Kitabı oku: «Our Next-Door Neighbors», sayfa 4
Chapter IX
In Which We See Ghosts
The next morning Rob tried earnestly and vainly to drive a wedge in Beth’s good graces, but she treated him with a casual tolerance that finally put him in an ill humor which he took out on me with many a gibe at my “stone fence spirit.”
Men of my profession who have to deal with facts rather than fancy are not believers in the supernatural. I was sure that the extending arm and the beckoning finger were there, but belonged to no ghost. It might have been a curtain blowing out the window or a fake of some kind. But I knew that unless there was some kind of a showing in a ghostly way that night, I should never hear the last of my stone fence indulgence, so I resolved to make a preliminary visit alone by daylight and rig up something white to substantiate my spectral narrative.
I didn’t find an opportunity to escape unseen until late in the afternoon, when I went, ostensibly, for a solitary row on the lake.
I landed and came by a circuitous route to the haunted house. The calm security of sunshine, of course, prevented any shivers of anticipation such as I had experienced the night before. On passing one of the windows on my way to the front entrance, I glanced in, stopped in sheer fright, stooped and backed to the next window, which was screened by a labyrinth of vines through which I peered. I am sure I lost my Bloom of Youth complexion for a few moments. I babbled aimlessly to myself and then managed to pull together and beat it to the lake with as much speed as my farmer friend had shown in his retreat. I made the boat and the hotel in double quick time.
I felt no misgivings now as to the promise of a sensation that night, and that sustaining thought was all that propped my flagging spirits throughout the day, but I resolved to keep my little party at safe distance from the house.
“Say we keep our nocturnal noctambulation under our hats,” proposed Rob.
When this proposition was translated to Silvia, she entirely approved, so, committing Diogenes to the Polydores’ Providence, we left the hotel at half past eleven for a row on the lake by moonlight.
When we descended the slope leading to the House of Mystery, I cautioned silence and a “safety-first” distance.
“Ghosts are easily vanished,” I informed them. “They don’t seek limelight, and I want you to be sure to see this one.”
As we came to the untrodden undergrowth we heard a weird, wailing sound that would have curdled my blood had I not glanced in the window that afternoon and so, in a measure, been prepared for this–or anything.
“Look!” whispered Beth. “The arm!”
Silvia looked at the roof window and with a stifled shriek of terror turned and fled up the hill, Rob chivalrously pursuing her.
Beth was pale, but game.
“What can it be, Lucien?” she whispered. “Do we dare go in to see?”
“I wouldn’t, Beth,” I vetoed quickly. “Maybe some lunatic or half-witted person has taken up abode here.”
“Lucien!” called Rob peremptorily.
I turned quickly. He was at the top of the hill, half supporting Silvia. I ran toward them, followed by Beth.
“It isn’t a ghost, of course, Silvia,” I said soothingly, and then repeated my supposition about the lunatic.
“Of course I don’t believe in ghosts,” said Silvia shudderingly, “but it’s an awful place and those sounds are like those I have heard in nightmares.”
“We’ll hurry back to the hotel and forget all about it,” I urged.
I rowed the boat and Silvia sat opposite me. Beth and Rob were in the stern and I had to listen to their conversation.
“Of course I felt a little creepy,” she admitted, “but then I like to feel that way, and I wasn’t afraid.”
“No, of course, you wouldn’t be,” he replied somewhat ironically. “You’re the new woman type.”
“No, I am not,” she denied. “I wish I were. Silvia’s really the strong-minded type.”
“She didn’t act the part when she saw the ghost,” he retorted.
“It’s very unusual for her nerves to give way. Silvia’s quite a surprise to me this summer, but I think those funny Polydores have upset her more than Lucien realizes.”
I wondered if she were right, and once again murderous wishes toward the Polydores entered my brain, and I made renewed vows about disposing of them on our return home.
One thing, however, had been accomplished by our expedition. Silvia was more lenient in her judgment on my indulgences of the preceding night.
By the time we pulled in at the landing, Silvia had recovered her equilibrium.
“Lucien, what the devil do you suppose was in that house?” asked Rob, when we were putting up the boat.
