The House Of A Thousand Candles/Chapter 26

“They’re coming faster this time,” remarked Stoddard.

“Certainly. Their general has been cursing them right heartily for retreating without the loot. He wants his three-hundred-thousand-dollar autograph collection,” observed Larry.

“Why doesn’t he come for it himself, like a man?” I demanded.

“Like a man, do you say!” ejaculated Larry. “Faith and you flatter that fat-head!”

It was nearly eleven o’clock when the attacking party returned after a parley on the ice beyond the boat-house. The four of us were on the terrace ready for them. They came smartly through the wood, the sheriff and Morgan slightly in advance of the others. I expected them to slacken their pace when they came to the open meadow, but they broke into a quick trot at the water-tower and came toward the house as steady as veteran campaigners.

“Shall we try gunpowder?” asked Larry.

“We’ll let them fire the first volley,” I said.

“They’ve already tried to murder you and Stoddard, —I’m in for letting loose with the elephant guns,” protested the Irishman.

“Stand to your clubs,” admonished Stoddard, whose own weapon was comparable to the Scriptural weaver’s beam. “Possession is nine points of the fight, and we’ve got the house.”

“Also a prisoner of war,” said Larry, grinning.

The English detective had smashed the glass in the barred window of the potato cellar and we could hear him howling and cursing below.

“Looks like business this time!” exclaimed Larry. “Spread out now and the first head that sticks over the balustrade gets a dose of hickory.”

When twenty-five yards from the terrace the advancing party divided, half halting between us and the water-tower and the remainder swinging around the house toward the front entrance.

“Ah, look at that!” yelled Larry. “It’s a battering-ram they have. O man of peace! have I your Majesty’s consent to try the elephant guns now?”

Morgan and the sheriff carried between them a stick of timber from which the branches had been cut, and, with a third man to help, they ran it up the steps and against the door with a crash that came booming back through the house.

Bates was already bounding up the front stairway, a revolver in his hand and a look of supreme rage on his face. Leaving Stoddard and Larry to watch the library windows, I was after him, and we clattered over the loose boards in the upper hall and into a great unfinished chamber immediately over the entrance. Bates had the window up when I reached him and was well out upon the coping, yelling a warning to the men below.

He had his revolver up to shoot, and when I caught his arm he turned to me with a look of anger and indignation I had never expected to see on his colorless, mask-like face.

“My God, sir! That door was his pride, sir,—it came from a famous house in England, and they’re wrecking it, sir, as though it were common pine.”

He tore himself free of my grasp as the besiegers again launched their battering-ram against the door with a frightful crash, and his revolver cracked smartly thrice, as he bent far out with one hand clinging to the window frame.

His shots were a signal for a sharp reply from one of the men below, and I felt Bates start, and pulled him in, the blood streaming from his face.

“It’s all right, sir,—all right,—only a cut across my cheek, sir,”—and another bullet smashed through the glass, spurting plaster dust from the wall. A fierce onslaught below caused a tremendous crash to echo through the house, and I heard firing on the opposite side, where the enemy’s reserve was waiting.

Bates, with a handkerchief to his face, protested that he was unhurt.

“Come below; there’s nothing to be gained here,”—and I ran down to the hall, where Stoddard stood, leaning upon his club like a Hercules and coolly watching the door as it leaped and shook under the repeated blows of the besiegers.

A gun roared again at the side of the house, and I ran to the library, where Larry had pushed furniture against all the long windows save one, which he held open. He stepped out upon the terrace and emptied a revolver at the men who were now creeping along the edge of the ravine beneath us. One of them stopped and discharged a rifle at us with deliberate aim. The ball snapped snow from the balustrade and screamed away harmlessly.

“Bah, such monkeys!” he muttered. “I believe I’ve hit that chap!” One man had fallen and lay howling in the ravine, his hand to his thigh, while his comrades paused, demoralized.

“Serves you right, you blackguard!” Larry muttered.

I pulled him in and we jammed a cabinet against the door.

Meanwhile the blows at the front continued with increasing violence. Stoddard still stood where I had left him. Bates was not in sight, but the barking of a revolver above showed that he had returned to the window to take vengeance on his enemies.

Stoddard shook his head in deprecation.

“They fired first,—we can’t do less than get back at them,” I said, between the blows of the battering-ram.

A panel of the great oak door now splintered in, but in their fear that we might use the opening as a loophole, they scampered out into range of Bates’ revolver. In return we heard a rain of small shot on the upper windows, and a few seconds later Larry shouted that the flanking party was again at the terrace.

