A REAL ROOF-TREE.
Ringing the bell at the low front step of a two-story brick dwelling,
Duff Salter was admitted by Mr. Knox Van de Lear, the proprietor, a
tall, plain, commonplace man, who scarcely bore one feature of his
venerable father. "Come in, Mr. Salter," bellowed Knox, "tea's just
a-waitin' for you. Pap's here. You know Cal, certain! This is my good
lady, Mrs. Van de Lear. Lottie, put on the oysters and waffles! Don't
forgit the catfish. There's nothing like catfish out of the Delaware,
Mr. Salter."
"Particularly if they have a corpse or two to flavor them," said Calvin
Van de Lear in a low tone.
Mrs. Knox Van de Lear, a fine, large, blonde lady, took the head of the
table. She had a sweet, timid voice, quite out of quantity with her bone
and flesh, and her eyelashes seemed to be weak, for they closed together
often and in almost regular time, and the delicate lids were quite as
noticeable as her bashful blue eyes.
"Lottie," said Rev. Silas Van de Lear, "I came in to-night with a little
chill upon me. At my age chills are the tremors from other wings
hovering near. Please let me have the first cup of coffee hot."
"Certainly, papa," said the hostess, making haste to fill his cup. "You
don't at all feel apprehensive, do you?"
"No," said the old man, with his teeth chattering. "I haven't had
apprehensions for long back. Nothing but confidence."
"Oh, pap!" put in Knox Van de Lear, "you'll be a preachin' when I'm a
granddaddy. You never mean to die. Eat a waffle!"
"My children," said the old man, "death is over-due with me. It gives me
no more concern than the last hour shall give all of us. I had hoped to
live for three things: to see my new church raised; to see my son Calvin
ready to take my place; to see my neighbor, Miss Wilt, whom I have seen
grow up under my eye from childhood, and fair as a lily, brush the dew
of scandal from her skirts and resume her place in our church, the
handmaid of God again."
"Amen, old man!" spoke Calvin irreverently, holding up his plate for
oysters.
"Why, Cal," exclaimed the hostess, closing her delicately-tinted eyelids
till the long lashes rested on the cheek, "why don't you call papa more
softly?"
"My son," spoke the little old gentleman between his chatterings, "in
the priestly office you must avoid abruptness. Be direct at all
important times, but neither familiar nor abrupt. I cannot name for you
a model of address like Agnes Wilt."
"Isn't she beautiful!" said Mrs. Knox. "Do you think she can be
deceitful, papa?"
"I have no means to pierce the souls of people, Lottie, more than
others. I don't believe she is wicked, but I draw that from my reason
and human faith. That woman was a pillar of strength in my
Sabbath-school. May the Lord bring her forth from the furnace refined by
fire, and punish them who may have persecuted her!"
"Cal is going into a decline on her account," said Knox. "I know it by
seeing him eat waffles. She refused Cal one day, and he came home and
eat all the cold meat in the house."
"Mr. Salter," the hostess said, raising her voice, "you have a beautiful
woman for a landlady. Is she well?"
"Very melancholy," said Duff Salter. "Why don't you visit her?"
"Really," said the hostess, "there is so much feeling against Agnes
that, considering Papa Van de Lear's position in Kensington, I have been
afraid. Agnes is quite too clever for me!"
"I hope she will be," said Duff Salter, relapsing to his coffee.
"He didn't hear what you said, Lot," exclaimed Calvin. "The old man has
to guess at what we halloo at him."
"Have you appraised the estate of the late William Zane?" asked the
minister, with his bold pulpit voice, which Salter could hear easily.
"Yes," replied the deaf guest. "It comes out strong. It is worth, clear
of everything and not including doubtful credits, one hundred and eighty
thousand dollars."
"That is the largest estate in Kensington," exclaimed the clergyman.
"I shall release it all within one week to Miss Agnes," said Duff
Salter. "You are too old, Mr. Van de Lear, to manage it. I have finished
my work as co-executor with you. The third executor is Miss Wilt. With
the estate in her hands she will change the tone of public opinion in
Kensington, perhaps, and the fugitive heir must return or receive no
money from the woman he has injured!"
"I am entirely of your opinion," said Reverend Mr. Van de Lear. "Agnes
was independent before; this will make her powerful, and she needs all
the power she can get to meet this insensate suburban opinion. When I
was a young man, commencing to minister here, I had rivals enough, and
deeply sympathize with those who must defend themselves against the
embattled gossip of a suburban society."
