AN INVOLUNTARY LANDLORD
Thaxton Vail was eating a solitary breakfast, next morning, when,
wholly unannounced, a long and ecstatic youth burst in upon him. The
intruder was Willis Chase, who had roomed with Thaxton at Williams and
who still was his fairly close and most annoyingly irresponsible friend.
“Grand!” yelled Chase, bearing down upon the breakfaster. “Grand and
colossal! A taxi-bandit is dumping all my luggage on the veranda, and
your poor sour-visaged butler is making awful sounds at him. I didn’t
bring my man. I didn’t even bring my own car. I taxied over from the
club, just as I was; the moment I read it. I knew you had plenty
of cars here; and the hotel valet can look after me. I’m inured to
roughing it. Isn’t it a spree?”
“If you’ll stop running around the ceiling, and light somewhere, and
speak the language of the country,” suggested the puzzled Thaxton,
“perhaps I can make some guess what this is all about. I take it
you’re inviting yourself here for a visit. But what you mean by ‘the
hotel valet’ is more than I--”
“Don’t you grasp it?” demanded Chase, in amaze. “Haven’t you even read
that thing? It was in one of the New York papers, at the club, this
morning. A chap, there, said it was in the _Advocate_, yesterday. Your
secret has exploded. All the cruel world knows of your shame. You run
a hotel. You have to; or else you’d lose Vailholme. It’s all in the
paper. In nice clear print. For everybody to read. And everybody’s
reading it, ever so happily. I’m going to be your first guest. It all
flashed on me, like--”
“Then switch the flash off!” ordered Thaxton, impatiently. “This crazy
thing seems to hit you as a grand joke. To me, it hasn’t a single
redeeming feature. Clear out!”
“My worthy fellow,” reproved Chase, “you forget yourself. You run a
hotel. Your hotel is not full. I demand a room here. I can pay. By law,
you cannot refuse to take me in. If you do, I shall bring an attorney
here to enforce my rights. And at the same time, I shall bring along
ten or eleven or nineteen of the Hunt Club crowd, as fellow-guests; to
liven things for the rest of the summer. Now, Landlord, do I stay; or
do I not?”
Vail glowered on his ecstatically grinning friend, in sour abhorrence.
Then he growled:
“If I throw you out, it’d be just like you to bring along that howling
crowd of outcasts; and all of you would camp here on me for the season.
If you think it’s a joke, keep the joke to yourself. If you insist on
butting in here, you can stay. Not because I want you. I don’t. But
you’re equal to making things fifty times worse, if I turn you out.”
“I sure am,” assented Chase, much pleased by the compliment to his
powers. “Maybe even seventy-eight times worse. And then some--_et puis
quelque_, as we ten-lesson boulevardiers say. So here we are. Now, what
can you do for me in the way of rooms, me good man? The best is none
too good. I am accustomed to rare luxury in my own palatial home, and I
expect magnificent accommodations here.”
Thaxton’s grim mouth relaxed.
“Very good,” he agreed. “Miss Gregg and Doris are due here, too, in an
hour or so. They have picked out my best suite. But--”
“They are? Glory be! I--”
Thaxton proceeded:
“As landlord, I have the right to put my guests in any sort of room I
choose to; and to charge them what price I choose. If my guests don’t
like that, they can get out. I have all manner of rooms, you know; from
my own to the magenta. Do you remember the magenta room, by any chance?”
“Do I?” snorted Chase, memory of acute misery making him drop
momentarily his pose. “_Do_ I? Didn’t I get that room wished on me,
six years ago, when your uncle had the Christmas house party; and
when I turned up at the last minute? I remember how the dear old chap
apologized for sticking me in there. Every other inch of space was
crowded. I swear I believe that terrible room is the only uncomfortable
spot in this house of yours, Thax. I wonder you don’t have it turned
into a storeroom or something. Right over the kitchen; hot as Hades and
too small to swing a cat in, and no decent ventilation. Why do you ask
if I ‘remember’ it? Joan of Arc would be as likely to forget the stake.
