Part 5

A man was peering at them eagerly over the tops of a few bushes. His face was white and his teeth chattering. His arms, dimly discerned through the branches, were wrapped around his shivering form with fervor and he was standing gingerly on first one foot and then the other.

"Hello," said Mike facetiously. "Going in?" and he nodded casually backward to the lake.

"Been in," chattered the miserable wretch, trying to control his teeth so that he could say more.

"Oughtn't to stay in too long," advised James solicitously. "Your lips look blue."

"Bad for the heart," said Mike.

"We ain't ladies," added James with delicacy. "You might come out from them bushes."

"Some--some one stole my--my--my clothes," stammered the young man, stepping carefully forth. "Been here--here since this--this morning." He looked sharply at the shabby pair before him, with quick distrust in his bloodshot eyes and added coldly, "Some--some tramp."

"Did you see him?" asked James.

"No--no--no. But who else could have stolen them?"

"I," said Mike, drawing himself up to his five feet five and throwing back his pudgy shoulders, "I am a tramp. I trust, sir, you meant no insult to me profession?"

The stranger waved the question aside. "Get me some clothes and I'll give you some money."

"What money?" asked James.

"I will send you some. I am rich. My car is in the road. Maybe you saw it. I was coming through the woods to the hotel to get a tow up, for I was out of gasolene, when I saw the lake. It was early and I thought I would take a swim. Maybe you saw my car by the side of the road?"

"I didn't see no car," said Mike.

"Did you come by the road?"

"Yes, a narrow wood road."

"Yes, yes; that's where I left it. The damned thief has probably gone off with my car, too."

"Then he couldn't be a tramp," said James judiciously. "Tramps don't know nothing about motor-cars."

"Maybe he took it up to the hotel," said Mike, cheerfully helpful.

The stranger shook his head. "No, he wouldn't do that. He would get out of the country as fast as he could."

"If there wasn't no gasolene," suggested James tentatively.

"He could easily get some from the hotel. It was early when he stole my clothes." And James realized with relief that the youth before him was, in his own eyes, always right, and advice wholly superfluous.

"I saw a big red car," said Mike, "down the road a bit, over the other side of the village, going south. But maybe your car wasn't red."

"Yes, yes, it was," cried the stranger. "What was the make? Could you tell?"

"A Thomas car--"

"Ah, my car. Get me something to put on and I'll make it worth your while. I'm William Hargrave Batchelor. Maybe you have read about me in yesterday's papers?" And the poor, shivering, naked wretch drew himself up proudly and smiled with much complacency.

"I," said Mike, tapping himself on his breast, "am George V., of England."

"No, no," protested the stranger. "I'm not fooling. Get me, some clothes and come with me to the nearest telegraph office and I'll show you."

"How much," asked Mike, "will you give me?"

"Us," corrected James.

"How much do you want?"

"How much will you give?"

"Ten dollars."

"For a suit of clothes?" Mike's fat red face depicted his horror.

"Twenty," cried the stranger.

"Apiece?" asked James.

"Apiece," declared the unhappy youth.

"Apiece, James," said Mike, turning inquiringly to his companion.

"Make it thirty," said James, "and we may be able to help you."

"All right, thirty apiece. Get me the clothes."

"You might write us each a check," suggested James, and drew forth the pen and check-book.

"For innocence," groaned Mike, "commend me to me loving comrade, James."

The stranger's eyes glittered as he recognized his book and pen. He glanced from one ragged specimen before him to the other, from James' crafty face to Mike's sly visage, but he said nothing, merely took the pen and book.

"Your names?" he asked, opening the book and resting it against a tree for support.

"Better put 'to bearer,'" said James. "Simplicity is always the best."

The stranger wrote the checks, signed them and turned to the two watching him. "Bring me the suit," he said quietly, "and these are yours."

Mike shuffled off into the trees and James and the stranger waited in silence for his return. He came back presently and threw the suit at the stranger's feet.

