brick posts. The lower hinge of one gate was broken, and that gate
lurched forward, leaving an opening. By the light of the electric torch
they could see the beginning of a driveway, rough and weed-grown, lined
with trees of great age and bulk, and an unkempt lawn, strewn with
bushes, and beyond, in an open place bare of trees and illuminated
faintly by the stars, the shadow of a house, black, silent, and
forbidding.
“That’s it,” whispered the chauffeur. “I was here before. The well is
over there.”
The young man gave a gasp of astonishment.
“Why,” he protested, “this is the Carey place! I should say we _were_
lost. We must have left the road an hour ago. There’s not another house
within miles.” But he made no movement to enter. “Of all places!” he
muttered.
“Well, then,” urged the girl briskly, “if there’s no other house, let’s
tap Mr. Carey’s well and get on.”
“Do you know who he is?” asked the man.
The girl laughed. “You don’t need a letter of introduction to take a
bucket of water, do you?” she said.
“It’s Philip Carey’s house. He lives here.” He spoke in a whisper, and
insistently, as though the information must carry some special
significance. But the girl showed no sign of enlightenment. “You
remember the Carey boys?” he urged. “They left Harvard the year I
entered. They _had_ to leave. They were quite mad. All the Careys have
been mad. The boys were queer even then, and awfully rich. Henry ran
away with a girl from a shoe factory in Brockton and lives in Paris, and
Philip was sent here.”
“_Sent_ here?” repeated the girl. Unconsciously her voice also had sunk
to a whisper.
“He has a doctor and a nurse and keepers, and they live here all the
year round. When Fred said there were people hereabouts, I thought we
might strike them for something to eat, or even to put up for the night,
but, Philip Carey! I shouldn’t fancy——”
“I should think not!” exclaimed the girl.
For a minute the three stood silent, peering through the iron bars.
“And the worst of it is,” went on the young man irritably, “he could
give us such good things to eat.”
“It doesn’t look it,” said the girl.
“I know,” continued the man in the same eager whisper. “But—who was it
telling me? Some doctor I know who came down to see him. He said Carey
does himself awfully well, has the house full of bully pictures, and the
family plate, and wonderful collections—things he picked up in the
East—gold ornaments, and jewels, and jade.”
“I shouldn’t think,” said the girl in the same hushed voice, “they would
let him live so far from any neighbors with such things in the house.
Suppose burglars——”
“Burglars! Burglars would never hear of this place. How could they? Even
his friends think it’s just a private mad-house.”
The girl shivered and drew back from the gate.
Fred coughed apologetically.
“_I’ve_ heard of it,” he volunteered. “There was a piece in the _Sunday
Post_. It said he eats his dinner in a diamond crown, and all the walls
is gold, and two monkeys wait on table with gold——”
“Nonsense!” said the man sharply. “He eats like any one else and dresses
like any one else. How far is the well from the house?”
“It’s purty near,” said the chauffeur.
“Pretty near the house, or pretty near here?”
“Just outside the kitchen; and it makes a creaky noise.”
“You mean you don’t want to go?”
Fred’s answer was unintelligible.
“You wait here with Miss Forbes,” said the young man. “And I’ll get the
water.”
“Yes, sir!” said Fred, quite distinctly.
“No, sir!” said Miss Forbes, with equal distinctness. “I’m not going to
be left here alone—with all these trees. I’m going with you.”
“There may be a dog,” suggested the young man, “or, I was thinking if
they heard me prowling about, they might take a shot—just for luck. Why
don’t you go back to the car with Fred?”
“Down that long road in the dark?” exclaimed the girl. “Do you think I
have no imagination?”
The man in front, the girl close on his heels, and the boy with the
buckets following, crawled through the broken gate, and moved cautiously
up the gravel driveway.
Within fifty feet of the house the courage of the chauffeur returned.
“You wait here,” he whispered, “and if I wake ’em up, you shout to ’em
that it’s all right, that it’s only me.”
“Your idea being,” said the young man, “that they will then fire at me.
Clever lad. Run along.”
There was a rustling of the dead weeds, and instantly the chauffeur was
swallowed in the encompassing shadows.
Miss Forbes leaned toward the young man.
“Do you see a light in that lower story?” she whispered.
“No,” said the man. “Where?”
After a pause the girl answered: “I can’t see it now, either. Maybe I
didn’t see it. It was very faint—just a glow—it might have been
phosphorescence.”
