GHOSTS IN THE ACADEMY BELFRY
There was one man who had never been able to get Bar Vernon fairly out
of his head since the first day he saw him, and that man was old Judge
Danvers.
Not but that the busy lawyer had plenty of other things to occupy him,
but there was something in Bar and his mysterious “old time” which was
well calculated to excite the curiosity of one whose whole life had
been spent in solving “riddles” of one kind or another.
“That black valise,” he said to himself. “I admire Bar’s honesty about
it, and of course he must keep his word, but I’m under no such bond. I
think I must manage to get hold of that Major Montague. He’ll be a hard
one to find, if he chooses to keep out of the way. Sorry Dr. Manning
didn’t temporize with him a little. I doubt if he will come near my
office again. There’s something about the premises that doesn’t suit
his fancy.”
Major Montague had reasons of his own for not fancying anything which
reminded him of the law, but just now, as we have seen, he would have
been meeting the wishes of Judge Danvers a good deal more than halfway
if it had not been for insurmountable difficulties.
The old lawyer was in quite a “brown study” over what might or might
not be the best way to find the Major, when his office-boy brought him
in a card, and with it a note of introduction.
“Ashbel Norton!” said the Judge, as he glanced at the card and
then opened the note. “Ah, an Englishman. Brown Brothers, bankers.
Introduction enough for any man. Show the gentleman in.”
A very English-looking person, indeed, with light hair and whiskers,
and it seemed to the judge that he very much resembled somebody he
knew, though he could not say whom.
The usual formalities of such a call were rapidly completed, for, as
the banker’s introduction had stated, the stranger required the old
lawyer’s professional advice and services.
“Very curious case, indeed,” he said, as he laid a bundle of papers on
the table. “Involves family secrets--very unpleasant things, you know.
Not the affair I’d intrust to any ordinary man, I assure you. There’s
really a good deal at stake, my dear sir.”
The Judge dryly professed his readiness to pay attention, although he
could not, somehow, prevent his thoughts even then from wandering to
Bar Vernon and Major Montague.
Whether or not the stranger was favorably impressed with the manner of
his “counsel,” he promptly began to open his budget, accompanying the
action with such verbal explanations as seemed to be required.
It was a strange story, though Judge Danvers had heard others somewhat
resembling it, and before long he found himself taking a deeper and
deeper interest, and Mr. Norton expressed himself surprised, in their
subsequent conversation, at finding how thoroughly the lawyer had made
himself acquainted with the outlines of his case.
“The first thing to be done,” remarked the Judge, “is to set the
detectives on the track of all these items of information. They are
very slender as yet. Mere hints. That will take time.”
“Of course,” replied Mr. Norton, “I expect that. Am ready to spend as
much time, and money, too, as may be necessary. I am quite at your
service.”
“Then take a trip of a week to Niagara, or any other place where you
can enjoy yourself, and by the time you return I will be ready to
report what I have discovered.”
“Can I not aid you in your proposed search?”
“After that,” replied the Judge. “Is not this your first visit to
America?”
“It is, indeed,” said Mr. Norton.
“Then try to make the most of it,” said Judge Danvers. “There’s no
telling where you may have to travel before we get through.”
Mr. Ashbel Norton was apparently a gentleman accustomed to having his
own way, but he was old enough to know there was little to be gained
in a dispute with a lawyer, and so, after answering a legion of what
seemed to him unimportant questions, he bowed himself out, promising to
return at the end of the week.
“Very curious affair,” growled Judge Danvers, after his new client had
departed. “Now I’ve two family mysteries on my hands--one from England,
and one from I don’t know where. Well, I’ll set the wires a-working on
this one, but, for all that, I won’t neglect the other. I must find
that rascal, Montague, and then I must write to Barnaby. No, not that,
I must go to see him; but I’d like to find the Major first.”
A busy head was that of the old lawyer that afternoon and evening, what
with one case and another; but not one whit more active than had been
the brains of the two youngsters, away up there in Ogleport.
At the supper table Brayton remarked to Mrs. Wood:
“The sun went down in a great pile of clouds. Looks very much as if a
storm were brewing.”
“’Bout time for one,” replied the landlady. “I kind o’ feel it in my
bones. Not that I’m at all superstitious, only maybe it’s rheumatism.”
“Superstitious?” remarked Val, maliciously. “Mr. Brayton, do you
believe in ghosts?”
Brayton had heard all that there was to hear about the village legends,
and he was just “boy” enough to answer:
“Can’t say, Val; but I never saw one.”
“Or heard one?” asked Bar.
“No, nor heard one,” said Brayton; “but I believe I should like to.”
“Ghosts!” exclaimed Mrs. Wood. “I s’pose it was ghosts that tied poor
Dr. Dryer’s dun heifer to the bell rope.”
