Our Next-Door Neighbors
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I lifted the child to my knee, and speaking more gently to him than I had ever done, I asked:
“Di, did you and Tolly play in the sandpile yesterday?”
He was quite emphatic in his affirmative.
“Well, tell Ocean: Did Tolly go away and leave you?”
“Tolly goed away,” he confirmed.
“Oh, Lucien!” protested Beth, laughing. “He’s too little to know what you are talking about or to remember.”
“Lucien’s ruling passion strong in death,” murmured Rob. “He can’t help cross-examining the cradle even!”
“Which way,” I resumed, ignoring these interruptions, “did Tolly go–that way?” pointing towards the woods.
“No! Tolly goed–” and he trailed off into his baby jargon which no one could understand, but he pointed to the lake.
“What did he say when he went away; when he tied the rope around you?”
“Bye-bye.”
“What else?”
Diogenes’ intentions to be communicative were certainly all right, but not a word was intelligible. As he kept picking at his dress and pointing to it, I finally prompted:
“Did Tolly pin a paper to Di’s dress?”
“‘m–h’–m.”
“Bravo, Lucien!” applauded Rob. “They say you can induce a witness to admit anything.”
“What did Di do with the paper?” I continued.
The word he wanted evidently being beyond his vocabulary and speech, he made a rotary motion with his fist. The gesture conveyed nothing to our minds, but was instantly recognized and interpreted by the landlady’s little girl, who said he meant a windmill such as she had sometimes made for him.
“What did Di do with the windmill?” I asked.
He pointed to the sandpile, which I investigated and found a stick planted therein. I pulled it up and saw a pin sticking in the end of it. Further excavation revealed a crumpled piece of paper on which was written in Ptolemy’s round hand:
“Want to see kids. Am going home. Tell Beth I bet she dasent go to the haunted house alone at night. Ptolemy.”
“Poor Huldah!” sighed Silvia.
“I thought he was having the time of his life here,” said Rob.
“He was sore,” declared Beth, “because you and Lucien wouldn’t take him with you on the fishing trip. He was moping by himself all the morning.”
“Trying to think up some new deviltry,” I theorized, “to make us feel bad.”
“No,” asserted Silvia, “I think he really misses the boys. The Polydores, for all their scrappings, are very clannish. But how do you suppose he got down to Windy Creek?”
“He could catch plenty of rides along the way, but what is puzzling me is how he got the money to pay his fare.”
“He seemed very well provided with cash,” informed Rob. “I tried to pay for his ticket down here, but he insisted on buying it himself.”
Silvia worried so much about what might happen to him en route that after dinner I motored to Windy Creek with some tourists who had stopped at the hotel in passing.
I called up long distance and after some delay got in communication with our house. Ptolemy himself answered and assured me he had arrived all “hunky doory”, that Huldah, who was out on an errand, was “hunky doory”, and that the kids were all “hunky doory.” In fact, his cheerful tone indicated that the whole universe was in the beatific state described by his expressive adjective.
I was really ripping mad at his taking French leave and so giving Silvia cause for her anxiety, but I forbore to reprimand him by word or tone, lest he get even by “coming back” literally. I did tell him how the loss of the note for twenty-four hours had caused a general excitement, but he felt no remorse for his share in the situation, blaming Diogenes entirely and bidding me “punch the kid’s face” for unpinning the note.
On my return from Windy Creek I was fortunate enough to fall in with a farmer who lived near the hotel. He was driving some sort of a machine he called an autoo. He was an old-timer in the vicinity and related the past, present, and pluperfect of all the residents on the route. I had a detailed and vivid account of the midnight visitor of the haunted house.
“I’d jest naturally like to see what there is to it,” he said. “Not that I am afeerd at all, only it’s sort of spooky to go to a lonesome place like that all alone. If I could git some one to go with me, I’d tackle the job, but I vum if every time I perpose it to anyone they don’t make some excuse.”
“I’m on,” I declared. “I don’t dread ghosts near as much as I do some living folks I know.”
“Right you air,” chuckled the old man. “If you say so we’ll go right off now jest as sure as shootin’. We may be ghosts ourselves tomorrow.”
I assured him I was quite ready to encounter the ghost, so he jubilantly turned the machine from the road into a grass-grown lane. We zigzagged for some distance and then got out and went on foot through a grove. The moon and the stars were half veiled by some light, misty clouds, so that the little house didn’t show up very clearly, but as we came to the top of the hill, we saw something that shook even my well-behaved nerves.
