Mr. Gryce and his men were hard at work when we passed them. Knowing the detective so well, and rating at its full value his undoubted talent for reading the motives of those about him, I made no attempt at cajolery in the explanation I proffered of our sudden departure, but merely said, in my old, peremptory way, that I found waiting at the gate so tedious that I had accepted William’s invitation to drive into town. Which, while it astonished the old gentleman, did not really arouse his suspicions, as a more conciliatory manner and speech might have done. This disposed of, we drove rapidly away.
William’s sense of humor once aroused was not easily allayed. He seemed so pleased with his errand that he could talk of nothing else, and turned the subject over and over in his clumsy way, till I began to wonder if he had seen through the object of our proposed visit and was making me the butt of his none too brilliant wit.
But no, he was really amused at the part he was called upon to play, and, once convinced of this, I let his humor run on without check till we had re-entered Lost Man’s Lane from the other end and were in sight of the low sloping roof of Deacon Spear’s old-fashioned farmhouse.
Then I thought it time to speak.
“William,” said I, “Deacon Spear is too good a man, and, as I take it, is in possession of too great worldly advantages for you to be at enmity with him. Remember that he is a neighbor, and that you are a landed proprietor in this lane.”
“Good for you!” was the elegant reply with which this young boor honored me. “I didn’t think you had such an eye for the main chance.”
“Deacon Spear is rich, is he not?” I pursued, with an ulterior motive he was far from suspecting.
“Rich? Why, I don’t know; that depends upon what you city ladies call rich; I shouldn’t call him so, but then, as you say, I am a landed proprietor myself.”
His laugh was boisterously loud, and as we were then nearly in front of the Deacon’s house, it rang in through the open windows, causing such surprise, that more than one head bobbed up from within to see who dared to laugh like that in Lost Man’s Lane. While I noted these heads and various other small matters about the house and place, William tied up the horse and held out his hand for me to descend.
“I begin to suspect,” he whispered as he helped me out, “why you are so anxious to have me on good terms with the Deacon.” At which insinuation I attempted to smile, but only succeeded in forcing a grim twitch or two to my lips, for at that moment and before I could take one step towards the house, a couple of pigeons rose up from behind the house and flew away in a bee-line for Mother Jane’s cottage.
“Ha!” thought I; “my instinct has not failed me. Behold the link between this house and the hut in which those tokens of crime were found,” and was for the moment so overwhelmed by this confirmation of my secret suspicions, that I quite forgot to advance, and stood stupidly staring after these birds now rapidly disappearing in the distance.
William’s voice aroused me.
“Come!” he cried. “Don’t be bashful. I don’t think much of Deacon Spear myself, but if you do—Why, what’s the matter now?” he asked, with a startled look at me. I had clutched him by the arm.
“Nothing,” I protested, “only—you see that window over there? The one in the gable of the barn, I mean. I thought I saw a hand thrust out—a white hand that dropped crumbs. Have they a child on this place?”
“No,” replied William, in an odd voice and with an odd look toward the window I have mentioned. “Did you really see a hand there?”
“I most certainly did,” I answered, with an air of indifference I was far from feeling. “Some one is up in the hay-loft; perhaps it is Deacon Spear himself. If so, he will have to come down, for now that we are here, I am determined you shall do your duty.”
“Deacon Spear can’t climb that hay-loft,” was the perplexed answer I received in a hardly intelligible mutter. “I’ve been there, and I know; only a boy or a very agile young man could crawl along the beams that lead to that window. It is the one hiding-place in this part of the lane; and when I said yesterday that if I were the police and had the same search to make which they have, I knew where I would look, I meant that same little platform up behind the hay, whose only outlook is yonder window. But I forgot that you have no suspicions of our good Deacon; that you are here on quite a different errand than to search for Silly Rufus. So come along and—”
But I resisted his impelling hand. He was so much in earnest and so evidently under the excitement of what appeared to him a great discovery, that he seemed quite another man. This made my own suspicions less hazardous, and also added to the situation fresh difficulties which could only be met by an appearance on my part of perfect ingenuousness.
Turning back to the buggy as if I had forgotten something, and thus accounting to any one who might be watching us, for the delay we showed in entering the house, I said to William: “You have reasons for thinking this man a villain, or you wouldn’t be so ready to suspect him. Now what if I should tell you that I agree with you, and that this is why I have dragged you here this fine morning?”
“I should say you were a deuced smart woman,” was his ready answer. “But what can you do here?”
“What have we already done?” I asked. “Discovered that they have someone in hiding in what you call an inaccessible place in the barn. But didn’t the police examine the whole place yesterday? They certainly told me they had searched the premises thoroughly.”
“Yes,” he repeated, with great disdain, “they said and they said; but they didn’t climb up to the one hiding-place in sight. That old fellow Gryce declared it wasn’t worth their while; that only birds could reach that loophole.”
“Oh,” I returned, somewhat taken aback; “you called his attention to it, then?”
