Daniel Plainway - Or The Holiday Haunting of the Moosepath League

by Van Reid

  “Usually I head east first,”said the postmaster, “but I’ll do things in reverse today and baffle everybody.”

  “Gerald’s uncle’s, I take it, is west,” said Daniel.

  “It is.” The road rose and fell with the land, and with it the view of the Presidential Range, off in New Hampshire. “It’ll be the sleigh in another week, I warrant,” said Mr. Beals. “Don’t like to let go of the carriage,” the postmaster was saying. “It means winter and sleighing till snow breaks.”

  Daniel knew that snow breaking meant the mail was delivered on foot till mud cleared or not at all.

  “You’re a lawyer,” said Mr. Beals.

  “I am,” said Daniel.

  “Thought so.” This was enough for a minute or two. They pulled up before the first house outside the village, and Mr. Beals hopped out with his delivery. Daniel waved to the woman who came to the door, and he could hear the postmaster explaining who he was. “Gerald has had some time!” said the gray fellow when he climbed back in.

  “So I understand,” said Daniel again.

  The old Pinkney place had been a tavern long before, one of the resting places and watering holes that led travelers into the White Mountains. Since then Gerald’s uncle Pughe had lived there for twenty years by himself, and the place had not been very well tended. It looked abandoned, slouching above the road, its front porch gazing to the west and the blue and white heights. There were two wagons parked in front of the old house, and Daniel stopped for a moment to consider the oddities piled therein.

  “Daniel!” came the familiar voice of Gerald Pinkney, and a stocky fellow stomped onto the porch. “What a time I’ve had!”

  Daniel smiled. “Have you?” He looked to the postmaster, who had gotten from his carriage and followed him.

  Mr. Beals shrugged. “Been a pleasure meeting you, Mr. Plainway,” he said then. The postmaster shook Daniel’s hand and politely left them to their business.

  “If I could be sure there was a smidgen of truth to what they all say,” said the man on the porch, “I’d take it down stick by stick!” Gerald Pinkney and Daniel Plainway had known each other since their days at Colby, and Daniel had always thought of Gerald as a slightly antagonized bee.

  “You won’t sell it in pieces,” said Daniel. He stood and looked up at the old creation.

  “That’s just it,” said Gerald. “I believe I do have it sold.” He led them up the steps and into the house, which felt cold and empty. Daniel was reminded of the Linnett estate and not for the first time worried about those strange marks in the snow by the pond. There were three other fellows, young men, with Gerald, who were helping him clean out the place. They stood in the front room, where a stove did its best against the constant opening of the door.

  “I’ve taken up floorboards,” Gerald was saying. “I’ve looked between walls. We’ve wandered from room to room, thumping on the walls, and all we found was an old musket in the partition between the kitchen and the pant.”

  “Unloaded, I trust,” said Daniel. Then he asked wryly, “No digging in the cellar?”

  Gerald was taking it all very seriously, however, and he shook his head. “Couldn’t find any sign of recent digging, but we sunk a hole or two. There’s an old siege well down there, and we sent one of the neighborhood kids down it with a lamp.” Daniel was chuckling now. “Laugh you may!” said Gerald, who was not really angry. “But Uncle Pughe sold his investments in five ships before he chased off here, and as far as I can tell, he didn’t spend much!”

  “He might have lost it,” suggested Daniel, who understood the vagaries of the market. “He might have given it away.”

  Gerald made a low sound, like a growl.

  Daniel looked about the front room. Only the dining room would be larger in an old tavern, but the ceilings were low, and chairs stood in three of the room’s corners, as in older days. There was a bed in the fourth corner, against an outer wall (which seemed chilly), and Daniel walked over to the old headboard and considered the yellowed clippings from newspapers and periodicals that covered the walls above the mattress.

  “We opened the mattress, of course,” said Gerald.