Mrs. Knox Van de Lear opened and closed her eyes with a saintly sort of
resignation.
"I am glad for Agnes," she said. "But I fear the courts will not allow
her, suspected as she is, to have the custody of so much wealth that has
descended to her through the misfortunes of others, if not by crimes."
"You are right, Lot," said Calvin. "Her little game may be to get a
husband as soon as she can, who will resist a trustee's appointment by
the courts."
"Can _she_ get a husband, Cal?"
"Oh, yes! She's lightning! There's old Salter, rich as a Jew. She's
smart enough to capture him and add all he has to all that was coming to
Andrew Zane."
Mr. Salter drew up his napkin and sneezed into it a soft articulation of
"Jericho! Jericho!"
"Cal, don't you think you have some chance there yet?" asked Knox Van
de Lear. "I hoped you would have won Aggy long ago. It's a better show
than I ever had. You see I have to be at work at six o'clock, winter and
summer, and stay at the bookbindery all day long, and so it goes the
year round."
"Indeed, it is so!" exclaimed the hostess, slowly shutting down her
silken lids of pink. "My poor husband goes away from me while I still
sleep in the dark of dawn; he only returns at supper."
"Well, haven't you got brother Cal?" asked the bookbinder. "He's better
company than I am, Lottie."
"But Calvin is in love with Miss Wilt," said the lady, softly unclosing
her eves.
"No," coolly remarked Calvin, "I am not in love with her. You know that,
Lottie."
"Well, Calvin, dear, you would be if you thought she was pure and clear
of crime."
"Don't ask me foolish questions!" said Calvin.
The lady at the head of the table wore a pretty smile which she shut
away under her eyelids again and again, and looked gently at Calvin.
"Dear Agnes!" ejaculated Mrs. Knox, "I never blamed her so much as that
bold little creature, Podge Byerly! No one could make any impression
upon Agnes's confidence until that bright little thing went to board
with her. It is so demoralizing to take these working-girls, shop-girls
and school-teachers, in where religious influences had prevailed! They
became inseparable; Agnes had to entertain such company as Miss Byerly
brought there, and it produced a lowering of tone. She looked around her
suddenly when these crimes were found out, and all her old mature
friends were gone. It is so sad to lose all the wholesome influences
which protect one!"
Duff Salter had been eating his chicken and catfish very gravely, and as
he stopped to sneeze and apologize he noticed that Calvin Van de Lear's
face was insolent in its look toward his brother's wife.
"Wholesome influence," said Calvin, "will return at the news of her
money, quick enough!"
"Poor dear Cal!" exclaimed the lady; "he is still madly in love!"
"My friends," spoke up Duff Salter, "your father is a very sick man. Let
us take him to a chamber and send for his doctor."
Mr. Van de Lear had been neglected in this conversation; it was now seen
that he was in collapse and deathly pale. He leaned forward, however,
from strong habit, to close the meal with a blessing, and his head fell
forward upon the table. Duff Salter had him in his arms in a moment, and
bore him into the little parlor and placed him on a sofa.
"Give me some music, children," he murmured. "Oh, my brother Salter! I
would that you could hear with me the rustling sounds I hear in music
now! There are voices in it keeping heavenly time, saying, 'Well done!
well done!' My strong, kind brother, let me lean upon your breast. Had
we met in younger days I feel that we would have been very friendly with
each other."
Duff Salter already had the meagre little man upon his breast, and his
long, hale beard descended upon the pale and aged face.
Mrs. Knox Van de Lear seated herself at the piano and began a hymn, and
Calvin Van de Lear accompanied her, singing bass. The old man closed his
eyes on Duff Salter's breast, and Mr. Knox Van de Lear went out softly
to send for a physician. Duff Salter, looking up at a catch in the
singing, saw that Calvin Van de Lear was leaning familiarly on the
lady's shoulder while he turned the leaves of the book of sacred music.
"I am very sick," said the old clergyman, still shaken by the chills.
"Perhaps we shall meet together no more. My fellow-executor, do my part
in this world! In all my life of serving the church and its Divine
Master, I have first looked out for the young people. They are most
helpless, most valuable. See that Sister Agnes is mercifully cared for!
If young Andrew Zane returns, deal gently with him too. Let us be kind
to the dear boys, though they go astray. The dear, dear boys!"
Duff Salter received the brave little man's head again upon his breast,
and said to himself:
"May God speedily take him away in mercy!"
