A BRIGHT PARTICULAR STAR
Wire from The Author, New York City, to Miss S. Smith, Hyndsville,
South Carolina:
Photos received. Furniture noted. It's pretty, but is it
art?
Wire from Miss Smith to The Author:
What is Art?
Wire from The Author:
Sometimes an invention of the devil. Is your stuff Madison
Avenue or Grand Rapids? Reply.
Wire from Miss Smith:
Madison Avenue and Grand Rapids hadn't been invented when
Hynds House was furnished.
Wire from The Author:
Maybe not, but mightn't be same furniture. Have been stung
before. Can't be genuine. Too much of it.
Wire from Miss Smith:
Please yourself.
Wire from The Author:
Coming to investigate. Won't sleep in anything but pineapple
bed; won't sit in anything but carved chair; can't pray
without prie-dieu. If spurious will publicly gibbet you and
probably burn your house down. Hold southwest room my
arrival.
Alicia laughed, and cuddled those yellow slips.
"I knew this was an enchanted place!" she cried. "Oh, Sophy, it's
working! He's coming, he's coming, and he's the biggest ever, and
he's going to _stay_! Sophy, think of the advertising!"
"He will probably be detestable. Geniuses are generally horrid to
live with. And there will be something the matter with his
digestion; there is always something the matter with their
digestion."
"From swallowing all the flattery shoveled upon them, poor dears,"
Alicia explained charitably. "Don't worry about his digestion: leave
it to Mary Magdalen's waffles. Hooray! Hynds House stock is
booming!"
It was.
From the head of our firm:
_My dear Miss Smith_:
I have your interesting letter and the delightful
photographs, which have so completely charmed Mrs.
Westmacote and me that we have decided it wouldn't be good
business to miss Hynds House on our trip South this year.
Mrs. Westmacote asks if you could also accommodate a cousin
of hers, Miss Emmeline Phelps-Parsons, a lady deeply
interested in the colonial homes of America.
You must allow me heartily to congratulate you upon your
great good fortune in falling heir to such a wonderful old
place; and to wish you many happy and prosperous years in
it.
I shall telegraph you when to expect us. With all good
wishes,
Yours faithfully,
GEORGE PEABODY WESTMACOTE.
Letter from Miss Emmeline Phelps-Parsons, of Boston:
_Dear Miss Smith_:
My cousin Mrs. Westmacote, whom I have been visiting, showed
me your letter and the enchanting photographs of your house
which you were kind enough to send Mr. Westmacote. Hynds
House is just the one place I have long been looking
for!--an unspoiled colonial house, with historic
associations!
It is perfect! I must see with my own eyes those Chelsea
figures on your drawing-room mantel, the luster and
Washington jugs in the dining-room, and the cabinets in the
hall.
Sincerely yours,
EMMELINE PHELPS-PARSONS.
P.S. I hope it is really true that there is an Influence in
Hynds House? I do so greatly long to come in contact with
the Occult and the Unknown!
"Somewhere on the firing-line of fifty," mused Alicia. "A lady with
a soul. Don't you hear dear old Boston calling you, Sophy? Here's
one to put Miss Martha Hopkins's light under a bushel basket!"
We had several other inquirers; and chose from them Mr. Chetwynd
Harrison-Gore and his daughter, English folk "doing" America and
delighted to include a Carolina colonial house in their trip; a
suffrage leader, whose throat needed a rest; and Morenas, the
illustrator. It seemed that Hynds House offered to each one
something that had been craved for.
The Author pounced upon us two or three days before we expected him,
to take stock after his own fashion. I have heard The Author
commended for "the humor of his rare smile and the keen, kind
intellectuality of his remarkable eyes." Well, the smile was rare
enough; and of course there isn't any doubt about the man's
intellectuality. For the rest, he proved to be a tall, lanky,
stooping person, with a thin tanned face, outstanding ears, a high
nose, and long, blue-gray eyes half-hidden under drooping lids and
behind glasses. His hair was just hair. And he had the sort of
mustache that bristled like a cat's when he twisted his lip.