This movement evidently heartened the sheriff, for, under a fire from Bates, his men rushed up and the log crashed again into the door, shaking it free of the upper hinges. The lower fastenings were wrenched loose an instant later, and the men came tumbling into the hall, —the sheriff, Morgan and four others I had never seen before. Simultaneously the flanking party reached the terrace and were smashing the small panes of the French windows. We could hear the glass crack and tinkle above the confusion at the door.

In the hall he was certainly a lucky man who held to his weapon a moment after the door tumbled in. I blazed at the sheriff with my revolver as he stumbled and half-fell at the threshold, so that the ball passed over him, but he gripped me by the legs and had me prone and half-dazed by the rap of my head on the floor.

I suppose I was two or three minutes, at least, getting my wits. I was first conscious of Bates grappling the sheriff, who sat upon me, and as they struggled with each other I got the full benefit of their combined, swerving, tossing weight. Morgan and Larry were trying for a chance at each other with revolvers, while Morgan backed the Irishman slowly toward the library. Stoddard had seized one of the unknown deputies with both hands by the collar and gave his captive a tremendous swing, jerking him high in the air and driving him against another invader with a blow that knocked both fellows spinning into a corner.

“Come on to the library!” shouted Larry, and Bates, who had got me to my feet, dragged me down the hall toward the open library-door.

Bates presented at this moment an extraordinary appearance, with the blood from the scratch on his face coursing down his cheek and upon his shoulder. His coat and shirt had been torn away and the blood was smeared over his breast. The fury and indignation in his face was something I hope not to see again in a human countenance.

“My God, this room—this beautiful room!” I heard him cry, as he pushed me before him into the library. “It was Mr. Glenarm’s pride,” he muttered, and sprang upon a burly fellow who had came in through one of the library doors and was climbing over the long table we had set up as a barricade.

We were now between two fires. The sheriff’s party had fought valiantly to keep us out of the library, and now that we were within, Stoddard’s big shoulders held the door half-closed against the combined strength of the men in the ball. This pause was fortunate, for it gave us an opportunity to deal singly with the fellows who were climbing in from the terrace. Bates had laid one of them low with a club and Larry disposed of another, who had made a murderous effort to stick a knife into him. I was with Stoddard against the door, where the sheriff’s men were slowly gaining upon us.

“Let go on the jump when I say three,” said Stoddard, and at his word we sprang away from the door and into the room. Larry yelled with joy as the sheriff and his men pitched forward and sprawled upon the floor, and we were at it again in a hand-to-hand conflict to clear the room.

“Hold that position, sir,” yelled Bates.

Morgan had directed the attack against me and I was driven upon the hearth before the great fireplace. The sheriff, Morgan and Ferguson hemmed me in. It was evident that I was the chief culprit, and they wished to eliminate me from the contest. Across the room, Larry, Stoddard and Bates were engaged in a lively rough and tumble with the rest of the besiegers, and Stoddard, seeing my plight, leaped the overturned table, broke past the trio and stood at my side, swinging a chair.

At that moment my eyes, sweeping the outer doors, saw the face of Pickering. He had come to see that his orders were obeyed, and I remember yet my satisfaction, as, hemmed in by the men he had hired to kill me or drive me out, I felt, rather than saw, the cowardly horror depicted upon his face.

Then the trio pressed in upon me. As I threw down my club and drew my revolver, some one across the room fired several shots, whose roar through the room seemed to arrest the fight for an instant, and then, while Stoddard stood at my side swinging his chair defensively, the great chandelier, loosened or broken by the shots, fell with a mighty crash of its crystal pendants. The sheriff, leaping away from Stoddard’s club, was struck on the head and borne down by the heavy glass.

Smoke from the firing floated in clouds across the room, and there was a moment’s silence save for the sheriff, who was groaning and cursing under the debris of the chandelier. At the door Pickering’s face appeared again anxious and frightened. I think the scene in the room and the slow progress his men were making against us had half-paralyzed him.

We were all getting our second wind for a renewal of the fight, with Morgan in command of the enemy. One or two of his men, who had gone down early in the struggle, were now crawling back for revenge. I think I must have raised my hand and pointed at Pickering, for Bates wheeled like a flash and before I realized what happened he had dragged the executor into the room.

“You scoundrel—you ingrate!” howled the servant.

