THE SIGN OF THE OPEN WINDOW
Undecided, Mr. Magee looked toward the kitchen door, from behind which
came the sound of men's voices. Then he smiled, turned and led Mr.
Peters back into the office. The Hermit of Baldpate fairly trembled with
news.
"Since I broke in on you yesterday morning," he said in a low tone as he
took a seat on the edge of a chair, "one thing has followed another so
fast that I'm a little dazed. I can't just get the full meaning of it
all."
"You have nothing on me there, Peters," Magee answered. "I can't
either."
"Well," went on the hermit, "as I say, through all this downpour of
people, including women, I've hung on to one idea. I'm working for you.
You give me my wages. You're the boss. That's why I feel I ought to give
what information I got to you."
"Yes, yes," Mr. Magee agreed impatiently. "Go ahead."
"Where you find women," Peters continued, "there you find things beyond
understanding. History--"
"Get to the point."
"Well--yes. This afternoon I was looking round through the kitchen, sort
of reconnoitering, you might say, and finding out what I have to work
with, for just between us, when some of this bunch goes I'll easily be
persuaded to come back and cook for you. I was hunting round in the big
refrigerator with a candle, thinking maybe some little token of food had
been left over from last summer's rush--something in a can that time can
not wither nor custom stale, as the poet says--and away up on the top
shelf, in the darkest corner, I found a little package."
"Quick, Peters," cried Magee, "where is that package now?"
"I'm coming to that," went on the hermit, not to be hurried. "What
struck me first about the thing was it didn't have any dust on it.
'Aha,' I says, or words to that effect. I opened it. What do you think
was in it?"
"I don't have to think--I know," said Magee. "Money. In the name of
heaven, Peters, tell me where you've got the thing."
"Just a minute, Mr. Magee. Let me tell it my way. You're right. There
was money in that package. Lots of it. Enough to found a university, or
buy a woman's gowns for a year. I was examining it careful-like when a
shadow came in the doorway. I looked up--"
"Who?" asked Magee breathlessly.
"That little blinky-eyed Professor Bolton was standing there, most
owlish and interested. He came into the refrigerator. 'That package you
have in your hand, Peters,' he says, 'belongs to me. I put it in cold
storage so it would keep. I'll take it now.' Well, Mr. Magee, I'm a
peaceful man. I could have battered that professor into a learned sort
of jelly if I'd wanted to. But I'm a great admirer of Mr. Carnegie, on
account of the library, and I go in for peace. I knew it wasn't exactly
the thing, but--"
"You gave him the package?"
"That's hardly the way I would put it, Mr. Magee. I made no outcry or
resistance when he took it. 'I'm just a cook,' I says, 'in this house. I
ain't the trusted old family retainer that retains its fortunes like a
safety deposit vault.' So I let go the bundle. It was weak of me, I
know, but I sort of got the habit of giving up money, being married so
many years."
"Peters," said Mr. Magee, "I'm sorry your grip was so insecure, but I'm
mighty glad you came to me with this matter."
"He told me I wasn't to mention it to anybody," replied the hermit, "but
as I say, I sort of look on it that we were here first, and if our
guests get to chasing untold wealth up and down the place, we ought to
let each other in on it."
"Correct," answered Magee. "You are a valuable man, Peters. I want you
to know that I appreciate the way you have acted in this affair." Four
shadowy figures tramped in through the dining-room door. "I should say,"
he continued, "that the menu you propose for dinner will prove most
gratifying."
"What--oh--yes, sir," said Peters. "Is that all?"
"Quite," smiled Magee. "Unless--just a minute, this may concern you--on
my word, there's another new face at Baldpate."
He stood up, and in the light of the fire met Hayden. Now he saw that
the face of the latest comer was scheming and weak, and that under a
small blond mustache a very cruel mouth sought to hide. The stranger
gazed at Magee with an annoyance plainly marked.
"A friend of mine--Mr.--er--Downs, Mr. Magee," muttered Bland.
