SILENT GUESTS
SILENT
GUESTS
By
A. E. Forrest
[Illustration]
CHICAGO
PASCAL COVICI, _Publisher_
MCMXXVII
COPYRIGHT, 1927, BY
PASCAL COVICI, PUBLISHER, INC.
PRINTED IN THE U. S. A. BY
THE CUNEO PRESS, INC.
“_What lurks behind the curtain? Wouldst thou learn? If thou art wise
thou wouldst not_--”
[Illustration]
CHAPTER I
A mysterious thing, the human mind. Can it keep a secret indefinitely?
Here I find myself committing to paper things which I had determined
never to divulge--sacred things long hidden; intimate privacies having
their roots in the soul.
However, these written pages shall never be seen by the merely
inquisitive eye, but shall be safely hidden away and kept as a
faithful attestation of the genesis of this house--unless fate
decrees otherwise. I believe in fate--are we not all merely its
playthings--toys moved hither and yon in Nature’s nursery?
Was it fate that called me from my accustomed life and routine in a
distant American city to that little churchyard in a secluded corner of
the Canadian backwoods, where so trivial a thing as curiosity aroused
by the peculiarity of an epitaph chiseled in a marble headstone marking
the grave of an unknown led me into a realm of fact more unreal than
even the wildest of dreams and unfolded to me in reality the pages of
a weird, transcendental drama? Was it predestined that I should leave
home and friends and find in this sparsely settled spot an interest
which inextricably drew the very threads of my being into the tangled
skein of other and tragic lives?
The mission calling me from the office of a firm of lawyers in
Philadelphia into which I had but recently been admitted as junior
partner was a forlorn search for traces of an Englishman, one James
Hogarth, who had, while in Canada, mysteriously disappeared. The case
was important and urgent, we were informed by our clients in London, as
seven years had elapsed since Hogarth, heir to a large estate, had been
heard from, and the property was about to escheat to the British crown.
I was following a seemingly slender clue--the statement of a butler
once in the employ of the Hogarth family that “some six or seven years
previously he had seen a letter postmarked ‘Valleyford, Canada’ in
which Hogarth made mention of a place called Craighead Hall.”
On this meager thread rested our firm’s hope of a large fee and mine of
proving my qualification as a worthwhile partner.
My third day of travel on this, my first long journey, brought me to
a village called Laketown, reached only by local train. This day is
indelibly fixed in my memory. It was a bright September morning, and
marked the last stopping point before reaching my destination.
No premonition of anything untoward troubled me as I rested comfortably
on the cushions of an old-fashioned high-swung stage-coach as it rolled
quietly along a smooth dirt road away from the village. My spirits were
high through avid anticipations of success and the enjoyment of an
unusual and well-deserved holiday.
Alone in the coach, a long twenty-mile ride before me, I had
ample opportunity for reflection. What should I find: romance,
mystery, perhaps danger, for impulsively even before transferring
my luggage from the depot platform to the stage-coach labeled
“Laketown-Valleyford,” I had questioned the driver of the team of bays:
“Do you know of a place called Craighead Hall?”
The man had given me a peculiar inspection.
“Yes, but nobody of your kind ever goes there.”
Further inquiry brought curiosity but little satisfaction. “Never been
there.” “No, nobody ever went there.” “Place was some ten miles east of
the village.” “Was said to be a resort for criminals, brought there by
the owner, Hugh Craighead, who lived with them, a sort of overlord.”
“No, I have never seen him, but I think you run a big chance of being
murdered,” he speculated after I had informed him of my errand.
The driver had never heard of James Hogarth, but volunteered that
he would not be surprised at the disappearance of anyone who visited
Craighead Hall.
My pulse quickened at the thought of meeting this overlord of
criminals, but before we reach thirty, romanticism holds strong,
especially in those in whose veins flows Scotch blood, and my name is
Montrose.
“My partners know my destination,” was my thought, and there was
nothing to dull the keenness of anticipation as we jogged on, straight
into the wilderness.
The regular thud of hoof on soft dirt became monotonous and I welcomed
the opportunity of taking a seat beside the driver when a stop was made
that the horses might drink from a small fordable stream crossing the
roadway. The air was clear and bracing and the open country with its
evidences of a recently gathered bountiful crop of wheat, barley and
rye, in time gave place to dense woods.