  Daniel leaned forward, fascinated by the panoply of faces and figures before him. Both walls from corner to nearest window were covered with drawings and etchings of women. There were fashion advertisements and comic panels, portraits of famous ladies and domestic scenes; there were women at their needle and thread, cooking, playing the piano. There was nothing that was not demure and pleasing to the eye-handsome dresses and handsome figures within them, large eyes and Cupid’s bow lips.

  “That’s quite a gallery,” said Daniel pleasantly. He could imagine Gerald’s uncle finding comfort in all these fine ladies when he woke each morning.

  “Yes,” said Gerald, his mind briefly taken from his hunt. “My wife was a little scandalized. Not that there’s anything in particular; it’s just the sheer weight of it.”

  “It’s a great lot of work,” agreed Daniel. He chuckled again, but his eye had been taken by a particular portrait, which seemed itself to be the copy of a framed work of art. There was something in the young woman’s eyes, expressed therein, that harkened to Daniel.

  “What I need to know,” Gerald was saying, “is there such a thing as a stipulation in a selling agreement that says if something valuable is found after the transfer of the building, it must be turned over to the previous owner?”

  Daniel leaned closer to the wall. The clipping didn’t seem as old, or as yellowed, as some of the others. There were two small lines of print beneath the face of the young woman.

  “Of course,” continued Gerald, “that presupposes a degree of honesty on the part of the buyer.”

  The portrait discovered beneath Fort Edgecomb, now in the custody of Mister Walton, read the legend beneath the picture. The woman was beautiful despite what Daniel suspected was an imperfect rendering. He considered the eyes and the almost sad smile.

  “Daniel, are you listening to me?”

  “I’m sorry, Gerald. I am not.”

  “You want to take that wall with you?”

  Then Daniel knew. “Gerald,” he said, his head buzzing, “I know this woman!”

  Gerald and the young men crowded around to peer at the picture. “This one?”

  “Yes. My word, it’s Eleanor Linnett!”

  “An old flame, Daniel?” asked Gerald.

  “Not at all,” said Daniel Plainway. “Simply a dear friend. She died four or five years ago.”

  “I am sorry.”

  “But you see,” said Daniel as he reached out to touch the piece of newspaper, “this picture of her-well, the picture that this is copied from disappeared, along with her son.”

  “Did he take it with him?” wondered one of the young fellows. They were all ready to be wrapped in Daniel’s sudden mystery.

  “Not by himself,” said Daniel, hardly hearing himself. “He was only a year old.” He felt out of breath, his mouth was dry, almost with fright, as if he had seen a ghost.

  Gerald saw that his friend had grown pale, and he forgot about business for the moment as he suggested that Daniel sit down.

  “We’ve just wondered so about the boy and worried about him,” explained the lawyer. “I knew the family well, and there was a man intended to be the boy’s tutor. I’m not making much sense, I know-” He touched the picture again. “May I take this?”

  “Of course,” said Gerald, and Daniel carefully eased the picture from the wall. It had been glued there, but the glue was stiff and came away without damaging the clipping.

  “What paper do you suppose this came from?” asked Daniel.

  “Who knows?” said Gerald. “There were hundreds and hundreds—stacks of papers-all through the house!”

  “I wonder if I could match the type,” said Daniel.

  “We threw them all out,” admitted Gerald.

  Daniel read the legend beneath the portrait again. The portrait discovered beneath F
ort Edgecomb, now in the custody of Mister Walton. Who was this Mister Walton, and what business had he taking custody of Nell’s picture? Daniel, who liked most people, felt a vague irritation with this Mister Walton. If only the accompanying article had been saved, but the wall boasted of nothing but pictures of handsome females. “Edgecomb,” he said. “That’s near the coast, I think.”

  Gerald hoped to bring Daniel’s attention back to the difficulty regarding Uncle Pughe’s missing fortune. “That’s quite something, finding that here. What say we have a bite to eat? We’ve been keeping the kitchen going. Then maybe you can help me decide what to do.”