"Oh, come now," smiled Magee. "Let's tell our real names. I heard you
greeting your friend a minute ago. How are you, Mr. Hayden?"
He held out his hand. Hayden looked him angrily in the eyes.
"Who the devil are you?" he asked.
"Do you mean," said Magee, "that you didn't catch the name. It's
Magee--William Hallowell Magee. I hold a record hereabouts, Mr. Hayden.
I spent nearly an hour at Baldpate Inn--alone. You see, I was the first
of our amiable little party to arrive. Let me make you welcome. Are you
staying to dinner? You must."
"I'm not," growled Hayden.
"Don't believe him, Mr. Magee," sneered the mayor, "he doesn't always
say what he means. He's going to stay, all right."
"Yes, you'd better, Mr. Hayden," advised Bland.
"Huh--delighted, I'm sure," snapped Hayden. He strolled over to the
wall, and in the light of the fire examined a picture nonchalantly.
"The pride of our inn," Mr. Magee, following, explained pleasantly, "the
admiral. It is within these very walls in summer that he plays his
famous game of solitaire."
Hayden wheeled quickly, and looked Magee in the eyes. A flush crossed
his face, leaving it paler than before. He turned away without speaking.
"Peters," said Magee, "you heard what Mr. Hayden said. An extra plate at
dinner, please. I must leave you for a moment, gentlemen." He saw that
their eyes followed him eagerly--full of suspicion, menacing. "We shall
all meet again, very shortly."
Hayden slipped quickly between Magee and the stairs. The latter faced
him smilingly, reflecting as he did so that he could love this man but
little.
"Who are you?" said Hayden again. "What is your business here?"
Magee laughed outright, and turned to the other men.
"How unfortunate," he said, "this gentleman does not know the manners
and customs of Baldpate in winter. Those are questions, Mr. Hayden, that
we are never impolite enough to ask of one another up here." He moved on
toward the stairs, and reluctantly Hayden got out of his path. "I am
very happy," he added, "that you are to be with us at dinner. It will
not take you long to accustom yourself to our ways, I'm sure."
He ran up the stairs and passed through number seven out upon the
balcony. Trudging through the snow, he soon sighted the room of
Professor Bolton. And as he did so, a little shiver that was not due to
atmospheric conditions ran down his spine. For one of the professor's
windows stood wide open, bidding a welcome to the mountain storm. Peters
had spoken the truth. Once more that tight little, right little package
was within Mr. Magee's ken.
He stepped through the open window, and closed it after him. By the
table sat Professor Bolton, wrapped in coats and blankets, reading by
the light of a solitary candle. The book was held almost touching his
nose--a reminder of the spectacles that were gone. As Magee entered the
old man looked up, and a very obvious expression of fright crossed his
face.
"Good evening, Professor," said Magee easily. "Don't you find it rather
cool with the window open?"
"Mr. Magee," replied the much wrapped gentleman, "I am that rather
disturbing progressive--a fresh air devotee. I feel that God's good air
was meant to be breathed, not barricaded from our bodies."
"Perhaps," suggested Magee, "I should have left the window open?"
The old man regarded him narrowly.
"I have no wish to be inhospitable," he replied. "But--if you please--"
"Certainly," answered Magee. He threw open the window. The professor
held up his book.
"I was passing the time before dinner with my pleasant old companion,
Montaigne. Mr. Magee, have you ever read his essay on liars?"
"Never," said Magee. "But I do not blame you for brushing up on it at
the present time, Professor. I have come to apologize. Yesterday morning
I referred in a rather unpleasant way to a murder in the chemical
laboratory at one of our universities. I said that the professor of
chemistry was missing. This morning's paper, which I secured from Mr.
Peters, informs me that he has been apprehended."
"You need not have troubled to tell me," said the old man. He smiled his
bleak smile.
"I did you an injustice," went on Magee.
"Let us say no more of it," pleaded Professor Bolton.
