“Waal, what do you think of her now?” chuckled Mr. Simsbury, touching up his horse. “She’s always like that, saying over numbers, and muttering about Lizzie. Lizzie was her daughter. Forty years ago she ran off with a man from Boston, and for thirty-eight years she’s been lying in a Massachusetts grave. But her mother still thinks she is alive and is coming back. Nothing will ever make her think different. But she’s harmless, perfectly harmless. You needn’t be afeard of her.”
This, because I cast a look behind me of more than ordinary curiosity, I suppose. Why were they all so sure she was harmless? I had thought her expression a little alarming at times, especially when she took the money from my hand. If I had refused it or even held it back a little, I think she would have fallen upon me tooth and nail. I wished I could take a peep into her cottage. Mr. Gryce had described it as four walls and nothing more, and indeed it was small and of the humblest proportions; but the fluttering of some half-dozen pigeons about its eaves proved it to be a home and, as such, of interest to me, who am often able to read character from a person’s habitual surroundings.
There was no yard attached to this simple building, only a small open place in front in which a few of the commonest vegetables grew, such as turnips, carrots, and onions. Elsewhere towered the forest—the great pine forest through which this portion of the road ran.
Mr. Simsbury had been so talkative up to now that I was in hope he would enter into some details about the persons and things we encountered, which might assist me in the acquaintanceship I was anxious to make. But his loquaciousness ended with this small adventure I have just described. Not till we were well quit of the pines and had entered into the main thoroughfare did he deign to respond to any of my suggestions, and then it was in a manner totally unsatisfactory and quite uncommunicative. The only time he deigned to offer a remark was when we emerged from the forest and came upon the little crippled child, looking from its window. Then he cried:
“Why, how’s this? That’s Sue you see there, and her time isn’t till arternoon. Rob allers sits there of a mornin’. I wonder if the little chap’s sick. S’pose I ask.”
As this was just what I would have suggested if he had given me time, I nodded complacently, and we drove up and stopped.
The piping voice of the child at once spoke up:
“How d’ ye do, Mr. Simsbury? Ma’s in the kitchen. Rob isn’t feelin’ good today.”
I thought her tone had a touch of mysteriousness in it. I greeted the pale little thing, and asked if Rob was often sick.
“Never,” she answered, “except, like me, he can’t walk. But I’m not to talk about it, ma says. I’d like to, but—”
Ma’s face appearing at this moment over her shoulder put an end to her innocent garrulity.
“How d’ ye do, Mr. Simsbury?” came a second time from the window, but this time in very different tones. “What’s the child been saying? She’s so sot up at being allowed to take her brother’s place in the winder that she don’t know how to keep her tongue still. Rob’s a little languid, that’s all. You’ll see him in his old place tomorrow.” And she drew back as if in polite intimation that we might drive on.
Mr. Simsbury responded to the suggestion, and in another moment we were trotting down the road. Had we stayed a minute longer, I think the child would have said something more or less interesting to hear.
The horse, which had brought us thus far at a pretty sharp trot, now began to lag, which so attracted Mr. Simsbury’s attention, that he forgot to answer even by a grunt more than half of my questions. He spent most of his time looking at the nag’s hind feet, and finally, just as we came in sight of the stores, he found his tongue sufficiently to announce that the horse was casting a shoe and that he would be obliged to go to the blacksmith’s with her.
“Humph, and how long will that take?” I asked.
He hesitated so long, rubbing his nose with his finger, that I grew suspicious and cast a glance at the horse’s foot myself. The shoe was loose. I began to hear it clang.
“Waal, it may be a matter of a couple of hours,” he finally drawled. “We have no blacksmith in town, and the ride up there is two miles. Sorry it happened, ma’am, but there’s all sorts of shops here, you see, and I’ve allers heard that a woman can easily spend two hours haggling away in shops.”
I glanced at the two ill-furnished windows he pointed out, thought of Arnold & Constable’s, Tiffany’s, and the other New York establishments I had been in the habit of visiting, and suppressed my disdain. Either the man was a fool or he was acting a part in the interests of Lucetta and her family. I rather inclined to the latter supposition. If the plan was to keep me out most of the morning why could that shoe not have been loosened before the mare left the stable?
