MR. BANKS IS STUNG
Mr. Banks went over to the Harley place early on the morning after
Nell's visit, with a note from Reginald Rayton. The contents of the note
seemed to delight and comfort the girl. Banks saw violets on the
sitting-room table. He stared at them in astonishment. Mrs. Jim Harley
caught the look and laughed.
"They belong to Nell," she said. "Captain Wigmore brought them last
night. I am sure he sent all the way to Boston for them."
"Wigmore, too," remarked Banks reflectively. "Well, we are all in the
same boat."
He remained for half an hour, and then went home with a fat missive for
Reginald, from Nell, in his pocket. The letter threw the Englishman into
a foolish glow. For a whole hour after reading it he lay without a word
and grinned.
Banks went for a walk in the afternoon, and met Captain Wigmore. The
captain wore a new, fur-lined overcoat. His whiskers were brushed to the
last hair, and his manner was as dazzlingly polished as his false teeth.
He walked jauntily. The two exchanged a few commonplaces very agreeably.
Then Banks, prompted by a sudden inspiration, went to the house of one
Silas Long and engaged the eldest son of the family, Billy Long, aged
sixteen, to live at Rayton's for a month and attend to the wood and the
stock. He made the arrangements in Rayton's name. He told the lad to put
in an appearance before sunset, and then went home. He explained this
move to Reginald by saying frankly that he wanted to be absolutely free
to solve the mysteries upon which he was engaged. The Englishman had no
objections.
Mr. Banks left the house again right after the evening meal. It was a
clear, starlit night. He walked slowly toward Captain Wigmore's
dwelling, and within a few yards of the gate came face to face with the
captain.
"Hello!" exclaimed Wigmore. "Is that you, Banks? Are you coming to see
me?"
"No, I was just strolling 'round for a bit of fresh air," replied
Banks.
"Well, I am glad of that. I have an engagement for the evening."
"An engagement--in Samson's Mill Settlement! You seem to lead a gay
life, captain."
Wigmore chuckled. The New Yorker turned, and the two walked side by side
along the snowy road for a short distance. Then Banks said: "I'll leave
you now, captain, and cut home through the woods. Hope you'll have a
pleasant evening."
"I look forward to a very entertaining one," replied the old man,
chuckling.
Banks left the road, climbed a fence, and strode along through dry snow
that reached halfway to his knees. He was in a pasture dotted with
clumps of young spruce.
"The conceited old idiot!" he muttered. "I see his game. I'll fix him!"
He halted, behind a thicket, and stood motionless for a few minutes,
listening intently. Then he made a wide half circle to the right, and
soon came out again upon the beaten road but now about a quarter of a
mile beyond the captain's house. His feet were cold and he stamped
vigorously on the road to warm them. The night was windless, but bitter.
Mr. Banks advanced stealthily toward the dark house. Not a glimmer of
light showed in any window. He opened the front gate cautiously, closed
it cautiously behind him, and went furtively up the narrow path between
the snow-banked lawns. On the step of the little front porch he paused
and listened. Then he grasped the knob of the outer door and turned it.
The door opened noiselessly.
He entered the narrow porch and stood with his ear against the inner
door. He could not hear anything. He fumbled for the knob, found it, and
learned that the inner door was locked. He hunted under the mat and in
every corner of the porch for the key, having heard somewhere that keys
were sometimes hidden away in just such foolish places. He did not find
it. Again he listened at the door, this time with his ear against the
keyhole. The house was silent as a tomb.
He left the porch, closed the outer door, and made his way to the left
along the front of the house and around the corner to the woodshed.
Knowing that he could not possibly avoid leaving a trail in the snow, he
shuffled his feet so as to make it an unreadable one. He did this so
artfully that not one clear impression of his big New York hunting boots
was left in his path. He opened the door of the shed without a check and
felt his way between piles of stove wood to the door of the kitchen.
"I don't feel respectable," he murmured. "But I'll feel a darned sight
worse if any one finds me sneaking 'round like this. I must get in,
though, and have a look 'round."
The kitchen door was fastened tight. Banks twisted the knob this way and
that, all in vain. In spite of his coonskin coat and fur cap he was
beginning to feel extremely chilly. He promised himself a husky pull at
a bottle of some kind or other should he ever manage to break into the
house. He left the shed and tried a back window. He could not get a hold
on the sash, however. He drew a heavy clasp knife from his pocket and
forced the strong blade between the sill and the bottom of the sash. In
this way he pried the sash up almost half an inch. The window had not
been fastened. He returned to the shed, and after a few minutes of
fumbling about in the darkness he found an axe. By using the thick blade
of the axe in place of the knife he soon had the window on the move. He
propped up the sash, put the axe back in its place, and returned to the
window. With a shove of his right hand he forced it up to the top. This
done, he paused for a moment and stood with every sense and nerve on
the alert. He heard nothing, saw nothing, felt nothing.
