We had coffee on the veranda (Alice thought it would be nicer there), and as Antoine gave me my cup he edged close to my chair to whisper:
"That party, sir. If he should come----"
"Tell the troops not to attack any visitors," I said, loud enough for the others to hear. "Mr. Torrence will be here shortly, and it would be annoying to have him ushered in on a shutter. We must establish a rule that callers are not to be fired upon at the gate."
"I know why this is the land of the free and the home of the brave,"
laughed Alice. "One has to be brave to live here."
Antoine departed with a resentful twist of the shoulders, and I decided to meet squarely the matter of the visitors who had so troubled him.
"Please don"t be frightened," I said as lightly as possible, "but these old fellows haven"t enough to do, and they are full of apprehensions.
With n.o.body here to keep them busy it"s remarkable they haven"t found a ghost."
"If they only would!" murmured Mrs. Farnsworth.
"No such luck! They have been alarmed by an agent of some sort who wants to welcome you to America by selling you a piano on easy payments."
Antoine had been hovering inside, and my remark brought him to the door.
"Beg pardon, Mr. Singleton, but that party is not an agent, but quite different, sir. He came to the house, quite like a gentleman, several times, and asked if Mrs. Bashford had arrived. He came in a big car, and seemed disappointed, madame, that you were not here and not expected.
The second time he said he was just pa.s.sing on his way to the city and thought he would stop again. A very well-spoken gentleman, and we"d have thought nothing of it except that a few days later I caught a man I was sure was the same party, but dressed in rough clothes, sneaking across the veranda right there where you"re sitting. When I called to him he ran as hard as he could, and Graves--he"s the vegetable-gardener--saw him leaving the property by the back way."
"It"s hardly possible that a man who impressed you as a gentleman when you saw him at the door should have returned in disguise and tried to break into the house. The two things don"t hang together, Antoine."
"Oh," exclaimed Mrs. Farnsworth, "it would be so much more delightful if that were true! Any one in disguise is bound to be interesting. A disguise suggests most beautiful possibilities. And to be sought, asked for by a stranger!"
I could not be sure in the dim light of the veranda, but I thought I detected a white slipper cautiously reach out and touch a black one. At any rate, Mrs. Farnsworth lapsed into silence.
"Thank you very much, Antoine," said Alice. "It is very proper for you to tell me anything of any stranger on the property, but I see nothing here to be alarmed about. If the same gentleman calls again, let me know instantly."
"Very good, madame." And then, turning as though conferring upon me a part of his responsibility for the security of the premises: "It"s a party with a limp; just a trifling limp, sir; you"d hardly notice it. It was worse the last time as he ran away. A smallish man, rather dark, with a little mustache turned up at the ends."
"I have noted all these details, Antoine," I replied; and again I thought there was a telegraphic exchange between the ladies, though this time a black slipper was the means of communication.
Torrence arrived in a moment, and nothing has ever given me keener joy than his shock of surprise at beholding Mrs. Bashford. As I introduced the ladies he was so overcome that he greeted Mrs. Farnsworth as Mrs.
Bashford--a not unnatural mistake--and there was an embarra.s.sing moment as I set him right. Having done this, I seated myself beside Mrs.
Farnsworth that Torrence might be free to talk business with my aunt. I was devoutly grateful that he had not been present at the dinner-table, for my own efforts to interest Torrence in anything but the most practical matters had always been highly unsuccessful, and the discussion of ghosts and witches would hardly have amused him. As Mrs.
Farnsworth and I took up the recent movements on the western front I overheard Torrence putting all the machinery of the trust company at Mrs. Bashford"s disposal. It seemed almost a blasphemy to be talking of income and like matters to a woman like Alice Bashford!
They continued their conference for some time, but I got nothing out of Mrs. Farnsworth that shed any light on my aunt"s history beyond what she had told me herself, which was precious little. Mrs. Farnsworth"s talk was that of a cultivated woman. Her voice interested me unaccountably; the tones had all manner of shadings and inflections; it was curiously musical, but in speaking of the great war a pa.s.sionate note crept into it that stirred me deeply.
"This has been a dark year for Alice," she remarked. "Mr. Bashford"s death, followed quickly by that of her brother--an only son--piled a cruel burden of grief upon the dear child. She wants to go back to England to nurse the wounded, to do anything for our dear country, but I want to keep her here a little while until she can readjust herself. You must not think, Mr. Singleton, that she has no feeling; you have no idea of the depths of that child"s nature; they are unfathomable! It is my task to encourage her in frivolity and the make-believe she loves--hence our absurdities at the table. She"s the drollest child, but with wonderful understanding. And at times it"s not easy to keep the divine spark of play alive in her heart."
The light of one of the porch lamps fell upon Alice"s face as she patiently gave heed to Torrence"s account of his stewardship. One of her hands gently stroked the terrier that lay quietly in a chair beside her.
