The House of a Thousand Candles, Meredith Nicholson [13 inch ebook reader TXT] 📗
- Author: Meredith Nicholson
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lied, but without appealing to Bates I was not prepared
to prove it.
“But you can’t deny that you’re on my grounds now,
can you?” I had dropped the revolver to my knee, but
I raised it again.
“Certainly not, Mr. Glenarm. If you’ll allow me to
explain—”
“That’s precisely what I want you to do.”
“Well, it may seem strange,”—he laughed, and I felt
the least bit foolish to be pointing a pistol at the head
of a fellow of so amiable a spirit.
“Hurry,” I commanded.
“Well, as I was saying, it may seem strange; but I
was just examining the wall to determine the character
of the work. One of the cottagers on the lake left me
with the job of building a fence on his place, and I’ve
been expecting to come over to look at this all fall.
You see, Mr. Glenarm, your honored grandfather was
a master in such matters, as you may know, and I didn’t
see any harm in getting the benefit—to put it so—of his
experience.”
I laughed. He had denied having entered the house
with so much assurance that I had been prepared for
some really plausible explanation of his interest in the
wall.
“Morgan—you said it was Morgan, didn’t you?—you
are undoubtedly a scoundrel of the first water. I make
the remark with pleasure.”
“Men have been killed for saying less,” he said.
“And for doing less than firing through windows at a
man’s head. It wasn’t friendly of you.”
“I don’t see why you center all your suspicions on
me. You exaggerate my importance, Mr. Glenarm. I’m
only the man-of-all-work at a summer resort.”
“I wouldn’t believe you, Morgan, if you swore on a
stack of Bibles as high as this wall.”
“Thanks!” he ejaculated mockingly.
Like a flash he swung the hammer over his head and
drove it at me, and at the same moment I fired. The
hammer-head struck the pillar near the outer edge and
in such a manner that the handle flew around and
smote me smartly in the face. By the time I reached
the ground the man was already running rapidly
through the park, darting in and out among the trees,
and I made after him at hot speed.
[Illustration: Like a flash he swung the hammer, and at the same moment I fired.]
The hammer-handle had struck slantingly across my
forehead, and my head ached from the blow. I abused
myself roundly for managing the encounter so stupidly,
and in my rage fired twice with no aim whatever after
the flying figure of the caretaker. He clearly had the
advantage of familiarity with the wood, striking off
boldly into the heart of it, and quickly widening the
distance between us; but I kept on, even after I ceased
to hear him threshing through the undergrowth, and
came out presently at the margin of the lake about fifty
feet from the boat-house. I waited in the shadow for
some time, expecting to see the fellow again, but he did
not appear.
I found the wall with difficulty and followed it back
to the gate. It would be just as well, I thought, to
possess myself of the hammer; and I dropped down on
the St. Agatha side of the wall and groped about among
the leaves until I found it.
Then I walked home, went into the library, alight
with its many candles just as I had left it, and sat
down before the fire to meditate. I had been absent
from the house only forty-five minutes.
A STRING OF GOLD BEADS
A moment later Bates entered with a fresh supply of
wood. I watched him narrowly for some sign of perturbation,
but he was not to be caught off guard. Possibly
he had not heard the shots in the wood; at any
rate, he tended the fire with his usual gravity, and after
brushing the hearth paused respectfully.
“Is there anything further, sir?”
“I believe not, Bates. Oh! here’s a hammer I picked
up out in the grounds a bit ago. I wish you’d see if it
belongs to the house.”
He examined the implement with care and shook his
head.
“It doesn’t belong here, I think, sir. But we sometimes
find tools left by the carpenters that worked on
the house. Shall I put this in the tool-chest, sir?”
“Never mind. I need such a thing now and then and
I’ll keep it handy.”
“Very good, Mr. Glenarm. It’s a bit sharper to-night,
but we’re likely to have sudden changes at this season.”
“I dare say.”
We were not getting anywhere; the fellow was certainly
an incomparable actor.
“You must find it pretty lonely here, Bates. Don’t
hesitate to go to the village when you like.”
“I thank you, Mr. Glenarm; but I am not much for
idling. I keep a few books by me for the evenings. Annandale
is not what you would exactly call a diverting
village.”
“I fancy not. But the caretaker over at the summer
resort has even a lonelier time, I suppose. That’s what
I’d call a pretty cheerless job—watching summer cottages
in the winter.”
“That’s Morgan, sir. I meet him occasionally when
I go to the village; a very worthy person, I should call
him, on slight acquaintance.”
“No doubt of it, Bates. Any time through the winter
you want to have him in for a social glass, it’s all
right with me.”
