ALL ABOARD FOR PARDYVILLE
“Who is it?” says Poppy, as the waddler tried out his weight on the
porch steps. “Mark Tidd, Sr.?”
“Search me,” says I, wondering if the heavy watch chain that the
over-fed visitor carried around on his vest front, like a young
suspension bridge, was solid gold. If it was, he must be a millionaire,
I thought.
“It’s Lawyer Chew,” the woman told us in a low voice.
“Quick!” laughed Poppy, remembering that this was the enemy. “Get the
teakettle.”
“A dose of hot water is what he deserves,” came stiffly from
the fearless little old lady, as she planted herself, sort of
belligerent-like, in front of the door.
Having successfully dragged himself up the mountain, like a heaving
donkey engine, old fatty stopped on the top step to swab his bald spot
and adjust his scowl.
“Well, madam,” he boomed at us out of his inflated stomach, “I’m here.”
“So I see,” says Mrs. Doane quietly.
“As I told you over the ’phone,” proceeded old dough-face in his
ponderous, important way, “you are outside of your rights in coming
here to live. The late owner of this place instructed me to close it
after his death and keep it closed until the complete settlement of the
estate. So I have come to see that his wishes are obeyed.”
Say, I wish you could have seen that little old lady swell up! As
I watched her, grinning, all I could think of was a ruffled bantam
getting ready to do its stuff. Boy, was my thought, if she ever socked
her spurs into old goozleum the goo sure would run.
“I don’t believe,” came hotly, “that Corbin Danver ever told you to
close this house against his relations. And I defy you to show me any
_writing_ to that effect.”
“I know my business, madam.”
“Then tend to it,” was the slap that old fatty got in the face.
“Hot dog!” laughed Poppy in my ear, as tickled as a monkey with the
cooties. “I guess she handed him a hot one that trip.”
The visitor’s big ears were on fire now.
“Mrs. Doane,” he rumbled like an angry volcano, “I didn’t come here
to bandy words with you. Nor do I feel called upon to show you any
_writing_ to back up my position as preliminary administrator of
this estate. His chosen legal adviser, I was given certain definite
instructions by the late Corbin Danver, just before his death, and to
the best of my professional ability I am now trying to carry out those
instructions. As I tell you, you’ve got to pack up and get out of here.
And the sooner you do it the better for _you_.”
But Ma held the fort.
“_Oh!_ ... do tell!” came sarcastically. “And suppose I _don’t_ pack up
and get out of here--what then?”
“In that case, madam, I’ll see that the law puts you out.”
That was more than the high-spirited little old lady could stand.
“So, you’re going to put me out, are you?” she cried, shaking her fists
in the lawyer’s pudgy face. “You and the _law_! I’d like to see you
do it. Yes, you better back up, you big bag of wind. For two cents
I’d twist your fat nose. Maybe you’d learn then to keep it where it
belongs.”
“Madam! ...” thundered the heaving volcano, as the lava slopped close
to the brim.
“Don’t ‘madam’ me. You’re more lucky than you realize that I don’t fly
at you and scratch your eyes out. Such an insult! And now that you have
had _your_ say, Mr. Lawyer Chew, let _me_ tell you something: The whole
state militia can’t drag me out of here if I choose to stay. Is that
clear to you? Not that I’m a person to oppose the law, but in this
case I don’t believe that you have any _right_ to put me out of here.
If Corbin Danver told me _once_ he told me a hundred times that of all
his relations there was no one whom he enjoyed having here more than
me. I was welcome to come whenever I chose, he said. Nor did he say
that his death was to make any difference. Yet _you_ try to put me out!
And this in spite of the fact that I was sent here, as I told you last
night, by some one who has every right in the world to use the property
as she sees fit.”
At this mention of the granddaughter, the volcano sort of subsided. And
there was a peculiar crafty look in the deepset eyes now.
“What is this that you tell me about Miss Ruth sending you here to open
up the house for her? Is she intending to live here?”
With all of her free talk to us, Mrs. Doane was foxy about showing her
hand to the enemy.
