“Is it that odious—” I began heatedly, then stopped.
She had anticipated my next word and was nodding her head violently.
“The beast!” I cried hotly. “What has he done to you? The beast!”
She clenched her little white fists angrily.
“He has been making—he has been trying to make love to me; and I’ve always detested him—the fat little toad! And he knows it—or should!”
I moved nearer and again took her hand in mine,
“Muriel,” I begged, “aren’t you ever going to tell me just who and what this person is?”
“He—he— Oh, I’ve fibbed to you so much I hardly know where or how to begin. He is not an attorney; he does not know my father; he does not know any of my family.”
“I had guessed as much. Please go on.”
“I’ll start at the beginning. I didn’t come to Chicago on business; I came for a career. And then I met you, and—and, I hardly know why I did, it; it was silly, I know. I didn’t want to tell you of my career; I wanted to wait until I was celebrated, and then dazzle you with my renown. It was silly, don’t you think so? And vain, too.”
“And this career?” I asked, blushing and waiving her question.
“Music. My family, my friends, told me I was destined to be a great pianist. I became imbued with their rosy enthusiasm. I came to Chicago to study.”
“And the fat man?”
“Is—was my music teacher. I rented a piano from him. I installed it in my studio in the Parthenon. Every spare moment I practiced. He continually praised my playing, declared I was born to be one of the truly great; and—poor, deluded me!—I believed him.
“Then came some dreadful person who rented a studio just opposite mine. Nothing but a narrow air-shaft separated us. He played—or tried to play—some sort of horrible concertina, or something or other.
“At first I thought he was crazy. But now I know he was not. He was mocking me! He played only when I did. And last night”—there came a catch in her voice which she quickly changed into a cough— “last night he—he shouted at me to shut up!”
She stopped and turned away, and I vowed quick and pitiless vengeance on Bliffins.
“But he was right,” she went on spiritedly, turning back to me. “I know now he was right. It was all a mistake. I can’t play.
“Everybody has deceived me—everybody except this man. He knew. And now I know, and I have sent my piano back to the warerooms and I never want to see another one again as long as I live, and I want to get away from it all—away from the city and all.
“I’m homesick, Jefferson, very, very homesick.”
Yes, as I said in the beginning, there are many sorts of critics, and the best of them all is the intuitive critic.
The first six months we raised seven hundred and fifty chickens.
THE MAD DETECTIVE, by John D. Swain
CHAPTER I: THE VACATION
At the top of a little hill, Jed Hooper shut off the engine and brought his crazy flivver to a full stop. He turned in his seat and spoke to the two passengers, buried under a heap of luggage and parcels.
“Yonder’s the camp,” he said. “The white one, against the clump of cedars.”
Frank Weston and his wife gazed with tired eyes over a country well worth coming hundreds of miles to behold. Though fairly well settled, as the Maine countryside goes, it seems almost a primeval wilderness, with most of the farmhouses hidden by the green forest, and only here and there in a clearing, a glimpse of distant homes, with an occasional white spire piercing the treetops. A mile away Frenchman’s Bay glowed blue and gold in the afternoon sun, and in the offing Mt. Desert loomed like a huge purple jewel floating lightly on the breast of the Atlantic.
“Why, there’s smoke coming from our chimney!”
Jed Hooper looked through his windshield. “Yes, ma’am. My wife reckoned it’d seem homelike to you. She’ll have a pot of tea waiting for you, and mebbe some of her molasses cookies. Thoughtful about such things, Lizzie is.”
He slipped in the clutch, and the car started, coasting easily down the slope, crossing a noisy little brook, swinging in from the highway over a grass-grown road which brought them through a ragged orchard to the front door of a well-preserved, story-and-a-half frame house badly in need of paint. Half of an old grindstone formed the doorstep, and as the passengers dismounted stiffly, the door opened and a fat, smiling woman wearing a gingham apron beamed on them, and began to help them unload their bundles before the slower-moving Jed had heaved himself out of the car.
“Land sakes! That a cat you got there in that satchel with a little window in it?”