The blood on his face and bare chest and the hatred in his eves made him a hideous object; but in that lull of the storm while we waited, watching for an advantage, I heard off somewhere, above or below, that same sound of footsteps that I had remarked before. Larry and Stoddard heard it; Bates heard it, and his eyes fixed upon Pickering with a glare of malicious delight.

“There comes our old friend, the ghost,” yelled Larry.

“I think you are quite right, sir,” said Bates. He threw down the revolver he held in his hand and leaned upon the edge of the long table that lay on its side, his gaze still bent on Pickering, who stood with his overcoat buttoned close, his derby hat on the floor beside him, where it had fallen as Bates hauled him into the room.

The sound of a measured step, of some one walking, of a careful foot on a stairway, was quite distinct. I even remarked the slight stumble that I had noticed before.

We were all so intent on those steps in the wall that we were off guard. I heard Bates yell at me, and Larry and Stoddard rushed for Pickering. He had drawn a revolver from his overcoat pocket and thrown it up to fire at me when Stoddard sent the weapon flying through the air.

“Only a moment now, gentlemen,” said Bates, an odd smile on his face. He was looking past me toward the right end of the fireplace. There seemed to be in the air a feeling of something impending. Even Morgan and his men, half-crouching ready for a rush at me, hesitated; and Pickering glanced nervously from one to the other of us. It was the calm before the storm; in a moment we should be at each other’s throats for the final struggle, and yet we waited. In the wall I heard still the sound of steps. They were clear to all of us now. We stood there for what seemed an eternity—I suppose the time was really not more than thirty seconds—inert, waiting, while I felt that something must happen; the silence, the waiting, were intolerable. I grasped my pistol and bent low for a spring at Morgan, with the overturned table and wreckage of the chandelier between me and Pickering; and every man in the room was instantly on the alert.

All but Bates. He remained rigid—that curious smile on his blood-smeared face, his eyes bent toward the end of the great fireplace back of me.

That look on his face held, arrested, numbed me; I followed it. I forgot Morgan; a tacit truce held us all again. I stepped back till my eyes fastened on the broad paneled chimney-breast at the right of the hearth, and it was there now that the sound of footsteps in the wall was heard again; then it ceased utterly, the long panel opened slowly, creaking slightly upon its hinges, then down into the room stepped Marian Devereux. She wore the dark gown in which I had seen her last, and a cloak was drawn over her shoulders.

She laughed as her eyes swept the room.

“Ah, gentlemen,” she said, shaking her head, as she viewed our disorder, “what wretched housekeepers you are!”

Steps were again heard in the wall, and she turned to the panel, held it open with one hand and put out the other, waiting for some one who followed her.

Then down into the room stepped my grandfather, John Marshall Glenarm! His staff, his cloak, the silk hat above his shrewd face, and his sharp black eyes were unmistakable. He drew a silk handkerchief from the skirts of his frock coat, with a characteristic flourish that I remembered well, and brushed a bit of dust from his cloak before looking at any of us. Then his eyes fell upon me.

“Good morning, Jack,” he said; and his gaze swept the room.

“God help us!”

It was Morgan, I think, who screamed these words as he bolted for the broken door, but Stoddard caught and held him.

“Thank God, you’re here, sir!” boomed forth in Bates’ sepulchral voice.

It seemed to me that I saw all that happened with a weird, unnatural distinctness, as one sees, before a storm, vivid outlines of far headlands that the usual light of day scarce discloses.

I was myself dazed and spellbound; but I do not like to think, even now, of the effect of my grandfather’s appearance on Arthur Pickering; of the shock that seemed verily to break him in two, so that he staggered, then collapsed, his head falling as though to strike his knees. Larry caught him by the collar and dragged him to a seat, where he huddled, his twitching hands at his throat.

“Gentlemen,” said my grandfather, “you seem to have been enjoying yourselves. Who is this person?”

He pointed with his stick to the sheriff, who was endeavoring to crawl out from under the mass of broken crystals.

“That, sir, is the sheriff,” answered Bates.

“A very disorderly man, I must say. Jack, what have you been doing to cause the sheriff so much inconvenience? Didn’t you know that that chandelier was likely to kill him? That thing cost a thousand dollars, gentlemen. You are expensive visitors. Ah, Morgan,—and Ferguson, too! Well, well! I thought better of both of you. Good morning, Stoddard! A little work for the Church militant! And this gentleman?”—he indicated Larry, who was, for once in his life, without anything to say.

“Mr. Donovan,—a friend of the house,” explained Bates.

