CHAPTER XVI

POISON

So near did Tobias Bassett's matchmaking schemes come to naught that had he known it he would have--in his own words--"let go all holts."

It seemed that his intimation to Ralph and Lorna regarding the supposed loss of their respective fortunes was a bubble that was bound to be punctured. For Professor Henry Endicott, in spite of his seemingly self-centered existence, possessed a proper share of kindliness, and considered the Nicholets' financial troubles as his own.

He seldom left his own premises. Between meals, and sometimes until late into the night, the professor lived in his laboratory, reading and experimenting. The white smock he wore while thus engaged had become much more familiar to him than evening dress.

Yet after dinner on this evening Ralph was surprised to see his uncle, arrayed in the prescribed garments for an evening call (and rather rusty they were, for Mrs. Mallow, the housekeeper, knew little about grooming a man, and their old valet, Jerome, was purblind and fairly tottering with age), march across the two lawns to the Nicholet house.

Ralph himself was seriously considering the journey which he had already hinted to Lorna he purposed taking. He was not saying anything about it at home, for he feared his Uncle Henry and his Cousin Luce would object. He was determined, however, not to waste the entire summer in loafing about Clay Head and the Twin Rocks Light.

Ralph planned for this escape from home entanglements just as another and lighter-minded young fellow might have schemed for some forbidden spree. He packed his steamer trunk in secret.

Professor Endicott came to the dimly lit veranda of the Nicholet house, which overlooked the starlit bay. The white beam of the Twin Rocks Light was flung far seaward. Its illumination did nothing to abate the pale rays of the stars which glittered on the ruffled water of the almost land-locked harbor.

A figure in white, quietly swaying in a basket rocker, leaned forward to distinguish the man's features.

"Henry! Professor Endicott! Come up. You _are_ an unexpected caller."

"Er--yes, Miss Ida. I am not very neighborly in my habits, I acknowledge. So busy--always. You know. Er--is John in his room?"

"My brother has gone to Boston," said Miss Ida, pushing a light chair toward him with her neatly slippered foot. "Will you sit down, Professor Endicott?"

"Thanks, Miss Ida. Has John gone for any length of time?"

"He could not tell me how long he would be away. But he did say he might be detained for some days. Did you wish to see him particularly?"

"Yes. I did, really. But of course I can wait for his return," Henry Endicott added hastily. "There is nothing troubling him in business, Miss Ida, is there?" he finally blurted out.

"No. Not that I know of," was the slow reply.

"I fancied the last time John spoke to me he was in some business difficulty. Nothing of--er--importance, of course. But I was so deep in the theory of an experiment at the time--ah, perhaps I did not pay sufficient attention. Of course you would know, Miss Ida?"

"My brother confides a good deal in me," said the woman placidly. "I believe he has under way some new business deal. Perhaps it is that you mean."

"Perhaps that was it," returned Endicott.

How could he come out bluntly with this suspicion Ralph had put in his mind regarding the loss of the Nicholet fortune? He could not do it!

He uttered a few commonplace remarks. He was vastly disturbed, and even a tete-a-tete with Miss Ida did not calm him. It was on the tip of his tongue all the time to venture upon the ground of financial difficulties. Yet it was quite plain to the professor's observation that Miss Ida was not after all in her brother's confidence regarding this very serious matter. If outsiders were informed of the disaster that threatened or had overtaken the Nicholets, the head of the family had managed thus far to hide it from the other members thereof.

Miss Ida was quite unaware of any present or coming disaster. The professor desired greatly to get hold of John Nicholet. He finally said:

"When John returns, tell him to come and see me." He rose from his seat. "I really wish to talk with him. Perhaps there is something I may be able to do----"

His words trailed off again into silence. He said good-night and descended the steps. When his figure was only a dim outline across the lawn, Miss Ida sighed.

A dainty person in a shimmering frock came lightly to her side from the darker end of the porch.

"What did the professor want, Aunt Ida?"

"I really cannot imagine," Miss Ida said, quite composedly.

"But didn't he seem disturbed--more than usually difficult?"

"'Difficult' does express it, Lorna," said Miss Ida. "He said he wished to talk with your father."

"On business?" Lorna asked with some eagerness.

"Yes. He intimated as much. But why----"

"Oh, Auntie!" exclaimed the girl. "I am afraid it is true! I told father."

"What did you tell him? What are you talking about?" asked Miss Ida Nicholet in her most placid manner.

"I believe Professor Endicott is in financial difficulties. They say he has lost his money--has quite ruined the family."

"Lorna!"