So far as monetary success, and efficacious press-agents, and the
adulation, admiration, emulation, and envy of his contemporaries
went, he had nothing to complain of. He was lionized, quoted,
courted, flattered, reviewed, viewed through rose-colored
spectacles; and disillusioned, discontented, cynical, selfish, and,
of course, most horribly bored. He was gun-shy of women; he
suspected them of wanting to marry him. He was wary of men; he
suspected them of wanting to exploit him. He loathed children, who
were generally obstreperous and unnecessary editions of parents he
didn't admire. He didn't even trust the beautiful works of men's
hands. They, even they, were too often faked! If you had dug up the
indubitable mummy of the first Pharaoh from under the oldest of the
pyramids, The Author would have turned him over on his back and
hunted for the trade-mark of The Modern Mummy-makers: London, Paris,
and New York; Catalogue on Request.
He stalked through Hynds House with slitted eyes and bristling
mustache--business of silent sleuth on the trail of the
furniture-fakir! He'd pause at each door and with an eagle glance
take a comprehensive survey; then, defensively, offensively, he
examined things in detail. From our rambling attics to our vast and
cavernous cellars did he go; and not a word crossed his lips until
he had completed this conandoyley examination. Then:
"Telegraph form if you have one, please," he requested briefly. "I
wish to wire for my car. Put Johnson in the room next mine.
Johnson's my secretary." He looked at Alicia, reflectively. "Amiable
ass, Johnson," he volunteered. Then he went over to the tiled
fireplace--we were in the library--and bent worshipfully before it.
"The finest bit of tile-work on this continent," he said, in a
hushed voice. "Absolutely perfect. And it belongs to a woman named
Smith!"
"We know just how you feel about it," Alicia told him
sympathetically, while The Author turned red to his ears. "I have
often felt like that myself, when something I particularly wanted
was bought by somebody I was sure couldn't properly appreciate it. I
dare say I was mistaken," admitted Alicia, "just as mistaken as you
are now in thinking that Sophy and I aren't worthy of those tiles.
We are--all the more so because we never before had anything like
them."
The spoiled darling of success looked at us intently; and a most
curious change came over his clever, bad-tempered face. His eyes are
as bright as ice, and have somewhat the same cold light in them. Now
a thaw set in and melted them, and a mottled red spread over his
sallow cheeks.
"Miss Gaines," he said, abruptly, "your doll-baby face does your
intelligence an injustice--Miss Smith, I apologize." And before the
astonished and indignant Alicia could summon a withering retort, he
added heartily: "This whole place is quite the real thing, you
know--almost too good to be true and too true to be good. Would you
mind telling me how you happened to think of letting me in on it,
eh?"
"Because we knew it _was_ the real thing," Alicia replied,
truthfully.
"Do you know,"--The Author was plainly pleased--"that that is one of
the very nicest things that's ever been said to me? Because I really
_do_ know above a bit about genuine stuff."
"It must be a great relief to you to hear something pleasant about
yourself that is also something true," I said with sympathy. The
Author grinned like a hyena, and Alicia giggled. "Because you must
be bored to extinction, having to listen to all sorts of people
ascribe to you all sorts of virtues that no one man could possibly
possess and remain human." I was remembering some of the fulsome
flubdub I'd read about him.
"Hark to her!" grinned The Author. "What! you don't believe all the
nice things you've read about me?"
"I do not."
"You don't in the least look or write like a dehumanized saint, you
know," supplemented Alicia, laughing.
"What _do_ I look like, then?" He sat on the edge of a table and
cuddled a bony knee. Behind his glasses his eyes began to twinkle.
"You look more like yourself than you do like your photographs,"
decided Alicia.
The Author threw up his hands.
"And now, tell me this, please: How, when, where, and from whom, did
you acquire the supreme art of aiding and abetting an old house to
grow young again without losing its character?"
"We were born," Alicia explained, "with the inherent desire to do
just what we have been able to do here. This house gave us our big
chance. But it wouldn't have been so--so in keeping with itself,"
she was feeling for the right words, "if it hadn't been for Mr.
Nicholas Jelnik."
The Author pricked up his intellectual ears. His eyes narrowed.
"Jelnik? I knew a Jelnik, an Austrian alienist; met him at dinner at
the American Ambassador's in Vienna; quiet, unassuming, pleasant
man, and one of the greatest doctors in Europe."
"Mr. Jelnik is Doctor Jelnik's son."
"What!" shrieked The Author. And with unfeigned amazement: "In the
name of high heaven, what is Jelnik's son doing _here_?"
"Mr. Jelnik's mother was a Miss Hynds. She met and married your
doctor abroad."
