CHAPTER IIITHE SPOTTED GANDER
Theghost theory is bunk. Every big kid knows that.Ghosts?Pooh! Who could be crazy enough to believe in ghosts? That is what we say back and forth, thebigkids I mean, when the sun is doing its dinner-time stuff, high in the sky, and the nearest cemetery is six miles away.
But what happens when a white cow makes goo-goo eyes at us over a moonlit cemetery fence? Oh, boy! How we can cut the dust then. The only kid who ever beat me in a race like that was Spider Whickleberry, and his legs are so long that he modestly uses his pa’s white duck trousers for basketball pants. And even then the pants aren’t any too long for him!
Mebelieve in ghosts? Well, I should sa-ay not! But, to own up, what was the big thought in my mind right now?Ghosts, and nothing else but. Yes, sir, as crazy as it may seem to you, I actually believed in my excitement that therewasa ghost in the upper part of the house. And what more likely than the ghost of the man who had died here?
At first sight the lonely house had struck me asbeing queer. Not only in its unusual size, as it had towered in the moonlight, but in its desolate location, as well. Truly, had been my thought, no one but a queer-minded man could have wanted such a place.
Now I wondered if the dead man’s secrets were living after him. It would seem so. Br-r-r-r! Certainly, I told myself, the elderly spook had a nice gentle way of letting us know that it was on the job! I wondered further if the door slamming, so sharp and businesslike, wasn’t a gentle little hint for us to evaporate.
But the leader just laughed at me when I told him my thoughts. There was no such thing as ghosts, he argued. When people were dead they were dead—and once buried in the regular way that was the end of them so far as their earthly stunts were concerned.
“I’d sooner think,” says he, “that it’s tramps.”
“Tramps?” says I.
“Sure thing. They’ve had the house to themselves since it was closed. See? And the door slamming is a trick of theirs to scare the old people away.”
Mrs. Doane came away from the telephone with flashing eyes. It was Lawyer Chew of Neponset Corners, she told us, and we remembered then that Neponset Corners was the small town across the river from New Zion, on the other hard road where the automobiles were.
“He practically ordered me to leave here,” the indignant talker galloped along, “but until Miss Ruthherselftells me to get out I’m going to stay right ... where ... I ... am. The idea ofhim, whose grandfather was jailed for horse stealing, and, worse, almost lynched, ordering aDanveraround! My blood boils. Oh, the burden and humiliation of being a poor relation! But let him try to order Miss Ruth out of here and very probably she’ll tell him whatIhardly dared to tell him. For this is her house, though, of course, to a legal fine-point, she hasn’t a deed to ityet. But everybody in the family knows that her grandpa left her the keys, and certainly, as I tell Pa, when we speculate on whatweare likely to get, the old gentleman wouldn’t have ordered the keys turned over to her when he was dead and gone if he didn’t consider the place hers. Yet, even if she does inherit it—and we’ll know the truth in a day or two, when the will is read—what good will she get out of it? For who besides a recluse like Corbin Danver would want to live in a place like this?”
“It certainly is lonely enough,” says Poppy.
“Still,” the woman added quickly, “Iwould gladly take it if it were given tome. Yes, indeed. But I’m not Miss Ruth. WhileIcould live here if necessary, it would bore her to death, for she lovesgayety and excitement. And what is there gay and exciting aroundhere? Even the nearest town is a community of religious fanatics, who won’t look at a talking machine or an automobile. Anything that isn’t plain bread and butter and hard work is a worldly sin in their eyes.”
“She means New Zion,” Poppy nudged me.
“Of course, as I tell Pa, I haven’t any hopes of getting this place, being no closer kin than a cousin. In fact, to that point, I haven’t the slightest idea what I will get. I tried to pump Lawyer Chew the day of the funeral, for, of course, he knows what is in the will, being the family lawyer. But could I get anything out ofhim? No, indeed! Nor did any of the other relations, I venture to say. The seal of the will, he explained importantly—and if there’s anything I hate next to secrecy it’s over-importance!—was not to be broken for a year. I remember my feelings that day. In his lifetime Corbin Danver had been a deep man. Always thinking and scheming. I could tell you some very unusual stories about him. And knowing him so well, I realized that he had acted to a hidden purpose, both in giving his granddaughter the keys of his house and letting his will stand unread for a year. Yet, puzzle my brain as I would, I could think of no answer to the riddle. Nor did I, as I say, getany help from Mr. Tight-mouth Chew! I was to have patience, he told me dryly. In due time I would learn ifmyname were mentioned in the will.”
We were grinning now.
