Part 8

"We did mention him. She asked me if I had seen him, and it was the thought of him that evoked her merriest laughter."

She shook her head and sighed; then her manner changed abruptly.

"You delivered my message to Mr. Wiggins?"

"I did. He is badly out of sorts and sees nothing clearly. He is very bitter toward your aunt. He thinks she has treated him outrageously."

"Aunt Octavia has done nothing of the kind," she replied with spirit. "Mr. Wiggins has no right to speak of Aunt Octavia save in terms of kindness. If her wits are sharper than his, it is not her fault, that I can see! But there are matters here that I do not understand, Mr. Ames. I trust you, as my aunt evidently does, or I should not be talking to you as I am; and I am moved to ask a favor of you,--a favor of considerable weight in view of the fact that you are a professional man with doubtless many pressing calls upon your time."

I bowed humbly before this compliment. My time had been lightly appraised by Miss Octavia and again by Wiggins. A long telegram from my assistant that reached me while I dressed for dinner had urged my immediate attendance upon my office. Some of my best clients, now reopening their houses for the winter, were in desperate straits. From the number of appeals for help reported by my assistant I judged that all the chimneys in the republic had grown obstreperous. But Father Time learned early in his career that to women his scythe's edge has no terrors. In this instance I must admit that if Cecilia Hollister wished to cut a few days out of my reasonable expectation of life it was not for me to plead sick chimneys as an excuse for declining to serve her.

In fact, I had never found myself so close upon the heels of the adventure that we all crave as since making the acquaintance of the Hollisters. Octavia Hollisters do not occur in the life of every young man, and both Cecilia and Hezekiah had taken strong hold upon my imagination. Wiggins's place among the dramatis personae would in itself have compelled my sympathetic attention; and the nine silk hats that I had seen bobbing over the stile still danced before my eyes.

"Miss Hollister," I said, "my time is yours to command. My office is well organized, and I am sure that my assistant is equal to any demands that may be made upon him. Pray state in what manner I may serve you."

"I am going far, I know, Mr. Ames, but I beg that you will not be in haste to leave my aunt's house. She must have been strongly prejudiced in your favor, or she would not have asked you here on so short acquaintance. I am confident that she has no thought of your leaving. She expressed her great liking for you at luncheon, and I am sure that she will see to it that you do not lack for entertainment. I assume that you must have gathered from what Mr. Wiggins told you of my acquaintance with him the peculiar plight in which I am placed."

I bowed. If she groped in the dark and needed my help in finding the light, I was not the man to desert her. I had dropped my plumb-line into too many dark chimneys not to feel the fascination of mystery. As I expressed again my entire willingness to abide at Hopefield Manor as long as she wished, the footman announced Mr. Hartley Wiggins.

We had hardly exchanged greetings before another man was announced, and then another. I should say that it was at intervals of about three minutes that the sedate servant appeared in the curtained doorway and announced a caller, until nine had been admitted. My spirits soared high as the gentlemen from the Prescott Arms appeared one after the other. The earlier arrivals rose to greet the later ones,--and as they were all in evening clothes I experienced, as when I had seen the same gentlemen in their afternoon raiment crossing the stile, a sense of something fantastic and eerie in them. There was nothing unusual about them, taken as individuals; collectively they were like life-size studies in black and white that had stepped from their frames for an evening's recreation. Cecilia introduced me in the order of their arrival; and in the interest of brevity, and to avoid confusion, I tabulate them here, with a notation as to their residence and occupation, taking such data from the notebook in which, at subsequent dates, I set down the facts which are the basis of this chronicle.

HARTLEY WIGGINS, Lawyer and Farmer; Hare and Tortoise Club, New York.

LINNAEUS B. HENDERSON, Planter; Roanoke, Virginia.

CECIL HUGH, LORD ARROWOOD, no occupation; Arrowood, Hants, England.

DANIEL P. ORMSBY, Manufacturer of Knit Goods; Utica, New York.

S. FORREST HUME, Lecturer on Scandinavian Literature, Occidental University; Long Trail, Oklahoma.

JOHN STEWART DICK, Pragmatist; Omaha, Nebraska.

PENDENNIS J. ARBUTHNOT, Banker and Horseman; Lexington, Kentucky.

PERCIVAL B. SHALLENBERGER, Novelist and Small Fruits; Sycamore, Indiana.

GEORGE W. GORSE, Capitalist; Redlands, California.

We rose and stood in our several places when, a moment later, Miss Octavia entered. She greeted the suitors graciously, and then, in her most charming manner, called one after the other to sit beside her on a long davenport, the time apportioned being weighed with nicety, so that none might feel himself slighted or preferred. These interviews consumed more than half an hour, and the movement thus occasioned gave considerable animation to the scene.

