Chapter 5

THE FARM-BOY TELLS A GHASTLY STORY AND AN IRISHMAN ENTERS

Barnes stared. "What do you mean?" he demanded sharply.

"I mean just what I said. What do you know about this business?"

"How should I know ANYTHING about it?"

"Well, we don't know who you are, nor what you're doing up here, nor what your real profession is. That's why I ask the question."

"I see," said Barnes, after a moment. He grasped the situation and he admitted to himself that Jones had cause for his suspicions. "It has occurred to you that I may be a detective or a secret service man, isn't that the case? Well, I am neither. Moreover, this man and his companion evidently had their doubts about me, if I am to judge by your remark and your actions on the porch earlier in the evening."

"I only said that they were curious about you. The man named Roon asked me a good many questions about you while you were in at supper. Who knows but what he was justified in thinkin' you didn't mean any good to him and his friend?"

"Did you know any more about these two men, Mr. Jones, than you know about me?"

"I don't know anything about 'em. They came here like any one else, paid their bills regular, 'tended to their own business, and that's all."

"What was their business?"

"Mr. Roon was lookin' for a place to bring his daughter who has consumption. He didn't want to take her to a reg'lar consumptive community, he said, an' so he was lookin' for a quiet place where she wouldn't be associatin' with lungers all the time. Some big doctor in New York told him to come up here an' look around. That was his business, Mr. Barnes, an' I guess you'd call it respectable, wouldn't you?"

"Perfectly. But why should he be troubled by my presence here if--" Miss Thackeray put an end to the discussion in a most effectual manner.

"Oh, for the Lord's sake, cut it out! Wait till he's dead, can't you?" she whispered fiercely. "You've got all the time in the world to talk, and he hasn't more than ten minutes left to breathe unless that rube doctor gets here pretty soon. If you've GOT to settle the question right away, at least have the decency to go out of this room."

Barnes flushed to the roots of his hair. Jones was aghast, dumb with surprise and anger.

"You are right, Miss Thackeray," said the former, deeply mortified. "This is not the time nor the place to----"

"He can't understand a word we say," said Putnam Jones loudly. "You better get out of here yourself, young woman. This is a job for men, not--"

"I think he's going now," she whispered in an awe-struck voice. "Keep still, all of you. Is he breathing, Mr. Barnes? That awful cough just now seemed to--"

"Come away, please," said Barnes, taking her gently by the arm. "I--I believe that was the end. Don't stay here, Miss Thackeray. Dillingford, will you be good enough to escort Miss--"

"I've never seen any one die before," she said in a low, tense voice. Her eyes were fixed on the still face. "Why--why, how tightly he holds my hand! I can't get it away--he must be alive, Mr. Barnes. Where is that silly doctor?"

Barnes unclasped the rigid fingers of the man called Andrew Paul, and, shaking his head sadly, drew her away from the improvised bier. He and the shivering Mr. Dillingford conducted her to the dining-room, where a single kerosene lamp gave out a feeble, rather ghastly light. The tall Bacon followed, the upper part of his person enveloped in the blanket Putnam Jones had hastily snatched from the mattress before it was slipped under the dying man. Several of the women of the house, including the wife of the landlord, clogged the little entrance hall, chattering in hushed undertones.

"Would you like a little brandy?" inquired Barnes, as she sat down limply in the chair he pulled out for her. "I have a flask upstairs in my--"

"I never touch it," she said. "I'm all right. My legs wabble a little but--Sit down, Mr. Barnes. I've got something to say to you and I'd better say it now, because it may come in pretty handy for you later on. Don't let those women come in here, Dilly."

Barnes drew a chair close beside her. Bacon, with scant regard for elegance, seated himself on the edge of the table and bent an ear.