“Exactly,” said Brayton. “That’s the kind I imagine there are more of
than any other. All very good ghosts till they are found out.”
“They haven’t found out that one,” said Val.
“Not yet they haven’t,” snapped Mrs. Wood; “but I believe his right
name is Zebedee Fuller.”
“Nothing very ghostly about Zeb,” said Bar.
“Nor the heifer,” added Val.
Just then there came a pretty good gust of wind through the open window
of the dining-room, and the two young conspirators could scarcely avoid
a sly glance into each other’s eyes.
It was a very quick flash of a glance, but George Brayton caught it.
He could not guess at its meaning just then, but he stored it away in
his memory for future reference, for it meant, as plainly as anything
could, “Fun a-coming. Wait and see.”
So he determined to do that very thing, and went on with his supper.
The night promised to be a dark and stormy one by the time the boys had
a chance to look out on it. All the more so because the weather seemed
disposed to take its own time in getting ready.
The two friends retired to their own room, and Bar astonished Val by
actually going to work on his books.
“You’re a queer fellow,” said Val. “Why, I’m all ears.”
“So am I,” said Bar, “but I mean to improve my time, for all that. This
wind’ll do our work for us without any help of ours. Seems as if it was
getting more and more westerly all the while.”
Nevertheless, it required all the resolution Bar could muster to do
anything worth while with his Greek, and Val vainly endeavored to find
anything interesting in one of Kingsley’s best novels.
So long a time went by, in fact, that even Bar began to have half a
fear that his machinery had got “stuck” in some way.
So it had, for there had been more than a little rust on those old
wheels, and, in spite of the oil, the “wing” had to work back and forth
a good while before it had rubbed them into anything like easy running
order.
Then the wind, too, at first, had come only in fitful and insufficient
gusts, and not from the right direction, and so the good people of
Ogleport, early sleepers and early risers, had a fine opportunity to
stow themselves away in bed before the “ghosts” got fairly loose in the
belfry.
Not all of them were sufficiently easy in their minds to go to sleep
at once, however, and Mrs. Dryer had just remarked to the Doctor, as a
sort of clincher to a good many other things she had been saying:
“Fond of fast horses, too, Dr. Dryer; that’s the kind of man you’ve
got. The Academy’s all going to destruction. Riding ’round the country
in buggies. Effie, too, what do you say to that? Boys fighting on the
green and calling it boxing lessons. Threatening to drown you in the
mill-pond. Tying your cow’s horns to the bell-rope. Buying boats on the
lake----”
“Dorothy Jane,” began the principal, but he was suddenly interrupted
by a deep, mournful, booming sound from the Academy belfry, and an
exclamation from his wife.
“Mercy on us, Doctor, what’s that?”
“Dorothy Jane,” replied the Doctor, as he slowly arose in bed, “can it
be within the compass of mundane possibilities that that outrageous
cow----”
“The cow? Poor thing!” returned his “third,” disdainfully. “Ain’t you
ashamed, Dr. Dryer! Do you suppose she’d be out on such a night as
this? Listen to the rain on the window. There it is again!”
“Dorothy Jane!” exclaimed the Doctor, as he sprang to his feet and
began to dress himself, “this proceeding should arouse all Ogleport!”
“That bell!” mourned Mrs. Dryer.
“Yes, indeed!” replied the Doctor. “It’s a terrible affliction.”
George Brayton also heard the first sound made by the bell, and it
somehow put him in mind of his two young friends, although he well
knew they were at that very moment in their room.
He was sure of it, if from nothing else, by the unnecessary amount of
racket Bar Vernon was making in getting on his boots.
Fiercer and higher rose the strength of that reckless wind from the
west, and louder and more prolonged, though terribly irregular were the
clamorous peals from the Academy belfry, till not a sleeper remained in
all Ogleport, except the stone-deaf grandmother of Zeb Fuller’s friend,
William Jones.
The worst puzzled pair of ears in all the village, however, were those
of Zebedee himself.
Not only on account of the bell, but because Deacon Fuller had deemed
that tolling a direct summons to the bedroom of his son, and it had
required all his fatherly faith in Zeb’s truthfulness to convince him
that the mischief, whatever it might be, would never be traced across
his own threshold.
That was very bad--so bad that Zeb enjoyed the rare luxury of looking
upon himself in the character of injured innocence, but the very worst
of it was that here was something going on in his own Ogleport of
which he knew no more than did “old Sol” himself.
“This must be looked to, father!” he solemnly declared. “It can hardly
be the dun heifer can so soon again have forgotten herself. There’s
been nothing going on that I know of, that the old bell need wake
up and toll about at this time o’ night. We’d better go and make an
investigation.”
There were plenty more of the same way of thinking, and now they were
gathering at the Academy door, some with umbrellas and some without,
and not a few of them had brought along their lanterns.
