VISITORS AT PRESTON
Dr. Wright was pretty sure that James Hanks would not have been able to
travel very far after the knockout blow he had received, so when they
could not find him in the woods near by it was decided he must be in
hiding in some cabin. The search continued but no trace was found of the
missing men.
"Sounds shady to me," declared Lewis Somerville.
"The idea! You can't mean that the count and Mr. Herz deliberately let
the men get away!" exclaimed Douglas.
"I believe they are capable of it."
"Lewis! How can you?"
"I tell you I mistrust them both. I don't like their names--I don't like
their looks--I don't like their actions."
"Nor do I," declared Billy Sutton, who had dropped in that morning to
have a chat after the ball. Everybody was too exhausted to think of
going on with any very arduous work.
"Well, I think that after you accepted the count's hospitality you have
no right to say things about him," broke in Nan.
"Well, hasn't he accepted the hospitality of this country, and what is
he doing? Don't you know it is that fool darky school that got all those
poor nigs thinking that Grantly belonged to them? I bet Miss Helen
agrees with me."
"I--I--don't know," said Helen faintly. "I am all mixed up about the
whole thing. Why should the count want to make trouble?"
The matter was discussed up and down by the young people. The males for
the most part sided against the count and his secretary, the females,
with the exception of Lucy and Mag, taking up for them. Mrs. Carter was
most indignant that anyone should say anything disagreeable about a
gentleman of such fine presence and engaging manners as the Count de
Lestis, one who knew so well how to entertain and who was so lavish. As
for the other man, that Herz, no doubt he was fully capable of any
mischief. He could not dance, had no small talk, and held his fork in a
very awkward way when at the table.
The count's ankle did not keep him in very long. He was soon around,
although he limped quite painfully. His only difficulty was in
remembering which foot was injured. He renewed his attentions towards
the ladies at Valhalla. His protestations of concern for the Misses
Grant were warm and convincing. He offered to come stay with them or let
Herz come until they were sure that the county had settled down into its
usual state of safety and peace.
Those ladies were not in the least afraid, however, but still declared
that nobody would ever hurt them. It turned out that on the night of
what came so near being such a tragedy they had had in the house exactly
three dollars and twenty cents. What an angry crowd it would have been
when they began the division!
Now came stirring news in the daily papers.
Diplomatic relations were broken with Germany and the declaration of
war imminent! Excitement and unrest were on every hand. Sometimes Nan
and Lucy would come home laden with extras with headlines of terror and
bloodshed. Mr. Carter occasionally went to town with them.
"I feel as though I must find out what people are saying and thinking,"
he would declare.
The truth of the matter was that Mr. Carter was well,--as well as ever,
and the mere chopping of wood and stopping of cracks was not enough to
occupy him. It had seemed to him as he went on that mad ride to the
rescue of his beloved Helen that he was absolutely himself again. No
longer could he let people plan his life for him. He was a man and meant
to take the reins into his own hands. Not that his girls had not driven
the family coach excellently well. They were wonderful, but he was able
to do it for himself now and he intended to start.
He consulted Dr. Wright:
"I tell you, Wright, I am as fit as a fiddle and can get to work now."
"Of course you are! Didn't I give you a year? You have not taken quite a
year but the time is almost up. The shock that night of the ball helped
you on to a complete recovery a little ahead of time. Sometimes a
nervous patient gets a shock that does more than rest. The trouble is,
one can't tell whether it will kill or cure."
"Well, this one cured all right. Why, man, I could build a cathedral
tomorrow!"
"Good!"
"I never can thank you enough for your kindness to me and my family. If
there is ever anything I can do for you----"
"No doubt there will be," was the doctor's cryptic remark.
Herz kept up his walks with Douglas, although the girl did nothing to
encourage him. She did everything to discourage him, in fact, except
actually ask him to let her alone. She would find him waiting on the
road after school. Sometimes he would even come to the school door for
her if for any reason she was detained. These walks were usually taken
when the count was off on one of his many business trips.
