Produced by Tor Martin Kristiansen, Joseph Cooper, Mary
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SEVEN KEYS TO BALDPATE
BY EARL DERR BIGGERS
Buccaneer Books
NEW YORK
Copyright 1913 by The Bobbs-Merrill Company
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 78-66864
CONTENTS
CHAPTER
I "WEEP NO MORE, MY LADY"
II ENTER A LOVELORN HABERDASHER
III BLONDES AND SUFFRAGETTES
IV A PROFESSIONAL HERMIT APPEARS
V THE MAYOR CASTS A SHADOW BEFORE
VI GHOSTS OF THE SUMMER CROWD
VII THE MAYOR BEGINS A VIGIL
VIII MR. MAX TELLS A TALE OF SUSPICION
IX MELODRAMA IN THE SNOW
X THE COLD GRAY DAWN
XI A FALSEHOOD UNDER THE PALMS
XII WOE IN NUMBER SEVEN
XIII THE EXQUISITE MR. HAYDEN
XIV THE SIGN OF THE OPEN WINDOW
XV TABLE TALK
XVI A MAN FROM THE DARK
XVII THE PROFESSOR SUMS UP
XVIII A RED CARD
XIX EXEUNT OMNES, AS SHAKESPEARE HAS IT
XX THE ADMIRAL'S GAME
XXI THE MAYOR IS WELCOMED HOME
XXII THE USUAL THING
SEVEN KEYS TO BALDPATE
CHAPTER I
"WEEP NO MORE, MY LADY"
A young woman was crying bitterly in the waiting-room of the railway
station at Upper Asquewan Falls, New York.
A beautiful young woman? That is exactly what Billy Magee wanted to know
as, closing the waiting-room door behind him, he stood staring just
inside. Were the features against which that frail bit of cambric was
agonizingly pressed of a pleasing contour? The girl's neatly tailored
corduroy suit and her flippant but charming millinery augured well.
Should he step gallantly forward and inquire in sympathetic tones as to
the cause of her woe? Should he carry chivalry even to the lengths of
Upper Asquewan Falls?
No, Mr. Magee decided he would not. The train that had just roared away
into the dusk had not brought him from the region of skyscrapers and
derby hats for deeds of knight errantry up state. Anyhow, the girl's
tears were none of his business. A railway station was a natural place
for grief--a field of many partings, upon whose floor fell often in
torrents the tears of those left behind. A friend, mayhap a lover, had
been whisked off into the night by the relentless five thirty-four
local. Why not a lover? Surely about such a dainty trim figure as this
courtiers hovered as moths about a flame. Upon a tender intimate sorrow
it was not the place of an unknown Magee to intrude. He put his hand
gently upon the latch of the door.
And yet--dim and heartless and cold was the interior of that
waiting-room. No place, surely, for a gentleman to leave a lady
sorrowful, particularly when the lady was so alluring. Oh, beyond
question, she was most alluring. Mr. Magee stepped softly to the ticket
window and made low-voiced inquiry of the man inside.
"What's she crying about?" he asked.
A thin sallow face, on the forehead of which a mop of ginger-colored
hair lay listlessly, was pressed against the bars.
"Thanks," said the ticket agent. "I get asked the same old questions so
often, one like yours sort of breaks the monotony. Sorry I can't help
you. She's a woman, and the Lord only knows why women cry. And sometimes
I reckon even He must be a little puzzled. Now, my wife--"
"I think I'll ask her," confided Mr. Magee in a hoarse whisper.
"Oh, I wouldn't," advised the man behind the bars. "It's best to let 'em
alone. They stop quicker if they ain't noticed."
"But she's in trouble," argued Billy Magee.
"And so'll you be, most likely," responded the cynic, "if you interfere.
No, siree! Take my advice. Shoot old Asquewan's rapids in a barrel if
you want to, but keep away from crying women."
The heedless Billy Magee, however, was already moving across the
unscrubbed floor with chivalrous intention.
The girl's trim shoulders no longer heaved so unhappily. Mr. Magee,
approaching, thought himself again in the college yard at dusk, with the
great elms sighing overhead, and the fresh young voices of the glee club
ringing out from the steps of a century-old building. What were the
words they sang so many times?
"Weep no more, my lady,
Oh! weep no more to-day."
He regretted that he could not make use of them. They had always seemed
to him so sad and beautiful. But troubadours, he knew, went out of
fashion long before railway stations came in. So his remark to the young
woman was not at all melodious:
"Can I do anything?"