If you’re leading up to telling me the room’s been walled in or--”
“I’m not,” said Vail. “I’m leading up to telling you that that’s the
room I’m assigning to you. And the price, with board, will be one
hundred dollars a day. Take it or leave it. As--”
A howl from Chase interrupted him.
“Take it or leave it,” placidly repeated Vail. “In reverse to the order
named.”
“You miserable Shylock!” stormed Chase. “And after I worked it all out
so beautifully! Say, listen! Just to spite you and to take that smug
look off your ugly face, I’m going to stay! Get that? I’m going to
_stay_! One day, anyhow. And I’ll take that hundred dollars out of your
hide, somehow or other, while I’m here! Watch if I don’t. It-- What you
got there?” he broke off.
Thaxton had pulled out an after-breakfast cigar and had felt in vain
for the cigar-cutter which usually lodged in his cash pocket. Failing
to find it, he had fished forth a knife to cut the cigar-end. It
was the sight of this knife which had caught the mercurial Chase’s
interest. Thaxton handed it across the table for his friend’s
inspection.
“It’s a German officer’s army knife,” he explained. “Clive Creede
brought it home with him, from overseas, for me. There aren’t any more
of them made. It weighs a quarter-pound or so, but it has every tool
and appliance on earth tucked away, among its big blades. It’s the
greatest sort of knife in the world for an outdoor man to carry, in the
country.”
Chase, with the curiosity of a monkey, was prying open blade after
blade, then tool after tool, examining each in childlike admiration.
“What’s this for?” he asked, presently, after closing a pair of folding
scissors and a sailor’s needle; and laboriously picking open a long
triangular-edged instrument at the back of the knife. “This blade, or
whatever it is. It’s got a point like a needle. But it slopes back to
a thick base. And its three edges are razor-sharp. What do you use it
for?”
“I don’t use it for anything,” replied Vail. “I don’t know just what
it’s for. It’s some sort of punch, I suppose. To make graduated holes
in girths or in puttee-straps or belts. Vicious looking blade, isn’t
it? The knife’s a treasure, though. It--”
“Say! About that magenta room, now! Blast you, can’t I--?”
“Take it or get out! I hope you’ll get out. It--”
A shadow, athwart the nearest long window, made them turn around.
Clive Creede was stepping across the sill, into the room. He was pale
and hollow-eyed; and seemed very sick.
“Hello, old man!” Vail greeted him. “You came in, like a ghost. And you
look like one, too. Was it a large night or--?”
“It was,” answered Clive, hoarsely, as he turned from shaking hands
with his host and with Chase. “A very large night. In fact it came
close to being a size too large for me. I got to fooling with some
new monoxide gas experiments in that laboratory of Oz’s and mine. No
use going into details that’d bore you. But I struck a combination by
accident that put me out.”
“You look it. Why--?”
“Oz happened to drop in. He found me on the lab floor; just about gone
for good. He lugged me out of doors and worked over me for a couple
of hours before he got me on my feet. The whole house,--the whole of
Rackrent Farm, it seems to me,--smells of the rotten chemical stuff. I
got out, this morning, before it could keel me over again. The smell
will hang around there for days, I suppose. It--”
“Why in blazes should a grown man waste time puttering around with
silly messes of chemicals?” orated Chase, to the world at large. “At
best, he can only discover a new combination of smelly drugs. And at
worst, he can be croaked by them. Not that research isn’t a grand
thing, in its way,” he added. “I used to do a bit of it, myself. For
instance, last month, I discovered one miraculously fine combination,
I remember: A hooker of any of the Seven Deadly Gins, and one-- No,
that’s wrong! Two parts Jersey applejack to one part French--”
He broke off in his bibulous reminiscences, finding he was not listened
to. Thaxton solicitously had helped Clive to a chair and was pouring
him a cup of black coffee. The visitor appeared to be on the verge of
serious collapse.
“Did Doc Lawton think it was all right for you to leave the house while
you’re so done up?” asked Vail.
“I didn’t send for him. Oz pulled me through,” returned Clive, dully.
“Then I piked over here. I couldn’t stay there, in that horribly smelly
place, could I?”