"You'll notice," said he, "that this nobby spring suit in our latest style is cheap at the price. Fancy, a thing like that for only sixty dollars!"

"I see," said the stranger.

"Payable in advance," said James.

The stranger handed them each a check and thoughtfully drew on the shabby clothes of the Watermelon. It had not been long since he had worn rags of a necessity, and he hitched them up with the skill bred of familiarity. He thrust the pen and book into a pocket he had first made sure was holeless. Then he turned to the two and his eyes gleamed.

"How much for the car?" he asked.

Mike raised his hands to Heaven. "The car? James, does he think we stole his car?"

"A stock-broker," said James, "would suspect his own mother."

"If you want youse car," said Mike, "go to the hotel."

"Bah," snapped the stranger. "Do you think I was weaned yesterday? Be quick and tell me your price."

"I have no price," said Mike proudly, not sure where the car was.

They started through the woods to the village, the stranger leading and Mike and James following. At the edge of the village, they paused instinctively and without a word.

"Tell me where the car is and who your accomplice is," said the stranger in the short sharp tones of one born to command, "and you two can go free. If you don't tell, I'll do my best to have you arrested and sent up for grand larceny. Understand?"

"Oh, yes," said Mike, "I understand. When I was young I learned English, foolishly, as I haven't used it since."

"We don't know where your damn car is," declared James. "And we didn't steal your blooming outfit. What do you take us for, anyway?"

"Very well, then," snapped the stranger. "I see that you won't tell. Remember, I gave you your chance."

He turned and hurried down the village street. The two watched him as he stopped a pedestrian and apparently asked to be directed to the justice of the peace, then they slipped away in the woods and quietly, simultaneously, turned north, falling into a gentle lope that took them far with the minimum of effort.

"I hope the kid ain't pinched," said James, after a while.

Mike sighed and shook his head. "Grand larceny," he murmured. "That's gratitude for you."

*CHAPTER IX*

*ON THE ROAD*

The general never went anywhere without a well-stocked library, guide-books, instruction books, maps. All were consulted long and often, and with a childlike faith that Henrietta's sarcasm and the sign-posts had not been able to shake.

If the guide-book read, "White rock on left," the general stopped the car if the rock were not immediately seen where it should be according to the book and refused to go farther until it had been discovered. If the rock could not be located, the general ran back a little way or ahead a little way and if the white rock still refused to be seen on the left, the general did not see what right any one had to remove valuable landmarks. Henrietta's tentative endeavor to point out the possibility that the book was mistaken, doubtless unintentionally, but still mistaken, was simply waved aside as one more indication of woman's inferiority to man. If the book said that there was a hill at such and such a place and there was in fact no hill there, the book was still correct. There was something the matter with the landscape.

Bartlett knew of this unfortunate tendency of the general's and resolved to get rid of those books and maps and papers. With every mile indicated and nicely tabulated, every turn and landmark mentioned, it would be almost impossible to get off the beaten route, and they must avoid telegraph stations and post-offices as much as possible. The success of the scheme lay in keeping Batchelor away from all touch and communication with the city. They must, if possible, get lost, and with the multitudinous books and maps they would not be able to. Therefore, they must get rid of the books and maps.

When they had separated to prepare for the trip, Bartlett returned hastily to the garage. No one was in sight except a strange chauffeur lounging in the doorway. Bartlett collected all the literature from the general's car and hastened back to the hotel. Surreptitiously, he entered an empty room near the one assigned to him and when he emerged again, his arms were burdenless and he was smiling gently.

They waited for the Watermelon on the porch, intending to have an early supper and start while it was still light. Bartlett greeted the returning youth with relief and lead the way to the dining-room. He mentioned a small village some thirty miles to the north, where they could find accommodations for the night in an old farm-house.

"Friends of mine," said he. "I go there every fall."

The general rose to get his blue book. "We will look it up," said he.

Bartlett stopped him. The town was not in the book. He knew, for he had tried to find it.

