CHAPTER XIII

DEALS WITH SOME HAPPENINGS OF THE NEXT DAY

The remainder of the night passed without incident; and next morning, Scanlon accompanied by Kretz, who carried the light, made a complete tour of the regions beneath the castle. No one was hidden there; there were only the massive walls and arches, the damp and the echo.

“Locks and bolts seem to offer no hindrance to housebreakers,” said Bat, speaking to Campe who met them when they came up. “So, with your permission, we’ll have a few additional precautions.”

Procuring a hammer and some heavy nails, the door to the vaults was made fast.

“Now,” Bat proceeded, “we are in a position to offer some defence against another invasion. But,” and he glanced from Campe to the silent German, and back again, “how the dickens they got into the cellar puzzles me. I looked all around; but not a way could I see.”

“If we can prevent any further entrances into the house itself, for the present, we’ll be satisfied,” said Campe.

Scanlon did not approve of this. It indicated a willingness to share something with the enemy.

“Which is always wrong,” he told himself, later, as he trudged along the road on his way to Marlowe Furnace. “If it was my affair, I’d shake it up till I had those crooks headed for the next county.”

Campe had abruptly closed the conversation of the night before with the request that no names be mentioned, and so Scanlon had been left in a state of doubt.

“He knows, or suspects about the girl,” thought the big man, “but what about these other people? Has he got them placed? I’d ’a told him all I’d seen and heard last night, but as he wanted silence, silence it is. Anyway,” as an afterthought, “it might have been a wrong move to say anything more than I did. Maybe Ashton-Kirk doesn’t want him told.”

There were no letters for him at the village post-office, and he was much disappointed. So much had happened to him in the last twenty-four hours that he had the feeling that Ashton-Kirk must also have had some exciting experiences which he would report at once.

“But he hasn’t had time to say anything,” reasoned the big man. “Maybe I’ll get something in the mail to-night.”

He stood upon the post-office steps and lighted a cigar; while he was puffing thoughtfully at this, he felt his arm jostled gently. Turning he saw an old man with a basket on his arm, and a hand tangled in a chin beard.

“How d’ye do?” asked the old man.

“Pretty fair,” said Bat.

“Stopping up at Schwartzberg, ain’t you?”

“Yes.”

“Thought so. My name’s Henry; got a brother over at the station.”

“Oh, yes,” said Bat. “I detect the family resemblance. How is he?”

“Doing tolerable.” There was a slight pause, then the old man disentangled the hand and jostled Scanlon’s arm once more. “Remember a man that asked for you one night at the station--fat kind of a fellow?”

“Yes,” said Bat.

“Saw him last night.”

“That so?” Bat was unmoved, smoking calmly.

“Helped to take him to Doc. Sharpless’s. Found him in the road, not far from Schwartzberg. Was coming along in a waggon with my brother when I seen him. Only for the moon we’d run over him.”

“What was wrong?” asked Scanlon, carelessly.

“Don’t know. He told Doc. Sharpless he fell somehow. Doc. says he’d got a bad bump.”

The old fellow looked at Bat as though he expected him to say something. But the big man examined the wrapper of his cigar in silence.

“I’d never knowed who the fellow was,” said the man with the basket, “only my brother was along. He told me.”

Still Bat was silent, and the greater grew the old chap’s disappointment.

“We reckoned you’d like to hear about him,” resumed he. “Of course we thought he must be a friend of yours.”

“Entire stranger,” replied Bat, briefly.

“Funny, aint it, how he should come asking after you like that, and you not know him? And then to find him unconscious in the road out by the castle, too. We thought that was very queer.”

It occurred to Scanlon that the tone of the old man’s remarks was not desirable. So he attempted to shift it about.

“When a person feels that he must fall,” remarked Bat, “he should be very careful in the selection of a place to fall in. Now the middle of a roadway as a site shows carelessness don’t you think?”

But the ancient refused to be side-tracked. He clung to his theme like a terrier.