"It's all rot about that man Roon being here to look for a place for his daughter." She spoke rapidly and cautiously. "I don't know whether Jones knows, but that certainly wasn't what he was here for. The young fellow in there was a sort of secretary. Roon had a room at the other end of the hall from yours, on the corner, facing the road and also looking toward the cross-roads. Young Paul had the next room, with a door between. I was supposed to make up their rooms after they'd gone out in the forenoon for a horseback ride. I kept out of their sight, because I knew they were the kind of men who would laugh at me. They couldn't understand, and, of course, I couldn't explain. Yesterday morning I found a sort of map on the floor under young Paul's washstand. The wind had blown it off the table by the window and he hadn't missed it. It was in lead pencil and looked like a map of the roads around here. I couldn't read the notations, but it required only a glance to convince me that this place was the central point. All of the little mountain roads were there, and the cross-roads. There wasn't anything queer about it, so I laid it on his table and put a book on it.

"This afternoon I walked up in the woods back of the Tavern to go over some lines in a new piece we are to do later on,--God knows when! I could see the house from where I was sitting. Roon's windows were plainly visible. I wasn't very far away, you see, the climb being too steep for me. I saw Roon standing at a window looking toward the cross-roads with a pair of field-glasses. Every once in awhile he would turn to Paul, who stood beside him with a notebook, and say something to him. Paul wrote it down. Then he would look again, turning the glasses this way and that. I wouldn't have thought much about it if they hadn't spent so much time there. I believe I watched them for an hour. Suddenly my eyes almost popped out of my head. Paul had gone away from the window. He came back and he had a couple of revolvers in his hands. They stood there for a few minutes carefully examining the weapons and reloading them with fresh cartridges. The storm was coming up, but I love it so that I waited almost until dark, watching the clouds and listening to the roar of the wind in the trees. I'm a queer girl in that way. I like turmoil. I could sit out in the most dreadful thunder storm and just revel in the crashes. Just as I was about to start down to the house--it was a little after six o'clock, and getting awfully dark and overcast,--Roon took up the glasses again. He seemed to be excited and called his companion. Paul grabbed the glasses and looked down the road. They both became very much excited, pointing and gesticulating, and taking turn about with the glasses."

"About six o'clock, you say?" said Barnes, greatly interested.

"It was a quarter after six when I got back to the house. I spoke to Mr. Bacon about what I'd seen and he said he believed they were German spies, up to some kind of mischief along the Canadian border. Everybody is a German spy nowadays, Mr. Barnes, if he looks cross-wise. Then about half an hour later you came to the Tavern. I saw Roon sneak out to the head of the stairs and listen to your conversation with Jones when you registered. That gave me an idea. It was you they were watching the road for. They saw you long before you got here, and it was--"

Barnes held up his hand for silence. "Listen," he said in a low voice, "I will tell you who they were looking for." As briefly as possible he recounted his experience with the strange young woman at the cross-roads. "From the beginning I have connected this tragedy with the place called Green Fancy. I'll stake my last penny that they have been hanging around here waiting for the arrival of that young woman. They knew she was coming and they doubtless knew what she was bringing with her. They went to Green Fancy to-night with a very sinister purpose in mind, and things didn't turn out as they expected. What do you know about the place called Green Fancy?"

He was vastly excited. His active imagination was creating all sorts of possibilities and complications, depredations and intrigues.

Bacon was the one who answered. He drew the blanket closer about his lean form and shivered as with a chill.

"I know this much about the place from hearsay," he said in a guttural whisper. "It's supposed to be haunted. I've heard more than one of these jays,--big huskies too,--say they wouldn't go near the place after dark for all the money in the state."

"That's just talk to scare you, Ague," said Dillingford. "People live up there and since we've been here two or three men visitors have come down from the place to sample our stock of wet goods. Nothing suspicious looking or ghostly about them either. I talked with a couple of 'em day before yesterday. They were out for a horseback ride and stopped here for a mug of ale."

"Were they foreigners?" inquired Barnes.

"If you want to call an Irishman a foreigner, I'll have to say one of them was. He had a beautiful brogue. I'd never seen an Irishman in slick riding clothes, however, so I doubted my ears at first. You don't associate a plain Mick with anything so swell as that, you know. The other was an American, I'm sure. Yesterday they rode past here with a couple of swell looking women. I saw them turn up the road to Green Fancy, so that knocks your ghost story all to smash, Bacon."

"It isn't MY ghost story," began Mr. Bacon indignantly. The arrival of four or five men, who stamped into the already crowded hallway from the porch outside, claimed the attention of the quartette. Among them was the doctor who, they were soon to discover, was also the coroner of the county. A very officious deputy sheriff was also in the group.