That sixth sense possessed by him to an unusual degree, warned him
that he was on the trail of Copy.
"May I ask questions?" he demanded.
"Of course."
"You inherited this property from an old aunt, I believe?"
"She wasn't my aunt, really. She married my mother's uncle, Johnny
Scarlett."
"I see. And Jelnik's mother was a Miss Hynds. How long has he been
here?"
"For some time before we came."
"Near neighbor of yours?"
"Yes," Alicia put in; "and Doctor Richard Geddes is our neighbor on
the other side. His grandmother was a Miss Hynds."
"Pardon a writer-man's curiosity," begged The Author, smiling. "But
this house is unusual, very unusual. While I am here I shall look up
its history. It should make good copy."
Having a pretty shrewd idea of The Author's powers of finding out
what he wanted to find out, we thought it better that he should hear
that history, as we knew it. If the mystery had ever been solved,
the tragedy of Hynds House would have had but passing interest for
The Author. But the undiscovered piqued and puzzled him and aroused
his combative egotism.
From the pictured face of Freeman--dark, stern, uncommunicative--he
trotted back to the drawing room to look again at the boyish face of
little Richard leaning against his pretty mother's knees; at the
haughty, handsome face of James Hampden; and at beautiful dark
Jessamine, who had a long black curl straying across the shoulder of
a blue frock, and a curled red lip, and a breast of snow.
"Freeman was not a crook; his face is hard, stern, bigoted,
secretive, but honest. Yet if he didn't do it himself what was he
trying to tell when death cut off his wind? If he did it, where did
he hide the plunder? Here in this house? His family must have known
every nook and cranny as well as he did himself, and he could be
sure they'd pull it to pieces in the search that would ensue.
"If Richard were the thief, to whom did he give the loot? If the
gems had been put upon the market, some trace of them must have been
discovered. Remains: Who got them? Where did they go?"
"That's what the unhappy people in this house asked a century ago,
and there was no answer," I remarked, soberly.
"And that poor woman Jessamine went mad trying to solve it!" he
said, looking at her with commiseration. And after a pause: "And so
the lady who left her husband's grandniece the house of her
forebears was Freeman's daughter: and the Austrian doctor's son is
Richard's great-great-grandson! I meet Jelnik _père_ in Vienna, and
come to Hyndsville, South Carolina, to meet Jelnik _fils_. H'm!
Decidedly, the situation has nice possibilities!"
Whereupon he took note-book and fountain-pen from his coat pocket
and in the most composed manner began to jot down the outstanding
features of Hynds House history.
"It will give me something to puzzle over while I'm here," he
remarked, complacently. It did!
The Author approved of Hynds House. It had all the charm of a new
and quaint field of exploration and research, and there was nothing
in it to offend his hypercritical judgment. I have a shrewd
suspicion that Mary Magdalen's cooking played no mean part in his
satisfaction. His prowess as a trencherman aroused the admiration
and respect of Fernolia, who waited on table. Fernolia had learned
to admire herself in her smart apron and cap, and to serve
creditably enough. Only twice did she fall from grace; once was the
morning The Author broke his own record for waffles. Fernolia,
excited and astonished, placed the last platter before him, raised
the cover with a flourish, and remarked with deep meaning:
"_Dem's all!_"
The second time was when we had what Mary Magdalen calls "mulatto
rice," which is a dish built upon a firm foundation of small strips
of bacon, onion, stewed tomatoes, and rice, and a later and last
addition of deliciously browned country sausages. Fernolia, beaming
upon The Author hospitably, broke her parole:
"You ain't called to skimp yo'self none on dat rice," she told him
confidentially. "De cook done put yo' name in de pot _big_. She say
she glad we-all got man in de house to 'preciate vittles. Yes-_suh_,
Ma'y Magdalen aim to make you bust yo' buttonholes whilst you hab de
chanst."
I am told that The Author always makes a great hit when he tells
that on himself, and is considered tremendously clever because he
can imitate Fernolia's soft South Carolina drawl.
Mr. Nicholas Jelnik, whom he managed to meet within the week,
aroused The Author's professional interest. For once his tried and
tested powers of turning other people's minds inside out failed
utterly. His innocent-sounding queries, his adroit leads, were
smilingly turned aside. The defense, so far as Mr. Jelnik was
concerned, was ridiculously simple: he didn't want to talk about
himself and he didn't do it.
