DISCUSSION OF WAYS AND MEANS
Roy bounded up the stairway two steps at a time. He was conscious that
both his sisters had walked to the foot of it and were looking after
him fearfully. Then he heard Rex’s voice. Evidently his brother was not
hurt.
“Oh, it didn’t matter in the least,” Rex was saying. “It was an old
thing, we shouldn’t have taken it with us to the new house.”
He and Mr. Keeler were bending over a heap of fragments on the floor.
Roy stepped into the room and saw that they had once been the clock
that stood on a bracket near the foot of the bed.
“I was reaching up to get that wasp’s nest we stuck behind it,” Rex
explained. “My coat sleeve caught on the clock and pulled the whole
thing over.”
Roy gave a sigh of relief and then almost smiled as he recalled what
he and his sisters had thought for a minute had really happened. He
bent down and helped the others to pick up the pieces.
“I think this should be a warning to me to go to bed at once,” said Mr.
Keeler with a laugh. “Good-night, boys, I shall be on hand for eight
o’clock breakfast.”
He went out into the hall and up the stairs to the third floor, where
Roy had already lighted the lamp for him in Syd’s room.
“An awfully nice fellow, isn’t he, Roy?” remarked Rex, rolling the
fragments of the clock up in an old newspaper.
Roy did not make any reply. He had sat down on a chair by the bureau,
on which he was resting his elbow. His eyes were fixed thoughtfully on
the book rack opposite in which stood the volume of which Mr. Keeler
was the author.
“Rex,” he said suddenly, “come on downstairs.”
“I’ve got to go down any way with this rubbish. But what’s come over
you, Roy? You look as sober as a judge in a criminal case.”
“I’ll show you in the library,” was all Roy’s reply, then recollecting
that the girls would be anxious to hear his report, he hurried out and
down the stairs.
Eva and Jess were still standing by the newel post.
“Well?” they asked in a breath.
“It was only the old clock Rex knocked down. Mr. Keeler has gone up to
bed.”
“Did you tell Rex?”
“No, not yet. Here he comes now.”
Eva went out and showed her brother where to deposit the contents of
the newspaper. Then she brought him back into the library and pointed
out the portrait of Martin Blakesley.
Rex understood at once what it meant, for he had been looking at the
book.
“Whew!” he brought out this low whistle and then glanced from one to
the other of his companions.
“You think it is the same man then?” said Roy.
“It looks exactly like him, and I suppose it would be as easy for him
to take the name Keeler as any other alias.”
“But there is a Charles Keeler,” went on Roy, “I didn’t know these men
would dare masquerade around the country as such famous people. They
would be sure to be found out.”
“What are you going to do about it?” asked Rex.
It was characteristic of him that, though he had himself invited Keeler
to the house, he was now putting all the responsibility on his brother.
“Let’s sit down and talk it over calmly,” replied Roy. “I’ve been
thinking the thing over and I can’t see what harm it can do to let Mr.
Keeler stay.”
“What, a confidence man!” exclaimed Rex and Jess in a breath.
“He may have reformed,” continued Roy. “He didn’t plan deliberately to
come to this house, nothing he has said or done since he has been here
has made us suspect him of being anything else than what he claimed to
be.”
“But if he has reformed what would he be going around pretending to be
what he wasn’t for?” interrupted Jess, “You don’t suppose that Martin
Blakesley and Charles Keeler, the author, are one and the same person,
do you?”
Roy did not answer for a minute. He had plainly not thought of this
side of the matter.
“Ugh! it makes me creep,” went on Jess, “to feel that a man who has
been in state’s prison twice is in this very house and going to stay
here all night. I’m going to stay up until morning. I think I’ll sit
down here and read the lives of these criminals. It will be an
appropriate occupation.”
“You girls needn’t stay up at all,” said Rex. “Roy and I will stand
guard.”
“Oh, I couldn’t sleep if I went to bed,” declared Jess. “I don’t know
as I can ever sleep again so long as we are in this house. Think how he
must know all the ins and outs of it by this time!”
“How silly you talk, Jess,” interposed Eva. “One would think to hear
you that Mr. Keeler was a common burglar. As Roy says, he didn’t plan
to come here, and like as not he’ll go away in the morning without
having disturbed us in the least.”
“You’re standing up for him, are you, Eva? Well, I thought his good
looks were making an impression on you.”
“Jessie, you have no right to talk in that way. I’m not standing up for
him at all. I’m only trying to get you to look at the facts of the case
in a sensible way.”
“But there’s nothing sensible in inviting a jail bird to the house, and
having him stay all night. It isn’t the sort of thing you can prepare
yourself to bear up under in dignified fashion.”
“Shall I go up to town and get the constable to come down and arrest
him?” asked Rex.
“You can’t do that!” returned Roy promptly. “He hasn’t committed any
crime.”
“But if we wait till he does commit one, it will be like locking the
stable door after the horse has been stolen.”
“You might go over to the Burtons’, Roy, and get Will to come and stay
with us,” Eva suggested.
“And rouse them up at this hour of the night? It’s getting on to be
eleven o’clock. And it would be a pretty reason to give, wouldn’t it:
‘If you please, Mr. Burton, we invited a convict to spend the night
with us, and now we’re afraid.’”
Eva couldn’t resist smiling at Roy’s way of putting it.
Rex yawned heavily.
“I’m awfully sleepy,” he said.
“Yes; and you and Rex were the ones who were to stand guard,” Jess
reminded him promptly.
“Well, I’m beginning to agree with Eva now,” Rex returned. “I haven’t
an idea that man intends to harm any of us. Perhaps there is some
mistake after all and he isn’t Martin Blakesley, only somebody that
looks like him.”
“I don’t go to bed on any such uncertainty as that,” declared Jess.
“What would we do if we stayed up and we heard him coming down stairs
to burglarize the house?” Rex wanted to know.
“If you and Roy weren’t shaking in your boots too much to take aim you
might bring him to a halt by pointing Syd’s pistol at his head.”
“I suppose we could ask him to wait first till we ran up to Syd’s
bureau drawer and got it,” retorted Rex with fine irony.
“Mercy sakes! There he is right in the room with the only weapon we’ve
got in the house!” and Jess looked really terrified now. “Why didn’t
one of you think to take it out?”
“Why didn’t you think to tell us who Mr. Keeler was before we asked him
to stay all night?” Eva retorted. “You said you knew all the time you
had seen him somewhere before.”
“The boys had no business to pick up a stranger and bring him to the
house in this way,” Jess replied. “What do you suppose mother will say
when we tell her?”
“You needn’t tell her,” said Rex.
“Needn’t tell her!” exclaimed Jess. “When she finds half the silver
gone and Syd’s pistol missing I suppose we can say that the cat carried
them off.”
“Well, I didn’t pick the fellow up,” affirmed Rex. “It was Roy. He
called to me to come and meet him.”
“And you invited him to the house,” Roy couldn’t resist adding.
“Come,” interposed Eva, “stop quarreling over what is past and decide
what we must do in the present. For my part I can’t think we are in any
personal danger. If the man up stairs is the same one described in the
book he has evidently reformed.”
“But remember what it says about his smooth ways,” interjected Jess.
“That is just where he has made his reputation, by his easy way of
crawling into people’s confidence.”
“I tell you what to do,” said Roy. “You and Rex, Eva, go up to bed.
Jess and I will stay up all night and stand watch.”
“But what good will that do you if you haven’t any weapons?” Rex wanted
to know.
“We can run, any way,” answered Jess. “That will be better than lying
still to be murdered in our beds.”
After some further discussion the matter was settled in this way.