The doctor, returning with Knox Van de Lear, commanded the minister to
be instantly removed to a chamber, and Duff Salter, unassisted, walked
up-stairs with him like a father carrying his infant to bed. As they
placed the wasted figure away beneath the coverlets, he put his arm
around Duff Salter's neck.
"Brother," he said hoarsely, the chill having him in its grasp, "God has
blessed you. Can you help my new church?"
"I promise you," said Duff Salter, "that after your people have done
their best I will give the remainder. It shall be built!"
"Now, God be praised!" whispered the dying pastor. "And let Thy servant
depart in peace."
"Amen!" from somewhere, trembled through the chamber as Duff Salter, his
feet muffled like his voice, in the habit of mute people who walk as
they hear, passed down the stairway.
Duff Salter took his seat in the dining-room, which was an extension of
Knox Van de Lear's plain parlor, and buried his face in his palms. Years
ago, when a boy, he had attended preaching in Silas Van de Lear's little
chapel, and it touched him deeply that the nestor of the suburb was
about to die; the last of the staunch old pastors of the kirk who had
never been silent when liberty was in peril. The times were not the
same, and the old man was too brave and simple for the latter half of
his century. As Duff Salter thought of many memories associated with the
Rev. Silas Van de Lear's residence in Kensington, he heard his own name
mentioned. It was a lady's voice; nothing but acute sensibility could
have made it so plain to a deaf man:
"Husband," said the lady with the slumberous eyelids, "go out with the
pitcher and get us half a gallon of ale. Cal and Mr. Salter and myself
are thirsty."
"I have been for the doctor, Lottie; let Cal go."
"Cal?" exclaimed the lady, very quietly raising her lashes. "It would
not do for him to go for _ale_! He is to be the junior pastor, my dear,
as soon as papa is buried, over the Van de Lear church."
"All right," said the tired husband, "I'll go. We must all back up Cal."
As soon as the door closed upon Mr. Knox Van de Lear, a kiss resounded
through the little house, and a woman's voice followed it, saying:
"Imprudent!"
"Oh, bah!" spoke Calvin Van de Lear. "Salter is deaf as a post. Lottie,
Agnes Wilt has been ruined!"
In the long pause following this remark the deaf man peeped through his
fingers and saw the lady of the house kiss her husband's brother again
and again.
"I am so glad," she whispered. "Can it be true?"
"It's plain as a barn door. She'll be a mother before shad have run out,
or cherries come in."
"The proud creature! And now, Cal dear, you see nothing exceptionally
saint-like there?"
"I see shame, friendlessness, wealth, and welcome," spoke the young man.
"It's just my luck!"
"But the deaf man? Will he not take her part?"
"No. I shall show him to-night what will cure his partiality. Lottie,
you must let me marry her."
The large, blonde lady threw back her head until the strong, animal
throat and chin stood sharply defined, and white and scarlet in color as
the lobster's meat.
"Scoundrel!" she hissed, clenching Calvin's wrist with an almost
maniacal fury.
At this moment a bell began to toll on the neighboring fire company's
house, and Knox Van de Lear entered with the pitcher of ale.
"They're tolling the fire bell at the news of father's dying," said
Knox.
Calvin filled a glass of ale, and exclaimed:
"Here's to the next pastor of Kensington!" as he laughingly drained it
off.
"Oh, brother Cal!" remarked the hostess as she softly dropped her
eyelids and smiled reprovingly; "this irreverence comes of visiting Miss
Agnes Wilt too often. I must take you in charge."
Duff Salter gave a furious sneeze:
"Jericho! Oh! oh! Jericho!"
Calvin Van de Lear closed the door between the dining-room and the
parlor, and drew Duff Salter's tablets from his pocket and wrote:
"I want you to go up on the house roof with me."
Duff looked at him in surprise, and wrote in reply:
"Do you mean to throw me off?"
Calvin's sallow complexion reddened a very little as he laughed
flippantly, and stroked his dry side-whiskers and took the tablets
again:
"I want you to see the ghost's walk," he wrote. "Come along!"
* * * * *
Passing the sick father's door, Calvin led Duff Salter up to the garret
floor, where a room with rag carpet, dumb-bells, boxing-gloves,
theological books, and some pictures far from modest, disclosed the
varied tastes of an entailed pulpit's expectant. Calvin drew down the
curtain of the one window and lighted a lamp. There was a table in the
middle of the floor, and there the two men conducted a silent
conversation on the ivory tablets.