“I made all necessary purchases while in New York,” said I, “but if you must get the horse shod, why, take her off and do it. I suppose there is a hotel parlor near here where I can sit.”
“Oh, yes,” and he made haste to point out to me where the hotel stood. “And it’s a very nice place, ma’am. Mrs. Carter, the landlady, is the nicest sort of person. Only you won’t try to go home, ma’am, on foot? You’ll wait till I come back for you?”
“It isn’t likely I’ll go streaking through Lost Man’s Lane alone,” I exclaimed indignantly. “I’d rather sit in Mrs. Carter’s parlor till night.”
“And I would advise you to,” he said. “No use making gossip for the village folks. They have enough to talk about as it is.”
Not exactly seeing the force of this reasoning, but quite willing to be left to my own devices for a little while, I pointed to a locksmith’s shop I saw near by, and bade him put me down there.
With a sniff I declined to interpret into a token of disapproval, he drove me up to the shop and awkwardly assisted me to alight.
“Trunk key missing?” he ventured to inquire before getting back into his seat.
I did not think it necessary to reply, but walked immediately into the shop. He looked dissatisfied at this, but whatever his feelings were he refrained from any expression of them, and presently mounted to his place and drove off. I was left confronting the decent man who represented the lock-fitting interests in X.
I found some difficulty in broaching my errand. Finally I said:
“Miss Knollys, who lives up the road, wishes a key fitted to one of her doors. Will you come or send a man to her house today? She is too occupied to see about it herself.”
The man must have been struck by my appearance, for he stared at me quite curiously for a minute. Then he gave a hem and a haw and said:
“Certainly. What kind of a door is it?” When I had answered, he gave me another curious glance and seemed uneasy to step back to where his assistant was working with a file.
“You will be sure to come in time to have the lock fitted before night?” I said in that peremptory manner of mine which means simply, “I keep my promises and expect you to keep yours.”
His “Certainly” struck me as a little weaker this time, possibly because his curiosity was excited. “Are you the lady from New York who is staying with them?” he asked, stepping back, seemingly quite unawed by my positive demeanor.
“Yes,” said I, thawing a trifle; “I am Miss Butterworth.”
He looked at me almost as if I were a curiosity.
“And did you sleep there last night?” he urged.
I thought it best to thaw still more.
“Of course,” I said. “Where do you think I would sleep? The young ladies are friends of mine.”
He rapped abstractedly on the counter with a small key he was holding.
“Excuse me,” said he, with some remembrance of my position toward him as a stranger, “but weren’t you afraid?”
“Afraid?” I echoed. “Afraid in Miss Knollys’ house?”
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“Why, then, do you want a key to your door?” he asked, with a slight appearance of excitement. “We don’t lock doors here in the village; at least we didn’t.”
“I did not say it was my door,” I began, but, feeling that this was a prevarication not only unworthy of me, but one that he was entirely too sharp to accept, I added stiffly: “It is for my door. I am not accustomed even at home to sleep with my room unlocked.”
“Oh,” he murmured, totally unconvinced, “I thought you might have got a scare. Folks somehow are afraid of that old place, it’s so big and ghost-like. I don’t think you would find any one in this village who would sleep there all night.”
“A pleasing preparation for my rest tonight,” I grimly laughed. “Dangers on the road and ghosts in the house. Happily I don’t believe in the latter.”
The gesture he made showed incredulity. He had ceased rapping with the key or even to show any wish to join his assistant. All his thoughts for the moment seemed to be concentrated on me.
“You don’t know little Rob,” he inquired, “the crippled lad who lives at the head of the lane?”
“No,” I said; “I haven’t been in town a day yet, but I mean to know Rob and his sister too. Two cripples in one family rouse my interest.”
He did not say why he had spoken of the child, but began tapping with his key again.
“And you are sure you saw nothing?” he whispered. “Lots of things can happen in a lonely road like that.”