A portion of the handkerchief was removed, and an eye which, Mr. Magee
noted, was of an admirable blue, peeped out at him. To the gaze of even
a solitary eye, Mr. Magee's aspect was decidedly pleasing. Young
Williams, who posed at the club as a wit, had once said that Billy Magee
came as near to being a magazine artist's idea of the proper hero of a
story as any man could, and at the same time retain the respect and
affection of his fellows. Mr. Magee thought he read approval in the lone
eye of blue. When the lady spoke, however, he hastily revised his
opinion.
"Yes," she said, "you can do something. You can go away--far, far away."
Mr. Magee stiffened. Thus chivalry fared in Upper Asquewan Falls in the
year 1911.
"I beg your pardon," he remarked. "You seemed to be in trouble, and I
thought I might possibly be of some assistance."
The girl removed the entire handkerchief. The other eye proved to be the
same admirable blue--a blue half-way between the shade of her corduroy
suit and that of the jacky's costume in the "See the World--Join the
Navy" poster that served as background to her woe.
"I don't mean to be rude," she explained more gently, "but--I'm crying,
you see, and a girl simply can't look attractive when she cries."
"If I had only been regularly introduced to you, and all that,"
responded Mr. Magee, "I could make a very flattering reply." And a true
one, he added to himself. For even in the faint flickering light of the
station he found ample reason for rejoicing that the bit of cambric was
no longer agonizingly pressed. As yet he had scarcely looked away from
her eyes, but he was dimly aware that up above wisps of golden hair
peeped impudently from beneath a saucy black hat. He would look at those
wisps shortly, he told himself. As soon as he could look away from the
eyes--which was not just yet.
"My grief," said the girl, "is utterly silly and--womanish. I think it
would be best to leave me alone with it. Thank you for your interest.
And--would you mind asking the gentleman who is pressing his face so
feverishly against the bars to kindly close his window?"
"Certainly," replied Mr. Magee. He turned away. As he did so he collided
with a rather excessive lady. She gave the impression of solidity and
bulk; her mouth was hard and knowing. Mr. Magee felt that she wanted to
vote, and that she would say as much from time to time. The lady had a
glittering eye; she put it to its time-honored use and fixed Mr. Magee
with it.
"I was crying, mamma," the girl explained, "and this gentleman inquired
if he could be of any service."
Mamma! Mr. Magee wanted to add his tears to those of the girl. This
frail and lovely damsel in distress owning as her maternal parent a
heavy unnecessary--person! The older woman also had yellow hair, but it
was the sort that suggests the white enamel pallor of a drug store, with
the soda-fountain fizzing and the bottles of perfume ranged in an
odorous row. Mamma! Thus rolled the world along.
"Well, they ain't no use gettin' all worked up for nothing," advised the
unpleasant parent. Mr. Magee was surprised that in her tone there was no
hostility to him--thus belying her looks. "Mebbe the gentleman can
direct us to a good hotel," she added, with a rather stagy smile.
"I'm a stranger here, too," Mr. Magee replied. "I'll interview the man
over there in the cage."
The gentleman referred to was not cheerful in his replies. There was, he
said, Baldpate Inn.
"Oh, yes, Baldpate Inn," repeated Billy Magee with interest.
"Yes, that's a pretty swell place," said the ticket agent. "But it ain't
open now. It's a summer resort. There ain't no place open now but the
Commercial House. And I wouldn't recommend no human being
there--especially no lady who was sad before she ever saw it."
Mr. Magee explained to the incongruous family pair waiting on the bench.
"There's only one hotel," he said, "and I'm told it's not exactly the
place for any one whose outlook on life is not rosy at the moment. I'm
sorry."
"It will do very well," answered the girl, "whatever it is." She smiled
at Billy Magee. "My outlook on life in Upper Asquewan Falls," she said,
"grows rosier every minute. We must find a cab."
She began to gather up her traveling-bags, and Mr. Magee hastened to
assist. The three went out on the station platform, upon which lay a
thin carpet of snowflakes. There the older woman, in a harsh rasping
voice, found fault with Upper Asquewan Falls,--its geography, its public
spirit, its brand of weather. A dejected cab at the end of the platform
stood mourning its lonely lot. In it Mr. Magee placed the large lady and
the bags. Then, while the driver climbed to his seat, he spoke into the
invisible ear of the girl.
"You haven't told me why you cried," he reminded her.
She waved her hand toward the wayside village, the lamps of which shone
sorrowfully through the snow.
"Upper Asquewan Falls," she said, "isn't it reason enough?"
Billy Magee looked; saw a row of gloomy buildings that seemed to list as
the wind blew, a blurred sign "Liquors and Cigars," a street that
staggered away into the dark like a man who had lingered too long at the
emporium back of the sign.