From a window in the roof-room extended a white arm and hand, with index finger pointing threateningly and directly toward us.
My farmer friend turned quickly and fled toward the grove. I followed fleetly. “What’s your rush?” I asked, when I had overtaken him.
“I just happened to remember,” he explained gaspingly, “that there’s a pesky autoo thief in these ’ere parts. Bukins had his stole jest last night.”
The lights on his machine must have reassured him as to its safety when we emerged from the woods into the open, but he didn’t lessen his speed. We got in the “autoo” and soon said good-by to the lane. At one time I believed it was good-by to everything, but at last we gained the highway, right side up.
“Well!” I said, when we were running normally again on terra firma, “that was some little old ghost,–beckoned to us to come right in, too!”
“You seen it then!” he exclaimed excitedly. “I’m mighty glad I had an eyewitness. Folks wouldn’t believe me.”
“They probably won’t believe me, either,” I assured him. “I am a lawyer.”
“You don’t tell me! Well, it did jest give me a start for a minute. I’d like to hev gone in and seen it nigh to, if I hadn’t happened to think of this ’ere autoo. You see I ain’t got it all paid for yet. I’m jest clean beat. You don’t mind my takin’ a leetle pull at a stone fence, do you?”
“I guess not,” I assented somewhat dubiously, however. “That was a rail fence we took a pull at back in the lane, wasn’t it? Of course, if we shouldn’t happen to clear the stone fence as well as we did the rail fence, it might be more disastrous.”
“Oh, land!” he said with a cackling laugh, “I ain’t meanin’ that kind of a fence. I mean the kind you–Say! You ain’t one of them teetotalers, be you?”
“Only in theory,” I replied, “but this stone fence drink is a new one on me. What’s it like?”
He stopped the “autoo” and pulled a bottle from an inner pocket.
“You kin taste it better than I kin tell it,” he declared. “Take a pull–a condumned good one.”
I rarely imbibed, confining my indulgences to the demands of necessity, but I thought that the flight of Ptolemy, the ghostly encounter, and my Mazeppa–wild ride all combined to constitute an occasion adequate to call for a bracer in the shape of a stone fence, or anything he might produce.
I took what I considered a “condumned good one” from the bottle and it nearly strangled me, but I followed the aged stranger’s advice to take another to “cure the chokes” caused by the first one. On general principles I took a third and then reluctantly returned him the bottle.
“Here’s over the moon,” he jovially exclaimed as he proceeded to make my attempt at a “condumned good one” appear most niggardly.
“May I ask,” I inquired when my feeling of nerve-tense strain had vanished, and I felt as if I were treading thin air, “just what is in a stone fence?”
“Well, what do you think?” he asked slyly.
“I think the very devil is in it,” I replied.
“Well, mebby,” he admitted. “It’s two-thirds hard cider and one-third whisky. It’s a healthy, hearting drink and yet it has a leetle come back to it–a sort o’ kick, you know. But this is where I live,” pointing to a farmhouse well back from the road, “but I am goin’ to run you on to your tavern though.”
The hotel was dark, save for a light in my room. I invited him in, but he was anxious to “git hum and tell the folks”, so I gave him some cigars and went in to “tell my folks.”
I found them in the room waiting for me. That is, Beth was in the room, sitting by the table and pretending to read. Silvia and Rob were out in the little balcony. They came inside as soon as they heard my voice.
“Oh, was he there?” asked Silvia anxiously.
“Yes,” I replied. “He answered the telephone himself.”
I was feeling quite exhilarated by this time. My wife looked a perfect vision to me. Beth, I thought, was some sister, and Rob the best fellow in the world. Even the Polydores at long range, and under the ameliorating influence of stone fences, seemed like fine little fellows–rather active and strenuous, to be sure, but only as all wholesome children should be.
Silvia was relieved at the announcement of Ptolemy’s safety, but very much disappointed that I did not succeed in interviewing Huldah and finding out something about domestic affairs.
I assured her that everything was “hunky doory” at home, praised the telephone service, my expedition to town, and painted my return ride with “the honest farmer” in glowing terms. I was suddenly halted in my eulogy by becoming aware of an amazed expression on my wife’s countenance, a most suspicious glance in Beth’s wide-open eyes, and a very knowing wink from Rob.
