by Van Reid
“Thank you, Sheriff,” said Frederick.
“Bernard,” said Capital.
With the assistance of some of the other men, the sheriff ushered the two blond men to the door.
“If you will pardon me, gentlemen,” said Sundry, “I have something for you.” He advanced upon Arthur and Edgar, and though he wore the most amiable of expressions, they shied a little at his approach. The sherif watched Sundry closely. “This is what you were looking for, I think,” said Sundry, “at Mr. Thole’s house in Augusta.” And he held out the photograph of the boulder on Council Hill.
Edgar and Arthur considered the offered photograph with suspicion.
“Don’t thank me,” said Sundry. “We’re giving them to everyone in town and will be sending more to the papers in the morning.”
There was the flash of something dangerous in the expressions of the two men at the door, but Sundry only cocked his head to one side and thrust the picture toward them again.
“I am not finished with you,” said Edgar, whose cheek was still bruised from Sundry’s fist.
“If that’s a threat-” began the sheriff.
“Only of legal action,” said the man, but Sundry was looking into the man’s eyes and sensed the threat of something else entirely.
“You haven’t translated it, have you?” said Arthur to Frederick with something like a sneer, before they were prodded out the door.
“Don’t concern yourself,” assured Mister Walton, with a hand on Frederick Covington’s arm; “neither have they.”
29. Number Two in a Series of Three
There were bells on the harness of the horse that pulled their sleigh, and Daniel almost laughed, it so completed the cozy picture as they skimmed the white street beneath the lamp that bobbed on a pole behind them. There were two other people riding with them, and Charlotte sat in the seat opposite from Daniel but kept the accidental intimacy between them alive with happy conversation, making it difficult for him to be sorry about the train’s derailing.
They were not long arriving in Iceboro, the community named for the ice-cutting industry that was at its height in those days along that portion of the Kennebec River. The settlement itself was impressive for its huge warehouses and ice plants and the great boardinghouses that slept and fed the workers who cut the ice in winter and loaded ships with their precious harvest throughout the warmer months. “I take it we will not have to bunk with the ice cutters,” said Charlotte wryly to the driver.
“Mother Rose will take you in,” said the man around a long-stemmed pipe.
“Mother Rose?”
“She runs the hotel hereabouts.”
Mother Rose’s was more properly an old tavern, now making the most of its trade as an inn, and that rather briskly tonight. The ancient sign at the tavern door was adorned with a briar rose, lit by the lamp in an upper window, and swinging in a spiral of snow.
Daniel took up Charlotte’s bag as well as his own and followed her into the inn. The floor of the long tavern room was wet with snow from the boots of previous arrivals, and coats hung upon the near wall. The driver stomped in behind them, mumbling something about a warming draft; he leaned his head into a doorway to their left and hooted after help for his passengers, accepted a generous coin from Daniel, and left with a tip of his hat.
A young woman came in by the left-hand door and greeted them pleasantly. “You’ll be wanting a room for two then?” she asked, before Daniel could, with some awkwardness, explain that he and Miss Burnbrake were simply fellow travelers. The young woman begged their pardon, and perused her register accordingly. She was a smart young lady, with a pretty smile, and when Daniel asked after Mother Rose, it was his turn to beg her pardon since he was speaking to the very individual. “It’s what the ice cutters in town call me,” she said with a laugh, and hurried up the stairs to prepare, first, a room for Miss Burnbrake.
“She’s not what I had expected of a Mother Rose,” said Daniel to Charlotte. He didn’t know why he should be in constant embarrassment around this woman.
Charlotte didn’t know why she should be in such constant amusement; neither did she know why it felt so easy to speak with humor and frankness to this man. “I suspect she is a happy surprise to many a weary traveler,” she said.
They heard a door slam shut, and a man’s voice called after Rose, who stood at the head of the broad front stairs.
“Yes, sir?” she said.
“My bed has been slept in,” came the voice.
“Yes, it’s an inn, you know,” she said, managing the answer without sounding altogether flippant.
“But the sheets are old,” said the man with irritation rankling his voice.
“They are not new bought, if that is what you mean,” returned the young woman, “but they are clean, I assure you.”
“Get me the manager!” demanded the man.
“You are speaking to her,” said the woman.
“There must be someone else-”
“You can consult with my father if you care to brave the churchyard tonight,” she returned. By now another man came out of his room and added his own stare at the unseen malcontent.
Daniel couldn’t say why that irate voice vexed him so until he glanced back at Charlotte and saw that she had lost all color in her face. Then Daniel stepped around the register desk to get a look at the man before he disappeared back into his room; but there was the sound of a door slamming, and Charlotte caught his sleeve, saying, “Please, it’s him!”
“Could it be?”
“He must have been on the train ahead of us. I must go somewhere else. I can’t face him again after today, Mr. Plainway.”
“The driver was certain that everyone else was full up,” reminded Daniel. “Perhaps I had better speak with him. He might do the decent thing and find lodgings elsewhere.”
“He will not, I assure you.”