He shuddered, in reminiscence, and gulped his coffee.
“It’ll be days before the place is fit to live in again,” he said. “The
gases have permeated--”
“I’d swap the magenta room for it, any time,” put in Chase, unheeded.
Clive continued:
“Oz brought me as far as your door, in his runabout. He had an idea he
wouldn’t be over-welcome here, so he went on. He wanted me to stay at
Canobie, with him, till I can go back home. But-- Well, when I’m as
knocked out as this, I don’t want to. Oz is all right. He’s a dandy
brother, and a white pal. But he has no way with the sick. He--”
“I know,” said Thaxton, as Clive halted, embarrassed. “I know.”
“You see,” added Clive, “I don’t want you to think I’m a baby, to go
to pieces like this. But the fumes seem to have caught me where I was
gassed, at Montfaucon. Started up all the old pain and gasping and
faintness, and heart bother and splitting headache again. I’ve heard it
comes back, like that. The surgeon told me it might. And now I know it
does. It’s put me pretty well onto the discard. But a few days quiet
will set me on my feet.”
“So you rolled over here, first crack out of the box?” suggested Willis
Chase. “By way of keeping perfectly quiet?”
“No,” denied Clive, looking up, apologetically, from his second cup of
black coffee. “I came over to sponge on Thax, if he’ll let me. Thax,
will it bother you a whole lot if I stay here with you for a few days?
I won’t be in the way. And I know you’ve got lots of room, and nobody
else is stopping with you. I don’t want to put it on the ‘hotel’ basis.
But that’s what gave me the nerve to ask--”
“Rot!” exclaimed Thaxton, in forced cordiality. “What’s the use of all
that preamble? You’re knocked off your feet. You can’t stay at home.
Every inn is full, for ten miles around. I can understand your not
wanting to stay with Oz. If you hadn’t come here, I’d have come after
you. Of course, you must stay.”
As a matter of fact, all Vail’s boyhood friendship for the invalid was
called upon, to make the invitation sound spontaneous. He liked Clive.
He liked him better than any other friend. Ordinarily, it would have
been a joy to have him for a house-guest. The two men had always been
congenial, even though they had seen less of each other since their
return from France and had abated some of the oldtime boyish chumship.
Yet with Doris Lane coming to Vailholme, the host had dreamed of long
uninterrupted hours with her. And now the presence of this other
admirer of hers would block most of his golden plans. Yet there was
no way out of it. In any event Willis Chase’s undesired arrival had
wrecked his hopes for sweet seclusion. So the man made the best of the
annoying situation and threw into his voice and manner the cordiality
he could not put into his heart.
He was ashamed of himself for his sub-resentment that this sick
comrade of his should find no warmer welcome, in appealing to him for
hospitality. Yet the dream of having Doris all to himself for hours
a day had been so joyous! While he could not rebuff Clive as he had
sought to rebuff Willis Chase, yet he could not be glad the invalid had
chosen this particular time to descend upon Vailholme.
Sending for Mrs. Horoson, his elderly housekeeper, he bade her prepare
the two east rooms for Clive’s reception.
“Say!” Chase broke in on the instructions. “You told me that measly
magenta room was the only one you had vacant!”
“I did not,” rasped Thaxton. “I told you it was the only one _you_
could have. And it is. I hope you won’t take it. If I’d had any sense
I’d have said the furnace room was the only one I’d give you. That or
the coal cellar.”
“Never mind!” sighed Chase, with true Christian resignation. “What am
_I_, to complain? What am _I_?”
“I’d hate to tell you,” snapped Thaxton.
“What are you charging Clive?” demanded Willis.
“A penny a year. Laundry three cents extra. He--”
“Miss Gregg, sir. Miss Lane,” announced the sour-visaged butler, from
the dining room doorway.
Thaxton arose wearily and went to meet his guests. All night he had
mused happily on the rare chance which was to make Doris and himself
housemates for an entire rapturous week--a week, presumably, in which
Miss Gregg should busy herself on long daily inspection visits to
Stormcrest. And now--an invalid and a cheery pest were to shatter that
lovely solitude.