THE BELL MYSTERY REMAINS UNSOLVED
To say that the usual amount of sleeping was done in Ogleport that
night would be to trifle with truth but, for all that, everybody was
astir bright and early the next morning.
Why not, when there would be so remarkable an opportunity for everybody
to ask everybody else:
“What do you think about it?”
Even Zeb Fuller’s name was less frequently on the lips of men than on
the former occasion, for this was something apparently beyond him.
And yet Zeb’s “chores” had been done at railway speed that morning, and
there was that in his eyes which might have been very suggestive to a
man that knew him well.
Hardly had Bar and Val finished their breakfast before word was brought
them by Mrs. Wood that the Fuller boy was asking for them. “And you’d
better look out for him or he’ll get you into all sorts of difficulty.”
Zebedee’s errand was a very peaceful and proper one, however, for he
merely proposed to join them in their day on the lake, if they were
going, and to show them some things he reckoned they had not yet seen.
It is possible that George Brayton would have willingly kept Bar and
Val within reach that day, but they were off with Zeb before he had a
chance to offer any objection. Very quiet was Zeb, till the three were
well out of the village, and then he turned suddenly upon Bar, with:
“He’d ha’ found it out, after all, if it hadn’t been for me.”
“Why,” said Bar, somewhat taken by surprise, “did you find it out?”
“Can’t say I did,” said Zeb, as if ashamed of such a confession, “but I
knew that rope along the timber and under that wheel had something to
do with it. So I kept between him and that as much as I could.”
[Illustration: “HE’D HA’ FOUND IT OUT, IF IT HADN’T BEEN FOR ME”]
“You’re a trump, Zeb,” shouted Bar. “I wondered myself how it was he
failed to see that, dark as it was, when they had so many lanterns. But
there they were, all of them looking up and couldn’t see it.”
“Brayton’s was the only good pair of eyes among ’em,” said Zeb, “and he
was looking up, too, most of the time. But will it toll again?”
“How should I know?” asked Bar.
“Look here,” exclaimed Zeb; “there isn’t another chap in or about
Ogleport that can do that belfry climbing. Brayton understands that as
well as I do.”
“I’m afraid he does,” said Val, thoughtfully. “If there should be a
wind this afternoon, now?”
“Oh! that’s it, is it?” exclaimed Zeb. “Why didn’t I think of that
before? I give it up. You fellows beat me. To think that I should never
have thought of the wind!”
There was little more to be done except to explain the exact
particulars, and when Bar had done that, Zeb stopped in front of him
and removed from his head the broad-brimmed and somewhat battered
“straw,” saying,
“Barnaby Vernon, you can take my hat. I think I must emigrate.”
“Emigrate?” said Val Manning.
“Yes,” replied Zeb, dolefully; “there isn’t room for him and me in the
same village. And yet I must remain and see how he and Solomon will
work together. Old Sol has his eye on you, my boy, but you needn’t be
afraid of George Brayton. I’ve great confidence in George.”
But the boys were not the only part of the village population that
continued to be exercised about the bell business.
Dr. Dryer instituted what he called “an exhaustive analysis of the
mysterious phenomenon” at an early hour in the forenoon, but he never
put his head above the “deck,” and he acquired no additional wisdom.
Brayton had deemed his own search of the previous night sufficient for
the present, and he had, besides, some private matters of his own to
attend to that day.
His morning mail had brought him news of some of these, and had sent
him to Mrs. Wood with a request that she would prepare a room for his
mother and sister, who were coming to pay him a visit.
There was no reason, thought his landlady, why he should get so very
much flushed in the face about it; but George Brayton did not care the
rest of that day whether the Academy had one bell or ten.
Mrs. Dryer did, however, and she talked “bell” till her pretty
stepdaughter could stand it no longer, but put on her bonnet for a very
aimless flight among her neighbors.
There, too, it was the bell, the bell, till poor Effie reached a state
of mind which led her to say to George Brayton, when she met him
crossing the green:
“Please don’t speak to me. I don’t want to hear another word about it.”
“About what?” asked the very much astonished young man.
“That dreadful bell!” exclaimed Effie.
“Oh! I’d forgotten there was one,” replied Brayton. “You see, I’ve good
news this morning. My mother and sister are coming to see me----”
“How very pleasant!” interrupted Effie; “and they know nothing about
the bell--there, my hat. Oh, dear me! there it goes again!”
There it went, sure enough, Effie’s very pretty hat, with George
Brayton after it halfway across the green, and at that moment and with
the breath of that one sudden gust, the obnoxious character in the
steeple had uttered a grating and sonorous warning that there was life
and mischief in him yet.
Just that one malicious effort did the village monster make, but that
was enough, and in five minutes more there were a hundred pairs of eyes
straining up at the steeple on all sides, and Dr. Dryer, accompanied by
his faithful “third,” was striding across the green with the key in his
hand.
Even in that moment of concentrated thought and feeling, however, Mrs.
Dryer’s vision swept in all the surrounding circumstances, and she
exclaimed, in the tone of an injured angel:
“I told you so. There’s Effie with George Brayton out there on the
green, and she’s bare-headed, too. It’s awful! There, he’s had her hat
in his hand. Doctor, what do you say to such doings? Are you a post?”
“A humble pillar, I hope, Dorothy Jane,” replied the Doctor, but there
was no time for anything more.
“Are you not going to help them?” asked Effie of Brayton.
“No, indeed. Why should I?” he asked. “There’s enough of ’em now. Too
many, in fact. Besides, if they find out what’s the matter, they’ll be
sure to let the rest of us know.”
It looked very much as if the young man was right, but the curious
part of it was, after all, that not one of that crowd, nor all of them
together, did more than rummage the Academy after hidden human beings.
They were all equally sure that there was no one up in the belfry, and
so that part of the building was left to keep its own secrets and those
of Mrs. Wood’s ghosts.
Meantime, George Brayton and Effie had the pleasantest kind of a walk
and talk, and Mrs. Dryer was enabled to bottle-up an immense amount of
wrath against her next meeting with her stepdaughter.
In fact, when that much-disturbed lady came out of the Academy, after
the fruitless raid of the villagers, she was unable to so much as even
smile in the bewildered faces of her neighbors, thereby sending them
all away with a deeper sense than ever of the gloomy depth of the cloud
which seemed to be settling over Ogleport and its Academy.