Our Next-Door Neighbors
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“To tell the truth, Lucien, I wasn’t thinking so much of that as I was of Miss Frayne’s interests. You see she has come a long ways for a story and if it collapsed from her ghostly expectations to a showdown of four healthy boys, the blow might mean a good deal to her in a business way. I think we had better let Ptolemy plant a ghost just once more for her. You know you made him take a reef in the flapping of ghostly garments. Can’t we resurrect the specter and restore the wails just for tonight, and bring her over here at the witching hour?”
“Sure we will,” I agreed heartily. “She shall have her ghost and all the trappings. It will give the Polydores the time of their lives.”
“Let’s go over there now and put Ptolemy next so he can get busy on his spirits.” We went down to the shore and pulled off. Midway across the lake, Rob suddenly rested on his oars and asked:
“Where did Beth go?”
“Back to first principles,” I replied. “She thinks, judging from your excited, earnest manner in addressing Miss Frayne and your rushing frantically away for a walk with her before she had removed the travel dust, that Ptolemy was quite correct, after all, in declaring you to be a ‘ladies’ man.’”
“Didn’t you explain to her who Miss Frayne was?” he asked.
“No,” I replied. “I am on my vacation and I am not doing any explaining, professionally or otherwise.”
He swung the boat around.
“Starboard!” I cried. “Don’t you know a trump card when you see it?”
Again he rested on his oars and stared at me.
“What do you mean, Lucien? If you have a grain of hope for me, please let me in.”
I repeated Silvia’s theories.
“I am not going to win her that way,” he said slowly, “not by playing a part.”
“Well,” I declared, “if you go back to the hotel now, you can’t explain Miss Frayne to Beth, because she went for a walk with old Professor Treadtop.”
He turned the boat again.
“Silvia won’t come to the Haunted House, will she?” he asked.
“No, indeed. Nothing would induce her to.”
“Then you bring Miss Frayne here tonight and I’ll bring Beth. And I’ll be sure that there are no double boats lying around loose. I’ll have two at the dock, see?”
“I see your system,” I replied, “but I am not sure how I can explain Miss Frayne to Silvia. Silvia is not in the least narrow-minded, but still to leave the hotel at midnight with a perfectly strange young woman–”
“You can tell her I want a clear field for Beth. She will see it is in a good cause.”
The Polydores greeted us rapturously and roughly. When I had restored order, and they were once more right side up, I addressed the chief of the bandits.
“Ptolemy,” I began, “a young lady, who is a reporter for a big newspaper, has come from many miles away to write up the haunted house and the ghost, and they will be pictured out in the Sunday edition.”
Ptolemy’s eyes glistened, and “Them Three” were instantly “at attention.”
“Oh, say, stepdaddy,” begged the young chief, “let me play ghost right for her, just once, will you?”
“You may for tonight,” I said, “but you will have to be very careful and not overdo the matter, for she isn’t the kind that is easily fooled. She’s had to keep her eyes and wits sharpened, else she wouldn’t be on a newspaper, so I want you to be very careful and not bungle. Make a neat job of it.”
“I’ll do it up brown, you bet!” he cried gleefully.
“Naw, do it up white,” drawled Pythagoras.
“Show me your ghost stuff by daylight,” I demanded, “and let me see how you are going to rig him up.”
He brought forth a head and shoulders and arms that were ghastly even in sunlight, and proceeded to explain them.
“I got this skull out of father’s study, and the arms came off a skeleton mother had in her antiquities. I dressed them up in a pillow case and the white cotton gloves are Huldah’s. I can get some phosphorus in the woods and put it in the eyes. And Demetrius bought two electric flashlights yesterday, and Pythagoras can snap them once in a while from the lower windows.”
“You are some little property man,” said Rob in admiration. “But tell me who produces those heart-rending shrieks?”
“That was Pythagoras who did the high ones. And Em came in with low groans. Show ’em, boys.”
Pythagoras uttered high-trebled, thin-toned whines and ever and anon Emerald added a basso profundo accompaniment, making a combination that was most trying to the ears at close range.
“I don’t know,” said Rob, “as I want Beth subjected to such a realistic performance. We will loiter in the distance.”
“Your rehearsal,” I assured Ptolemy, “is very good, but you must remember that Miss Frayne is used to encountering things far more terrible than ghosts. She may insist on coming right in here to investigate. Of course, if she does, I can’t refuse or she’ll think I am afraid, or else that I put up a fake ghost here, myself.”
