Buckwheat was cut, harvest brooded hazily over the land and the fields were bright with goldenrod when Diane turned sharply across Virginia to Kentucky.
"It is already autumn," she wrote to Ann Sherrill. "The summer has flown by like a bright-winged bird. For days now the forests have been splashed with red and gold. The orchards are heavy with harvest apples, the tassels of the corn are dark and rusty, and the dooryards of the country houses riot gorgeously in scarlet sage and marigold, asters and gladiolas. The twilight falls more swiftly now and the nights are cooler but before the frost sweeps across the land I shall be in Georgia.
"For all it is autumn elsewhere, here in this wonderful blue grass land, it is spring again, a second spring. The autumn sunlight over the woods and pastures is deeply, richly yellow. There are meadow larks and off somewhere the tinkle of a cow bell. Oh, Ann, how good it is to be alive!
"Ages ago, in that remote and barbarous past when I lived with a roof above my head, there were times when every pulse of my body cried and begged for life—for gypsy life and gypsy wind and the song of the roaring river! Now, somehow, I feel that I have lived indeed—so fully that a wonderful flood tide of peace and happiness flows strongly in my veins. I am brown and happy. Each day I cook and tramp and fish and swim and sleep—how I sleep with the leaves rustling a lullaby of infinite peace above me! Would you believe that I lived for two days and nights in a mountain cave? I did indeed, but Johnny was greatly troubled. Aunt Agatha stuffed his head with commands.
"The South thrills and calls. After all, though I was born in the Adirondacks, I am Southern, every inch of me. The Westfalls have been Florida folk since the beginning of time.
"There is an interesting nomad in a picturesque suit of corduroy who crosses my path from time to time with an eccentric music-machine. Sometimes I see him gravely organ-grinding for a crowd of youngsters, sometimes—with an innate courtliness characteristic of him—for a white-haired couple by a garden gate. He is wandering about in search of health. Oddly, his way lies, too, through Kentucky and Tennessee, to Florida. He—and Ann, dear, this confidence of his I must beg you to respect, as I know you will—is a Hungarian nobleman, picturesquely disguised because of some political quarrel with his country. He writes excellent verse in French and Latin, is a clever linguist, and has a marvelous fund of knowledge about birds and flowers. Altogether he is a cultured, courtly, handsome man whom I have found vastly entertaining. Romantic, isn't it?
"A letter to Eadsville, Kentucky, will reach me if you write as soon as this reaches you.
"Ever yours,
"Diane."
Let him who is more versed in the science of a nomad's mind than I, say why there was no mention of the hay-camp!
Ann's answer came in course of time to Eadsville. As Ann talked in sprightly italics, so was her letter made striking and emphatic by numberless underlinings.
"How very romantic!" ran a part of it. "I am mad about your nobleman! Isn't it wonderful to have such unique and thrilling adventures? I suppose you hung things up on the walls of the cave and built a delightfully smoky fire and that the Hungarian—bless his heart!—trimmed his corduroy suit with an ancestral stiletto, and paid his courtly respects to the beautiful gypsy hermit and fell desperately in love with her, as well he might. I would myself!
"Diane, I simply must see him! I'm dying for a new sensation. Ever since Baron Tregar's car was stolen from the farm garage and his handsome secretary mysteriously disappeared (by the way, it's Philip Poynter—Carl knows him—do you?) and then reappeared with a most unsatisfactory explanation which didn't in the least explain where he had been—only to up and disappear again as strangely as before, and the very next morning—life has been terribly monotonous. And mother had a rustic seizure and made us stay at the farm all summer. Imagine! Dick's aeroplaned the tops off all the trees!
"Do beg your Hungarian to join us at Palm Beach in January. It would be most interesting and novel and I'll swear on the ancestral stiletto to preserve his incognito! You remember you solemnly promised to come to me in January, no matter where you were! My enthusiasm grows as I write—it always does. I'm planning a fête de nuit—masked of course. Do please induce the romantic musician to attend. I must have him. I'm sure he'll enjoy a few days of conventional respectability and so will you. I'll lend you as many gowns as you need, you dear, delightful gypsy!"
To which Diane's answer was eminently satisfactory.
"Last night as Johnny was getting supper," she wrote, "our minstrel appeared with a great bunch of silver-rod and I begged him to stay to supper. He was greatly gratified and when later I confessed my indiscreet revelation to you—and your invitation—he accepted it instantly. He will be honored to be your guest, he said, provided of course he may depend upon us to preserve his incognito. That is very important. Do you know it is astonishing how I find myself keyed up to the most amazing pitch of interest in him—he's so mysterious and romantic and magnetic.
"Your constant craving for new and original sensations brings back a lot of memories. Will you never get over it?
"I shall probably leave the van with Johnny at Jacksonville and go down by rail. There are certain spectacular complications incident to an arrival at Palm Beach in the van which would be very distasteful, to say the least. Besides, I'd be later than we planned."
For most likely, reflected Diane, nibbling intently at the end of her pen, most likely Palm Beach had never seen a hay-camp and much Mr. Poynter would care!