“Lucien,” said Silvia severely, “I believe you’ve been drinking. I certainly smell spirits.”
“Maybe you do,” I replied jocosely. “I certainly saw spirits. I went to the haunted house on my way back.”
“I thought Windy Creek was a dry town,” remarked Rob innocently.
“It is,” I assured him, “but I rode home with an old man–a farmer.”
“Does he run a blind pig?” asked Rob.
“It was more like a pig in a poke,” I replied.
“Lucien,” exclaimed Silvia reproachfully, “you told me two years ago, after that banquet to the Bar, that you were never going to touch wine or whisky again. What did that horrid old man give you?”
“A stone fence. That’s what he said it was anyway.”
“It’s a new one on me,” commented Rob.
“There was a new toast went with it. He drank to ‘over the moon.’”
“You must have gone there all right and taken all the shine from the moon-man,” said Rob.
“Lucien,” asked Beth, “did you really go to that haunted house?”
Again I was moved to eloquence, and I told of the farmer’s yearning, the fulfillment, the beckoning hand and the beating of the retreat at length.
“Are you sure,” asked Rob, “that you didn’t take that stone fence before you visited the haunted house?”
“I know,” I replied, loftily, “that a lawyer’s word is worthless, but seeing is believing. We will all visit the haunted house tomorrow night and I’ll make good on ghosts.”
This plan was unanimously approved, and then Silvia suggested that she thought I had better go to bed. I had no particular objection to doing so.
“Lucien,” she said solemnly, when we were alone, “I want you to promise me something. I want you to give me your word that you will never take another stone wall.”
I did this most readily.
Chapter IX
In Which We See Ghosts
The next morning Rob tried earnestly and vainly to drive a wedge in Beth’s good graces, but she treated him with a casual tolerance that finally put him in an ill humor which he took out on me with many a gibe at my “stone fence spirit.”
Men of my profession who have to deal with facts rather than fancy are not believers in the supernatural. I was sure that the extending arm and the beckoning finger were there, but belonged to no ghost. It might have been a curtain blowing out the window or a fake of some kind. But I knew that unless there was some kind of a showing in a ghostly way that night, I should never hear the last of my stone fence indulgence, so I resolved to make a preliminary visit alone by daylight and rig up something white to substantiate my spectral narrative.
I didn’t find an opportunity to escape unseen until late in the afternoon, when I went, ostensibly, for a solitary row on the lake.
I landed and came by a circuitous route to the haunted house. The calm security of sunshine, of course, prevented any shivers of anticipation such as I had experienced the night before. On passing one of the windows on my way to the front entrance, I glanced in, stopped in sheer fright, stooped and backed to the next window, which was screened by a labyrinth of vines through which I peered. I am sure I lost my Bloom of Youth complexion for a few moments. I babbled aimlessly to myself and then managed to pull together and beat it to the lake with as much speed as my farmer friend had shown in his retreat. I made the boat and the hotel in double quick time.
I felt no misgivings now as to the promise of a sensation that night, and that sustaining thought was all that propped my flagging spirits throughout the day, but I resolved to keep my little party at safe distance from the house.
“Say we keep our nocturnal noctambulation under our hats,” proposed Rob.
When this proposition was translated to Silvia, she entirely approved, so, committing Diogenes to the Polydores’ Providence, we left the hotel at half past eleven for a row on the lake by moonlight.
When we descended the slope leading to the House of Mystery, I cautioned silence and a “safety-first” distance.
“Ghosts are easily vanished,” I informed them. “They don’t seek limelight, and I want you to be sure to see this one.”
As we came to the untrodden undergrowth we heard a weird, wailing sound that would have curdled my blood had I not glanced in the window that afternoon and so, in a measure, been prepared for this–or anything.
“Look!” whispered Beth. “The arm!”
Silvia looked at the roof window and with a stifled shriek of terror turned and fled up the hill, Rob chivalrously pursuing her.
Beth was pale, but game.
“What can it be, Lucien?” she whispered. “Do we dare go in to see?”
“I wouldn’t, Beth,” I vetoed quickly. “Maybe some lunatic or half-witted person has taken up abode here.”
“Lucien!” called Rob peremptorily.
I turned quickly. He was at the top of the hill, half supporting Silvia. I ran toward them, followed by Beth.
“It isn’t a ghost, of course, Silvia,” I said soothingly, and then repeated my supposition about the lunatic.