Before rejoining the crowd in the tap-room, Barnes advised his companions, especially the girl, to say as little as possible about what they had heard and seen.

"This thing is going to turn out to be a whacking sensation, and it may be a great deal more important than we think. You don't want to become involved in the investigation, which may become a national affair. I'd like to have a hand in clearing it up. My head is chock-full of theories that might--"

"Maybe Roon was right," said Dillingford, slowly, as he edged a step or two away from Barnes.

"In what respect?"

"He certainly thought you were a detective or something like that. Maybe he thought you came with that young woman, or maybe he thought you were shadowing her, or--"

"There are a lot of things he may have thought," interrupted Barnes, smiling. "It is barely possible that my arrival may have caused him to act more hastily than he intended. That may be the reason why the job ended so disastrously for him."

Mrs. Jones called out from the doorway. "Mr. Barnes, you're wanted in there."

"All right," he responded.

"Better let me get you a wet towel to wash your hand," said Bacon to Miss Thackeray. "My God, I wouldn't have THAT on my hand for a million dollars."

The doctor had been working over the prostrate form on the tables. As Barnes entered the room, he looked up and declared that the man was dead.

"This is Mr. Barnes," said Putnam Jones, indicating the tall traveller with a short jerk of his thumb.

"I am from the sheriff's office," said the man who stood beside the doctor. The rest of the crowd evidently had been ordered to stand back from the tables. The sheriff was a burly fellow, whose voice shook in a most incongruous manner, despite his efforts to appear composed and otherwise efficient. "Did you ever see this man before?"

"Not until he was carried in here half an hour ago. I arrived here this evening."

"What's your business up here, Mr. Barnes?"

"I have no business up here. I just happened to stroll in this evening."

"Well," said the sheriff darkly, "I guess I'll have to ask you to stick around here till we clear this business up. We don't know you an'--Well, we can't take any chances. You understand, I reckon."

"I certainly fail to understand, Mr. Sheriff. I know nothing whatever of this affair and I intend to continue on my way to-morrow morning."

"Well, I guess not."

"Do you mean to say that I am to be detained here against my--"

"You got to stay here till we are satisfied that you don't know anything about this business. That's all."

"Am I to consider myself under arrest, sir?"

"I wouldn't go as far as to say that. You just stick around here, that's all I got to say. If you're all right, we'll soon find it out. What's more, if you are all right you'll be willin' to stay. Do you get me?"

"I certainly do. And I can now assure you, Mr. Sheriff, that I'd like nothing better than to stick around here, as you put it. I'd like to help clear this matter up. In the meantime, you may readily find out who I am and why I am here by telegraphing to the Mayor of New York City. This document, which experience has taught me to carry for just such an emergency as this, may have some weight with you." He opened his bill-folder and drew forth a neatly creased sheet of paper. This he handed to the sheriff. "Read it, please, and note the date, the signature, the official seal of the New York Police department, and also the rather interesting silver print pasted in the lower left hand corner. I think you will agree that it is a good likeness of me. Each year I take the precaution of having myself properly certified by the police department at home before venturing into unknown and perhaps unfriendly communities. This, in a word, is a guarantee of good citizenship, good intentions and-good health. I was once taken up by a rural Sherlock on suspicion of being connected with the theft of a horse and buggy, although all the evidence seemed to indicate that I was absolutely afoot and weary at the time, and didn't have the outfit concealed about my person. I languished in the calaboose for twenty-four hours, and might have remained there indefinitely if the real desperado hadn't been captured in the nick o' time. Have you read it?"

"Yes," said the sheriff dubiously; "but how do I know it ain't a forgery?"

"You don't know, of course. But in case it shouldn't be a forgery and I am subjected to the indignity of arrest or even detention, you would have a nasty time defending yourself in a civil suit for damages. Don't misunderstand me. I appreciate your position. I shall remain here, as you suggest, but only for the purpose of aiding you in getting to the bottom of this affair."

"What do you think about it, Doc?"

