“Good night, merry gentlemen!”
In Indiana, I reflected, rustics, young or old, men or women, were probably not greatly given to salutations of just this temper.
Bates now appeared.
“Beg pardon, sir; but your room’s ready whenever you wish to retire.”
I looked about in search of a clock.
“There are no timepieces in the house, Mr. Glenarm. Your grandfather was quite opposed to them. He had a theory, sir, that they were conducive, as he said, to idleness. He considered that a man should work by his conscience, sir, and not by the clock,—the one being more exacting than the other.”
I smiled as I drew out my watch,—as much at Bates’ solemn tones and grim lean visage as at his quotation from my grandsire. But the fellow puzzled and annoyed me. His unobtrusive black clothes, his smoothly-brushed hair, his shaven face, awakened an antagonism in me.
“Bates, if you didn’t fire that shot through the window, who did—will you answer me that?”
“Yes, sir; if I didn’t do it, it’s quite a large question who did. I’ll grant you that, sir.”
I stared at him. He met my gaze directly without flinching; nor was there anything insolent in his tone or attitude. He continued:
“I didn’t do it, sir. I was in the pantry when I heard the crash in the refectory window. The bullet came from out of doors, as I should judge, sir.”
The facts and conclusions were undoubtedly with Bates, and I felt that I had not acquitted myself creditably in my effort to fix the crime on him. My abuse of him had been tactless, to say the least, and I now tried another line of attack.
“Of course, Bates, I was merely joking. What’s your own theory of the matter?”
“I have no theory, sir. Mr. Glenarm always warned me against theories. He said—if you will pardon me— there was great danger in the speculative mind.”
The man spoke with a slight Irish accent, which in itself puzzled me. I have always been attentive to the peculiarities of speech, and his was not the brogue of the Irish servant class. Larry Donovan, who was English-born, used on occasions an exaggerated Irish dialect that was wholly different from the smooth liquid tones of Bates. But more things than his speech were to puzzle me in this man.
“The person in the canoe? How do you account for her?” I asked.
“I haven’t accounted for her, sir. There’s no women on these grounds, or any sort of person except ourselves.”
“But there are neighbors,—farmers, people of some kind must live along the lake.”
“A few, sir; and then there’s the school quite a bit beyond your own west wall.”
His slight reference to my proprietorship, my own wall, as he put it, pleased me.
“Oh, yes; there is a school—girls?—yes; Mr. Pickering mentioned it. But the girls hardly paddle on the lake at night, at this season—hunting ducks—should you say, Bates?”
“I don’t believe they do any shooting, Mr. Glenarm. It’s a pretty strict school, I judge, sir, from all accounts.”
“And the teachers—they are all women?”
“They’re the Sisters of St. Agatha, I believe they call them. I sometimes see them walking abroad. They’re very quiet neighbors, and they go away in the summer usually, except Sister Theresa. The school’s her regular home, sir. And there’s the little chapel quite near the wall; the young minister lives there; and the gardener’s the only other man on the grounds.”
So my immediate neighbors were Protestant nuns and school-girls, with a chaplain and gardener thrown in for variety. Still, the chaplain might be a social resource. There was nothing in the terms of my grandfather’s will to prevent my cultivating the acquaintance of a clergyman. It even occurred to me that this might be a part of the game: my soul was to be watched over by a rural priest, while, there being nothing else to do, I was to give my attention to the study of architecture. Bates, my guard and housekeeper, was brushing the hearth with deliberate care.
“Show me my cell,” I said, rising, “and I’ll go to bed.”
He brought from somewhere a great brass candelabrum that held a dozen lights, and explained:
“This was Mr. Glenarm’s habit. He always used this one to go to bed with. I’m sure he’d wish you to have it, sir.”
I thought I detected something like a quaver in the man’s voice. My grandfather’s memory was dear to him. I reflected, and I was moved to compassion for him.
“How long were you with Mr. Glenarm, Bates?” I inquired, as I followed him into the hall.
“Five years, sir. He employed me the year you went abroad. I remember very well his speaking of it. He greatly admired you, sir.”
He led the way, holding the cluster of lights high for my guidance up the broad stairway.
The hall above shared the generous lines of the whole house, but the walls were white and hard to the eye. Rough planks had been laid down for a floor, and beyond the light of the candles lay a dark region that gave out ghostly echoes as the loose boards rattled under our feet.
“I hope you’ll not be too much disappointed, sir,” said Bates, pausing a moment before opening a door. “It’s all quite unfinished, but comfortable, I should say, quite comfortable.”
“Open the door!”
He was not my host and I did not relish his apology. I walked past him into a small sitting-room that was, in a way, a miniature of the great library below. Open shelves filled with books lined the apartment to the ceiling on every hand, save where a small fireplace, a cabinet and table were built into the walls. In the center of the room was a long table with writing materials set in nice order. I opened a handsome case and found that it contained a set of draftsman’s instruments.
I groaned aloud.
“Mr. Glenarm preferred this room for working. The tools were his very own, sir.”
“The devil they were!” I exclaimed irascibly. I snatched a book from the nearest shelf and threw it open on the table. It wasThe Tower: Its Early Use for Purposes of Defense. London: 1816.
I closed it with a slam.
“The sleeping-room is beyond, sir. I hope—”
“Don’t you hope any more!” I growled; “and it doesn’t make any difference whether I’m disappointed or not.”
“Certainly not, sir!” he replied in a tone that made me ashamed of myself.
The adjoining bedroom was small and meagerly furnished. The walls were untinted and were relieved only by prints of English cathedrals, French chateaux, and like suggestions of the best things known to architecture. The bed was the commonest iron type; and the other articles of furniture were chosen with a strict regard for utility. My trunks and bags had been carried in, and Bates asked from the door for my commands.
