TWO OR THREE INTRUDERS
Yet luncheon was a gay enough meal. All the guests were old friends,
and all were more or less congenial. Thaxton’s duties as host were in
no way onerous, except when Willis Chase undertook to guy him as to
his anomalous position as hotelkeeper--which Chase proceeded to do at
intervals varying from two minutes to fifteen.
In the afternoon, Miss Gregg was forced to drive across to Stormcrest,
to superintend the first touches of the decorators to her remaining
rooms. Clive made some excuse for retiring shakily to his own rooms
for a rest. Willis Chase had to go back to Stockbridge on urgent
business--having found, on unpacking, that in his haste he had brought
along all his evening clothes except the trousers.
Thus, for an hour or so, Vail had Doris Lane to himself. They idled
about the grounds, Vail showing the girl his new sunken garden and his
trout hatcheries. Throughout the dawdling tour they talked idly and
blissfully, and withal a whit shyly, as do lovers on whom the Great
Moment is making ready to dawn. At their heels paced Vail’s dark sable
collie, Macduff.
The sky was hazy, the air was hot. Weather-wise Berkshire folk would
have prophesied a torrid spell, the more unbearable for the bracing
cool of the region’s normal air. But the hot wave had merely sent this
mildly tepid day as a herald.
To the lounging young folk in the garden it carried no message. Yet at
whiles they fell silent as they drifted aimlessly about the grounds.
There was a witchery that both found hard to ignore.
Rousing herself embarrassedly from one of these sweet silences, Doris
nodded toward the big brown collie, who had come to a standstill in
front of a puffy and warty old toad, fly-catching at the edge of a rock
shelf.
The dog, strolling along in bored majesty in front of his human
escorts, had caught the acrid scent of the toad and was crouching
truculently in front of it, making little slapping gestures at the
phlegmatic creature with his white forepaws and then bounding back, as
if he feared it might turn and rend him.
It was quite evident that Macduff regarded his encounter with that
somnolent toad as one of the High Dramatic Moments of his career.
Defiantly, yet with elaborate caution, he proceeded to harry it from a
safe distance.
“What on earth makes him so silly?” asked Doris as she and Vail paused
to watch the scene--the dog’s furry and fast-moving body taking up the
entire narrow width of the path. “He must have seen a million toads, in
his time.”
“What on earth made you cry, the evening we saw Bernhardt die, in
_Camille_, when we were kids?” he countered, banteringly. “You knew
she wasn’t really dead. You knew she’d get into her street clothes and
scrub the ghastliness off her face and go out somewhere and eat a big
supper. But you wept, very happily. And I had to give you my spare
handkerchief. And it had a hole in it, I remember. I was hideously
mortified. Every time I went to the theater with you, after that, I
carried a stock of brand-new two-dollar handkerchiefs, to impress you.
But you never cried, again, at a play. So that’s all the good they did
me. Of course, the one time you cried, I had to be there with the last
torn handkerchief I ever carried. Remember?”
“I remember I asked you why Mac is so silly about that toad,” she
reproved him, “and you mask your ignorance of natural history and of
dog-psychology by changing the subject.”
“I did not!” he denied, with much fervor. “I was leading up in a
persuasive yet scholarly way to my explanation. You knew Bernhardt
wasn’t dying. Yet you cried. Mac knows that toad is as harmless as
they make them. Yet he is fighting a spectacular duel with it. You
entered into the spirit of a play. He’s entering into the spirit of a
perilous jungle adventure. You cried because an elderly Frenchwoman
draped herself on a sofa and played dead. He is all het up, because
he’s endowing that toad with a blend of the qualities of a bear and
a charging rhinoceros. That’s the collie of it. Collies are forever
inventing and playing thrillingly dramatic games. Just as you and I are
always eager to see thrillingly dramatic plays. It isn’t really silly.
Or if it is, then what are people who pay to get thrills out of plays
they know aren’t true and out of novels that they know are lies? On the
level, I think Mac has a bit the best of us.”