To which William answered with a vigorous nod and the grumbling words:
“I don’t believe in the police. I think they’re often in league with the very rogues they—”
But here the necessity of approaching the house became too apparent for further delay. Deacon Spear had shown himself at the front door, and the sight of his astonished face twisted into a grimace of doubtful welcome drove every other thought away than how we were to acquit ourselves in the coming interview. Seeing that William was more or less nonplussed by the situation, I caught him by the arm, and whispering, “Let us keep to our first programme,” led him up the walk with much the air of a triumphant captain bringing in a recalcitrant prisoner.
My introduction under these circumstances can be imagined by those who have followed William’s awkward ways. But the Deacon, who was probably the most surprised, if not the most disconcerted member of the group, possessed a natural fund of conceit and self-complacency that prevented any outward manifestation of his feelings, though I could not help detecting a carefully suppressed antagonism in his eye when he allowed it to fall upon William, which warned me to exercise my full arts in the manipulation of the matter before me. I accordingly spoke first and with all the prim courtesy such a man might naturally expect from an intruder of my sex and appearance.
“Deacon Spear,” said I, as soon as we were seated in his stiff old-fashioned parlor, “you are astonished to see us here, no doubt, especially after the display of animosity shown towards you yesterday by this graceless young friend of mine. But it is on account of this unfortunate occurrence that we are here. After a little reflection and a few hints, I may add, from one who has seen more of life than himself, William felt that he had cause to be ashamed of himself for his show of sport in yesterday’s proceedings, and accordingly he has come in my company to tender his apologies and entreat your forbearance. Am I not right, William?”
The fellow is a clown under all and every circumstance, and serious as our real purpose was, and dreadful as was the suspicion he professed to cherish against the suave and seemingly respectable member of the community we were addressing, he could not help laughing, as he blunderingly replied:
“That
you are, Miss Butterworth! She’s always right, Deacon. I did act like a fool yesterday.” And seeming to think that, with this one sentence he had played his part out to perfection, he jumped up and strolled out of the house, almost pushing down as he did so the two daughters of the house, who had crept into the hall from the sitting-room to listen.
“Well, well!” exclaimed the Deacon, “you have done wonders, Miss Butterworth, to bring him to even so small an acknowledgment as that! He’s a vicious one, is William Knollys, and if I were not such a lover of peace and concord, he should not long be the only aggressive one. But I have no taste for strife, and so you may both regard his apology as accepted. But why do you rise, madam? Sit down, I pray, and let me do the honors. Martha! Jemima!”
But I would not allow him to summon his daughters. The man inspired me with too much dislike, if not fear; besides, I was anxious about William. What was he doing, and of what blunder might he not be guilty without my judicious guidance?
“I am obliged to you,” I returned; “but I cannot wait to meet your daughters now. Another time, Deacon. There is important business going on at the other end of the lane, and William’s presence there may be required.”
“Ah,” he observed, following me to the door, “they are digging up Mother Jane’s garden.”
I nodded, restraining myself with difficulty.
“Fool’s work!” he muttered. Then with a curious look which made me instinctively draw back, he added, “These things must inconvenience you, madam. I wish you had made your visit to the lane in happier times.”
There was a smirk on his face which made him positively repellent. I could scarcely bow my acknowledgments, his look and attitude made the interview so obnoxious. Looking about for William, I stepped down from the stoop. The Deacon followed me.
“Where is William?” I asked.
The Deacon ran his eye over the place, and suddenly frowned with ill-concealed vexation.
“The scapegrace!” he murmured. “What business has he in my barn?”
I immediately forced a smile which, in days long past (I’ve almost forgotten them now), used to do some execution.
“Oh, he’s a boy!” I exclaimed. “Do not mind his pranks, I pray. What a comfortable place you have here!”
Instantly a change passed over the Deacon, and he turned to me with an air of great interest, broken now and then by an uneasy glance behind him at the barn.
“I am glad you like the place,” he insinuated, keeping close at my side as I stepped somewhat briskly down the walk. “It is a nice place, worthy of the commendation of so competent a judge as yourself.” (It was a barren, hard-worked farm, without one attractive feature.) “I have lived on it now forty years, thirty-two of them with my beloved wife Caroline, and two—” Here he stopped and wiped a tear from the dryest eye I ever saw. “Miss Butterworth, I am a widower.”
I hastened my steps. I here duly and with the strictest regard for the truth aver, that I decidedly hastened my steps at this very unnecessary announcement. But he, with another covert glance behind him towards the barn, from which, to my surprise and increasing anxiety, William had not yet emerged, kept well up to me, and only paused when I paused at the side of the road near the buggy.
“Miss Butterworth,” he began, undeterred by the air of dignity I assumed, “I have been thinking that your visit here is a rebuke to my unneighborliness. But the business which has occupied the lane these last few days has put us all into such a state of unpleasantness that it was useless to attempt sociability.”
His voice was so smooth, his eyes so small and twinkling, that if I could have thought of anything except William’s possible discoveries in the barn, I should have taken delight in measuring my wits against his egotism.
But as it was, I said nothing, possibly because I only half heard what he was saying.