“It might,” said the man. He gave a shrug of distaste. “The whole place
is certainly old enough and decayed enough.”
For a brief space they stood quite still, and at once, accentuated by
their own silence, the noises of the night grew in number and
distinctness. A slight wind had risen and the boughs of the pines rocked
restlessly, making mournful complaint; and at their feet the needles
dropping in a gentle desultory shower had the sound of rain in
springtime. From every side they were startled by noises they could not
place. Strange movements and rustlings caused them to peer sharply into
the shadows; footsteps, that seemed to approach, and then, having marked
them, skulk away; branches of bushes that suddenly swept together, as
though closing behind some one in stealthy retreat. Although they knew
that in the deserted garden they were alone, they felt that from the
shadows they were being spied upon, that the darkness of the place was
peopled by malign presences.
The young man drew a cigar from his case and put it unlit between his
teeth.
“Cheerful, isn’t it?” he growled. “These dead leaves make it damp as a
tomb. If I’ve seen one ghost, I’ve seen a dozen. I believe we’re
standing in the Carey family’s graveyard.”
“I thought you were brave,” said the girl.
“I am,” returned the young man, “very brave. But if you had the most
wonderful girl on earth to take care of in the grounds of a mad-house at
two in the morning, you’d be scared too.”
He was abruptly surprised by Miss Forbes laying her hand firmly upon his
shoulder and turning him in the direction of the house. Her face was so
near his that he felt the uneven fluttering of her breath upon his
cheek.
“There is a man,” she said, “standing behind that tree.”
By the faint light of the stars he saw, in black silhouette, a shoulder
and head projecting from beyond the trunk of a huge oak, and then
quickly withdrawn. The owner of the head and shoulder was on the side of
the tree nearest to themselves, his back turned to them, and so deeply
was his attention engaged that he was unconscious of their presence.
“He is watching the house,” said the girl. “Why is he doing that?”
“I think it’s Fred,” whispered the man. “He’s afraid to go for the
water. That’s as far as he’s gone.” He was about to move forward when
from the oak-tree there came a low whistle. The girl and the man stood
silent and motionless. But they knew it was useless; that they had been
overheard. A voice spoke cautiously.
“That you?” it asked.
With the idea only of gaining time, the young man responded promptly and
truthfully. “Yes,” he whispered.
“Keep to the right of the house,” commanded the voice.
The young man seized Miss Forbes by the wrist and moving to the right
drew her quickly with him. He did not stop until they had turned the
corner of the building and were once more hidden by the darkness.
“The plot thickens,” he said. “I take it that that fellow is a keeper,
or watchman. He spoke as though it were natural there should be another
man in the grounds, so there’s probably two of them, either to keep
Carey in or to keep trespassers out. Now, I think I’ll go back and tell
him that Jack and Jill went up the hill to fetch a pail of water, and
that all they want is to be allowed to get the water, and go.”
“Why should a watchman hide behind a tree?” asked the girl. “And why——”
She ceased abruptly with a sharp cry of fright. “What’s that?” she
whispered.
“What’s what?” asked the young man startled. “What did you hear?”
“Over there,” stammered the girl. “Something—that—groaned.”
“Pretty soon this will get on my nerves,” said the man. He ripped open
his great-coat and reached under it. “I’ve been stoned twice, when there
were women in the car,” he said, apologetically, “and so now at night I
carry a gun.” He shifted the darkened torch to his left hand, and,
moving a few yards, halted to listen. The girl, reluctant to be left
alone, followed slowly. As he stood immovable there came from the leaves
just beyond him the sound of a feeble struggle, and a strangled groan.
The man bent forward and flashed the torch. He saw stretched rigid on
the ground a huge wolf-hound. Its legs were twisted horribly, the lips
drawn away from the teeth, the eyes glazed in an agony of pain. The man
snapped off the light. “Keep back!” he whispered to the girl. He took
her by the arm and ran with her toward the gate.
“Who was it?” she begged.
“It was a dog,” he answered. “I think——”
He did not tell her what he thought.
“I’ve got to find out what the devil has happened to Fred!” he said.
“You go back to the car. Send your brother here on the run. Tell him
there’s going to be a rough-house. You’re not afraid to go?”
“No,” said the girl.
A shadow blacker than the night rose suddenly before them, and a voice
asked sternly but quietly: “What are you doing here?”
The young man lifted his arm clear of the girl, and shoved her quickly
from him. In his hand she felt the pressure of the revolver.
“Well,” he replied truculently, “and what are you doing here?”