“Yes, we thought it was kind of queer,” he re-affirmed. “But then,” with a shake of his head, “I don’t know as we should, after all. For there’s such a lot of queer things going on around Schwartzberg that we shouldn’t be surprised at one more. What between some kind of thunder, and gun shots and people running and racing about in the night, that house has given this village something to think about.”

Bat grinned, and smoked away.

“So they think the castle’s a place of interest, do they?” he asked.

“It’s a place they’re afraid of,” said the old man. Since he had failed to get Scanlon to talk, he seemed determined to do the next best thing--talk himself. “Tom Gould’s constable here, and he’s thinking of looking into things.”

“Oh, well,” said Bat, “we can’t blame Tom for showing a little enterprise.”

“There ain’t never been any such goings on at Marlowe Furnace before,” stated the man with the basket. “And I don’t think folks’ll put up with it much longer. Shots and strange noises and finding people hurt in the middle of the road’ll never do. It ought to be seen into.”

“Why don’t you speak to Campe?” suggested Bat.

“How could I--or anybody else, if it comes to that?” demanded the ancient. “How often is he seen? And when he does come out, why does he look as if he was running away when he gits sight of anybody? What’s wrong with him? What’s he afraid of? What’s he done--him with his dogs, and his man on the wall, and his searchlight, frightening the women and kids?”

“I think,” said Bat, “you’re imagining a good deal of this. Anyway, it’s Campe’s own place, and I suppose he can do as he likes on it.”

He nodded to the old man with a smile, but as he walked away from the post-office he was thoughtful enough.

“Getting on the nerves of the population, eh?” said he. “Well, I don’t wonder. A fellow can’t go slam-hanging around like that and not attract attention.”

He noticed, as he went along, that more than one person regarded him curiously; little knots of people gathered behind him, their heads together and no doubt deep in the discussion of the odd doings about Schwartzberg. He had left Marlowe Furnace some distance behind when an idea occurred to him.

“I’ll just top a few of these hills to the left,” said he, “and stop off at the inn. It wouldn’t surprise me if I saw or heard some little thing of interest. These fellows with the lame lungs and the lame legs seem to have more to them than a first glance shows.”

So Mr. Scanlon confidently took the path across the hills. As a rule a criminal caught in the act of housebreaking would not be expected to linger in the neighbourhood of his exploit; but that the man with the cough had departed was not at all in the calculations of Bat.

“According to the dope of both Kirk and Mrs. Kretz, Campe is afraid of the police,” was the way the big man reasoned it out. “Knowing the nature of the thing which makes Campe afraid, the housebreaker knows that the police won’t be called in. So, then, he’ll stick around, waiting for another chance.”

In the road which led to the inn Bat heard the sound of wheels; it was the rolling chair containing the man with the flattened skull. The black, glittering eyes of the invalid fixed themselves upon Bat as he came up with the chair. The big man noted this and nodded.

“Nice day,” said he.

“Splendid,” replied the invalid, in his peculiarly strong voice. “In fact there has been a succession of fine days. This district seems specially favoured.”

Bat nodded his head many times.

“I’ve been thinking something like that myself,” he said. “There seem to be things here which a fellow wouldn’t be likely to run into anywhere else.”

“I’ve noticed you a number of times with your dogs and gun,” said the sick man. “The game is none too plentiful hereabouts, I should say.”

“It depends a good bit on what you’re after,” stated Mr. Scanlon.

“Yes, I suppose that is true.”

The tone of the man in the chair was quieter than usual; his manner, too seemed mild. But the expression of his full-lipped mouth was one of infinite savagery; his eyes shone like those of a caged beast.

“Doctor sent you out here, I suppose,” said Scanlon, as they went on toward the inn.

The invalid gestured with one wasted hand.

“We who have no health,” said he, “are for ever under a doctor’s directions. We can never follow our own desires.”

Bat regarded the speaker attentively.

“Any one,” was his thought, “who could make you do what you didn’t want to do would be a good one.”

But aloud he said:

“So I fancy! The doc. who has you in charge, I’ve noticed, seems to have some confidence in fresh air. I suppose that’s why you keep so much to the roads?”