"The maps will do," said the general, who liked to locate every town visually on the maps or in the books before he undertook to motor there.

Desperate, Bartlett declared that it was not on the maps. But the general would not be daunted. They could put it on the maps themselves if they knew in which county it was, near what post-office--

"We don't want to locate it," said Bartlett, growing stern and cross of a necessity.

They found the cars waiting at the steps and a small crowd to see them off and wile away the time before supper.

Bartlett said, as he knew the way, he would lead. "We need only two cars. Mr. Batchelor's car can be left until we return."

"Three cars might come in handy," protested the general, who objected to every suggestion not his own, on principle.

"Why?" asked Bartlett coldly.

"Mr. Batchelor might become offended at us and want to ride by himself," suggested Henrietta, laughing.

"Yes," agreed Billy, who, though young and charming, was sometimes lacking in that reserve that should have stamped her father's daughter. "He and dad are fighting each other now on 'Change."

Henrietta flushed, the Watermelon laughed and the general looked pained at the thought of any possible lack of congeniality.

"My dear Billy," said Bartlett, "the third auto would be extremely handy for you and your tongue, at least."

Billy glanced miserably from one to the other. "Why, Daddy, you told me, yesterday--"

"I have told you many things," said Bartlett, "both yesterday and the day before."

He took the general by the arm and gently but firmly thrust him into his car, getting in himself and taking the wheel. The young folk could ride in the tonneau and Alphonse follow in the general's car with the luggage.

The cars started down the hill in the first sweet flush of evening. Birds were going to bed with noisy upbraidings. A few cows at the pasture bars watched them pass with great, stupid, placid eyes, jaws going slowly, rhythmically, as they waited for the milking time. Now they flashed from the shadows of the woods to the open country, pastures and rolling grain fields on each hand. Now they plunged among the trees again with the drowsy twitter of birds and the clear babbling of a brook somewhere off among the ferns and brambles.

The Watermelon leaned back in the deep soft cushions of the big car and smiled a smile of calm and peace and comfort. The car ran smoothly, noiselessly, little breezes laden with the sweetness of the approaching night wandered by, on each side of him was a pretty girl. Tramping idealized! It was living idealized. And that morning, hungry, shabby, unshaved, he had been content to lie in the sweet lush grasses of a chance meadow, under a butternut tree, with the convivial James and the corpulent Mike! He crossed one well-pressed, silken leg over the other and saw by the wayside, lounging in the shadows, waiting for the car to pass, the two, James and Mike--Mike, fat, red-faced, dirty, his frowsy hat pulled aslant over his small, bleary eyes, shoulders humped from long habit in cold weather, toes coming out of his boot ends; James, clean shaven, but otherwise no better dressed, no cleaner, both chewing tobacco with the thoughtful rumination of the cows watching over the pasture bars at the end of the wooded lane.

Over the trees, the sun was dropping from sight. Clearly and sweetly on the quiet air of the eventide, the church bells began to toll from the village below them in the valley.

Billy nudged the Watermelon to call his attention to the two weary figures by the wayside.

"Poor fellows," said Henrietta softly, lest they hear her.

The Watermelon glanced at them in lofty disgust and catching James' eye, his own flickered the fraction of an inch and he raised his hands languidly to adjust the brown silk tie at his throat. When they had passed, he turned and waved a graceful farewell. He explained to Billy as they swept on into the deepening dusk.

"You might as well encourage the poor fellows. They probably want to ride as well as I." And Henrietta fancied that possibly his father had looked thus on a Sunday, in the pulpit of a country church.

"Yes," agreed Billy. "They may be perfectly dandy fellows."

"Assuredly," laughed Henrietta. "The stout one fairly radiated truth and nobility, a manly, upright youth."

"I don't care," declared Billy warmly. "You can't always tell from appearances. You ought to know that, Henrietta. Clothes don't make the man."

"Nor his manners," laughingly retorted Henrietta.