"Are you doomed to stay here long?" he asked.
"Come on, Mary," cried a deep voice from the cab. "Get in and shut the
door. I'm freezing."
"It all depends," said the girl. "Thank you for being so kind and--good
night."
The door closed with a muffled bang, the cab creaked wearily away, and
Mr. Magee turned back to the dim waiting-room.
"Well, what was she crying for?" inquired the ticket agent, when Mr.
Magee stood again at his cell window.
"She didn't think much of your town," responded Magee; "she intimated
that it made her heavy of heart."
"H'm--it ain't much of a place," admitted the man, "though it ain't the
general rule with visitors to burst into tears at sight of it. Yes,
Upper Asquewan is slow, and no mistake. It gets on my nerves sometimes.
Nothing to do but work, work, work, and then lay down and wait for
to-morrow. I used to think maybe some day they'd transfer me down to
Hooperstown--there's moving pictures and such goings-on down there. But
the railroad never notices you--unless you go wrong. Yes, sir, sometimes
I want to clear out of this town myself."
"A natural wanderlust," sympathized Mr. Magee. "You said something just
now about Baldpate Inn--"
"Yes, it's a little more lively in summer, when that's open," answered
the agent; "we get a lot of complaints about trunks not coming, from
pretty swell people, too. It sort of cheers things." His eye roamed with
interest over Mr. Magee's New York attire. "But Baldpate Inn is shut up
tight now. This is nothing but an annex to a graveyard in winter. You
wasn't thinking of stopping off here, was you?"
"Well--I want to see a man named Elijah Quimby," Mr. Magee replied. "Do
you know him?"
"Of course," said the yearner for pastures new, "he's caretaker of the
inn. His house is about a mile out, on the old Miller Road that leads up
Baldpate. Come outside and I'll tell you how to get there."
The two men went out into the whirling snow, and the agent waved a hand
indefinitely up at the night.
"If it was clear," he said, "you could see Baldpate Mountain, over
yonder, looking down on the Falls, sort of keeping an eye on us to make
sure we don't get reckless. And half-way up you'd see Baldpate Inn,
black and peaceful and winter-y. Just follow this street to the third
corner, and turn to your left. Elijah lives in a little house back among
the trees a mile out--there's a gate you'll sure hear creaking on a
night like this."
Billy Magee thanked him, and gathering up his two bags, walked up "Main
Street." A dreary forbidding building at the first corner bore the sign
"Commercial House". Under the white gaslight in the office window three
born pessimists slouched low in hotel chairs, gazing sourly out at the
storm.
"Weep no more, my lady,
Oh! weep no more to-day,"
hummed Mr. Magee cynically under his breath, and glanced up at the
solitary up-stairs window that gleamed yellow in the night.
At a corner on which stood a little shop that advertised "Groceries and
Provisions" he paused.
"Let me see," he pondered. "The lights will be turned off, of course.
Candles. And a little something for the inner man, in case it's the
closed season for cooks."
He went inside, where a weary old woman served him.
"What sort of candles?" she inquired, with the air of one who had an
infinite variety in stock. Mr. Magee remembered that Christmas was near.
"For a Christmas tree," he explained. He asked for two hundred.
"I've only got forty," the woman said. "What's this tree for--the
Orphans' Home?"
With the added burden of a package containing his purchases in the tiny
store, Mr. Magee emerged and continued his journey through the stinging
snow. Upper Asquewan Falls on its way home for supper flitted past him
in the silvery darkness. He saw in the lighted windows of many of the
houses the green wreath of Christmas cheer. Finally the houses became
infrequent, and he struck out on an uneven road that wound upward. Once
he heard a dog's faint bark. Then a carriage lurched by him, and a
strong voice cursed the roughness of the road. Mr. Magee half smiled to
himself as he strode on.
"Don Quixote, my boy," he muttered, "I know how you felt when you moved
on the windmills."
It was not the whir of windmills but the creak of a gate in the storm
that brought Mr. Magee at last to a stop. He walked gladly up the path
to Elijah Quimby's door.
In answer to Billy Magee's gay knock, a man of about sixty years
appeared. Evidently he had just finished supper; at the moment he was
engaged in lighting his pipe. He admitted Mr. Magee into the intimacy of
the kitchen, and took a number of calm judicious puffs on the pipe
before speaking to his visitor. In that interval the visitor cheerily
seized his hand, oblivious of the warm burnt match that was in it. The
match fell to the floor, whereupon the older man cast an anxious glance
at a gray-haired woman who stood beside the kitchen stove.