He was perfectly willing to talk, when the humor seized him, and he
did talk, brilliantly, wittily, freely, and impersonally. The
egoistic "I" was conspicuous by its absence. And while he talked you
could see the agile antennæ of The Author's winged mind feeling
after the soul-string that might lead him through the mazes of this
unusual character. That he could be deftly diverted filled The
Author with chagrin mingled with wonder.
He manoeuvered for an invitation to the gray cottage and secured
it with suspicious ease; called, and had a glass of most excellent
wine in his host's simplest of bachelor living-rooms; made the
closer acquaintance of Boris--he didn't care for dogs--and of
self-contained, dark-faced Daoud, Mr. Jelnik's East Indian
man-servant; and came home dissatisfied and determined. He scented
"copy," and a born writer after copy is, next to an Apache after a
scalp or a Dyak after his enemy's head, the most ruthless of created
beings. He will pick his mother's naked soul to pieces, bore into
his wife's living brain, dissect his daughter's quivering heart,
tear across his sister's mind, rip up his father's life and his best
friend's character, lay bare the tomb itself, and make for himself
an ink of tears and blood that he may write what he finds. Of such
is the kingdom of Genius.
And in the meantime the wondrous news that The Author himself was
staying at Hynds House, percolated through Hyndsville and soaked to
the bone. The Author was too big a figure to be ignored, even by
South Carolina people. Something had to be done. But how shall one
become acquainted with a notoriously unfriendly and gun-shy
celebrity, a personage of such note that every utterance means
newspaper space; and at the same time manage utterly to ignore and
cast into outer darkness the people with whom the great one is
staying?
The town felt itself put upon its mettle. The first move was made by
Miss Martha Hopkins. It was understood that if anybody could clear
the way, carry a difficult position with skill and aplomb, that
somebody was Miss Martha Hopkins.
She didn't bear down directly upon The Author: that would have been
crude. She opened her campaign by a flank movement upon Alicia and
me, in her capacity of secretary and treasurer of the missionary
society.
Miss Hopkins sailed into Hynds House on a perfect afternoon, to
discuss with us a proposed rummage-sale which was to benefit the
heathen. She wasn't really worrying about the heathen: he had all
the rest of his benighted life to get himself saved in, hadn't he?
All the while she sat there and talked about him, she was really
loaded to the muzzle with pertinent remarks to affluent authors.
She had come with the hope of chancing upon the great man himself;
and, failing that, she meant to pump Alicia and me of enough
material to, say, enable her to use a part of her stock of pet
adjectives in the paper she would prepare for the next meeting of
the literary society. She had a pretty stock of adjectives--plump,
purple words like _lyric_, and _liquid_, and _plastic_, and
_subtile_, and _poignancy_, with every now and then a _chiaoscuro_
thrown in for good measure; and a whole melting-pot full of "rare
emotional experiences," "art that was almost intuitive in its
passion, so subtly did it"--oh, do all sorts of things!--and
"handling the plastic outlines of the theme with rare emotional
skill and mastery of technique," "purest lyricism lifted to heights
of poignancy,"--all that sort of stuff, you know. Next time a
writer, or, better still, a fiddler or a pianist comes to your town,
look in your home paper the morning after, and you'll see it.
As it happened, The Author was not at home. His secretary had
arrived a day or two before, and after unloading a systemful of copy
upon that faithful beast of burden, The Author had given himself a
half-holiday with old Riedriech, who knew quite enough about old
furniture to win his interest and affection.
Miss Hopkins, then, had Alicia and me to herself. Sedately we
discussed rummage-sales, and the effect of cotton shirts upon the
adolescent cannibal; and all the while Miss Hopkins was stealthily
watching doors and windows and hoping that high heaven would send
The Author to her hands. We hadn't so much as mentioned his name. It
pleased us to sit there and watch her trying to make us do so.
The iron knocker on the front door sounded. And ushered in by
Queenasheeba, there stood Nicholas Jelnik with great gray Boris
beside him, and beauty and glamour and romance upon him like a
light. Miss Hopkins had seen him on the streets, but hadn't met him
personally. I don't think she relished the fact that she had to come
to Hynds House to do so. Nor could she save herself from the crudity
of staring with all her eyes at this handsome offshoot of the
Hyndses, with what in a less polite person might well have been
called avid curiosity.