“Loons and things,” I allowed.
“But what was that white arm?”
“Some fake thing the village wag has put up to scare the natives.”
Next morning’s stage brought some new arrivals, and among them were two college students who at once were claimed by Beth. She played tennis with one and later went rowing with the other. Rob smoked and sulked, apart.
My farmer friend had been garrulous and rumors of the ghost and the haunted house had come to the ears of the hotel inmates, thereby causing a pleasurable stir of excitement. A number of them announced their intention of visiting the place. They asked me to be their guide, but I refused.
“It was interesting,” I said, “but I think it would be a bore to see the same ghost twice.”
“I am sure I don’t care to go again,” was Silvia’s emphatic reply when asked to be one of the party.
“Ghosts are scientifically admitted and explained,” growled Rob, “so I don’t see anything to be excited about.”
Beth accepted the offer of escort of one of the students, so Silvia, Rob, and I remained at home. The night was quite cool, and we played cards in our room. When the party returned, Beth joined us. She looked rather out of sorts.
“Oh, yes,” she replied in answer to Silvia’s eager inquiry. “We saw the ghost. I don’t know whether it was the same little old last night’s ghost or a new one. He showed more of himself this time though. He had two arms and a veiled head out of the window. As soon as our crowd glimpsed it, they all fled quicker than we did last night. Those two students fell all over each other and left me in the lurch.”
“What could you expect,” asked Rob, “from such ladylike things? They ought to be kept in the confines of the croquet ground. If they are a fair specimen of the kind you have met, no wonder you–”
He stopped abruptly.
“No wonder what?” she asked quickly.
“Nothing,” he replied glumly.
When I came down to breakfast the next morning, the landlady in tears waylaid me.
“Oh, Mr. Wade,” she began in trouble-telling tone, “this affair about the ghost is going to hurt my business. Some of those folks say they are going home, and they will tell others and–”
“I’ll fix the ghost story. Just leave it to me!” I assured her optimistically, as we went into the dining-room.
There were only enough guests to fill one long table, and every one was excitedly dissecting the ghost.
I took my seat and also the floor.
“I hate to dispel your illusions,” I said cheerfully, “but the fact is, I made a daylight investigation of the haunted house. First I looked in the window and I saw–”
“Oh, what did you see?” chorused a dozen or more expectant voices.
“A lot of–mice.”
“Oh!” came in disappointed and skeptical tones.
“But, the ghost, Mr. Wade?”
“Yes! The arms and the head?”
“A fake figure put up by some practical joker for the purpose of frightening timid people and encouraging the credulous. I didn’t want to spoil your little picnic, so I kept still.”
“Those sounds, Lucien!” reminded Silvia.
“Were from a cat chorus. They were prowling about the house.”
“You’re sure some lawyer, Mr. Wade,” doubtfully complimented my grateful landlady, as we went out of the room after breakfast.
“Lucien,” asked Rob sotto voce, joining me on the veranda, “why don’t the cats you speak of catch that lot of mice?”
Fortunately Beth came up to us, and I didn’t have to explain.
“Oh!” she said with a shudder. “I’ll never go near that awful place! I’d rather see a perfectly good ghost, or a loon, or a lunatic any day than a mouse.”
“You’re surely not afraid of a mouse!” exclaimed Rob.
“Why not?” she asked coolly as she walked on.
“I told you she was feminine,” I reminded him.
He shook his head.
“I can’t understand,” he remarked, “why a girl who is afraid of mice should be–”
“You don’t understand anything about women,” I interrupted.
“You’re right, Lucien. I don’t, but your sister is surely the greatest enigma of them all.”
I rented the stone fence farmer’s “autoo” and took Silvia and Diogenes to a neighboring town that afternoon. We didn’t get back to the hotel until dinner time.
“What have you been up to all day, Rob?” I asked.
“Numerous things. For one, I strolled down to the haunted house.”
“What did you see?” cried the women.
“I saw four–”
“Ghosts?” asked Beth.
I shot him a warning glance.
“Young tomcats playing tag with the mice.”