“Mr. Glenarm always breakfasted at seven-thirty, sir, as near as he could hit it without a timepiece, and he was quite punctual. His ways were a little odd, sir. He used to prowl about at night a good deal, and there was no following him.”
“I fancy I shan’t do much prowling,” I declared. “And my grandfather’s breakfast hour will suit me exactly, Bates.”
“If there’s nothing further, sir—”
“That’s all;—and Bates—”
“Yes, Mr. Glenarm.”
“Of course you understand that I didn’t really mean to imply that you had fired that shot at me?”
“I beg you not to mention it, Mr. Glenarm.”
“But it was a little queer. If you should gain any light on the subject, let me know.”
“Certainly, sir.”
“But I believe, Bates, that we’d better keep the shades down at night. These duck hunters hereabouts are apparently reckless. And you might attend to these now, —and every evening hereafter.”
I wound my watch as he obeyed. I admit that in my heart I still half-suspected the fellow of complicity with the person who had fired at me through the dining-room window. It was rather odd, I reflected, that the shades should have been open, though I might account for this by the fact that this curious unfinished establishment was not subject to the usual laws governing orderly housekeeping. Bates was evidently aware of my suspicions, and he remarked, drawing down the last of the plain green shades:
“Mr. Glenarm never drew them, sir. It was a saying of his, if I may repeat his words, that he liked the open. These are eastern windows, and he took a quiet pleasure in letting the light waken him. It was one of his oddities, sir.”
“To be sure. That’s all, Bates.”
He gravely bade me good night, and I followed him to the outer door and watched his departing figure, lighted by a single candle that he had produced from his pocket.
I stood for several minutes listening to his step, tracing it through the hall below—as far as my knowledge of the house would permit. Then, in unknown regions, I could hear the closing of doors and drawing of bolts. Verily, my jailer was a person of painstaking habits.
I opened my traveling-case and distributed its contents on the dressing-table. I had carried through all my adventures a folding leather photograph-holder, containing portraits of my father and mother and of John Marshall Glenarm, my grandfather, and this I set up on the mantel in the little sitting-room. I felt to-night as never before how alone I was in the world, and a need for companionship and sympathy stirred in me. It was with a new and curious interest that I peered into my grandfather’s shrewd old eyes. He used to come and go fitfully at my father’s house; but my father had displeased him in various ways that I need not recite, and my father’s death had left me with an estrangement which I had widened by my own acts.
Now that I had reached Glenarm, my mind reverted to Pickering’s estimate of the value of my grandfather’s estate. Although John Marshall Glenarm was an eccentric man, he had been able to accumulate a large fortune; and yet I had allowed the executor to tell me that he had died comparatively poor. In so readily accepting the terms of the will and burying myself in a region of which I knew nothing, I had cut myself off from the usual channels of counsel. If I left the place to return to New York I should simply disinherit myself. At Glenarm I was, and there I must remain to the end of the year; I grew bitter against Pickering as I reflected upon the ease with which he had got rid of me. I had always satisfied myself that my wits were as keen as his, but I wondered now whether I had not stupidly put myself in his power.
I looked out on the bright October morning with a renewed sense of isolation. Trees crowded about my windows, many of them still wearing their festal colors, scarlet and brown and gold, with the bright green of some sulking companion standing out here and there with startling vividness. I put on an old corduroy outing suit and heavy shoes, ready for a tramp abroad, and went below.
The great library seemed larger than ever when I beheld it in the morning light. I opened one of the French windows and stepped out on a stone terrace, where I gained a fair view of the exterior of the house, which proved to be a modified Tudor, with battlements and two towers. One of the latter was only half-finished, and to it and to other parts of the house the workmen’s scaffolding still clung. Heaps of stone and piles of lumber were scattered about in great disorder. The house extended partly along the edge of a ravine, through which a slender creek ran toward the lake. The terrace became a broad balcony immediately outside the library, and beneath it the water bubbled pleasantly around heavy stone pillars. Two pretty rustic bridges spanned the ravine, one near the front entrance, the other at the rear. My grandfather had begun his house on a generous plan, but, buried as it was among the trees, it suffered from lack of perspective. However, on one side toward the lake was a fair meadow, broken by a water-tower, and just beyond the west dividing wall I saw a little chapel; and still farther, in the same direction, the outlines of the buildings of St. Agatha’s were vaguely perceptible in another strip of woodland.
The thought of gentle nuns and school-girls as neighbors amused me. All I asked was that they should keep to their own side of the wall.
I heard behind me the careful step of Bates.
“Good morning, Mr. Glenarm. I trust you rested quite well, sir.”
His figure was as austere, his tone as respectful and colorless as by night. The morning light gave him a pallid cast. He suffered my examination coolly enough; his eyes were, indeed, the best thing about him.
“This is what Mr. Glenarm called the platform. I believe it’s inHamlet, sir.”
I laughed aloud. “Elsinore: A Platform Before the Castle.”
“It was one of Mr. Glenarm’s little fancies, you might call it, sir.”
“And the ghost,—where does the murdered majesty of Denmark lie by day?”
“I fear it wasn’t provided, sir! As you see, Mr. Glenarm, the house is quite incomplete. My late master had not carried out all his plans.”
Bates did not smile. I fancied he never smiled, and I wondered whether John Marshall Glenarm had played upon the man’s lack of humor. My grandfather had been possessed of a certain grim, ironical gift at jesting, and quite likely he had amused himself by experimenting upon his serving man.
“You may breakfast when you like, sir,”—and thus admonished I went into the refectory.
A newspaper lay at my plate; it was the morning’s issue of a Chicago daily. I was, then, not wholly out of the world, I reflected, scanning the head-lines.
“Your grandfather rarely examined the paper. Mr. Glenarm was more particularly interested in the old times. He wasn’t what you might call up to date,—if you will pardon the expression, sir.”
“You are quite right about that, Bates. He was a medievalist in his sympathies.”
