Burton had jumped to his feet. "Let me help you to a couch," he said, offering his arm as a support. "Not into this room," Dr. Underwood sputtered, wincing with pain as he spoke. "Good land, man, do you suppose a man with a sprained ankle who isn't going to be able to walk for the rest of his natural life, and then will have to go on crutches for a while, wants to sit down on one of those spindle-legged chairs that break if you look at them? Get me into the surgery. And Leslie, if you have an atom of filial feeling, you might show him the way instead of standing there like a classical figure of despair on a monument smiling at a bloody temple. I'm ashamed of you. Where's your equanimity? Ouch! Jerusalem! Sante Fe! You don't need to try to carry me, man. I can walk. Leslie, if you haven't any religious scruples against really opening the door while you are about it, perhaps this procession could get through without scraping the skin off its elbows,--"
Burton had slipped his shoulder under the doctor's arm, and, guided by Leslie, he got him through a hall which seemed interminably long, and into the room which he had called the surgery. Burton helped him to the leathern couch.
"Get me some hot water," he said in a hasty aside to Leslie, and she quickly left the room.
He stripped off Dr. Underwood's shoe, and began to manipulate the swollen ankle.
"This isn't going to be serious," he said soothingly. "It's merely a strain, not a dislocation. It will be painful for a while,--"
"Will be! Jerusalem, what do you think it is now? You are a doctor."
"No. But I have had some experience with accidents. If you want me to go for a doctor,--"
"You are all I can stand at present, thank you. I know you are a doctor by your confounded nerve. Will be painful! I wish it were your ankle, confound you. And I'll never grumble again when my patients swear at me. I never realized before what a relief it is to swear at your doctor. How did you happen to be here? I suppose it was an accident and not a special dispensation of Providence."
"I was the bearer of a message to your daughter, and so happened to be on hand at the right moment, that's all. My name is Burton,--Hugh Burton, Putney, Massachusetts."
"A message? From whom? What about?"
"There, doesn't that begin to feel more comfortable?"
"Humph! That's a neat way of telling me to mind my own business."
Burton merely laughed. "Let me look at this cut in your temple. So! Any more damages?"
"My little finger was knocked out of joint, but I think I put it back. I guess that's all they had time to get in,--"
"Who?"
The sharp monosyllable made them both start. Leslie had returned with Mrs. Bussey, who was carrying a kettle of hot water; but in her surprise at her father's remark, she was very effectively blocking the way for the timid servant.
"Leslie, your curiosity unfits you for any useful career," her father exclaimed, with a great show of irritation. "Do you suppose Dr. Burton wanted that hot water to meliorate the temperature of the room? If so, it will probably be just as well to keep Mrs. Bussey holding it in the doorway; but if you think he possibly meant to use it as a fomentation,--"
"You needn't think you are going to put me off in that way," said Leslie, making way for Mrs. Bussey. "I am just as sorry as I can be that you are hurt, you know, but that isn't all. I want to know what has happened now."
"Dr. Burton assures me it is merely a strain, though he goes so far as to admit that if I make the worst of it, I may be able to imagine that it hurts. But of course it doesn't really. It will merely be nerves."
"Can I help you with that hot application, Mr. Burton?" Leslie asked.
"Mrs. Bussey can do this. Do you know where to find some court-plaster? And scissors?"
She got the required articles deftly, and watched in silence while he dressed the doctor's temple. Then she asked: "May he talk now?"
"I should not undertake to prevent him."
"Now, father,--"
"Well, those little imps of Satan that live in that tumble-down house on King Street, where you went Friendly Visiting,--"
"The Sprigg children?"
"That's the name. They have heard Aristides called the unjust so long that they thought they would throw a stone or two to mark their ennui, but they misunderstood the use of the stone, and so they threw it at me instead of for me--"
"Do you mean that they stoned you?"
"Oh, I shouldn't have minded the little devils, but they threw stones at Dolly, and they might easily have broken her leg. That's what made me jump out of the buggy to go after them, because I thought they needed a lesson, but I jumped on one of their infernal stones and it turned my foot and that's how I twisted my ankle. So I got back into the buggy, and was glad I didn't have far to go to get to it. Then I came on home. I never knew that walk from the street to the front door was so long."
"But your face--?"
"Oh, that was one of the stones that flew wide of the mark. The little heathen don't know how to throw straight. They ought to be kept under an apple-tree with nothing to eat until they learn how to bring down their dinner with the first throw."
Leslie clenched her hands.
"It is outrageous. I don't see how you can treat it so lightly. That they should dare to stone you,--to try deliberately to hurt you, perhaps to kill you! Oh, they would never dare if it were not for this shameful, unendurable, wicked persecution!"
"Leslie, after the example which I have always carefully given you of moderation in language,--"
"It is wicked. It is unendurable. I feel as though I were in a net that was drawing closer and closer about me. It is the secrecy of it that makes me wild. If I could only fight back! But to have some one watching in the dark, and not to know who or what it is,--to suspect everybody,--"
"Leslie, don't you realize that Dr. Burton will think you delirious if you talk like this? If you are jealous of my temporary prominence as an interesting patient,--"
Leslie turned swiftly to Burton.