It may seem ridiculous that nine gentlemen thus paying court to a young woman should call upon her at the same hour, but I must say that the gravity of the suitors and the entire sobriety of Cecilia did not affect me humorously. Nor did I feel at all out of place in this strange company. I found myself agreeably engaged for several minutes in discussing Ibsen with the Oklahoma professor, who proved to be a delightful fellow. His experience of life was apparently wide, and he told me with an engaging frankness of his meeting with the Hollisters in France and of his pursuit of them over many weary parasangs the previous summer. As no one had elected his courses in the university at the beginning of the fall term, he had been granted a leave of absence, and this accounted for his freedom to press his suit at Hopefield Manor at this season. He was a big fellow, with clean-cut features, and bore himself with a manly determination that I found attractive.

He alone, I may say, of the nine men who had thus appeared in Miss Octavia's library, met me in a cordial spirit. Even Wiggins seemed not wholly pleased to find me there again, though he had asked me to remain. The manner of the others expressed either disdain, suspicion, or fierce hostility, and Lord Arrowood, who was older than the others and a man well advanced toward middle age, glared at me so savagely with his pale blue eyes, that I should have laughed in his face in any other circumstances.

When the last man rose from the davenport, Miss Octavia called me to her side. She seemed contrite at having neglected me during the day, but assured me that later she hoped to place an entire day at my disposal. As we talked, the nine suitors sat in a semicircle about Cecilia, while the group listened to an anecdotal exchange between Professor Hume and Henderson, the Virginia planter. My opinion of Cecilia Hollister as a girl of high spirit, able to carry off any situation no matter how difficult, rose to new altitudes as I watched her. If this strange wooing _en bloc_ was not to her liking, she certainly made the best of it. She capped Henderson's best story with a better one, in negro dialect, and no professional entertainer could have improved upon her recital. As she finished we all joined in the general laugh, Lord Arrowood's guffaw booming out a trifle boisterously, when Miss Octavia quietly rose and excused herself. About five minutes later, when the company had plunged into another series of anecdotes, I suddenly became conscious that the fireplace, near which I sat, had all at once begun to act strangely. Much in the manner of its performance the previous night, it abruptly gasped and choked; the smoke ballooned in a great swirl and then poured out into the room.

After my examination of the flues in the morning, I had dismissed them from my mind, and this extraordinary behavior of the library fireplace astounded me. It is not in reason that a perfectly normal fireplace, built in the most approved fashion, and with chimneys that rise into as clear an ether as October can bestow, could act so monstrously without the intervention of some malign agency. We had discussed all the possibilities the previous night, and I was not anxious to hear further lay opinions. The chimney's conduct was annoying, the more so that to my professional sense it was inexplicable.

Lord Arrowood had retreated discreetly toward the door, and the others had risen and stood close behind Cecilia, whose gaze was bent rather accusingly upon me.

A dark thought had crossed my mind. As our eyes met, I felt that she had read my suspicions and did not wholly reject them. Henderson was valiantly poking the logs, while one or two of the other men gave him the benefit of their advice. I crossed the hall to the drawing-room, but no one was there. I went back to the billiard-room, but saw nothing of Miss Octavia. Cecilia had rung for the footman, and I passed him in the hall on his way to answer her summons. I stopped him with an inquiry on my lips; but I could not ask the question; even in my perplexity as to the cause of the chimney's remarkable performances I did not so far forget myself as to communicate my suspicion to a servant.

"Nothing, Thomas," I said; and the man passed on.

It was possible, of course, that Miss Octavia knew more than she cared to tell about the erratic ways of the library chimney, or she might indeed be the cause of its vagaries. Sufficient time had elapsed after her retirement from the library to allow her to gain the roof and clap a stopper on the chimney-pot. This did not however account for the fact that on the previous evening she had been present in the library when the same chimney had manifested a similar sulkiness. I was still pondering these things when I heard loud laughter from the library, and on returning found the logs again blazing in the fireplace, from which the smoke rose demurely in the flue.

"This fireplace is like a geyser, Mr. Ames," said Cecilia, "and spurts smoke at regular intervals. As I remember, the clock on the stair was striking nine last night when the smoke poured out, and there--it is striking nine now!"

She tossed her head slightly; and this was, I thought, in disdain of the suspicion that must still have shown itself a little stubbornly in my face.

I withdrew again in a few minutes, and followed the great chimney's course upward. Miss Octavia's apartments were at the front of the house, her sitting-room windows looking out upon the Italian garden. Her doors were closed, but I knew from my examination in the morning that the flue of her fireplace tapped the chimney that rose from the drawing-room, and had nothing whatever to do with the library chimney.

From the fourth floor I gained the roof, by the route followed on my inspection of the house in the morning. The smoke from the library chimney was rising in the crisp, still air blithely. I leaned upon the crenelations and looked off across the hills, enjoying the loveliness of the sky, in which the planets throbbed superbly. There was nothing to be learned here, and I crept back to the trap-door through which I had come, made it fast, and continued on down to the library.