“Not if everybody is as afraid to enter it as you say your villagers are,” I retorted.
But he didn’t yield a jot.
“Some folks don’t mind present dangers,” said he. “Spirits—”
But he received no encouragement in his return to this topic. “You don’t believe in spirits?” said he. “Well, they are doubtful sort of folks, but when honest and respectable people such as live in this town, when children even, see what answers to nothing but phantoms, then I remember what a wiser man than any of us once said— But perhaps you don’t read Shakespeare, madam?”
Nonplussed for the moment, but interested in the man’s talk more than was consistent with my need of haste, I said with some spirit, for it struck me as very ridiculous that this country mechanic should question my knowledge of the greatest dramatist of all time, “Shakespeare and the Bible form the staple of my reading.” At which he gave me a little nod of apology and hastened to say:
“Then you know what I mean—Hamlet’s remark to Horatio, madam, ‘There are more things,’ etc. Your memory will readily supply you with the words.”
I signified my satisfaction and perfect comprehension of his meaning, and, feeling that something important lay behind his words, I endeavored to make him speak more explicitly.
“The Misses Knollys show no terror of their home,” I observed. “They cannot believe in spirits either.”
“Miss Knollys is a woman of a great deal of character,” said he. “But look at Lucetta. There is a face for you, for a girl not yet out of her twenties; and such a round-cheeked lass as she was once! Now what has made the change? The sights and sounds of that old house, I say. Nothing else would give her that scared look—nothing merely mortal, I mean.”
This was going a step too far. I could not discuss Lucetta with this stranger, anxious as I was to hear what he had to say about her.
“I don’t know,” I remonstrated, taking up my black satin bag, without which I never stir. “One would think the terrors of the lane she lives in might account for some appearance of fear on her part.”
“So it might,” he assented, but with no great heartiness. “But Lucetta has never spoken of those dangers. The people in the lane do not seem to fear them. Even Deacon Spear says that, set aside the wickedness of the thing, he rather enjoys the quiet which the ill repute of the lane gives him. I don’t understand this indifference myself. I have no relish for horrible mysteries or for ghosts either.”
“You won’t forget the key?” I suggested shortly, preparing to walk out, in my dread lest he should again introduce the subject of Lucetta.
“No,” said he, “I won’t forget it.” His tone should have warned me that I need not expect to have a locked door that night.
CHAPTER XII
THE PHANTOM COACH
Ghosts! What could the fellow have meant? If I had pressed him he would have told me, but it did not seem quite a lady’s business to pick up information in this way, especially when it involved a young lady like Lucetta. Yet did I think I would ever come to the end of this matter without involving Lucetta? No. Why, then, did I allow my instincts to triumph over my judgment? Let those answer who understand the workings of the human heart. I am simply stating facts.
Ghosts! Somehow the word startled me as if in some way it gave a rather unwelcome confirmation to my doubts. Apparitions seen in the Knollys mansion or in any of the houses bordering on this lane! That was a serious charge; how serious seemed to be but half comprehended by this man. But I comprehended it to the full, and wondered if it was on account of such gossip as this that Mr. Gryce had persuaded me to enter Miss Knollys’ house as a guest.
I was crossing the street to the hotel as I indulged in these conjectures, and intent as my mind was upon them, I could not but note the curiosity and interest which my presence excited in the simple country folk invariably to be found lounging about a country tavern. Indeed, the whole neighborhood seemed agog, and though I would have thought it derogatory to my dignity to notice the fact, I could not but see how many faces were peering at me from store doors and the half-closed blinds of adjoining cottages. No young girl in the pride of her beauty could have awakened more interest, and this I attributed, as was no doubt right, not to my appearance, which would not perhaps be apt to strike these simple villagers as remarkable, or to my dress, which is rather rich than fashionable, but to the fact that I was a stranger in town, and, what was more extraordinary, a guest of the Misses Knollys.