“We’ll lock the door with a chair,” suggested Emerald.
“She’ll be quite capable of breaking into a little house like this, but I’ll keep her back until you have time to haul in your ghost and make a quick and quiet getaway by a back window. Then another thing, she’ll be over here tomorrow morning to take some pictures of the house, so by sunrise I want you all to take up your abode in the tent you have in the woods and stay there until I come and tell you the coast is clear.”
“We’re dead on,” assured Ptolemy. “I’m glad there’s going to be something doing. We’re getting tired of being here alone. I had to tie Demetrius up this morning. He was bound to go over to the hotel and see mudder.”
“Don’t one of you dare to make such an attempt,” I said peremptorily. “You keep right on here for a few days. Some of us, either Rob, or Beth and I will drop over every day. If you play your ghost just as I tell you and keep out of sight, I’ll bring you over some ice cream tomorrow.”
“Bring me a bigger bat.”
“Bring me a mitt.”
“Bring me a boat,” came in chorus from Ptolemy, Emerald, and Demetrius.
“What’ll you give me to stay here?” asked Pythagoras, who was a born bargain-driver.
“I’ll give you a licking if you don’t stay,” was the only offer he gleaned from me.
“Be good boys,” adjured the softhearted Rob, “and I’ll bring you everything I can find at the hotel.”
It was long past the luncheon hour when we returned. We found Miss Frayne wondering at Rob’s sudden disappearance and Beth was accordingly mystified.
I planted myself directly in front of Miss Frayne.
“May I take you to the haunted house tonight at the yawning churchyard hour?” I asked. “I am most eminently fitted to be your guide, for I was the first one of this assembly to see the ghost in toto.”
“He saw it over a stone fence,” remarked Rob.
“Indeed you may, thank you very much,” she said enthusiastically.
Silvia’s face was a study.
“And will you come with me, Beth?” asked Rob. “Of course, the ghost is an old story to us, but we really should hover in Lucien’s wake out of regard to the conventions.”
“Is Miss Frayne interested in ghosts?” asked Beth.
Miss Frayne turned and answered the question.
“Not personally,” she admitted frankly, “but the newspaper I am on is, and they sent me up here to get a story.”
“Oh, you are a reporter?”
“Yes; on the Times.”
“She won’t be one long, though,” asserted Rob cheerfully, “because she is going to marry my cousin in the fall.”
Beth’s expression remained neutral at the announcement, but I noticed throughout the afternoon that she was extremely affable toward Miss Frayne, and that she had the whiphand again with Rob, and meanwhile he seemed to be gathering a grim determination to do or die.
“Lucien, how did you come to ask Miss Frayne to go to that awful place tonight?” asked Silvia when we had gone to our room for a siesta, which seemed impossible by reason of the bellowing of Diogenes, who balked at being required to lie down.
“Rob asked me to,” I informed her, when I had cowed Diogenes, “so he could have a free field for Beth. I believe he planned this expedition so he could storm the citadel.”
She reflected.
“Well, maybe he is wise. Girls like Beth have to be taken by storm sometimes. I shouldn’t wonder if Rob could be a bit of a bully, too, but–”
She ended her speculations in a shriek.
“Oh, Lucien! Diogenes has jumped out the window.”
We rushed down stairs, Silvia informing the guests in transit of the awful catastrophe.
Silvia paused at the door opening on to the veranda.
“I can’t see him,” she said faintly, closing her eyes. “You’ll have to tend to it alone, Lucien.”
Beth was already at the telephone, which connected with the country doctor’s. Rob joined me. We located our window, and began hunting underneath for the pieces.
“Where in the world do you suppose he landed?” asked Rob.
Just then the missing one came around the house clasping a bologna sausage in his fist.
“Ye Gods and little Polydores!” exclaimed Rob.
I caught Diogenes by the arm and rushed him in to Silvia.
I found her in company with an old colored mammy, who was laundress for the hotel.
“Sho’,” she was saying, “I done gwine by de windah with ma baby cab full o’ cloes, an’ dis yer white chile done come tumblin’ down an’ fall right in ma cab. Now, what do you think o’ dat? I reckon I was nevah so done clean skeert afoah in ma life. An’ ef de chile didn’t grab one of ma bolognas and done git out de cab an’ run around de house.”
