Kitabı oku: «The Girls of Hillcrest Farm: or, The Secret of the Rocks», sayfa 12

CHAPTER XXIV
PROFESSOR SPINK’S BOTTLES

But Professor Lemuel Judson Spink did not look happy–not at all!

While the neighbors were crowding around, emitting “ohs” and “ahs” over his find in the broken old desk, the proprietor of “the breakfast for the million” began to look pretty sick.

“Five thousand dollars! My mercy!” gasped the Widow Harrison. “Then Bob didn’t lie about bringing home that fortune when he came from the army.”

“It’s a shame, Widder!” cried one man. “That five thousand ought to belong to you.”

“Dad got it right; didn’t he?” said Lucas, shaking his head sadly. “He allus said Harrison was trying to tell him where it was hid when he had his last stroke.”

Harris Colesworth spoke for the first time since the packages of notes were discovered:

“Mr. Harrison told Cyrus Pritchett that he had hid away ‘that that would be wuth five thousand.’ It’s plain what he had in his mind–and a whole lot of other foolish people had it in their minds just after the Civil War.”

“What do you mean, Mr. Colesworth?” cried Lyddy, who was clinging to the widow’s hand and patting it soothingly.

“Why,” chuckled Harris, “there were folks who believed–and they believed it for years after the Civil War–that some day the Federal Government was going to redeem all the paper money printed by the Confederate States – ”

“What?” bawled Lucas, fairly springing off the ground.

“Confederate money?” repeated the crowd in chorus.

No wonder Professor Spink looked sick. He broke through the group, flinging the neat packages of bills behind him as he strode away.

“How about the desk, Professor?” shouted Harris; “don’t you want it?”

“Give it to the old woman–you swindler!” snarled Spink.

And then the crowd roared! The humor of the thing struck them and it was half an hour before the auctioneer could go on with the sale.

“No; I did not know the bills were there,” Harris avowed. “But I thought the professor was so avaricious that he could be made to bid up the old desk. Had he bid on it when it was put up by the auctioneer, however, Mrs. Harrison would not have benefited. You see, the best the auctioneer can do, what he gets from the sale will not entirely satisfy Spink’s claim. But the money-grabber can’t touch that fifty dollars in good money he paid over to Mrs. Harrison with his own hands.”

“Oh, it was splendid, Harris!” gasped Lyddy, seizing both his hands. Then she retired suddenly to Mrs. Harrison’s side and never said another word to the young man.

“Gee, cracky!” said Lucas, with a sigh. “I was scairt stiff when I seen them bills fall out of the old desk. I thought sure they were good.”

“I confess I knew what they were immediately–and so did Spink,” replied Harris.

The young folks had got enough of the vendue now, and so had Mrs. Pritchett. Lucas agreed to come up with the farm wagon for the pieces of furniture with which Harris had presented the Widow Harrison–including the broken desk–and transport them and the widow herself to Hillcrest before night.

Mrs. Pritchett was enthusiastic over the girls taking Mrs. Harrison to the farm, and she could not say enough in praise of it. So Lyddy was glad to get out of the buckboard with Harris Colesworth at the bottom of the lane.

“You all talk too much about it, Mrs. Pritchett!” she cried, when bidding the farmer’s wife good-bye. “But I’d be glad to have you come up here as often as you can–and talk on any other subject!” and she ran laughing into the house.

Lyddy feared that Professor Spink would make trouble. At least, he and Harris Colesworth must be at swords’ point. And she was sorry now that she had so impulsively given the young chemist her commendation for what he had done for the Widow Harrison.

However, Harris went off at noon, walking to town to take the afternoon train to the city; and as the professor did not show up again until nightfall there was no friction that day at Hillcrest–nor for the rest of the week.

Mrs. Harrison came and got into the work “two-fisted,” as she said herself. She was a strong old woman, and had been brought up to work. Lyddy and ’Phemie were at once relieved of many hard jobs–and none too quickly, for the girls were growing thin under the burden they had assumed.