"Yes. I told father. I wish he were at home now. He is so full of this new business deal that he must have forgotten what I told him I had heard about the Endicotts. I believe that is what is troubling Ralph so much--makes him go mooning about as he does."

"Indeed!" ejaculated Miss Ida. "Are you quite sure that it is not your treatment of the boy that causes his moodiness?"

"Oh, dear, Aunt Ida! Ralph Endicott does not care how I treat him. I wish you could have heard him when we were coming up from Lower Trillion the other day in his _Fenique_. Called me 'kid'! Girls mean nothing to him. At least, not _this_ girl," and she laughed airily.

"But, Lorna," said her aunt, "can it be possible that this tale you have heard is true--about the loss of Henry's money?"

"Well, Aunt Ida, how did the professor impress you just now?"

"As acting very strangely--even for him. And his peculiar manner did not seem to arise as usual from his habitual absent-mindedness."

"That is what I thought. Of course the poor old fellow always does have a 'lost, strayed, or stolen' way about him----"

"Why, Lorna! Professor Henry Endicott is not old--not at all!" admonished Miss Ida heatedly.

So near did Tobias Bassett's scheme fall through. Had John Nicholet been at home the fanciful tale of financial disaster, at either the Nicholet or Endicott side of the big lawn, would have been exploded!

As it was, the next morning, before Miss Ida could make up her mind to go to Professor Endicott and put a plain question or two, the latter had plunged into a new series of experiments from which the family did not dare to try to recall him under any circumstances. And on the professor's part, he had quite forgotten the Nicholets' financial troubles.

Ralph "fiddled about," as Tobias Bassett said, as uncertain in his direction as a crab.

"I give it as my opinion," the lightkeeper observed to Miss Heppy, "that the boy can't make up his mind whether to go about or keep on the main tack. He is as onsartain as April weather."

"I do hope he ain't sick," said his sister. "Maybe he's comin' down with something."

"Oh, sugar! There ain't nothing the matter with that fellow's health," chuckled Tobias. "All he's sickenin' for is _girlitis_--got it the worst way. Only he don't know it."

Nor was it thought of Conny Degger that disturbed Ralph's mind. At least he did not fear that individual's approach to the Clay Head or the Twin Rocks Light. He did not, however, take into consideration the possibility of Lorna's meeting the treacherous Degger at a distance.

One must occasionally shop. An entire summer could not pass without the need of renewal in the Nicholet household of clothing and domestic necessities. Clinkerport stores did not carry much variety in any merchandise. So Lorna started early one morning, driven by Jackson, the Nicholets' gardener and chauffeur, for the Big Town.

It was when she was returning and was still several miles on the far side of Clinkerport that Lorna spied a familiar figure walking ahead of the automobile in the road. She leaned over the back of the driver's seat and spoke to Jackson:

"That is Mr. Degger ahead of us, Jackson. Stop when you reach him. I wish to speak to him."

They were almost upon the pedestrian before Lorna saw the bandage about his head and that he carried his left hand in a sling. The noise of the stopping car made him look around.

Ralph had certainly fulfilled his promise. He had so greatly changed Conny Degger's facial appearance that only from the rear was he to be easily recognized.

Besides his swathed forehead he had one rainbow-colored eye and a bruise on his cheek that gave him the appearance of carrying what the children call an "all-day-sucker" in that side of his mouth. When he opened his lips to speak to Lorna the absence of two teeth made an ugly gap in an otherwise perfect upper set.

"Mercy's sake!" gasped Lorna. "What has happened to you, Mr. Degger?"

For the second time since she had known him, Lorna gained a look right into the very soul of the fellow. She had seen him display cowardice in the face of danger. She scorned him for that, yet realized that he was a landsman and--unlike Ralph and herself--was unused to the more boisterous phases of the sea.

Here was something different. He did not sneer. It was a positively wolfish snarl that he displayed in reply to her question. The blood rushed into his face, making the whole of it almost as dark as though his bruises were a complete mask.

"So you haven't heard the glad news?" he lisped through his missing teeth.

"What do you mean, Mr. Degger?" she demanded. "Get in here. I wish to speak with you. Oh! is your arm broken?"

"My finger. When I hit him," said Degger, with a harsh laugh. "I guess he carries the mark. Haven't you seen him?-"

"Seen whom?"

"Endicott."

"I don't understand," murmured Lorna. "I have not spoken with Ralph for two days. You--were you fighting with him?"

"I tried to defend myself," snarled Degger. "He caught me unaware. I had no idea he was such a brute."

"Oh!"

"He'll come to you and brag about it, all right, when time has erased the few marks I put on him. I fought back the best I could. But he gave me no real chance--none at all."