Annie Weston laughed. “Yes, Mrs. Hooper. We thought it wouldn’t be homelike without a cat; so we bought one from the animal shop in New York.”
Lizzie Hooper lifted the satchel and peered curiously at the alarmed creature which was faintly meowing within.
“Well,” she decided. “It ain’t much to look at! Got no tail, for one thing. Never could abide a tailless cat. They look sort of unfinished. If it was your own, one you’d got attached to, I could understand; but why on earth you should go buy one! Up here, we’re glad to give ’em away. Why, Jed has got to drown four kittens, right now. Pretty little things they be, too.”
“Oh, how dreadful!” Annie Weston cried. “I never could bear to do it!”
“Well, if you had about twelve a year, you’d have to, or the country’d be overrun with wild critters. We got four, right now; and whenever the count runs higher ’n that, there’s a drowning has to be tended to.”
The city couple entered through the wide doorway, and from its little entry passed into a pleasant, low-ceilinged room in whose far end burned a cheery, open fire. The furniture was simple but effective; little, old, low rockers, with gay chintz covers; a mellow cherry table; a horsehair sofa; a great hooked rug on the floor of wide boards, some samplers and dingy steel engravings on the walls. The table was set out with dishes, cups and saucers; and soon the Westons were devouring fresh molasses cookies, dishes of wild strawberries with cream, cups of strong tea, slices of home-baked bread thickly spread with fresh butter.
After eating, the question of the cat came up. The door was shut, and the animal released, its attention called to a saucer of rich milk. It ignored it and all the inmates with equal impatience and began to circle the room, the fur along its spine raised, whiskers twitching, eager only to find a way out of the room and house.
“That’s the way with cats in a strange place,” Jed remarked. “They won’t settle down till they’ve learned every nook and hole in the place. You got to butter their paws!”
“You—what?” Mrs. Weston gasped. “Butter their—”
“Yes’m. Never fails; you look and see.”
With some difficulty Jed succeeded in capturing the frightened, bobtailed gray creature, which he held despite its scratching and wriggling, while Lizzie, with the skill of long practice, took a spoonful of butter from the dish on the table, and thoroughly rubbed it into each one of the four paws. This done, Jed set the cat down.
Instead of running about as before, the cat looked slightly puzzled. It shook first one, then the other of its paws; seated itself, and carefully licked each one clean. The process took some time; and when done, the cat seemed for the first time to notice its saucer of milk. It sniffed daintily at it, found it good, and lapped up the very last drop, as well as another saucerful which Lizzie poured. Thereafter the city cat sat peacefully down beside the fireplace, blinked its eyes, washed its whiskers clean, and began to purr.
“Well, I’ll be darned!” said Weston. “How come?”
Jed chuckled. “Seems like the one thing a cat regards above all else, is to clean itself of anything that gits onto it; ’specially its feet. While it was licking off the butter, it forgot it was in a strange place; and the taste of butter made it remember it was hungry. So, having eaten in a place, why, that makes it seem like home. Same as I h
ope you folks do after eating ma’s molasses cakes and tea!”
Annie Weston laughed. “We certainly do, don’t we, Frank? You see, this is really our honeymoon! Yes, when we were married all that Frank could spare was just three days. Of course, we went to Atlantic City! And every year since then, we’ve promised ourselves a real honeymoon. And this is it; we’re going to stay two months, and forget business and everything. Going to wear old clothes, and go to bed with the chickens, and rise with the sun. Why, we haven’t even subscribed for a daily paper! We’ve put New York behind us, stock-market reports, theatrical reviews, divorces, crimes and all. It’s quiet we want, and just to be ourselves and get acquainted.”
Jed and Lizzie both nodded appreciatively.
“Well, you’ll git all the quiet you want! Nothing ever happens here more exciting than a hen stealing her nest, or a school of mackerel reported out in the bay, or the like of that. We ain’t even had a funeral for more’n a year. Folks live long, up in these parts, even if they don’t live very fast!”