“Oh,” cried Silvia, “poor little baby! Come to mudder. Lucien, where are you going with him?”
I had picked up the acrobatic Polydore and was going up the stairs two at a time. I gained our room, locked the door and proceeded to give the “poor little baby” all that was coming to him. Now and then above his howls, I heard Silvia’s plaintive protests outside the door, but I finished my job completely and satisfactorily, and laid the penitent Polydore in his little bed. Then I went out into the hall, feeling better than I had in months.
Silvia essayed to pass me, but I took her arm and led her to a recess in the hall.
“I am convinced,” I told her, “that we have Diogenes as a permanent pensioner on our hands, so it was up to me to show him where to get off. You can’t go to him for a quarter of an hour.”
We went down stairs and I was sure I read suppressed regret in the faces of most of the guests at learning of the soft place in which Diogenes’ lot had been cast. Silvia tearfully told Rob and Beth of my cruelty.
“Do him good!” approved Rob heartily.
“How mean men are!” declared Beth indignantly. “I am going up and comfort the poor little thing.”
I held up the key to the room with a grin, and she had to content herself by making unkind remarks about me.
At the expiration of the allotted time, I handed Silvia the key. She took it from me without a word or a look. It was quite evident I was in wrong.
In half an hour my wife came down, carrying Diogenes, who, dressed in fresh white clothes, was a good picture of an angel child. She passed me and went to a remote corner of the veranda and sat down. When he spied me, he leaped from her arms and ran to me.
“Ocean,” he said propitiatingly, “me love oo.”
I took him up. His arms clasped about my neck, and over his curly head, I winked at Silvia and Beth.
Rob roared.
Chapter XIV
A Midnight Excursion
The night was Satan’s own: dark, wind-shrieking, and Polydorish. No one saw us leave the hotel when, at a late hour, we started on our little excursion. On account of the darkness and the poor landing near the haunted house, we decided to go by the overland route. I managed to purloin a lantern from the kitchen to light our path.
Rob and Beth kept behind Miss Frayne and myself, and in spite of the wildness of the weather, he was evidently pleading his suit, for now and then above the roar of the wind, I heard his ardent voice. Apparently Beth had not yet given him any encouragement.
Going down the lane my lantern underwent a total eclipse, so we had a Jordan-like road to travel. Miss Frayne was quite impervious to unfavorable conditions, as it was a matter of bread and butter to her, she said, and she was accustomed to braving worse storms than this, and anyway she hadn’t come here for a summer picnic.
When we came into the grove it was so dark, I lost my bearings.
“Why didn’t we bring a flashlight?” asked Beth.
“There were none at the hotel,” I told her.
“I know some boys,” said Rob with a little laugh, “who would have lent us one–maybe.”
Fortunately we were well provided with safety matches and after striking a box or so, we gained the open. A rise of ground hid the house, but when we climbed to the top, the ghost loomed up ghastlier than ever.
I felt the business-like Miss Frayne start and shiver as a little scream escaped her. I didn’t wonder. Even I, knowing that it was an illusion and a snare, felt my flesh creeping as I looked at the ghastly thing in the window.
Every now and then according to schedule a light flashed from the windows below. And then came the blood-curdling sounds–whimpers and groans that were rivaling the whistling of the wind.
“This is awful!” said Miss Frayne in a hoarse whisper.
“Do you want to go inside the house?” I asked.
“No–o! I couldn’t. Not tonight.”
We were some little in advance of Rob and Beth. When one spectral sound came like a tense whisper, Miss Frayne turned and fled, and of course I followed her. We could not see our two companions, but suddenly in an interim of wind and ghost whispers, we heard Beth say:
“Yes, Rob. I think we should really be cosier in a story-and-a-half cottage than we should in a bungalow.”
“Ye Gods!” muttered Miss Frayne, “did he propose in the face of that awful Thing?”
“Ship ahoy!” I called.
“Oh, didn’t you go inside?” asked Rob.
“Go in! I wouldn’t go inside that place; not if I lose my job on the paper. What can it be? You don’t seem to mind it, Miss Wade.”
“Well, you know,” said Beth apologetically, “this is my third performance.”
We were now down the hill out of sight of the gruesome, ghastly window display, and Miss Frayne gained courage as we retreated.
“Of course I don’t believe in ghosts,” she said, “but what do you suppose that is?”