“Of course I don’t believe in ghosts,” said Silvia shudderingly, “but it’s an awful place and those sounds are like those I have heard in nightmares.”
“We’ll hurry back to the hotel and forget all about it,” I urged.
I rowed the boat and Silvia sat opposite me. Beth and Rob were in the stern and I had to listen to their conversation.
“Of course I felt a little creepy,” she admitted, “but then I like to feel that way, and I wasn’t afraid.”
“No, of course, you wouldn’t be,” he replied somewhat ironically. “You’re the new woman type.”
“No, I am not,” she denied. “I wish I were. Silvia’s really the strong-minded type.”
“She didn’t act the part when she saw the ghost,” he retorted.
“It’s very unusual for her nerves to give way. Silvia’s quite a surprise to me this summer, but I think those funny Polydores have upset her more than Lucien realizes.”
I wondered if she were right, and once again murderous wishes toward the Polydores entered my brain, and I made renewed vows about disposing of them on our return home.
One thing, however, had been accomplished by our expedition. Silvia was more lenient in her judgment on my indulgences of the preceding night.
By the time we pulled in at the landing, Silvia had recovered her equilibrium.
“Lucien, what the devil do you suppose was in that house?” asked Rob, when we were putting up the boat.
“Loons and things,” I allowed.
“But what was that white arm?”
“Some fake thing the village wag has put up to scare the natives.”
Next morning’s stage brought some new arrivals, and among them were two college students who at once were claimed by Beth. She played tennis with one and later went rowing with the other. Rob smoked and sulked, apart.
My farmer friend had been garrulous and rumors of the ghost and the haunted house had come to the ears of the hotel inmates, thereby causing a pleasurable stir of excitement. A number of them announced their intention of visiting the place. They asked me to be their guide, but I refused.
“It was interesting,” I said, “but I think it would be a bore to see the same ghost twice.”
“I am sure I don’t care to go again,” was Silvia’s emphatic reply when asked to be one of the party.
“Ghosts are scientifically admitted and explained,” growled Rob, “so I don’t see anything to be excited about.”
Beth accepted the offer of escort of one of the students, so Silvia, Rob, and I remained at home. The night was quite cool, and we played cards in our room. When the party returned, Beth joined us. She looked rather out of sorts.
“Oh, yes,” she replied in answer to Silvia’s eager inquiry. “We saw the ghost. I don’t know whether it was the same little old last night’s ghost or a new one. He showed more of himself this time though. He had two arms and a veiled head out of the window. As soon as our crowd glimpsed it, they all fled quicker than we did last night. Those two students fell all over each other and left me in the lurch.”
“What could you expect,” asked Rob, “from such ladylike things? They ought to be kept in the confines of the croquet ground. If they are a fair specimen of the kind you have met, no wonder you–”
He stopped abruptly.
“No wonder what?” she asked quickly.
“Nothing,” he replied glumly.
When I came down to breakfast the next morning, the landlady in tears waylaid me.
“Oh, Mr. Wade,” she began in trouble-telling tone, “this affair about the ghost is going to hurt my business. Some of those folks say they are going home, and they will tell others and–”
“I’ll fix the ghost story. Just leave it to me!” I assured her optimistically, as we went into the dining-room.
There were only enough guests to fill one long table, and every one was excitedly dissecting the ghost.
I took my seat and also the floor.
“I hate to dispel your illusions,” I said cheerfully, “but the fact is, I made a daylight investigation of the haunted house. First I looked in the window and I saw–”
“Oh, what did you see?” chorused a dozen or more expectant voices.
“A lot of–mice.”
“Oh!” came in disappointed and skeptical tones.
“But, the ghost, Mr. Wade?”
“Yes! The arms and the head?”
“A fake figure put up by some practical joker for the purpose of frightening timid people and encouraging the credulous. I didn’t want to spoil your little picnic, so I kept still.”
“Those sounds, Lucien!” reminded Silvia.
“Were from a cat chorus. They were prowling about the house.”
“You’re sure some lawyer, Mr. Wade,” doubtfully complimented my grateful landlady, as we went out of the room after breakfast.
“Lucien,” asked Rob sotto voce, joining me on the veranda, “why don’t the cats you speak of catch that lot of mice?”
Fortunately Beth came up to us, and I didn’t have to explain.