The west was yellow. High on the mountain where a mad little waterfall sprayed the bushes of laurel and rhododendron with quicksilver, the afterglow of the sunset on the tumbling water made a streak of saffron. The wings of a homing eagle were golden-black against the sky. Over there above the cornfields to the west there was a cliff and a black and bushy ravine over which soared a buzzard or two. Presently when the moon rose its splendid alchemy would turn the black to glowing silver.
A Kentucky brook chuckled boisterously by the hay-camp, tumbling headlong over mossy logs and stones and a tangled lacery of drenched ferns.
Philip laid aside a bow and arrow upon which he had been busily working since supper and summoned Dick Whittington. Beyond, through oak and poplar, glowed the camp fire of his lady.
"Likely we'll tramp about a bit, Richard, if you're willing," said he. "Somehow, we're infernally restless to-night and just why our lady has seen fit to pile that abominable silver-rod in such a place of honor by her tent, we can't for the life of us see. It's nothing like so pretty as the goldenrod. By and by, Whittington," Philip felt for his pipe and filled it, "we'll have our wildwood bow and arrows done and we fancy somehow that our gypsy's wonderful black eyes are going to shine a hit over that. Why? Lord, Dick, you do ask foolish questions! Our beautiful lady's an archer and a capital one too, says Johnny—even if she does like beastly silver-rod."
Somewhat out of sorts the Duke of Connecticut set off abruptly through the trees with the dog at his heels.
Having climbed over log and boulder to a road which cleft the mountain, he kept on to the north, descending again presently to the level of the camp, smoking abstractedly and whistling now and then for Richard Whittington, who was prone to ramble. Philip was debating whether or not he had better turn back, for the moon was already edging the black ravine with fire, when a camp fire and the silhouette of a lonely camper loomed to the west among the trees. Philip puffed forth a prodigious cloud of smoke and seated himself on a tree stump.
"My! My!" said he easily. "Must be our invalid and his rumpus machine. Whittington, we're just in the mood to-night, you and I, to wander over there and tell him that he's not getting half so much over on us as he thinks he is. I've a mind to send you forward with my card."
Philip's eyes narrowed and he laughed softly. Tearing a sheet of paper from a notebook he took from his pocket, he scribbled upon it the following astonishing message:
"The Duke of Connecticut desires an audience. Do not kick the courier!"
Accustomed by now to carry birch-bark messages to Diane, Richard Whittington waggled in perfect understanding and trotted off obediently toward the fire with Philip close at his heels.
Conceivably astonished, the camper presently picked up the paper which Mr. Whittington dropped at his feet, and read it. As Philip stepped lazily from the trees he turned.
It was Baron Tregar. Both men stared.
"The Duke of Connecticut!" at length rumbled the Baron with perfect gravity. "I am overwhelmed."
Philip, much the more astonished of the two, laughed and bowed.
"Excellency," said he formally, "I am indeed astonished."
"Pray be seated!" invited the Baron, his eyes more friendly than those of his guest. "I, too, have taken to the highway, Poynter, on yonder motorcycle and I have lost my way." He sniffed in disgust. "I am dining," he added dryly, "if one may dignify the damnable proceeding by that name, on potatoes which I do not in the least know how to bake without reducing them to cinders. I bought them a while back at a desolate, God-forsaken farmhouse. Heaven deliver me from camping!"
With which pious ejaculation the Baron inspected his smudged and blistered fingers and read again the entertaining message from the Duke of Connecticut.
"Why take to the highway," begged Philip guilelessly, "when the task is so unpleasant?"
"Ah!" rumbled the Baron, more sombre now, "there is a man with a music-machine—"
"There is!" said Philip fervently.
The Baron looked hard at His Highness, the Duke of Connecticut. The latter produced his cigarette case and opening it politely for the service of his chief, smiled with good humor.
"There is," said he coolly, "a man with a music-machine, a mysterious malady, a stained skin and a volume of Herodotus! Excellency knows the—er—romantic ensemble?"
Excellency not only knew him, but for days now, taking up the trail at a certain canal, he had traveled hard over roads strangely littered with hay and food and linen collars—to find that romantic ensemble. He added with grim humor that he fancied the Duke of Connecticut knew him too. The Duke dryly admitted that this might be so. His memory, though conveniently porous at times, was for the most part excellent.
"What is he doing?" asked the Baron with an ominous glint of his fine eyes.
"Excellency," said Philip, staring hard at the end of his cigarette, "by every subtle device at his command, he is making graceful love to Miss Westfall, who is sufficiently wholesome and happy and absorbed in her gypsy life not to know it—yet!"
The Barents explosive "Ah!" was a compound of wrath and outraged astonishment. Philip felt his attitude toward his chief undergoing a subtle revolution.
"His discretion," added Philip warmly, "has departed to that forgotten limbo which has claimed his beard."
The Baron was staring very hard at the camp fire.
"So," said he at last,—"it is for this that I have been—" he searched for an expressive Americanism, and shrugging, invented one, "thunder-cracking along the highway in search of the man Themar saw by the fire of Miss Westfall. 'It is incredible—it can not be!' said I, as I blistered about, searching here, searching there, losing my way and thunder-cracking about in dead of night—all to pick up the trail of a green and white van and a music-machine! 'It is unbelievable—it is a monstrous mistake on the part of Themar!' But, Poynter, this love making, in the circumstances, passes all belief!" The Baron added that twice within the week he had passed the hay-camp but that by some unlucky fatality he had always contrived to miss the music-machine.