"What did Ralph attack you for?" the girl asked, her practical sense coming to the fore. It was not easy for her to believe that Ralph Endicott had been so unfair as Degger declared.

"Oh, we had words," was the latter's hesitating reply.

"Over what?"

He looked at her from under lowered lids. The color receded from his face. The corners of his lips curled in a wolfish smile. He was not a pretty sight.

"It was nothing you would care to hear about, Miss Nicholet," was his apparently evasive reply.

She knew he desired her to urge his confidence. It would have been wiser had she refused to be thus baited. But curiosity is a most irritating complaint, and Lorna was not immune.

"I want to know what you quarreled about, Mr. Degger," she said. "I know you and Ralph had words when you left us aboard the _Fenique_ down there at Lower Trillion. You were angry, or you would not have gone away from the light without bidding any of us good-bye. I think you two men are very foolish. Fighting and quarreling. Like dogs! It is most disgraceful.

"And if I thought," she added, "that you and Ralph quarreled about me----"

He flashed her another lowering glance. His smile now was most malicious.

"No, Miss Nicholet," he said quite truthfully, "your name was not mentioned between us." Then: "Our difficulty arose over quite a different person."

"Yes?"

"I was a fool!" he exclaimed with apparent anger. "I tried to do somebody a favor. I thought I might be able to show Endicott wherein he was wrong. Never will I try again to point out his duty to a man!"

Lorna listened with growing amazement. This certainly was a new side to Degger's character!

"Just what do you mean?" she asked wonderingly.

"Well, I do not feel myself bound to secrecy. It is Endicott's affair. I only tell you what is common knowledge. There was a girl Endicott was chasing after more than a year ago."

"Indeed?" said Lorna stiffly. "I do not believe I care to hear----"

"Well, you wanted to know what the row was about, didn't you?" he snarled. "I have mentioned Cora Devine before to you. I thought it was something of a joke then. But since I have found out that Endicott treated her very shabbily. She was a silly girl, I guess--one of that kind that believe everything a fellow like Endicott tells her. And she probably knew he was rich, too."

"Oh!" gasped Lorna.

"It's a sordid piece of business," said Degger, ruminatively. "Whether he really did take her away from her folks or not, I don't know. But she needs help now, and I heard about it. I put it up to Endicott and--well, you can see what I got for my pains," he concluded with a bitter laugh.

Lorna was shaken by his words. She was disgusted and horrified. Ralph Endicott to be connected with such a sordid affair as this that Degger intimated? She could scarcely believe it. She thought she knew Ralph so well!

"I cannot imagine Ralph doing such a thing as you suggest, Mr. Degger," she said gravely. "I think I know him quite as well as anybody--better than you do, for instance----"

"I don't doubt it," interposed Degger, grimly. "But a fellow is sometimes quite different away from home--and at college--from what he is among his family and friends." He laughed harshly. "Oh, Endicott knows the girl well. See here! This he tore from his address book and threw at me when he said he'd got through with her--well, you can look or not as you please," as Lorna turned her face from him.

He had dragged from his pocket the crumpled leaf of a memorandum book and offered it to her. In spite of herself the girl could not refuse to look at it.

She recognized a leaf of the little red book she had often seen in Ralph's possession. Yes! That was his writing. She would know it anywhere. Boldly Ralph had set down:

"Cora Devine "27 Canstony Street "Charlestown, Mass."

Lorna was not likely to forget that name and address. A flame of anger shot all through her trembling body. She did not realize that Degger was watching her with sly delight at the mental pain he caused her.

"I would not have believed!" she murmured.

"Oh, Endicott is sly--dee-vilish sly," chuckled Degger. "But I guess Cora Devine has been causing him some worriment of late. She wants money. She's been nagging him for it, like enough. That is what made him so sore, I suppose, when I tried to say a good word for her to him.

"Oh, well! I was a fool. I assure you, Miss Nicholet, I've washed my hands of them both. If the girl finds a shyster lawyer to take up her case, Endicott will sweat. Let him. He deserves to."

"Now, I'll get down here, if you don't mind," added the fellow, as they came to the Outskirts of Clinkerport. "Thanks for the lift. I've had my lesson, I have. I'm going to mind my own affairs strictly in the future. I'm sorry for the Devine girl; but she'll have to fight her own battles as far as Endicott is concerned. Good-day, Miss Nicholet."

Lorna could not even find voice to tell Jackson to drive on. But he did so on his own initiative while Lorna sat very upright in the tonneau of the car, clutching that leaf of Ralph's address book in her hand.