"My father has been made the object of a most infamous persecution by some unknown person. The most outrageous stories are circulated about him, the most unjustifiable things are done,--like this. Those children don't go around stoning people in general; they have been put up to it by some one who is always watching a chance,--some one who has used them as an instrument for his malice!"
"You must make some allowance for the intemperate zeal of a daughter, Dr. Burton," said Dr. Underwood. A twinge of pain twisted his smile into a grimace. He had a wide, flexible mouth, and when he grinned he looked a caricature. Burton reflected that a man must be sustained by an unusually strong consciousness of virtue to risk his character on such a grin,--or else it was the very mockery of virtue.
"Then you think Miss Underwood overstates the case?" he asked thoughtfully. He was glad to have them talk about the matter. It was a curious situation, even without considering its possible effect on Philip's life.
"Well, I have seen too many queer things that turned out to be mere coincidences to be so sure that there is really a conspiracy against me," Underwood said quietly. "Public opinion is a queer thing. It takes epidemics. At present it seems to have an epidemic of suspicion of me. It will probably run its course and recover."
"What form does it take?"
"The latest and for the time being the most embarrassing form is that it takes me for a highwayman. I have been pretty hard up at times, but I confess I never had the originality to think of that method of relieving my necessities. And yet, confound the sarcasm of the idiots, they are determined to give me the discredit without the cash. If I had only got Selby's money,--I've no doubt he got it by holding up his customers in his turn,--I wouldn't mind these innuendoes so much."
"Oh, well, so long as the Grand Jury doesn't think it worth mentioning, you can probably afford to take it with equal indifference," said Burton lightly.
But Leslie turned upon him with immediate dissent.
"I should much rather have the matter taken up and sifted to the bottom. Then there might be some chance of finding out who is behind all these mysterious happenings. They don't happen of themselves. As it is, there is talk, and suspicion, and sidelong looks, and general ostracism, and I go around hating everybody, because I don't know whom to hate! Oh, if I were only a man! I would do something."
"I have done something now, Leslie," said her father. "I have invited a committee to come here this evening and make a search, as those fool bills suggested."
"This evening?"
"Yes. You will have to do the honors, if I am going to be laid up. I don't suppose your mother will care to see them. And Henry is not exactly the one." A shadow passed over his face, and he fell suddenly silent.
"What do you mean by a search, if I may ask?" Burton put in. They were so frank in their attitude, he felt that his interest would not be regarded as an impertinence.
"Why, ever since this rumor went abroad that I had held up Selby, there have been handbills distributed about town,--posted up on fences and thrust in open doors,--urging that my house be searched. It got on Leslie's nerves. So, just to let her see that something was doing, I told them today to come and search, and be hanged to them."
"And they are coming this evening?"
"Yes. That's the plan."
"Is Selby one of them?" asked Burton with sudden interest.
"Oh, yes. He's the one I spoke to about it. I understand he takes an interest in the matter."
"Well, have you made ready for them?"
"What do you mean?" asked Dr. Underwood.
"Have you searched yourself?" laughed Burton.
"I don't understand you," said Dr. Underwood. His tone was stern, and his manner indicated plainly that he considered it a matter of politeness not to understand.
"Mrs. Bussey, may I trouble you to bring some more hot water? This is getting too cold. Thank you." He closed the door behind her, and came back to Dr. Underwood's couch. "It seems to me my suggestion is perfectly simple and the reason for it perfectly obvious. Some enemy is urging that your house be searched. I say enemy, because it must be clear that no friend would urge it in that manner. Now, if it is an enemy, he is not doing it for your benefit. He must have an idea that a search would injure you. How could he have that idea unless he knew that it would result in discovering something that, we will say for the sake of argument, he had previously concealed where it would be found at the right time? And here you are walking right into the trap, by inviting a public search without taking the precaution to make a preliminary search yourself."
Leslie had listened with breathless eagerness, never moving her eyes from Burton's face. Now she turned with earnest reproach to her father.
"Now, father!" she said.
Dr. Underwood shook his head impatiently. "Do you mean that you would have me ask them to come here to make a search, and then look the place over first and remove anything that they might think incriminating? That would be a farce. I should be ashamed of myself."
Leslie turned her reproachful eyes upon Burton.
"Of course," she said, with that same earnestness.
Burton laughed. "Why, what nonsense! Beautiful nonsense, if you will, but utter nonsense, all the same. According to your own account, you are dealing with some unscrupulous person who is trying to turn suspicion upon you. Why should you help him? He certainly wouldn't be trying to bring about an investigation unless it would help on his purpose,--assuming that he has the purpose Miss Underwood attributes to him."
Dr. Underwood moved restlessly.
"I should feel mighty cheap," he said.
"Do you happen to have one of those handbills you speak of about?" asked Burton.
"There's one on the mantel. Give it to him, Leslie."
Burton crossed to the mantel and picked up the paper. It was a single sheet, typewritten. It read: "Search Underwood's rooms. You will find proof."
"These have been distributed generally?"
"Not many at a time, but a few one place one night and another place the next night. Every day since that damnable hold-up, I have heard directly or indirectly that some one has received or seen some such notice."