"My name's Magee," blithely explained that gentleman, dragging in his
bags. "And you're Elijah Quimby, of course. How are you? Glad to see
you." His air was that of one who had known this Quimby intimately, in
many odd corners of the world.
The older man did not reply, but regarded Mr. Magee wonderingly through
white puffs of smoke. His face was kindly, gentle, ineffectual; he
seemed to lack the final "punch" that send men over the line to success;
this was evident in the way his necktie hung, the way his thin hands
fluttered.
"Yes," he admitted at last. "Yes, I'm Quimby."
Mr. Magee threw back his coat, and sprayed with snow Mrs. Quimby's
immaculate floor.
"I'm Magee," he elucidated again, "William Hallowell Magee, the man Hal
Bentley wrote to you about. You got his letter, didn't you?"
Mr. Quimby removed his pipe and forgot to close the aperture as he
stared in amazement.
"Good lord!" he cried, "you don't mean--you've really come."
"What better proof could you ask," said Mr. Magee flippantly, "than my
presence here?"
"Why," stammered Mr. Quimby, "we--we thought it was all a joke."
"Hal Bentley has his humorous moments," agreed Mr. Magee, "but it isn't
his habit to fling his jests into Upper Asquewan Falls."
"And--and you're really going to--" Mr. Quimby could get no further.
"Yes," said Mr. Magee brightly, slipping into a rocking-chair. "Yes, I'm
going to spend the next few months at Baldpate Inn."
Mrs. Quimby, who seemed to have settled into a stout little mound of a
woman through standing too long in the warm presence of her stove, came
forward and inspected Mr. Magee.
"Of all things," she murmured.
"It's closed," expostulated Mr. Quimby; "the inn is closed, young
fellow."
"I know it's closed," smiled Magee. "That's the very reason I'm going to
honor it with my presence. I'm sorry to take you out on a night like
this, but I'll have to ask you to lead me up to Baldpate. I believe
those were Hal Bentley's instructions--in the letter."
Mr. Quimby towered above Mr. Magee, a shirt-sleeved statue of honest
American manhood. He scowled.
"Excuse a plain question, young man," he said, "but what are you hiding
from?"
Mrs. Quimby, in the neighborhood of the stove, paused to hear the reply.
Billy Magee laughed.
"I'm not hiding," he said. "Didn't Bentley explain? Well, I'll try to,
though I'm not sure you'll understand. Sit down, Mr. Quimby. You are
not, I take it, the sort of man to follow closely the light and
frivolous literature of the day."
"What's that?" inquired Mr. Quimby.
"You don't read," continued Mr. Magee, "the sort of novels that are sold
by the pound in the department stores. Now, if you had a daughter--a
fluffy daughter inseparable from a hammock in the summer--she could help
me explain. You see--I write those novels. Wild thrilling tales for the
tired business man's tired wife--shots in the night, chases after
fortunes, Cupid busy with his arrows all over the place! It's good fun,
and I like to do it. There's money in it."
"Is there?" asked Mr. Quimby with a show of interest.
"Considerable," replied Mr. Magee. "But now and then I get a longing to
do something that will make the critics sit up--the real thing, you
know. The other day I picked up a newspaper and found my latest
brain-child advertised as 'the best fall novel Magee ever wrote'. It got
on my nerves--I felt like a literary dressmaker, and I could see my
public laying down my fall novel and sighing for my early spring styles
in fiction. I remembered that once upon a time a critic advised me to go
away for ten years to some quiet spot, and think. I decided to do it.
Baldpate Inn is the quiet spot."
"You don't mean," gasped Mr. Quimby, "that you're going to stay there
ten years?"
"Bless you, no," said Mr. Magee. "Critics exaggerate. Two months will
do. They say I am a cheap melodramatic ranter. They say I don't go deep.
They say my thinking process is a scream. I'm afraid they're right. Now,
I'm going to go up to Baldpate Inn, and think. I'm going to get away
from melodrama. I'm going to do a novel so fine and literary that Henry
Cabot Lodge will come to me with tears in his eyes and ask me to join
his bunch of self-made Immortals. I'm going to do all this up there at
the inn--sitting on the mountain and looking down on this little old
world as Jove looked down from Olympus."
"I don't know who you mean," objected Mr. Quimby.
"He was a god--the god of the fruit-stand men," explained Magee.
"Picture me, if you can, depressed by the overwhelming success of my
latest brain-child. Picture me meeting Hal Bentley in a Forty-fourth
Street club and asking him for the location of the lonesomest spot on
earth. Hal thought a minute. 'I've got it', he said, 'the lonesomest
spot that's happened to date is a summer resort in mid-winter. It makes
Crusoe's island look like Coney on a warm Sunday afternoon in
comparison.' The talk flowed on, along with other things. Hal told me
his father owned Baldpate Inn, and that you were an old friend of his
who would be happy for the entire winter over the chance to serve him.