“I had a theory,” I said, “that it is the work of a lunatic, but I’ve since concluded it is due to practical jokers. I’ll tell you what I’ll do. If you wait here, I’ll investigate and see what I can find out for you.”
“Oh, would you really dare, Mr. Wade? I don’t believe men ever have creepy nerves,” she exclaimed.
I began to feel ashamed of my deception.
“I wouldn’t go, Lucien,” warned Rob, coming to my rescue. “There may be a gang of desperadoes in there, or counterfeit money-makers, or something of that kind. Besides, I have a far more interesting piece of news than anything the ghost could give you.”
“Rob!” protested Beth.
“We know it already,” I laughed. “It’s to be a story-and-a-half high.”
“I think I am getting material for quite a story,” declared Miss Frayne.
I knew Beth’s dislike of scenes and display of emotions–mock heroics–she called them, so I made no congratulatory speeches of the bless-you-my-children order, but presently under the cover of darkness, I felt a little hand slipped in mine, and my clasp was eloquent of what I felt.
“I hope,” said Miss Frayne, “that daylight will make me so ashamed of my cowardice that I can come down here and take some pictures and go inside the house.”
“We’ll all come with you,” promised Beth. “There’s safety in numbers.”
When we were back at the hotel I managed to have a few words with Rob before we went upstairs.
“Bless the ghost!” he said cheerily. “When Beth first glimpsed it, she just turned and fell into my arms. She was really frightened for the first time. I shall feel under obligations to Ptolemy for a lifetime.”
“Thank goodness!” I ejaculated fervently, “that I am under no obligations to a Polydore. Ptolemy certainly did put up the most ghastly thing in the way of ghosts. The lights in the eyes of the skeleton were frightful.”
“Did you see the ghost?” asked Silvia sleepily, when I came in.
“Yes; same old ghost, only more of him,” I assured her.
She was asleep before I had uttered this reply.
“Silvia,” I said, “I have a more startling piece of news for you than that.”
She sat bolt upright.
“Are they engaged, Lucien?”
“They are. They are building their castle–I mean their story-and-a-half cottage already.”
Alas for my own desire to sleep! I had so effectually awakened Silvia that she planned Beth’s trousseau, the wedding, honeymoon, and the furnishing of their house before she subsided.
Chapter XV
What Miss Frayne Found Out
We had planned to go to the haunted house at nine o’clock the next morning, but owing to my dissipation of the night before, it was long after the appointed hour when Silvia awoke me.
I hurried down stairs and ate my breakfast in solitude. I inquired for Beth and Rob, but the waitress told me they had left the dining-room at seven o’clock and gone for a walk in the woods. She said it with a knowing smile that told me she, too, must be a “sister of the Golden Circle.”
“And Miss Frayne?” I asked.
“She went down the road over an hour ago.”
Evidently her courage had come up with the sun. I was greatly disturbed at the chance of her stumbling over one or more Polydores, and Rob didn’t want to let the cat out of the bag until her article was written, as he believed that if the ghostly spell were broken, she would lose her “punch.”
I was unable to think of any plausible explanation to offer Silvia as to why I should start in pursuit, and I wished all sorts of dire calamities on Rob’s blond head. Lovers were surely blind and selfish.
About ten o’clock they came strolling in.
“We didn’t know it was so late,” said Beth cheerfully, “but the boys will keep in the woods all right.”
“With her nose for news, there is no telling how far into the woods Miss Frayne’s investigation will take her.”
“Say we go down by the lane and meet her,” proposed Beth, “so that if she has run across the boys we can explain to her why we desire secrecy from Silvia.”
“You and Rob go,” I advised. “It would seem odd to Silvia if we didn’t ask her to go with us.”
So the newly engaged couple started down the road, but in their self-absorption they didn’t notice the turn to the lane, and they got half way to Windy Creek before they came back to earth and the hotel. Miss Frayne still had not shown up, and I began to have misgivings lest the Polydores had locked her up in the house, but finally just as we were having a happy family gathering and discussing the new event under the shade of the one resort tree, she came excitedly up to us.
“Such an interesting morning as I have had!” she exclaimed enthusiastically. “I made some corking pictures of the place, and I’ve found out about not only that ghost, but all ghosts–the whole race of ghosts.”
I hurriedly interrupted her and made elaborate and jumbled apologies for not keeping our engagement, which evidently bored her and mystified Silvia.
“I am glad I went alone,” she finally replied. “Otherwise I might not have got such an interesting interview.”