That very week their advertisements brought them a gentleman and his wife with a little crippled daughter. It was getting warm enough now so that people were not afraid to come to board in a house that had no heating arrangements but open fireplaces.

As the numbers of the boarders increased, however, Lyddy did not find that the profit increased proportionately. She was now handling fifty-one dollars and a half each week; but the demands for vegetables and fresh eggs made a big item; and as yet there had been no returns from the garden, although everything was growing splendidly.

The chickens had hatched–seventy-two of them. Mr. Bray had taken up the study of the poultry papers and catalogs, and he declared himself well enough to take entire charge of the fluffy little fellows as soon as they came from the shell. He really did appear to be getting on a little; but the girls watched him closely and could scarcely believe that he made any material gain in health.

With Harris Colesworth’s help one Saturday, he had knocked together a couple of home-made brooders and movable runs, and soon the flock, divided in half, were chirping gladly in the spring sunshine on the side lawn.

They fed them scientifically, and with care. Mr. Bray was at the pens every two hours all day–or oftener. At night, two jugs of hot water went into the brooders, and the little biddies never seemed to miss having a real mother.

Luckily Lyddy had chosen a hardy strain of fowl and during the first fortnight they lost only two of the fluffy little fellows. Lyddy saw the beginning of a profitable chicken business ahead of her; but, of course, it was only an expense as yet.

She could not see her way clear to buying the kitchen range that was so much needed; and the days were growing warmer. May promised to be the forerunner of an exceedingly hot summer.

At Hillcrest there was, however, almost always a breeze. Seldom did the huge piles of rocks at the back of the farm shut the house off from the cooling winds. The people who came to enjoy the simple comforts of the farmhouse were loud in their praises of the spot.

“If we can get along till July–or even the last of June,” quoth Lyddy to her sister, “I feel sure that we will get the house well filled, the garden will help to support us, and we shall be on the way to making a good living – ”

“If we aren’t dead,” sighed ’Phemie. “I do get so tired sometimes. It’s a blessing we got Mother Harrison,” for so they had come to call the widow.

“We knew we’d have to work if we took boarders,” said Lyddy.

“Goodness me! we didn’t know we had to work our fingers to the bone–mine are coming through the flesh–the bones, I mean.”

“What nonsense!”

“And I know I have lost ten pounds. I’m only a skeleton. You could hang me up in that closet in the old doctor’s office in place of that skeleton – ”

“What’s that, ’Phemie Bray?” demanded the older sister, in wonder.

’Phemie realized that she had almost let that secret out of the bag, and she jumped up with a sudden cry:

“Mercy! do you know the time, Lyd? If we’re going to pick those wild strawberries for tea, we’d better be off at once. It’s almost three o’clock.”

And so she escaped telling Lyddy all she knew about what was behind the mysteriously locked green door at the end of the long corridor of the farmhouse.

Harris Colesworth, on his early Sunday morning jaunts to the swimming-hole in Pounder’s Brook, had discovered a patch of wild strawberries, and had told the girls. Up to this time Lyddy and ’Phemie had found little time in which to walk over the farm. As for traversing the rocky part of it, as old Mr. Colesworth and Professor Spink did, that was out of the question.

But fruit was high, and the chance to pick a dish for supper–enough for all the boarders–was a great temptation to the frugal Lyddy.

She caught up her sunbonnet and pail and followed her sister. ’Phemie’s bonnet was blue and Lyddy’s was pink. As they crossed the cornfield, their bright tin pails flashing in the afternoon sunlight, Grandma Castle saw them from the shady porch.

“What do you think about those two girls, Mrs. Chadwick?” she demanded of the little lame girl’s mother.

“I have been here so short a time I scarcely know how to answer that question, Mrs. Castle,” responded the other lady.