"Miss Leetchy," (he had gaily borrowed Fernolia's pronunciation of
Alicia's name), "I have brought you the butter-scotch your soul
hankers after. I fear you can never hope to grow up, Miss Leetchy,
while you cherish a jejune passion for butter-scotch."
"Oh, I don't know. It might have been fudge!" Alicia replied airily.
"But thank you, Mr. Jelnik: it was very nice of you to remember."
"Yes. I have such an excellent memory," said he, blandly. "Miss
Smith, this preserved ginger is laid at your shrine. If you offer me
a piece or two, I shall accept with thanks: I like preserved ginger,
myself.--Boris, you'll prefer butter-scotch. You may ask Miss Gaines
to give you a piece."
Miss Hopkins, it appeared, despised butter-scotch, and abhorred
preserved ginger.
"I saw The Author hiking across lots a while since. Nice,
open-hearted, neighborly man, The Author.--Oh, by the way, Miss
Smith: is it, or is it not written in the Book of Darwin that the
gadfly is one of the distinct evolutionary links in the descent of
man?"
"Good heavens, certainly not!" cried Miss Hopkins. And she looked
strangely upon Mr. Nicholas Jelnik.
"No? Thank you. I was in doubt," murmured Mr. Jelnik. The golden
flecks danced in and out of his eyes. "But we were speaking of The
Author: may I ask how The Author appeals to you as a human being,
Miss Hopkins?"
"I do not know him as a human being," Miss Hopkins admitted.
Mr. Jelnik looked surprised. His eyebrows went up.
"Oh, come, now!" he demurred. "He isn't so bad as all _that_!"
"Oh, dear me, no!" Alicia protested, in a shocked voice. "He may
have abrupt manners and say unexpected things, but he is perfectly
respectable, Miss Hopkins! There's never been a _breath_ against his
character. I thought you knew," purred the hussy, demurely. "Why,
he's dined at the White House, and lunched and motored and yachted
with royalties, and lectured before the D.A.R.'s themselves! And he
belongs to at least a dozen societies. There are,"--Alicia was
enjoying her naughty self immensely--"good authors and bad authors.
Sometimes the bad authors are good, and sometimes the good authors
are bad. But our author is more than either: he's It!"
"You entirely and strangely misunderstand me." Miss Hopkins spoke
with the deadly gentleness of suppressed fury. "I had no slightest
intention of reflecting upon the character of so eminent a writer,
with whose career, Miss Gaines, I am thoroughly familiar. I was
merely trying to explain that I had never met him."
"Oh, I see. Of course! I should have remembered that!"
Miss Hopkins's entire contempt for Alicia's mentality overcame any
suspicion she might have entertained. Also, she had come determined
to discover what she could about The Author, and she was not one
lightly to be put aside. She said, smiling tolerantly:
"Of course you should! But mayn't I congratulate _you_ upon knowing
him? Having him here in Hynds House almost justifies turning the old
place into a boarding-house, doesn't it?"
"The Author," Mr. Jelnik remarked gently, "has a very sensitive
soul. I shudder to think what the effect upon him would be were he
to hear himself referred to as a boarder. My dear Miss Hopkins,
never, never let him hear you designate him 'boarder'!"
"Who's talking about boarders?" asked a hearty voice, and Doctor
Richard Geddes came in like a gale of mountain air.
"Miss Hopkins. She thinks The Author's presence almost justifies the
turning of Hynds House into a boarding-house," answered Mr. Jelnik.
He added, thoughtfully, "Curious notion; isn't it?"
"Martha has plenty more," said the doctor, bluntly. "Boarding-house?
Well, supposing? What was it before? A hyena-cage, Martha, a
hyena-cage, into which you'd be the last to venture your nose, my
dear woman! I say, put on your bonnets, all of you, and let's have a
spin in the fresh air. The roads are gorgeous. You can come too,
Jelnik: there's room for five."
Mr. Jelnik was desolated: he had a pressing engagement. Miss Hopkins
rose precipitately. She also had an engagement; besides, she liked
to walk. People needed to walk more than they did. The reason why
one saw so many bad figures nowadays, was that people lolled around
in automobiles instead of walking.
"Well, walking is certainly good for you, Martha. It helps you to
reduce," the doctor agreed. Miss Hopkins said dryly that the little
walking she intended to do just then wouldn't affect her weight any.
