The House Of A Thousand Candles/Chapter 21

The next morning Bates placed a letter postmarked Cincinnati at my plate. I opened and read it aloud to Larry:

“Very truly the devil’s,” growled Larry, snapping his cigarette case viciously.

“How did he find out?” I asked lamely, but my heart sank like lead. Had Marian Devereux told him! How else could he know?

“Probably from the stars,—the whole universe undoubtedly saw you skipping off to meet your lady-love. Bah, these women!”

“Tut! They don’t all marry the sons of brewers,” I retorted. “You assured me once, while your affair with that Irish girl was on, that the short upper lip made Heaven seem possible, but unnecessary; then the next thing I knew she had shaken you for the bloated masher. Take that for your impertinence. But perhaps it was Bates?”

I did not wait for an answer. I was not in a mood for reflection or nice distinctions. The man came in just then with a fresh plate of toast.

“Bates, Mr. Pickering has learned that I was away from the house on the night of the attack, and I’m ordered off for having broken my agreement to stay here. How do you suppose he heard of it so promptly?”

“From Morgan, quite possibly. I have a letter from Mr. Pickering myself this morning. Just a moment, sir.”

He placed before me a note bearing the same date as my own. It was a sharp rebuke of Bates for his failure to report my absence, and he was ordered to prepare to leave on the first of February. “Close your accounts at the shopkeepers’ and I will audit your bills on my arrival.”

The tone was peremptory and contemptuous. Bates had failed to satisfy Pickering and was flung off like a smoked-out cigar.

“How much had he allowed you for expenses, Bates?”

He met my gaze imperturbably.

“He paid me fifty dollars a month as wages, sir, and I was allowed seventy-five for other expenses.”

“But you didn’t buy English pheasants and champagne on that allowance!”

He was carrying away the coffee tray and his eyes wandered to the windows.

“Not quite, sir. You see—”

“But I don’t see!”

“It had occurred to me that as Mr. Pickering’s allowance wasn’t what you might call generous it was better to augment it— Well, sir, I took the liberty of advancing a trifle, as you might say, to the estate. Your grandfather would not have had you starve, sir.”

He left hurriedly, as though to escape from the consequences of his words, and when I came to myself Larry was gloomily invoking his strange Irish gods.

“Larry Donovan, I’ve been tempted to kill that fellow a dozen times! This thing is too damned complicated for me. I wish my lamented grandfather had left me something easy. To think of it—that fellow, after my treatment of him—my cursing and abusing him since I came here! Great Scott, man, I’ve been enjoying his bounty, I’ve been living on his money! And all the time he’s been trusting in me, just because of his dog-like devotion to my grandfather’s memory. Lord, I can’t face the fellow again!”

“As I have said before, you’re rather lacking at times in perspicacity. Your intelligence is marred by large opaque spots. Now that there’s a woman in the case you’re less sane than ever. Bah, these women! And now we’ve got to go to work.”

Bah, these women! My own heart caught the words. I was enraged and bitter. No wonder she had been anxious for me to avoid Pickering after daring me to follow her!

We called a council of war for that night that we might view matters in the light of Pickering’s letter. His assuredness in ordering me to leave made prompt and decisive action necessary on my part. I summoned Stoddard to our conference, feeling confident of his friendliness.

“Of course,” said the broad-shouldered chaplain, “if you could show that your absence was on business of very grave importance, the courts might construe in that you had not really violated the will.”

Larry looked at the ceiling and blew rings of smoke languidly. I had not disclosed to either of them the cause of my absence. On such a matter I knew I should get precious little sympathy from Larry, and I had, moreover, a feeling that I could not discuss Marian Devereux with any one; I even shrank from mentioning her name, though it rang like the call of bugles in my blood.

She was always before me,—the charmed spirit of youth, linked to every foot of the earth, every gleam of the sun upon the ice-bound lake, every glory of the winter sunset. All the good impulses I had ever stifled were quickened to life by the thought of her. Amid the day’s perplexities I started sometimes, thinking I heard her voice, her girlish laughter, or saw her again coming toward me down the stairs, or holding against the light her fan with its golden butterflies. I really knew so little of her; I could associate her with no home, only with that last fling of the autumn upon the lake, the snow-driven woodland, that twilight hour at the organ in the chapel, those stolen moments at the Armstrongs’. I resented the pressure of the hour’s affairs, and chafed at the necessity for talking of my perplexities with the good friends who were there to help. I wished to be alone, to yield to the sweet mood that the thought of her brought me. The doubt that crept through my mind as to any possibility of connivance between her and Pickering was as vague and fleeting as the shadow of a swallow’s wing on a sunny meadow.

“You don’t intend fighting the fact of your absence, do you?” demanded Larry, after a long silence.