"He says he's willing to stay, don't he? Well, what more can you ask?" snapped the old doctor. "I should say the best thing for you to do, Abner, is to get a posse of men together and begin raking the woods up yonder for the men that did the shooting. You say there is another one dead up at Jim Conley's? Well, I'll go over and view him at once. The first thing to do is to establish the corpus delicti. We've got to be able to say the men are dead before we can charge anybody with murder. This man was shot in the chest, from in front. Now we'll examine his clothes and so forth and see if they throw any additional light on the matter."

The most careful search of Andrew Paul's person established one thing beyond all question: the man had deliberately removed everything that might in any way serve to aid the authorities in determining who he really was and whence he came. The tailor's tags had been cut from the smart, well-fitting garments; the buttons on the same had been replaced by others of an ordinary character; the names of the haberdasher, the hat dealer and the boot maker had been as effectually destroyed. There were no papers of any description in his pockets. His wrist watch bore neither name, date nor initials. Indeed, nothing had been overlooked in his very palpable effort to prevent actual identification, either in life or death.

Subsequent search of the two rooms disclosed the same extreme precautions. Not a single object, not even a scrap of paper had been left there on the departure of the men at nine o'clock. Ashes in an old-fashioned fireplace in Roon's room suggested the destruction of tell-tale papers. Everything had vanished. A large calibre automatic revolver, all cartridges unexploded, was found in Paul's coat pocket. In another pocket, lying loose, were a few bank notes and some silver, amounting all told to about thirty dollars.

The same thorough search of the dead body of Roon later on by the coroner and sheriff, revealed a similar condition. The field-glasses, of English make, were found slung across his shoulder, and a fully loaded revolver, evidently his, was discovered the next morning in the grass beside the road near the point where he fell. There were several hundred dollars in the roll of bills they found in his inside coat pocket.

Roon was a man of fifty or thereabouts. Although both men were smooth-faced, there was reason to suspect that Roon at least had but recently worn a mustache. His upper lip had the thick, stiff look of one from which a beard of long-standing recently had been shaved.

Later on it was learned that they purchased the two horses in Hornville, paying cash for the beasts and the trappings. The transaction took place a day or two before they came to Hart's Tavern for what had been announced as a short stay.

Standing on Jim Conley's front porch a little after sunrise, Barnes made the following declaration:

"Everything goes to show that these men were up here for one of two reasons. They were either trying to prevent or to enact a crime. The latter is my belief. They were afraid of me. Why? Because they believed I was trailing them and likely to spoil their game. Gentlemen, those fellows were here for the purpose of robbing the place you call Green Fancy."

"What's that?" came a rich, mellow voice from the outskirts of the crowd. A man pushed his way through and confronted Barnes. He was a tall, good-looking fellow of thirty-five, and it was apparent that he had dressed in haste. "My name is O'Dowd, and I am a guest of Mr. Curtis at Green Fancy. Why do you think they meant to rob his place?"

"Well," began Barnes drily, "it would seem that his place is the only one in the neighbourhood that would BEAR robbing. My name is Barnes. Of course, Mr. O'Dowd, it is mere speculation on my part."

"But who shot the man?" demanded the Irishman. "He certainly wasn't winged by any one from our place. Wouldn't we have known something about it if he had attempted to get into the house and was nailed by--Why, Lord love you, sir, there isn't a soul at Green Fancy who could shoot a thief if he saw one. This is Mr. De Soto, also a guest at Green Fancy. He will, I think, bear me out in upsetting your theory."

A second man approached, shaking his head vigorously. He was a thin, pale man with a singularly scholastic face. Quite an unprepossessing, unsanguinary person, thought Barnes.

"Mr. Curtis's chauffeur, I think it was, said the killing occurred just above this house," said he, visibly excited. "Green Fancy is at least a mile from here, isn't it? You don't shoot burglars a mile from the place they are planning to rob, do you? Is the man a native of this community?"

"No," said Barnes, on whom devolved the duties of spokesman. "By the way, his companion lies dead at Hart's Tavern. He was shot from his horse at the cross-roads."

"God bless me soul," gasped O'Dowd. "The chauffeur didn't mention a second one. And were there two of them?"

"And both of them dead?" cried De Soto. "At the cross-roads? My dear sir, how can you reconcile--" He broke off with a gesture of impatience.