In Virginia, March means spring, although sometimes a very blustering
spring. If one wanders in the woods it is quite usual to find hepatica
and arbutus making their way up through the leaves. The tender green
begins to make its appearance on hedge and tree, and in the old gardens
jonquils and daffodils and crocuses pop up their saucy heads, defying
possible late snows and frosts.
The roads were still muddy but not quite so bad as in the winter, and
now, more than ever, Douglas with her faithful protector, Bobby, could
enjoy the walks to and from school. The stilts did not have to be used
nearly so often, although Nan and Lucy had become such adepts on their
flamingo legs that they often mounted them merely for the pleasure and
not because of the mud.
Valhalla was growing lovelier day by day. The gaunt trees had taken on a
veil of green. The nations were at war. The United States was being
forced into the game in spite of her attempts at neutrality; but Mother
Nature's slogan was: "Business as usual!" and she was attending to it
exactly as she had from the beginning and as she will until the end of
time.
Spring had come in good earnest, and with her the myriads of little
creatures who must work so hard for a mere existence. Strange
scratchings had begun in the chimneys at Valhalla. The swallows were
back and gave the Carters to understand that they had been tenants in
that old overseer's house long before those city folks ever thought of
such a thing as spending the winter in such a place. The robins were
hopping about the lawn, trying to decide where they would build, while
the mocking-birds were already busy in the honeysuckle hedge.
One Saturday, the Saturday before war was actually declared, the Count
de Lestis came to call, bringing with him in a lovely wicker cage a
carrier pigeon for Douglas.
"You promised that sometimes you would send me a message, remember," he
said with the sentimental glance that Douglas refused to respond to.
"Certainly I will. I'll send a note asking you to come to dinner. Would
that do?"
"Anything you send will do," he sighed.
The pigeon was a beautiful little creature with glossy plumage and
dainty red legs.
"He will come back straight to Weston because he has young in the nest.
He is not like some men who are up and away at the smallest excuse."
"But how cruel to take him away from his young!"
"Ah, but the hausfrau is there! She will see that no harm befalls the
babies. And, too, she will remain faithful until her lord returns. As
faithful as a pigeon means true unto death."
The pigeon house had continued to be a thorn in the flesh to Mr. Carter.
It was painted white, as that is what the pigeons like, and it was so
large and so out of tone with the fine lines of the roof that Mr. Carter
declared he could not bear to go to Weston any more.
No trace of the lost negroes was found, although Mr. Sutton had
detectives from Richmond to work on the case. They had evidently got
away and well away. The farmer who had been so nearly asleep when Helen
and Dr. Wright arrived at the ball, the farmer whose wife wore the
stiff, green silk, declared he had passed that road on the way home that
night and he had seen no sign of a red car turned turtle down a ditch.
Of course the neighbors all said he had been driving in his sleep.
Mr. Sutton made a trip into Richmond and had a conference with the
governor. He told him that the bloodhounds employed to trace the darkies
had never left the scene of the accident, although they had had many
things belonging to the escaped men as a clue to tracing them. The
governor told Mr. Sutton something that made him open his honest eyes
very wide. At the same time he was cautioned to keep his honest mouth
shut very tight. He came back to Preston with an air of mystery about
him that disconcerted his good wife greatly.
"Margaret, could you accommodate a guest just now?"
"Why, certainly, if it is necessary, but who is the guest?"
"A gentleman I have never met, maybe there will be two of them,--but we
must pretend they are our very good friends."
"Why, William, are you crazy?"
"No, ma'am!" and then he whispered something to her, although they were
alone, and she, too, opened her eyes very wide but promised to keep her
mouth shut.
The visitors came, two quiet gentlemen with good manners and simple
habits. Mr. and Mrs. Sutton decided they should be some long lost
cousins from the west who were in the country for their health. Thus
they explained their visitors to Billy and Mag and their neighbors. They
brought a small Ford runabout which they used a great deal.
