Kitabı oku: «Our Next-Door Neighbors», sayfa 6

Chapter XIV
A Midnight Excursion

The night was Satan’s own: dark, wind-shrieking, and Polydorish. No one saw us leave the hotel when, at a late hour, we started on our little excursion. On account of the darkness and the poor landing near the haunted house, we decided to go by the overland route. I managed to purloin a lantern from the kitchen to light our path.

Rob and Beth kept behind Miss Frayne and myself, and in spite of the wildness of the weather, he was evidently pleading his suit, for now and then above the roar of the wind, I heard his ardent voice. Apparently Beth had not yet given him any encouragement.

Going down the lane my lantern underwent a total eclipse, so we had a Jordan-like road to travel. Miss Frayne was quite impervious to unfavorable conditions, as it was a matter of bread and butter to her, she said, and she was accustomed to braving worse storms than this, and anyway she hadn’t come here for a summer picnic.

When we came into the grove it was so dark, I lost my bearings.

“Why didn’t we bring a flashlight?” asked Beth.

“There were none at the hotel,” I told her.

“I know some boys,” said Rob with a little laugh, “who would have lent us one–maybe.”

Fortunately we were well provided with safety matches and after striking a box or so, we gained the open. A rise of ground hid the house, but when we climbed to the top, the ghost loomed up ghastlier than ever.

I felt the business-like Miss Frayne start and shiver as a little scream escaped her. I didn’t wonder. Even I, knowing that it was an illusion and a snare, felt my flesh creeping as I looked at the ghastly thing in the window.

Every now and then according to schedule a light flashed from the windows below. And then came the blood-curdling sounds–whimpers and groans that were rivaling the whistling of the wind.

“This is awful!” said Miss Frayne in a hoarse whisper.

“Do you want to go inside the house?” I asked.

“No–o! I couldn’t. Not tonight.”

We were some little in advance of Rob and Beth. When one spectral sound came like a tense whisper, Miss Frayne turned and fled, and of course I followed her. We could not see our two companions, but suddenly in an interim of wind and ghost whispers, we heard Beth say:

“Yes, Rob. I think we should really be cosier in a story-and-a-half cottage than we should in a bungalow.”

“Ye Gods!” muttered Miss Frayne, “did he propose in the face of that awful Thing?”

“Ship ahoy!” I called.

“Oh, didn’t you go inside?” asked Rob.

“Go in! I wouldn’t go inside that place; not if I lose my job on the paper. What can it be? You don’t seem to mind it, Miss Wade.”

“Well, you know,” said Beth apologetically, “this is my third performance.”

We were now down the hill out of sight of the gruesome, ghastly window display, and Miss Frayne gained courage as we retreated.

“Of course I don’t believe in ghosts,” she said, “but what do you suppose that is?”

“I had a theory,” I said, “that it is the work of a lunatic, but I’ve since concluded it is due to practical jokers. I’ll tell you what I’ll do. If you wait here, I’ll investigate and see what I can find out for you.”

“Oh, would you really dare, Mr. Wade? I don’t believe men ever have creepy nerves,” she exclaimed.

I began to feel ashamed of my deception.

“I wouldn’t go, Lucien,” warned Rob, coming to my rescue. “There may be a gang of desperadoes in there, or counterfeit money-makers, or something of that kind. Besides, I have a far more interesting piece of news than anything the ghost could give you.”

“Rob!” protested Beth.

“We know it already,” I laughed. “It’s to be a story-and-a-half high.”

“I think I am getting material for quite a story,” declared Miss Frayne.

I knew Beth’s dislike of scenes and display of emotions–mock heroics–she called them, so I made no congratulatory speeches of the bless-you-my-children order, but presently under the cover of darkness, I felt a little hand slipped in mine, and my clasp was eloquent of what I felt.

“I hope,” said Miss Frayne, “that daylight will make me so ashamed of my cowardice that I can come down here and take some pictures and go inside the house.”

“We’ll all come with you,” promised Beth. “There’s safety in numbers.”

When we were back at the hotel I managed to have a few words with Rob before we went upstairs.

“Bless the ghost!” he said cheerily. “When Beth first glimpsed it, she just turned and fell into my arms. She was really frightened for the first time. I shall feel under obligations to Ptolemy for a lifetime.”