“Why doesn’t he bring the sterling drama to a climax by annihilating
the toad so we can get past?” she demanded, adding, “Not that I’d let
him. That’s why I’m waiting here, while he blocks the path, instead of
going around him.”
“If that’s all you’re waiting for,” he reassured her, “your long wait
has been for nothing. No rescue will be needed. Mac will never touch
the toad.”
“Does Mac know he won’t, though?”
“He does,” returned Vail, with finality. “Every normal outdoors dog, in
early puppyhood, undertakes to bite or pick up a toad. And no dog ever
tried it a second time. A zoölogy sharp told me why. He said toads’
skins are covered with some sort of chemical that would make alum taste
like sugar, by contrast. It’s horrible stuff, and it’s the toad’s only
weapon. No dog ever takes a second chance of torturing his tongue with
it. That’s why Mac keeps his mouth shut, every time he noses at the
ugly thing. The toad is quite as safe from him as Bernhardt was from
dying on the elaborate _Camille_ sofa. Mac knows it. And the toad knows
it. If toads know anything. So nobody’s the worse for the drama.... One
side there, Mac! You’re a pest.”
At the command, the collie gave over his harrowing assault, and
wandered unconcernedly down the path ahead of them, his plumed tail
gently waving, his tulip ears alert for some new adventure.
“Remember old Chubb Beasley?” asked Thaxton. “He lived down on the Lee
Road.”
“I do, indeed,” she made answer. “He used to be pointed out to us by
our Sunday School teacher as the one best local example of the awful
effects of drink. What about him?”
“He owned Macduff’s sire,” said Vail. “A great big gold-and-white
collie--a beauty. Chubb used to go down to Lee, regularly, every
Saturday, to spend his pay at the speak-easy booze joint in the back
of Clow’s grocery. The old chap used to say: ‘If I c’d afford it, I’d
have a batting average of seven night a week. As it is, I gotta do my
’umble best of a Sat’dy night.’ And he did it. He came home late every
Saturday evening, in a condition where the width of the road bothered
him more than the length of it. And always, his loyal old collie was
waiting at the gate to welcome him and guide his tangled footsteps up
the walk to the house.”
“Good old collie!” she applauded. “But--”
“One night, Beasley got to Clow’s just as the saloon was raided by the
Civic Reform Committee. He couldn’t get a drink, and he spent the
evening wandering around looking for one. He had to go back home, for
the first Saturday night in years, dead cold sober. The collie was
waiting for him at the gate, as usual. Chubb strode up to him on steady
unwavering legs and without either singing or crying. He didn’t even
walk with an accent. The faithful dog sprang at the poor old cuss and
bit him. Didn’t know his own master.”
Macduff’s histrionic display, and the story it had evoked, dispersed
the sweet spell that had hung over the man and the maid, throughout
their leisurely walk. Subconsciously, both felt and resented the
glamour’s vanishing, without being able to realize their own emotions
or to guess why the ramble had somehow lost its dreamy charm.
They were at the well-defined stage of heart malady when a trifle
will cloud the elusive sun, and when a shattered mood cannot be
reconstructed at will.
Doris became vaguely aware that the afternoon was hot and that her nose
was probably shiny. Instinctively, she turned toward the house.
Vail, unable to frame an excuse for prolonging the stroll, fell into
step at her side, obsessed by a dull feeling that the walk had somehow
been a failure and that he was making no progress at all in his suit.
As they made their way houseward across the rolling expanse of
side-lawn, they saw a huge and dusty car drawn up under the
porte-cochère. On the steps was a heap of luggage. A chauffeur stood by
the car, stretching his putteed legs, and smoking a furtive cigarette;
the machine’s bulk between him and the porch.
In the tonneau lolled a fat and asthmatic-looking old German police dog.