"Days back," rumbled the Baron thoughtfully, "I assigned to Themar the task of discovering the identity of the man who—er—acquired a certain roadster of mine and who, I felt fairly certain, would not lose track of Miss Westfall but Themar, Poynter, came to grief—"
"Yes?" said Philip coolly. "You interest me exceedingly."
"He made his way back to me after many weeks of illness," said the Baron slowly, "with a curious tale of a terrible thrashing, of a barge and mules, of rough men who kicked him about and consigned him to a city jail under the malicious charge of a mule-driver who swore that he loved not black-and-tans—"
"Lord!" said Philip politely; "that was tough, wasn't it?"
"Just what, Poynter," begged the Baron, "is a black-and-tan?"
Mr. Poynter fancied he had heard the term before. It might have reference to the color of a man's skin and hair.
An uncomfortable silence fell over the Baron's camp. The Baron himself was the first to break it.
"Poynter," said he bluntly, "the circumstances of our separation at Sherrill's have engendered, with reason, a slight constraint. There was a night when you grievously misjudged me—"
"I am willing," admitted Philip politely, "to hear why I should alter my views."
"Mon Dieu, Poynter!" boomed the Baron in exasperation, "you are maddening. When you are politest, I fume and strike fire—here within!"
"Mental arson!" shrugged the Duke of Connecticut, relighting his cigarette with a blazing twig. "For that singular crime. Excellency, my deepest apologies."
The Baron stared, frowned, and laughed. One may know very little of one's secretary, after all.
"You are a curious young man!" said he.
The Duke of Connecticut admitted that this might be so. Hay, therapeutically, had effected an astonishing revolution in a nature disposed congenitally to peace and trustfulness. Local applications of hay had made him exceedingly suspicious and hostile. So much so indeed that for days now he had slept by day, to the total wreck of his aesthetic reputation, and watched by night, convinced that Miss Westfall's camp was prone to strange and dangerous visitors. Excellency no doubt remembered the knife and the bullet.
The Baron sighed.
"Poynter," he said simply, "to a man of my nature and diplomatic position, a habit of candor is difficult. I wonder, however, if you would accept my word of honor as a gentleman that I know as little of this treacherous bullet as you; that for all I am bound to secrecy, my sincerest desire is to protect Miss Westfall from the peculiar consequences of this damnable muddle, to clear up the mystery of the bullet, and for more selfish reasons to protect her from the romantic folly of the man with the music-machine!"
Philip, his frank, fine face alive with honest relief, held out his hand.
"Excellency," said he warmly, "one may learn more of his chief over a camp fire, it seems, than in months of service. Our paths lie parallel." There was a subtle compact in the handshake.
"What," questioned the Baron presently, "think you, are my fine gentleman's plans, Poynter?"
Philip reddened.
"Excellency," he admitted, "I have definite information of his plans which I did not seek."
"And the source?"
"Miss Westfall's servant."
"Ah!"
"There are certain atmospheric conditions," regretted Philip, "intensely bad for hay-camps, wherefore I found myself obliged to seek an occasional understudy who would not only blaze the trail for me but do faithful sentry duty in my absence. And Johnny, Excellency, whom I pledged to this secret service, uncomfortably insists upon reporting to me much unnecessary detail. He has developed a most unreasoning dislike for music-machines and musical gypsies."
"There appears to be a general prejudice against them," admitted the Baron grimly.
"A while back, then," resumed Philip, "Johnny chanced upon the information that in January Miss Westfall will be a guest of Ann Sherrill's at Palm Beach. So will our minstrel—still incognito—"
"Excellent!" rumbled the Baron with relish. "Excellent. If all this be true," he added, muddling an Americanism, "we have then, of the horse another color!"
"Later," said Philip, "when Miss Westfall returns to her house on wheels, I imagine he too will take to the road again—and resume his charming erotics."
"That," said the Baron with decision, "is most undesirable."
"I agree with you!" said Philip feelingly.
"I too have promised to be a guest at Miss Sherrill's fête de nuit!" purred the Baron suavely. "And you, Poynter?"
"Unfortunately Miss Sherrill knows absolutely nothing of my whereabouts."
"Sherrill days ago entrusted me with a cordial invitation for you. He was unaware of our disagreement and expected you to accompany me. As my official secretary, Poynter, for, let us say the month of January, it is possible for me to command your attendance at Palm Beach."
"Excellency," said Philip slowly, "singular as it may seem in my present free lance state, I am greatly desirous of hearing such a command."
"Poynter," boomed the Baron formally, "in January I shall be overweighted with diplomatic duties at Palm Beach. I regret exceedingly that I am forced to command your attendance. This frivoling about must cease." He shook suddenly with silent laughter. "Doubtless," said he, meeting Philip's amused glance with level significance, "doubtless, Poynter, we can—"
"Yes," said Philip with much satisfaction, "I think we can."
They fell to chatting in lower voices as the fire died down.