We traveled miles through an unbroken forest of hardwood; the maples
had taken on their best scarlet dress and the oak and beech were
changing. We neared a river; spruce and cedar trees occasionally opened
to furnish a glimpse of white water tossed into spray. A waterfall, it
must have been of some magnitude, gave notice of its force.
The driver, pointing to an avenue between fronds of green, said
“Kneeley’s Falls; the river drivers shoot that fall of eighteen feet.
Craighead’s foreman tried it once--they got what was left of him six
miles downstream.”
Craighead again. I plied the man with questions, but he had no further
information to impart.
A wooded hill was on our left; not a human habitation had we passed
in ten miles; dense thickets of green fringed the noisy river on the
right. Suddenly we dropped without warning into civilization. We
crossed on a wooden bridge about one hundred and fifty feet in length,
a stream of water so black and swift that it presented the appearance
of immobility.
“The Ford, fifty feet deep and running like a millrace,” the driver
volunteered, “but old Sandy Todd with his usual Saturday night load of
gin aboard thought his mare could ford it.”
The usual small town, I reflected; two main streets, post office at the
bridge end, good brick buildings, one sporting four stories, at which
I alighted. This was the Myrtle Bank Hotel, with a piazza a few feet
above the board sidewalk.
Though the usual small village crowd was assembled to witness the one
exciting event of the day, the coach’s arrival, I was obliged to carry
my portmanteau into the office.
The dust of travel removed, a very fair dinner, then to the post
office. Not the postmaster, hotel proprietor, or livery-stable keeper,
nor any of the other citizens of whom I made inquiry had ever heard
of Hogarth or any stranger visiting this man’s town. Nor could I hire
a vehicle which would take me to the Craighead “plantation” as it was
commonly called.
I was not more fortunate on the following morning--“There is a funeral
out in the country, everything engaged,” was the excuse vouchsafed at
the public livery office. When I insisted, I was informed that roads
were bad and Craighead kept a pack of vicious hounds that roamed the
woods out to a high fence a mile from his house and did not welcome
strangers. No villager had entered the place.
In desperation I borrowed a ride on the seat beside a farmer whose
homing course brought him within three miles of Craighead’s enclosure.
We had traveled about seven miles and had just passed a small
white-painted church when the taciturn farmer, who declined my proffer
of money for the accommodation in terms equally decisive with those
used in refusing to discuss the Craighead menage, spoke, a little
excitement apparent in his voice:
“There is Hugh Craighead now,” pointing to a little cemetery adjoining
the church on the east. “He is at John Blank’s grave as usual.”
In the far corner of this little churchyard fate brought me face to
face with Hugh Craighead. The man was leaning on a white-painted
paling enclosing an isolated grave just outside the God’s acre
dedicated to remembrance. So absorbed in thought was he that he did not
notice me until I was quite near and called him by name.
I looked into the eyes of a man apparently in the early thirties;
kindly yet piercing eyes, wide set in a strong, refined face.
Tall, over six feet, symmetrical in build, yet showing evidence of
a constitution none too robust. There was a something about his
expression difficult of explanation--a sadness and yet not exactly
that, the face of a soulful man with a history. Introducing myself, I
stated my business and was pleased to hear him say: “Yes, I have heard
the name Hogarth. James, I think it was.”
My hopes of immediate success were shattered when he added, after
a pause, “That was many years ago when I was abroad. The name was
mentioned in the letter of a superintendent now dead.”
I pushed my inquiry as far as I dared without appearing importunate,
even suggesting that some old servant at his home might remember
Hogarth’s visit. “There are no old servants at Craighead Hall,” he
replied in a tone which forbade further questioning.
Evidently feeling that his statement was inadequate, abrupt, he added,
“You do not know of my establishment.”
Sensing in the man’s peculiar mien a desire perhaps for privacy as to
his peculiar affairs, I merely said, as I turned from him, “I am sorry.”