While Jed showed Weston about the yard, and explained how to start the wooden pump if it got obstinate, and pointed out the ruinous chicken run and the bearing trees of what had once been a fine fruit orchard, his wife took Mrs. Weston all about the house, with which she fell in love at once. It was primitive to a degree the city woman had never dreamed of; no running water in the house, a wooden sink, scrubbed clean, great beds with queer contraptions of tauted ropes for springs, shelves of quaint old china and pewter, everything immaculately clean, and nothing lacking save modern plumbing and lighting. The latter consisted of old kerosene lamps, and tallow candles.
“It’s plain,” Lizzie admitted. “But it served old Miss Jarvis more’n fifty years. She was born and died right in this house, and her father before her. This chinaware and the furniture was hers. It all belongs to a niece, who lives out to Minnesota. We have the leasing of the house. An artist had it last summer. He spattered paint some; I cleaned it off as well as I could.”
The Hoopers rattled off in their car, cordially urging their tenants to call on them for any help needed. They could supply milk, butter, eggs, vegetables, salt pork, fresh-killed fowls, advice, and back numbers of a weekly newspaper, the Farmer’s Almanac, and the Rural Agriculturist.
Alone, for almost the first time in five years, the Westons looked at one another, laughed happily, took hands and executed an improvised dance about their living room, kitchen, and parlor. The cat, already entirely at home, was out in the yard clumsily attempting to catch grasshoppers, an exciting game which had not, in its brief life passed in a bird-and-animal shop, been called to its attention.
“Are you going to be contented, Frank?” his wife asked a little wistfully.
“Am I? Why, I’ve left everything in such shape that I don’t even want to see a newspaper; and only half a dozen people have my mail address. That’s our mail box, by the way; that galvanized tin out on the gate post, with the little red tin flag sticking up in it. I’m going to loaf and grow fat, and make love to you!”
“You may grow thin, on my cooking! It is years since I touched a frying pan; and then I had an electric range, a cookbook, and all sorts of devices to save labor. You’re going to suffer indigestion for a few days, old boy!”
“Well, I’ll work it off splitting kindling, and digging clams, and tramping through the woods!”
That evening they ate their first meal alone, with no servant to stand at their elbows, no cook to cater to their whims. And for the first time in long years, both were ravenously hungry. There was a cement-floored, stone-walled little cellar, with only narrow slits for ventilation, and a single door leading from the kitchen; a solid plank of oak, fastened by a hand-wrought iron staple. In the cellar were bins of clean white sand, containing vegetables. There was a keg of cider, and a swing shelf loaded with bottles and jars of jellies, pickles, preserves, relishes, fruits. A big ham swung from an iron hook; underneath stood a keg of salt pork, and a pail of salt mackerel. In the kitchen was flour, sugar, a bread and cake tin, a wood stove and a small oil one. Jed Hooper had caught and cleaned a mess of flounders for them, boiled two fat lobsters, and set a pail of clams by the sink.
Red, with a new burn on one white arm, but radiantly happy withal, Annie flitted back and forth from kitchen stove to table. They had decided to eat in the kitchen; it was large, extending the entire width of the house, and it had a fireplace, as had nearly every room in the house. They ate until they were more than satisfied, but no indigestion resulted, even though the fried potatoes were scorched, and the coffee was too strong.
With the setting of the sun, a chill descended; and they were glad to close the door and sit near the fireplace in the living room.
Romeo the cat, groggy from the amount of grasshoppers he had devoured, dozed at their feet. The wood crackled pleasantly; outside all was still save for the distant hooting of an owl, and once or twice a dry, sharp bark which they supposed to be uttered by a dog, but which was really a young fox out hunting in the moonlight. Then, suddenly and startling, a whip-poor-will began its weird song very near them; stealing to the window, they could just make out its body perched on the old wooden pump.
The cat, whose experience had been only with birds in cages, pricked up his ears and licked his chops. The song of the night warbler drowned the steady ticking of the wooden clock with its picture of a square-rigger on a very wooden sea.
“Sounds sort of lonesome, don’t you think?” whispered Annie.
Frank Weston laughed happily.
“Sounds good! Haven’t heard one since I was a ten-year-old. Don’t believe I’ve ever thought of one for twenty years. They used to say it is a good sign when one of them comes so near a house. They mostly cling to the deep woods. Guess this one is serenading us, welcoming us home!”
