_Ptolemy Disappears and I Visit a Haunted House_
When Rob and I, with our camping outfit, drove off through the woods,
Ptolemy's eyes followed us so enviously and he pleaded so eloquently
to be taken with us that Rob was actually on the point of considering
it.
"See here, Rob Rossiter!" I exclaimed, "This is my vacation and all I
came to this God-forsaken place for was to escape the Polydores. If he
goes, I stay. You know I've always tried to meet issues, but this
antique family has got me going."
"All right," he yielded.
After a drive of a few miles we came to the lake and pitched our tent.
Two days of ideal camp life followed. The weather was fine, Rob was a
first-class cook, and the sport was beyond our most optimistic
expectation. We landed enough of the Friday food to satisfy the most
fastidious fishing fiend, and the mosquitoes, finding we were
impervious to their stings, finally let us alone.
I forgot all business cares and disappointments, yes, even the
Polydores; but on the morning of the third day Rob began to show signs
of restlessness and spoke of the likelihood of my wife's being
lonely.
"Not with Beth and Ptolemy in calling distance," I told him.
"But they will be off together," he replied, "and your wife will be
alone with that _enfant terrible_. I fancy, too, that your sister
isn't exactly a companion for your wife."
"Well, that shows how little you know her. She and Silvia are great
friends."
"Oh, yes, of course they are friendly, but I mean their tastes are so
different, and they are so unlike. Your sister doesn't care for
domesticity."
"Sure she does. You have turned the wrong searchlight on Beth. If you
knew her, you'd like her."
"I do like her," he declared. "It's too bad she--"
He stopped abruptly and quickly changed the conversation. In spite of
my efforts to renew the controversy about Beth, he refused to return
to the subject.
[Illustration: He pleaded eloquently to be taken with us.]
In the afternoon, when I was doing a little scale work preparatory to
cooking, a messenger from the hotel drove up with a note from Silvia
which I read aloud:
"Ptolemy has been missing for twenty-four hours. We are in hopes he
has joined you. If not, what shall I do?"
"We'll go back with you," said Rob to the man. "Just lend a hand here
and help us pull up these tent stakes."
"What's Ptolemy to me or I to him?" I asked with a groan, "can't we
give him absent treatment?"
"You're positively inhuman, Lucien," protested Rob. "The boy may be at
the bottom of the lake."
"Not he! He was born to be hung."
All this time, however, I had been active in making preparations for
departure, as I knew that Silvia would feel that we were responsible
for Ptolemy's safety, and her anxiety was reason enough for me to
hasten to her.
Rob was quite jubilant on our return trip and declared that the fish
came too easily and too plentifully to make it real sport, but I felt
that I had another grudge to be charged up to the fateful family.
We found Silvia pale from anxiety, Beth in tears, and Diogenes loudly
clamoring for "Tolly." We learned that the afternoon before, Silvia
and Beth had gone with the landlady for a ride, leaving Diogenes in
Ptolemy's care, but on their return at dinner time, Diogenes was
playing alone in the sandpile.
Nothing was thought of Ptolemy's absence until bedtime, and they had
then sent out searching parties to the woods and the lake shores.
Finally it occurred to Beth that he might have gone to join Rob and
me, so they sent the messenger to investigate.
"He must be lost in the woods somewhere," said Beth tearfully, "and
he will starve to death."
Rob actually touched her hand in his distress at her grief.
"Ptolemy is too smart to get lost anywhere," I declared. "He knows
fully as much about woodcraft as he does about every other kind of
craft. He's one of his mother's antiquities personified. But haven't
you been able to find anyone who saw him after you went for your
ride?"
"No; even the hotel help were all out on the lake."
"And he left Diogenes here, absolutely unguarded?"
"Well!" admitted Silvia, "he tied Diogenes to a tree near the
sandpile."
"Then he must have gone away with malice aforethought," I said,
"and Diogenes is the only one who knows anything about his last
movements."
I lifted the child to my knee, and speaking more gently to him than I
had ever done, I asked:
"Di, did you and Tolly play in the sandpile yesterday?"
He was quite emphatic in his affirmative.
"Well, tell Ocean: Did Tolly go away and leave you?"
"Tolly goed away," he confirmed.
"Oh, Lucien!" protested Beth, laughing. "He's too little to know what
you are talking about or to remember."
"Lucien's ruling passion strong in death," murmured Rob. "He can't
help cross-examining the cradle even!"
"Which way," I resumed, ignoring these interruptions, "did Tolly
go--that way?" pointing towards the woods.
"No! Tolly goed--" and he trailed off into his baby jargon which no
one could understand, but he pointed to the lake.
"What did he say when he went away; when he tied the rope around
you?"
"Bye-bye."
"What else?"