“Humph! I only hope, if Miss Ruth does inherit the bulk of the estate, as she has a right to do, that she gives that impudent-acting lawyer his walking papers. It rather surprised him, I think,” and by a warmer look in her eyes, and a wag of her head, the talker showed satisfaction now, “to learn that the granddaughter had sent me here to open up the house for her. He hadn’t much to say after I told him that. Maybe, though, I shouldn’t have mentioned it. For Miss Ruth said I was to come here quietly. Yet how was I going to explain my presence here except by telling him the truth?”
“Say, Mrs. Doane,” Poppy jumped in, when the long-distance talker put on the air brakes and stopped. “Jerry and I think we know what made that door slam.”
The woman’s jaw dropped, showing her false teeth, and for an instant she looked blank.
“The door!” she cried. Then she was herself again. “Laws-a-me!” and she started off at her usual snappy pace. “With Lawyer Chew trying to chase me out of here, I had forgotten all about the door.”
“Had you thought of tramps, Mrs. Doane?”
“Tramps? I’d sooner think it was spooks,” came bluntly.
“Atta-boy!” I yipped. “That’s exactly whatIthought, too.”
“But, Mrs. Doane,” argued old material mind, “there is no such thing as a real spook.”
“No?” came quietly, and the peculiar dry smile that jumped into the woman’s face, and out again, showed that she was holding something back. “Maybe,” she added, unable, I guess, to longer keep her secret, “if you kneweverythingthat has happened in this house since Pa and I came here you’d change your mind about spooks. I knowIhave. Doors slamming, footfalls in the dead of night, windows creaking in their slides, and every night thatqueer smellin the upper hall.”
Poppy was staring now.
“Queer smell?” he used her words. “What do you mean?”
“When we first came here,” the housekeeper ran on, only too glad of the chance, I guess, to tell her unusual story, “I thought I detected a peculiar smell in the house. Like drugs. But it seemed to go away when we let in fresh air. Then that night the door slammed. Pa and I had gone to bed. We got up, thinking that a window was open. But we couldfind no open windows. And in the hall I noticed that peculiar smell again, only stronger. I asked Pa if he noticed it. ‘A dead rat,’ says he. ‘No,’ says I sharply, ‘it isn’t a dead rat—it’s some kind of a drug.’ Well, we went back to bed again, finding everything all right, as I say. Then the next night the door slammed again. And there in the hall was that same peculiar smell. The third night Pa and I watched. But first we went around and locked all the doors. Yet at ten o’clock we heard the sound again. And trying the doors, we found that the one leading into the master’s chamber was unlocked.”
“And you’re sure you locked it?”
“I had toldPato lock it, but, as I say, you’re never sure of anythinghedoes. The fourth night, though,Ilocked the door myself.”
“And what happened?”
“We later found it wide open. And again that peculiar smell hung in the hall. Since then Pa and I have been locking ourselves in our room. Yet I never get to sleep until after ten o’clock. And always at the same hour, when the clock has struck ten, I hear the door slam. The last two nights we’ve heard other things, too—the creaking of windows, as I say, and even footfalls.”
“Well, I’ll be jiggered!” cried Poppy; then he got my eyes to see if I were as struck with excitement as he was.
“Paalways did believe in ghosts and the like,” the little old woman ran on, determined to tell all she knew. “Butme—it was a parcel of nonsense, I said. But now what can I say? I don’t know how much of the situation you’ve grasped from my talk—and I guess, if the truth is told, Idotalk an awful lot—still, I’m not ashamed of that trait, for it’s characteristic of the women on our side of the house. There was my Aunt Samantha, for whom I was named.Shewas a real talker, to my notion. Laws-a-me! How I enjoyed my visits with her before she got paralysis of the jaw. As I say, I don’t know how much of my talk you remember, rambling as it is, but I have tried to make you understand thatsomething queeris going on in this house. You say it’s tramps. I don’t believe it. For listen to this,” and the voice was mysteriously lowered. “When Corbin Danver died,” came slowly, “Iwas the first blood relative to get here. I wanted to have a final look at him, before the others came, to see if the undertaker had removed the two ugly warts on his nose, as was proper, I thought, but Dr. Madden, who since has been in Europe, said ‘no.’ He had reasons, he declared, more important than warts, for keeping the casket closed. This, coming on top of the old gentleman’s unusually sudden death, aroused my suspicions. And being of a determinednature—another Danver trait—I decided to see for myself. Nor did I even take Pa into my confidence. That night at twelve o’clock, with everybody else asleep, I crept downstairs.... I was sickened for a moment by a strangling odor.... You can see what I’m leading up to—every night since we have been here, at ten o’clock, the hour my relative died, that same smell seeps through the upper hall. A peculiar drug. I can’t name it. And however much I have scolded Pa in the past about his silly belief in spirits, I now find myself wondering if the body of Corbin Danver, saturated with that drug, is indeed coming back in spirit form. And to what purpose? Has he some message for me?—some instructions? If so, why doesn’t he come to me directly instead of slamming the door of his bedchamber night after night? And there is Miss Ruth.Whyis she coming here secretly? Some one must have sent for her. But who? And now, in final, I have Lawyer Chew’s ultimatum to get out of here promptly before the law puts me out. Oh,” and the woman threw up her thin hands, a hopeless look taking hold of her tired face, “it seems to me that a hundred things have happened since I came here to unnerve and bewilder me. And how glad I am to have you boys to talk to, you can’t imagine. I think I would go crazy if I had to be here alone very many hours.”