“Yes,” replied the invalid.

“Outdoors,” said Scanlon, “is a fine thing. I guess that’s why there is so much of it. It’s full of benefits, night and day. Moonlight nights,” sagely, “are especially good. Then you not only get the air, but you get a view of things, which helps the mind. Last night was as bright as day, and Schwartzberg looks well with the moon on it.”

The beast in the man glared out more than ever from the black eyes, and the teeth gleamed between the full lips. But he said, quietly:

“Ah, yes; I can believe that Schwartzberg is an interesting place. I have given it some attention since I have been here.”

Bat nodded.

“A number of people have,” said he. “We have visitors dropping in every now and then.”

“Some time _I_ shall go,” said the invalid. “I have been promising myself that for a long while.”

“Quite,” said the big man, easily; “of course. But the others only stayed a little while. When you come, we’ll keep you longer.”

“Thank you,” said the sick man. “You are very kind.”

Here his chair turned into the gravel path leading to the inn door, and Scanlon followed it. The cramped-looking man with the crutch and the walking stick was stamping up and down.

“The blood,” declared the cramped-looking man, “is the most important thing in the body. It is meant to carry vigour to all our outlying parts; but, sir, it carries other things at times--other things not so desirable.”

A tall man with a saffron complexion and a pair of thick blue spectacles sat in a cane chair; his clothes hung about him as if he had shrunken a half-hundredweight in a short time; his long hands, as yellow as his face, were clasped before him.

“I will not try to belittle the function of the blood,” said he in a husky voice. “It would be foolish in me to do so. But you exaggerate it, sir. And why? Your joints are solidifying through deposits of lime; this is carried to the joints by the blood, and therefore you give undue importance to that fluid.”

“Undue importance!” The cramped man paused in his stumping and seemed astounded. “Undue! But, my good sir, how can that be? It is life itself.”

The yellow-faced man jeered at this.

“Fiddlesticks!” said he. “Fiddlesticks, Mr. Hirst. Since the time Harvey discovered its circulation, sentimentalists have overpraised this corpuscle-carrying agent. They have given it credit which it in no way deserves. In much the same way poets and novelists have misrepresented the heart. To them, this is the seat of affection--of every noble impulse--where, as a matter of fact, it is nothing more than a pump.”

The cramped-looking man cast a look of complaint at every one on the porch; then he was about to put it into words, but the yellow man stopped him.

“You spoke of the blood as ‘carrying vigour,’” said the latter. “‘Carrying,’ mind you. And that’s all it does--carry. It remains for other and more important things to make and introduce both that vigour of which you speak and that lack of vigour. The liver, now; take that! There’s a piece of machinery for you. There’s an organ which means something.”

The cramped man seemed amused. He cackled and hammered with his cane upon the floor.

“The liver,” said he; “why, I’ve known men to go on forty years who had no livers at all. Because yours has refused to secrete and has painted you up with jaundice, you put it in front, and belittle more important things. With good blood, sir, a man need have no liver.”

“Without a liver,” maintained the saffron-hued man, “he could not have good blood.”

Mr. Scanlon nodded to the landlord.

“It’s a fine, uplifting conversation,” said he, in a low tone. “Do you have to listen to them often?”

The innkeeper smiled.

“About two-thirds of the talk here is of symptoms,” answered he.

“I once stopped at a hotel in Colorado,” said Bat, “where they were loaded up with a gang something like this one of yours. They’d sit around and draw diagrams of each other, and stick pins in the places where their ailments were located. And I never saw one of them back out when it came to the possession of the most deadly complaint. They were as keen for the championship as a crowd of golfers round a green.”

“These are about like that,” said the landlord.

“It’s funny the way the thing works,” commented Bat. “A man can go along all his life with no one paying the slightest attention to him; then he accumulates a rare disease, and at once becomes an object of interest. Can you blame him if he cherishes his aches and makes much of his pains? They’ve lifted him out of the rut for the first time in his life, and given him something to brag about.”