“Thank you for that word, sir; I’ve frequently heard him apply it to himself. The plain omelette was a great favorite with your grandfather. I hope it is to your liking, sir.”
“It’s excellent, Bates. And your coffee is beyond praise.”
“Thank you, Mr. Glenarm. One does what one can, sir.”
He had placed me so that I faced the windows, an attention to my comfort and safety which I appreciated. The broken pane told the tale of the shot that had so narrowly missed me the night before.
“I’ll repair that to-day, sir,” Bates remarked, seeing my eyes upon the window.
“You know that I’m to spend a year on this place; I assume that you understand the circumstances,” I said, feeling it wise that we should understand each other.
“Quite so, Mr. Glenarm.”
“I’m a student, you know, and all I want is to be left alone.”
This I threw in to reassure myself rather than for his information. It was just as well, I reflected, to assert a little authority, even though the fellow undoubtedly represented Pickering and received orders from him.
“In a day or two, or as soon as I have got used to the place, I shall settle down to work in the library. You may give me breakfast at seven-thirty; luncheon at one-thirty and dinner at seven.”
“Those were my late master’s hours, sir.”
“Very good. And I’ll eat anything you please, except mutton broth, meat pie and canned strawberries. Strawberries in tins, Bates, are not well calculated to lift the spirit of man.”
“I quite agree with you, sir, if you will pardon my opinion.”
“And the bills—”
“They are provided for by Mr. Pickering. He sends me an allowance for the household expenses.”
“So you are to report to him, are you, as heretofore?”
I blew out a match with which I had lighted a cigar and watched the smoking end intently.
“I believe that’s the idea, sir.”
It is not pleasant to be under compulsion,—to feel your freedom curtailed, to be conscious of espionage. I rose without a word and went into the hall.
“You may like to have the keys,” said Bates, following me. “There’s two for the gates in the outer wall and one for the St. Agatha’s gate; they’re marked, as you see. And here’s the hall-door key and the boat-house key that you asked for last night.”
After an hour spent in unpacking I went out into the grounds. I had thought it well to wire Pickering of my arrival, and I set out for Annandale to send him a telegram. My spirit lightened under the influences of the crisp air and cheering sunshine. What had seemed strange and shadowy at night was clear enough by day.
I found the gate through which we had entered the grounds the night before without difficulty. The stone wall was assuredly no flimsy thing. It was built in a thoroughly workmanlike manner, and I mentally computed its probable cost with amazement. There were, I reflected, much more satisfactory ways of spending money than in building walls around Indiana forests. But the place was mine, or as good as mine, and there was no manner of use in quarreling with the whims of my dead grandfather. At the expiration of a year I could tear down the wall if I pleased; and as to the incomplete house, that I should sell or remodel to my liking.
On the whole, I settled into an amiable state of mind; my perplexity over the shot of the night before was passing away under the benign influences of blue sky and warm sunshine. A few farm-folk passed me in the highway and gave me good morning in the fashion of the country, inspecting my knickerbockers at the same time with frank disapproval. I reached the lake and gazed out upon its quiet waters with satisfaction. At the foot of Annandale’s main street was a dock where several small steam-craft and a number of catboats were being dismantled for the winter. As I passed, a man approached the dock in a skiff, landed and tied his boat. He started toward the village at a quick pace, but turned and eyed me with rustic directness.
“Good morning!” I said. “Any ducks about?”
He paused, nodded and fell into step with me.
“No,—not enough to pay for the trouble.”
“I’m sorry for that. I’d hoped to pick up a few.”
“I guess you’re a stranger in these parts,” he remarked, eying me again,—my knickerbockers no doubt marking me as an alien.
“Quite so. My name is Glenarm, and I’ve just come.”
“I thought you might be him. We’ve rather been expecting you here in the village. I’m John Morgan, caretaker of the resorters’ houses up the lake.”
“I suppose you all knew my grandfather hereabouts.”
“Well, yes; you might say as we did, or you might say as we didn’t. He wasn’t just the sort that you got next to in a hurry. He kept pretty much to himself. He built a wall there to keep us out, but he needn’t have troubled himself. We’re not the kind around here to meddle, and you may be sure the summer people never bothered him.”
There was a tone of resentment in his voice, and I hastened to say:
“I’m sure you’re mistaken about the purposes of that wall. My grandfather was a student of architecture. It was a hobby of his. The house and wall were in the line of his experiments, and to please his whims. I hope the people of the village won’t hold any hard feelings against his memory or against me. Why, the labor there must have been a good thing for the people hereabouts.”
“It ought to have been,” said the man gruffly; “but that’s where the trouble comes in. He brought a lot of queer fellows here under contract to work for him, Italians, or Greeks, or some sort of foreigners. They built the wall, and he had them at work inside for half a year. He didn’t even let them out for air; and when they finished his job he loaded ’em on to a train one day and hauled ’em away.”
“That was quite like him, I’m sure,” I said, remembering with amusement my grandfather’s secretive ways.
“I guess he was a crank all right,” said the man conclusively.
It was evident that he did not care to establish friendly relations with the resident of Glenarm. He was about forty, light, with a yellow beard and pale blue eyes. He was dressed roughly and wore a shabby soft hat.
“Well, I suppose I’ll have to assume responsibility for him and his acts,” I remarked, piqued by the fellow’s surliness.
We had reached the center of the village, and he left me abruptly, crossing the street to one of the shops. I continued on to the railway station, where I wrote and paid for my message. The station-master inspected me carefully as I searched my pockets for change.
“You want your telegrams delivered at the house?” he asked.
“Yes, please,” I answered, and he turned away to his desk of clicking instruments without looking at me again.
It seemed wise to establish relations with the post-office, so I made myself known to the girl who stood at the delivery window.
“You already have a box,” she advised me. “There’s a boy carries the mail to your house; Mr. Bates hires him.”