“I am the night watchman,” answered the voice. “Who are you?”
It struck Miss Forbes if the watchman knew that one of the trespassers
was a woman he would be at once reassured, and she broke in quickly:
“We have lost our way,” she said pleasantly. “We came here——”
She found herself staring blindly down a shaft of light. For an instant
the torch held her, and then from her swept over the young man.
“Drop that gun!” cried the voice. It was no longer the same voice; it
was now savage and snarling. For answer the young man pressed the torch
in his left hand, and, held in the two circles of light, the men
surveyed each other. The new-comer was one of unusual bulk and height.
The collar of his overcoat hid his mouth, and his derby hat was drawn
down over his forehead, but what they saw showed an intelligent, strong
face, although for the moment it wore a menacing scowl. The young man
dropped his revolver into his pocket.
“My automobile ran dry,” he said; “we came in here to get some water. My
chauffeur is back there somewhere with a couple of buckets. This is Mr.
Carey’s place, isn’t it?”
“Take that light out of my eyes!” said the watchman.
“Take your light out of my eyes,” returned the young man. “You can see
we’re not—we don’t mean any harm.”
The two lights disappeared simultaneously, and then each, as though
worked by the same hand, sprang forth again.
“What did you think I was going to do?” the young man asked. He laughed
and switched off his torch.
But the one the watchman held in his hand still moved from the face of
the girl to that of the young man.
“How’d you know this was the Carey house?” he demanded. “Do you know Mr.
Carey?”
“No, but I know this is his house.”
For a moment from behind his mask of light the watchman surveyed them in
silence. Then he spoke quickly:
“I’ll take you to him,” he said, “if he thinks it’s all right, it’s all
right.”
The girl gave a protesting cry. The young man burst forth indignantly:
“You will _not_!” he cried. “Don’t be an idiot! You talk like a
Tenderloin cop. Do we look like second-story workers?”
“I found you prowling around Mr. Carey’s grounds at two in the morning,”
said the watchman sharply, “with a gun in your hand. My job is to
protect this place, and I am going to take you both to Mr. Carey.”
[Illustration: In the two circles of light the men surveyed each other]
Until this moment the young man could see nothing save the shaft of
light and the tiny glowing bulb at its base; now into the light there
protruded a black revolver.
“Keep your hands up, and walk ahead of me to the house,” commanded the
watchman. “The woman will go in front.”
The young man did not move. Under his breath he muttered impotently, and
bit at his lower lip.
“See here,” he said, “I’ll go with you, but you sha’n’t take this lady
in front of that madman. Let her go to her car. It’s only a hundred
yards from here; you know perfectly well she——”
“I know where your car is, all right,” said the watchman steadily, “and
I’m not going to let you get away in it till Mr. Carey’s seen you.” The
revolver motioned forward. Miss Forbes stepped in front of it and
appealed eagerly to the young man.
“Do what he says,” she urged. “It’s only his duty. Please! Indeed, I
don’t mind.” She turned to the watchman. “Which way do you want us to
go?” she asked.
“Keep in the light,” he ordered.
The light showed the broad steps leading to the front entrance of the
house, and in its shaft they climbed them, pushed open the unlocked
door, and stood in a small hallway. It led into a greater hall beyond.
By the electric lights still burning they noted that the interior of the
house was as rich and well cared for as the outside was miserable. With
a gesture for silence the watchman motioned them into a small room on
the right of the hallway. It had the look of an office, and was
apparently the place in which were conducted the affairs of the estate.
In an open grate was a dying fire; in front of it a flat desk covered
with papers and japanned tin boxes.
“You stay here till I fetch Mr. Carey and the servants,” commanded the
watchman. “Don’t try to get out, and,” he added menacingly, “don’t make
no noise.” With his revolver he pointed at the two windows. They were
heavily barred. “Those bars keep Mr. Carey in,” he said, “and I guess
they can keep you in, too. The other watchman,” he added, “will be just
outside this door.” But still he hesitated, glowering with suspicion;
unwilling to trust them alone. His face lit with an ugly smile.
“Mr. Carey’s very bad to-night,” he said; “he won’t keep his bed and
he’s wandering about the house. If he found you by yourselves, he
might——”
The young man, who had been staring at the fire, swung sharply on his
heel.
“Get-to-hell-out-of-here!” he said.
The watchman stepped into the hall and was cautiously closing the door
when a man sprang lightly up the front steps. Through the inch crack
left by the open door the trespassers heard the new-comer’s eager
greeting.