The wheels of the rolling chair sounded upon the porch floor, and the squat servant pushed it out into the hotel. Scanlon glanced about.

“I don’t see the man with the cough,” said he to the landlord.

“Mr. Shaw, I suppose you mean.”

“Sort of a worn-out looking fellow,” said Bat, carelessly.

“Mr. Shaw met with a small but rather painful accident,” said the landlord. “It happened last night; he scratched and bruised himself by falling into one of my hot-bed glasses, which some one left carelessly in the way.”

“I see,” said Bat. “Glass hurt much?”

“About all broken,” said the innkeeper laconically. “But I can’t understand who could have been touching it, and why.”

Mr. Scanlon felt that he could enlighten the hotel man upon both these points, but he judged it best to keep the matter to himself. Here the man with the crutch stumped away into the hotel, and in a few moments the landlord followed. The saffron-hued man turned his dark glasses upon Scanlon.

“I beg your pardon,” said he, “but I had not noticed you before. Are you a guest of the house?”

“No,” replied Bat. “Not yet.”

“I was recommended here,” said the man. “Just came yesterday. I find that most of the guests are here for a purpose.”

“So _I’ve_ noticed,” replied Scanlon, agreeably.

The jaundiced man shook his head.

“Ah, the doctors,” said he. “If I could control my liver without their attention, I’d be satisfied never to lay eyes upon another one of them.” He studied Bat for a space, and then said in an awed tone, “The liver, sir, is a most tremendous thing.”

“So I’ve heard,” said Scanlon, cheerfully. “I suppose I’ve got one myself, but it’s never introduced itself to me, and so I haven’t given it much attention.”

The saffron-hued man seemed appalled at this last.

“Sir,” said he, “I am a stranger, and I know it is a very great liberty to take, but I cannot help a word to you, now that I see it is needed.”

“Sure,” said Bat, “go ahead!”

“Some one--and a very wise person it must have been--has said: ‘In time of peace, prepare for war.’ That, sir, should be the duty of every man; he should not procrastinate; he should, so to speak, take his liver by the forelock, and tame it--tame it, sir, completely.”

“But,” protested Mr. Scanlon, “a liver that’s never, in its career as such, said anything to its owner, seems to me to be tame enough.”

The jaundiced one grew more agitated than ever.

“Don’t be deceived,” begged he. “Don’t be imposed upon. They are things given to the most deplorable treachery. One can place no faith in them whatever; they are worthy of not the lightest confidence. They have been known,” and here his voice shook a little, “to stop short in their functions at an instant’s notice--and this after years of apparent devotion.”

“Well,” said Scanlon, “that does sound like a dirty trick, that’s a fact. But what’s a fellow unaccustomed to such things to do? How is he to know when to jump in with his corrective measures?”

“Any time will do before the thing asserts its independence of you. If it is mild, beware of it; for like as not it will eventually become like an old man of the sea and rule you completely. Scourge it; drench it with compelling draughts; submerge it completely; bombard it with bitter pills.”

“I suppose,” said Bat, “you speak as a man who neglected all these measures.”

“Utterly, sir, utterly!” The saffron-hued man shook his head sadly. “I had no voice to speak a warning word; I was unlearned in the wiles of the thing. Even after it had secured the whip hand of me, I could have defeated it if I had been told how by a person of experience in such struggles. With a few dozen bottles of ‘Seaweed Tonic’ I could have stopped its assaults; and with a handful of ‘Grady’s Grey Granules’ I could have put it to flight.”

“Maybe,” said Mr. Scanlon, “I’ll lay in a stock of those some time.”

“They are the only permanent hope of man,” declared the yellow gentleman. “Behind a stockade made of the ‘Tonic’ and the ‘Granules’ he can defy the encroachments of even the most evilly disposed of livers.”

Bat went inside, smoked a second cigar, and chatted with the landlord. None of the guests was to be seen, and so the big man gradually drifted into a conversation concerning them. But the landlord was apparently without any information.