He met my gaze without flinching, and lighted me
to the stair with our established ceremony. I voted him
an interesting knave and really admired the cool way
in which he carried off difficult situations. I had no
intention of being killed, and now that I had due warning
of danger, I resolved to protect myself from foes
without and within. Both Bates and Morgan, the caretaker,
were liars of high attainment. Morgan was,
moreover, a cheerful scoundrel, and experience taught
me long ago that a knave with humor is doubly dangerous.
Before going to bed I wrote a long letter to Larry
Donovan, giving him a full account of my arrival at
Glenarm House. The thought of Larry always cheered
me, and as the pages slipped from my pen I could feel
his sympathy and hear him chuckling over the lively beginning
of my year at Glenarm. The idea of being fired
upon by an unseen foe would, I knew, give Larry a real
lift of the spirit.
The next morning I walked into the village, mailed
my letter, visited the railway station with true rustic
instinct and watched the cutting out of a freight car for
Annandale with a pleasure I had not before taken in
that proceeding. The villagers stared at me blankly as
on my first visit. A group of idle laborers stopped talking
to watch me; and when I was a few yards past them
they laughed at a remark by one of the number which
I could not overhear. But I am not a particularly sensitive
person; I did not care what my Hoosier neighbors
said of me; all I asked was that they should refrain
from shooting at the back of my head through the windows
of my own house.
On this day I really began to work. I mapped out
a course of reading, set up a draftsman’s table I found
put away in a closet, and convinced myself that I was
beginning a year of devotion to architecture. Such was,
I felt, the only honest course. I should work every day
from eight until one, and my leisure I should give to
recreation and a search for the motives that lay behind
the crafts and assaults of my enemies.
When I plunged into the wood in the middle of the
afternoon it was with the definite purpose of returning
to the upper end of the lake for an interview with Morgan,
who had, so Bates informed me, a small house back
of the cottages.
I took the canoe I had chosen for my own use from
the boat-house and paddled up the lake. The air was
still warm, but the wind that blew out of the south
tasted of rain. I scanned the water and the borders of
the lake for signs of life—more particularly, I may as
well admit, for a certain maroon-colored canoe and a
girl in a red tam-o’-shanter, but lake and summer cottages
were mine alone. I landed and began at once my
search for Morgan. There were many paths through
the woods back of the cottages, and I followed several
futilely before I at last found a small house snugly
bid away in a thicket of young maples.
The man I was looking for came to the door quickly
in response to my knock.
“Good afternoon, Morgan.”
“Good afternoon, Mr. Glenarm,” he said, taking the
pipe from his mouth the better to grin at me. He
showed no sign of surprise, and I was nettled by his cool
reception. There was, perhaps, a certain element of
recklessness in my visit to the house of a man who had
shown so singular an interest in my affairs, and his cool
greeting vexed me.
“Morgan—” I began.
“Won’t you come in and rest yourself, Mr. Glenarm?”
he interrupted. “I reckon you’re tired from your trip
over—”
“Thank you, no,” I snapped.
“Suit yourself, Mr. Glenarm.” He seemed to like my
name and gave it a disagreeable drawling emphasis.
“Morgan, you are an infernal blackguard. You have
tried twice to kill me—”
“We’ll call it that, if you like,”—and he grinned.
“But you’d better cut off one for this.”
He lifted the gray fedora hat from his head, and
poked his finger through a hole in the top.
“You’re a pretty fair shot, Mr. Glenarm. The fact
about me is,”—and he winked—“the honest truth is,
I’m all out of practice. Why, sir, when I saw you paddling
out on the lake this afternoon I sighted you from
the casino half a dozen times with my gun, but I was
afraid to risk it.” He seemed to be shaken with inner
mirth. “If I’d missed, I wasn’t sure you’d be scared to
death!”
For a novel diversion I heartily recommend a meeting
with the assassin who has, only a few days or hours
before, tried to murder you. I know of nothing in the
way of social adventure that is quite equal to it. Morgan
was a fellow of intelligence and, whatever lay back
of his designs against me, he was clearly a foe to reckon
with. He stood in the doorway calmly awaiting my
next move. I struck a match on my box and lighted a
cigarette.
“Morgan, I hope you understand that I am not responsible
for any injury my grandfather may have inflicted
on you. I hadn’t seen him for several years before
he died. I was never at Glenarm before in my
life, so it’s a little rough for you to visit your displeasure
on me.”
He smiled tolerantly as I spoke. I knew—and he
knew that I did—that no ill feeling against my grandfather
lay back of his interest in my affairs.
“You’re not quite the man your grandfather was, Mr.
Glenarm. You’ll excuse my bluntness, but I take it
that you’re a frank man. He was a very keen person,
and, I’m afraid,”—he chuckled with evident satisfaction
to himself—“I’m really afraid, Mr. Glenarm, that
you’re not!”
“There you have it, Morgan! I fully agree with you!
I’m as dull as an oyster; that’s the reason I’ve called on
you for enlightenment. Consider
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