“Oh!” she said with a shudder. “I’ll never go near that awful place! I’d rather see a perfectly good ghost, or a loon, or a lunatic any day than a mouse.”
“You’re surely not afraid of a mouse!” exclaimed Rob.
“Why not?” she asked coolly as she walked on.
“I told you she was feminine,” I reminded him.
He shook his head.
“I can’t understand,” he remarked, “why a girl who is afraid of mice should be–”
“You don’t understand anything about women,” I interrupted.
“You’re right, Lucien. I don’t, but your sister is surely the greatest enigma of them all.”
I rented the stone fence farmer’s “autoo” and took Silvia and Diogenes to a neighboring town that afternoon. We didn’t get back to the hotel until dinner time.
“What have you been up to all day, Rob?” I asked.
“Numerous things. For one, I strolled down to the haunted house.”
“What did you see?” cried the women.
“I saw four–”
“Ghosts?” asked Beth.
I shot him a warning glance.
“Young tomcats playing tag with the mice.”
I corralled Rob outside after dinner.
“For Heaven’s sake!” I implored. “Don’t disturb Silvia’s peace of mind. Did you go inside?”
“No; I was sorely tempted to, but refrained out of deference to the evident wishes of my host, but really, Lucien, we should–”
“I have only ten more days off, Rob. Don’t make any unpleasant suggestions.”
“I won’t,” he said promptly.
Chapter X
In Which We Make Some Discoveries
Diogenes, who, for a Polydore, had been quite placid since Ptolemy’s departure, caused a commotion by disappearing the next morning. As he was possessed of a deep desire to go in the lake and get a little snake, he had been, when not under strict surveillance, tied to a tree with enough leeway in the length of rope to allow him to play comfortably.
By some means he had managed to work himself loose from the rope and had evidently followed Ptolemy’s example. I suggested calling up Huldah and asking if he had arrived yet, but I met with such chilling glances from Silvia and Beth that I got busy and organized searching parties, who reluctantly and lukewarmly engaged in the pursuit. Rob and I took the shore. After we had walked some little distance, we met a woman and stopped for inquiry. She said she had seen a child of about two years, clad in a blue and white striped dress and a big hat, going over the hill in company with a boy of about eight.
“Are you going on to the hotel?” I asked.
On her replying that she was, I told her to inform them that she had met me and that the lost child was located.
Rob and I then kept on over the hill, and when we neared the haunted house, we heard hair-raising sounds.
“If I hadn’t been here before,” remarked Rob, “I should think that Sitting Bull had been reincarnated and was reviving the warrior war whoops.”
We paused on the threshold. A human windmill of whirling legs and arms–Polydore legs and arms–flashed before our eyes.
“Stop!” I thundered.
The flying wheel of arms and legs slacked, ran a few times, then slowly stopped, and the Polydore quintette assumed normal positions.
“Halloa, stepdaddy!”
A landslide composed of Emerald, Pythagoras, and Demetrius started toward me. I side-stepped and let Rob receive the charge.
“Line them up now, for attention,” I directed Ptolemy. “I have something to say to you all.”
Ptolemy knocked the three terrors up against the wall, and I picked up Diogenes, who had a bump as big as an egg on his head.
“I told you,” said Ptolemy to Pythagoras, “that if you brought Di down here they’d get on our trail. He wanted to see Di,” he explained, “so he sneaked over there and got him.”
“We were wise before today,” I informed him. “I saw you all day before yesterday.”
“And I discovered you yesterday,” added Rob.
Ptolemy looked rather crestfallen, and then, seeming to consider that my discovery had been succeeded by inaction, which must mean non-interference, he heartened up.
“Now,” I demanded, “I want you to begin at the time you left the hotel and tell me everything and why you did it.”
“I wasn’t having any fun after you two went off camping,” he began lugubriously. “I couldn’t hang around women folks all the time. I wanted boys to play with.”
I saw a gleam of sympathy and understanding come into Rob’s eyes.
“A harem of hens,” he muttered.
“I knew we could all have a grand time here and not be a bother to mudder, or Huldah or anyone, and it seemed too bad for this nice house to be empty, and no one anywhere else wanting us.”
I felt my first gleam of pity for a Polydore and wiped Diogenes’ dirty, moist face carefully with my handkerchief.
“So I went home and told Huldah I had come after the boys to take them back with me.”
“And told her we had sent for them?” I asked sharply.