CHAPTER VIII

TELLS HOW THE NIGHT BREEZE BLEW FROM THE NORTHWEST

At dinner that evening Scanlon was surprised to find Miss Hohenlo. She wore a faded little smile and nodded girlishly to the trainer.

“It is such a task for me to dress,” she told him. “That’s why I so seldom come down of an evening. But the coming of your friend yesterday, and what Frederic has been telling me about him is quite exciting.”

Bat raised his brows inquiringly.

“Telling you about him?” said he.

“You know he mentioned his interest in old Count Hohenlo,” said Campe. “My aunt is pleased with that.”

“I see,” said Bat, and felt more at ease. Happening to turn his eyes in the midst of his complacency, he found those of Miss Knowles fixed upon him observantly.

“Your friend, Mr. Ashton-Kirk, must be a man of much learning,” said she.

“He has so many books that it’d give you a headache just to look at them,” said Bat. “As a child, they fed him learning with a spoon. He knows more inside stuff about people whom ordinary people never heard of than you’d think could be found out in half-a-dozen lifetimes.”

“How very interesting,” said Miss Knowles.

“Only to-day he was overhauling a group of musty old fellows who, so it would seem, put in their lives poking around among skulls.”

“Oh!” Miss Knowles said this, and her hands went up in a pretty gesture, apparently of dismay. But Bat, somehow, was quite sure it was to hide the expression that swept across her face. However, he went on, calmly:

“To find a dome that was fore and aft, or to put the tape around one that leaned to one side, was life’s extreme limit for those chaps. They even seem to have written books about bumps which any fairly strong man could pack into the thumb of a lady’s glove.”

“And is your friend also interested in this study?” asked the girl.

“Only a little,” replied Scanlon. “He does not make a practice of any one thing, as a matter of fact. He’s the kind of a fellow who has a great many cards up his sleeve; and so he always has one to play when it’s wanted.”

“That,” said Miss Knowles, “is clever of him.”

“And it’s so unusual to find a man interested in biographical bypaths,” said Miss Hohenlo. “The Count, you know, figured largely in the court of Frederic the Great; he was a friend to Voltaire and other men of note, and gave his sword and his genius for the freedom of these states.”

“Sure,” said Bat. “He’s one that I missed, but I can appreciate him for all that.”

The delicate hands went out in a gesture extremely girlish; the spinster’s faded face was full of rapture.

“It is really remarkable how things come about,” she said, “and, somehow, I feel that the visit of Mr. Ashton-Kirk will result in something.”

“I’m sure it will,” said Bat, calmly.

“Frederic has been gathering documents for a long time,” she went on. “I have a number of journals containing data of a most interesting character, and there are letters without number from historical personages. These together will show the beautiful fulness of the Count’s life. When your friend comes again, we must not fail to call his attention to them.”

“On the next visit he’ll not miss a thing,” stated Scanlon, confidently.

As they arose from the table Miss Hohenlo went to a window, raised it and looked out over the country, now dimming under the hand of dusk.

“If Schwartzberg had nothing else in its favour,” she said, vivaciously, “we could always fall back upon the glorious weather. And to-night,” with a gesture of the beautiful hands, “is more than usually splendid.”

As she stood there, framed in the high window, the spinster looked even more angular than Scanlon had supposed her to be. Her faded hair threw back nothing that the lamp-light gave it; her neck was thin, her arms were long and awkward. Near her stood the stately Miss Knowles, magnificent in her youth, her height, her long soft lines. The girl’s complexion was more like cream and roses than ever; the splendid crown of yellow hair was built up in a shining mass.

Striking as was her beauty, and much as he would have liked to stand and admire it, Bat Scanlon’s interest was called to something else. The actions of Miss Hohenlo at the window were commonplace enough, and yet, somehow, Miss Knowles seemed to attach much importance to them. The girl stood talking with Campe. Their tones were low; and the young man’s face had lost the strained look. The fear, which usually held its place so fixedly in his eyes, was gone for the time, and an eagerness had replaced it.

