"The word does me great honor, Donovan. They chucked me from Yale in my junior year. Why, you may ask? Well, it happened this way: You know Rooney, the Bellefontaine Cyclone? He struck New Haven with a vaudeville outfit, giving boxing exhibitions, poking the bag and that sort of fake. At every town they invited the local sports to dig up their brightest amateur middle-weight and put him against the Cyclone for five rounds. I brushed my hair the wrong way for a disguise and went against him."
"And got smashed for your trouble, I hope," I interrupted.
"No. The boys in the gallery cheered so that they fussed him, and he thought I was fruit. We shook hands, and he turned his head to snarl at the applause, and, seeing an opening, I smashed him a hot clip in the chin, and he tumbled backward and broke the ring rope. I vaulted the orchestra and bolted, and when the boys finally found me I was over near Waterbury under a barn. Eli wouldn"t stand for it, and back I went to the b.u.t.ton factory; and here I am, sir, by the grace of G.o.d, an ignorant man."
He lay blinking as though saddened by his recollections, and I turned away and paced the floor. When I glanced at him again he was still staring soberly at the wall.
"How did you find your way here, Gillespie?" I demanded.
"I suppose I ought to explain that," he replied. I waited while he reflected for a moment. He seemed to be quite serious, and his brows wrinkled as he pondered.
"I guessed it about half; and for the rest, I followed the heaven-kissing stack of trunks."
He glanced at me quickly, as though anxious to see how I received his words.
"Have you seen anything of Henry Holbrook in your travels? Be careful now; I want the truth."
"I certainly have not. I hope you don"t think--" Gillespie hesitated.
"It"s not a matter for thinking or guessing; I"ve got to know."
"On my honor I have not seen him, and I have no idea where he is."
I had thrown myself into a chair beside the couch and lighted my pipe.
My captive troubled me. It seemed odd that he had found the abiding-place of the two women; and if he had succeeded so quickly, why might not Henry Holbrook have equal luck?
"You probably know this troublesome brother well," I ventured.
"Yes; as well as a man of my age can know an older man. My father"s place at Stamford adjoined the Holbrook estate. Henry and Arthur Holbrook married sisters; both women died long ago, I believe; but the brothers had a business row and went to smash. Arthur embezzled, forged, and so on, and took to the alt.i.tudinous timber, and Henry has been busy ever since trying to pluck his sister. He"s wild on the subject of his wrongs--ruined by his own brother, deprived of his inheritance by his sister and abandoned by his only child. There wasn"t much to Arthur Holbrook; Henry was the genius, but after the bank went to the bad he sought the consolations of rum. He and Henry married the Hartridge twins who were the reigning Baltimore belles in the early eighties--so runneth the chronicle. But I gossip, my dear sir; I gossip, which is against my principles. Even the humble b.u.t.ton king of Strawberry Hill must draw the line."
When Ijima brought in a plate of sandwiches he took one gingerly in his swathed hand, regarded it with cool inquiry, and as he munched it, remarked upon sandwiches in general as though they were botanical specimens that were usually discussed and a.n.a.lyzed in a scientific spirit.
"The sandwich," he began, "not unhappily expresses one of the saddest traits of our American life. I need hardly refer to our deplorable national habit of hiding our shame under a blithe and misleading exterior. Now this article, provided by your generous hospitality for a poor prisoner of war, contains a bit of the breast of some fowl, presumably chicken--we will concede that it is chicken--taken from rather too near the bone to be wholly palatable. Chicken sandwiches in some parts of the world are rather coa.r.s.ely marked, for purposes of identification, with pin-feathers. You may covet no n.o.bler fame than that of creator of the Flying Sandwich of Annandale. Yet the feathered sandwich, though more picturesque, points rather too directly to the strutting lords of the barn-yard. A sandwich that is decorated like a fall bonnet, that suggests, we will say, the milliner"s window--or the plumed knights of sounding war--"
With a little sigh, a slow relaxation of muscles, Mr. Gillespie slept.
I locked the doors, put out the lights, and tumbled into my own bed as the chapel clock chimed two.
In the disturbed affairs of the night the blinds had not been drawn, and I woke at six to find the room flooded with light and my prisoner gone. The doors were locked as I had left them. Mr. Gillespie had departed by the window, dropping from a little balcony to the terrace beneath. I rang for Ijima and sent him to the pier; and before I had finished shaving, the boy was back, and reported Gillespie"s boat still at the pier, but one of the canoes missing. It was clear that in the sorry plight of his arms Gillespie had preferred paddling to rowing.
Beneath my watch on the writing-table I found a sheet of note-paper on which was scrawled:
DEAR OLD MAN--I am having one of those nightmares I mentioned in our delightful conversation. I feel that I am about to walk in my sleep.