I was sure that his painstaking description of a.s.sets and market values was boring her. Once her voice rose in expostulation. Torrence, I judged, was suggesting that legal means could be found to expel the old Tyringham employees from the Barton property.
"Oh, never in the world! It was quite like Mr. Bashford to want to care for these people in their old age. And"--she laughed and turned toward me--"they can"t be dislodged while Bob lives; and we don"t want to part with him just yet."
I was glad to have him hear her address me in this intimate fashion.
Torry always inspired in me a desire to shock him. He was trying to a.s.sure Alice that his only concern was to make her comfortable; he wished to save her from every annoyance and that sort of thing.
"I shall help Alice to break them in, Torry," I said, lingering upon her name for his special edification.
"Of course, Singleton," he replied. "I wasn"t sure you meant to stay on.
Pardon me, but I didn"t----"
"Oh, it isn"t that Bob hasn"t a right to stay," said Alice quickly; "Mrs. Farnsworth and I are hoping that he will like us well enough to share our exile on other accounts. We are so unfamiliar with everything American that it would be most unkind for him to desert us."
"I am engaging Mr. Singleton to explain American jokes to me," announced Mrs. Farnsworth. "Alice seems to get them, but I"m never sure."
It is a part of Torrence"s business to counsel widows, which he does like the honorable man he is, but as he rose to go presently, remarking that his wife would motor down to call shortly, I caught a glimpse of his face that indicated deep perplexity. I wanted to warn him that Alice Bashford was not an ordinary widow, who vexes officers of trust companies with foolish questions and is p.r.o.ne to overdraw her account, so I left when he did.
"I want to talk to you," he said nervously when we were outside. "I"ll send the car ahead to the gate."
When the shrubbery cut us off from the house he stopped abruptly and seized my arm. "What do you make of it?" he demanded.
"Make of what?" I asked.
"That girl!" he exclaimed testily.
"If you insist, I must avow that she"s adorable, nothing else."
"Don"t be a fool! You knew Raymond Bashford much better than I did, and you know perfectly well he never married a young girl of that sort!
Those women are playing a trick, and I"m surprised that you don"t see through it."
"My uncle was a man of taste and a gentleman," I answered deliberately.
"There"s nothing in the least improbable in his being infatuated with a young woman of charm and wit like this girl. And it is hardly profitable or decent to speculate as to her interest in him. You mustn"t forget that Uncle Bash was an unusual man, a man with whom a young girl might easily fall in love without reference to his age or money or anything else."
"I tell you it won"t do," he insisted. "If either of those women at the house is Raymond Bashford"s widow, it"s the one who calls herself Farnsworth."
"You did your best to convict them of fraud the first jump out of the box," I said, laughing at the recollection of his confusion when I introduced him.
"My mistake was a natural one," he said defensively. "They"re playing a game of some kind and it"s no laughing matter, but it won"t take long to find out what they"re up to."
"You"ll hardly go the length of having them arrested as imposters, Torrence--not without some data to work on!"
"Certainly not. You seem to be hitting it off with both of them, but I advise you to be on guard. Are you sure your uncle never sent you his wife"s photograph? That would have been a perfectly natural thing to do."
"If I"d got a photograph, I should have headed for j.a.pan, not for France." I laughed, but I was thinking deeply. His line of reasoning as to the incongruity of the marriage was not so different from my own that I could sneer at his suspicions. Very convincingly, as became a practical-minded man, he expanded his views as to the unlikelihood of my uncle"s marrying a girl but little beyond school age. I shrank from telling him that I didn"t care a hang whether the widow was a fraud or not. If the two women who had settled themselves on the Barton estate were imposters, they were extraordinarily daring and clever. My att.i.tude toward them was wholly defensive. If women of their quality were perpetrating a fraud, I was for giving them every chance, and I had no intention of allowing Torrence to spoil the unfolding of the conspiracy.
We were nearing a gateway where his car waited, and I saw several of the guard hanging about at a discreet distance. "Look here, Singleton," he said angrily, "you don"t seem to take this business very seriously. You don"t want to make the mistake of letting a pretty girl pull the wool over your eyes. If we"re not careful, we"re all of us likely to get into trouble." He lowered his voice and added tensely: "Those women are under suspicion of something more serious than an attempt to rob an estate.
An agent of the American State Department called on me yesterday and asked embarra.s.sing questions about Mrs. Bashford. Not a Secret Service man, you understand, or anything of that kind, but an important man in the State Department."
"Of course you knew nothing to tell," I suggested as he beat the walk impatiently with his stick.
"I took a chance at lying to him about her expected arrival. I thought it only decent to have a look at the woman first. He told me nothing except that the British Emba.s.sy had made inquiries and that the matter was delicate and must be handled carefully."
"Was this inquirer lame--a small dark man with a black mustache?" I asked, suddenly interested. "Such a person has been hanging about here, so the boys tell me?"