"Meanwhile," shrugged the disgusted Baron a little later, "I shall abandon that accursed music-machine to its fate, and rest. God knows I am but an indifferent nomad and need it sorely. Night and day have I thunder-cracked the highways, losing my way and my temper until I loathe camps and motor machines and dust and wind and baked potatoes. I sincerely hope, Poynter, that you can find me the road to an inn and a bed, a bath and some iced mint—to-night."
Philip could and did. Presently standing by his abominated motorcycle on a lonely moonlit road, the Baron adjusted his leather cap and stroked his beard.
"Do you know, Poynter," said he slowly, "this is a most mysterious motorcycle. It was crated to me from an unknown village in Pennsylvania by the hand of God knows whom!"
"Excellency," said Philip politely as he cordially shook hands with his chief, "The world, I find, is full of mystery."
As the dusty wanderers wound slowly down into southern Georgia on a mild bright day, a December snow storm broke with flake and flurry over the Westfall farm. Whirling, crooning, pirouetting, the mad white ghost swept down from the hills and hurled itself with a rattle of shutters and stiffened boughs against the frozen valley. By nightfall the wind was wailing eerily through the chimneys; but the checkerboard panes of light one glimpsed through the trees of the Westfall lane were bright and cheery.
In the comfortable sitting room of the farmhouse, Carl rose and drew the shades, added a log to the great, open fireplace and glanced humorously at his companion who was industriously playing Canfield.
"Well, Dick," said he, "on with your overcoat. Now that supper's done, we've a tramp ahead of us."
Wherry rebelled.
"Oh, Lord, Carl!" he exclaimed. "Hear the wind!" He rose and drew aside the shade. "The lane's thick with snow. Heavens, man, it's no night for a tramp. Allan's coming in with the mail and he looks like a snow man."
"You promised," reminded Carl inexorably. "How long since you've had a drink, Dick?"
"Nine weeks!" said Wherry, his boyish face kindling suddenly with pride.
"And your eyes and skin are clear and you're lean and hard as a race horse. But what a fight! What a fight!" Carl slipped his arm suddenly about the other's broad shoulders. "Come on, Dick," he urged gently. "It's discipline and endurance to-night. I want you to fight this icy wind and grit your teeth against it. Every battle won makes a force furrow in your will."
He met Wherry's eyes and smiled with a flash of the irresistible magnetism which somehow awoke unconscious response in those who beheld it. It flamed now in Wherry's clear young eyes, a look of dumb fidelity such as one sees now and then in the eyes of a faithful animal. Such a look had flashed at times in the bloated face of Hunch Dorrigan, in the eyes of young Allan Carmody here at the farm, and—in early manhood when Carl had lazily set a college by the ears—in the eyes of Philip Poynter. It was the nameless force which the faculty had dreaded, for it sent men flocking at the heels of one whose daring whims were as incomprehensible as they were unexpected and original.
Young Allan brought the mail in and Carl smilingly tossed a letter to Wherry, who colored and slipped it in his pocket with an air of studied indifference.
Carl slit the two directed to himself and rapidly scanned their contents. One was from Ann Sherrill jogging his memory about a promise to come to Palm Beach in January, the other from Aunt Agatha, whose trip to her cousin's in Indiana Carl had encouraged with a great flood of relief, for it had made possible this nine weeks with Wherry at the Glade Farm.
Two steps at a time, Wherry bounded up to his room. When he returned he was in better spirits than he had been for months.
"Come on, Carl," he exclaimed boyishly. "I'll walk down any gale to-night. And Allan says we're in for a blizzard."
Breasting the biting gale, the two men swung out through the snowy lane to the roadway.
Carl watched his companion in silence. It was a test—this wind—to see how much of a man had been made from the flabby, drunken wreck he had dragged to the Glade Farm weeks ago with a masterful command. It had been a bitter fight, with days of heavy sullenness on Wherry's part and swift apology when the mood was gone, days of hard riding and walking, of icy plunges after a racking grind of exercise for which Carl himself with his splendid strength inexorably set the pace, days of fierce rebellion when he had calmly thrashed his suffering young guest into submission and locked him in his room, days of horrible choking remorse and pleading when Carl had grimly turned away from the pitiful wreck Starrett had made of his clever young secretary.
Once Starrett had motored up officiously to bully Wherry into coming back to him. Carl smiled. Starrett had stumbled back to his waiting motor with a broken rib and a bruised and swollen face. Starrett was a coward—he would not come again.
Carl glanced again at Wherry. It was a man who walked beside him to-night. The battle was over. Chin up, shoulders squared against the bitter wind, he walked with the free, full stride of health and new endurance, tossing the snow from his dark, heavy hair with a laugh. There was clear red in his face and his eyes were shining.
Five miles in the teeth of a sleety blizzard and every muscle ached with the fight.
"Dick," said Carl suddenly, "I'm proud of you."
Wherry swung sturdily on his heel.
"But you won for me, Carl," he said quietly. "I'll not forget that."
In silence they tramped back through the heavy drifts to the farmhouse and left their snowy coats in the great warm kitchen where the Carmodys—old Allan and young Allan, young, shy, pretty Mary and old Mary, the sole winter servants of the Glade—were mulling cider over a red-hot stove.