"This is my room," wrote Calvin. "I stay here all day when I study or
enjoy myself. The governor doesn't come in here to give me any advice
or nose around."
"Is Mrs. Knox Van de Lear serious as to religious matters?"
"Very," wrote Calvin, sententiously, and looked at Duff Salter with the
most open countenance he had ever been seen to show. Duff merely asked
another question:
"Has she a good handwriting? I want to have a small document very neatly
written."
Calvin went over to a trunk, unlocked it, and took out a bundle of what
appeared to be lady's letters, and selecting one, folded the address
back and showed the chirography.
"Jericho! Jerry-cho! cho! O cho!" sneezed Duff Salter. "The most
admirable writing I have ever seen."
Calvin took the tablets.
"I have been in receipt of some sundry sums of money from you, Salter,
to follow up this Zane mystery. I hope to be able to show you to-night
that it has not been misinvested."
"You have had two hundred dollars," wrote Duff Salter. "What are your
conclusions?"
"Andrew Zane is in Kensington."
"Where?"
"In the block opposite are several houses belonging to the Zane estate.
One of them stood empty until within a month, when a tenant unknown to
the neighborhood, with small furniture and effects--evidently a mere
servant--moved in. My brother's wife has taken a deep interest in the
Zane murder, and being at home all day, her resort is this room, where
she can see, unobserved, the whole _menage_ and movement in the block
opposite."
"Why did she feel so much interested?"
"Honor bright!" Calvin wrote. "Well, Mrs. Knox was a great admirer of
the late William Zane. They were very intimate--some thought under
engagement to marry. Suddenly she accepted my brother, and old Zane
turned out to be infatuated with his ward. We may call it rivalry and
reminiscence."
"Jer-i-choo-wo!"
Duff Salter, now full of smiles, proffered a pinch of snuff to his host,
who declined it, but set out a bottle of brandy in reciprocal
friendship.
"Go on," indicated Salter to the tablets.
"One morning, just before daybreak, my brother's wife, glancing out of
this window--"
"In this room, you say, before daybreak?"
Calvin looked viciously at Duff Salter, who merely smiled.
"She saw," said Calvin Van de Lear, "an object come out of the trap-door
on Zane's old residence and move under shelter of the ridge of the roof
to the newly-tenanted dwelling in the same block, and there disappear
down the similar trap."
"Jericho! Jericho!--Proceed."
"It was our inference that probably Andrew Zane was making stealthy
visits to Agnes, and we applied a test to her. To our astonishment we
found she had only seen him once since the murder, and that was the
night the bodies were discovered."
"How could you extract that from a self-contained woman like Agnes
Wilt?" asked Duff Salter, deeply interested.
"We got it from Podge Byerly."
"Jerusalem!" exclaimed Duff Salter aloud, knocking over the snuff-box
and forgetting to sneeze. "Mr. Calvin Van de Lear, it is a damned lie."
Calvin locked up with some surprise but more conceit.
"I'm a first-class eavesdropper," he wrote, and held it up on the tablet
to Duff's eyes. "We got the fact from Podge's bed-ridden brother, a
scamp who destroyed his health by excesses and came back on Podge for
support. Knowing how corruptible he was, I got access to him and paid
him out of your funds to wheedle out of Podge all that Lady Agnes told
her. She had no idea that her brother communicated with any person, as
he was unable to walk, and she told him for his amusement secrets she
never dreamed could go out of the house. We corresponded with him by
mail."
"Calvin," wrote Duff Salter, "you never thought of these things
yourself."
"To give the devil his credit, my brother's wife suggested that device."
"Jericho-o-o-oh!"
Duff Salter was himself again.
"Well, Salter," continued the heir-apparent of Kensington, "we laid our
heads together, and the mystery continued to deepen why Andrew Zane
infested the residence of his murdered father if he never revealed
himself to the woman he had loved. Not until the discovery that Agnes
Wilt had been ruined could we make that out."
They were both looking at each other intently as Duff Salter read the
last sentence.
"It then became plain to us," continued Calvin, "that Andrew Zane wanted
to abandon the woman he had seduced, as was perfectly natural. He
haunted and alarmed the house and kept informed on all its happenings,
but cut poor Agnes dead."
"The infamous scoundrel!" exclaimed Duff Salter, looking very dark and
serious.