On the veranda, in two wicker chairs drawn forward from their wonted
places, lolled a man and a woman swathed in yellow dust-coats. The man
was enormous, paunchy, pendulous, sleek. The woman was small and dark
and acerb. They were chatting airily, as Vail and Doris drew near.
In front of them wavered Vogel, the butler, trying to get in a word
edgewise, as they talked. Back of the doorway, in the hall, could be
seen the shadowy forms of the second man and a capped maid, listening
avidly.
At sight of Thaxton, the butler abandoned his vain effort to interrupt
the strangers and came in ponderous haste down the stone steps and
across the lawn to meet his employer.
“Excuse me, sir,” began Vogel, worriedly, “but might I speak to you a
minute?”
Doris, with a word of dismissal to her escort, moved on toward the
house, entering by a French window and giving the queerly occupied
front veranda a wide berth.
“Well?” impatiently asked Vail, vexed at the interruption and by the
presence of the unrecognized couple on the porch. “Well, Vogel? What is
it? And who are those people?”
For reply, the butler proffered him two cards. He presented them, on
their tray, as if afraid they might turn and rend him.
“They are persons, sir,” he said, loftily. “Just persons, sir. Not
people.”
Without listening to the distinction, Thaxton Vail was scanning the
cards. He read, half aloud:
“_Mr. Joshua Q. Mosely._” Then, “_Mrs. Joshua Q. Mosely, 222 River
Front Terrace, ... Tuesdays until Lent._”
“Interesting, if true. I should say, offhand, it ought to count them
about three, decimal five,” gravely commented Vail. “But it’s nothing
in _my_ young life. I don’t know them.”
“No, sir,” agreed Vogel. “You would not be likely to, sir. Nobody
would. They are persons. Most peculiar persons, too. I think they are
a bit jiggled, sir, if I might say so. Unbalanced. Why, sir, they
actually thought this was an hotel!”
“Huh?” interjected Vail, with much the same sound as might have been
expected from him had some one dug an elbow violently into his stomach.
“Huh? What’s that, Vogel? Hotel?”
“Yes, sir. That’s why I took the liberty of asking to speak to you
alone. I fancied you would not wish Miss Lane to hear of such a
ridiculous--”
“What do you mean?”
“Why, sir, they came here, some five minutes ago, and ordered Francis
to conduct them to ‘the desk.’ He could not understand, sir, so he came
to me, and I went out to see what it meant. They told me they wished
rooms here; for themselves and for their chauffeur. And for that stout
gray dog in the car. They were most unnecessarily unpleasant, sir, when
I told them this was no hotel. They insist it is. They say they know
all about it. And they demand to see the proprietor. I was arguing
with them when I saw you coming. Would it be well, sir, if I should
telephone the police station at Aura or--?”
“No,” groaned Vail. “I’ll see them. You needn’t wait.”
Bracing himself, and cursing his loved great-uncle’s eccentricity,
and cursing a thousand times more vehemently the mischief-act of
Osmun Creede, the unhappy householder walked up the veranda steps and
confronted the two newcomers.
On the way he planned to carry off the situation with a high hand and
to get rid of the couple as quickly as might be. Whistling to heel
Macduff, the collie, who showed strong and hostile signs of seeking
closer acquaintance with the fat police dog, he advanced on the couple.
“Good afternoon,” he said, briskly, as he bore down on the big man and
the small woman. “I am Thaxton Vail. What can I do for you?”
“I am Joshua Q. Mosely,” answered the enormous man, making no move
to rise from the easy chair from whose ample sides his fat bulk was
billowing sloppily. “What are your rates?”
“Rates?” echoed Vail, dully.
“Yes,” replied Mosely. “Your rates--American plan--for an outside room
and board for Mrs. M. and myself and a shakedown, somewhere, for
Pee-air.... Pee-air is our chauffeur. How much?”
“Please explain,” said Vail, bluffing weakly.