"Sure," said the Watermelon. "Father used to say that manners didn't count any more than the good apples on the top of the box to hide the rotten ones beneath."

"I think your father was a cynic," said Henrietta sharply, into whose ears Billy had been recounting the sayings of the absent divine.

"Yes," admitted the Watermelon, "he was."

"Cynicism is a sign of failure," quoted Henrietta. "Surely your father wasn't a cynic."

"Yes, he was," declared the Watermelon, "and you didn't make that up yourself. You heard some failure say it. Father used to say, and he's right, that if a man reached forty without becoming a cynic, he was a fool and might better never have reached forty. A success can be a cynic, for cynicism is simply a pretty good idea of the meanness of human nature and no unfounded expectation of anything especially decent coming from it, isn't that so? Father used to say that love was divine, hate devilish and meanness just cussed human nature, and a mixture of the three in more or less degree made man."

"Your father was a philosopher," laughed Henrietta. "I would like to have met him."

"I thought the papers said--" began Billy, in her slow, anxious way to get things right.

"Yes, they did," interrupted the Watermelon, "and they were right."

It was quite dark now. Bartlett stopped a moment while Alphonse lit the lamps, and then they went on and on, faster and faster, into the summer night. Once in a while they passed a lighted farm-house and a dog rushed out and barked at them. Twice they whirled through small villages and the villagers, going home from church, paused to watch them pass and be swallowed up in the dark ahead. The air was full of fireflies. A whippoorwill called plaintively from the bushes, and low in the west were flashes of heat lightning, with now and then an ominous rumble of distant thunder. Silence had settled on all, even Billy mused in her corner, half asleep.

The general had been worried for some time. They were apparently getting nowhere. He felt that he should have consulted the blue book. He was about to suggest that they stop and get the book from the rear car, when Bartlett waved toward the dark bulk of a house looming out of the night, some little way ahead.

"That's the place," said he. "We can spend the night there and get one of the best chicken breakfasts I ever ate."

The general looked at the place and rallied his sinking spirits. It appeared dark and he should say it was deserted, but Bartlett doubtless knew what he was talking about. The people probably lived in the kitchen. He was hungry and tired and the thought of hot sausages, bread and jam and milk and then a soft cool bed was nearly as good as the reality. He turned gaily to the quiet three in the tonneau.

"Wake up and hear the birds sing."

Bartlett glanced back and laughed. "Asleep, eh? We're there," he added, turning the car neatly into the open driveway. "Guess you won't refuse a good supper very strenuously."

The drive was rough and they rolled slowly tip to a great dark house, standing on a slight rise of ground, a typical New England farmhouse, square and gaunt and unadorned, with a small front stoop and a long side porch. From the trees behind the house, came the dismal cry of a hoot owl, as the cars came to a rest, and an answering cry from the grove across the road.

"Ghosts," whispered the general.

"Oh, hush," pleaded Billy. "There is no need of fooling with things like that."

"This house ain't lived in," said the Watermelon, as he slipped from the car to straighten his cramped legs.

"Folks gone to bed," explained Bartlett cheerfully, since he was not the one who had gone to bed. "We will just have to rout them out."

He shut off the power and alighted from the car, pulling off his gloves. Alphonse came up in the other car and peered out at the dark, quiet, lonely house and shook his head with forebodings.

"There isn't any one here," insisted the Watermelon, "asleep or awake."

The general climbed out. "If we had consulted the book--"

"My dear sir," interrupted Bartlett, a bit irritated, "the book could not possibly have told us that the family had moved since last fall when I spent two weeks here, hunting."

"Certainly not," laughed Henrietta, who spent a good part of her life steering with infinite care and constantly growing skill between the Scylla of her father's wrath and the Charybdis of the hurt feelings of those whom the general had offended. "This is simply one of the unforeseen misfortunes of the road."

"Besides," said Bartlett, "we don't know that the Higginses have gone!"