In turning, my eye was caught by a peculiarity in the markings on the
white marble slab at the head of the well-kept grave within the little
enclosure. It carried only the words:
JOHN BLANK
and underneath in chiseled script these lines:
_Weep not for me, my children dear,
I am not dead, but sleeping here;
The day will come when I shall rise
To meet my loved ones in the skies._
There were lacking the customary dates; neither birth nor death
was recorded, nothing but the name so suggestive of desire to hide
identity, and the meaningless verse. The grave was evidently not
old--could it not hold the object of my search, perhaps masquerading
under the pseudonym John Blank?
“Who was this man?” I abruptly inquired of Craighead. “You evidently
knew him well.”
A peculiar, hunted look came into Craighead’s eyes as he too turned to
glance at the headstone. “Oh yes, I knew him well, knew him during my
childhood,” and after a pause added, “I know him yet, but you would
not understand,” and turned toward the roadway as though wishing to
terminate the interview.
“My friend,” I said, “What was this man’s real name--how did he die? I
am much interested.”
Craighead appeared troubled. After a keen direct look, holding my eyes
by something peculiar in his, he said, “His history is strange, most
tragic. I have never discussed it with any person.” Then he hesitated,
“But I rather like your manner, Mr.----”
“Montrose. Gordon Montrose,” I hastily answered. “You evidently did not
catch the name.”
“No, I was somewhat nonplussed when you addressed me. You know Hugh
Craighead has few friends hereabout,” he said rather pridefully, I then
thought.
The thought persisted--“This may be acting.”
“A relative, I presume, and a much loved one to bring you out to his
resting place,” I ventured.
“No,” Craighead replied, “the man was just one of the many
unfortunates, a plaything of fate, whose life was a fever and whose
death was a terrible tragedy. But,” he continued, “he did not suffer
alone, as I find cases just as sad as his in our work.”
“I don’t think I quite understand your real work, Mr. Craighead.”
He smiled peculiarly. “I am doing for both body and soul what your
ministers of the gospel claim to be doing for the soul. I am salving
the mentality of the derelicts of Canada, picking up the hulks held in
the whirlpool and those set adrift by the state to become a new menace
to society; searching out the history of felons claiming innocence or
justification and obtaining the release of the worthy; caring for them
until self-respect returns.”
Craighead turned toward Blank’s grave. “That silent sleeper there, a
felon, a suicide, yet a man--every inch a man. Would to God I had been
a grown man and had known his wrongs.”
He drew his hand across his eyes as though wiping away a film, a vision
stirred by recollection; then, as though exhausted, seated himself on a
flat slab of marble covering all that was mortal of one who had lived
and loved and was no more.
Both of us fell silent. There was for me a moment of embarrassment;
the man was so gentlemanly, so womanish and yet so strong. Nothing of
the overlord I had pictured; my sympathies were keenly aroused. “I
should like to hear his story,” I said, “maybe I can render you some
assistance;” an attempt to break the embarrassing silence rather than
the expression of a hope.
Craighead looked keenly at me, seeming to wish to read my thought
as well as character and after a pause, “Mr. Montrose, what is your
calling?”
“Lawyer,” I answered, “and you are also a lawyer. I was informed that
you were interested in helping criminals, but did not quite grasp the
nature of your work. I wish I could see the reformatory.”
“Reformatory!” he shot back. “You shall. Why man, that word reeks of
abuse, cruelty, petty graft and everything that is loathsome. You shall
see my _home_, my guests, the evidence of the worth of my work.”
Here he paused as I replied, promptly accepting the invitation. Into
his eyes that were blazing crept a look of defeat, fear, I thought. He
looked at his watch, glanced at the sun just disappearing behind the
ridge of the peaked roof of the one-storied church. I could read a wish
to recall the invitation.
“Mr. Montrose, night will soon be here. You are seven miles from the
village, without a conveyance. I have few callers at Craighead Hall.
Frankly, were there any means of getting you back to your hotel, I
should ask you to spend the day, rather than--” again he hesitated as
though reflecting--
“However, I shall enjoy your company tonight,” and his face lighted
as he added, “It is long since I have spent an evening in the company
of a brother in the law--and I may wish to ask your advice on a
matter--Well, my home is but three miles away.”