“I’ll tell you: They’re wonderful!” declared Grandma Castle. “If my granddaughters had half the get-up-and-get to ’em that Lydia and Euphemia have, I’d be as proud as Mrs. Lucifer! So I would.”

Meanwhile the girls of Hillcrest Farm had passed through the young corn–acres and acres of it, running clear down to Mr. Pritchett’s line–and climbed the stone fence into the upper pasture.

Here a path, winding among the huge boulders, brought them within sound of Pounder’s Brook. ’Phemie laughed now at the remembrance of her intimate acquaintance with that brook the day they had first come to Hillcrest.

It broadened here in a deep brown pool under an overhanging boulder. A big beech tree, too, shaded it. It certainly was a most attractive place.

“Wish I was a boy!” gasped ’Phemie, in delight. “I certainly would get a bathing suit and come up here like Harris Colesworth. And Lucas comes here and plunges in after his day’s work–he told me so.”

“Dear me! I hope nobody will come here for a bath just now,” observed Lyddy. “It would be rather awkward.”

“And I reckon the water’s cold, too,” agreed her sister, with a giggle. “This stream is fed by a dozen different springs around among the rocks here, so Lucas says. And I expect one spring is just a little colder than another!”

“Oh, look!” exclaimed Lyddy. “There are the strawberries.”

The girls were down upon their knees immediately, picking into their tins–and their mouths. They could not resist the luscious berries–“tame” strawberries never can be as sweet as the wild kind.

And this patch near the swimming hole afforded a splendid crop. The girls saw that they might come here again and again to pick berries for their table–and every free boon of Nature like this helped in the management of the boarding house!

But suddenly–when their kettles were near full–’Phemie jumped up with a shrill whisper:

“What’s that?”

“Hush, ’Phemie!” exclaimed her sister. “How you scared me.”

“Hush yourself! don’t you hear it?”

Lyddy did. Surely that was a strange clinking noise to be heard up here in the woods. It sounded like a milkman going along the street carrying a bunch of empty bottles.

“It’s no wild animal–unless he’s got glass teeth and is gnashing ’em,” giggled ’Phemie. “Come on! I want to know what it means.”

“I wouldn’t, ’Phemie – ”

“Well, I would, Lyddy. Come on! Who’s afraid of bottles?”

“But is it bottles we hear?”

“We’ll find out in a jiff,” declared her younger sister, leading the way deeper into the woods.

The sound was from up stream. They followed the noisy brook for some hundreds of yards. Then they came suddenly upon a little hollow, where water dripped over a huge boulder into another still pool–but smaller than the swimming hole.

Behind the drip of the water was a ledge, and on this ledge stood a row of variously assorted bottles. A man was just setting several other bottles on the same ledge.

These were the bottles the girls had heard striking together as the man walked through the woods. And the man himself was Professor Spink.

CHAPTER XXV
IN THE OLD DOCTOR’S OFFICE

The two girls, almost at once, began to shrink away through the bushes again–and this without a word or look having passed between them. Both Lyddy and ’Phemie were unwilling to meet the professor under these conditions.

They were back at the strawberry patch before either of them spoke aloud.

“What do you suppose he was about?” whispered ’Phemie.

“How do I know? And those bottles!”

“What do you think was in them?”

“Looked like water–nothing but water,” said Lyddy. “It certainly is a puzzle.”

“I should say so!”

“And there doesn’t seem to be any sense in it,” cried Lyddy. “Let’s go home, ’Phemie. We’ve got enough berries for supper.”

As they went along the pasture trail, the younger girl suggested:

“Do you suppose he could be making up another of his fake medicines? Like those ‘Stonehedge Bitters?’ Lucas says they ought to be called ’Stonefence Bitters,’ for they are just hard cider and bad whiskey–and that’s what the folks hereabout call ‘stonefence.’”

“It looked like only water in those bottles,” Lyddy said, slowly.

