He returned the pocketbook to his inside pocket and the flashlight to an outside one, turned up his coat collar, pulled the brown derby down as tightly upon his brow as he could, picked up the heavy suitcase and started forth to tramp the mile which separated his tired self from food and rest--especially rest.
The first hundred yards of that mile cut him off entirely from the world. It was dark now, pitch dark, and the fog was so thick as to be almost a rain. His coat and hat and suitcase dripped with it. The drops ran down his nose. He felt as if there were almost as much water in the air as there was beneath him on the ground--not quite as much, for his feet were wetter than his body, but enough.
And it was so still. No sound of voices, no dogs barking, no murmur of the wind in trees. There did not seem to be any trees. Occasionally he swept a circle of his immediate surroundings with the little flashlight, but all its feeble radiance showed was fog and puddles and wet weeds and ruts and gra.s.s--and more fog.
Still! Oh, yes, deadly still for a long minute"s interval, and then out of the nowhere ahead, with a suddenness which each time caused his weakened nerves to vibrate like fiddle strings, would burst the bellow of the great foghorn.
Silence, the splash and "sugg" of Galusha"s sodden shoes moving up and down, up and down--and then:
"OW--ooo--ooo---ooo--OOO!!"
Once a minute the foghorn blew and once a minute Galusha Bangs jumped as if he were hearing it for the first time.
The signboard had said "1 MILE." One hundred miles, one thousand miles; that was what it should have said to be truthful. Galusha plodded on and on, stopping to put down the suitcase, then lifting it and pounding on again. He had had no luncheon; he had had no dinner. He was weak from illness. He was wet and chilled. And--yes, it was beginning to rain.
He put down the suitcase once more.
"Oh, my soul!" he exclaimed, and not far away, close at hand, the word "soul" was repeated.
"Oh, dear!" cried Galusha, startled.
"Dear!" repeated the echo, for it was an echo.
Galusha, brandishing the tiny flashlight, moved toward the sound.
Something bulky, huge, loomed in the blackness, a building. The flashlight"s circle, growing dimmer now for the battery was almost exhausted, disclosed steps and a broad piazza. Mr. Bangs climbed the steps, crossed the piazza, the boards of which creaked beneath him.
There were doors, but they were shut tight; there were windows, but they were shuttered. Down the length of the long piazza tramped Galusha, his heart sinking. Every window was shuttered, every door was boarded up.
Evidently this place, whatever it was, was closed. It was uninhabited.
He came back to the front door again. Over it was a sign, he had not looked as high before. Now he raised the dimming flashlight and read:
"THE RESTABIT INN. Open June 15 to September 15."
September 15!!! Why, September was past and gone. This was the 3rd of October. The Restabit Inn was closed for the season.
Slowly, Galusha, tugging the suitcase, stumbled to the edge of the piazza. There he collapsed, rather than sat down, upon the upper step. Above him, upon the piazza roof, the rain descended heavily. The flashlight dimmed and went out altogether.
"OW--ooo---ooo--ooo--OOO!!" whooped the foghorn.
Later, just how much later he never knew exactly, Mr. Bangs awoke from his faint or collapse or doze, whichever it may have been, to hear some one calling his name.
"Loosh! Loosh! Loosh!"
This was odd, very odd. "Loosh" was what he had been called at college.
That is, some of the fellows had called him that, those he liked best.
The others had even more offensive nicknames. He disliked "Loosh" very much, but he answered to it--then.
"Loosh! Loosh! Loosh, where are you?"
Queer that any one should be calling him "Loosh"--any one down here in... Eh? Where was he? He couldn"t remember much except that he was very tired--except--
"Loosh! Looshy! Come Looshy!"
He staggered to his feet and, leaving the suitcase where it was, stumbled away in the direction of the voice. The rain, pouring down upon him, served to bring him back a little nearer to reality. Wasn"t that a light over there, that bright yellow spot in the fog?
It was a light, a lighted doorway, with a human figure standing in it.
The figure of a woman, a woman in a dark dress and a white ap.r.o.n. It must be she who was calling him. Yes, she was calling him again.
"Loosh! Loosh! Looshy! Oh, my sakes alive! Why don"t you come?"
Mr. Bangs b.u.mped into something. It was a gate in a picket fence and the gate swung open. He staggered up the path on the other side of that gate, the path which led to the doorway where the woman was standing.
"Yes, madam," said Galusha, politely but shakily lifting the brown derby, "here I am."
The woman started violently, but she did not run nor scream.
"My heavens and earth!" she exclaimed. Then, peering forward, she stared at the dripping apparition which had appeared to her from the fog and rain.
"Here I am, madam," repeated Mr. Bangs.
The woman nodded. She was middle-aged, with a pleasant face and a figure of the sort which used to be called "comfortable." Her manner of looking and speaking were quick and businesslike.
"Yes," she said, promptly, "I can see you are there, so you needn"t tell me again. WHY are you there and who are you?"
Galusha"s head was spinning dizzily, but he tried to make matters clear.
"My name is--is--Dear me, how extraordinary! I seem to have forgotten it. Oh, yes, it is Bangs--that is it, Bangs. I heard you calling me, so--"
"Heard ME calling YOU?"
"Yes. I--I came down to the hotel--the rest--Rest--that hotel over there. It was closed. I sat down upon the porch, for I have been ill recently and I--ah--tire easily. So, as I say--"
The woman interrupted him. She had been looking keenly at his face as he spoke.
"Come in. Come into the house," she commanded, briskly.
Mr. Bangs took a step toward her. Then he hesitated.
"I--I am very wet, I"m afraid," he said. "Really, I am not sure that--"
"Rubbish! It"s because you are wet--wet as a drowned rat--that I"m askin" you to come in. Come now--quick."
Her tone was not unkind, but it was arbitrary.
Galusha made no further protest. She held the door open and he preceded her into a room, then into another, this last evidently a sitting room.
He was to know it well later; just now he was conscious of little except that it was a room--and light--and warm--and dry.
"Sit down!" ordered his hostess.