The House of a Thousand Candles, Meredith Nicholson [13 inch ebook reader TXT] 📗
- Author: Meredith Nicholson
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and Pickering glanced nervously from one to the
other of us. It was the calm before the storm; in a moment
we should be at each other’s throats for the final
struggle, and yet we waited. In the wall I heard still
the sound of steps. They were clear to all of us now.
We stood there for what seemed an eternity—I suppose
the time was really not more than thirty seconds—inert,
waiting, while I felt that something must happen; the
silence, the waiting, were intolerable. I grasped my pistol
and bent low for a spring at Morgan, with the overturned
table and wreckage of the chandelier between me
and Pickering; and every man in the room was instantly
on the alert.
All but Bates. He remained rigid—that curious
smile on his blood-smeared face, his eyes bent toward the
end of the great fireplace back of me.
That look on his face held, arrested, numbed me; I
followed it. I forgot Morgan; a tacit truce held us all
again. I stepped back till my eyes fastened on the
broad paneled chimney-breast at the right of the hearth,
and it was there now that the sound of footsteps in the
wall was heard again; then it ceased utterly, the long
panel opened slowly, creaking slightly upon its hinges,
then down into the room stepped Marian Devereux.
She wore the dark gown in which I had seen her last,
and a cloak was drawn over her shoulders.
She laughed as her eyes swept the room.
“Ah, gentlemen,” she said, shaking her head, as she
viewed our disorder, “what wretched housekeepers you
are!”
Steps were again heard in the wall, and she turned to
the panel, held it open with one hand and put out the
other, waiting for some one who followed her.
Then down into the room stepped my grandfather,
John Marshall Glenarm! His staff, his cloak, the silk
hat above his shrewd face, and his sharp black eyes were
unmistakable. He drew a silk handkerchief from the
skirts of his frock coat, with a characteristic flourish
that I remembered well, and brushed a bit of dust from
his cloak before looking at any of us. Then his eyes
fell upon me.
“Good morning, Jack,” he said; and his gaze swept
the room.
“God help us!”
It was Morgan, I think, who screamed these words as
he bolted for the broken door, but Stoddard caught and
held him.
“Thank God, you’re here, sir!” boomed forth in Bates’
sepulchral voice.
It seemed to me that I saw all that happened with a
weird, unnatural distinctness, as one sees, before a
storm, vivid outlines of far headlands that the usual
light of day scarce discloses.
I was myself dazed and spellbound; but I do not like
to think, even now, of the effect of my grandfather’s
appearance on Arthur Pickering; of the shock that
seemed verily to break him in two, so that he staggered,
then collapsed, his head falling as though to strike his
knees. Larry caught him by the collar and dragged him
to a seat, where he huddled, his twitching hands at his
throat.
“Gentlemen,” said my grandfather, “you seem to have
been enjoying yourselves. Who is this person?”
He pointed with his stick to the sheriff, who was endeavoring
to crawl out from under the mass of broken
crystals.
“That, sir, is the sheriff,” answered Bates.
“A very disorderly man, I must say. Jack, what
have you been doing to cause the sheriff so much inconvenience?
Didn’t you know that that chandelier was
likely to kill him? That thing cost a thousand dollars,
gentlemen. You are expensive visitors. Ah, Morgan—
and Ferguson, too! Well, well! I thought better of both
of you. Good morning, Stoddard! A little work for
the Church militant! And this gentleman?”—he indicated
Larry, who was, for once in his life, without anything
to say.
“Mr. Donovan—a friend of the house,” explained
Bates.
“Pleased, I’m sure,” said the old gentleman. “Glad
the house had a friend. It seems to have had enemies
enough,” he added dolefully; and he eyed the wreck of
the room ruefully. The good humor in his face reassured
me; but still I stood in tongue-tied wonder, staring
at him.
“And Pickering!” John Marshall Glenarm’s voice
broke with a quiet mirth that I remembered as the preface
usually of something unpleasant. “Well, Arthur,
I’m glad to find you on guard, defending the interests
of my estate. At the risk of your life, too! Bates!”
“Yes, Mr. Glenarm.”
“You ought to have called me earlier. I really prized
that chandelier immensely. And this furniture wasn’t
so bad!”
His tone changed abruptly. He pointed to the
sheriff’s deputies one after the other with his stick.
There was, I remembered, always something insinuating,
disagreeable and final about my grandfather’s staff.
“Clear out!” he commanded. “Bates, see these fellows
through the wall. Mr. Sheriff, if I were you I’d
be very careful, indeed, what I said of this affair. I’m
a dead man come to life again, and I know a great deal
that I didn’t know before I died. Nothing, gentlemen,
fits a man for life like a temporary absence from this
cheerful and pleasant world. I recommend you to try
it.”
He walked about the room with the quick eager step
that was peculiarly his own, while Stoddard, Larry and
I stared at him. Bates was helping the dazed sheriff
to his feet. Morgan and the rest of the foe were crawling
and staggering away, muttering, as though imploring
the air of heaven against an evil spirit.