“I’ll let her talk for herself when she gets here.”
“Then she isn’t here yet?” and instead of craftiness there was
satisfaction in the gray-green eyes now.
“If she were,” came sharply, “you’d have been ordered away from here
before this. For while you may question _my_ right to be here, I don’t
think, if you have any judgment at all, that you would question _her_
right.”
In the further heated talk between the angry man and woman, I got the
feeling that it was a case of dog eat dog. They both hated each other.
And probably, I concluded, it was to spite the woman more than anything
else that the visitor was now threatening to come back in the afternoon
with the sheriff.
“Nor will it avail you anything to resist. For I have the law on my
side. And I’m going to use it. If necessary,” came the final ugly
threat, “we can take you by force and set you down outside of the stone
wall. And that’s where you’ll stay until the granddaughter gets here.”
Well, say, if he hadn’t backed down the steps I actually believe that
he would have lost what little hair he had. For take it from me that
little old lady was _mad_. Drive her out of the house, would he? Set
her down outside of the stone wall in spitework, huh? Gr-r-r-r!
But she went all to pieces when the angry lawyer was gone. She trembled
like a leaf. And there was worry and every other kind of grief mixed up
in her thin face. The poor old soul! She had tried to be brave but her
age was against her. I felt sorry for her. And what I wanted to do to
old fatty!
Poppy drew me aside. And as I got a squint at his face I saw right off
that he was getting ready to do something. He’s that kind of a kid.
Let some one he likes get stepped on and he’ll fight his head off for
them. And now, as I saw, hating the lawyer the same as me, and wanting
to fix him, he was getting ready to take up Mrs. Doane’s battle.
“When did old dough-face say he was coming back with the sheriff?”
“This afternoon.”
“Then we’ve either got to find the granddaughter this morning or think
up some kind of a scheme.”
“It’s easy enough to talk about finding her,” says I. “But how are we
going to do it?”
Here old Ivory Dome percolated through the front door.
“Jerry, _he_ knows where the girl is.”
“Shall we choke it out of him?” I grinned.
“Bu-lieve me, I’ll try it if necessary.”
“Why ... Ma,” came in a worried voice from the newcomer. “You look all
white. Be you sick?”
“Oh, Pa,” came helplessly. “Lawyer Chew was here. And he’s coming back
with the sheriff to put us out.”
“Um.... What’s he goin’ to put us out for?”
“Spitework, more than anything. He says that we haven’t any right to be
here.”
“But Miss Ruth has the keys. Her grandpa gave her the keys. And she
sent us here.”
[Illustration: “SO, YOU’RE GOING TO PUT ME OUT, ARE YOU?”
_Poppy Ott and the Galloping Snail._ _Page 85_]
“I know, Pa, but Miss Ruth isn’t here yet. And until she comes we’re
helpless. Oh, the humiliation if that man does put us out in the road!
To think that such a thing could happen to a _Danver_ at the hands of a
man whose grandfather was a horse thief!”
Poppy and I were watching the old man to see what we could read in
his face. For in this new trouble it didn’t seem possible to us that
he could hide all trace of his secret. Yet we saw nothing--only
dumbness. I began to wonder then if he really knew as much about the
granddaughter’s hiding place and her other secrets as we imagined.
Maybe, I admitted our error, we were all wrong in our belief.
Poppy had gone into the house. And now I heard him at the telephone.
When he came out he was grinning. But when I asked him what the joke
was he wouldn’t tell me. I suspected, though, that he had made the
first move against the enemy.
It was now time for us to start for Pardyville. So, with the old engine
heaving and snorting, we loaded ourselves onto the cushioned back of
the Galloping Snail and gallantly set forth on our journey, yelling
to Ma Doane the very last thing to keep a stiff upper lip and cook a
lot of beefsteak and gravy. For there’d be five of us for supper, we
promised. Down in our hearts, though, we were saying “maybe.” Yet it
was all right, we thought, to say something like that to cheer her up.
And it made us glad to know that we left her smiling.