My intention in approaching the hotel was not to spend a couple of dreary hours in the parlor with Mrs. Carter, as Mr. Simsbury had suggested, but to obtain if possible a conveyance to carry me immediately back to the Knollys mansion. But this, which would have been a simple matter in most towns, seemed well-nigh an impossibility in X. The landlord was away, and Mrs. Carter, who was very frank with me, told me it would be perfectly useless to ask one of the men to drive me through the lane. “It’s an unwholesome spot,” said she, “and only Mr. Carter and the police have the courage to brave it.”
I suggested that I was willing to pay well, but it seemed to make very little difference to her. “Money won’t hire them,” said she, and I had the satisfaction of knowing that Lucetta had triumphed in her plan, and that, after all, I must sit out the morning in the precincts of the hotel parlor with Mrs. Carter.
It was my first signal defeat, but I was determined to make the best of it, and if possible glean such knowledge from the talk of this woman as would make me feel that I had lost nothing by my disappointment. She was only too ready to talk, and the first topic was little Rob.
I saw the moment I mentioned his name that I was introducing a subject which had already been well talked over by every eager gossip in the village.
Her attitude of importance, the air of mystery she assumed, were preparations I had long been accustomed to in women of this kind, and I was not at all surprised when she announced in a way that admitted of no dispute:
“Oh, there’s no wonder the child is sick. We would be sick under the circumstances. He has seen the phantom coach.”
The phantom coach! So that was what the locksmith meant. A phantom coach! I had heard of every kind of phantom but that. Somehow the idea was a thrilling one, or would have been to a nature less practical than mine.
“I don’t know what you mean,” said I. “Some superstition of the place
? I never heard of a ghostly appearance of that nature before.”
“No, I expect not. It belongs to X. I never heard of it beyond these mountains. Indeed, I have never known it to have been seen but upon one road. I need not mention what road, madam. You can guess.”
Yes, I could guess, and the guessing made me set my lips a little grimly.
“Tell me more about this thing,” I urged, half laughing. “It ought to be of some interest to me.”
She nodded, drew her chair a trifle nearer, and impetuously began:
“You see this is a very old town. It has more than one ancient country house similar to the one you are now living in, and it has its early traditions. One is, that an old-fashioned coach, perfectly noiseless, drawn by horses through which you can see the moonlight, haunts the highroad at intervals and flies through the gloomy forest road we have christened of late years Lost Man’s Lane. It is a superstition, possibly, but you cannot find many families in town but believe in it as a fact, for there is not an old man or woman in the place but has either seen it in the past or has had some relative who has seen it. It passes only at night, and it is thought to presage some disaster to those who see it. My husband’s uncle died the next morning after it flew by him on the highway. Fortunately years elapse between its going and coming. It is ten years, I think they say, since it was last seen. Poor little Rob! It has frightened him almost out of his wits.”
“I should think so,” I cried with becoming credulity. “But how came he to see it? I thought you said it only passed at night.”
“At midnight,” she repeated. “But Rob, you see, is a nervous lad, and night before last he was so restless he could not sleep, so he begged to be put in the window to cool off. This his mother did, and he sat there for a good half-hour alone, looking out at the moonlight. As his mother is an economical woman there was no candle lit in the room, so he got his pleasure out of the shadows which the great trees made on the highroad, when suddenly—you ought to hear the little fellow tell it—he felt the hair rise on his forehead and all his body grow stiff with a terror that made his tongue feel like lead in his mouth. A something he would have called a horse and a carriage in the daytime, but which, in this light and under the influence of the mortal terror he was in, took on a distorted shape which made it unlike any team he was accustomed to, was going by, not as if being driven over the earth and stones of the road—though there was a driver in front, a driver with an odd three-cornered hat on his head and a cloak about his shoulders, such as the little fellow remembered to have seen hanging in his grandmother’s closet—but as if it floated along without sound or stir; in fact, a spectre team which seemed to find its proper destination when it turned into Lost Man’s Lane and was lost among the shadows of that ill-reputed road.”
The Lady Sleuths MEGAPACK ™: 20 Modern and Classic Tales of Female Detectives Page 95