And now the door was opened by the Rev. Dr. Dryer in person, as on the
previous occasion, and the whole crowd, variously half-clad, were glad
enough to get in out of the rain.
There was the mystery, however, right before them.
No rope, no cow, and the old bell banging ceaselessly away, up there in
the steeple.
“She’s working tip-top,” whispered a cautious voice in Bar Vernon’s
ear. “You said as how the fun’d come the first windy night, and I
footed it over arter my sheer. It’s most as good as boat-buildin’.”
“All right, Puff; only keep still,” returned Bar. “Let’s see what
they’ll do about it.”
There were other volunteers to go up with George Brayton that night,
however, and although Zebedee Fuller crept along behind one of the
trustees, he did not seem disposed to make himself at all conspicuous.
He had noted the presence of Bar and Val, but had promptly dismissed
them from his calculations with the silent question:
“What do city fellows know about bells?”
Not much, perhaps, but the dripping investigators soon began to suspect
that they themselves knew even less, for they failed to detect any sign
of rope on the second floor.
“Now, my friends!” exclaimed the principal, triumphantly, “whoever the
perpetrators may be, we are reasonably assured of their capture. They
have lingered too long in the steeple!”
“Looks like it,” muttered Zeb; “nobody ever engineered a dun heifer
up those crooked stairs. It was a tough enough job to get her into the
lower hall.”
But not on the stairs, nor even to the adventurous eyes which shortly
afterwards peered out upon the “deck” above, did there appear any sign
of boy or man or apple-hunting cow.
Such a gale as was sweeping through the sashless frame of the
bell-tower and across the vacant level of the deck at that moment!
It laid the wing of Bar Vernon’s subtle invention so very flat that the
tolling ceased and even the uplifted lanterns failed to discover it.
The combined light of the latter, moreover, convinced the keen eyes of
George Brayton that no human form was lurking among the cross-pieces of
the bell-frame in its nook overhead.
“Not a living soul, there or here,” solemnly exclaimed one of the
trustees.
“No rope,” added another.
“It’s an awful mystery,” exclaimed a third.
“Ghosts from Mrs. Wood’s,” suggested a sepulchral voice behind them,
and although they all knew it came from the lips of Zebedee Fuller,
there was a very general disposition to regard their search as
completed.
“He’s got away, whoever he was,” remarked George Brayton, “but the
question is, how?”
Did the bell mean to laugh at them?
They were halfway down the stairway just then, and the tolling burst
forth in a sudden fit of half frantic violence that almost made one of
the trustees lose his footing.
That was quite enough for George Brayton, however, and he quietly said
to the rest:
“I’m going back. Please tell Mr. Vernon I wish he would come up here.”
“Now you’re in for it,” said Val, as he heard the message delivered.
“No, Val,” said Bar, “it’s all right. If I don’t go up they’ll find it
out. I must shut it off for this time.”
“Shall I come along?”
“Better not. One’s enough.”
One would indeed have been enough, and Zeb Fuller made two. That would
have been altogether too much, if there had not somehow dimly dawned on
Zebedee’s mind the idea that it was his duty to keep George Brayton’s
attention as much as possible.
Bar found the two sitting together at the top of the stairs waiting for
him, but he stepped lightly past them and out upon the deck.
It was the work of an instant, as he seemed to peer out upon the roof
through that western window. The end of the rope was detached from the
lower “arm” of the van and there was no danger of any more noise just
then.
“Vernon,” said Brayton, “do you think you could climb up there such a
night as this without danger?”
“Certainly,” said Bar.
“Will you?”
Bar’s reply, to the intense admiration of Zeb Fuller, who would
scarcely have undertaken it himself, except as out-and-out “mischief,”
was to climb rapidly and lightly up, till he reached the rafters beside
the bell.
“Nobody here, Mr. Brayton,” he shouted. “Nobody’d want to sit here and
toll, anyhow!”
“Come down, then. I thought as much,” replied Brayton.
Bar was down with the rapidity of a young monkey, for he now knew every
inch of the way.
“Have you examined the roof?” he asked of Brayton.
“No,” was the reply; “it’s too wet and slippery for any one to venture
on to-night, and it’s too dark for us to see all over it. I’m afraid
we’ll have to give it up.”
They waited for sometime, nevertheless, visited at brief intervals by
other watchers from below, but no renewal of the mysterious sounds
disturbed them.
In fact, the wind was dying away now, having lasted a good while for a
summer gust, and when at last Brayton led the way down-stairs, Zeb went
next, and Bar had a precious moment in which he was able to step back
and once more slip the end of the tolling-rope over the arm of the van.
“It won’t do any harm, right away,” he thought, “and there’s no telling
when I may have another chance to get up here.”
Once or twice, in the remaining course of that eventful night, faint
efforts at a clangor moaned across the green through the still falling
rain, but there was not enough of them to draw the villagers again from
their houses.