“Yep,” nodded Joshua Q. Mosely. “He said you’d try to stall. Said you
were queer that way. But he said if I stuck to it, I’d get in. Said he
could prove you weren’t full up. So I’m sticking to it. How much for--?”
“Who are you talking about?” queried Vail. “Who’s ‘he’? And--”
“Here’s his card,” responded Joshua Q. Mosely, groping in an inner
pocket. “Met him on the steps of the Red Lion--at Stockbridge, you
know--this morning. They’d told us they hadn’t a room left there. Same
thing at Haddon Hall. Same thing at Pittsfield. Same thing at Lenox.
Same at Lee. Full everywhere. Gee, but you Berkshire hotel men must be
making a big turnover, this season! Yep, here’s his card. Thought I’d
lost it.”
He fished out a slightly crumpled oblong of stiff paper and handed
it to Vail. Thaxton read: “_Mr. Osmun Creede, ‘Canobie,’ Aura,
Massachusetts._”
“We were coming out of the Red Lion,” resumed Joshua Q. Mosely.
“Figured we’d have to drive all the way to Greenfield or maybe to
Springfield, before we could get rooms. We didn’t want to do that. We
wanted another day in this region and then make the thirty-mile run to
Williamstown and back to North Adams and over the Mohawk Trail to--”
“Quite so,” cut in Vail. “What has all this to do with--?”
“I was coming to that. We were standing there on the steps, jawing
about it, the wife and me, when up comes this Mr. Creede. He’d been
sitting on the porch there and he’d overheard us. He hands me his card
and he says: ‘You can get into Vailholme if you’re a mind to,’ he says.
‘Most excloosive hotel in the Berkshires. Not like any other place in
America. Best food. Best rooms. They never advertise. So they aren’t
full up,’ he says. ‘They try to keep folks away. But give Mr. Vail this
card and tell him I’ll know who to go to with information if he refuses
to take in people who can’t get accommodations elsewhere; and he’ll
take you in.’ I thought maybe he was jollying me.”
“I--”
“He looked kind of funny while he talked to me,” prattled Mosely,
unheeding. “So I asked the day clerk at the Red Lion about it. The
clerk said he knew you run a hotel, because he’d read about it in
the paper. And he guessed you weren’t full up. So here I came. And
your--your head waiter, I s’pose he is, he told me you didn’t have but
four folks stopping here with you just now. So that means you’ve got
rooms left. What rates for--”
A despairing grunt from Vail checked at last the flow of monologue.
Thaxton was aware of a deep yearning to hunt up Osmun Creede and murder
him. Well did he understand the inner meaning of Creede’s hint as to
the lodging of information in case Vail should refuse to obey the terms
of the will whereby he held tenure of Vailholme. And he knew Osmun was
quite capable of keeping his word.
Vailholme was dear to Thaxton. He was not minded to lose it through
any legal loophole. He was profoundly ignorant of the law. But he
remembered signing an agreement to fulfill all the conditions of his
great-uncle’s will before assuming ownership of the property.
“I am obliged,” he said, haltingly, “to take in any travelers who can
pay my prices. Probably that is what Mr. Creede meant. But I have no
adequate provision--or provisions--for guests. I don’t think you’d care
for it, here; even for a single day. Why not go on to North Adams, to
the--”
“No, thanks, friend,” disclaimed Joshua Q. Mosely, with a leer of
infinite cunning. “This isn’t the first time the wife and I have been
steered away from excloosive joints. We know the signs. And we want to
stop here. So here we stop. For the night, anyhow. We know our rights.
And we know the law. Now, once more, what’s your rates for us? Put a
price on the--”
“Your chauffeur will have to bunk in at one of the rooms over the
garage,” said Vail, morbidly aware that the butler and a maid and the
second man were still listening from the hallway. “And I can’t give you
and Mrs. Mosely a room with a bath. I’ll have to give you one without.
And you’ll have to eat at the only table I have--the table where I and
my four personal guests will dine.”