Pickering sat silent, not sure whether he saw a ghost
or real flesh and blood, and Larry kept close to him, cutting
off his retreat. I think we all experienced that bewildered
feeling of children who are caught in mischief
by a sudden parental visitation. My grandfather went
about peering at the books, with a tranquil air that was
disquieting.
He paused suddenly before the design for the memorial
tablet, which I had made early in my stay at
Glenarm House. I had sketched the lettering with some
care, and pinned it against a shelf for my more leisurely
study of its phrases. The old gentlemen pulled out his
glasses and stood with his hands behind his back, reading.
When he finished he walked to where I stood.
“Jack!” he said, “Jack, my boy!” His voice shook
and his hands trembled as he laid them on my shoulders.
“Marian,”—he turned, seeking her, but the girl had
vanished. “Just as well,” he said. “This room is hardly
an edifying sight for a woman.” I heard, for an instant,
a light hurried step in the wall.
Pickering, too, heard that faint, fugitive sound, and
our eyes met at the instant it ceased. The thought of
her tore my heart, and I felt that Pickering saw and
knew and was glad.
“They have all gone, sir,” reported Bates, returning
to the room.
“Now, gentlemen,” began my grandfather, seating
himself, “I owe you an apology; this little secret of mine
was shared by only two persons. One of these was Bates,”
—he paused as an exclamation broke from all of us; and
he went on, enjoying our amazement—“and the other
was Marian Devereux. I had often observed that at a
man’s death his property gets into the wrong hands, or
becomes a bone of contention among lawyers. Sometimes,”
and the old gentleman laughed, “an executor
proves incompetent or dishonest. I was thoroughly
fooled in you, Pickering. The money you owe me is a
large sum; and you were so delighted to hear of my
death that you didn’t even make sure I was really out of
the way. You were perfectly willing to accept Bates’
word for it; and I must say that Bates carried it off
splendidly.”
Pickering rose, the blood surging again in his face,
and screamed at Bates, pointing a shaking finger at the
man.
“You impostor—you perjurer! The law will deal
with your case.”
“To be sure,” resumed my grandfather calmly;
“Bates did make false affidavits about my death; but
possibly—”
“It was in a Pickwickian sense, sir,” said Bates
gravely.
“And in a righteous cause,” declared my grandfather.
“I assure you, Pickering, that I have every intention of
taking care of Bates. His weekly letters giving an account
of the curious manifestations of your devotion to
Jack’s security and peace were alone worth a goodly
sum. But, Bates—”
The old gentleman was enjoying himself hugely. He
chuckled now, and placed his hand on my shoulder.
“Bates, it was too bad I got those missives of yours
all in a bunch. I was in a dahabiyeh on the Nile and
they don’t have rural free delivery in Egypt. Your
cablegram called me home before I got the letters. But
thank God, Jack, you’re alive!”
There was real feeling in these last words, and I
think we were all touched by them.
“Amen to that!” cried Bates.
“And now, Pickering, before you go I want to show
you something. It’s about this mysterious treasure, that
has given you—and I hear, the whole countryside—so
much concern. I’m disappointed in you, Jack, that you
couldn’t find the hiding-place. I designed that as a part
of your architectural education. Bates, give me a
chair.”
The man gravely drew a chair out of the wreckage
and placed it upon the hearth. My grandfather stepped
upon it, seized one of the bronze sconces above the mantel
and gave it a sharp turn. At the same moment,
Bates, upon another chair, grasped the companion
bronze and wrenched it sharply. Instantly some mechanism
creaked in the great oak chimney-breast and the
long oak panels swung open, disclosing a steel door with
a combination knob.
“Gentlemen,”—and my grandfather turned with a
quaint touch of humor, and a merry twinkle in his
bright old eyes—“gentlemen, behold the treasury! It
has proved a better hiding-place than I ever imagined
it would. There’s not much here, Jack, but enough to
keep you going for a while.”
We were all staring, and the old gentleman was unfeignedly
enjoying our mystification. It was an hour
on which he had evidently counted much; it was the
triumph of his resurrection and home-coming, and he
chuckled as he twirled the knob in the steel door. Then
Bates stepped forward and helped him pull the door
open, disclosing a narrow steel chest, upright and held
in place by heavy bolts clamped in the stone of the chimney.
It was filled with packets of papers placed on
shelves, and tied neatly with tape.
“Jack,” said my grandfather, shaking his head, “you
wouldn’t be an architect, and you’re not much of an
engineer either, or you’d have seen that that paneling
was heavier than was necessary. There’s two hundred
thousand dollars in first-rate securities—I vouch for
them! Bates and I put them there just before I went
to Vermont to die.”
“I’ve sounded those panels a dozen times,” I protested.
“Of course you have,” said my grandfather, “but
solid steel behind wood is safe. I tested it carefully before
I left.”
He laughed and clapped his knees, and I laughed with
him.
“But you found the Door of Bewilderment and Pickering’s
notes, and that’s something.”
“No; I didn’t even find that. Donovan deserves the
credit. But how did you ever come to build that tunnel,
if you don’t mind telling me?”
He laughed gleefully.
“That was originally a trench for natural-gas pipes.
There was once a large pumping-station on the site of
this house, with a big trunk main running off across
country to supply the
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