“Fine for him!” was Bat’s mental comment. “If it don’t do anything else, the entertainment will rest him up for a little, and that’s something. And,” here his mouth twisted slightly at the corner, “the lady is as interested as he is, but not at the same thing.”

There was a subtle something going on which the big man did not grasp; that it was proceeding was plain enough; but its meaning was lost upon him.

“I’m muffing it,” was his thought. “Right under it, too. It must be,” sadly, “that the grand stand’s too big; a minor leaguer never does get a right slant at anything until he’s out of the bush for a season. Kirk ought to be here.”

“How deep the shadows grow on the east of the hills,” remarked Miss Hohenlo, sentimentally. “I love to watch them as they thicken and lengthen in the evening.” She leaned farther from the window, a hand outstretched. “There is only the faintest of breezes,” she continued, “so little that one can scarcely detect its direction.”

At this, the watching Scanlon saw the blue eyes of Miss Knowles narrow; the look of interest upon her face deepened.

“Now it’s the wind,” said Bat, to himself. “And I am up to my eyebrows for sure.”

“Frederic,” and Miss Hohenlo turned to her nephew, “see if you can catch the wind’s direction.”

Obediently the young man left the side of Miss Knowles.

“It’s from the northwest, I think,” said he. “Yes, look there. Those tall birches are stirring; you can see their tops against the sky.”

“What wonderful sight you have, my dear,” said his aunt, as she fixed her eye-glasses upon her insignificant nose, and strove to see the tree tops he mentioned. “You must inherit it from your father’s family, for ours have never seen very clearly.” She looked out into the dusk with much affectation of fear. “Oh, dear, isn’t it very lonely out there?” she said. “Darkness does make such a change, doesn’t it, Mr. Scanlon?”

“One time,” said Mr. Scanlon, “when I had nothing else to do, I took a short whirl at a theatrical enterprise in Dodge City. And that showed me something fresh about the effects of darkness. Flood the stage with light and you couldn’t stir a thrill in the audience, no matter to what histrionic lengths you went. But put on the shadows and you began to get them; shut off the lights altogether, and you could feel things creeping right over the footlights.”

“Could you really?” Miss Hohenlo was extremely juvenile in her gestures of terror. “It must have been dreadful!” Then to her nephew: “You are quite sure it’s from the northwest, Frederic?”

“Yes, quite sure,” replied the young man a trifle impatiently. He had gone back to the girl once more and taken up the low-pitched conversation.

“Perhaps,” said Miss Hohenlo, “it might change.”

Young Campe did not hear this, so Mr. Scanlon said, reassuringly:

“Not to-night it won’t. It’ll stick around that quarter till sunrise, anyway.”

“Isn’t it delightful to understand the laws of Nature?” said Miss Hohenlo. “I never had a head for it, really.”

A very few moments later she moved out of the room; Scanlon, with a nod and a half-spoken excuse, left the girl and Campe together. Descending the stone stairs, he let himself out into the courtyard, and lighting a cigar he began walking up and down.

The square figure of the German sergeant-major was to be seen upon the wall; there was something intent in his attitude, indistinct though he was.

“A good watch-dog,” mused Bat, as he puffed away. “But, dash it, I don’t get him! A fellow like that is useful if you know he belongs to you; but when you get to thinking that he might----” Here the big man paused and took the cigar from his mouth. “What happened to that lamp in the vaults yesterday?” he demanded of himself. “What did it smash for? It wasn’t till afterward that there were any pistol shots.” He snapped his finger and thumb with a sharp popping sound. “I wonder if Kirk thought of that,” he said in a low tone. “I’ll mention it to him when I see him.”

With the cigar burning freely, and his hands clasped behind him, Scanlon trudged up and down.