By the fire in the sitting room Dick faced his host with hot color in his face.
"Carl," he said with an effort, "my letter to-night—it's from a girl up home in Vermont. I—I've never spoken of her before—I wasn't fit—"
"Yes?" said Carl.
"She's a little bit of a girl with wonderful eyes," said Wherry, his eyes gentle. "We used to play a lot by the brook, Carl, until I went away to college and forgot. I—I wrote her the whole wretched mess," he choked. "She says come back."
"Yes," said Carl sombrely, "there are fine, big splendid women like that. I'm glad you know one. God knows what the world of men would do without them. You'll go back to her?"
Wherry gulped courageously.
"If—if you think I'm fit," he said, his face white. "If you feel you can trust me, I'll go in the morning."
"I know I can trust you," said Carl with his swift, ready smile. "I know, old man, that you'll not forget."
"No," said Dick, "I can't forget."
"Tell me," Carl bent and turned the log. "What will you do now, Dick? I know your head was turned a bit by the salary Starrett gave you, but you'll not go back to that sort of work for a while anyway, will you?"
"No," said Dick. "If I knew something of scientific farming," he added after a while, "I think I'd stay home. Dad's a doctor, a kindly, old-fashioned chap. I—I'd like to have you know him, Carl—he's a bully sort. He's living up there in Vermont on a farm that's never been developed to its full possibilities. It's the best farm in the valley, but, you see, he hasn't the time and he's growing old—"
"Why not take a course at an agricultural college?"
Wherry colored.
"I haven't the money, Carl," he acknowledged honestly. "Most of Dad's savings went to see me through college. I've a little—"
"Would a thousand a year see you through, with what you've got?" asked Carl quietly.
But Wherry did not answer. He had walked away to the window, shaking. Presently he turned back to the table, but his face was white and his eyes dark with agony. Dropping into a chair he buried his face in his hands, unnerved at the end of his fight by Carl's offer.
Wisely the man by the fire let him fight it out by himself and for an interval there was no sound in the quiet room save the crackle of the log and the great choking breaths of the boy by the table, whose head had fallen forward on his outstretched arms.
Carl threw his cigar into the fire and rose.
"Brace up, Dick!" he said at length. "We've been touching the high spots up here and you were strung to a tension that had to break." He crossed to Wherry and laid his hand heavily on the boy's heaving shoulder. "Now, Dick, I want you to listen to me. I'm going to see you through an agricultural college and you're not going to tell me I can't afford it. I know it already. But I've four thousand a year and that's so far off from what I need to live in my way—that a thousand or so one way or the other wouldn't make any more difference than a snowflake in hell. I owe you something anyway—God knows!—for supplying the model that sent you to perdition. If you hadn't paid me the ingenuous compliment of unremitting imitation, you'd have been a sight better off… And you're going to marry the white little girl with the beautiful eyes and the wonderful, sweet forgiving decency of heart, and bring up a crowd of God-fearing youngsters, make over the old doctor's farm for him—and likely his life—and begin afresh. That's all I ask. Now to bed with you."
Wherry wrung Carl's hand, and after a passionate, incoherent storm of gratitude stumbled blindly from the room.
The old house grew very quiet. Presently to the crackle of the fire and the wild noise of the wind outside was added the soft and melancholy lilt of a flute. There was no mockery or impudence in the strain to-night. It was curiously of a piece with the creaking loneliness of the ancient farmhouse and so soft at times that the clash of the frozen branches against the house engulfed it utterly.
Sombre, swayed by a surge of deep depression, the flutist lay back in his chair by the fire, piping moodily upon the friend he always carried in his pocket. To-morrow Dick would be off to the girl in Vermont—
The clock struck twelve. The rural world was wrapped in slumber. Above-stairs Dick was sleeping the sound, dreamless sleep of healthy weariness, and most likely dreaming of the girl by the brook. A cleansed body and a cleansed mind, thank God! So had he slept for nights while the inexorable master of his days, with no companion but his flute, drank and drank until dawn, climbing up to bed at cockcrow—sometimes drunk and morose, sometimes a grim and conscious master of the bottle.
Carl had been drinking wildly, heavily for months. That in flagellating Wherry's body day by day he spared not himself, was characteristic of the man and of his will. That he preached and dragged a man from the depths of hell by day and deliberately descended into infernal abysses by night, was but another revelation of the wild, inconsistent humors which tore his soul, Youth and indomitable physique gave him as yet clear eyes and muscles of iron, for all he abused them, but the humors of his soul from day to day grew blacker.
Kronberg, a new servant Carl had brought with him to the Glade for personal attendance, presently brought in his nightly tray of whiskey.
Carl glanced at the bottle and frowned.
"Take it away!" he said curtly.
Kronberg obeyed.
A little later, white and very tired, Carl went up to bed.
Dick went in the morning. At the door, after chatting nervously to cover the surge of emotion in his heart, he held out his hand. Neither spoke.
"Carl," choked Wherry at last, meeting the other's eyes with a glance of wild imploring, "so help me God, I'll run straight. You know that?"
"Yes," said Carl truthfully, "I know it."
An interval of desperate silence, then: "I—I can't thank you, old man, I—I'd like to but—"
"No," said Carl. "I wish you wouldn't."