"Now, Salter," continued Calvin, "we had a watch set on that ridge of
roofs every night, and another one at the old Zane house, front and
rear, and the apparition on the roof was so irregular that we could not
understand what occasions it took to come out until we observed that
whenever your servant was out of the neighborhood a whole night, the
roof-walker was sure to descend into Zane's trap."
"Jer-i-cho-ho-ho!"
"To-night, as we have made ourselves aware, your servant is not in
Kensington. We saw him off to Treaty Island. I am watching at this
window for the man on the roof. The moment he leaves the trap-door of the
tenant's house, it will be entered by officers at the waving of this
lamp at my window. One officer will proceed along the roof and station
himself on the Zane trap, closing that outlet. At the same time the Zane
house will be entered front and rear and searched. The time is due. It
is midnight. Come!"
Calvin pointed to a ladder that led from the corner of his study to the
roof, and Duff Salter nodded his head acquiescently.
They went up the ladder and thrust their heads into the soft night of
early summer.
There was starlight, but no moon.
The engine bell just ceased to toll as they looked forth on the
scattered suburb, and at points beheld the Delaware flowing darkly,
indicated by occasional lights of vessels reflected upward, and by the
very distant lamps on the Camden shore.
Most of the houses within the range of vision were small, patched, and
irregular, except where the black walls of the even blocks on some
principal streets strode through.
Scarcely a sound, except the tree frogs droning, disturbed the air, and
Kensington basked in the midnight like some sleeping village of the
plains, stretching out to the fields of cattle and the savory truck
farms.
Duff Salter mentally exclaimed:
"Here, like two angels of good or evil, we spy upon the dull old hamlet,
where nothing greater has happened than to-night since the Indians
bartered their lands away for things of immediate enjoyment. Are not
most of these people Indians still, ready to trade away substantial
lands of antique title for the playthings of a few brief hours? Yes,
heaven itself was signed away by man and woman for the juices of one
forbidden fruit. Here, where the good old pastor, like another William
Penn, is running his stakes beyond the stars and peopling with angels
his possessions there, the savage children are occupied with the trifles
of lust, covetousness, and deceit. They are no worse than the sons of
Penn, who became apostates to his charity and religion before the breath
had left his body. So goes the human race, whether around the Tree of
Knowledge or Kensington's Treaty Tree."
Duff Salter felt his arm pulled violently, and heard his companion
whisper,
"There! Do you see it?"
Across the street, only a few hundred feet distant, an object emerged
from the black mass of the buildings and moved rapidly along the
opposite ridge of houses against the sky, drawing nearer the two
watchers as it advanced, and passing right opposite.
Duff Salter made it out to be a woman or a figure in a gown.
It looked neither to the right nor left, and did not stoop nor cower,
but strode boldly as if with right to the large residence of the Zanes,
where in a minute it faded away.
Duff Salter felt a little superstitious, but Calvin Van de Lear shot
past him down the ladder.
Duff heard the curtain at the window thrown up as the divinity student
flashed his lamp and saw the door of the house whence the apparition had
come, forced by the police.
As he descended the ladder Calvin Van de Lear extended Duff's hat to
him, and pointed across the way.
They were not very prompt reaching the door of the Zane residence, but
were still there in time to employ Duff Salter's key, instead of
violence, to make the entry.
"Gentlemen," said the deaf man, with authority, "there is no occasion of
any of you pressing in here to alarm a lady. Mr. Van de Lear and myself
will make the search of the house which you have already guarded,
front, back, and above, and rendered it impossible for the object of
your warrant to escape."
The dignity and commanding stature of Duff Salter had their effect.
Calvin Van de Lear and Duff Salter entered the silent house, lighted the
gas, and walked from room to room, finally entering the apartment of
Duff Salter himself.
There sat Mike, the serving-man, in his red hair, uneven eyebrows,
crutch, and wooden leg, as quietly arranging the models of vessels and
steamers as if he had not anticipated a midnight call nor ceased his
labor since Duff Salter had gone out.
"Damnation!" exclaimed Calvin Van de Lear, pale with exertion and rage,
"are you here? I thought you were at Treaty Island."
"Misther Salter," said the Irishman, "I returned, do you see, because I
forgot something and wanthed a drop of your brandy, sur."
Duff Salter walked up to the speaker and seized him by the lapels of his
coat, and placing the other hand upon his head, tore off the entire
red-haired scalp which covered him.
"Andrew Zane," said Duff Salter in a low voice, "your disguise is
detected. Yield yourself like a man to your father's executor. You are
my prisoner!"