Bates had himself given me this information, but the girl seemed to find pleasure in imparting it with a certain severity. I then bought a cake of soap at the principal drug store and purchased a package of smoking-tobacco, which I did not need, at a grocery.
News of my arrival had evidently reached the villagers; I was conceited enough to imagine that my presence was probably of interest to them; but the station-master, the girl at the post-office and the clerks in the shops treated me with an unmistakable cold reserve. There was a certain evenness of the chill which they visited upon me, as though a particular degree of frigidity had been determined in advance.
I shrugged my shoulders and turned toward Glenarm. My grandfather had left me a cheerful legacy of distrust among my neighbors, the result, probably, of importing foreign labor to work on his house. The surly Morgan had intimated as much; but it did not greatly matter. I had not come to Glenarm to cultivate the rustics, but to fulfil certain obligations laid down in my grandfather’s will. I was, so to speak, on duty, and I much preferred that the villagers should let me alone. Comforting myself with these reflections I reached the wharf, where I saw Morgan sitting with his feet dangling over the water, smoking a pipe.
I nodded in his direction, but he feigned not to see me. A moment later he jumped into his boat and rowed out into the lake.
When I returned to the house Bates was at work in the kitchen. This was a large square room with heavy timbers showing in the walls and low ceiling. There was a great fireplace having an enormous chimney and fitted with a crane and bobs, but for practical purposes a small range was provided.
Bates received me placidly.
“Yes; it’s an unusual kitchen, sir. Mr. Glenarm copied it from an old kitchen in England. He took quite a pride in it. It’s a pleasant place to sit in the evening, sir.”
He showed me the way below, where I found that the cellar extended under every part of the house, and was divided into large chambers. The door of one of them was of heavy oak, bound in iron, with a barred opening at the top. A great iron hasp with a heavy padlock and grilled area windows gave further the impression of a cell, and I fear that at this, as at many other things in the curious house, I swore—if I did not laugh—thinking of the money my grandfather had expended in realizing his whims. The room was used, I noted with pleasure, as a depository for potatoes. I asked Bates whether he knew my grandfather’s purpose in providing a cell in his house.
“That, sir, was another of the dead master’s ideas. He remarked to me once that it was just as well to have a dungeon in a well-appointed house,—his humor again, sir! And it comes in quite handy for the potatoes.”
In another room I found a curious collection of lanterns of every conceivable description, grouped on shelves, and next door to this was a store-room filled with brass candlesticks of many odd designs. I shall not undertake to describe my sensations as, peering about with a candle in my hand, the vagaries of John Marshall Glenarm’s mind were further disclosed to me. It was almost beyond belief that any man with such whims should ever have had the money to gratify them.
I returned to the main floor and studied the titles of the books in the library, finally smoking a pipe over a very tedious chapter in an exceedingly dull work onNorman Revivals and Influences. Then I went out, assuring myself that I should get steadily to work in a day or two. It was not yet eleven o’clock, and time was sure to move deliberately within the stone walls of my prison. The long winter lay before me in which I must study perforce, and just now it was pleasant to view the landscape in all its autumn splendor.
Bates was soberly chopping wood at a rough pile of timber at the rear of the house. His industry had already impressed me. He had the quiet ways of an ideal serving man.
“Well, Bates, you don’t intend to let me freeze to death, do you? There must be enough in the pile there to last all winter.”
“Yes, sir; I am just cutting a little more of the hickory, sir. Mr. Glenarm always preferred it to beech or maple. We only take out the old timber. The summer storms eat into the wood pretty bad, sir.”
“Oh, hickory, to be sure! I’ve heard it’s the best firewood. That’s very thoughtful of you.”
I turned next to the unfinished tower in the meadow, from which a windmill pumped water to the house. The iron frame was not wholly covered with stone, but material for the remainder of the work lay scattered at the base. I went on through the wood to the lake and inspected the boat-house. It was far more pretentious than I had imagined from my visit in the dark. It was of two stories, the upper half being a cozy lounging-room, with wide windows and a fine outlook over the water. The unplastered walls were hung with Indian blankets; lounging-chairs and a broad seat under the windows, colored matting on the floor and a few prints pinned upon the Navajoes gave further color to the place.
I followed the pebbly shore to the stone wall where it marked the line of the school-grounds. The wall, I observed, was of the same solid character here as along the road. I tramped beside it, reflecting that my grandfather’s estate, in the heart of the Republic, would some day give the lie to foreign complaints that we have no ruins in America.
I had assumed that there was no opening in the wall, but half-way to the road I found an iron gate, fastened with chain and padlock, by means of which I climbed to the top. The pillars at either side of the gate were of huge dimensions and were higher than I could reach. An intelligent forester had cleared the wood in the school-grounds, which were of the same general character as the Glenarm estate. The little Gothic church near at hand was built of stone similar to that used in Glenarm House. As I surveyed the scene a number of young women came from one of the school-buildings and, forming in twos and fours, walked back and forth in a rough path that led to the chapel. A Sister clad in a brown habit lingered near or walked first with one and then another of the students. It was all very pretty and interesting and not at all the ugly school for paupers I had expected to find. The students were not the charity children I had carelessly pictured; they were not so young, for one thing, and they seemed to be appareled decently enough.
I smiled to find myself adjusting my scarf and straightening my collar as I beheld my neighbors for the first time.
As I sat thus on the wall I heard the sound of angry voices back of me on the Glenarm side, and a crash of underbrush marked a flight and pursuit. I crouched down on the wall and waited. In a moment a man plunged through the wood and stumbled over a low-hanging vine and fell, not ten yards from where I lay. To my great surprise it was Morgan, my acquaintance of the morning. He rose, cursed his ill luck and, hugging the wall close, ran toward the lake. Instantly the pursuer broke into view. It was Bates, evidently much excited and with an ugly cut across his forehead. He carried a heavy club, and, after listening for a moment for sounds of the enemy, he hurried after the caretaker.