“Thank goodness!” I ejaculated fervently, “that I am under no obligations to a Polydore. Ptolemy certainly did put up the most ghastly thing in the way of ghosts. The lights in the eyes of the skeleton were frightful.”

“Did you see the ghost?” asked Silvia sleepily, when I came in.

“Yes; same old ghost, only more of him,” I assured her.

She was asleep before I had uttered this reply.

“Silvia,” I said, “I have a more startling piece of news for you than that.”

She sat bolt upright.

“Are they engaged, Lucien?”

“They are. They are building their castle–I mean their story-and-a-half cottage already.”

Alas for my own desire to sleep! I had so effectually awakened Silvia that she planned Beth’s trousseau, the wedding, honeymoon, and the furnishing of their house before she subsided.

Chapter XV
What Miss Frayne Found Out

We had planned to go to the haunted house at nine o’clock the next morning, but owing to my dissipation of the night before, it was long after the appointed hour when Silvia awoke me.

I hurried down stairs and ate my breakfast in solitude. I inquired for Beth and Rob, but the waitress told me they had left the dining-room at seven o’clock and gone for a walk in the woods. She said it with a knowing smile that told me she, too, must be a “sister of the Golden Circle.”

“And Miss Frayne?” I asked.

“She went down the road over an hour ago.”

Evidently her courage had come up with the sun. I was greatly disturbed at the chance of her stumbling over one or more Polydores, and Rob didn’t want to let the cat out of the bag until her article was written, as he believed that if the ghostly spell were broken, she would lose her “punch.”

I was unable to think of any plausible explanation to offer Silvia as to why I should start in pursuit, and I wished all sorts of dire calamities on Rob’s blond head. Lovers were surely blind and selfish.

About ten o’clock they came strolling in.

“We didn’t know it was so late,” said Beth cheerfully, “but the boys will keep in the woods all right.”

“With her nose for news, there is no telling how far into the woods Miss Frayne’s investigation will take her.”

“Say we go down by the lane and meet her,” proposed Beth, “so that if she has run across the boys we can explain to her why we desire secrecy from Silvia.”

“You and Rob go,” I advised. “It would seem odd to Silvia if we didn’t ask her to go with us.”

So the newly engaged couple started down the road, but in their self-absorption they didn’t notice the turn to the lane, and they got half way to Windy Creek before they came back to earth and the hotel. Miss Frayne still had not shown up, and I began to have misgivings lest the Polydores had locked her up in the house, but finally just as we were having a happy family gathering and discussing the new event under the shade of the one resort tree, she came excitedly up to us.

“Such an interesting morning as I have had!” she exclaimed enthusiastically. “I made some corking pictures of the place, and I’ve found out about not only that ghost, but all ghosts–the whole race of ghosts.”

I hurriedly interrupted her and made elaborate and jumbled apologies for not keeping our engagement, which evidently bored her and mystified Silvia.

“I am glad I went alone,” she finally replied. “Otherwise I might not have got such an interesting interview.”

Beth, Rob, and I made frantic and appealing gestures to her behind Silvia’s back, but she didn’t seem to notice them.

“Whom did you interview, the ghost?” asked Silvia.

“No, indeed. Some very interesting and unusual people who are staying there.”

I threw her a wildly beseeching glance and Beth and Rob began at the same time to ply her with distracting questions. I think she seemed to divine that there was something in the situation that was not to be explained, but Silvia interrupted them.

“Do let Miss Frayne tell us about her interview,” she said. “We all seem to be very talkative today.”

I saw there was no way to dodge the dénouement, so I awaited the finale in dread desperation. It proved to be more of a stunner than I had expected.

“I went down the lane,” she said, “and through the grove, up the little hill, and laughed at myself for the hallucinations of the night before. There were no ghosts visible and the door to the haunted house was hospitably open. I stood on the hill long enough to make some pictures and then went on. I walked up the steps fearlessly and looked within. A woman, an untidy, disheveled-looking woman, sat at a table writing furiously in just the same breathless way I write when I have a scoop, and the presses are waiting open-mouthed for my copy.

“She looked up and scowled at my intrusion.

“‘Don’t bother me,’ she said, and continued writing.