I corralled Rob outside after dinner.
“For Heaven’s sake!” I implored. “Don’t disturb Silvia’s peace of mind. Did you go inside?”
“No; I was sorely tempted to, but refrained out of deference to the evident wishes of my host, but really, Lucien, we should–”
“I have only ten more days off, Rob. Don’t make any unpleasant suggestions.”
“I won’t,” he said promptly.
Chapter X
In Which We Make Some Discoveries
Diogenes, who, for a Polydore, had been quite placid since Ptolemy’s departure, caused a commotion by disappearing the next morning. As he was possessed of a deep desire to go in the lake and get a little snake, he had been, when not under strict surveillance, tied to a tree with enough leeway in the length of rope to allow him to play comfortably.
By some means he had managed to work himself loose from the rope and had evidently followed Ptolemy’s example. I suggested calling up Huldah and asking if he had arrived yet, but I met with such chilling glances from Silvia and Beth that I got busy and organized searching parties, who reluctantly and lukewarmly engaged in the pursuit. Rob and I took the shore. After we had walked some little distance, we met a woman and stopped for inquiry. She said she had seen a child of about two years, clad in a blue and white striped dress and a big hat, going over the hill in company with a boy of about eight.
“Are you going on to the hotel?” I asked.
On her replying that she was, I told her to inform them that she had met me and that the lost child was located.
Rob and I then kept on over the hill, and when we neared the haunted house, we heard hair-raising sounds.
“If I hadn’t been here before,” remarked Rob, “I should think that Sitting Bull had been reincarnated and was reviving the warrior war whoops.”
We paused on the threshold. A human windmill of whirling legs and arms–Polydore legs and arms–flashed before our eyes.
“Stop!” I thundered.
The flying wheel of arms and legs slacked, ran a few times, then slowly stopped, and the Polydore quintette assumed normal positions.
“Halloa, stepdaddy!”
A landslide composed of Emerald, Pythagoras, and Demetrius started toward me. I side-stepped and let Rob receive the charge.
“Line them up now, for attention,” I directed Ptolemy. “I have something to say to you all.”
Ptolemy knocked the three terrors up against the wall, and I picked up Diogenes, who had a bump as big as an egg on his head.
“I told you,” said Ptolemy to Pythagoras, “that if you brought Di down here they’d get on our trail. He wanted to see Di,” he explained, “so he sneaked over there and got him.”
“We were wise before today,” I informed him. “I saw you all day before yesterday.”
“And I discovered you yesterday,” added Rob.
Ptolemy looked rather crestfallen, and then, seeming to consider that my discovery had been succeeded by inaction, which must mean non-interference, he heartened up.
“Now,” I demanded, “I want you to begin at the time you left the hotel and tell me everything and why you did it.”
“I wasn’t having any fun after you two went off camping,” he began lugubriously. “I couldn’t hang around women folks all the time. I wanted boys to play with.”
I saw a gleam of sympathy and understanding come into Rob’s eyes.
“A harem of hens,” he muttered.
“I knew we could all have a grand time here and not be a bother to mudder, or Huldah or anyone, and it seemed too bad for this nice house to be empty, and no one anywhere else wanting us.”
I felt my first gleam of pity for a Polydore and wiped Diogenes’ dirty, moist face carefully with my handkerchief.
“So I went home and told Huldah I had come after the boys to take them back with me.”
“And told her we had sent for them?” I asked sharply.
He flushed slightly at my tone.
“No; I didn’t tell her so. She got that idea herself, and I didn’t tell her different.”
“When did you come?”
“I came the same night that you telephoned, and took the train you and mudder came on. We got to Windy Creek in the morning. We fetched all our stuff here from home. I bought it.”
“Right here,” I said, “tell me where you got the money to buy your stuff and to pay your fare here.”
“I cashed father’s check.”
“I didn’t know he left you one.”
“He didn’t, except the one he gave me to give you for our board. You told mudder you wouldn’t touch it, and it seemed a pity not to have it working.”
Visions of a future Polydore doing the chain and ball step flashed before my vision.
“And they cashed it for you at the bank?”