“Pleased, I’m sure,” said the old gentleman. “Glad the house had a friend. It seems to have had enemies enough,” he added dolefully; and he eyed the wreck of the room ruefully. The good humor in his face reassured me; but still I stood in tongue-tied wonder, staring at him.

“And Pickering!” John Marshall Glenarm’s voice broke with a quiet mirth that I remembered as the preface usually of something unpleasant. “Well, Arthur, I’m glad to find you on guard, defending the interests of my estate. At the risk of your life, too! Bates!”

“Yes, Mr. Glenarm.”

“You ought to have called me earlier. I really prized that chandelier immensely. And this furniture wasn’t so bad!”

His tone changed abruptly. He pointed to the sheriff’s deputies one after the other with his stick. There was, I remembered, always something insinuating, disagreeable and final about my grandfather’s staff.

“Clear out!” he commanded. “Bates, see these fellows through the wall. Mr. Sheriff, if I were you I’d be very careful, indeed, what I said of this affair. I’m a dead man come to life again, and I know a great deal that I didn’t know before I died. Nothing, gentlemen, fits a man for life like a temporary absence from this cheerful and pleasant world. I recommend you to try it.”

He walked about the room with the quick eager step that was peculiarly his own, while Stoddard, Larry and I stared at him. Bates was helping the dazed sheriff to his feet. Morgan and the rest of the foe were crawling and staggering away, muttering, as though imploring the air of heaven against an evil spirit.

Pickering sat silent, not sure whether he saw a ghost or real flesh and blood, and Larry kept close to him, cutting off his retreat. I think we all experienced that bewildered feeling of children who are caught in mischief by a sudden parental visitation. My grandfather went about peering at the books, with a tranquil air that was disquieting.

He paused suddenly before the design for the memorial tablet, which I had made early in my stay at Glenarm House. I had sketched the lettering with some care, and pinned it against a shelf for my more leisurely study of its phrases. The old gentlemen pulled out his glasses and stood with his hands behind his back, reading. When he finished he walked to where I stood.

“Jack!” he said, “Jack, my boy!” His voice shook and his hands trembled as he laid them on my shoulders. “Marian,”—he turned, seeking her, but the girl had vanished. “Just as well,” he said. “This room is hardly an edifying sight for a woman.” I heard, for an instant, a light hurried step in the wall.

Pickering, too, heard that faint, fugitive sound, and our eyes met at the instant it ceased. The thought of her tore my heart, and I felt that Pickering saw and knew and was glad.

“They have all gone, sir,” reported Bates, returning to the room.

“Now, gentlemen,” began my grandfather, seating himself, “I owe you an apology; this little secret of mine was shared by only two persons. One of these was Bates,”—he paused as an exclamation broke from all of us; and he went on, enjoying our amazement,—“and the other was Marian Devereux. I had often observed that at a man’s death his property gets into the wrong hands, or becomes a bone of contention among lawyers. Sometimes,” and the old gentleman laughed, “an executor proves incompetent or dishonest. I was thoroughly fooled in you, Pickering. The money you owe me is a large sum; and you were so delighted to hear of my death that you didn’t even make sure I was really out of the way. You were perfectly willing to accept Bates’ word for it; and I must say that Bates carried it off splendidly.”

Pickering rose, the blood surging again in his face, and screamed at Bates, pointing a shaking finger at the man.

“You impostor,—you perjurer! The law will deal with your case.”

“To be sure,” resumed my grandfather calmly; “Bates did make false affidavits about my death; but possibly—”

“It was in a Pickwickian sense, sir,” said Bates gravely.

“And in a righteous cause,” declared my grandfather. “I assure you, Pickering, that I have every intention of taking care of Bates. His weekly letters giving an account of the curious manifestations of your devotion to Jack’s security and peace were alone worth a goodly sum. But, Bates—”

The old gentleman was enjoying himself hugely. He chuckled now, and placed his hand on my shoulder.

“Bates, it was too bad I got those missives of yours all in a bunch. I was in a dahabiyeh on the Nile and they don’t have rural free delivery in Egypt. Your cablegram called me home before I got the letters. But thank God, Jack, you’re alive!”

There was real feeling in these last words, and I think we were all touched by them.

“Amen to that!” cried Bates.

“And now, Pickering, before you go I want to show you something. It’s about this mysterious treasure, that has given you—and I hear, the whole countryside—so much concern. I’m disappointed in you, Jack, that you couldn’t find the hiding-place. I designed that as a part of your architectural education. Bates, give me a chair.”