And that Doctor Geddes should himself take to walking: men always
got fat as they neared fifty.
"Fat! Fifty!" roared the doctor, with enraged astonishment. "Why,
I'm not by some years as old as you are, Martha! You were several
classes ahead of me in school, don't you remember? I am exactly
thirty-nine years old, and as you know everything else, you ought to
know that!"
Miss Hopkins studied him with a balefully level eye.
"You really can't blame anybody for forgetting it, Richard," she
said, ambiguously.
"You are to recollect, Geddes, that a woman is always as young as
she looks," (Mr. Jelnik bowed, smilingly, to Miss Hopkins), "and a
man is older than he feels," he added, for the doctor's benefit.
"All right. Let's say I feel as good as Martha looks," the doctor's
momentary ill humor vanished. Miss Hopkins smiled. She had stuck her
claws into him and drawn blood; but her fur was still ruffled.
Mr. Jelnik made his adieus, Boris offering each of us a polite paw.
"And now," the doctor ordered briskly, "to your spinning, jades, to
your spinning! Into my car, the three of you! No, Martha, I will
_not_ take a refusal; you shall not walk: you've got to come along,
if I have to tuck you under my arm. I don't care if you never
reduce. What do you want to reduce for, anyhow? You're all right
just as you are! There! are you satisfied?"
We stood by passively while the masterful doctor heckled and hustled
the unhappy Center of Culture into his car. With heaven knows what
feelings, she found herself seated beside me, Sophy Smith, while
Alicia, beside the doctor, tossed gay remarks over her shoulder.
Miss Hopkins realized that all Hyndsville would witness what she
herself knew to be high-handed capture by force, but which must
hideously resemble capitulation; and she also realized that
explanations never explain.
I respected her misery enough to keep silent, and she made no
attempt to converse. Her hat slid forward at a rakish angle over one
ear, and her hair blew about her face in stringy wisps, as the
doctor broke the speed laws on the long, level stretches of quiet
roads. When we came to a rough spot she bounced up and down (one
might hear her breath exhaled in a--well, yes, in a grunt) but she
made no complaint, uttered no protest. She was a shackled and
voiceless victim, until we finally drew up at her own gate, after an
hour's jaunt, and allowed her to escape.
"Why, Martha, our little spin has given you a fine color!" remarked
the doctor, genuinely pleased. Two conspicuously red spots shone in
Miss Hopkins's cheeks, and her eyes were extremely bright. "We'll
have to take you out with us again," he added, genially.
"Shall you, Richard?" muttered Miss Hopkins, and scuttled up her
front path,
Like one who in a lonesome wood
Doth walk in fear and dread,
Because he knows a frightful fiend
Doth close behind him tread!
By and large, I should say that the honors were with Alicia.
The Author's secretary was pacing up and down the garden when we
reached home, with Potty Black careering after him and every now and
then dashing into the shrubbery to put to flight Beautiful Dog, who
was also enamored of the young man with the nice smile and the good
brown eyes. He had a great affection for animals, as they seemed to
understand.
Beautiful Dog laid aside, for his sake, his fear of white people,
and slunk after him fawningly, wagging what did duty as a tail, and
showing every tooth in an ear-to-ear grin. At sight of us, Beautiful
Dog gave a dismal yelp and disappeared.
"Let's sit in the library," coaxed the secretary. "I want you
please to allow me to hold in my hands your copy of 'Purchas his
Pilgrimes.' The Author dreams about that book out loud. Oh, yes,
another thing I want to ask you: what sort of perfume do you use,
and where do you get it?"
My scalp prickled.
"I noticed it in the upper hall last night," went on the secretary,
innocently. "It was pervasive, but at the same time so delicate, so
elusive, that I couldn't determine what it was. I am very sensitive
to perfumes."
"So are we," Alicia told him. "And if what you think you smelled is
what we think we smell, it isn't a--a regular perfume. It's a--a--a
something that belongs to Hynds House."
The library was flooded with the ruddy light of sunset. Every bit of
color in the big room stood out against a golden background, and a
great golden spear fell across the dark, brooding face of Freeman
Hynds above the old tiled fireplace. In that rosy glow he seemed to
look down at us with living eyes.
"Is that so?" The secretary stopped; and his head went up and his
nose wrinkled. For the "something that belonged to Hynds House"
walked upon the air with invisible feet.