  Nothing but handsome females, Daniel was thinking as he looked from the piece of print in his hand to the place on the wall where he had lifted it. Except for that green tinted picture of Silas W right there. Daniel stepped up to the bed once again and leaned forward to peer at the government engraving peering back from the surrounding femininity. Beside the late statesman were the bold words Treasury of the United States—Fifty Dollars in Gold Coin!

  “Gerald,” said Daniel, “have you looked behind these clippings?”

  He had begun several letters, though he was not sure to whom he intended to send any of them:t whom it may concern, perhaps. The clock in the hall tolled eleven, but he did not think that he could sleep yet. He had been here most of the evening, arriving after dark from Gilead, and having explained to Martha what had happened, he bolted a quick supper and sequestered himself in his study.

  On the desk before him was the newspaper portrait; on the floor beside him lay the Atlas of the Maine Railway System. Finding Edgecomb on a map had been the first order of business, and half a dozen times he had returned to the book to trace the lines of roads and railways, hills and coastline, attempting to descry from those charts the manner in which Eleanor Linnett’s portrait might have found its way to that riverside town and into the hands of the previously unheard-of Mister Walton.

  The portrait discovered beneath Fort Edgecomb, read the legend beneath the picture, but what could that mean?

  He thought he heard something in the hall and looked over his shoulder. a brisk wind, coming down from the mountains, rattled at the west end of the house. The hall was dark, and Martha startled him by appearing in the doorway of his study.

  “I thought you had gone to bed,” he said.

  “I did,” she said, “but you were making so little noise down here I couldn’t get to sleep.”

  There was a certain inversion to Martha Bailey’s sense of humor that Daniel welcomed. It meant, he hoped, that she was not entirely unhappy living in her brother’s house. She had married more than ten years ago but had lost her husband to a logging accident within a year of their wedding. She had been with Daniel ever since. There was a picture of Edward Bailey in her room, above the headboard of her bed, like a patron saint.

  Daniel himself had always thought marriage a pleasant idea and had even known someone to whom he had contemplated a proposal. He was reticent, however, in such matters, and life was permitted to interrupt his intentions. She had married the year after Martha and moved away.

  Their own family-parents, two brothers, and a sister-had all gone before them, and it was not strange that Daniel had allowed himself to become an adopted uncle at the Linnett house.

  “I think I will go to Edgecomb,” said Daniel to the curtained window before his desk.

  “You said yourself that a telegram would serve as well,” said Martha.

  “I did, didn’t I.”

  “I wasn’t sure at the time whom you were trying to convince.”

  Daniel picked up another item on his desk, the fifty-dollar bill that Gerald Pinkney had pressed on him. He had been embarrassed to accept such a gift, atop his fee, but Gerald was so delighted with Daniel for discovering (however accidentally) Uncle Pughe’s stash, papering the parlor walls beneath the mass of feminine portraits and newspaper clippings, that he would not have taken no for an answer. Gerald was not a greedy man and had made similar gifts to the young fellows who had helped him in his search. “If you thought I was crazy all this time,” Gerald had said, “you never let on.”

  “Maybe I’ll use this to travel with,” said Daniel to his sister. The bill still had traces of wallpaper paste on one side and felt stiff and unreal when he waved it. The truth was that he had already earmarked the bill for Christmas.

  “You should keep it,” said Martha, “and take yourself fishing with it next spring.” She made her way across the floor and stood by his desk, looking down at the picture of Eleanor Linnett. The engraving failed to do justice to either the woman or the original portrait, but it harkened enough after both to revive memories, which were not all sad. “She was lovely, wasn’t she,” said Martha.

  “Yes,” replied the brother. “And never knew it-or, at least, never thought about it.”

  Daniel was both wise and mild, but Martha knew there was still much of the child about him, and she worried accordingly. She half suspected that her brother, in his own unsuspecting way, had been in love with Nell Linnett, and she would not have blamed him. But if Daniel displayed reticence to the world in such matters, it was not a signal of any lack of self-awareness; he had loved Eleanor Linnett as a friend, or a cousin, or as another sister perhaps. He had looked forward to her happiness with some young fellow and to watching her children grow.