The man gravely drew a chair out of the wreckage and placed it upon the hearth. My grandfather stepped upon it, seized one of the bronze sconces above the mantel and gave it a sharp turn. At the same moment, Bates, upon another chair, grasped the companion bronze and wrenched it sharply. Instantly some mechanism creaked in the great oak chimney-breast and the long oak panels swung open, disclosing a steel door with a combination knob.

“Gentlemen,”—and my grandfather turned with a quaint touch of humor, and a merry twinkle in his bright old eyes—“gentlemen, behold the treasury! It has proved a better hiding-place than I ever imagined it would. There’s not much here, Jack, but enough to keep you going for a while.”

We were all staring, and the old gentleman was unfeignedly enjoying our mystification. It was an hour on which he had evidently counted much; it was the triumph of his resurrection and home-coming, and he chuckled as he twirled the knob in the steel door. Then Bates stepped forward and helped him pull the door open, disclosing a narrow steel chest, upright and held in place by heavy bolts clamped in the stone of the chimney. It was filled with packets of papers placed on shelves, and tied neatly with tape.

“Jack,” said my grandfather, shaking his head, “you wouldn’t be an architect, and you’re not much of an engineer either, or you’d have seen that that paneling was heavier than was necessary. There’s two hundred thousand dollars in first-rate securities—I vouch for them! Bates and I put them there just before I went to Vermont to die.”

“I’ve sounded those panels a dozen times,” I protested.

“Of course you have,” said my grandfather, “but solid steel behind wood is safe. I tested it carefully before I left.”

He laughed and clapped his knees, and I laughed with him.

“But you found the Door of Bewilderment and Pickering’s notes, and that’s something.”

“No; I didn’t even find that. Donovan deserves the credit. But how did you ever come to build that tunnel, if you don’t mind telling me?”

He laughed gleefully.

“That was originally a trench for natural-gas pipes. There was once a large pumping-station on the site of this house, with a big trunk main running off across country to supply the towns west of here. The gas was exhausted, and the pipes were taken up before I began to build. I should never have thought of that tunnel in the world if the trench hadn’t suggested it. I merely deepened and widened it a little and plastered it with cheap cement as far as the chapel, and that little room there where I put Pickering’s notes had once been the cellar of a house built for the superintendent of the gas plant. I had never any idea that I should use that passage as a means of getting into my own house, but Marian met me at the station, told me that there was trouble here, and came with me through the chapel into the cellar, and through the hidden stairway that winds around the chimney from that room where we keep the candlesticks.”

“But who was the ghost?” I demanded, “if you were really alive and in Egypt?”

Bates laughed now.

“Oh, I was the ghost! I went through there occasionally to stimulate your curiosity about the house. And you nearly caught me once!”

“One thing more, if we’re not wearing you out—I’d like to know whether Sister Theresa owes you any money.”

My grandfather turned upon Pickering with blazing eyes.

“You scoundrel, you infernal scoundrel, Sister Theresa never borrowed a cent of me in her life! And you have made war on that woman—”

His rage choked him.

He told Bates to close the door of the steel chest, and then turned to me.

“Where are those notes of Pickering’s?” he demanded; and I brought the packet.

“Gentlemen, Mr. Pickering has gone to ugly lengths in this affair. How many murders have you gentlemen committed?”

“We were about to begin actual killing when you arrived,” replied Larry, grinning.

“The sheriff got all his men off the premises more or less alive, sir,” said Bates.

“That is good. It was all a great mistake,—a very great mistake,”—and my grandfather turned to Pickering.

“Pickering, what a contemptible scoundrel you are! I lent you that three hundred thousand dollars to buy securities to give you better standing in your railroad enterprises, and the last time I saw you, you got me to release the collateral so you could raise money to buy more shares. Then, after I died”—he chuckled—“you thought you’d find and destroy the notes and that would end the transaction; and if you had been smart enough to find them you might have had them and welcome. But as it is, they go to Jack. If he shows any mercy on you in collecting them he’s not the boy I think he is.”

Pickering rose, seized his hat and turned toward the shattered library-door. He paused for one moment, his face livid with rage.

“You old fool!” he screamed at my grandfather. “You old lunatic, I wish to God I had never seen you! No wonder you came back to life! You’re a tricky old devil and too mean to die!”

He turned toward me with some similar complaint ready at his tongue’s end; but Stoddard caught him by the shoulders and thrust him out upon the terrace.

A moment later we saw him cross the meadow and hurry toward St. Agatha’s.