It was not my row, though I must say it quickened my curiosity. I straightened myself out, threw my legs over the school side of the wall and lighted a cigar, feeling cheered by the opportunity the stone barricade offered for observing the world.
As I looked off toward the little church I found two other actors appearing on the scene. A girl stood in a little opening of the wood, talking to a man. Her hands were thrust into the pockets of her covert coat; she wore a red tam-o’-shanter, that made a bright bit of color in the wood. They were not more than twenty feet away, but a wild growth of young maples lay between us, screening the wall. Their profiles were toward me, and the tones of the girl’s voice reached me clearly, as she addressed her companion. He wore a clergyman’s high waistcoat, and I assumed that he was the chaplain whom Bates had mentioned. I am not by nature an eavesdropper, but the girl was clearly making a plea of some kind, and the chaplain’s stalwart figure awoke in me an antagonism that held me to the wall.
“If he comes here I shall go away, so you may as well understand it and tell him. I shan’t see him under any circumstances, and I’m not going to Florida or California or anywhere else in a private car, no matter who chaperones it.”
“Certainly not, unless you want to—certainly not,” said the chaplain. “You understand that I’m only giving you his message. He thought it best—”
“Not to write to me or to Sister Theresa!” interrupted the girl contemptuously. “What a clever man he is!”
“And how unclever I am!” said the clergyman, laughing. “Well, I thank you for giving me the opportunity to present his message.”
She smiled, nodded and turned swiftly toward the school. The chaplain looked after her for a few moments, then walked away soberly toward the lake. He was a young fellow, clean-shaven and dark, and with a pair of shoulders that gave me a twinge of envy. I could not guess how great a factor that vigorous figure was to be in my own affairs. As I swung down from the wall and walked toward Glenarm House, my thoughts were not with the athletic chaplain, but with the girl, whose youth was, I reflected, marked by her short skirt, the unconcern with which her hands were thrust into the pockets of her coat, and the irresponsible tilt of the tam-o’-shanter. There is something jaunty, a suggestion of spirit and independence in a tam-o’-shanter, particularly a red one. If the red tam-o’-shanter expressed, so to speak, the key-note of St. Agatha’s, the proximity of the school was not so bad a thing after all.
In high good-humor and with a sharp appetite I went in to luncheon.
“The persimmons are off the place, sir. Mr. Glenarm was very fond of the fruit.”
I had never seen a persimmon before, but I was in a mood for experiment. The frost-broken rind was certainly forbidding, but the rich pulp brought a surprise of joy to my palate. Bates watched me with respectful satisfaction. His gravity was in no degree diminished by the presence of a neat strip of flesh-colored court-plaster over his right eye. A faint suggestion of arnica hung in the air.
“This is a quiet life,” I remarked, wishing to give him an opportunity to explain his encounter of the morning.
“You are quite right, sir. As your grandfather used to say, it’s a place of peace.”
“When nobody shoots at you through a window,” I suggested.
“Such a thing is likely to happen to any gentleman,” he replied, “but not likely to happen more than once, if you’ll allow the philosophy.”
He did not refer to his encounter with the caretaker, and I resolved to keep my knowledge of it to myself. I always prefer to let a rascal hang himself, and here was a case, I reasoned, where, if Bates were disloyal to the duties Pickering had imposed upon him, the fact of his perfidy was bound to disclose itself eventually. Glancing around at him when he was off guard I surprised a look of utter dejection upon his face as he stood with folded arms behind my chair.
He flushed and started, then put his hand to his forehead.
“I met with a slight accident this morning, sir. The hickory’s very tough, sir. A piece of wood flew up and struck me.”
“Too bad!” I said with sympathy. “You’d better rest a bit this afternoon.”
“Thank you, sir; but it’s a small matter,—only, you might think it a trifle disfiguring.”
He struck a match for my cigarette, and I left without looking at him again. But as I crossed the threshold of the library I formulated this note: “Bates is a liar, for one thing, and a person with active enemies for another; watch him.”
All things considered, the day was passing well enough. I picked up a book, and threw myself on a comfortable divan to smoke and reflect before continuing my explorations. As I lay there, Bates brought me a telegram, a reply to my message to Pickering. It read:
“Yours announcing arrival received and filed.”
It was certainly a queer business, my errand to Glenarm. I lay for a couple of hours dreaming, and counted the candles in the great crystal chandelier until my eyes ached. Then I rose, took my cap, and was soon tramping off toward the lake.
There were several small boats and a naphtha launch in the boat-house. I dropped a canoe into the water and paddled off toward the summer colony, whose gables and chimneys were plainly visible from the Glenarm shore.
I landed and roamed idly over leaf-strewn walks past nearly a hundred cottages, to whose windows and verandas the winter blinds gave a dreary and inhospitable air. There was, at one point, a casino, whose broad veranda hung over the edge of the lake, while beneath, on the water-side, was a boat-house. I had from this point a fine view of the lake, and I took advantage of it to fix in my mind the topography of the region. I could see the bold outlines of Glenarm House and its red-tile roofs; and the gray tower of the little chapel beyond the wall rose above the wood with a placid dignity. Above the trees everywhere hung the shadowy smoke of autumn.
I walked back to the wharf, where I had left my canoe, and was about to step into it when I saw, rocking at a similar landing-place near-by, another slight craft of the same type as my own, but painted dark maroon. I was sure the canoe had not been there when I landed. Possibly it belonged to Morgan, the caretaker. I walked over and examined it. I even lifted it slightly in the water to test its weight. The paddle lay on the dock beside me and it, too, I weighed critically, deciding that it was a trifle light for my own taste.
“Please—if you don’t mind—”
I turned to stand face to face with the girl in the red tam-o’-shanter.
“I beg your pardon,” I said, stepping away from the canoe.