Mr. Magee walked about the room. Warily the professor turned so that the
other was at no instant at his back. He looked so helpless, so little,
so ineffectual, that Mr. Magee abandoned his first plan of leaping upon
him there in the silence. By more subtle means than this must his
purpose be attained.
"I suppose," he said, "your love of fresh air accounts for the strolls
on the balcony at all hours of the night?"
The old man merely blinked at him.
"I mustn't stop," Magee continued. "I just wanted to make my apology,
that's all. It was unjust of me. Murder--that is hardly in your line. By
the way, were you by any chance in my room this morning, Professor
Bolton?"
Silence.
"Pardon me," remarked the professor at last, "if I do not answer. In
this very essay on--on liars, Montaigne has expressed it so well. 'And
how much is a false speech less sociable than silence.' I am a sociable
man."
"Of course," smiled Magee. He stood looking down at the frail old
scholar before him, and considered. Of what avail a scuffle there in
that chill room? The package was no doubt safely hidden in a corner he
could not quickly find. No he must wait, and watch.
"Good-by, until dinner," he said, "and may you find much in your wise
companion's book to justify your conduct."
He went out through the open window, and in another moment stood just
outside Miss Norton's room. She put a startled head out at his knock.
"Oh, it's you," she said. "I can't invite you in. You might learn
terrible secrets of the dressing-table--mamma is bedecking herself for
dinner. Has anything happened?"
"Throw something over your head, Juliet," smiled Magee, "the balcony is
waiting for you."
She was at his side in a moment, and they walked briskly along the
shadowy white floor.
"I know who has the money," said Magee softly. "Simply through a turn of
luck, I know. I realize that my protestations of what I am going to do
have bored you. But it looks very much to me as if that package would be
in your hands very soon."
She did not reply.
"And when I have got it, and have given it to you--if I do," he
continued, "what then?"
"Then," she answered, "I must go away--very quickly. And no one must
know, or they will try to stop me."
"And after that?"
"The deluge," she laughed without mirth.
Up above them the great trees of Baldpate Mountain waved their black
arms constantly as though sparring with the storm. At the foot of the
buried roadway they could see the lamps of Upper Asquewan Falls; under
those lamps prosaic citizens were hurrying home with the supper
groceries through the night. And not one of those citizens was within
miles of guessing that up on the balcony of Baldpate Inn a young man had
seized a young woman's hand, and was saying wildly: "Beautiful girl--I
love you."
Yet that was exactly what Billy Magee was doing. The girl had turned her
face away.
"You've known me just two days," she said.
"If I can care this much in two days," he said, "think--but that's old,
isn't it? Sometime soon I'm going to say to you: 'Whose girl are you?'
and you're going to look up at me with a little heaven for two in your
eyes and say: 'I'm Billy Magee's girl.' So before we go any further I
must confess everything--I must tell you who this Billy Magee is--this
man you're going to admit you belong to, my dear."
"You read the future glibly," she replied. "Are your prophecies true, I
wonder?"
"Absolutely. Some time ago--on my soul, it was only yesterday--I asked
if you had read a certain novel called _The Lost Limousine_, and you
said you had, and that--it wasn't sincere. Well, I wrote it--"
"Oh!" cried the girl.
"Yes," said Magee, "and I've done others like it. Oh, yes, my muse has
been a _nouveau riche_ lady in a Worth gown, my ambition a big red
motor-car. I've been a 'scramble a cent, mister' troubadour beckoning
from the book-stalls. It was good fun writing those things, and it
brought me more money than was good for me. I'm not ashamed of them;
they were all right as a beginning in the game. But the other day--I
thought an advertisement did the trick--I turned tired of that sort, and
I decided to try the other kind--the real kind. I thought it was an
advertisement that did it--but I see now it was because you were just a
few days away."