Poppy got around so he could whisper to me.
“Do you believe her story, Jerry?”
“Sure thing. Don’t you?”
“She may be cuckoo.”
“You’re cuckoo!”
His eyes began to dance.
“Oh, boy, if only we could sleep in the room where the old man died! The ‘ghost’ would get the surprise of his life, huh, when we yanked his sheet off?”
“I don’t like it,” I told him. But I wasn’t scared. No. Ready to stand by him, as a loyal chum should, what worried me, I guess, was the thought that I might not be gritty enough to do my part in some of the crazy situations that were sure to bob up if we started any of the “ghost-catching” business. For “ghost-catching,” let me tell you, even when the “ghost” is a man and not a real spook, is a mighty risky game, and nothing else but.
I’ll never forget our first trip into the upper rooms of the big house. At every step I expected something to grab me. We went up the big front staircase, through all the rooms, one after another, where we looked under the beds and in the closets, then down the smaller back stairs. We went through the attic, too, finding all kinds of trash there.
Poppy’s “tramp” theory exploded into thin air, we landed back in the kitchen at ten-thirty, havingused the small back staircase in coming down, as I say. Suddenly a fearful clatter came from the road.
“Listen!” cried the leader. Then he laughed. “Does it sound familiar to you, Jerry?”
“The Galloping Snail!” I yipped, scooting for the front door. Nor was I surprised to learn, after all, that the man we had seen on the road was the one this woman was watching for. Her talk about their “poor automobile” had put me wise, though it was a puzzle to me where the man had been all this time.
“It’s Pa and Miss Ruth!” the woman cried, taking after us. “They’ve come at last.”
Suddenly all sounds of the car ceased. And that was queer, we thought. Running down the moonlit graveled drive, we found the car on its side just outside the stone arch, where the driver, in poor work, had tried to swing out of the sandy ruts.
Thrown from the car, and getting his head cut, the old man was sort of staggering around like a groggy sailor. Then, before we could get to him, he keeled over in a dead faint.
“He’s hurt!” the woman cried, and though, with her white face, she looked as though she were going to keel over herself, she kept up. “Help me, and we’ll carry him into the house.”
Poppy wiped away the blood.
“It isn’t a deep cut, Mrs. Doane. He’ll be all right in a minute or two.”
It was then, I think, that the woman discovered that the car had brought only one passenger.
“Why!...” she cried in new alarm. “Where is Miss Ruth?”
The injured man began to mumble like one in a dream.
“Ma! Is that you, Ma?” and a fumbling hand felt around in the air.
“Pa, what have you done with Miss Ruth? Where is she?”
“Miss Ruth?” came vaguely.
“You went to the train to meet her. Where is she?”
“Miss Ruth?” the voice faltered, as its groggy owner, now sitting up, tried to explore his clogged mind for the truth. “Did—did I—I see Miss Ruth, Ma? I’ve plum furgot. It seems to me I did; an’ then it seems to me I didn’t. Now, Ma,” came whiningly, like a little kid begging off, “please don’t scold. You always scold. I guess I’ve furgot somethin’ ag’in. I’m always furgittin’ somethin’ or other. But I’ll go back an’ git it, if you’ll jest tell me what ’twas.”
The woman’s anger got the best of her sympathy.
“Ivor Doane! If you aren’t the dumbest numskull I ever heard tell of.” Then she seemed to go topieces. “Oh, dear!” she wailed, turning to us for help. “Do you suppose he has lost Miss Ruth somewhere along the road? What shall I do? What shall I do?”
Suddenly I felt something nip the calf of my leg. Boy, did I ever jump. And when I looked down, there was the injured man’s goose. It was wanting attention, I guess!
“The goose! The goose!” I yipped like a dumb-bell.
But Poppy had better eyes than me.
“It isn’t a goose, Jerry,” he told me quickly. “It’s a spotted gander.”