“I went through the house and came outside again where I met an absent-minded, spectacled man. I told him who I was and of my object in coming to the house. Then he showed signs of coming to.

“‘Oh, the ghost!’ he said. ‘That is what brought me here. My wife is interested in more tangible, more material things. We have just returned from a long journey, and when we were nearly to our destination, our place of residence, I happened to read in a paper about this haunted house and its apparition, so we came right up here this morning to remain overnight and see if the article were true.’

“I told him how successful I had been and he became quite alert and enthusiastic. He showed me why I should not have been alarmed, because ghosts, he said, were scientific facts. He then explained to me at length how the gases from the dead arise and form a nebulous vapor or a vaporous nebula. It sounded very simple and plausible when he told me, but I can’t seem to remember it. Fortunately I have it all down in writing.”

Silvia’s eyes and mine had met in speechless horror since she had mentioned the “writing woman.”

“Lucien!” Silvia now said in a tragic, hoarse whisper–“the Polydores!”

“Oh, do you know them?” asked Miss Frayne. “Dr. Felix Polydore, the eminent LL.D. or something like that.”

“The whole family are D’s,” I said.

“His wife is the highest of high-brows, and they are averse to interviews. They moved to a small city sometime ago to be secluded. Just think of my opportunity! I have them headlined! ‘The Haunted House of Hope Haven. Ghost that appears at midnight scientifically explained by the distinguished Dr. Felix Polydore.’”

“I think we are in luck,” I said to Silvia, on second thoughts. “We will take them home by the nape of the neck and deliver their children into their keeping to have and to hold.”

“I can’t turn Diogenes over to them,” she said plaintively.

“Diogenes!” repeated Miss Frayne in astonishment.

I then narrated to her the history of our next-door neighbors, and how they planted their five children upon us.

“We had better go down at once and see them,” said Silvia, “before they escape. No telling where they might take it in their heads to go.”

“We will,” I said, “we’ll go soon after luncheon.”

“Thrice blessed haunted house,” quoted Rob. “It gave me Beth, and it has restored the parents of the wise Ptolemy and ‘Them Three.’”

“And gave me a ripping story,” said Miss Frayne.

Just then the gong sounded, and after luncheon while I was comfortably tipped back in a chair, my feet on the veranda rail, seeing in the smoke from my pipe dream visions of Polydoreless days, a faint cry from Silvia brought me back to earth.

“Lucien, look!”

I looked.

My chair came down to all fours and my feet slipped from the rail.

Chapter XVI
Ptolemy’s Tale

Four defiant, determined-looking Polydores came up the steps and bore down upon us. Then Silvia as usual thought she saw land ahead.

“Oh, boys,” she asked hopefully, “did your father send for you to meet him here? And when is he going to take you home?”

“Didn’t I tell you,” I thundered at Ptolemy, “that you were not to leave that house–”

“It left us,” interrupted Emerald with a grin.

“Went up in smoke,” added Pythagoras blithely, “ghost and all.”

“Four minutes quicker,” said Demetrius, “and it would have took father and mother, too.”

“Oh, is it the haunted house they are talking about?” asked Miss Frayne joyfully. “What a story I’ll have!”

Life to Miss Frayne seemed to be one story after another. Well, it was certainly becoming the same way to us.

“Did the ghost set fire to the house?” asked Beth.

“What are you all talking about,” demanded Silvia, “and how did you know these boys were there? How long have you been here?” she asked, turning to Ptolemy.

“I told you,” I repeated angrily to the subdued boy, “not to leave. Those were plain orders. If the house did burn up, you could have stayed in your tent in the woods.”

Ptolemy’s lips twitched faintly.

“The house burned up and all our clothes and our stuff to eat, and our bats and things, and father and mother went away and I didn’t know what to do, so–I came here. But we’ll go back to our own house. We have learned to cook. Come on, boys.”

“You’ll stay right here with me, son,” and Rob’s hand came down intimately on Ptolemy’s shoulder.

“It isn’t likely we’ll turn them out into the woods, when they haven’t a roof over their heads,” declared Silvia, drawing Emerald to her side.

“I think you are absolutely inhuman, Lucien,” cried Beth. “I don’t see what has changed you so,” and she proceeded to make room for Pythagoras in the porch swing.