"I'll admit it's a bit out of reason," said Barnes. "The second man could only have been shot by some one who was lying in wait for him."

"Why, the thing's as clear as day," cried O'Dowd, facing the crowd. His cheerful, sprightly face was alive with excitement. "They were not trying to rob any one. They were either trying to get across the border into Canada themselves or else trying to head some one off who was coming from that side of the line."

"Gad, you may be right," agreed Barnes instantly. "If you'd like to hear more of the story I'll be happy to relate all that we know at present."

While the coroner and the others were loading the body of Albert Roon into a farm wagon for conveyance to the county-seat, Barnes, who had taken a sudden fancy to the two men from Green Fancy, gave them a brief but full account of the tragedy and the result of investigations as far as they had gone.

"Bedad," said O'Dowd, "it beats the devil. There's something big in this thing, Mr. Barnes,--something a long shot bigger than any of us suspects. The extraordinary secrecy of these fellows, their evident gentility, their doubtful nationality--why, bedad, it sounds like a penny-dreadful thriller."

"You'll find that it resolves itself into a problem for Washington to solve," said De Soto darkly. "Nothing local about it, take my word for it. These men were up to some international devilment. I'm not saying that Germany is at the back of it, but, by Jove, I don't put anything beyond the beggars. They are the cleverest, most resourceful people in the world, damn 'em. You wait and see if I'm not right. There'll be a stir in Washington over this, sure as anything."

"What time was it that you heard the shots up at Green Fancy?" ventured Barnes.

"Lord love you," cried O'Dowd, "we didn't hear a sound. Mr. Curtis, who has insomnia the worst way, poor devil, heard them and sent some one out to see what all the racket was about. It wasn't till half an hour or so ago that De Soto and I were routed out of our peaceful nests and ordered,--virtually ordered, mind you,--to get up and guard the house. Mr. Curtis was in a pitiful state of nerves over the killing, and so were the ladies. 'Gad, everybody seemed to know all about the business except De Soto and me. The man, it seems, made such a devil of a racket when he came home with the news that the whole house was up in pajamas and peignoirs. He didn't say anything about a second Johnnie being shot, however. I'm glad he didn't know about it, for that matter. He'll be seeing one ghost for the rest of his days and that's enough, without having another foisted upon him."

"I think I have a slight acquaintance with the chauffeur," said Barnes. "He gave me the most thrilling motor ride I've ever experienced. 'Gad, I'll never forget it."

The two men looked at him, plainly perplexed.

"When was all this?" inquired De Soto.

"Early last evening. He took me from the cross-roads to Hart's Tavern in a minute and a half, I'll bet my soul."

"Last evening?" said O'Dowd, something like skepticism in his tone.

"Yes. He picked up your latest guest at the corners, and she insisted on his driving me to the Tavern before the storm broke. I've been terribly anxious about her. She must have been caught out in all that frightful--"

"What's this you are saying, Mr. Barnes?" cut in De Soto, frowning. "No guest arrived at Green Fancy last evening, nor was one expected."

Barnes stared. "Do you mean to say that she didn't get there, after all?"

"She? A woman, was it?" demanded O'Dowd. "Bedad, if she said she was coming to Green Fancy she was spoofing you. Are you sure it was old Peter who gave you that jolly ride?"

"No, I am not sure," said Barnes, uneasily. "She was afoot, having walked from the station below. I met her at the corners and she asked me if I knew how far it was to Green Fancy, or something like that. Said she was going there. Then along came the automobile, rattling down this very road,--an ancient Panhard driven by an old codger. She seemed to think it was all right to hop in and trust herself to him, although she'd never seen him before."

"The antique Panhard fits in all right," said O'Dowd, "but I'm hanged if the woman fits at all. No such person arrived at Green Fancy last night."

"Did you get a square look at the driver's face?" demanded De Soto.

"It was almost too dark to see, but he was old, hatchet-faced, and spoke with an accent."

"Then it couldn't have been Peter," said De Soto positively. "He's old, right enough, but he is as big as the side of a house, with a face like a full moon, and he is Yankee to his toes. By gad, Barnes, the plot thickens! A woman has been added to the mystery. Now, who the devil is she and what has become of her?"