Beth, Rob, and I made frantic and appealing gestures to her behind Silvia’s back, but she didn’t seem to notice them.
“Whom did you interview, the ghost?” asked Silvia.
“No, indeed. Some very interesting and unusual people who are staying there.”
I threw her a wildly beseeching glance and Beth and Rob began at the same time to ply her with distracting questions. I think she seemed to divine that there was something in the situation that was not to be explained, but Silvia interrupted them.
“Do let Miss Frayne tell us about her interview,” she said. “We all seem to be very talkative today.”
I saw there was no way to dodge the dénouement, so I awaited the finale in dread desperation. It proved to be more of a stunner than I had expected.
“I went down the lane,” she said, “and through the grove, up the little hill, and laughed at myself for the hallucinations of the night before. There were no ghosts visible and the door to the haunted house was hospitably open. I stood on the hill long enough to make some pictures and then went on. I walked up the steps fearlessly and looked within. A woman, an untidy, disheveled-looking woman, sat at a table writing furiously in just the same breathless way I write when I have a scoop, and the presses are waiting open-mouthed for my copy.
“She looked up and scowled at my intrusion.
“‘Don’t bother me,’ she said, and continued writing.
“I went through the house and came outside again where I met an absent-minded, spectacled man. I told him who I was and of my object in coming to the house. Then he showed signs of coming to.
“‘Oh, the ghost!’ he said. ‘That is what brought me here. My wife is interested in more tangible, more material things. We have just returned from a long journey, and when we were nearly to our destination, our place of residence, I happened to read in a paper about this haunted house and its apparition, so we came right up here this morning to remain overnight and see if the article were true.’
“I told him how successful I had been and he became quite alert and enthusiastic. He showed me why I should not have been alarmed, because ghosts, he said, were scientific facts. He then explained to me at length how the gases from the dead arise and form a nebulous vapor or a vaporous nebula. It sounded very simple and plausible when he told me, but I can’t seem to remember it. Fortunately I have it all down in writing.”
Silvia’s eyes and mine had met in speechless horror since she had mentioned the “writing woman.”
“Lucien!” Silvia now said in a tragic, hoarse whisper–“the Polydores!”
“Oh, do you know them?” asked Miss Frayne. “Dr. Felix Polydore, the eminent LL.D. or something like that.”
“The whole family are D’s,” I said.
“His wife is the highest of high-brows, and they are averse to interviews. They moved to a small city sometime ago to be secluded. Just think of my opportunity! I have them headlined! ‘The Haunted House of Hope Haven. Ghost that appears at midnight scientifically explained by the distinguished Dr. Felix Polydore.’”
“I think we are in luck,” I said to Silvia, on second thoughts. “We will take them home by the nape of the neck and deliver their children into their keeping to have and to hold.”
“I can’t turn Diogenes over to them,” she said plaintively.
“Diogenes!” repeated Miss Frayne in astonishment.
I then narrated to her the history of our next-door neighbors, and how they planted their five children upon us.
“We had better go down at once and see them,” said Silvia, “before they escape. No telling where they might take it in their heads to go.”
“We will,” I said, “we’ll go soon after luncheon.”
“Thrice blessed haunted house,” quoted Rob. “It gave me Beth, and it has restored the parents of the wise Ptolemy and ‘Them Three.’”
“And gave me a ripping story,” said Miss Frayne.
Just then the gong sounded, and after luncheon while I was comfortably tipped back in a chair, my feet on the veranda rail, seeing in the smoke from my pipe dream visions of Polydoreless days, a faint cry from Silvia brought me back to earth.
“Lucien, look!”
I looked.
My chair came down to all fours and my feet slipped from the rail.
Chapter XVI
Ptolemy’s Tale
Four defiant, determined-looking Polydores came up the steps and bore down upon us. Then Silvia as usual thought she saw land ahead.
“Oh, boys,” she asked hopefully, “did your father send for you to meet him here? And when is he going to take you home?”
“Didn’t I tell you,” I thundered at Ptolemy, “that you were not to leave that house–”
“It left us,” interrupted Emerald with a grin.
“Went up in smoke,” added Pythagoras blithely, “ghost and all.”
“Four minutes quicker,” said Demetrius, “and it would have took father and mother, too.”
“Oh, is it the haunted house they are talking about?” asked Miss Frayne joyfully. “What a story I’ll have!”