Mr. Sutton had a long conference with Mr. Carter. There was some more
opening of eyes and shutting of mouths.
"What a fool I have been!" cried that gentleman. "I can see it all now.
Lewis Somerville tried to make me see but I was quite hard on the boy.
Well! Well! What is to be done?"
"Nothing! Just bide our time."
"See here, Sutton, I believe there was method in that man's madness when
he got two electric light systems. He told me to order one and then said
his secretary had ordered one, too. Pretended he had not told me to, and
then was tremendously kind and magnanimous about it. I began to think
maybe I had not understood,--you see my head hadn't been very clear for
business for many months and I mistrusted myself. I'll wager anything
that that extra battery is running a wireless station at Weston."
"Geewhilikins!" exclaimed the elder Sutton in very much the same tone
his son might have used. "This business is growing very exciting."
Sometimes the two quiet gentlemen visitors at Preston would go out for
an airing in their little car, and finding a secluded spot in a pine
woods, one of them would cleverly convert himself into an Armenian
pedlar with a pack filled with cheap lace and jewelry. Then he would
make the rounds of the cabins. He could speak almost no English when
doing this part and seemed not to understand any at all. He visited
every house in Paradise and from there made his way to Weston. His
heavy, blue-black beard and long straggling hair so completely disguised
him that the count never dreamed the man he saw at his kitchen door
haggling with his colored cook over some coarse pillow shams was the
same smooth-faced gentleman he had met that morning driving with his
neighbor Sutton.
As a book agent, the clever detective gained access to the count's
library and actually sold him a set of Ruskin. As telephone inspector,
he got much information desired, and as a government agricultural
expert, he was favored with a long, intimate talk with the owner of
Weston.
Old Blitz, the German farmer near Preston, came in for his share of
visits, too, from pedlars and book agents, etc. The mills of the
government were grinding slowly but they were grinding exceeding small.
The neighborhood was in absolute ignorance of the fact that their
delightful count was being watched. His comings and goings were known.
He had few secrets. It was learned by the detectives that he was not a
Hungarian at all but his father was Austrian, his mother Prussian. He
had been sent to this country by his government to make trouble among
the negroes and to buy up tracts of land for future emigration. When the
world was to be Prussianized, fair Virginia was not to be neglected.
The raid on Grantly was traced absolutely to his lectures and the
teachings of Herz, the so-called secretary. The only thing that had gone
wrong was that the negroes had acted sooner than their masters had
planned. Their object had been to have a general uprising and they
wanted it to be timed about when war was declared. Their schemes had not
been directed against poor old Grantly especially, but against all the
whites, with a view of keeping the darkies out of the army.
Herz turned out to be a full-blooded Prussian, who had lived in
Cincinnati for about five years. He was a trusted spy of his government
and had done wonderful work for them in Mexico. He was really the brains
of the partnership and de Lestis the mixer. When de Lestis went off on
his long business trips to Chicago and New York it developed he had been
across the water several times, bearing with him maps and information
that must be personally conducted.
A wireless station was suspected but it was difficult to locate.
"Look in the pigeon house," suggested Mr. Carter, still bearing a grudge
against the atrocity that had ruined his beloved roof line.
There it was, as neatly installed an instrument as one could find with
the extra batteries doing the work perfectly. The telephone inspector
found it quite easily. The pigeon house was a hollow sham. There was a
reason for making it so large since the wireless was to have an inner
chamber.
The net was drawing more closely around the two men but they, scornful
of the intelligence of the stupid Americans, went unconcernedly on,
laying their plans and hatching their deviltries. Many a laugh they had
over the automobile accident.
"Those darkies before a clever lawyer would have been our undoing," they
admitted to one another.
The night school was discontinued for the time being and the poor
colored people got back into their one time rut. Tempy resumed her
labors at Grantly, a sadder and wiser girl. She no longer slept amidst
the unwashed dishes but seemed anxious to become as good a servant as
her sister Chloe. Sam, the factotum, returned in time to put in the
garden.