“And he’s so afraid old Mr. Colesworth–or Harris–will come up here and find him at work–or come across his water-bottles,” continued ’Phemie. “Lucky this new boarder–Mr. Chadwick–isn’t much for long walks. It would keep old Spink busier than a hen on a hot griddle, as Lucas says, to watch all of them.”

“Well, I wish I knew what it meant. It puzzles me,” remarked Lyddy. “And I never yet asked Mr. Pritchett about the evening we saw him and a man whom I now think must have been Professor Spink at the farmhouse.”

“Ask him–do,” urged ’Phemie, at last curious enough to have Lyddy share all the mystery that had been troubling her own mind since they first came to Hillcrest.

“I’ll do so the very first time I see him,” declared Lyddy.

But something else happened first–and something that brought the mystery regarding Professor Lemuel Judson Spink to a head for the time being, at least.

’Phemie lost the key to the green door!

Now, off and on, that missing key had troubled Lyddy. She had seldom spoken of it, for she had never even known it had been in the door when the girls came to Hillcrest. Only ’Phemie, it will be remembered, had the midnight adventure in the old doctor’s suite of offices in the east wing.

Lyddy only said, occasionally, that it was odd Aunt Jane had not sent the key to the green door when she expressed all the other keys to her nieces when the project of keeping boarders at Hillcrest was first broached.

At these times ’Phemie had kept as still as a mouse. Sometimes the key was worn on a string around her neck; sometimes it was concealed in a cunning little pocket she had sewn into her skirt. But wherever it was, it always seemed–to ’Phemie–to be burning a hole in her garments and trying to make its appearance.

After finding Professor Spink filling the bottles with water up by Pounder’s Brook, the girl was more than usually troubled about the east wing and the mystery.

She moved the key about from place to place. One day she wore it; another she hid it in some corner. And finally, one night when she came to go to bed, she found that the cord on which she had worn the key that day was broken and the key was gone.

She screamed so loud at this discovery that her sister was sure she had seen a mouse, and she bounded into bed, half dressed as she was.

“Where–where is it, ’Phemie?” she gasped, for Lyddy was as afraid of mice as she was of rats.

“Oh, mercy me!” wailed ’Phemie, “that’s what I’d like to know.”

“Didn’t you see it?” cried her trembling sister.

“It’s gone!” returned ’Phemie.

Lyddy got gingerly down from the bed.

“Then I’d like to know what you yelled so for–if the mouse has disappeared?” she demanded, quite sternly.

And then ’Phemie, understanding her, and realizing that she had almost given her secret away, burst into a hysterical giggle, which nothing but Lyddy’s shaking finally relieved.

“You’re just as twittery as a sparrow,” declared Lyddy. “I never did see such a girl. First you’re squealing as though you were hurt, and then you laugh in a most idiotic way. Come! do behave yourself and go to bed!”

But even after ’Phemie obeyed she could not go to sleep.

Suppose somebody picked up that key? She had no idea, of course, where it had been dropped. Certainly not on the floor of her bedroom. Some time during the day, inside, or outside of the house, the key, with its little brass tag stamped with the words “East Wing,” had slipped to the ground.

Now–suppose it was found?

’Phemie got out of bed quietly, slipped on her slippers and shrugged herself into her robe. Somebody might be down there in old Dr. Phelps’s offices right now.

And that somebody, of course, in ’Phemie’s mind, meant just one person–Professor Lemuel Judson Spink.

Why had he come to Hillcrest to board, anyway? And why hadn’t he gone away when he had been made the topic of many a joke about old Bob Harrison’s treasure trove?

For nearly a fortnight now the professor had stood grimly the jokes and laughing comments aimed at him by the other boarders. The presence of Mrs. Harrison, too, in the house, was a constant reminder to the breakfast food magnate of how his own acquisitiveness had made him over-reach himself.

’Phemie went downstairs, taking a comforter with her, and went into the long corridor leading from the west wing entry to the green door. The girls had never taken the old davenport out of this wide hall, and ’Phemie curled up on this–with its hard, hair-cloth-covered arm for a pillow–spread the quilt over her, and tried to compose her nerves here within sight and sound of the east wing entrance.