Rose had returned to her desk, and she watched the conversation for only a moment before she realized that the newcomer’s agitation had something to do with the man in the room above. The door of the man’s room sounded again, and with marvelous prescience, Rose hurried back up the stairs to stop Roger Noble from coming down. They could hear her placating him with promises of new sheets, and while she kept him busy, Charlotte and Daniel snatched up their bags and hurried onto the porch of the inn.
The storm had weakened considerably, and there was that soft hissing calm that accompanies the finale of such a snow. a horse and rider trotted past the inn and down the main street of the settlement. Lights blazed from a sprawling boardinghouse on the ridge above them.
“What would you have me do?” asked Daniel plainly, putting himself completely at Charlotte’s beck.
“If you could just find a sleigh and driver who would take me to the next town.”
“Perhaps there is a room somewhere else.”
She shook her head. “I couldn’t sleep, wondering if I’m to see him on the street tomorrow. I would have stayed in Portland if I had known he was coming this way!”
Daniel was only now understanding the depth of Miss Burn brake’s fear, and the more he understood, the less he liked Roger Noble, and the more his peaceful nature was nettled by a desire to punch the man in the nose. “You understand,” he said quietly, “that I can’t simply put you on a sleigh and send you into the night, and this storm could pick up again.”
There were tears in Charlotte’s eyes. “I’ve put you to such trouble already.”
“Not at all. It’s only that you’ll have to put up with my company for a while longer if you want to sled out of here.”
She put a hand on his arm, and her relief appeared to weaken her. “Could we, please, without delay!” She sent a look of apprehension in the direction of the inn’s door.
“Yes,” he said, “let’s go quickly.” When they were some distance up the street, they heard a door slam, and looking over his shoulder, Daniel thought he could see a figure standing on the porch of Mother Rose’s,
smoking a cigarette.
Roger Noble heard the jingling of a harness somewhere up the street and he walked around the corner of the hotel porch out of idle curiosity and the need to move about. a sleigh was barely visible as a shadow flashing under the streetlamps in the direction of Gardiner. The lamps themselves had the appearance of producing the snow within the circle of their light.
He could not have put himself in worse straits: He had dared his uncle’s ire, distanced himself further from Charlotte, and now he was trapped in a country burg without diversion to while the hours and placate his fears and conscience. It occurred to him that he could hire a sleigh up the street, but the emotions that rankled him conversely sapped him of his will to take action against them. He looked up the hill to the boardinghouse for the ice cutters and wondered if there was anything as lowly as a card game or a bottle of beer to be had there.
A man stood below the porch steps watching Noble, and Roger was a little startled to think it might be a member of the Moosepath League. They had seemed fools to him, but they were connected to his uncle and he was uneasy about them.
“Good evening,” said the man as he mounted the steps. He took his hat from his blond head and smiled with the self-assurance that Noble spent most of his energies feigning.
Noble put his cigarette to his lips and drew on it while he watched as the man brushed the snow from his hat. How long was he standing there? wondered Roger. He simply nodded to the man.
“Bit of an unfortunate accident,” said the man, and when Noble frowned, he added, “The train.”
Roger didn’t consider this statement worthy of a reply. He wondered about the man, who seemed too well dressed to be a drummer.
“A rough day altogether,” continued the man, and there was something so pointed about the statement and so knowing about the manner in which it was delivered that Noble narrowed his eyes at the man and spoke for the first time.
“Do I know you?”
“No, Mr. Noble, I don’t believe you do.” wanted a drink. He began to bring the cigarette up to his lips again, but his I must owe him money! thought Roger, and his stomach lurched. He hand was shaking. But how could I owe him money if I don’t know him? He lowered his hand and took on an air of irritation. Then it hit him that the man was a debt enforcer and he wondered if he could make a run for it.
“No, you don’t owe any money to anyone I know or represent,” said the man, as if Roger had voiced his thoughts. Then with continued and unwarranted bonhomie, the man added, “But my colleagues and I may have the power to resolve some of your debts.”
“At two hundred percent and the risk of broken thumbs, no thank you,” said Roger, regaining some of his irritable mien now that his fears were momentarily placated.
“Not at all.” The man still had his hat in his hand, and he pointed at his head and said, “You have a calling card that allows you the opportunitto join my colleagues and myself in an enterprise that will enrich all involved.”
Noble narrowed his eyes again with renewed suspicion.
“We have been watching you, Mr. Noble,” said the man, “ever since we first instigated business with your uncle; and I am pretty sure that we can help to put you in an enviable position with Ezra Burnbrake as well as with your lovely cousin Charlotte. You see,” continued the man cryptically, “we’ve been caught short, you might say, as two of our colleagues north of here have just found out. And as you will find out, our society does not take kindly to embarrassment.”
Daniel thought afterward that the driver they hired at the nearby livery hid his drink well. He was a young man, and if there was anything odd about his behavior, it went unnoticed; Daniel blamed himself for not, at least, smelling it on the fellow’s breath until it was too late.