There, somewhat to my surprise, I found that in my absence all but Hume had taken their departure. As I paused unseen in the doorway, I caught words that were clearly not intended for my ear.

Cecilia sat by the long table near the fireplace; Hume stood before her, his arms folded.

"You are kind; you do me great honor, Professor Hume, but under no circumstances can I become your wife."

I retreated hastily to the billiard-room, where I took a cue from the rack and amused myself for perhaps fifteen minutes, when, hearing the outer door close and knowing that Hume had departed with his congee, I returned to the library.

Cecilia sat where I had left her, and at first glance I thought she was reading; but she turned quickly as I crossed the room. She held in her hand an oblong silver trinket not larger than a card-case. A short pencil similar to those affixed to dance-cards was attached to it by a slight cord, and she had, I inferred, been making a notation of some kind on a leaf of the silver-bound booklet. Even after she had looked up and smiled at me, her eyes sought the page before her; then she closed the covers and clasped the pretty toy in her hand. As though to divert my attention she recurred at once to the chimney, in a vein of light irony.

"You see," she said, "there is ample reason for your remaining here. You would hardly find anywhere else so interesting a test of your professional powers as Hopefield Manor offers. The house is haunted beyond question, and I can see that you are not a man to leave two defenseless women to the mercy of a ghost who drops down chimneys at will."

I suffered her chaff for several minutes, then I asked point-blank:--

"Pardon me, but have you the slightest idea that Miss Octavia is behind this? It is not possible that she was responsible last night; but she was not on this floor a while ago when the smoke poured in here. I should be glad to hear your opinion."

"I saw that you suspected her before you left the room, Mr. Ames, and I must say that the idea is in no way creditable to you. If you entertain such a suspicion you must supply a motive, and just what motive would you attribute to my Aunt Octavia in this instance?"

Her tone and manner piqued me, or I should not have answered as I did.

"It is possible," I said, "that some of these gentlemen who came here to-night were not to her liking, and it may have occurred to her to get rid of them by the obviously successful method of smoking them out."

She rose, still clasping the little silver-backed note-book, and looked me over with amusement in her face and eyes.

"You are almost too ingenious, Mr. Ames. I hope that by breakfast-time you will have some more plausible solution of the problem. Good-night."

And so, tightly clasping the little book, she left the room. I followed her to the door, and at the turn of the stair she glanced down and nodded. Her face, as it hung above me for an instant, seemed transfigured with happiness.

But, as will appear, my adventures for the day were not concluded.

IX

I MEET A PLAYFUL GHOST

It was not yet ten o'clock, and I was dismayed at the thought of being left to my own devices in this big country-house, at an hour when the talk at the Hare and Tortoise usually became worth while. I sat down and began to turn over the periodicals on the library table, but I was in no mood for reading.

The butler appeared and offered me drink, but the thought of drinking alone did not appeal to me. I repelled the suggestion coldly; but after I had dropped my eyes to the English review I had taken up, I was conscious that he stood his ground.

"Beg pardon, sir."

"Well?"

"Hit's a bit hod about the chimney, sir."

The professional man in me was at once alert. The chimney's conduct was inexplicable enough, but I was in no humor to brook the theories of a stupid servant. Still, he might know something, so I nodded for him to go on.

He glanced over his shoulder and came a step nearer.

"They say in the village, sir, that the 'ouse is 'aunted."

"What?"

"'Aunted, sir."

"Who say it, James?"

"The liveryman told the coachman, and the 'ousemaid got hit from a seamstress. Hit's werry queer, sir."

"Rubbish, James. I 'm amazed that a person of your station should listen to a liveryman's gossip. There 's the chimney, it's working perfectly. Some shift of air-currents causes it to puff a little smoke into this room occasionally, but those things are not related to the supernatural. We 'll find some way of correcting it in a day or two."

"Werry good, sir. But begging pardon, the chimney hain't hall. Hit walks, if I may so hexpress hit."

"Walks?" I exclaimed, sitting up and throwing down my review. "What walks?"

"You 'ear hit, sir, hin the walls. Hit goes right through the solid brick, most hunaccountable."

"You hear a mouse in the walls and think it's a ghost? But you forget, James, that this is a new house,--only a year or so old,--and spooks don't frequent such places. If it were an old place, it might be possible that the creaking of floors and the settling of walls would cause uneasiness in nervous people. The ghost tradition usually rests on some ugly fact. But here nothing of the kind is present."

"Hit was one of 'is majesty's horfficers, sir," he answered hoarsely.

It flashed over me that this big stolid fellow was out of his head; but sane or mad he was clearly greatly disturbed. It was best, I thought, on either hypothesis, to speak to him peremptorily, and I rose, the better to deal with the situation.