Burton's eye wandered around the room. "When they come, I suppose they will begin here. This is the room where you would be most likely to conceal the evidence of your crimes, I take it. Now, let me consider where you would hide it. There might be a hiding place beneath the bricks in front of the fireplace, or behind some of the loose tiles back of the mantel. I see that one book has recently been disturbed in that set of medical encyclopedias,--the dust on the shelf shows it. Did you put something behind it?"
Laughingly he pulled out the volume he had indicated, and with it a handkerchief which had been thrust behind it. He shook it out, and then he laughed no more. There were two holes cut in the handkerchief for eyelets, and the wrinkled corners showed that it had been knotted hard, as a kerchief that had been tied over a man's face would have been.
"Santa Fe!" gasped Dr. Underwood, wrinkling up his face in one of his peculiar grimaces. It served to conceal his emotions as effectively as a mask.
Leslie sprang to her feet and stared hard at the rag, with a fascinated look. She had unconsciously clasped her hands together, and there was a look of fright in her eyes.
"Now do you see?" she cried. "That's the sort of thing we have to expect all the time."
Burton crushed the kerchief in his hand. "A very crude device. Your committee would have to be very special fools to believe that a man would preserve such a damning piece of evidence when there was a fireplace in the room, and matches were presumably within reach. Shall I burn it up?"
"No," said Dr. Underwood suddenly. "Give it to me. I feel in honor bound to show it to the committee and tell them just how and where it was found."
Burton shrugged his shoulders. "I am rather inclined to believe that you need a business manager, my dear Dr. Quixote."
The door opened and the gray-haired woman whom Burton had seen reading in the garden entered the room. Her composure was so insistent that Burton felt suddenly convicted of foolish excitability.
"Mrs. Bussey understood that you had been hurt," she said, going up to the couch and looking down calmly at the doctor.
Dr. Underwood squirmed. "Yes, Angelica, some sin or other has found me out, I suppose, for I have hurt my ankle. This is Mr. Burton, who happened to be on hand to take the place of Providence."
Mrs. Underwood acknowledged Burton's bow with a slight inclination of the head, but with no slightest indication of curiosity. She sat down beside her husband's couch and thoughtfully placed her finger on his pulse.
"Land of the living, Angelica, my ankle hasn't gone to my heart," muttered Dr. Underwood, with some impatience.
Leslie spoke aside to Burton.
"What can we do? It isn't this thing only; this is just an instance. You don't know how horrible it is to have the feeling that some enemy is watching you in the dark. And my father is not practical,--you see that. We have no friends left!"
"That is not so," he said quickly.
"You mean that you will help him?" she asked eagerly. "Oh, if you would! There is no one to whom I can turn for advice."
It was not exactly what he had meant, but he recognized at once that it was what he should have meant. If ever there were two babes in the wood, needing the kind attentions of a worldly and unoccupied robin--! Aside from that, if this girl were going to marry into the Overman family, he certainly owed it to Rachel to see that she came with a clean family record, if any efforts that he could make would establish a fact that should have been beyond question from the first.
"Let me be present this evening, when this committee comes," he said, slowly. "I will consider the matter and tell you what I think I can do, after I have seen and heard them."
"Stay and dine with us, then," she said quickly. "That will give me a chance to tell you some of the other things that have happened,--the things that father would like to call coincidences but that I know are all parts of one iniquitous conspiracy."
"Thank you, I shall be glad to," he answered. "If I am going to undertake this case, I certainly want all the facts that have any bearing upon it."
Leslie turned quickly to her mother.
"Mother, Mr. Burton will stay for dinner."
Mrs. Underwood had risen and she turned her calm eyes from her husband to Leslie. "Will he?" she said placidly. Then she drew her shawl about her shoulders and walked out of the room.
Leslie exchanged a look with her father.
"I'll speak to Mrs. Bussey," she said, and with one of her characteristically swift movements, she crossed the room and threw open the door which led to the rear of the house.
"Why, Mrs. Bussey!" she exclaimed, with surprise and annoyance. That faithful servant, doubtless on the theory that her further attendance might be required, had been crouching so close to the door that the sudden opening of it left her sitting like a blinking mandarin in the open doorway. She rose somewhat stiffly to her feet, and turned a reproachful look upon her young mistress. Leslie shut the door with some emphasis, as she went out to the housekeeper's domain.
Dr. Underwood laughed softly.
"Poor old soul, it's hard on one with such an appetite for news to get nothing but the crumbs that float through the keyhole. I'm mighty glad that you are going to stay, Doctor."
"Thank you. But your giving me that title makes me uncomfortable. I am not a physician. I'm afraid I am not much of anything but a dilettante."
"You are a good Samaritan to come to the rescue of the outcast," said the doctor. "Perhaps you didn't know what an outcast I am,--or did you?" he added keenly, warned by some subtle change in Burton's face.
"On the contrary, I thought when I saw your patience to your servant that you were the good Samaritan," said Burton quickly. This old man was so sharp that it was dangerous to think before him!
The doctor's manner changed. "The poor woman is a fool, but she can't help that," he said. "We keep her for the sake of her son. Ben is a cripple,--paralyzed from a spinal injury. He has no other home. Are you to be in High Ridge for some time?"