“Sure. Father always has me cash his checks for him.”
“What amount did you fill in?” I asked enviously.
“One hundred dollars. There’s a lot more in the bank, too.”
“How did you get your truck here from Windy Creek?” asked Rob.
“We divided it up and each took a bunch and started on foot, and some people in an automobile, going to the town past here, took us in and brought us as far as the lane. We’ve been having a fine time.”
“What doing?” asked Rob interestedly.
“Fishing, sailing on a raft, playing in the woods all day and–”
“Playing ghost at night,” said Pythagoras with a grin.
“Who made that ghost in the window?” I demanded.
“I did. I rigged up an arm and put it out the window the afternoon I left, hoping Beth would come down and see it, but we’ve got a jim dandy one now.”
“That was quite a shapely arm,” said Rob. “Where did you learn sculpturing?”
“Oh, I rigged it up,” he said casually.
“What did you bring in the way of supplies?”
“Bacon, crackers, beans, candy, popcorn, gum, peanuts, pickles, candles, matches, and butter,” was the glib inventory.
“You may stay here,” I said, “until we go home, but you are not to stir away from the woods about here and not on any account to come near the hotel, or let it be known that you are here. And you are to end this ghost business right off. Now, Di, we’ll go home to mudder.”
“No!” bawled Di. “Stay with boys. Mudder come here.”
At least this was Ptolemy’s interpretation of his protest.
I threatened, Rob coaxed, and Ptolemy cuffed, but every time I started to leave and jerk him after me, he uttered such demoniac yells I was forced to stop.
“Wish it was night,” said Emerald regretfully. “Wouldn’t he scare folks though! How does he get his voice up so high?”
“Poor little Di!” said a voice commiseratingly from the doorway. “Was Ocean plaguing him?”
Beth gathered the child in her arms, and his howls changed to sobs. Rob stood petrified with amazement at her appearance.
“Don’t want to go,” said Diogenes between gulps.
“Needn’t go!” promised Beth. “Stay here with me, and we’ll have dinner with the boys and then we’ll go home and get some ice cream.”
“All yite,” agreed the appeased Polydore.
“May Lucien and I stay to dinner, too?” asked Rob humbly.
“No,” she replied icily.
“But, Beth,” I remonstrated. “Silvia will be worrying about Di. How can we explain?”
“Silvia has gone to Windy Creek for the day. You see, I met that woman you sent to the hotel, and she told me she saw Di going over the hill with a boy, and I suddenly seemed to smell one of your mice, so I sent the woman on her way, and told Silvia you and Rob had found Diogenes. Just then some people she knew came along in a car and asked her to go to Windy Creek. I made her go and told her I’d look after Di.”
“You’re a brick, Beth!” applauded Ptolemy.
“If you boys will be very careful and not let anyone besides us know you are here, so mudder will not hear of it, for though she’d like to see you”–this without a flicker or flinch–“we want her to have a nice rest. I’ll come over every day except tomorrow and bring things from the hotel store, and bake up cookies and cake for you.”
A yell of approval went up.
“Why can’t you come tomorrow?” asked the greedy Demetrius.
“Because I’ve promised to go to the other end of the lake on a picnic. All the people at the hotel are going.”
“I’ll come tomorrow and spend the whole day with you,” promised Rob. “We’ll have a ride in the sailboat and do all sorts of things.”
“Why, aren’t you going on that infernal picnic?” I asked.
“No; I’ll have all the picnic I want over here. Like Ptolemy I feel that I want to play with some of my own kind.”
Beth looked at him approvingly; then she said a little sarcastically:
“Maybe you’ll change your mind–about going on the picnic, I mean–when you see the new girl who just came to the hotel on the morning stage. She’s a blonde, and not peroxided, either.”
“That would certainly drive him down here, or anywhere,” I laughed.
“Oh, don’t you like blondes?” she asked innocently.
“He doesn’t like–” I began, but Ptolemy rudely interrupted with an elaborate description of a new kind of fishing tackle he had bought.
Then Beth bade Pythagoras build a fire in the cook-stove while she set the room to rights.