And Wherry, wildly wringing his hand for the last time, was off to the sleigh waiting in the lane, a lean, quivering lad with blazing eyes of gratitude and a great choke in his throat as he waved at Carl, who smiled back at him with lazy reassurance through the smoke of a cigarette.
Carl's day was restless and very lonely. By midnight he was drinking heavily, having accepted the tray this time and dismissed Kronberg for the night. Though the snow had abated some the night before, and ceased in the morning, it was again whirling outside in the lane with the wild abandon of a Bacchante. The wind too was rising and filling the house with ghostly creaks.
It was one of those curious nights when John Barleycorn chose to be kind—when mind and body stayed alert and keen. Carl lazily poured some whiskey in the fire and watched the flame burn blue. He could not rid his mind of the doctor's farm and the girl in Vermont.
Again the wind shook the farmhouse and danced and howled to its crazy castanetting. There was a creak in the hallway beyond. Last night, too, when he had been talking to Wherry, there had been such a creak and for the moment, he recalled vividly, there had been no wind. Then, disturbed by Dick's utter collapse, he had carelessly dismissed it. Now with his brain dangerously edged by the whiskey and his mind brooding intently over a series of mysterious and sinister adventures which had enlivened his summer, he rose and stealing catlike to the door, flung it suddenly back.
Kronberg, his dark, thin-lipped face ashen, fell headlong into the room with a revolver in his hand.
With the tigerish agility which had served him many a time before Carl leaped for the revolver and smiling with satanic interest leveled it at the man at his feet.
"So," said he softly, "you, too, are a link in the chain. Get up!"
Sullenly Kronberg obeyed.
"If you are a good shot," commented Carl coolly, "the bullet you sent from this doorway would have gone through my head. That was your intention?"
Kronberg made no pretense of reply.
"You've been here nine weeks," sympathized Carl, "and were cautious enough to wait until Wherry departed. What a pity you were so delayed! Caution, my dear Kronberg, if I may fall into epigram, is frequently and paradoxically the mother of disaster. As for instance your own case. I imagine you're a blunderer anyway," he added impudently; "your fingers are too thick. If you hadn't been so anxious to learn when Wherry was likely to go," guessed Carl suddenly, "you wouldn't have listened and creaked at the keyhole last night. And more than likely you'd have gotten that creak over on me to-night."
Kronberg's shifting glance roved desperately to the doorway.
"Try it," invited Carl pleasantly. "Do. And I'll help you over the threshold with a little lead. Do you know the way to the attic door in the west wing?"
Kronberg, gulping with fear, said he did not. He was shaking violently.
"Get the little lamp on the mantel there," commanded Carl curtly, "and light it. Bring it here. Now you will kindly precede me to the door I spoke of. I'll direct you. If you bolt or cry out, I'll send a bullet through your head. So that you may not be tempted to waste your blood and brains, if you have any, and my patience, pray recall that the Carmodys are snugly asleep by now in the east wing and the house is large. They couldn't hear you."
It was the older portion of the house and one which by reason of its draughts was rarely used in winter, to which Carl drove his shaking prisoner. In summer it was cool and pleasant. In winter, however, it was cut off from heat and habitation by lock and key.
At Carl's curt direction Kronberg turned the key in the door and passed through the icy file of rooms beyond to the second floor, thence to a dusty attic where the sweep of the wind and snow seemed very close, and on to an ancient cluster of storerooms. Years back when the old farmhouse had been an inn, shivering servants had made these chill and dusty rooms more habitable. Now with the deserted wing below and the wind-feet of the Bacchante on the roof above, they were inexpressibly lonely and dreary.
Kronberg bit his lip and shuddered. His fear of the grim young guard behind him had been subtly aggravated by the desolation of his destined jail.
Halting in the doorway of an inner room, Carl held the light high and nodded with approval.
Its dim rays fell upon dust and cobwebs, trunks and the nondescript relics of years of hoarding. There were no windows; only a skylight above clouded by the whirl of the storm.
Carl seated himself upon a trunk, placed the lamp beside him and directed his guest to a point opposite. Kronberg, with dark, fascinated eyes glued upon the glittering steel in his jailer's hand, obeyed.
"Kronberg," said Carl coldly, "there's a lot I want to know. Moreover, I'm going to know it. Nor shall I trust to drunken jailers as I did a while back with a certain compatriot of yours. Late last spring when you sought employment at my cousin's town-house, you were already, I presume, a link in the chain. If my memory serves me correctly, you were dismissed after ten days of service, through no fault of your own. The house was closed for the summer. You came to me again this fall with a letter of recommendation from Mrs. Westfall. Knowing my aunt," reflected Carl dryly, "that is really very humorous. What were you doing in the meantime?"
Carl shifted the lamp that its pale fan of light might fall full upon the other's face.