"That will depend on circumstances. By the way, Miss Underwood has asked me to be present this evening when the committee comes. If you have any objection--"
Dr. Underwood looked quietly at the young man for a moment before replying. When he spoke, it was with courtesy in his tone, but he made no apology for his hesitation.
"Not in the least. You will put me under further obligations by staying. Anyhow, if Leslie has asked you to stay, I know my place too well to object. Did you meet Leslie in Washington?"
"I never had the pleasure of meeting Miss Underwood before, but I have heard a great deal of her from my friend, Philip Overman."
"Oh!" said Dr. Underwood, with a keen look. Then he threw his head back, closed his eyes, and murmured: "I am glad you arrived in time to meet the other investigating committee in active operation, Mr. Burton. The theatrical attractions in High Ridge are dull just now."
"I am finding High Ridge anything but dull," said Burton, ignoring the covert thrust of that "other." "And I can see possibilities of much entertainment here. For instance, in investigating your investigating committee, while your investigating committee is investigating you."
He laughed as he spoke, little guessing how far afield the pursuit of that entertainment was going to carry him.
It was a curious meal, that dinner. Burton often thought afterwards that in all the varied experiences of his life, and he had had a good many, first and last, he had never met at one time, and under circumstances of such sudden and peculiar intimacy, four people so unusual. Dr. Underwood had been helped to a couch in the dining-room, and had his dinner from an invalid's table. His eager face, with its keen blue eyes and flexible mouth, was so vividly alert that no one could forget him for a moment, whether he spoke or was silent. When he laughed, which was often, he wrinkled his face into a mask. For a simple device, it was the most effective means imaginable for concealing an emotion.
Mrs. Underwood presided at her own table with the detached air of a casual guest. "Mistress of herself, though china fall," Burton murmured to himself as he looked at her; and he had an intuition that china would quite frequently be exasperated into falling by her calm. Henry sat mostly silent, with downcast eyes, though occasionally he would look up, under half-lifted lids, with an expression of scorn or secret derision. If he had shown more animation or kindliness, he would have been a handsome man; but the heavy melancholy of his look had drawn bitter lines about his mouth, and his very silence seemed half reproachful, half sullen.
As for Leslie, the only discomposing thing about her was her beauty. Every time that Burton looked at her, it struck him anew as incongruous and distracting that she should hand him the bread or have an eye to his needs. She should have been kept in a case or a frame. She belonged in a palace, where she would have due attendance and ceremony. Well,--Philip had not been such a fool, after all.
"Now I am going to begin my story," said Leslie, "because I want Mr. Burton to understand what lies back of this present persecution. The story goes back six years."
Henry gave his sister one of his slow, curious looks, but dropped his eyes again without putting his silent comment into words.
"Six years ago we were kept in hot water all one summer by some malicious person who played mischievous pranks on us, and wrote anonymous letters to us and about us. For instance, there were letters warning people to be on their guard against papa, saying he had learned from the Indian medicine men how to put spells on people and make them wither away and die."
"If I could have done half the wonders they credited with me with," laughed Dr. Underwood, "I would have out-Hermanned Hermann and out-Kellered Keller. Indian fakirs and black magicians wouldn't have been in it with Roger Underwood, M. D. It was like accusing a man who is shoveling dirt for one-twenty-five a day of having money to pay the national debt concealed in his hatband."
"Then there were a lot of letters about Henry," Leslie went on. "They would say, for instance: 'Henry Underwood is a liar.' 'Henry Underwood is a thief.' 'Henry Underwood ought to be in the penitentiary.' All one summer that kept up."
Henry had dropped his knife and fork and sat silent, without looking at his sister. His face was the face of one who is nerving himself to endure torture.
"Were there any accusations of the other members of the family?"
"No. Only Henry and father.
"Who received the letters? Friends of yours? Or enemies?"
"They were sent to the tradesmen and the more prominent people in town. We heard of them here and there, but probably we didn't know about all that were received. I remember more clearly than anything else how angry I was at some of the tricks."
"There was something more than these anonymous letters, then?"
The doctor frowned but Leslie answered readily.
"Yes. The letters continued at odd times all summer, but there were other things happening at the same time. For instance, one day an advertisement appeared in the paper saying that Dr. Underwood offered fifty cents apiece for all the cats and dogs that would be brought him for the purpose of vivisection. Now, papa does not practise vivisection--"
"He does not now," Mrs. Underwood interrupted, with impressive deliberation, "but I am not at all sure that he never did. And as I have said before, if he was ever guilty of that abominable wickedness, at any time or under any circumstances, he richly deserved all the annoyance that advertisement brought upon him."
Dr. Underwood wrinkled up his face in a grimace, but made no answer.
"Well, he doesn't now, and he didn't six years ago," Leslie resumed pacifically, "but it was hard to convince people of that. You should have seen the place the next day! Farmers, street boys, tramps, all sorts of rough people kept coming here with cats and dogs of all kinds,--oh, the forlorn creatures! And when papa refused to buy them, the people were angry and threatened to have him arrested for not carrying out his agreement. And all the ministers and the women's societies called on him to remonstrate with him for such wickedness, and when he said that he had not had anything to do with the advertisement, they showed plainly that they thought he was trying to crawl out of it because he had been caught. Oh, it was awful."