Diogenes' intentions to be communicative were certainly all right, but
not a word was intelligible. As he kept picking at his dress and
pointing to it, I finally prompted:
"Did Tolly pin a paper to Di's dress?"
"'m--h'--m."
"Bravo, Lucien!" applauded Rob. "They say you can induce a witness to
admit anything."
"What did Di do with the paper?" I continued.
The word he wanted evidently being beyond his vocabulary and speech,
he made a rotary motion with his fist. The gesture conveyed nothing to
our minds, but was instantly recognized and interpreted by the
landlady's little girl, who said he meant a windmill such as she had
sometimes made for him.
"What did Di do with the windmill?" I asked.
He pointed to the sandpile, which I investigated and found a stick
planted therein. I pulled it up and saw a pin sticking in the end of
it. Further excavation revealed a crumpled piece of paper on which was
written in Ptolemy's round hand:
"Want to see kids. Am going home. Tell Beth I bet she dasent go to
the haunted house alone at night. Ptolemy."
"Poor Huldah!" sighed Silvia.
"I thought he was having the time of his life here," said Rob.
"He was sore," declared Beth, "because you and Lucien wouldn't take
him with you on the fishing trip. He was moping by himself all the
morning."
"Trying to think up some new deviltry," I theorized, "to make us feel
bad."
"No," asserted Silvia, "I think he really misses the boys. The
Polydores, for all their scrappings, are very clannish. But how do you
suppose he got down to Windy Creek?"
"He could catch plenty of rides along the way, but what is puzzling me
is how he got the money to pay his fare."
"He seemed very well provided with cash," informed Rob. "I tried to
pay for his ticket down here, but he insisted on buying it himself."
Silvia worried so much about what might happen to him en route that
after dinner I motored to Windy Creek with some tourists who had
stopped at the hotel in passing.
I called up long distance and after some delay got in communication
with our house. Ptolemy himself answered and assured me he had arrived
all "hunky doory", that Huldah, who was out on an errand, was "hunky
doory", and that the kids were all "hunky doory." In fact, his
cheerful tone indicated that the whole universe was in the beatific
state described by his expressive adjective.
I was really ripping mad at his taking French leave and so giving
Silvia cause for her anxiety, but I forbore to reprimand him by word
or tone, lest he get even by "coming back" literally. I did tell him
how the loss of the note for twenty-four hours had caused a general
excitement, but he felt no remorse for his share in the situation,
blaming Diogenes entirely and bidding me "punch the kid's face" for
unpinning the note.
On my return from Windy Creek I was fortunate enough to fall in with a
farmer who lived near the hotel. He was driving some sort of a machine
he called an _autoo_. He was an old-timer in the vicinity and related
the past, present, and pluperfect of all the residents on the route. I
had a detailed and vivid account of the midnight visitor of the
haunted house.
"I'd jest naturally like to see what there is to it," he said. "Not
that I am afeerd at all, only it's sort of spooky to go to a lonesome
place like that all alone. If I could git some one to go with me, I'd
tackle the job, but I vum if every time I perpose it to anyone they
don't make some excuse."
"I'm on," I declared. "I don't dread ghosts near as much as I do some
living folks I know."
"Right you air," chuckled the old man. "If you say so we'll go right
off now jest as sure as shootin'. We may be ghosts ourselves
tomorrow."
I assured him I was quite ready to encounter the ghost, so he
jubilantly turned the machine from the road into a grass-grown lane.
We zigzagged for some distance and then got out and went on foot
through a grove. The moon and the stars were half veiled by some
light, misty clouds, so that the little house didn't show up very
clearly, but as we came to the top of the hill, we saw something that
shook even my well-behaved nerves.
From a window in the roof-room extended a white arm and hand, with
index finger pointing threateningly and directly toward us.
My farmer friend turned quickly and fled toward the grove. I followed
fleetly. "What's your rush?" I asked, when I had overtaken him.
"I just happened to remember," he explained gaspingly, "that there's a
pesky autoo thief in these 'ere parts. Bukins had his stole jest last
night."
The lights on his machine must have reassured him as to its safety
when we emerged from the woods into the open, but he didn't lessen his
speed. We got in the "autoo" and soon said good-by to the lane. At one
time I believed it was good-by to everything, but at last we gained
the highway, right side up.
"Well!" I said, when we were running normally again on terra firma,
"that was some little old ghost,--beckoned to us to come right in,
too!"
"You seen it then!" he exclaimed excitedly. "I'm mighty glad I had an
eyewitness. Folks wouldn't believe me."
"They probably won't believe me, either," I assured him. "I am a
lawyer."
"You don't tell me! Well, it did jest give me a start for a minute.