"I wonder if my little idea is the right one," he murmured. "I wonder
what I shall find."
He put his gloved hands on the sill, hoisted himself, tipped forward,
and wriggled through the window into the dark and silent room. His hands
touched the floor first. He pulled his legs across the ledge and was
about to stand straight when his knife slipped from the pocket of his
coat and clattered on the floor. Still crouched low, he groped forward,
found the knife--and then!
It seemed to Harvey P. Banks that he had been asleep a long, long time
on a very uncomfortable bed in a very stuffy room. The greatest trouble
with the bed must be in the arrangement of the pillows, he reflected,
for his neck was terribly stiff and sore. He did not open his eyes right
away. There was a feeling in his head and eyes--yes, and in his
mouth--suggestive of other awakenings, in the years of his gay youth. So
he lay with his eyes closed, remembering that a too sudden opening of
the lids under certain once familiar conditions was decidedly
unpleasant. He tried to get his wits into line. Where was he? Where had
he been last night? What had he been drinking? His poor head only
throbbed in answer. So, at last, very cautiously, he raised his heavy
lids. He gazed upon darkness--against utter darkness on every side. No.
Directly above his head was a faint sheen of gray. That was a window, no
doubt; but what was a window doing above his head? That beat him, and he
closed his eyes again and tried hard to remember things. The far-away
past came clearly to him; but that did not help him. He knew that the
things he remembered were of months--even of years--ago.
He was surprised to find that he wore heavy, fur-lined gloves, a fur cap
pulled low over his ears and forehead, and a coonskin coat. He put out
his right hand and touched a wall of ice-cold dusty floor. He judged
that the floor was not more than six inches below the level of his body.
He put out his left hand and touched a wall of ice-cold plaster. With a
grunt of dawning dismay he sat up, and though his neck ached, and his
head spun and throbbed with the effort, he leaned forward and touched
his feet with his gloved hands. He felt his heavy shooting boots and a
flake or two of pressed snow on their soles--and at that his brain awoke
and the memory of his informal entrance into Captain Wigmore's house
flashed clear. He uttered a low cry of wonder and consternation.
"What happened?" he whispered. "Did I fall and stun myself as I climbed
over the window sill?"
His head behaved so badly at this point that he lay prone again on his
hard couch. But now his brain was working clearly, though painfully.
Every incident of his attempt to enter the house, with a view to reading
the mystery which he was sure it contained, was now as plain as a
picture before his inner vision. He reviewed the whole adventure
minutely, from the meeting with Wigmore to the opening of the window and
the dropping of the knife upon the floor of the pitch-black room. But
what had happened after that? Something sudden--and hard! Yes, there
could be no doubt of the suddenness and hardness of the next occurrence.
But what was it? Had he toppled forward and struck his head against a
piece of furniture? Or had something possessed of individual initiative
hit him over the head? He sat up again, removed his gloves and cap, and
felt all over his head with chilly, inquiring fingers. He could not find
any lump or cut; but the back and top of the head were agonizingly
tender to the touch.
"A sandbag--whatever that is," he muttered. "I have heard that they
effect one somewhat in this way, if properly applied."
He laughed shortly and painfully. His head seemed to have recovered
something of its normal position and balance. It felt more solid and
steady, and the ache in it was duller. He fumbled through the pockets of
his fur coat and found a pipe, tobacco pouch, and box of matches. His
clasp knife was not there. Evidently he had not succeeded in picking it
up, that time.
"Sorry for that," he muttered. "I could carve my way out of any place
with that knife."
He opened the fur coat, and found the contents of his inner pockets
intact--his watch, cigar case, three rifle cartridges, the stub of a
pencil, a few pocket-worn letters, and a railway timetable. He knew each
article by the feel of it. He opened the match box, and was glad to
discover that it was full. Then he took out his watch and lit a match.
The hands of the watch marked the time as half-past two--and the fact
that the watch had not run down proved to him that the hour was of the
early morning. He had lain unconscious more than five hours. He wound
the watch and returned it to his pocket. Then he struck another match,
held it high, and gazed inquiringly around him. The match was of wax,
and held its flame for nearly half a minute. He saw a small room, white
and bare of walls, bare of floor, with a sloping ceiling, broken by the
square of a little skylight. The only article of furniture in the place
was a narrow couch upon which he sat. A door of unpainted spruce divided
the wall at that end of the room where the ceiling reached its greatest
height.
Harvey P. Banks dropped the butt of the match to the floor and rubbed
the spark out of it with his foot. He knew that he was in some one's
attic; and he felt almost equally sure that it was the attic of Captain
Wigmore's house. But who had hit him over the head and then carried him
up and deposited him in this place? He had his suspicions, of course.