“We’ll eat out of doors,” she said, “I think it would be more appetizing.”
“How did you get here?” Rob asked her as we were leaving.
“I rowed over.”
“May I come over and row you back?” he asked pleadingly.
She hesitated, and then, realizing that she could scarcely manage a boat and Diogenes at the same time, assented, bidding him not come, however, until five o’clock.
“She’ll have enough of the Polydores by that time,” I said to Rob on our way home.
“Do you know,” he said reflectively, “I like Ptolemy. There’s the making of a man in him, if he has only half a chance. I didn’t suppose your sister understood children so well or was so fond of them. She looked quite the little housewife, too.”
“You’d discover a lot of things you don’t know, if you’d cultivate the society of women,” I informed him.
Chapter XI
A Bad Means to a Good End
When we were setting out on the proposed picnic the next day, Rob made himself extremely unpopular by announcing his intention to spend the day otherwise. The new blonde girl gave him fetching glances of entreaty which he never even saw. He made another sensation by proposing to keep Diogenes with him. To Silvia’s surprise, Diogenes voiced his delight and chattered away, I suppose, about playing with the boys, but fortunately no one understood him.
“Won’t you change your mind and come, too?” he asked Beth.
She seemed on the point of accepting and then firmly declined.
When we returned at six o’clock, Rob and Diogenes were awaiting us. There was something in Rob’s eyes I had not seen there before. He had the look of one in love with life.
“Did you have a nice time playing solitaire?” asked Silvia.
“I had a very nice time,” he replied with a subtle smile, “but I didn’t play solitaire. You know I had Diogenes.”
“Diogenes apparently had a good time, too,” said Silvia, looking at the child, who was certainly a wreck in the way of garments. “What did you do all day, Rob?”
“We went out on the water, played games, and had a picnic dinner outdoors.”
“You had huckleberry pie for one thing,” she observed, with a glance at Diogenes’ dress, “and jelly for another, and–”
“Chicken, baked potatoes, milk, cake, and ice cream,” he finished.
“Where did you get ice cream?” she asked.
“I went down to a dairy farm and got a gallon.”
“A gallon!” she exclaimed. “For you and Diogenes?”
“We didn’t eat it all,” he said guardedly. “I gave what we didn’t eat to some stray boys.”
“I hope Di won’t be ill.”
“He won’t,” asserted Rob. “I am sure he is made of cast iron.”
Throughout dinner Rob remained in high spirits. He kept eyeing Beth in a way that disconcerted her, and then suddenly he would smile with the expression of one who knows something funny, but intends to keep it a secret.
Presently Silvia left us and went upstairs to give Diogenes a bath before she put him to bed.
“You’ve had two days’ freedom from the last of the Polydores,” I called after her. “Doesn’t it seem delightful?”
“Lucien,” she answered slowly, “I’ve really missed the care of him. I was lonesome for him all day.”
“He isn’t such a bad little kid when he is out from Polydore environment,” I admitted, regretting that he had been restored to it.
“Now tell us all about your day with the boys,” Beth asked Rob, when we were left alone. “It really does seem too bad to keep a secret from Silvia, and yet it is a case of where ignorance is bliss–”
“It would be folly to be otherwise,” finished Rob. “Well, Diogenes and I left here with a boat load of supplies in the way of provender and things for the boys. I had to tie Diogenes in the boat, of course, so he would not try some aquatic feat. He objected and yelled like a fiend all the way. I was glad there was no one at the hotel to come out and arrest me for cruelty to children. Of course before we landed, his cries were heard by his brothers and they were all at the water’s edge. They made mulepacks of themselves and transferred the commissary supplies. The ice cream and bats and balls which I found at the store made quite a hit.
“We played baseball, fished, and had a spread on the shore. Then Ptolemy and I rowed out to where the sailboat was. I explained the mysteries of the jib and he caught on instantly. We took in the other Polydores and sailed for a couple of hours. Then we all went in swimming.”
“Not Diogenes!”
“Certainly. I tucked him under my arm and he seemed perfectly at home, although greatly disappointed because we didn’t succeed in catching a snake.