I'd like to hev gone in and seen it nigh to, if I hadn't happened to
think of this 'ere autoo. You see I ain't got it all paid for yet. I'm
jest clean beat. You don't mind my takin' a leetle pull at a stone
fence, do you?"
"I guess not," I assented somewhat dubiously, however. "That was a
rail fence we took a pull at back in the lane, wasn't it? Of course,
if we shouldn't happen to clear the stone fence as well as we did the
rail fence, it might be more disastrous."
"Oh, land!" he said with a cackling laugh, "I ain't meanin' that kind
of a fence. I mean the kind you--Say! You ain't one of them
teetotalers, be you?"
"Only in theory," I replied, "but this stone fence drink is a new one
on me. What's it like?"
He stopped the "autoo" and pulled a bottle from an inner pocket.
"You kin taste it better than I kin tell it," he declared. "Take a
pull--a condumned good one."
I rarely imbibed, confining my indulgences to the demands of
necessity, but I thought that the flight of Ptolemy, the ghostly
encounter, and my Mazeppa--wild ride all combined to constitute an
occasion adequate to call for a bracer in the shape of a stone fence,
or anything he might produce.
I took what I considered a "condumned good one" from the bottle and it
nearly strangled me, but I followed the aged stranger's advice to take
another to "cure the chokes" caused by the first one. On general
principles I took a third and then reluctantly returned him the
bottle.
"Here's over the moon," he jovially exclaimed as he proceeded to make
my attempt at a "condumned good one" appear most niggardly.
"May I ask," I inquired when my feeling of nerve-tense strain had
vanished, and I felt as if I were treading thin air, "just what is in
a stone fence?"
"Well, what do you think?" he asked slyly.
"I think the very devil is in it," I replied.
"Well, mebby," he admitted. "It's two-thirds hard cider and one-third
whisky. It's a healthy, hearting drink and yet it has a leetle come
back to it--a sort o' kick, you know. But this is where I live,"
pointing to a farmhouse well back from the road, "but I am goin' to
run you on to your tavern though."
The hotel was dark, save for a light in my room. I invited him in, but
he was anxious to "git hum and tell the folks", so I gave him some
cigars and went in to "tell my folks."
I found them in the room waiting for me. That is, Beth was in the
room, sitting by the table and pretending to read. Silvia and Rob were
out in the little balcony. They came inside as soon as they heard my
voice.
"Oh, was he there?" asked Silvia anxiously.
"Yes," I replied. "He answered the telephone himself."
I was feeling quite exhilarated by this time. My wife looked a perfect
vision to me. Beth, I thought, was some sister, and Rob the best
fellow in the world. Even the Polydores at long range, and under the
ameliorating influence of stone fences, seemed like fine little
fellows--rather active and strenuous, to be sure, but only as all
wholesome children should be.
Silvia was relieved at the announcement of Ptolemy's safety, but very
much disappointed that I did not succeed in interviewing Huldah and
finding out something about domestic affairs.
I assured her that everything was "hunky doory" at home, praised the
telephone service, my expedition to town, and painted my return ride
with "the honest farmer" in glowing terms. I was suddenly halted in my
eulogy by becoming aware of an amazed expression on my wife's
countenance, a most suspicious glance in Beth's wide-open eyes, and a
very knowing wink from Rob.
"Lucien," said Silvia severely, "I believe you've been drinking. I
certainly smell spirits."
"Maybe you do," I replied jocosely. "I certainly saw spirits. I went
to the haunted house on my way back."
"I thought Windy Creek was a dry town," remarked Rob innocently.
"It is," I assured him, "but I rode home with an old man--a farmer."
"Does he run a blind pig?" asked Rob.
"It was more like a pig in a poke," I replied.
"Lucien," exclaimed Silvia reproachfully, "you told me two years ago,
after that banquet to the Bar, that you were never going to touch wine
or whisky again. What did that horrid old man give you?"
"A stone fence. That's what he said it was anyway."
"It's a new one on me," commented Rob.
"There was a new toast went with it. He drank to 'over the moon.'"
"You must have gone there all right and taken all the shine from the
moon-man," said Rob.
"Lucien," asked Beth, "did you really go to that haunted house?"
Again I was moved to eloquence, and I told of the farmer's yearning,
the fulfillment, the beckoning hand and the beating of the retreat at
length.
"Are you sure," asked Rob, "that you didn't take that stone fence
before you visited the haunted house?"
"I know," I replied, loftily, "that a lawyer's word is worthless, but
seeing is believing. We will all visit the haunted house tomorrow
night and I'll make good on ghosts."
This plan was unanimously approved, and then Silvia suggested that she
thought I had better go to bed. I had no particular objection to doing
so.
"Lucien," she said solemnly, when we were alone, "I want you to
promise me something. I want you to give me your word that you will
never take another stone wall."
I did this most readily.