She did not wear the covert coat of the morning, but a red knit jacket, buttoned tight about her. She was young with every emphasis of youth. A pair of dark blue eyes examined me with good-humored curiosity. She was on good terms with the sun—I rejoiced in the brown of her cheeks, so eloquent of companionship with the outdoor world—a certificate indeed of the favor of Heaven. Show me, in October, a girl with a face of tan, whose hands have plied a paddle or driven a golf-ball or cast a fly beneath the blue arches of summer, and I will suffer her scorn in joy. She may vote me dull and refute my wisest word with laughter, for hers are the privileges of the sisterhood of Diana; and that soft bronze, those daring fugitive freckles beneath her eyes, link her to times when Pan whistled upon his reed and all the days were long.
She had approached silently and was enjoying, I felt sure, my discomfiture at being taken unawares.
I had snatched off my cap and stood waiting beside the canoe, feeling, I must admit, a trifle guilty at being caught in the unwarrantable inspection of another person’s property—particularly a person so wholly pleasing to the eye.
“Really, if you don’t need that paddle any more—”
I looked down and found to my annoyance that I held it in my hand,—was in fact leaning upon it with a cool air of proprietorship.
“Again, I beg your pardon,” I said. “I hadn’t expected—”
She eyed me calmly with the stare of the child that arrives at a drawing-room door by mistake and scrutinizes the guests without awe. I didn’t know what I had expected or had not expected, and she manifested no intention of helping me to explain. Her short skirt suggested fifteen or sixteen—not more—and such being the case there was no reason why I should not be master of the situation. As I fumbled my pipe the hot coals of tobacco burned my hand and I cast the thing from me.
She laughed a little and watched the pipe bound from the dock into the water.
“Too bad!” she said, her eyes upon it; “but if you hurry you may get it before it floats away.”
“Thank you for the suggestion,” I said. But I did not relish the idea of kneeling on the dock to fish for a pipe before a strange school-girl who was, I felt sure, anxious to laugh at me.
She took a step toward the line by which her boat was fastened.
“Allow me.”
“If you think you can,—safely,” she said; and the laughter that lurked in her eyes annoyed me.
“The feminine knot is designed for the confusion of man,” I observed, twitching vainly at the rope, which was tied securely in unfamiliar loops.
She was singularly unresponsive. The thought that she was probably laughing at my clumsiness did not make my fingers more nimble.
“The nautical instructor at St. Agatha’s is undoubtedly a woman. This knot must come in the post-graduate course. But my gallantry is equal, I trust, to your patience.”
The maid in the red tam-o’-shanter continued silent. The wet rope was obdurate, the knot more and more hopeless, and my efforts to make light of the situation awakened no response in the girl. I tugged away at the rope, attacking its tangle on various theories.
“A case for surgery, I’m afraid. A truly Gordian knot, but I haven’t my knife.”
“Oh, but you wouldn’t!” she exclaimed. “I think I can manage.”
She bent down—I was aware that the sleeve of her jacket brushed my shoulder—seized an end that I had ignored, gave it a sharp tug with a slim brown hand and pulled the knot free.
“There!” she exclaimed with a little laugh; “I might have saved you all the bother.”
“How dull of me! But I didn’t have the combination,” I said, steadying the canoe carefully to mitigate the ignominy of my failure.
She scorned the hand I extended, but embarked with light confident step and took the paddle. It was growing late. The shadows in the wood were deepening; a chill crept over the water, and, beyond the tower of the chapel, the sky was bright with the splendor of sunset.
With a few skilful strokes she brought her little craft beside my pipe, picked it up and tossed it to the wharf.
“Perhaps you can pipe a tune upon it,” she said, dipping the paddle tentatively.
“You put me under great obligations,” I declared. “Are all the girls at St. Agatha’s as amiable?”
“I should say not! I’m a great exception,—and—I really shouldn’t be talking to you at all! It’s against the rules! And we don’t encourage smoking.”
“The chaplain doesn’t smoke, I suppose.”
“Not in chapel; I believe it isn’t done! And we rarely see him elsewhere.”
She had idled with the paddle so far, but now lifted her eyes and drew back the blade for a long stroke.
“But in the wood—this morning—by the wall!”
I hate myself to this day for having so startled her. The poised blade dropped into the water with a splash; she brought the canoe a trifle nearer to the wharf with an almost imperceptible stroke, and turned toward me with wonder and dismay in her eyes.
“So you are an eavesdropper and detective, are you? I beg that you will give your master my compliments! I really owe you an apology; Ithoughtyou were a gentleman!” she exclaimed with withering emphasis, and dipped her blade deep in flight.
I called, stammering incoherently, after her, but her light argosy skimmed the water steadily. The paddle rose and fell with trained precision, making scarcely a ripple as she stole softly away toward the fairy towers of the sunset. I stood looking after her, goaded with self-contempt. A glory of yellow and red filled the west. Suddenly the wind moaned in the wood behind the line of cottages, swept over me and rippled the surface of the lake. I watched its flight until it caught her canoe and I marked the flimsy craft’s quick response, as the shaken waters bore her alert figure upward on the swell, her blade still maintaining its regular dip, until she disappeared behind a little peninsula that made a harbor near the school grounds.
The red tam-o’-shanter seemed at last to merge in the red sky, and I turned to my canoe and paddled cheerlessly home.
I was so thoroughly angry with myself that after idling along the shores for an hour I lost my way in the dark wood when I landed and brought up at the rear door used by Bates for communication with the villagers who supplied us with provender. I readily found my way to the kitchen and to a flight of stairs beyond, which connected the first and second floors. The house was dark, and my good spirits were not increased as I stumbled up the unfamiliar way in the dark, with, I fear, a malediction upon my grandfather, who had built and left incomplete a house so utterly preposterous. My unpardonable fling at the girl still rankled; and I was cold from the quick descent of the night chill on the water and anxious to get into more comfortable clothes. Once on the second floor I felt that I knew the way to my room, and I was feeling my way toward it over the rough floor when I heard low voices rising apparently from my sitting-room.