“I finally landed them all safely under the roof of the Haunted House, and Ptolemy assured me it was the best day of his young life. In appreciation of the diversions I had afforded him, he made a confession which proved such good news to me that I was a lenient listener and exacted no penalty.”
“What was it?” I asked.
“He told me that on the day of Miss Wade’s and my arrival at your house, he had made a misstatement to each of us and had not repeated to us accurately what he had overheard you telling Silvia when he was on the porch roof. Miss Wade, what did he tell you about me?”
“He said that Lucien said that your only failing was that you were daffy over women and made love to every one you saw.”
“Oh, Beth!” I cried, light bursting in, “and you believed that little wretch?”
“I did.”
“Then that is why you have been so–”
“Yes–so–” repeated Rob grimly.
“Well, I never did have any use for a man-flirt, and I was awfully disappointed, for I had thought from what Rob said that you were a man’s man.”
“And then, of course, when for the first time in my life I began being interested in a woman–in you–I played right into that little scamp’s hands.”
“He is a man’s man, Beth,” I said warmly. “What Ptolemy heard me say was that Rob was a woman-hater.”
“I am not!” declared Rob indignantly–“just a woman-shyer, but I haven’t finished with Ptolemy’s confession. I wonder, now, if either of you can guess what he told me was Miss Wade’s characteristic.”
“I don’t dare guess,” laughed Beth.
“What I did say about Beth was that she was a born flirt.”
“I am not!” protested my sister, in resentment.
“I should prefer that appellation to the one he gave you. He said you were strong-minded and a man-hater.”
Even Beth saw the irony of this.
“I asked him,” continued Rob, “what his motive was, and he said ‘Stepdaddy didn’t want Beth to know about the man-hater business,’ so he took that means of throwing you off the track.
“I took the occasion to talk to him like a Dutch uncle, though I don’t know exactly what that is. I think it was the first time anything but brute force had been tried on him. I must have touched some little flicker of the right thing in him, for he was really contrite and seemed to sense a different angle of vision when I explained to him what havoc could be worked by the misinformation of meddlers. He promised me he’d try to overcome his tendency to start things going wrong.”
I made no comment, but it occurred to me that Ptolemy was a shrewd little fellow, and that there had been wisdom back of his strategic speeches to Beth and Rob, for he had taken the one sure course to make them both “take notice.”
“So, Beth,” said Rob, and her name seemed to come quite handily to him, “can’t we cut out the past ten days and begin our acquaintance right?”
“I think we can,” she answered.
“I had better go upstairs,” I suggested, “and tell Silvia that Diogenes doesn’t need a bath, seeing he has been in swimming.”
Neither of them urged me to remain, so I went up to our room and found Silvia tucking Diogenes under cover.
“What did you come up for?” she asked. “I was just coming down to join you.”
“Beth is treating Rob so–differently, that I thought it well to retreat.”
“I am so glad! Whatever came over the spirit of her dreams?”
“They’ve just discovered in the course of conversation that Ptolemy as usual crossed the wires and told Beth Rob was a flirt, and then informed Rob that Beth was strong-minded and a man-hater.”
“Oh, the little imp!” she exclaimed indignantly.
“I don’t know. It worked, anyway, so Ptolemy was the bad means to a good end.”
“How did they ever happen to discover what he had done?”
“They caught on from something Rob said,” I told her, feeling again guilty at keeping my first secret from her.
“It will be a fine match for Beth,” said Silvia. “Rob is such a splendid man, and then he has plenty of money. He can give her anything she wants.”
I winced. I think Silvia must have been conscious of it, even though the room was dark, for she came to me quickly.
“I wish I could give you–everything–anything–you want, Silvia.”
“You have, Lucien. The things that no money could buy–love and protection.”
Well, maybe I had. I had surely given her protection from the Polydores, though she didn’t know to what extent.
“I am going to give you more material things, though, Silvia. When we go home, I shall start to work in earnest and see if I can’t get enough ahead to make a good investment I know of.”
“I’d rather do without the necessities even, Lucien, than to have you work any harder than you have been doing. We must let well enough alone.”