"What nonsense is this you have in your head? You 're in the United States, and there are n't any majesty's soldiers to deal with. You forget that you 're not in England now."

"But this 'ere country used to be Henglish, you may recall, sir. The story the coachman got hin the village goes back to the hold times, sir, when the colonies was hin rebellion, if I may so call hit, sir, and 'is majesty's troops was puttin' down the rebellion hin these parts. Some American rebels chased a British soldier from hover near White Plains to these 'ere woods as they was then, and they 'anged 'im, sir, right where this 'ere 'ouse stands, if I may make so free."

"Ah! This is a revolutionary relic, then?"

"You 'ave got hit, sir," he sputtered eagerly. "They 'anged the man right 'ere where the 'ouse stands."

"That's not a bad story, James. And what does your mistress say about it?"

"Well, sir; hit's the talk hin the village that that's why she bought the place, sir. She rather fancies ghosts and the like, as you may know, sir."

"Be careful what you say, James. Miss Hollister is a noble and wise lady, and you do well to give her your best service."

"We're all fond of 'er, sir, though she's a bit troubled hin the 'ead, if I may make so bold. She says a good ghost is a hasset."

I did not at once catch 'asset' with an aspirate, but when he repeated it, I laughed in spite of myself.

"You 'd better go to bed, James. And don't encourage talk among the other servants about this ghost. I know something about the building of houses, and I 'll give these walls a good looking over. Good-night."

It was apparent that my interview had not cheered him greatly. He turned at the door, to ask if I would put out the lights, and fear was so clearly written upon his big red face that I dismissed him sharply.

I made myself comfortable for an hour, smoking a cigar over an article on English politics, and while I read, a big log placidly burned itself to ashes. I found the switch and snapped out the library lights. When I had gained the second floor I turned off the lights in the hall below, and as I looked down the well to make sure I had turned the right key, the third floor lights suddenly died and I was left in darkness. This was the least bit disconcerting. I was quite sure that the upper lights had remained burning brightly after the darkening of the lower hall, so that it was hardly possible that the one switch had cut off both lights.

Standing by the rail that guarded the well, I peered upward, thinking that some one above me was manipulating another switch; but the silence was as complete as the blackness. I was about to turn from the rail to the wall to find the switch, but at this moment, as my face was still lifted in the intentness with which I was listening, something brushed my cheek,--something soft of touch and swift of movement. As I gripped the rail I felt this touch once, twice, thrice. Then my hand sought the wall madly, and with so bad an aim that it was quite a minute before I found the switch-plate and snapped all the keys. The stair, and the halls above and below me sprang into being again, and I stood blinking stupidly upward.

Though I was in a modern house thoroughly lighted by electricity, I cannot deny that this incident, following so quickly upon the butler's story, occasioned a moment's acute horripilation, accompanied by an uncomfortable tremor of the legs. As already hinted, I lay no claim to great valor. As for ghosts, I am half persuaded of their existence, and after witnessing a presentation of Hamlet, always feel that Shakespeare is as safe a guide in such matters as the destructive scientific critics.

There were various plausible explanations of the failure of the lights. Some switch that I did not know of, perhaps in the third-floor hall, might have been turned; or the power house in the village might have been shifting dynamos. Either solution of the riddle was credible. But the ghostly touch on my face could not be accounted for so readily. Leaving the lights on, I continued to the third floor, and examined the switch, and sought in other ways to explain these phenomena. My composure returned more slowly than I care to confess, and I think it was probably in my mind that the ghost of King George's dead soldier might be lying in wait for me; but I saw and heard nothing. The doors of the unused chambers on the third floor were closed, and I did not feel justified in trying them. The servants were housed on this floor, at the rear of the house, and a door that cut off their quarters proved on examination to be tightly locked.

The fourth floor was only a half-story, used for storage purposes. The roof was gained, I recalled, by an iron ladder and a hatchway in a trunk-room. I ran down to my room and found a candle, to be armed against any further fickleness of the lights, and set out for the fourth floor. I had changed my coat, and with a couple of candles and a box of matches started for the roof. My courage had risen now, and I was ready for any further adventure that the night might hold for me. Miss Hollister and Cecilia were both in their rooms, presumably asleep; the servants doubtless had their doors barred against ghostly visitors, and the house was mine to explore as I pleased.

I think I was humming slightly as I mounted the stair, which, in keeping with the general luxuriousness that characterized the furnishing of the house, was thickly carpeted even to the fourth floor. I was slipping my hand along the rail, and mounting, I dare say, a little jauntily as I screwed my courage to an unfamiliar notch, when suddenly, midway of the first half, and just before I reached the turn where the stair broke, the lights failed again, with startling abruptness. This was carrying the joke pretty far, and instantly I clapped my hand to my pocket for the box of safety-matches, dug it out, and then in my haste dropped the lid essential to ignition, and stooped to find it.