X
AFTER the departure of the ladies, Tucker and Crane stood an instant in silence on the piazza. Solon, who had been waked from his customary afternoon nap by the frantic summons of Mrs. Falkener, was still a little confused as to all that had happened, and had gathered nothing clearly except that Burton was in some way very much to be blamed.
"It"s too bad," he observed, "to have them go off like that. We shall miss them, I fear."
Crane was standing with his hands in his pockets, watching the tail-light as it disappeared down the drive.
"Let us avoid that, Tuck, by going away ourselves."
"You mean to leave here?"
"Why not? The experiment has not struck me as a very happy one. Our servants have gone, our guests have left us, and for my part, I am eager to be off as well."
The time had come, then, when Jane-Ellen was to be friendless and out of a job; the third act was here.
"Anything that suits you pleases me, Burton," said Tucker.
"In that case," answered Crane, "I will telephone Reed to come over at once and make arrangements for giving up the house. We can"t, I suppose, catch that night train, but with luck we may get away to-morrow morning."
"You seem in a great hurry."
"I"d like never to see the place again," returned Burton.
In the moment of silence that followed this heartfelt exclamation, a figure came briskly around the corner of the piazza, a figure discernible in the light shed by the front door.
"Oh, come here," said Crane.
The figure betrayed no sign of having heard, unless a slight accentuation in its limp might be so interpreted.
"What"s your name?" shouted Burton.
The old man looked up.
"Yes, yes," he said, in a high shaking voice, "I"m lame; you"re right there, sir. I"ve been lame these twenty years, and carrying down all them trunks has put sich a crick in my back as never was."
"I asked you your name," repeated his employer.
"When I came? Why, this afternoon, sir. It was your butler engaged me. I worked at the hotel here once, and Mr. Smithfield he come to my wife and says, "Susan," he says, he knowing her since he was a little boy--"
"Let me look at you," said Crane sternly.
But the elderly man, still talking to himself, retreated into the shadow.
And then Tucker was surprised to hear his host exclaim with violence:
"By Jove, the young devil," and to see him hurl himself off the piazza at its highest point. He would have landed actually on top of his decrepit servitor, had not the old man developed an activity utterly unsuspected by Tucker, which enabled him to get away down the avenue with a speed that Crane could not surpa.s.s.
"Well, well, what are we coming to?" Tucker murmured as he watched them dodge and double around trees and bushes. Presently they pa.s.sed out of the light from the house, and only the sound of their feet beating on the hard avenue indicated that the fugitive had taken to the open.
Solon was still peering nervously into the dark when at last his host returned. Crane was breathing hard, and held in his hand a small furry object that Tucker made out gradually to be a neat gray wig.
"Oh," said Burton, still panting and slapping his side, "I haven"t run so hard since I was in college. But I should have got him if it hadn"t been for his superior knowledge of the ground."
"My dear Burton," said Tucker crossly, "what in the world have you been doing?"
"What have I been doing? I"ve been trying to catch that wretched boy, Brindlebury, but it"s as well I didn"t, I dare say. I thought his limp a little spectacular this afternoon when the trunks were being carried down. But his deafness--the young fool!--that deafness, never found anywhere but on the comic stage, was too much for me. He runs fast, I"ll say that for him. He led me through a bramble hedge; backed through, himself. That"s when I got his wig."
"I should not be surprised if we all were murdered in our beds," said Tucker.
"That"s right, Tuck," said Crane, "look on the cheerful side. Come with me now, while I speak to Smithfield. I want to know what he has to say for himself."
Smithfield, looking particularly elegant in his shirt sleeves, a costume which shows off a slim figure to great advantage, was rather languidly setting the dinner-table for two; that is to say, he was rubbing a wine-gla.s.s, shaped like a miniature New England elm-tree, to remove the faint imprint of his own fingers.
"Smithfield," said Crane briskly, "I"m afraid your new useful man isn"t going to be very useful. He seems to me too old."
Smithfield placed the gla.s.s deliberately upon the table.
"He"s not so old as he appears, sir," he answered. "Only sixty-six his next birthday."
"A married man?"
"No, sir, a widower of many years. His wife died when her first baby was born--that"s Mr. Crosslett-Billington"s present chauffeur. That"s how I happened to get the old fellow. And when the rheumatism--"
"Smithfield," said Crane, "that"s about enough. Put down that gla.s.s, put on your coat and hat, and get out. You"re lying to me, and you"ve been lying to me from the beginning. Don"t stay to pack your things; you can settle all that with Mr. Reed to-morrow. Get out of my house, and don"t let me see you again. And," he added, throwing the gray wig into his hands, "there"s a souvenir for you."
Smithfield, without the least change of expression, caught the wig, bowed, and withdrew.
"And now, Tuck," Crane added, turning to his lawyer, "I wish you would go and telephone Reed to come here at once and clear this whole thing up. Tell him I"ll send the motor for him as soon as it comes back."
"It"s dinner-time now," observed Tucker.
"Ask him to dinner then," said Crane. "I must go and see that Smithfield really gets out of this house."
[Ill.u.s.tration: _Scene from the Play_ THE DINNER. OLIVIA, LEFFERTS, TUCKER, WEEKS AND CRANE. _Act III_]
Both tasks had been accomplished when at about eight o"clock Tucker and Crane again met in the hall. Smithfield had been actually seen off the place, Tucker had telephoned Reed and despatched the motor for him, and now the sound of an approaching car was heard.
"That can"t be Reed, yet," said Tucker, "there hasn"t been time."
Crane shook his head.
"It isn"t the sound of my engine, either," he answered.
Headlights came sweeping up the drive, and a few minutes later, Lefferts, in full evening dress, entered the house.
"I"m afraid I"m a little bit late," he said, "but I missed a turn."