In silence we walked southward across fields of wheat stubble--across
plowed land. No fenced road was encountered until just before coming
to a dense wood. We turned into a broad pathway--it was little
more--the turf had, however, been cut by the wheels of vehicles.
Save for a monosyllabic “A short cut,” from my host, no word passed
between us. Craighead seemed in a brown study and I felt the intruder.
We reached the border of the wood, a high fence stretched off to right
and left as far as I could see. Craighead selected a key from a ring
holding many of varying sizes and unlocked a small gate in the fence,
paused for me to enter, then relocked the gate.
I began to entertain misgivings. The man was certainly peculiar. Was
he sane? What was hidden in this dark timber confronting us? Was I but
following Hogarth, to disappear?
A well-defined roadway led us into deeper shadows. Footsteps made
scarcely a sound as they pressed the damp leaves under foot. The
gloom was oppressive. The silence of the man walking alongside though
just a step ahead, the eerie surroundings, all tended to stir in me a
foreboding of evil.
I was about to break the silence, although my host’s preoccupied manner
indicated such an intrusion presumptuous, when the air was suddenly
shattered by a most startling sound, the baying, near at hand, of what
seemed an army of hounds.
I stopped, frozen in my tracks. Before I could utter a word, Craighead
placed two fingers in his mouth giving a shrill whistle as half-a-dozen
huge, long-eared brown animals came hurtling into the roadway from all
directions. We had been surrounded, effectually trapped.
Abruptly the animals stopped, every beast alert, then Craighead said
gently, “Come on boys, ’tis only your master.”
They crowded about him, emitting short muffled sounds, not touching
him, just seemingly expressing joy and affection. I had retreated a
step or two, involuntarily, but aside from being the recipient of a
glance from many an upturned eye in which the white showed viciously
from ugly, many-wrinkled heads, I was ignored.
As we followed the dogs, a pack of bloodhounds I observed, my
uneasiness increased, and the pathway becoming more and more obscure as
twilight deepened into night, I thought of retreat.
Craighead suddenly stopped, laid his hand on my shoulder, “Pardon my
seeming boorishness, Mr. Montrose. I have a heavy problem; you don’t
mind my thinking it out?”
“Not in the least,” I replied, glad to hear his voice addressing me. He
sent the dogs ahead of us with a word.
“In my peculiar work I sometimes have to call on my four-footed
friends here for aid in running down some poor devil who in gaining
physical freedom loses what little mental poise prison has left him
and endeavors too early a return to old haunts, where he would soon
become either the hunted or the hunter among the wolves of society, and
eventually find his way back into confinement.
“These are bloodhounds, most intelligent brutes. They will run down and
hold but will not harm any person. You see I have many thousands of
acres in my home; the country is sparsely settled. Bears, wolves and
the dreaded lynx are plentiful, even in this wood, though we hunt them
incessantly. Thank Heaven, though a number of men have run away, nobody
has been eaten yet.”
We had been walking with long strides and, just then, emerged from the
wood into a clearing. The terrain rose quite rapidly as we advanced,
until at length we were on a plateau across which we followed a
well-made road seemingly for a long distance. The fading twilight
could not hide the fact that on either side were cultivated fields and
away to the right a dark shadow marked a hill, much higher than the
elevation which we had attained.
Craighead appeared to be hurrying as though anxious to make some goal
before darkness closed down; there was a moon, but it had not yet
arisen.
“Here we are,” he said.
We came abreast of and passed a number of large barns and a long,
one-storied stable of stone. The munching of hay and grain, the
stamping of hoofs, and such usual sounds as come from a small army of
horses housed for the night, struck my auricular sense as weird and
untoward, so highly keyed were my nerves. I thought I could discern
people moving about in the open spaces between the buildings, but save
for the sounds made by the animals, everywhere was silence. A human
voice, or even the barking of a dog would have afforded a degree of
relief.
Craighead preceding me, we soon passed a picketed enclosure, evidently
the dog kennels. A man was housing the hounds. Farther along, we
entered, through a gate, onto a white graveled walk which seemingly led
us through an orchard, as I could make out the outline of trees while
the perfumed emanations from ripe apples came to me soothingly.
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