“I can’t get him right!” he panted. “He’s snoring like a hog.”
The watchman exclaimed savagely:
“He’s fooling you.” He gasped. “I didn’t mor’ nor slap him. Did you
throw water on him?”
“I drowned him!” returned the other. “He never winked. I tell you we
gotta walk, and damn quick!”
“Walk!” The watchman cursed him foully. “How far could we walk? _I’ll_
bring him to,” he swore. “He’s scared of us, and he’s shamming.” He gave
a sudden start of alarm. “That’s it, he’s shamming. You fool! You
shouldn’t have left him.”
There was the swift patter of retreating footsteps, and then a sudden
halt, and they heard the watchman command: “Go back, and keep the other
two till I come.”
The next instant from the outside the door was softly closed upon them.
It had no more than shut when to the surprise of Miss Forbes the young
man, with a delighted and vindictive chuckle, sprang to the desk and
began to drum upon it with his fingers. It was as though he were
practising upon a type-writer.
“He missed _these_,” he muttered jubilantly. The girl leaned forward.
Beneath his fingers she saw, flush with the table, a roll of little
ivory buttons. She read the words “Stables,” “Servants’ hall.” She
raised a pair of very beautiful and very bewildered eyes.
“But if he wanted the servants, why didn’t the watchman do that?” she
asked.
“Because he isn’t a watchman,” answered the young man. “Because he’s
robbing this house.”
He took the revolver from his encumbering great-coat, slipped it in his
pocket, and threw the coat from him. He motioned the girl into a corner.
“Keep out of the line of the door,” he ordered.
“I don’t understand,” begged the girl.
“They came in a car,” whispered the young man. “It’s broken down, and
they can’t get away. When the big fellow stopped us and I flashed my
torch, I saw their car behind him in the road with the front off and the
lights out. He’d seen the lamps of our car, and now they want it to
escape in. That’s why he brought us here—to keep us away from our car.”
“And Fred!” gasped the girl. “Fred’s hurt!”
“I guess Fred stumbled into the big fellow,” assented the young man,
“and the big fellow put him out; then he saw Fred was a chauffeur, and
now they are trying to bring him to, so that he can run the car for
them. You needn’t worry about Fred. He’s been in four smash-ups.”
The young man bent forward to listen, but from no part of the great
house came any sign. He exclaimed angrily.
“They must be drugged,” he growled. He ran to the desk and made vicious
jabs at the ivory buttons.
“Suppose they’re out of order!” he whispered.
There was the sound of leaping feet. The young man laughed nervously.
“No, it’s all right,” he cried. “They’re coming!”
The door flung open and the big burglar and a small, rat-like figure of
a man burst upon them; the big one pointing a revolver.
“Come with me to your car!” he commanded. “You’ve got to take us to
Boston. Quick, or I’ll blow your face off.”
Although the young man glared bravely at the steel barrel and the lifted
trigger, poised a few inches from his eyes, his body, as though weak
with fright, shifted slightly and his feet made a shuffling noise upon
the floor. When the weight of his body was balanced on the ball of his
right foot, the shuffling ceased. Had the burglar lowered his eyes, the
manœuvre to him would have been significant, but his eyes were following
the barrel of the revolver.
In the mind of the young man the one thought uppermost was that he must
gain time, but, with a revolver in his face, he found his desire to gain
time swiftly diminishing. Still, when he spoke, it was with
deliberation.
“My chauffeur—” he began slowly.
The burglar snapped at him like a dog. “To hell with your chauffeur!” he
cried. “Your chauffeur has run away. You’ll drive that car yourself, or
I’ll leave you here with the top of your head off.”
The face of the young man suddenly flashed with pleasure. His eyes,
looking past the burglar to the door, lit with relief.
“There’s the chauffeur now!” he cried.
The big burglar for one instant glanced over his right shoulder.
For months at a time, on Soldiers’ Field, the young man had thrown
himself at human targets, that ran and dodged and evaded him, and the
hulking burglar, motionless before him, was easily his victim.
He leaped at him, his left arm swinging like a scythe, and, with the
impact of a club, the blow caught the burglar in the throat.
The pistol went off impotently; the burglar with a choking cough sank in
a heap on the floor.
The young man tramped over him and upon him, and beat the second burglar
with savage, whirlwind blows. The second burglar, shrieking with pain,
turned to fly, and a fist, that fell upon him where his bump of honesty
should have been, drove his head against the lintel of the door.