“Wind from the northwest, eh?” thought he. “That’s a funny kind of thing. There was something to it, though. I could read it in that girl’s face as plainly as I can read print. The old one seemed to want to be sure just how the wind blew; and the young one seemed interested in the desire. Wonder what kind of a little game it is, and how does it work into the bigger one that’s going on?”

He mused and smoked and paced, but the affair presented no aspects at all understandable. Finally, in exasperation, Bat began a conversation with the man on the wall.

“Nice night,” he called.

“Yes,” came the brief reply.

“Think it’ll rain?” asked Bat.

“The wind’s from the northwest,” stated the sergeant-major.

Bat bit at his cigar viciously. Though not able to give any good reason for it, he wished it would select some other quarter.

“The northwest!” said he, to himself. “What the dickens is there about the northwest that----” here he stopped, a thought taking shape in his mind. “I’ll go out,” said he, gravely. “There might be something doing, out that way; and if no one’s there it might break out.”

He called once more to Kretz.

“Hello,” answered the man.

“Come down,” requested Bat, “and open the gate. I want to go out.”

The sergeant-major descended from the wall.

“To go out,” stated he, “is not wise. Outside there is danger--from the tramps.”

“Unbolt the gate,” said Bat, serenely. “I rather like tramps. In fact, one of the regrets of my young life is that I’ve met so few of them.”

“In the cellar,” said Kretz, as he shot back a bolt, “they fired at us.”

“Maybe,” suggested Bat, “that volley ran them out of ammunition.”

“You do not know how much they are to be feared,” said the German, stubbornly. “I have served. I have seen danger. But,” and Bat saw his head shake, “never any like this.”

“To-night,” said the big man, “I feel like taking a chance. Stick around, will you, so you can let me in when I get back.”

Reluctantly the sergeant-major opened the gate; then he closed it promptly and Bat, from the outside, heard him refastening it.

“Is it that he is anxious that nothing should happen to me; or is it that he wants nothing to happen to something else?” reflected Bat, as he threw away the cigar, and stood by the gate looking away into the night. “Little anxieties like that might work both ways, as I’ve seen to my cost.”

Slowly and quietly he passed around the wall, and at a point overlooking the northwest he paused.

“The Potomac at its quietest could never compare with this,” said he, gently. “It’s as peaceful, apparently, as a pastoral on a post-card. All it needs is a glint of moon, a fleecy cloud, and a happy pair of lovers.”

It was a serene, quiet night; the wind from the northwest was but the merest puff; the shadowy hills lay long and looming on every side; the stars were few and seemed very far away.

“It’s on these still nights, though,” ruminated Bat, “that things that make a noise usually have their beginnings. Some wise old lad, in the days gone by, came through with a remark about the calm before the storm; and as an observer, I’ll say that he held aces. Because it’s always been my experience that your man always takes his longest rest before he comes at you with both hands swinging. So the right rule must be: the quieter the night, the wider you should keep your eyes open.”

Just then he turned his head and looked up at the castle. At an open window he saw something move. It was a woman in white--a tall woman. Bat’s straining eyes made her out.

“The young one,” said he, softly.

The window was dark, but the white of the gown was distinct; and the outlines, vague though they were, were unmistakable. And she seemed to be looking out over the swelling country toward the northwest.

“There are events to be looked for, as I thought,” murmured Mr. Scanlon. “Doings are being started just as sure as she stands in that window.”

He turned his eyes away from the shadowy window and toward the equally shadowy quarter which held the girl’s attention. For a space all was alike; it seemed evenly dark. Then he began to perceive points of light between the hills; these were low places in the western sky which the night had not stained completely black. Against one of these, Bat, as he looked, caught a movement; some slinking, peculiar figures crossed it and were at once swallowed up.

“Right,” muttered Mr. Scanlon, grimly. “Just stay still for a little, and I’ll be with you.”

And with that he quietly descended the slope of the hill upon which Schwartzberg stood, and made off into the darkness.