Tired from their long journey, and the excitement of arrival, they went early to bed. Upstairs, in a half-finished attic, were three small chambers, each with its big bed and old-fashioned bureau and washstand with bowl and pitcher. Fine linen towels, hemstitched by Jed Hooper’s wife, hung on the racks; new cakes of cheap soap were in their china dishes. Annie chose the rear room, which looked out over distant Frenchman’s Bay, now shimmering in moonlight, and separated from them by a heavy growth of cedars. Her husband took the front one which connected with it, the door having been removed from its hinges. The lamps were blown out. Romeo settled himself at the foot of Frank’s bed, and began a faint bedtime song. The whip-poor-will had ceased its welcome; it was intensely still now, outside. Listening closely, Annie could hear from the sea the deep respiration of the making tide as it flung itself against the rocky shore. Her thoughts drifted out on the tides of sleep.
Suddenly, appallingly loud in the quiet night, there came to her ears the heavy drumming of hard knuckles on wood. Downstairs, the front door vibrated to the sound of a knocking that would not be denied!
CHAPTER II: THE WARNING
There was something ominous in that urgent summons, heard in the night. Already the moon was sinking behind the cedar swamp; looking from his window, Frank Weston could make out only masses of shadow relieved by a pallid glimmer that revealed no details. Directly below him, and standing on the old grindstone by the front door, was a dark figure that looked too large to be a man. Who could have any business with them at such an hour, long after the countryside had retired to slumber, the oil lamps blown out in distant windows?
His voice, despite his efforts to control it, quavered a little as he leaned out into the cool night air, and called softly: “Yes? Who is it, and what do you want?”
The man below raised his head to the sound, his face showing as a whitish blur masked in a heavy beard and shaded by an old, floppy, black felt hat.
“Your name Weston? Just got here from the city, ain’t ye? Well, I’m Jason Hodge—your nearest neighbor down the road a piece. Come down so’s I can talk without hollerin’. Got something impo
rtant to say, and there’s no telling who may be listenin’.”
“What is it, Frank? Is anything wrong?”
The anxious voice of his wife came from the adjoining room as Weston hastily slipped into trousers and shoes, not bothering to put on his stockings nor fasten the laces.
“Oh, nothing much, I guess,” he answered lightly, though his nerves still jumped a little after being roused so startlingly from profound sleep. “Only a neighbor; says his name is Hodge. Probably wants to borrow something; folks out in the remote country are always running out of matches or flour or something. It’s all right; tell you all about it soon as he’s got what he wants and gone home.”
He took a pocket torch from the bureau, and snapped on its cold, white beam as he stole down the narrow stairway with its carved mahogany railing, which some misguided tenant had long ago painted white. For just an instant he hesitated at the door, before slipping the heavy iron bolt; then with a smile at his timidity, which he realized came solely from the unfamiliar isolation of one accustomed to living packed in among teeming thousands, he threw open the door. It creaked loudly in the silence; and unconsciously he stepped back a pace, his hand tightening on the metal cylinder of the torch.
The strange caller blinked as the beam played about his rugged, homely face. “I won’t step in,” he said, his voice pitched cautiously low. “And sorry to wake ye up this time o’ night. But fact is, there’s trouble afoot. I knew you and your wife just got in today; we see ye pass with Jed Hooper. Wanted to warn ye to keep doors and windows locked tight, and it might not be a bad idee to have a gun handy. Have you got one?”
“I have an automatic,” Weston admitted a little sheepishly. “Thought I might amuse myself shooting at a mark. Had it a long time, and never got a chance to fire it off in the city.”
The bearded figure nodded. “Mebbe you’ll have a real mark to shoot at. Hope not, and tain’t likely. This neighborhood is very peaceable. Everybody knows everybody else, or at least, we cal’lated we did. But I just got a telephone message; we’ve all of us got telephones, but you. That’s why I came over to warn ye. Didn’t seem right, somehow, with you two city folks sleeping like as not with the door unlocked—which nobody down here ever bothers to lock up nights—”
Adventure Tales, Volume 4 Page 11