At the same instant from the belfry on the roof there rang out on the
night the sudden tumult of a bell; a bell that told as plainly as though
it clamored with a human tongue, that the hand that rang it was driven
with fear; fear of fire, fear of thieves, fear of a madman with a knife
in his hand running amuck; perhaps at that moment creeping up the belfry
stairs.
From all over the house there was the rush of feet and men’s voices, and
from the garden the light of dancing lanterns. And while the smoke of
the revolver still hung motionless, the open door was crowded with
half-clad figures. At their head were two young men. One who had drawn
over his night-clothes a serge suit, and who, in even that garb, carried
an air of authority; and one, tall, stooping, weak of face and
light-haired, with eyes that blinked and trembled behind great
spectacles, and who, for comfort, hugged about him a gorgeous kimono.
For an instant the new-comers stared stupidly through the smoke at the
bodies on the floor breathing stertorously, at the young man with the
lust of battle still in his face, at the girl shrinking against the
wall. It was the young man in the serge suit who was the first to move.
“Who are you?” he demanded.
“These are burglars,” said the owner of the car. “We happened to be
passing in my automobile, and——”
The young man was no longer listening. With an alert, professional
manner he had stooped over the big burglar. With his thumb he pushed
back the man’s eyelids, and ran his fingers over his throat and chin. He
felt carefully of the point of the chin, and glanced up.
“You’ve broken the bone,” he said.
“I just swung on him,” said the young man. He turned his eyes, and
suggested the presence of the girl.
At the same moment the man in the kimono cried nervously: “Ladies
present, ladies present. Go put your clothes on, everybody; put your
clothes on.”
For orders the men in the doorway looked to the young man with the stern
face.
He scowled at the figure in the kimono.
“You will please go to your room, sir,” he said. He stood up, and bowed
to Miss Forbes. “I beg your pardon,” he asked, “you must want to get out
of this. Will you please go into the library?”
He turned to the robust youths in the door, and pointed at the second
burglar.
“Move him out of the way,” he ordered.
The man in the kimono smirked and bowed.
“Allow me,” he said; “allow me to show you to the library. This is no
place for ladies.”
The young man with the stern face frowned impatiently.
“You will please return to your room, sir,” he repeated.
With an attempt at dignity the figure in the kimono gathered the silk
robe closer about him.
“Certainly,” he said. “If you think you can get on without me—I will
retire,” and lifting his bare feet mincingly, he tiptoed away. Miss
Forbes looked after him with an expression of relief, of repulsion, of
great pity.
The owner of the car glanced at the young man with the stern face, and
raised his eyebrows interrogatively.
The young man had taken the revolver from the limp fingers of the
burglar and was holding it in his hand. Winthrop gave what was half a
laugh and half a sigh of compassion.
“So, that’s Carey?” he said.
There was a sudden silence. The young man with the stern face made no
answer. His head was bent over the revolver. He broke it open, and
spilled the cartridges into his palm. Still he made no answer. When he
raised his head, his eyes were no longer stern, but wistful, and filled
with an inexpressible loneliness.
“No, _I_ am Carey,” he said.
The one who had blundered stood helpless, tongue-tied, with no presence
of mind beyond knowing that to explain would offend further.
The other seemed to feel for him more than for himself. In a voice low
and peculiarly appealing, he continued hurriedly.
[Illustration: “You’ve broken the bone,” he said]
“He is my doctor,” he said. “He is a young man, and he has not had many
advantages—his manner is not—I find we do not get on together. I have
asked them to send me some one else.” He stopped suddenly, and stood
unhappily silent. The knowledge that the strangers were acquainted with
his story seemed to rob him of his earlier confidence. He made an
uncertain movement as though to relieve them of his presence.
Miss Forbes stepped toward him eagerly.
“You told me I might wait in the library,” she said. “Will you take me
there?”
For a moment the man did not move, but stood looking at the young and
beautiful girl, who, with a smile, hid the compassion in her eyes.
“Will you go?” he asked wistfully.
“Why not?” said the girl.
The young man laughed with pleasure.
“I am unpardonable,” he said. “I live so much alone—that I forget.” Like
one who, issuing from a close room, encounters the morning air, he drew
a deep, happy breath. “It has been three years since a woman has been in
this house,” he said simply. “And I have not even thanked you,” he went
on, “nor asked you if you are cold,” he cried remorsefully, “or hungry.
How nice it would be if you would say you are hungry.”