Perhaps the captain had sandbagged him. The old man might easily have
returned to the house immediately after parting with him on the road. Or
Timothy Fletcher? Why not Timothy Fletcher? Wigmore had been lying when
he said that Fletcher had run away to New York. Banks had felt sure of
that at the time the statement was made--and now he felt doubly sure of
it. Very likely they had both taken a hand in the game. Neither one of
them by himself could have carried Harvey P. Banks up to the garret.
Mr. Banks felt cold and sleepy and sore. The soreness was of spirit as
well as of body and head. He had certainly made a mess of things. And he
felt anxious--decidedly anxious. Who was to make the next move? And what
was the next move to be? He would have paid high to find himself snug
and safe in his own bed in Reginald Rayton's house. What was Reginald
thinking? But he had proved one thing! He had proved, beyond a doubt,
that the inmates of Captain Wigmore's house were mysterious and
undesirable persons.
He lit a cigar, lay back on his hard couch, and smoked reflectively. His
head was not yet steady enough to allow of action. After an inch or two
of the cigar had turned to ash, he sat up and got noiselessly to his
feet. He had not heard a sound since recovering consciousness. Perhaps
the house was empty? He lit a match and tiptoed to the door. He turned
the knob cautiously. The door was locked.
"I guess it's not my turn yet," he murmured, and went back to the couch.
He drew his cap down about his ears, fastened his fur coat up to the
chin, and lay flat on his broad back. But before the cigar was finished
he was on his feet again. He lifted the couch and placed it with his
head against the door. Then he extinguished the butt of the cigar, lay
down, and went to sleep.
Mr. Banks awoke suddenly. He was stiff and cold, but every sense was on
the alert. His head felt much better than it had before his sleep. The
room was full of gray light that filtered down from the snow-veiled
window in the roof. He looked at his watch. It was seven o'clock. He
listened intently, but could not hear a sound.
"I can see well enough now to take a hand in the game," he said. "So I
guess it is my turn to play."
He lifted the cot away from the door and set it down at one side without
a sound. Then he raised his right leg, drew his knee well back,
presented the heel of his big boot at the lock of the door, and drove it
forward with all the strength of his great hip and thigh. The lock
burst, and fell in fragments; and the door, having been constructed so
as to open inward, split, and tore itself from its hinges and flapped
wide. Thick muscles had bested thin iron in a single effort.
"There! Confound you!" exclaimed Mr. Banks, staggering a little to
recover the balance of his big body. He saw, beyond the gaping and
twisted door, by the feeble light from his own room, a dark, bare hall
and the unpainted rails around the top of a narrow staircase. He
advanced one foot across the threshold, stooped forward, and listened
intently. His big body, in its big coat of coonskins, filled the width
of the doorway and shut out much of the feeble illumination that
descended from the skylight behind and above him. So he stood for a
minute or two before he heard a sound save that of his own breathing.
And then! What is that? A single, furtive tap, as of something hard on a
thin edge of wood, close in front of him. He turned sideways on the
threshold so as to let the light from behind him reach the floor in
front.
What was that, thin and black, slanting up at him between the rounds of
the railing? It had a sinister look. It did not move. Behind it was the
black gulf of the stairway. Mr. Banks hesitated for a moment, then began
to edge forward.
"Stop where you are!" commanded a voice--the voice of old Captain
Wigmore. "This thing is the barrel of a rifle. I am behind the rifle. If
I press on the trigger, my dear Banks, I am sure to hit you somewhere,
you are so unnecessarily large. In the belly, most likely. That's right!
Stand still."
"You, Wigmore!" exclaimed the New Yorker. "What is the meaning of this?
What are you talking about? You must be stark mad!"
The other laughed. It was a most discomforting sound. The laugh of a
land crab--if the beast _could_ laugh--would doubtless resemble Captain
Wigmore's expression of mirth.
"You seem to be indignant, my dear fellow," he said, with exasperating
calm. "But what do you expect? I caught you breaking into my house when
you were under the impression that I was not at home. Do you think I
should have put you in my own bed, with a hot-water bottle at your feet,
and carried your breakfast up to you this morning? No, no, my dear
Banks! It is my duty to this country, and to society in general, to keep
a firm hand on you until the officers of the law relieve me of the
charge."
"You old hypocrite!" cried Banks. "You scheming, lying, old devil! Bring
the officers of the law! The sooner they get here the better I'll be
pleased. I have something to say to them."
Wigmore chuckled. "I haven't sent for them yet," he said. "I rather
enjoy the prospect of looking after you myself for a little while. I can
stand it--if you can."
Mr. Banks watched the barrel of the rifle out of the corner of his eye;
but the menacing thing did not waver.
"Where is Timothy Fletcher?" he asked.
"So that is your bright suspicion, is it?" returned Wigmore cheerfully.
"He went to New York, I told you. Where do you think he is?"
"In this house, you old ape!" cried Banks.
Wigmore hooted.