"Did you make any attempt to find out how the advertisement came to the paper, Doctor?"
Dr. Underwood shrugged his shoulders.
"Yes, they showed me the order. It had come by mail, with stamps enclosed to pay for the insertion. The dunderheaded fools hadn't had sense enough to guess that when a physician wants 'material' he doesn't advertise for it in the morning paper."
"Under the circumstances, Roger," said Mrs. Underwood gravely, "your flippancy is not becoming."
"It certainly was a neat scheme, if the object was to embarrass you, Doctor. What else, Miss Underwood?"
"One day every grocer in town appeared at the door with a big load of household supplies,--enough to provision a regiment for a winter. They had all received the same order,--a very large order, including expensive and unusual things that they had had to send away for. And of course they were angry when we wouldn't take any of the things. They said that after that they would accept no orders unless we paid for them in advance, and that was sometimes embarrassing, also!"
"Were the orders received by mail, as in the other cases?"
"I believe they were."
"Did you get any of the original papers? And have you preserved them?"
"No, I didn't preserve them," said Dr. Underwood. "You see, the disturbance was only a sporadic one. It stopped, and I dismissed the matter from my mind. I didn't realize that Leslie had stored so many of the details in her memory. I think she attaches too much importance to them."
"I am not at all sure that she does," said Burton promptly. "They certainly constitute a curious series of incidents. Was there anything more, Miss Underwood?"
"Oh, yes, indeed. One morning we could not get out of the house. During the night, every door and every window had been barred across from the outside. Strips of board had been fastened across all of them with screws so there had been no noise that would waken us. On the front door was a piece of paper, and written on it in big letters was 'This is a prison.' Henry found it when he came home,--he had been spending the night with a friend,--and tore it down, and unscrewed the bars on the front door and let us out of our prison."
"You could have got down all right from the second story by the big oak on the east side," said Henry. It was the first time he had contributed anything to the recital, and he spoke now in an impatient tone, as though the whole conversation bored him.
"Has it occurred to you," asked Burton thoughtfully, "that all these incidents bear the same marks of freakishness and mischief rather than of venomous malice? They are like the tricks a schoolboy might play to get even with some one he had a grudge against. They are not like the revenge a man would take for a real injury or a deep-felt grievance."
He glanced up at Dr. Underwood as he spoke, and caught the tail end of a scrutinizing look which that careless gentleman was just withdrawing from Henry's unconscious face. The furtive watchfulness of that look was wholly at variance with the offhand tone in which he answered Burton.
"I have not the slightest doubt you are right about that. It was mere foolishness on the part of some ignorant person, who wanted to do something irritating, and probably enjoyed the feeling that he was keeping us all agog over his tomfoolery."
"Oh, but it was more than nonsense," cried Leslie. "You forget about the fires. One night, Mr. Burton, Mrs. Bussey left the week's washing hanging on the lines in the back yard, and in the morning we found that it had all been gathered into a heap and burned. That was carrying a joke pretty far. And soon afterwards there was an attempt to burn the house down."
"Come, Leslie, let me tell that incident," interposed her father. "We found, one morning, a heap of half-charred sticks of wood on the front doorstep. It looked sinister at first sight, of course, but when I examined it, I was sure that there had been no fire in the sticks when they were piled on the step, or afterwards. It was a menace, if you like, but as Mr. Burton points out about those other matters, it was rather a silly attempt at a scare than a serious attempt at arson. Don't paint that poor devil any blacker than he is, my girl. He has probably realized long ago that it was all a silly performance, and we don't want to go about harboring malice."
"Of course not. Only,--those things did actually happen to us, Mr. Burton."
"Don't say happen, Leslie," said Mrs. Underwood, with the curious effect she always had of suddenly coming back to consciousness at any word that struck her ethical mind. "Things don't happen to people unless they have deserved them. What seems to be accident may be really punishment for sin."
"Well, these things befell us after that fashion," said Leslie patiently, picking her words to avoid pitfalls of metaphysics. "Then they stopped. Everything went on quietly until a few weeks ago. Then things began again."
"Let me warn you, Burton," interposed Dr. Underwood again, "that this is where Leslie becomes fantastic. She has too much imagination for her own good. She ought to be writing fairy tales, or society paragraphs for the Sunday papers. Now go ahead, my dear. Do your worst."
"Papa persists in making fun of me because I see a connection between what happened six years ago, and the things that have been coming up lately, but I leave you to judge. There have been no tricks on us, no disturbances about the house, but there have been stories circulated, perfectly outrageous stories,--"
"The highwayman story?"
"That is one of them."
"But surely the best way to treat that is with silent contempt!"
But Leslie shook her head.
"That isn't papa's way. He answers back. And it certainly is annoying to have your neighbors repeating such tales, and humiliating to find that they are ready to go more than halfway in believing them."
"It is not only humiliating; it is expensive," murmured Dr. Underwood, letting his head fall back against the cushions of the couch, and closing his eyes a little wearily. "You can't expect people to call in a doctor who is suspected of robbing the public and occasionally poisoning a patient. I have practically nothing left but charity patients now, and pretty soon they will consider that it is a charity to let me prescribe for them."