Suppose somebody was already in the offices?

The thought became so insistent that, after ten minutes, she was forced to creep along to the green door and try the latch.

With her hand on it, she heard a sudden sound from the room nearby. Was somebody astir in the Colesworth quarters?

This was late Saturday night–almost midnight, in fact; and of course Harris Colesworth was in the house. Sometimes he read until very late.

So ’Phemie turned again, after a moment, and lifted the latch. Then she pushed tentatively on the door, and —

It swung open!

’Phemie gasped–an appalling sound it seemed in the stillness of the corridor and at that hour of the night.

Often, while the key had been in her possession, she had tried the door as she passed it while working about the house. It had been securely locked.

Then, she told herself now, on the instant, the key had been found and it had been put to use. Somebody had already been in the old doctor’s offices and had ransacked the rooms.

She crossed the threshold swiftly and groped her way to the door of the second room–the old doctor’s consulting room. Here the light of the moon filtered through the shutters sufficiently to show her the place.

There seemed to be nobody there, and she stepped in, leaving the green door open behind her, but pulling shut the door between the anteroom and the office.

There was the old doctor’s big desk, and the bookcases all about the room, and the jars with “specimens” in them and–yes!–the skeleton case in the corner.

She had advanced to the middle of the room when suddenly she saw that the door into the lumber room, or laboratory, at the back, was open. A white wand of light shot through this open door, and played upon the ceiling, then upon the wall, of the old doctor’s office.

CHAPTER XXVI
A BLOW-UP

’Phemie’s heart beat quickly; but she was no more afraid than she had been the moment before, when she found the green door unlocked. There was somebody–the person who had found the lost key–still in the offices of the east wing.

The wand of white light playing about her was from an electric torch. She stooped, and literally crawled on all fours out of the range of the light from the rear doorway.

Before she knew it she was right beside the case containing the skeleton. Indeed, she hid in its shadow.

And her interest in that moving light–and the person behind it–made her forget her original terror of what was in the box.

She heard a rustle–then a step on the boards. It was a heavy person approaching. The door opened farther between the workshop and the room in which she was hidden.

Then she recognized the tall figure entering. It was as she had expected. It was Professor Spink.

The breakfast food magnate came directly toward the high, locked desk belonging to the dead and gone physician, who had been a kind friend and patron of this quack medicine man when he was a boy.

’Phemie had heard all the particulars of Spink’s connection with Dr. Polly Phelps. The good old doctor had been called to attend the boy in some childish disease while he was an inmate of the county poorhouse. His parents–who were gypsies, or like wanderers–had deserted the boy and he had “gone on the town,” as the saying was.

Dr. Polly had taken a fancy to the little fellow. He was then twelve years old–or thereabout–smart and sharp. The old doctor brought him home to Hillcrest, sent him to school, made him useful to him in a dozen ways, and began even to train him as a doctor.

For five years Jud Spink had remained with the old physician. Then he had run away with a medicine show. It was said, too, that he stole money from Dr. Polly when he went; but the physician had never said so, nor taken any means to punish the wayward boy if he returned.

And Jud Spink had never re-appeared in Bridleburg, or the vicinity, while the old doctor was alive.

Then his visits had been few and far between until, at last, coming back a few months before, a self-confessed rich man, he had declared his intention of settling down in the community.

But ’Phemie Bray believed that the false professor had come here to Hillcrest for a special object. He was money-mad–his avariciousness had been already well displayed.

She believed that there was something on Hillcrest that Jud Spink wanted–something he could make money out of.

She was not surprised, then, to see a short iron bar in the professor’s hand. It was flattened and sharpened at one end.

By the light of the hand-lamp the man went to work on the locked desk. It was of heavy wood–no flimsy thing like that one which he had burst open so easily the day of the Widow Harrison’s vendue.