“Of course not!” I replied quietly. “Pickering was right on my heels, and my absence was known to his men here. And it would not be square to my grandfather, —who never harmed a flea, may his soul rest in blessed peace!—to lie about it. They might nail me for perjury besides.”

“Then the quicker we get ready for a siege the better. As I understand your attitude, you don’t propose to move out until you’ve found where the siller’s hidden. Being a gallant gentleman and of a forgiving nature, you want to be sure that the lady who is now entitled to it gets all there is coming to her, and as you don’t trust the executor, any further than a true Irishman trusts a British prime minister’s promise, you’re going to stand by to watch the boodle counted. Is that a correct analysis of your intentions?”

“That’s as near one of my ideas as you’re likely to get, Larry Donovan!”

“And if he comes with the authorities,—the sheriff and that sort of thing,—we must prepare for such an emergency,” interposed the chaplain.

“So much the worse for the sheriff and the rest of them!” I declared.

“Spoken like a man of spirit. And now we’d better stock up at once, in case we should be shut off from our source of supplies. This is a lonely place here; even the school is a remote neighbor. Better let Bates raid the village shops to-morrow. I’ve tried being hungry, and I don’t care to repeat the experience.”

And Larry reached for the tobacco jar.

“I can’t imagine, I really can’t believe,” began the chaplain, “that Miss Devereux will want to be brought into this estate matter in any way. In fact, I have heard Sister Theresa say as much. I suppose there’s no way of preventing a man from leaving his property to a young woman, who has no claim on him,—who doesn’t want anything from him.”

“Bah, these women! People don’t throw legacies to the birds these days. Of course she’ll take it.”

Then his eyes widened and met mine in a gaze that reflected the mystification and wonder that struck both of us. Stoddard turned from the fire suddenly:

“What’s that? There’s some one up stairs!”

Larry was already running toward the hall, and I heard him springing up the steps like a cat, while Stoddard and I followed.

“Where’s Bates?” demanded the chaplain.

“I’ll thank you for the answer,” I replied.

Larry stood at the top of the staircase, holding a candle at arm’s length in front of him, staring about.

We could hear quite distinctly some one walking on a stairway; the sounds were unmistakable, just as I had heard them on several previous occasions, without ever being able to trace their source.

The noise ceased suddenly, leaving us with no hint of its whereabouts.

I went directly to the rear of the house and found Bates putting the dishes away in the pantry.

“Where have you been?” I demanded.

“Here, sir; I have been clearing up the dinner things, Mr. Glenarm. Is there anything the matter, sir?”

“Nothing.”

I joined the others in the library.

“Why didn’t you tell me this feudal imitation was haunted?” asked Larry, in a grieved tone. “All it needed was a cheerful ghost, and now I believe it lacks absolutely nothing. I’m increasingly glad I came. How often does it walk?”

“It’s not on a schedule. Just now it’s the wind in the tower probably; the wind plays queer pranks up there sometimes.”

“You’ll have to do better than that, Glenarm,” said Stoddard. “It’s as still outside as a country graveyard.”

“Only the slaugh sidhe, the people of the faery hills, the cheerfulest ghosts in the world,” said Larry. “You literal Saxons can’t grasp the idea, of course.”

But there was substance enough in our dangers without pursuing shadows. Certain things were planned that night. We determined to exercise every precaution to prevent a surprise from without, and we resolved upon a new and systematic sounding of walls and floors, taking our clue from the efforts made by Morgan and his ally to find hiding-places by this process. Pickering would undoubtedly arrive shortly, and we wished to anticipate his movements as far as possible.

We resolved, too, upon a day patrol of the grounds and a night guard. The suggestion came, I believe, from Stoddard, whose interest in my affairs was only equaled by the fertility of his suggestions. One of us should remain abroad at night, ready to sound the alarm in case of attack. Bates should take his turn with the rest—Stoddard insisted on it.

Within two days we were, as Larry expressed it, on a war footing. We added a couple of shot-guns and several revolvers to my own arsenal, and piled the library table with cartridge boxes. Bates, acting as quarter-master, brought a couple of wagon-loads of provisions. Stoddard assembled a remarkable collection of heavy sticks; he had more confidence in them, he said, than in gunpowder, and, moreover, he explained, a priest might not with propriety bear arms.

It was a cheerful company of conspirators that now gathered around the big hearth. Larry, always restless, preferred to stand at one side, an elbow on the mantel-shelf, pipe in mouth; and Stoddard sought the biggest chair,—and filled it. He and Larry understood each other at once, and Larry’s stories, ranging in subject from undergraduate experiences at Dublin to adventures in Africa and always including endless conflicts with the Irish constabulary, delighted the big boyish clergyman.

Often, at some one’s suggestion of a new idea, we ran off to explore the house again in search of the key to the Glenarm riddle, and always we came back to the library with that riddle still unsolved.