“I am no lady’s man,”—these were the next words I heard—“but then I judge you’re not anxious for flattery, but prefer the square thing uttered by a square man without delay or circumlocution. Madam, I am fifty-three, and I have been a widower two years. I am not fitted for a solitary life, and I am fitted for the companionship of an affectionate wife who will keep my hearth clean and my affections in good working order. Will you be that wife? You see my home,”—here his eye stole behind him with that uneasy look towards the barn which William’s presence in it certainly warranted—“a home which I can offer you unencumbered, if you—”
“Desire to live in Lost Man’s Lane,” I put in, subduing both my surprise and my disgust at this preposterous proposal, in order to throw all the sarcasm of which I was capable into this single sentence.
“Oh!” he exclaimed, “you don’t like the neighborhood. Well, we could go elsewhere. I am not set against the city myself—”
Astounded at his presumption, regarding him as a possible criminal, who was endeavoring to beguile me for purposes of his own, I could no longer repress either my indignation or the wrath with which such impromptu addresses naturally inspired me. Cutting him short with a gesture which made him open his small eyes, I exclaimed in continuation of his remark:
“Nor, as I take it, are you set against the comfortable little income somebody has told you I possessed. I see your disinterestedness, Deacon, but I should be sorry to profit by it. Why, man, I never spoke to you before in my life, and do you think—”
“Oh!” he suavely insinuated, with a suppressed chuckle which even his increasing uneasiness as to William could not altogether repress, “I see you are not above the flattery that pleases other women. Well, madam, I know a tremendous fine woman when I see her, and from the moment I saw you riding by the other day, I made up my mind I would have you for the second Mrs. Spear, if persistence and a proper advocacy of my cause could accomplish it. Madam, I was going to visit you with this proposal tonight, but seeing you here, the temptation was too great for my discretion, and so I have addressed you on the spot. But you need not answer me at once. I don’t need to know any more about you than what I can take in with my two eyes, but if you would like a little more acquaintance with me, why I can wait a couple of weeks till we’ve rubbed the edges off our strangeness, when—”
“When you think I will be so charmed with Deacon Spear that I will be ready to settle down with him in Lost Man’s Lane, or if that will not do, carry him off to Gramercy Park, where he will be the admiration of all New York and Brooklyn to boot. Why, man, if I was so easily satisfied as that, I would not be in a position today for you to honor me with this proposal. I am not easy to suit, so I advise you to turn your attention to someone much more anxious to be married than I am. But”—and here I allowed some of my real feelings to appear—“if you value your own reputation or the happiness of the lady you propose to inveigle into an union with you, do not venture too far in the matrimonial way till the mystery is dispelled which shrouds Lost Man’s Lane in horror. If you were an honest man you would ask no one to share your fortunes whilst the least doubt rests upon your reputation.”
“My reputation?” He had started very visibly at these words. “Madam, be careful. I admire you, but—”
“No offence,” said I. “For a stranger I have been, perhaps, unduly frank. I only mean that any one who lives in this lane must feel himself more or less enveloped by the shadow which rests upon it. When that is lifted, each and every one of you will feel himself a man again. From indications to be seen in the lane today, that time may not be far distant. Mother Jane is a likely source for the mysteries that agitate us. She knows just enough to have no proper idea of the value of a human life.”
The Deacon’s retort was instantaneous. “Madam,” said he, with a snap of his fingers, “I have not that much interest in what is going on down there. If men have been killed in this lane (which I do not believe), old Mother Jane has had no hand in it. My opinion is—and you may value it or not, just as you please—that what the people hereabout call crimes are so many coincidences, which some day or other will receive their
due explanation. Every one who has disappeared in this vicinity has disappeared naturally. No one has been killed. That is my theory, and you will find it correct. On this point I have expended more than a little thought.”
I was irate. I was also dumfounded at his audacity. Did he think I was the woman to be deceived by any such balderdash as that? But I shut my lips tightly lest I should say something, and he, not finding this agreeable, being no conversationalist himself, drew himself up with a pompously expressed hope that he would see me again after his reputation was cleared, when his attention as well as my own was diverted by seeing William’s slouching figure appear in the barn door and make slowly towards us.
Instantly the Deacon forgot me in his interest in William’s approach, which was so slow as to be tantalizing to us both.
When he was within speaking distance, Deacon Spear started towards him.
“Well!” he cried; “one would think you had gone back a dozen or so years and were again robbing your neighbor’s hen-roosts. Been in the hay, eh?” he added, leaning forward and plucking a wisp or two from my companion’s clothes. “Well, what did you find there?”
In trembling fear for what the lout might answer, I put my hand on the buggy rail and struggled anxiously to my seat. William stepped forward and loosened the horse before speaking. Then with a leer he dived into his pocket, and remarking slowly, “I found this,” brought to light a small riding-whip which we both recognized as one he often carried. “I flung it up in the hay yesterday in one of my fits of laughing, so just thought I would bring it down today. You know it isn’t the first time I’ve climbed about those rafters, Deacon, as you have been good enough to insinuate.”
The Deacon, evidently taken aback, eyed the young fellow with a leer in which I saw something more serious than mere suspicion.
The Anna Katharine Green Mystery Megapack Page 54