"Let me tell you—do!" said he. "For I'm sure I know. During the summer, my dear Kronberg, I was the victim of a series of peculiar and persistent attacks. To a growing habit of unremitting vigilance and suspicion, I may thank my life. As for the peaceful monotony of the last nine weeks, doubtless I may attribute that to the constant companionship of Wherry, the fact that you were much too unpopular with the Carmodys as a foreigner to find an opportunity of poisoning my food, and that I've fallen into the discreet and careful habit of always drinking from a fresh bottle, properly sealed. There was a chance even there, but you were not clever enough to take it. You're overcautious and a coward. But how busy you must have been before that," he purred solicitously, "bolting about in various disguises after me. How very patient! Dear, dear, if Nature had only given you brains enough to match your lack of scruples—"
The insolent purr of his musical voice whipped color into Kronberg's cheeks. Abruptly he shifted his position and glared stonily.
"Venice," murmured Carl impudently, "Venice called them bravi; here in America we brutally call them gun-men, but honestly, Kronberg, in all respect and confidence, you really haven't brains and originality enough for a clever professional murderer. Amateurish killing is a sickly sort of sport. And the danger of it! Take for instance that night when you fancied you were a motor bandit and waylaid me on the way to the farm. I was very drunk and driving madly and I nearly got you. A pretty to-do that would have been! To be killed by an amateur and you a paid professional! My! My! Kronberg, I blush for you. I really do!"
He rose smiling, though his eyes were dangerously brilliant.
"Just when," said he lazily, "did you steal the paper I found in the candlestick? It's gone—"
He had struck fire from the stone man at last. A hopeless, hunted look flamed up in Kronberg's eyes and died away.
"Ah!" guessed Carl keenly, "so you're in some muddle there, too, eh?" Kronberg stared sullenly at the dusty floor.
"A silence strike?" inquired Carl. "Well we'll see how you feel about that in the morning. As for the skylight, Kronberg, if you feel like skating down an icy roof to hell, try it."
Whistling softly, Carl backed to the door and disappeared. An instant later came the click of a key in the lock. He had taken the lamp with him.
Groping desperately about, Kronberg searched for some covering to protect him from the icy cold. His search was unsuccessful. When the skylight grayed at dawn, he was pacing the floor, white and shaking with the chill.
The key clicked in the lock. Kronberg, huddled in a corner, stirred and cunningly hid the flimsy coverings of chintz he had unearthed from an ancient trunk. For three days he had not spoken, three days of bitter, biting cold, three days of creaking, lonely quiet, of mournful wind and shifting lights above the glass overhead, of infernal visitations from one he had grown to fear more than death itself. With heavy chills racking his numb body, with flashes of fever and clamping pains in his head, his endurance was now nearing an end.
Bearing a tray of food, Carl entered and closed the door.
"I'm still waiting, Kronberg," he reminded coolly, "for the answers to those questions."
For answer Kronberg merely pushed aside the tray of food with a shudder. There was a dreadful nausea to-day in the pit of his stomach.
"So?" said Carl. "Well," he regretted, "there are always the finger stretchers. They're crude, Kronberg, and homemade, but in time they'll do the work."
Kronberg's face grew colorless as death itself as his mind leaped to the torture of the day before. A clamp for every finger tip, a metal bar between—the hell-conceived device invented by his jailer forced the fingers wide apart and held them there as in vise until a stiffness bound the aching cords, then a pain which crept snakelike to the elbow—and the shoulder. Then when the tortured nerves fell wildly to telegraphing spasmodic jerkings of distress from head to toe, the shrugging devil with the flute would talk vividly of roaring wood fires and the comforts awaiting the penitent below. Yesterday Kronberg had fainted. To-day—
Carl presently took the singular metal contrivance from his pocket, deftly clamped the fingers of his victim and sat down to wait, rummaging for his flute.
The tension snapped.
Choking, Kronberg fell forward at his jailer's feet, his eyes imploring.
"Mercy," he whispered. "I—I can not bear it."
"Then you will answer what I ask?"
"Yes."
Carl unsnapped the infernal finger-stretcher and dropped it in his pocket.
"Come," said he not unkindly and led his weak and staggering prisoner to a room in the west wing where a log fire was blazing brightly in the fireplace.
With a moan Kronberg broke desperately away from his grasp and flung himself violently upon his knees by the fire, stretching his arms out pitifully to the blaze and chattering and moaning like a thing demented. Carl walked away to the window.
Presently the man by the fire crept humbly to a chair, a broken creature in the clutch of fever, eyes and skin unnaturally bright.
"Here," said Carl, pouring him some brandy from a decanter on the table. "Sit quietly for a while and close your eyes. Are you better now?" he asked a little later.
"Yes," said Kronberg faintly.
"What is your real name?"
"Themar."
"When you took service with my aunt in the spring, you were looking for a certain paper?"
"Yes."
"Did you find it during your ten days in the town-house?"
"No."
"How did you discover its whereabouts?"
"One night I watched you replace it in a secret drawer in your room. Before I could obtain it, the house was closed for the summer and I was dismissed. I had succeeded, however, in getting an impression of the desk lock."
"You went back later?"
"Yes. It was a summer day—very hot. The front door was ajar. I opened it wider. Your aunt sat upon the floor of the hall crying—"
"Yes?"
"I spoke of passing and seeing the door ajar. She recognized me as one of the servants and begged me to call a taxi. I assisted her to the taxi and went back, having only pretended to lock the door."