The man inserted the sharp end of the jimmy between the lid and the upper shelf of the desk. ’Phemie heard the woodwork crack, and this time she did not suppress a gasp.

Why! this fellow was actually breaking open the old doctor’s desk. Aunt Jane had not even sent them the keys of the desk and bookcases in this suite of rooms.

Then ’Phemie had a sudden thought. She was really afraid of the big man. She did not know what he might do to her if he found her here spying on his actions. And–she didn’t want the lock of the old desk smashed.

She reached up softly and turned with shaking fingers the old-fashioned wooden button that held shut the door of the case beside which she crouched.

She remembered very clearly that it had snapped open before when she was investigating–and with a little click. The door of this case acted almost as though the hinges had springs coiled in them.

At once, when she released the door, it swung open–and in yawning it did make a suspicious sound.

Professor Spink started–he had been about to bear down on the bar again. He flashed a look back over his shoulder. But the corner was shrouded in darkness.

’Phemie sighed–this time with intent. She remembered how she had been frightened so herself at her former visit to this office–and she believed the marauder now before her had been partially the cause of her fright.

The jimmy dropped from Spink’s hand and clattered on the floor. He wheeled and shot the white spot of his lamp into the corner.

By great good fortune the ray of the lantern missed the girl; but it struck into the yawning case and intensified the horrid appearance of the skeleton.

For half a minute Spink stood as if frozen in his tracks. If he had known the old doctor had such a possession as the skeleton, he had forgotten it. Nor did he see any part of the case that held it, but just the dangling, grinning Thing itself, revealed by the brilliance of his spotlight, but with a mass of deep shadow surrounding it.

Professor Spink had perhaps had many perilous experiences in his varied life; but never anything just like this.

He might not have been afraid of a man–or a dozen men; no emergency–which he could talk out of–would have feazed him; but a man doesn’t feel like trying to talk down a skeleton!

He didn’t even stop to pick up the jimmy. He shut off the spotlight; and he stumbled over his own feet in getting to the door.

He was running away!

’Phemie was up immediately and after him. She did not propose for him to get away with that key.

“Stop! stop!” she shouted.

Perhaps Professor Spink verily believed that the skeleton in the box called after him–that it was, indeed, in actual pursuit.

He didn’t stop. He didn’t reply. He went across the small anteroom and out of the open green door.

But he had made a lot of noise. A big man with the fear of the supernatural chilling his very soul does not tread lightly.

A frightened ox in the place could have made no more noise. He tumbled over two chairs and finally went full length over an old hassock. He brought up with an awful crash against the big davenport in the corridor, where ’Phemie had tried to keep watch.

And there, when he tried to scramble up, he got entangled in ’Phemie’s quilt and went to the floor again just as a great light flashed into the corridor.

The Colesworths’ door stood open. Out dashed Harris in his pajamas and a robe. He fell upon the big body of Spink as though he were making a “tackle” in a football game.

“Hold him! hold him!” gasped ’Phemie.

“I’ve got him,” declared Harris. “What’s the matter, Miss ’Phemie?”

“He’s got the key,” explained ’Phemie. “Make him give it up.”

“Sure!” said Harris, and dexterously twitched the entangled Spink over on his back.

“By jove!” gasped the young man, standing up. “It’s the professor!”

“But he’s got the key!” the girl reiterated.

“What key?”

“The one to the green door.”

“The door of the east wing?” demanded Harris, turning to stare at the open door, on the threshold of which ’Phemie stood.

“Yes. I lost it. He found it. He’s got it somewhere. I found him trying to break into grandfather’s desk.”

“Bad, bad,” muttered Harris, stepping back and allowing the professor room to sit up. “Your interest in old desks seems to be phenomenal, Professor. Did you expect to find Confederate notes in this one?”

“Confound you–both!” snarled Spink, slowly rising.

“I don’t mind it,” said Harris, quietly. “But don’t include Miss Bray in your emphatic remarks. Give me that key.”