled down to the haunted house.”
“What did you see?” cried the women.
“I saw four––”
“Ghosts?” asked Beth.
I shot him a warning glance.
“Young tomcats playing tag with the mice.”
I corralled Rob outside after dinner.
“For Heaven’s sake!” I implored. “Don’t disturb Silvia’s peace of mind. Did you go inside?”
“No; I was sorely tempted to, but refrained out of deference to the evident wishes of my host, but really, Lucien, we should––”
138
“I have only ten more days off, Rob. Don’t make any unpleasant suggestions.”
“I won’t,” he said promptly.
139
ChapterXIn Which We Make Some Discoveries
Diogenes, who, for a Polydore, had been quite placid since Ptolemy’s departure, caused a commotion by disappearing the next morning. As he was possessed of a deep desire to go in the lake and get a little snake, he had been, when not under strict surveillance, tied to a tree with enough leeway in the length of rope to allow him to play comfortably.
By some means he had managed to work himself loose from the rope and had evidently140followed Ptolemy’s example. I suggested calling up Huldah and asking if he had arrived yet, but I met with such chilling glances from Silvia and Beth that I got busy and organized searching parties, who reluctantly and lukewarmly engaged in the pursuit. Rob and I took the shore. After we had walked some little distance, we met a woman and stopped for inquiry. She said she had seen a child of about two years, clad in a blue and white striped dress and a big hat, going over the hill in company with a boy of about eight.
“Are you going on to the hotel?” I asked.
On her replying that she was, I told her to inform them that she had met me and that the lost child was located.
Rob and I then kept on over the hill, and when we neared the haunted house, we heard hair-raising sounds.