"Don't tell me," whispered the girl, "that you came up here to--to--"
"Yes," smiled Magee, "I came up here to forget forever the world's giddy
melodrama, the wild chase for money through deserted rooms, shots in the
night, cupid in the middle distance. I came here to do--literature--if
it's in me to do it."
The girl leaned limply against the side of Baldpate Inn.
"Oh, the irony of it!" she cried.
"I know," he said, "it's ridiculous. I think all this is meant just
for--temptation. I shall be firm. I'll remember your parable of the
blind girl--and the lamp that was not lighted. I'll do the real stuff.
So that when you say--as you certainly must some day--'I'm Billy Magee's
girl' you can say it proudly."
"I'm sure," she said softly, "that if I ever do say it--oh, no, I didn't
say I would"--for he had seized her hands quickly--"if I ever do say
it--it will certainly be proudly. But now--you don't even know my
name--my right one. You don't know what I do, nor where I come from, nor
what I want with this disgusting bundle of money. I sort of feel, you
know--that this is in the air at Baldpate, even in the winter time. No
sooner have the men come than they begin to talk of--love--to whatever
girls they find here--on this very balcony--down there under the trees.
And the girls listen, for--it's in the air, that's all. Then autumn
comes, and everybody laughs, and forgets. May not our autumn come--when
I go away?"
"Never," cried Magee. "This is no summer hotel affair to me. It's a real
in winter and summer love, my dear--in spring and fall--and when you go
away, I'm going too, about ten feet behind."
"Yes," she laughed, "they talk that way at Baldpate--the last weeks of
summer. It's part of the game." They had come to the side of the hotel
on which was the annex, and the girl stopped and pointed. "Look!" she
whispered breathlessly.
In a window of the annex had appeared for a moment a flickering yellow
light. But only for a moment.
"I know," said Mr. Magee. "There's somebody in there. But that isn't
important in comparison. This is no summer affair, dear. Look to the
thermometer for proof. I love you. And when you go away, I shall
follow."
"And the book--"
"I have found better inspiration than Baldpate Inn."
They walked along for a time in silence.
"You forget," said the girl, "you only know who has the money."
"I will get it," he answered confidently. "Something tells me I will.
Until I do, I am content to say no more."
"Good-by," said the girl. She stood in the window of her room, while a
harsh voice called "That you, dearie?" from inside. "And I may add," she
smiled, "that in my profession--a following is considered
quite--desirable."
She disappeared, and Mr. Magee, after a few minutes in his room,
descended again to the office. In the center of the room, Elijah Quimby
and Hayden stood face to face.
"What is it, Quimby?" asked Magee.
"I just ran up to see how things were going," Quimby replied, "and I
find him here."
"Our latest guest," smiled Magee.
"I was just reminding Mr. Hayden," Quimby said, his teeth set, an angry
light in his eyes, "that the last time we met he ordered me from his
office. I told you, Mr. Magee, that the Suburban Railway once promised
to make use of my invention. Then Mr. Kendrick went away--and this man
took charge. When I came around to the offices again--he laughed at me.
When I came the second time, he called me a loafer and ordered me out."
He paused, and faced Hayden again.
"I've grown bitter, here on the mountain," he said, "as I've thought
over what you and men like you said to me--as I've thought of what might
have been--and what was--yes, I've grown pretty bitter. Time after time
I've gone over in my mind that scene in your office. As I've sat here
thinking you've come to mean to me all the crowd that made a fool of me.
You've come to mean to me all the crowd that said 'The public be damned'
in my ear. I haven't ever forgot--how you ordered me out of your
office."
"Well?" asked Hayden.
"And now," Quimby went on, "I find you trespassing in a hotel left in my
care--the tables are turned. I ought to show you the door. I ought to
put you out."
"Try it," sneered Hayden.
"No," answered Quimby, "I ain't going to do it. Maybe it's because I've
grown timid, brooding over my failure. And maybe it's because I know
who's got the seventh key."
Hayden made no reply. No one stirred for a minute, and then Quimby moved
away, and went out through the dining-room door.