“Did the fire scare you?” asked Miss Frayne gently, as she put her arms about Demetrius.

“Et tu, Brute? Well, I plainly see this is no place for an inhuman, childless, married man,” I said with a laugh, walking down the veranda.

In the doorway I met Diogenes, who raised his chubby arms invitingly.

“Up, up, Ocean!” he begged sweetly.

I lifted him to my shoulder, and then turned and walked triumphantly back to the family group.

“Now,” I said, “here is the whole d-dashed family. And I propose that each keep unto his charge the child he has now under his wing.”

Miss Frayne quickly relinquished the dirty Demetrius. Beth shrank away from Pythagoras.

As I seated myself still holding Diogenes, his brothers sprang toward him in greeting, but he spat at one, kicked at another, and pulled the hair of a third, although he patted Ptolemy’s cheek gently.

“Now, we’ll have this affair thrashed out,” I declared in my most authoritative, professional manner, and I then proceeded to explain to Silvia the housing of the Polydores, and our strategies to keep their arrival a secret simply on her account.

“Because you know,” interpolated Beth, with a consideration for the feelings of the young Polydores–a consideration they had never before encountered–“we wanted you to have a nice rest.”

Silvia looked quite penitent and remorseful for her seeming lack of appreciation of our combined efforts. When I had answered all her inquiries satisfactorily, Miss Frayne’s curiosity regarding the progeny of the eminent Polydores had to be fully relieved.

“And do you mean that the scribbling lady I saw at the table is really the mother of these five boys?” she asked, unable to grasp the fact.

“Yes; and the father hereof is the man who explained the ghosts to you so scientifically that you cannot remember what he said. Now, Ptolemy, we’ll hear your story of the fire and the whereabouts of your parents. Take your time and tell it accurately.”

“Well, you see we did just as you said to, and took the ghost out of the window and went out to the woods early this morning so as not to let the paper lady see us.”

“Oh!” cried Miss Frayne, “am I the paper lady? I begin to see daylight. Are these boys the ghost perpetrators, and were you in on the put-up job?”

“You’re a good guesser,” I replied.

“And why wasn’t I taken into your confidence?”

“For two reasons. First, because your friend Rob said you’d get better results for copy–more inspirations and thrills, if you weren’t behind the scenes on the ghost business,–and then we didn’t want to tell you about the presence of the Polydores lest inadvertently you betray the fact to my wife. Now, proceed, Ptolemy.”

“After we were in the woods, I heard an automobile coming down the lane, and I went up near the edge of the woods and peeked out behind a tree, and pretty soon I saw father and mother come over the hill and go in our haunted house, so I came up there and hid under the window and heard mother say: ‘What an ideal place to write this is. It looks as if I might really get a chance to write unmo–’

“‘–lested,’” I finished for him.

“I guess so,” he allowed. “Well, she began writing, so I didn’t go in, but when father came outside I went up to him and told him you and mudder were at the hotel and that we were all with you. He told me they came up here to write an article for some big magazine about the ghost. He hired an automobile down at Windy Creek to bring them up to the house and the man was going to come back for them tomorrow morning. I didn’t let on the ghost was a fake, because I thought he’d be so disappointed to have all his trouble for nothing, and he’d be mad at me for swiping his skull. I told him a paper lady was coming and then I went back to the woods. He went down with me to see the boys, and he said he would come back and have lunch with us. Mother doesn’t ever stop to eat at noon when she is writing.

“He went back and talked to the paper lady and pretty soon he came down and ate with us. I told him all about how we couldn’t get any girl to do the work for us and so we had been living with you, and how Di got sick and mudder was all worn out taking care of him and came down here to rest, and that you wouldn’t cash the check, so I did and was spending it and he said that was all right.” Here Ptolemy flashed me a most triumphant glance.

“He said you must be paid for all your expense and trouble, so he made out a check and gave it to me and told me to make mudder a nice present. He ain’t so bad when he ain’t thinking about dead stuff. When he felt in his pocket for his check book, he found a letter he had got yesterday and forgotten to open, so he read it then and found it was from some magazine, and the man said he’d pay his and mother’s expenses to go to Chili and write up some stuff about–something. So father said they must go at once.”