The manager of the stable was not on duty, so the driver had no one to answer to but himself, and he readily agreed to take them to Gardiner, where there would be lodgings. Daniel helped him harness a horse to a small sleigh. Though the snow had slowed considerably, the way was not short for a clouded night, and Daniel insisted on some additional throws for Miss Burnbrake and found an extra lantern in the livery office.
They put Iceboro behind them faster than Daniel would have credited.
Charlotte glanced back more than once, as if she expected to see her cousin, riding like the devil himself behind them. Daniel resisted looking back.
Night and distance swallowed them; they sensed the hills and trees to the west without seeing them, and the Kennebec along the eastern bank of the road harbored the wind so that the shifting air whined over the ice and these gusts blew over them at every point of exposure to the river. The horse kept a steady pace, undaunted by the dark and the snow; but a mile or so outside Iceboro, with four or five miles to go before they reached Gardiner, the driver got himself crossed up at a fork and put the horse and sleigh off the road.
Daniel had closed his eyes and had no idea they were in trouble until the sleigh took a lurch; he clutched the side of the seat and watched as the horse foundered in a drift. Still, it didn’t seem a terrible problem, and he was about to jump down and help lead the animal back to the road when a sudden snap and another lurch told him that they had broken a runner.
Charlotte fell against Daniel, and he helped her out of the sleigh. They struggled through the drift and away from the horse and vehicle. The lanter jiggled at the end of its pole, then leaped from its perch into the drift. The horse struggled in the ensuing dark, almost panicking, in the traces, and the driver managed to get himself knocked down before Daniel could pull him away from the animal.
It was then that Daniel realized the man was drunk, and astonished at himself and furious with the driver, he began to read the riot act.
“I ain’t drunk!” asserted the fellow, and Daniel saw there was no talking to him. Obliging enough till now, the driver grew surly when accused of that particular sin and called on his grandmother, who had passed from this vale, to bear him out. Daniel didn’t see how the boy’s grandmother, in whatever state, was going to be of service, and when the boy declared that he would get help, the older man tried to talk him from taking the horse, fearing he would break his neck or die of exposure if he fell.
The young man was adamant, promising that he would retrieve another sleigh, and as the driver took off in the dark with the halter in one hand and the extra lantern in the other, Daniel wondered what else could crash before the night was over. (Things, he later decided, often came in threes.)
“Now I’ve gotten us into a scrape,” said Charlotte, who had said little during the last few minutes. The snow had increased again, and the wind off the river was sharp.
“You didn’t stop the train,” said Daniel, “and you didn’t ditch the sleigh.” He relit the first lamp, and while she held this, he tipped the sleigh on its side; they used the cushions to sit upon and the blankets to wrap about them, with the sleigh itself a screen against the wind. Nevertheless, it seemed none too warm, and they kept the lantern as close as they dared to get what heat they could from it.
“Will your business with the Moosepath League suffer if you don’t reach them tomorrow?” asked Charlotte, who continued to worry herself over the deleterious effect she was having upon Mr. Plainway’s affairs.
“Not at all,” he replied. “It is only news of a sort that I have for them, and it has waited for some time now, so it can wait a little longer.”
“I’m glad,” she said.
“Two or three months ago,” he explained, “the Moosepath League was involved in rescuing a little boy from a gang of thieves, and the only clue they have to the child’s identity is the portrait of a woman with whom he shared, according to the account that I read, an unmistakable resemblance.”
“Do you know who he is then?”
“I know who the woman in the portrait was and that her son has been missing these past three years or more.”
Charlotte put a hand to her breast, as if she suddenly found it difficult to breathe. “The poor
woman! She must be mad with grief! But you mu hurry!”
“She is dead,” said Daniel. Even these years after, the thought shocked him a little, and he glanced away from the light of the lantern.
“I’m so sorry,” was all she said for some time, but finally she asked, “His family?”
“All gone. On his mother’s side, they’re gone. a for his father’s side, I’m not sure that they are any better than the thieves he was rescued from.”
“Will he remember them?”
“His people? I don’t think so. He’s only four or five now.”
Charlotte shivered, and Daniel tried to give her one of his throws. “No, no,” she insisted. “It wasn’t really the cold.”
“I’m sorry,” he said. “My choice of news could have been happier.”
“No,” she returned, “it’s just that there are so many people in the world willing to drive tragedy.”
“There are as many,” said Daniel, “more, really, who are willing to help put things right.”
She did not respond to this at first and looked as if she doubted the sentiment. Finally, however, she said, “There was the Moosepath League, of course, rescuing the little boy. And they were very kind about Uncle Ezra.”
“There’s this Mister Walton,” added Daniel, “whom I have yet to meet, but from the tales I have been told, he is a veritable engine of good works.”
“Well,”she said, smiling softly into the night, “there are other people too.”
When another shiver ran through her, he began to think they should look for other shelter. More than three-quarters of an hour had passed, and he thought it time enough for someone to have gotten back to them.
He may have broken his neck after all, Daniel thought but said nothing.
“Do you suppose he’s forgotten us?” wondered Charlotte. That of course was the other possibility.
“I think we’ve waited long enough,” said Daniel. “Let’s find the nearest house while there are still lights on to guide us.”
