In the afternoon, when I was doing a little scale work preparatory to cooking, a messenger from the hotel drove up with a note from Silvia which I read aloud:
"Ptolemy has been missing for twenty-four hours. We are in hopes he has joined you. If not, what shall I do?"
"We"ll go back with you," said Rob to the man. "Just lend a hand here and help us pull up these tent stakes."
"What"s Ptolemy to me or I to him?" I asked with a groan, "can"t we give him absent treatment?"
"You"re positively inhuman, Lucien," protested Rob. "The boy may be at the bottom of the lake."
"Not he! He was born to be hung."
All this time, however, I had been active in making preparations for departure, as I knew that Silvia would feel that we were responsible for Ptolemy"s safety, and her anxiety was reason enough for me to hasten to her.
Rob was quite jubilant on our return trip and declared that the fish came too easily and too plentifully to make it real sport, but I felt that I had another grudge to be charged up to the fateful family.
We found Silvia pale from anxiety, Beth in tears, and Diogenes loudly clamoring for "Tolly." We learned that the afternoon before, Silvia and Beth had gone with the landlady for a ride, leaving Diogenes in Ptolemy"s care, but on their return at dinner time, Diogenes was playing alone in the sandpile.
Nothing was thought of Ptolemy"s absence until bedtime, and they had then sent out searching parties to the woods and the lake sh.o.r.es.
Finally it occurred to Beth that he might have gone to join Rob and me, so they sent the messenger to investigate.
"He must be lost in the woods somewhere," said Beth tearfully, "and he will starve to death."
Rob actually touched her hand in his distress at her grief.
"Ptolemy is too smart to get lost anywhere," I declared. "He knows fully as much about woodcraft as he does about every other kind of craft. He"s one of his mother"s antiquities personified. But haven"t you been able to find anyone who saw him after you went for your ride?"
"No; even the hotel help were all out on the lake."
"And he left Diogenes here, absolutely unguarded?"
"Well!" admitted Silvia, "he tied Diogenes to a tree near the sandpile."
"Then he must have gone away with malice aforethought," I said, "and Diogenes is the only one who knows anything about his last movements."
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 pa.s.sion 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," a.s.serted Silvia, "I think he really misses the boys. The Polydores, for all their sc.r.a.ppings, 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 pa.s.sing.
I called up long distance and after some delay got in communication with our house. Ptolemy himself answered and a.s.sured 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."