“Not to Chili!” I exclaimed.

“Yes; we all went up to the house with him and I took mother’s pencil and paper away so she would have to listen. She was wild for Chili, and I had to go and hunt up a farmer who had a machine to take them down to Windy Creek. Father signed another blank check for you and said you could board us with it or do anything you thought best.

“Then mother took a lot of papers out of her bag, some stuff she had written and didn’t get suited with, and she stuffed them in the stove and set fire to them. Then we all went down to the lane to see father and mother off and when we got back the house was on fire. The chimney burned out.”

“Guess mother must have written some hot stuff,” said Emerald.

“It was burning so fast,” continued Ptolemy, “that we didn’t dast go in to save anything and all our food and clothes and balls and bats and fishing tackle are gone, and we didn’t know what to do, or what to eat, and so–we came here.”

“You did just right, Ptolemy,” I admitted. “I shouldn’t have called you down–not until I heard your story, anyway.”

I held out my hand, which he shook solemnly, but with an injured air.

“Do you mean to tell me,” asked Miss Frayne, “that your father and mother went away without seeing the baby?”

Ptolemy flushed a little.

“You see,” he explained apologetically, “mother gets woolly when she writes and she’s forgotten there’s Di. She thinks Demetrius is the youngest. She’s mad about writing. If she sees a blank paper anywhere, she ain’t happy until she has written something on it, and the sight of a pencil makes her fingers itch.”

“Take warning, Miss Frayne,” I said, “and don’t get too literary.”

“Some day,” resumed Ptolemy, “mother’ll get the antiques all out of her system and then she’ll remember us.”

I liked the boy’s defense of his mother, and I began to see that Rob was right in thinking there were possibilities in the lad, but it was Silvia’s influence that had developed them, for in the days when he borrowed soup plates of us, there had been no redeeming trait that I could discern.

And while I was recalling this, I heard Silvia saying to him kindly: “And in the meantime, I’ll be ‘mudder’ to you.”

“So will I,” chimed in Beth.

“I’ll be a big brother,” offered Rob.

“I’ll be next friend, Ptolemy,” I contributed.

Strange to say, my offer seemed to make the most impression on him. He came to me and gazed into my eyes earnestly.

“I’ll do just as you say,” he promised.

“Where do we’uns come in?” asked Pythagoras, with one of his satanic grins.

Miss Frayne saved the day.

“You all come in with me,” she said, “and have lunch. I haven’t eaten since breakfast, and I understand there is warm ginger cake and huckleberry pie. Aren’t you hungry?”

“You bet,” spoke up Pythagoras. “We only had coffee, peanuts, and beans down in the woods, and father ate the beans and drank all the coffee.”

“We’re out of the frying pan into the fire,” said Silvia woefully, when we were alone.

“I wish the Polydore parents had gone up in smoke,” I declared.

“Then your last hope of getting rid of the children would have gone up in smoke, too,” argued Beth.

“No; in case of the demise of their parents, we could have turned them over body and soul to the probate court,” I informed her.

“We will fill out this blank check for any amount, Lucien,” declared Silvia, “that will induce a housekeeper to take charge of their house. I shall keep Diogenes, though, until he is older.”

“I wouldn’t mind Ptolemy, either,” I admitted. “I shall be interested in seeing what I can make of him, and he hasn’t a bad influence over Diogenes, but I’ll be hanged if anything would induce me to have ‘Them Three’ Chessy cats running wild over us. They can live in their house alone, or be put in a reformatory. We won’t have them. We’re under no obligations, pecuniary or moral, to look after them.”

“I think, Lucien, we might as well go home now. We’ve had a good rest and a good time, and I am anxious to be back and see how Huldah is getting on.”

As Huldah had never mastered two of the three R’s, we had not been able to receive any reports from her.

“I’ll tell you what we’ll do,” proposed Beth. “Rob and I will take all the Polydores save Diogenes, and go home tomorrow and prepare the house and Huldah for the overflow. Then you two can come on with Diogenes the next day.”

“Good idea, Beth!” I approved. “I’d hate to face Huldah, unprepared, with the return of the Polydores en masse.”

“I am glad,” said Silvia, “that Huldah has been having a rest from them for a few days.”