"Don't you see that there aren't any signs of life?" demanded the Watermelon. He had lived by his wits so long that he noticed instinctively the little things which mean so much and are generally overlooked. "If there was any one here some window would be open on a night like this, wouldn't it?"

*CHAPTER X*

*THE DESERTED HOUSE*

"Wonderful, wonderful!" murmured Henrietta in the tones of the famous Watson.

Bartlett looked at the house and nodded gloomily. "I guess you are right. Funny they should have left without writing me about it. I have known them for years."

"I will get the blue book," said the general, with the calm satisfaction of one who at last comes into his own. "We can return to the nearest village--"

"What do we want a blue book to do that for?" sneered Bartlett. "I should think two motor-cars could do it, provided we followed the road."

"Hold on a shake," said the Watermelon. "I will get in a window and open the door."

"We had better not," objected Henrietta, "Wouldn't that be house-breaking?"

The general agreed. "Certainly. It is warm and we can spend the night outside quite comfortably if you do not want to return to the village."

Billy shuddered and glanced appealingly at the Watermelon. A deserted house was bad enough, but outside where the owls called dismally from the woods and where bats flitted by in the dark held possibilities infinitely worse.

"I have known these people longer than I have Billy," said Bartlett. "I used to come here when I was a kid. It will be all right to break in. They are like my own folks."

The Watermelon immediately jumped to the porch, disdaining the few steps, and disappeared behind the vines which covered one end and concealed the window.

Bartlett turned reassuringly to the general. "It will be all right, Charlie. Don't worry about it. Why, I've always called Mrs. Higgins, Aunt Sally."

Visions of hot sausages, bread and milk die hard when one is hungry and the general snorted. "That's all right. I am hungry enough to break into the Bank of England if it resulted in something to eat, but what can we find in an empty house?"

"Ghosts," said Henrietta.

Billy pinched her. "If you think there are ghosts in there, Henrietta, I simply won't go in."

"Certainly there are ghosts," said Henrietta. "There always are in empty houses. Where else do you find them?"

"We will return to the village," declared the general, "and get something to eat. I will get the book--"

"An empty house is better than the countryside," said Bartlett. "And we have plenty to eat in that basket Henrietta put up."

"If there is something to eat--" wavered the general.

A light gleamed a moment through the crack of the door and then the door opened and the Watermelon grinned at them in the light of a small smoky lamp he held.

"Where did you get the lamp?" asked the general as the Watermelon led the way in.

"Found it," said the Watermelon. "The place is furnished. The family is probably only away for a visit." He set the lamp on the table and from long habit wiped his dusty hand on his trouser leg. "I fell over everything in the room before I got next to the fact."

He glanced about with some pride and the others stood in a semicircle and stared around. The room was a typical country kitchen, a huge stove side by side with a large chintz-covered rocking-chair. A dresser for the crockery and a haircloth lounge took up one side. There was a center-table with a red checked cloth, a few chairs and a sewing-machine near the window. On the walls were a number of cheap prints and several huge advertising calendars With gay pictures of young women in large hats and low-cut dresses.

Bartlett glanced around and at every unfamiliar object his heart sank lower and lower and his first sickening suspicion became a painful fact. He had never been in that room before. The Higginses had never lived there. Everything was strange, the furniture, the rugs, the very shape of the room. Where were they? Whose house had they unceremoniously broken into? A clammy chill crept down Bartlett's back and his florid face grew still redder.

None of the others was noticing him. The general was prowling around to see that the enemy could not come upon them unawares. The Watermelon had lifted the basket on to the table and the girls were preparing gaily to set forth the repast, all three rummaging in closets and drawers for plates and knives and forks.

The general returned to the table. "All serene along the Potomac," said he, thrusting his hands into his pockets and peering into the basket with renewed hope. Henrietta smiled gaily. She had pushed aside her auto veil, her cheeks were flushed with the joy of the adventure and her eyes bright.

"Father," said she, "in all our lives, we have never had an adventure before, because you persist in using those blue books."

The general laughed and helped himself to a sandwich.