It was pitch dark in the hall. I stopped short and listened. The door of my room was open and a faint light flashed once into the hall and disappeared. I heard now a sound as of a hammer tapping upon wood-work.
Then it ceased, and a voice whispered:
“He’ll kill me if he finds me here. I’ll try again to-morrow. I swear to God I’ll help you, but no more now—”
Then the sound of a scuffle and again the tapping of the hammer. After several minutes more of this there was a whispered dialogue which I could not hear.
Whatever was occurring, two or three points struck me on the instant. One of the conspirators was an unwilling party to an act as yet unknown; second, they had been unsuccessful and must wait for another opportunity; and third, the business, whatever it was, was clearly of some importance to myself, as my own apartments in my grandfather’s strange house had been chosen for the investigation.
Clearly, I was not prepared to close the incident, but the idea of frightening my visitors appealed to my sense of humor. I tiptoed to the front stairway, ran lightly down, found the front door, and, from the inside, opened and slammed it. I heard instantly a hurried scamper above, and the heavy fall of one who had stumbled in the dark. I grinned with real pleasure at the sound of this mishap, hurried into the great library, which was as dark as a well, and, opening one of the long windows, stepped out on the balcony. At once from the rear of the house came the sound of a stealthy step, which increased to a run at the ravine bridge. I listened to the flight of the fugitive through the wood until the sounds died away toward the lake.
Then, turning to the library windows, I saw Bates, with a candle held above his head, peering about.
“Hello, Bates,” I called cheerfully. “I just got home and stepped out to see if the moon had risen. I don’t believe I know where to look for it in this country.”
He began lighting the tapers with his usual deliberation.
“It’s a trifle early, I think, sir. About seven o’clock, I should say, was the hour, Mr. Glenarm.”
There was, of course, no doubt whatever that Bates had been one of the men I heard in my room. It was wholly possible that he had been compelled to assist in some lawless act against his will; but why, if he had been forced into aiding a criminal, should he not invoke my own aid to protect himself? I kicked the logs in the fireplace impatiently in my uncertainty. The man slowly lighted the many candles in the great apartment. He was certainly a deep one, and his case grew more puzzling as I studied it in relation to the rifle-shot of the night before, his collision with Morgan in the wood, which I had witnessed; and now the house itself had been invaded by some one with his connivance. The shot through the refectory window might have been innocent enough; but these other matters in connection with it could hardly be brushed aside.
Bates lighted me to the stairway, and said as I passed him:
“There’s a baked ham for dinner. I should call it extra delicate, Mr. Glenarm. I suppose there’s no change in the dinner hour, sir?”
“Certainly not,” I said with asperity; for I am not a person to inaugurate a dinner hour one day and change it the next. Bates wished to make conversation,—the sure sign of a guilty conscience in a servant,—and I was not disposed to encourage him.
I closed the doors carefully and began a thorough examination of both the sitting-room and the little bed-chamber. I was quite sure that my own effects could not have attracted the two men who had taken advantage of my absence to visit my quarters. Bates had helped unpack my trunk and undoubtedly knew every item of my simple wardrobe. I threw open the doors of the three closets in the rooms and found them all in the good order established by Bates. He had carried my trunks and bags to a store-room, so that everything I owned must have passed under his eye. My money even, the remnant of my fortune that I had drawn from the New York bank, I had placed carelessly enough in the drawer of a chiffonnier otherwise piled with collars. It took but a moment to satisfy myself that this had not been touched. And, to be sure, a hammer was not necessary to open a drawer that had, from its appearance, never been locked. The game was deeper than I had imagined; I had scratched the crust without result, and my wits were busy with speculations as I changed my clothes, pausing frequently to examine the furniture, even the bricks on the hearth.
One thing only I found—the slight scar of a hammer-head on the oak paneling that ran around the bedroom. The wood had been struck near the base and at the top of every panel, for though the mark was not perceptible on all, a test had evidently been made systematically. With this as a beginning, I found a moment later a spot of tallow under a heavy table in one corner. Evidently the furniture had been moved to permit of the closest scrutiny of the paneling. Even behind the bed I found the same impress of the hammer-head; the test had undoubtedly been thorough, for a pretty smart tap on oak is necessary to leave an impression. My visitors had undoubtedly been making soundings in search of a recess of some kind in the wall, and as they had failed of their purpose they were likely, I assumed, to pursue their researches further.
I pondered these things with a thoroughly-awakened interest in life. Glenarm House really promised to prove exciting. I took from a drawer a small revolver, filled its chambers with cartridges and thrust it into my hip pocket, whistling meanwhile Larry Donovan’s favorite air, theMarche Funèbre d’une Marionnette. My heart went out to Larry as I scented adventure, and I wished him with me; but speculations as to Larry’s whereabouts were always profitless, and quite likely he was in jail somewhere.
The ham of whose excellence Bates had hinted was no disappointment. There is, I have always held, nothing better in this world than a baked ham, and the specimen Bates placed before me was a delight to the eye,—so adorned was it with spices, so crisply brown its outer coat; and a taste—that first tentative taste, before the sauce was added—was like a dream of Lucullus come true. I could forgive a good deal in a cook with that touch,—anything short of arson and assassination!
“Bates,” I said, as he stood forth where I could see him, “you cook amazingly well. Where did you learn the business?”
“Your grandfather grew very captious, Mr. Glenarm. I had to learn to satisfy him, and I believe I did it, sir, if you’ll pardon the conceit.”
“He didn’t die of gout, did he? I can readily imagine it.”
“No, Mr. Glenarm. It was his heart. He had his warning of it.”