"And having disposed of her," supplied Carl, "you flew up the stairs, applied the key made from the impression—and stole the paper?"
"Yes."
"Beautiful!" said Carl softly. "How cleverly you tricked me!"
Themar shrugged.
"It was very simple."
Carl smiled.
"Where is the paper now?" he inquired.
Themar's face darkened.
"When later I looked in the pocket of my coat," he admitted, "the paper had disappeared utterly. Nor have I found it since. It is a very great mystery—"
"Ah!" said Carl. "So," he mused, "as long as the paper was in my possession, my life was safe, for you must watch me to find it. Therefore I was not poisoned or stabbed or shot at during your original ten days of service. Later, even though you could not lay your own hands upon the paper, things began to happen. Knowing what I did, I had lived too long as it was."
"Yes."
"Suppose you begin at the beginning—and tell me just what you know."
It was a halting, nervous tale poorly told. Carl, with his fastidious respect for a careful array of facts, found it trying. By a word here or a sentence there, he twisted the mass of imperfect information into conformity and pieced it out with knowledge of his own.
"So," said he coldly, "you thought to stab me the night of the storm and stabbed Poynter. Fool! Why," he added curtly, "did you later spy upon my cousin's camp when Tregar had expressly forbidden it?"
It was an unexpected question. Themar flushed uncomfortably. Carl had a way of reading between the lines that was exceedingly disconcerting. His information, he said at length after an interval of marked hesitancy, had been too meager. He had listened at the door once when the Baron had spoken of Miss Westfall to his secretary. A housemaid had frightened him away and he had bolted upstairs—to attend to something else while they were both safely occupied. Rather than work blindly as he needs must if he knew no more, he had sought to add to his information by spying on her camp.
It was unconvincing.
"So," said Carl keenly, "Baron Tregar does not trust you!"
Themar's lip curled.
"The Baron knew of your ten days in my cousin's house?"
Again the marked hesitancy—the flush.
"Yes," said Themar.
"You're lying," said Carl curtly. "If you wish to go back—"
Themar moistened his dry lips and shuddered.
"No," he whispered, "he did not know."
"Why?"
Themar fell to trembling. This at least he must keep locked from the grim, ironic man by the window.
"You're playing double with Tregar and with me," said Carl hotly. "I thought so. Very well!" Smiling infernally, he drew from his pocket the finger-stretchers.
"Excellency!" panted Themar.
"Why did you serve in my cousin's house without the knowledge of the Baron?"
"If—if the secret was harmful to Houdania," blurted Themar desperately, spurred to confession by the clank of the metal in Carl's hand, "I—I could sell the paper to Galituria!"
The nature of the admission was totally unexpected. Carl whistled softly.
"Ah!" said he, raising expressive eyebrows.
"My mother," said Themar sullenly, "was of Galituria. There is hatred there for Houdania—a century's feud—"
"And you in the employ of the rival province hunting this to earth! What a mess—what a mess!"
Followed a battery of merciless questions punctuated by the diabolic clank of metal.
Themar had been deputed solely to report to Baron Tregar—
"And murder me!" supplemented Carl curtly.
"Yes," said Themar. "Under oath I was to obey Ronador's commands without question. But he did not even trust me with the cipher message of instruction. That was mailed to the Baron's Washington address written in an ink that only turned dark with the heat of a fire. I too was sent to Washington. Ronador knew nothing of the Baron's trip to Connecticut."
By spying before he had sailed, Themar added, at a question from Carl, he had learned of the cipher.
"You read the paper of course when you stole it from my desk?"
"There was a noise," said Themar dully, his face bitter; "I ran for the street. Later the paper was gone."
"What were Tregar's intentions about the paper?"
Themar chewed nervously at his lips.
"His Excellency spoke to me of a paper. He said that I must discover its whereabouts, if possible, but that none but he must steal it. Anything written which you would seem to have hidden would be of interest to him. He bound me by a terrible oath not to touch or read it."
"And you?"
"After a time I swore that I had seen you burn it—"
"Clumsy! Still if he believed it, it left me, in the event of Miss Westfall's complete ignorance of all this hubbub, the sole remaining obstacle."
But Themar had not heard. He was shaking again in the clutch of a heavy chill. Presently, his sentences having trailed off once or twice into peculiar incoherency, he fell to talking wildly of a hut in the Sherrill woods in which he had lived for days in the early autumn, of a cuff in a box buried in the ground beneath the planking. For weeks, he said, he had vainly tried to solve its cipher, stealing away from the farm by night to pore over it by the light of a candle. It was fearfully intricate—
"But you—you that know all," he gasped painfully, "you will get it and read and tell me—"
Moaning he fell back in his chair.
Carl rang for Mrs. Carmody. It was young Mary, however, who answered, her round blue eyes lingering in mystification upon the fire Carl had built in the deserted wing.
"Mary," said Carl carelessly, "you'd better phone for a doctor and a nurse. Kronberg has returned and I fear he's in for a spell of pneumonia."
Later in the Sherrill hut, Carl ripped a board from the floor and found in the dirt beneath, a box containing a soiled cuff covered with an intricate cipher.
"Odd!" said he with a curious smile as he dropped the cuff into his pocket; "it's very odd about that paper."