He happened to have a key to the place--the key to the big front door, I
guess, from the weight of it--and he gave it to me. He also wrote you to
look after me. So here I am."
Mr. Quimby ran his fingers through his white hair.
"Here I am," repeated Billy Magee, "fleeing from the great glitter known
as Broadway to do a little rational thinking in the solitudes. It's
getting late, and I suggest that we start for Baldpate Inn at once."
"This ain't exactly--regular," Mr. Quimby protested. "No, it ain't what
you might call a frequent occurrence. I'm glad to do anything I can for
young Mr. Bentley, but I can't help wondering what his father will say.
And there's a lot of things you haven't took into consideration."
"There certainly is, young man," remarked Mrs. Quimby, bustling forward.
"How are you going to keep warm in that big barn of a place?"
"The suites on the second floor," said Mr. Magee, "are, I hear, equipped
with fireplaces. Mr. Quimby will keep me supplied with fuel from the
forest primeval, for which service he will receive twenty dollars a
week."
"And light?" asked Mrs. Quimby.
"For the present, candles. I have forty in that package. Later, perhaps
you can find me an oil lamp. Oh, everything will be provided for."
"Well," remarked Mr. Quimby, looking in a dazed fashion at his wife, "I
reckon I'll have to talk it over with ma."
The two retired to the next room, and Mr. Magee fixed his eyes on a "God
Bless Our Home" motto while he awaited their return. Presently they
reappeared.
"Was you thinking of eating?" inquired Mrs. Quimby sarcastically, "while
you stayed up there?"
"I certainly was," smiled Mr. Magee. "For the most part I will prepare
my own meals from cans and--er--jars--and such pagan sources. But now
and then you, Mrs. Quimby, are going to send me something cooked as no
other woman in the county can cook it. I can see it in your eyes. In my
poor way I shall try to repay you."
He continued to smile into Mrs. Quimby's broad cheerful face. Mr. Magee
had the type of smile that moves men to part with ten until Saturday,
and women to close their eyes and dream of Sir Launcelot. Mrs. Quimby
could not long resist. She smiled back. Whereupon Billy Magee sprang to
his feet.
"It's all fixed," he cried. "We'll get on splendidly. And now--for
Baldpate Inn."
"Not just yet," said Mrs. Quimby. "I ain't one to let anybody go up to
Baldpate Inn unfed. I 'spose we're sort o' responsible for you, while
you're up here. You just set right down and I'll have your supper hot
and smoking on the table in no time."
Mr. Magee entered into no dispute on this point, and for half an hour he
was the pleased recipient of advice, philosophy, and food. When he had
assured Mrs. Quimby that he had eaten enough to last him the entire two
months he intended spending at the inn, Mr. Quimby came in, attired in a
huge "before the war" ulster, and carrying a lighted lantern.
"So you're going to sit up there and write things," he commented. "Well,
I reckon you'll be left to yourself, all right."
"I hope so," responded Mr. Magee. "I want to be so lonesome I'll sob
myself to sleep every night. It's the only road to immortality. Good-by,
Mrs. Quimby. In my fortress on the mountain I shall expect an occasional
culinary message from you." He took her plump hand; this motherly little
woman seemed the last link binding him to the world of reality.
"Good-by," smiled Mrs. Quimby. "Be careful of matches."
Mr. Quimby led the way with the lantern, and presently they stepped out
upon the road. The storm had ceased, but it was still very dark. Far
below, in the valley, twinkled the lights of Upper Asquewan Falls.
"By the way, Quimby," remarked Mr. Magee, "is there a girl in your town
who has blue eyes, light hair, and the general air of a queen out
shopping?"
"Light hair," repeated Quimby. "There's Sally Perry. She teaches in the
Methodist Sunday-school."
"No," said Mr. Magee. "My description was poor, I'm afraid. This one I
refer to, when she weeps, gives the general effect of mist on the sea at
dawn. The Methodists do not monopolize her."
"I read books, and I read newspapers," said Mr. Quimby, "but a lot of
your talk I don't understand."
"The critics," replied Billy Magee, "could explain. My stuff is only for
low-brows. Lead on, Mr. Quimby."
Mr. Quimby stood for a moment in dazed silence. Then he turned, and the
yellow of his lantern fell on the dazzling snow ahead. Together the two
climbed Baldpate Mountain.