“That’s all right,” pleasantly agreed the tourist. “We’re democratic,
Mrs. M. and me. We’ll put up with the best we can get. How much?”
“For all three of you,” said Thaxton, “the lump price will be--let’s
see--the lump price will be two hundred dollars a day.”
Joshua Q. Mosely gobbled. His lean little wife arose and faced him.
“It’s just like all these other excloosive places, Josh!” she shrilled.
“He’s trying to lose us. Don’t you let him! We’ll stay. It’ll be worth
two hundred dollars just to spite the stuck-up chap. We’ll stay, young
man. Get that? We’ll _stay_. If you knew anything about Golden City,
you’d know two hundred dollars is no more to my husband than a plugged
nickel would be worth to one of you Massachusetts snobs. We’re ‘doing’
the Berkshires. And we’re prepared to be done while we’re doing it. We
can afford to. Have us shown up to that room.”
Lugubriously Vail stepped to the hall door.
“Vogel,” he said, as a vanishing swarm of servants greeted his advent,
“show these people up to the violet room. Have Francis help their
chauffeur up with the luggage. Then have Gavroche take the chauffeur to
one of the garage rooms.”
He spoke with much authority; and forcibly withal. But he dared not
meet the fishy eye of his butler. And he retreated to the veranda
again, as soon as he had delivered the order.
“It’s all up,” he announced to Willis Chase, three minutes later, as
this first of his unwelcome guests alighted from a Stockbridge taxi,
bearing a bagful of the forgotten sections of his apparel. “Here’s
where I decamp. If I can’t get some inn to put me up for the night,
I’ll take a train for New York.”
“And leave us to our fate?” queried Chase, disgustedly.
“Precisely that. And I hope it’ll be a miserable fate. What do you
suppose has happened?”
Briefly, bitterly, he told of the arrival of the Moselys. Willis Chase
smiled in pure rapture. Then his face fell as he asked concernedly:
“And you say you’re getting out and deserting us?”
“Why not? It’ll be horrible. Fancy those two unspeakable vulgarians
sitting down to dinner with one! Fancy having to meet Vogel’s righteous
wrath! Fancy--”
“Fancy walking out on us!” retorted Chase. “Fancy leaving a girl like
Doris Lane to the mercies of the Moselys’ society at dinner! Fancy what
she’ll think of you for deserting her and her aunt, like a quitter,
when your place is at the head of your own table! Fancy leaving a
disorganized household that’ll probably go on strike! We’ve paid our
board. Are you going to welsh on us? Poor old Clive Creede is sick and
all shot to pieces. He came here to you for refuge. Going to leave him
to--?”
“No,” groaned Thaxton. “I suppose not. You’re right. I can’t. I’ve got
to stay and see it out. If I valued Vailholme any less than I value my
right arm, though, I’d let Uncle Oz’s fool conditions go to blazes.
Say! Let’s go for a walk. It’s hot as Tophet and I’m tired. But it’ll
be better than meeting Vogel till I have to. Let me put that off as
long as I can. Something tells me he is going to be nasty. And that
means he’ll probably organize a strike. Come along, Macduff!” he bade
the collie. “Stop nosing at that obese German dog in the car and come
here!”
“Why can’t real-life butlers be like the dear old stage butlers?”
sighed Chase, sympathetically, as he and Vail slunk, with guilty haste,
down the veranda steps and across the lawn. “Now if only Vogel were on
the stage, he’d come to you, with an antique ruffled shirt and with
his knees wabbling, and he’d say: ‘Master, I’ve saved up a little out
of my wages, this past ninety years that I’ve served your house. I
know you’re in trouble. Here’s my savings, Master! Maybe they’ll help.
And I’ll keep on working my poor hands to the bone for you, without
any wages, God bless your bonny face!’ That’s what he’d say. And he’d
snivel a bit as he said it. So would the audience.”
“Faster!” urged Vail, with a covert look over his shoulder. “He’s
standing on the steps, looking after us. Hit the pace!”