Burton's eyes were drawn to Leslie's face. She was looking at her father with a passion of pity and sympathy that was more eloquently expressed through her silence than by any words. Mrs. Underwood broke the silence with her judicial speech.
"I do not think," she said, "that there has ever been anything in your treatment of your patients that would at all justify the idea that you poisoned Mr. Means. Therefore, you can rest assured that the story will do you no harm. We really can suffer only from our own acts."
Underwood opened his eyes and looked at Burton with portentous gravity.
"We'll consider that matter settled, then. Sometime I should like to lay the details of that affair before you, Mr. Burton, because you would understand the wild absurdity of it all. As a matter of fact, strychnine in fatal quantities was found in the bottle of medicine which I made up myself, and I have not the slightest idea who could have tampered with it. Some one had. That is one of the mysteries which Leslie wants to fit in with the others of the series. But we haven't time for that now, for my committee is almost due, and I am going to ask you to help me back to the surgery. I will meet them there."
"One moment," said Burton. "You surely must have laid these matters before the police. Did they make no discoveries, have no theories?"
Underwood glanced at his daughter,--plainly and obviously a glance of warning. But he spoke in his habitually easy way.
"Oh, Selby has put it before the police," he said. "As I understand it, he has been neglecting his business to labor with the police by day and by night, trying to induce them to arrest me. It strike me that he is becoming something of a monomaniac on the subject, but I may be prejudiced."
"I didn't mean the recent hold-up, but those earlier affairs," explained Burton. "Didn't the police investigate them?"
"Our police force has fallible moments, and this proved to be one of them. They chased all over the place, like unbroken dogs crazy over a scent, ran many theories to earth, and proved nothing," said the doctor in an airy tone, as one dismissing a subject of no moment.
But Mrs. Underwood looked down the table toward Burton and spoke with her disconcerting and inopportune candor.
"They tried to make out that it was Henry," she said calmly. "I think I may say, without being accused of partiality, that I do not consider their charges as proven, for though Henry has much to answer for--"
"So you see we are very well-known people in the town and have been much in the public eye," interrupted the doctor smoothly.
"Not so well-known as you might be," said Burton, catching wildly at the first conversational straw he could think of, in his eagerness to second the doctor's obvious effort to put a stop to his wife's disconcerting admissions. "I asked a man who was talking to Mrs. Bussey at your back gate if this was your house, and he didn't even know your name."
"That is as gratifying as it is surprising," the doctor responded, also marking time. "I wonder who the ignorant individual could be."
At that moment Mrs. Bussey entered the room, with her tray, and to keep the ball going he turned to question her. "Who was it you were talking to at the back gate this afternoon, Mrs. Bussey?"
"Wasn't nobody," said Mrs. Bussey, with startled promptness.
"A man. Didn't know my name. Was he a stranger?"
"Didn't talk to nobody," she repeated doggedly, without looking up. "Who says I was talking to a strange man?"
"It doesn't matter," said the doctor, with a surprised glance. "He was evidently unknown as well as unknowing, Mr. Burton,--or at any rate we keep peace in the family by assuming that he was non-existent. There are things into which it is not wise to inquire too closely. Now I believe that I'll have to ask for help in getting back into the surgery."
Burton waited just long enough to assure himself that Henry was not going to his father's assistance, then offered his own arm. At the same moment he caught a slight but imperative sign from Mrs. Underwood to her son. In silent response to it, Henry came forward to support his father upon the other side. As soon as they got Dr. Underwood again into the surgery, Henry withdrew without a word. Burton felt that there was something wistful in the look which the doctor turned toward his son's retreating form. But he was saved from the embarrassment of recognizing the situation, for immediately Mrs. Bussey flung open the door without the formality of tapping and burst into the room.
"There's men a-coming," she exclaimed breathlessly.
"What's that? What d'ye mean?" demanded Dr. Underwood, startled and impatient.
"There's three men a-coming in at the gate. Shall I let loose the dog?"
"Go and let them in, you idiot. You will make Mr. Burton think that we have no visitors. Don't keep them waiting outside. They didn't come to study the architecture of the façade. Bring them here,--here to this room, do you understand?"
Mrs. Bussey departed, muttering something under her breath that evidently expressed her bewildered disapproval of this break in the familiar routine of life, and Dr. Underwood looked up at Burton with his peculiar grin, which might mean: amusement or embarrassment or any other emotion that he wanted to conceal.
"My investigating committee," he said.
If Dr. Underwood awaited his investigating committee with any special anxiety, his mobile face did not show it. Burton read excitement, interest, even satirical amusement in it, but nothing like dread. But surprise and disapproval came into it when the door opened abruptly and Leslie entered.
"I'm going to hear what they have to say," she announced.
"Now, see here, Leslie, it's bad enough to have a daughter bothering a man to death in his own home, but when she begins to tag him around in public affairs, so that he can't even meet a committee of his neighbors who want to search his study in order to arrest him for highway robbery without having her putting herself in evidence, it becomes a regular nuisance. You go back to your spinning-wheel."
"You neglected to bring me up to a spinning-wheel, father."
"You go back to your mother."