“Ah, yes; to be sure. The heart or the stomach,—one may as well fail as the other. I believe I prefer to keep my digestion going as long as possible. Those grilled sweet potatoes again, if you please, Bates.”
The game that he and I were playing appealed to me strongly. It was altogether worth while, and as I ate guava jelly with cheese and toasted crackers, and then lighted one of my own cigars over a cup of Bates’ unfailing coffee, my spirit was livelier than at any time since a certain evening on which Larry and I had escaped from Tangier with our lives and the curses of the police. It is a melancholy commentary on life that contentment comes more easily through the stomach than along any other avenue. In the great library, with its rich store of books and its eternal candles, I sprawled upon a divan before the fire and smoked and indulged in pleasant speculations. The day had offered much material for fireside reflection, and I reviewed its history calmly.
There was, however, one incident that I found unpleasant in the retrospect. I had been guilty of most unchivalrous conduct toward one of the girls of St. Agatha’s. It had certainly been unbecoming in me to sit on the wall, however unwillingly, and listen to the words—few though they were—that passed between her and the chaplain. I forgot the shot through the window; I forgot Bates and the interest my room possessed for him and his unknown accomplice; but the sudden distrust and contempt I had awakened in the girl by my clownish behavior annoyed me increasingly.
I rose presently, found my cap in a closet under the stairs, and went out into the moon-flooded wood toward the lake. The tangle was not so great when you knew the way, and there was indeed, as I had found, the faint suggestion of a path. The moon glorified a broad highway across the water; the air was sharp and still. The houses in the summer colony were vaguely defined, but the sight of them gave me no cheer. The tilt of her tam-o’-shanter as she paddled away into the sunset had conveyed an impression of spirit and dignity that I could not adjust to any imaginable expiation.
These reflections carried me to the borders of St. Agatha’s, and I followed the wall to the gate, climbed up, and sat down in the shadow of the pillar farthest from the lake. Lights shone scatteringly in the buildings of St. Agatha’s, but the place was wholly silent. I drew out a cigarette and was about to light it when I heard a sound as of a tread on stone. There was, I knew, no stone pavement at hand, but peering toward the lake I saw a man walking boldly along the top of the wall toward me. The moonlight threw his figure into clear relief. Several times he paused, bent down and rapped upon the wall with an object he carried in his hand.
Only a few hours before I had heard a similar sound rising from the wainscoting of my own room in Glenarm House. Evidently the stone wall, too, was under suspicion!
Tap, tap, tap! The man with the hammer was examining the farther side of the gate, and very likely he would carry his investigations beyond it. I drew up my legs and crouched in the shadow of the pillar, revolver in hand. I was not anxious for an encounter; I much preferred to wait for a disclosure of the purpose that lay behind this mysterious tapping upon walls on my grandfather’s estate.
But the matter was taken out of my own hands before I had a chance to debate it. The man dropped to the ground, sounded the stone base under the gate, likewise the pillars, evidently without results, struck a spiteful crack upon the iron bars, then stood up abruptly and looked me straight in the eyes. It was Morgan, the caretaker of the summer colony.
“Good evening, Mr. Morgan,” I said, settling the revolver into my hand.
There was no doubt about his surprise; he fell back, staring at me hard, and instinctively drawing the hammer over his shoulder as though to fling it at me.
“Just stay where you are a moment, Morgan,” I said pleasantly, and dropped to a sitting position on the wall for greater ease in talking to him.
He stood sullenly, the hammer dangling at arm’s length, while my revolver covered his head.
“Now, if you please, I’d like to know what you mean by prowling about here and rummaging my house!”
“Oh, it’s you, is it, Mr. Glenarm? Well, you certainly gave me a bad scare.”
His air was one of relief and his teeth showed pleasantly through his beard.
“It certainly is I. But you haven’t answered my question. What were you doing in my house to-day?”
He smiled again, shaking his head.
“You’re really fooling, Mr. Glenarm. I wasn’t in your house to-day; I never was in it in my life!”
His white teeth gleamed in his light beard; his hat was pushed back from his forehead so that I saw his eyes, and he wore unmistakably the air of a man whose conscience is perfectly clear. I was confident that he lied, but without appealing to Bates I was not prepared to prove it.
“But you can’t deny that you’re on my grounds now, can you?” I had dropped the revolver to my knee, but I raised it again.
“Certainly not, Mr. Glenarm. If you’ll allow me to explain—”
“That’s precisely what I want you to do.”
“Well, it may seem strange,”—he laughed, and I felt the least bit foolish to be pointing a pistol at the head of a fellow of so amiable a spirit.
“Hurry,” I commanded.
“Well, as I was saying, it may seem strange; but I was just examining the wall to determine the character of the work. One of the cottagers on the lake left me with the job of building a fence on his place, and I’ve been expecting to come over to look at this all fall. You see, Mr. Glenarm, your honored grandfather was a master in such matters, as you may know, and I didn’t see any harm in getting the benefit—to put it so—of his experience.”
I laughed. He had denied having entered the house with so much assurance that I had been prepared for some really plausible explanation of his interest in the wall.
“Morgan—you said it was Morgan, didn’t you?—you are undoubtedly a scoundrel of the first water. I make the remark with pleasure.”
“Men have been killed for saying less,” he said.
“And for doing less than firing through windows at a man’s head. It wasn’t friendly of you.”
“I don’t see why you center all your suspicions on me. You exaggerate my importance, Mr. Glenarm. I’m only the man-of-all-work at a summer resort.”
“I wouldn’t believe you, Morgan, if you swore on a stack of Bibles as high as this wall.”
“Thanks!” he ejaculated mockingly.
Like a flash he swung the hammer over his head and drove it at me, and at the same moment I fired. The hammer-head struck the pillar near the outer edge and in such a manner that the handle flew around and smote me smartly in the face. By the time I reached the ground the man was already running rapidly through the park, darting in and out among the trees, and I made after him at hot speed.