“They come and they go,” said he, “and, as I said, I’m glad to have them, to get over the autumn and the winter months. But I don’t know anything about them except that they are sick.”

After a time Scanlon, seeing that little was to be gained by lingering about the inn, departed. He noted that the jaundiced man was not upon the porch as he crossed it; but beyond that he never gave him a thought.

However, when he saw him, small and far away on a hilltop, stooping, studying and moving here and there, the big man manifested some interest.

“Hello!” said he; “what’s this?”

Cautiously he made his way toward the spot, moving along fences and keeping trees between himself and the other where it was possible. Finally he was able to make out the man and his doings with little difficulty.

The saffron-coloured one had a glass in his hand and was examining the hole of an oak tree which grew on the crest of the hill.

“Same tree I stood under last night when I watched the fellow in the rolling chair,” murmured Bat. “Wonder what he finds wrong with it?”

From the tree the yellow man fell to carefully noting the dried stems of some stunted bushes; then he studied something here and there upon the ground, sometimes using the glass, but more often not.

“If I didn’t have a first-class reason for suspecting invalids,” said Mr. Scanlon, “I’d say this fellow was a botanist--maybe hunting a plant which, when cooked, would have some sort of a discouraging effect on the liver.”

He watched the man for some time; carefully the saffron-hued one went from place to place, from tree to tree, from one clump of dried brush to another. Gradually he moved down one hill and up the side of another. From the top of this a good view was to be had of Schwartzberg through the trees, and stationing himself behind one of these, the stranger looked long and searchingly toward the castle.

Kretz was not to be seen upon the walls; but at one of the windows Bat made out a woman’s figure. Apparently the saffron-hued man also saw her; but apparently he desired a better view. So taking a field-glass from a case which hung at his side, he trained it upon the window.

He spent some little time in watching the woman; then putting the glass away he moved along a road that ran between the hills at a sharp angle from Schwartzberg. Much interested, Bat followed. Again the stranger turned sharply, this time toward the river. And now Scanlon understood his movements.

“He’s been making for the waterside all along,” reasoned the big man. “And he came this way so as not to be seen from the castle.”

Evidently this was correct. The stranger, when he gained the river, began walking along its margin in the direction of Schwartzberg, concealed by a sharp rise in the ground. But his searching glances seemed not to gain him the satisfaction he sought; and so, finally, though he did not seem at all eager to do so, he approached that portion of the riverside in full view of the castle.

The river was fairly broad at this point, and its placid waters flowed by with scarcely a ripple; a great mass of soft reddish rocks ran from the walls of the castle down to the water’s edge.

“He seems somewhat backward about putting himself on display,” said Scanlon, as he watched the doings of the jaundiced man with keen attention. “But, then, he may have the most urgent reasons for it, so I’ll not pick on him for that.”

From across the river came the sounds of laughing; some boys were fishing from a boat, and were shouting to each other over some comic misadventure. The saffron-hued man lifted his head and looked out across the slowly flowing water; but the pause was for an instant only; for he proceeded with the matter in hand.

A dozen yards further on he stooped, and seemed to grow intent and eager. Out came the lens which Bat had seen him use on the top of the tall hill, and down on his knees he went to examine something on the ground.

“And right there,” said Bat, “is the place where the soft-looking party broke through the edge of the bank and flopped into the water.” He stood watching for a space, and then, unable to restrain his curiosity, he pulled his hat firmly down upon his head and said: “I think I’ll have a closer view of those proceedings. They may contain something I ought to know.”

With a light step he moved along the river bank until he was within a half dozen paces of the stooping yellow man. Then he paused, and said:

“Hello! What’s the idea? Lost something?”

The yellow man replied promptly, without turning or lifting his head, and in a voice from which every vestige of huskiness was gone.

“Just working out a little idea, that’s all.”

At the voice Mr. Scanlon gasped. Then the man’s head lifted without the blue glasses. Even the yellow stain was no disguise.

“Kirk!” said the big man. “Kirk, by George!”