"I am going to stay here. I'll be reasonably quiet, but that's the only compromise I'll agree to. Don't waste nerve force scolding me, father. You need to conserve your strength." And with the evident intention of making herself as inconspicuous as possible she took a low chair half hidden by the heavy curtain of the window. Burton could not help thinking how futile any attempt at obscurity on her part must always be. Her beauty lit up the shadowy corner as a jewel lights its case. He had to make a conscious effort to turn his eyes away.
Again the door opened and Henry entered. The contrast between his attitude and his sister's was striking. He entered hesitatingly, one would have said reluctantly, and his eyes were not lifted from the floor.
"Mother thought I ought to be present," he said in a low voice.
Dr. Underwood regarded him with a baffled look, and Burton understood and sympathized with his perplexity. He looked curiously at Henry himself. His youthful escapades, so out of the ordinary, had evidently made him something of a family problem.
"You might profitably take for an example your brother's ready obedience to a parent's wishes," the doctor said dryly. He spoke to Leslie, but it was Henry who winced at the jibe. His face darkened, and he shot an angry look at his father.
The tramping of feet in the hall announced the approach of the committee.
"Here they be," said Mrs. Bussey, opening the door, and herself entering at the head of the little procession of three men. Her lively interest in the affair was comically evident.
Dr. Underwood saved the situation from its awkwardness with asavoir fairewhich Burton could not too much admire.
"Good evening, gentlemen," he cried genially. "You are very welcome. You will excuse my remaining seated, I hope. I have sprained my ankle. Let me present you to my friend, Mr. Burton,--Mr. Hadley, who is one of our most distinguished citizens; Mr. Ralston, who forms the opinions of the public of High Ridge by virtue of his position as our leading editor; Mr. Orton Selby, who was the unhappy victim of the highway robbery of which you have heard and who is justifiably anxious to let no guilty man escape. Be seated, gentlemen."
Burton bowed, in acknowledgment of the several introductions. He was touched by the simple-heartedness of Dr. Underwood in presenting him so frankly as a "friend," and felt more bound by it to act the part of a friend than he could have been by any formal pledge. He took quick appraisal of the three committeemen. Hadley was evidently prosperous, pompous and much impressed with his own importance. Ralston had the keen eye and dispassionate smile of the experienced newspaperman, so accustomed to having today's stories contradicted by to-morrow's that he has learned to be slow about committing himself to any side. Selby he had already met! That Selby remembered the fact was quite evident from the look of surprise and suspicion which he cast upon Dr. Underwood's guest. A striking man he was, with a dark narrow face, and a nervous manner. His eye was so restless that it seemed continually flitting from one object to another. His lips were thin, and, in their spasmodic twitching, gave the same sense of nervous instability that his restless eyes conveyed. Burton had an impulse to pick him up and set him forcibly down somewhere, with an injunction to sit still.
"If you have formed any plan of procedure, gentlemen, go ahead," said Underwood. "We stand ready, of course, to assist you in any way possible."
"Sorry you've had an accident," said Ralston, with friendly interest, "I hope it's not serious."
"Oh, no. It interferes with my walking for the present, but I'll be all right in a few days. Those pestiferous little imps, the Sprigg children, threw stones at my nag, and some of them took effect on me. Tormented little wretches! They are bound to be in the fashion if it takes a leg,--my leg, I mean. I told them fire would descend from heaven to burn up children who stoned prophets, but they didn't seem to realize that I was a prophet."
"I hope you may not prove so, in this instance," laughed Ralston.
"Yes, if fire should descend upon them, it might look as though you were responsible," said Hadley, with a ponderous air of perpetrating a light pleasantry. "They say it is dangerous to go up against you, Doctor. Something is apt to happen."
"Oh, laws!" gasped a frightened voice. Mrs. Bussey had been an open-mouthed listener to the conversation.
Underwood turned sharply upon her, perhaps glad of an opportunity to vent his irritation indirectly.
"Mrs. Bussey, while I regret to interfere with the liberty of action which belongs to every freeborn citizen of this great republic, I think we shall have to dispense with your presence at the ceremonies. I mean, Mrs. Bussey, we shan't need you any longer. You may go."
The woman muttered a grumbling dissent, but slowly withdrew. Burton was divided between amusement over the scene and wonder that the Underwoods, whatever their financial stress, should keep so untrained and untrainable a servant. She seemed to have all the defects and none of the merits of an old family retainer.
"Well, we came here for business and we don't want to be wasting time," said Selby abruptly. "You probably know how to get even with the Spriggs without delaying us."
"Certainly," said Underwood courteously, "but there is something I'd like to say first,--"
"If you are ready to make a confession, of course we are ready to hear you. I don't think anything else is in order at this point," said Selby, in the same aggressively abrupt manner.
Burton was suddenly conscious of an impulse to go up to the man and knock him down, and by that token he knew, if there had been any reservation in his mind before, that he had taken sides for good and all. He was for Dr. Underwood. He glanced swiftly around the room to see how the others took this wanton rudeness. Ralston was watching the doctor quizzically from under his eyebrows. Hadley did not know that anything had happened. Henry was still as impassive as a statue, but Leslie, from her low seat by the window, was leaning forward with a look of lively indignation that was more eloquent than words. Burton went quickly over to her and sat down beside her without speaking.