  Though the happiness with some young fellow had been skipped over somehow, there was (or had been) a child. This person-a boy, who could be no more than four years old now-was the true reason for Daniel’s troubled heart. He looked at the picture again and read the words beneath it. The portrait discovered beneath Fort Edgecomb, now in the custody of Mister Walton.

  What could it mean? And if the portrait was in the custody of this Mis-. ter Walton, where was the child? Where was little Bertram Linnett?

  “How will I know if he’s taken care of?” she had asked. “You’ll let me know,” she had said. a always the memory seemed to obstruct Daniel’s ability to breathe.

  “Mr. Lyatt is coming tomorrow,” said his sister.

  Daniel let out a sigh as he remembered this long-standing appointment. “Yes, of course,” he said. “Thank you. I’ll leave Friday morning, then.” He hardly thought he would sleep between now and then, but once he had come to this decision, a yawn rose up and overtook him. “I could be sending telegrams and letters back and forth for days with who knows who,” he continued when it had passed, “and meanwhile, where is the boy?” Nell’s boy must be a sweet little fellow, he was thinking.

  Martha surmised the boy was beyond anybody’s reach by now but said nothing. Daniel would have to find the truth or discover more questions on his own, and it was not for her to sow his heart with darker fears. She kissed him on the top of his head and said good-night.

  Daniel put away his pen. He folded the half-finished letters and tucked them into the wastebasket beneath his desk. He looked again at the maps, figuring his itinerary. Then he sat some more, listening to the wind and considering the past and the possibilities of the future. The clock was striking two when he came awake with a start in his chair. He turned out the light and went upstairs to bed.

  BOOK ONE

  December 3, 1896

  1. Not to Be Confused

  “Am I very much deceived in thinking that the object above us, just now, a hat?” said Aldicott Durwood.

  “If you are deceived,” said Roderick Waverley, “then I am every bit as deceived for thinking you are correct in thinking that that object above us, just now, is a hat.”

  “And I equally deceived in my agreement,” said Humphrey Brink.

  One would not guess from their indifferent, almost weary tones that a great deal of excitement surrounded these three men. On the upper bank of the Eastern Promenade in Portland, Maine, an army of revelers (not all children) were plummeting the white slope on sleds and toboggans and vehicles unnamable of every shape and size; more figures made the long trudge back to the top, and t
he air was large with shouts and laughter. The brilliant remnants of a perfect December afternoon seemed willing to linger, even as shadows lengthened and the sun reddened over the western ramparts of the city.

  To the south, at the mouth of Portland Harbor, the sails of an incoming schooner caught this radiance, and many at the top of the slope paused to watch this vessel round the northernmost point of Cape Elizabeth. It was identified, at first, as a three-masted vessel, but by the time a tug met her, it was dear to veteran seamen and armchair sailors alike that she was of the four-masted variety, limping into port without her full complement of sails and rigging. Soon a flag was raised at the observatory to indicate the ship’s business connections, and several people spoke the name of the Caleb Brown, which was overdue.

  But Durwood, Waverley, and Brink were oblivious of the drama evidenced by these sights, even as they were inattentive to the general gaiety about them. Hands. clasped behind their backs, they peered up at the floating hat so that each seemed to be playing the identical role in a formal tableau. “It does seem to be staying up there a very long time,” continued Durwood, who was darkly handsome, with a pencil-thin mustache. “For a hat,” he added.

  “It isn’t some sort of kite, is it?” wondered Waverley, who was lighter, taller, dean-shaven, and every bit as handsome.

  “I never saw a kite like it,” asserted Brink, who wore a close-cropped beard and winged mustaches. He was the shortest of them and perhaps the most dashing.

  A great shout went up as a toboggan race commenced. More people arrived at the crest of the hill, and voices rose in pleasure and surprised greetings. Durwood, Waverley, and Brink, however, were oblivious of everything but that single object.

  “Is it a very nice hat?” wondered Durwood. “I might like to have it if it is a very nice hat.”