"What I have to say is entirely in order at this point, even though it be not a confession," Dr. Underwood said quietly. "I invited you here in good faith to conduct any sort of an investigation that you might consider necessary. An hour or so ago, Mr. Burton found this handkerchief concealed behind the books on that shelf. As you would of course have discovered it, if he had not found it, I consider it only proper that I should place it in your hands." He picked up the mutilated handkerchief which had been left on the table, and after a moment's hesitation, said: "Henry, will you hand this to Mr. Hadley, as chairman of this committee?"
As Henry took the handkerchief from his father's hand, it fell open and the staring eyelet holes glared at the company. He stopped suddenly and a look of dismay went like a wave over his face. He glanced swiftly at his father. But while he hesitated, Selby sprang forward and snatched it from his hand with something like the snarl of an animal.
"Look at that! Look at that, will you?" he almost shouted. Hadley blinked at it and Ralston got up and took the handkerchief in his hand.
"It seems to be the orthodox thing," he said with interest.
"Seems to be! Seems to be pretty conclusive, I should say. It's proof!"
"It's proof that Dr. Underwood has a malicious enemy and a rather stupid one," said Burton, thinking that it was time for him to take a hand in this remarkable scene. "I found that handkerchief an hour ago, tucked behind one of the books there, where you would certainly have found it if you had made any search. It is, of course, perfectly evident that it was placed there for the express purpose of having you find it."
"I don't see that that is so evident," Selby interrupted. "What have you got to say about this, anyhow?"
"Do you think that if Dr. Underwood had had such an incriminating piece of evidence he would have kept it instead of destroying it? If he were bound to keep it, do you think he would hide it where the first careless search would bring it to light? If he had so hidden it, would he have invited you here to search? You can't answer yes to those questions, unless you think he is a fit subject for the insane asylum rather than the jail."
Leslie shot him an eloquent glance of thanks. Hadley coughed and looked at Ralston, who was attending to Burton closely.
"I agree with you perfectly," the editor said, and Hadley nodded.
Selby turned a face of deliberate insolence upon Burton. "I don't know who you are, Mr. Burton, but you are here as a friend of Dr. Underwood's, that's clear."
"Yes," said Burton. "I love him for the enemies he has made." Ralston looked at him with evident enjoyment.
"Well, a friend's say-so won't go very far in clearing a man when facts like these stand against him. We're here looking for a thief. If it wasn't Dr. Underwood that held me up, let him explain that handkerchief, found here in his own private room."
And Hadley sagely nodded.
"I can't explain it," said Dr. Underwood. The life had gone out of his voice.
"It explains itself," said Burton impatiently. "Some one is trying to make trouble for Dr. Underwood by a very clumsy and transparent device. Of course," he added, suddenly realizing that he was not taking the politic tone, "of course such an obvious trick might impose on ignorant people, but to three men of more than average intelligence and experience, it must be perfectly clear that the very obviousness of the evidence destroys its value."
Ralston cocked his left eye at him and laughed silently. Hadley nodded, but with some dubiousness. He agreed heartily with that part of the speaker's last sentiment which bore witness to his more than average intelligence, but he had a dizzy feeling that he was getting himself somewhat tangled up as to what he was committed to. But Selby was a Cerberus superior to the temptations of any sop.
"Then we'll look for some other evidence," he said aggressively. "We're here to search, and I propose to search."
"The house is yours, gentlemen," said Dr. Underwood.
Selby took a truculent survey of the room, which was not a large one. He walked over to the bookcase and ran his hand behind the books on the shelves and lifted heaps of loose papers and magazines without disclosing anything more deadly than dust. Then he opened the door of a medicine cabinet on the wall and pulled out the drawers of the table, and ran his eye over the mantel. He suggested a terrier trying to unearth a rat and apparently he was perfectly willing to conduct the search alone.
Leslie was watching him with a look of so much indignation and repressed scorn that Burton bent to her and said in a low voice: "Wouldn't it be better for you to leave?"
She shook her head.
"Don't waste your good hate on him," Burton urged gently. "He isn't worth it."
"There is some one behind all this who is," she flashed.
"Yes. We'll find out who it is before we are through."
She gave him a grateful look, and on the instant he began wondering how he could win another. They seemed especially well worth collecting.
Selby had dropped on his knees before the open fireplace and was examining the bricks that made the hearth.
"Some of these bricks are loose," he said accusingly to Underwood.
"Careless of them," murmured the doctor.
But Selby was in no mood for light conversational thrusts and parries. He was trying to pry up the suspicious bricks with his fingers and breaking his nails on them.
"Hand him a knife, Henry," said Dr. Underwood.
Henry took a clasp-knife from his pocket in the same passive silence that had marked him throughout, and mechanically opened the large blade. It slipped in his hand and Burton saw him wince as the steel shut with a snap upon his finger. But he opened it again and handed it to Selby, who took it with an inarticulate grunt. Burton kept his eye upon the cut finger, but as Henry, after a hasty glance, merely wrapped his handkerchief hard about it, and made no motion to leave the room, he concluded the hurt had not been as serious as it looked.