As my flannels are a trifle bluggy, pardon loss of your dressing-gown.
Yours,
R. G.
P. S.--I am willing to pay for the gla.s.s and medical attendance; but I want a rebate for that third sandwich. It really tickled too harshly as it went down. Very likely this accounts for my somnambulism.
G.
When I had dressed and had my coffee I locked my old portfolio and tossed it into the bottom of my trunk. Something told me that for a while, at least, I should have other occupation than contributing to the literature of Russian geography.
CHAPTER IV
I EXPLORE TIPPECANOE CREEK
The woodland silence, one time stirred By the soft pathos of some pa.s.sing bird, Is not the same it was before.
The spot where once, unseen, a flower Has held its fragile chalice to the shower, Is different for evermore.
Unheard, unseen A spell has been!
--_Thomas Bailey Aldrich_.
My first care was to find the gardener of St. Agatha"s and renew his pledge of silence of the night before; and then I sought the ladies, to make sure that they had not been disturbed by my collision with Gillespie. Miss Pat and Helen were in Sister Theresa"s pretty sitting-room, through whose windows the morning wind blew fresh and cool. Miss Pat was sewing--her dear hands, I found, were always busy--while Helen read to her.
"This is a day for the open! You must certainly venture forth!" I began cheerily. "You see, Father Stoddard chose well; this is the most peaceful place on the map. Let us begin with a drive at six, when the sun is low; or maybe you would prefer a little run in the launch."
They exchanged glances.
"I think it would be all right, Aunt Pat," said Helen.
"Perhaps we should wait another day. We must take no chances; the relief of being free is too blessed to throw away. I really slept through the night--I can"t tell you what a boon that is!"
"Why, Sister Margaret had to call us both at eight!" exclaimed Helen.
"That is almost too wonderful for belief." She sat in a low, deep, wicker chair, with her arms folded upon her book. She wore a short blue skirt and white waist, with a red scarf knotted at her throat and a ribbon of like color in her hair.
"Oh, the nights here are tranquillity itself! Now, as to the drive--"
"Let us wait another day, Mr. Donovan. I feel that we must make a.s.surance doubly sure," said Miss Pat; and this, of course, was final.
It was clear that the capture of Gillespie had not disturbed the slumber of St. Agatha"s. My conscience p.r.i.c.ked me a trifle at leaving them so ignorantly contented; but Gillespie"s appearance was hardly a menace, and though I had pledged myself to warn Helen Holbrook at the first sign of trouble, I determined to deal with him on my own account.
He was only an infatuated fool, and I was capable, I hoped, of disposing of his case without taking any one into my confidence. But first it was my urgent business to find him.
I got out the launch and crossed the lake to the summer colony and began my search by asking for Gillespie at the casino, but found that his name was unknown. I lounged about until lunch-time, visited the golf course that lay on a bit of upland beyond the cottages and watched the players until satisfied that Gillespie was not among them, then I went home for luncheon.
A man with bandaged arms, and clad in a dressing-gown, can not go far without attracting attention; and I was not in the least discouraged by my fruitless search. I have spent a considerable part of my life in the engaging occupation of looking for men who were hard to find, and as I smoked my cigar on the shady terrace and waited for Ijima to replenish the launch"s tank, I felt confident that before night I should have an understanding with Gillespie if he were still in the neighborhood of Annandale.
The midday was warm, but I cooled my eyes on the deep shadows of the wood, through which at intervals I saw white sails flash on the lake.
All bird-song was hushed, but a woodp.e.c.k.e.r on a dead sycamore hammered away for dear life. The bobbing of his red head must have exercised some hypnotic spell, for I slept a few minutes, and dreamed that the woodp.e.c.k.e.r had bored a hole in my forehead. When I roused it was with a start that sent my pipe clattering to the stone terrace floor. A man who has ever camped or hunted or been hunted--and I have known all three experiences--always scrutinizes the horizons when he wakes, and I found myself staring into the wood. As my eyes sought remembered landmarks here and there, I saw a man dressed as a common sailor skulking toward the boat-house several hundred yards away. He was evidently following the school wall to escape observation, and I rose and stepped closer to the bal.u.s.trade to watch his movements. In a moment he came out into a little open s.p.a.ce wherein stood a stone tower where water was stored for the house, and he paused here and gazed about him curiously. I picked up a field-gla.s.s from a little table near by and caught sight of a swarthy foreign face under a soft felt hat. He pa.s.sed the tower and walked on toward the lake, and I dropped over the bal.u.s.trade and followed him.
The j.a.panese boy was still at work on the launch, and, hearing a step on the pier planking, he glanced up, then rose and asked the stranger his business.
The man shook his head.
"If you have business it must be at the house; the road is in the other direction," and Ijima pointed to the wood, but the stranger remained stubbornly on the edge of the pier. I now stepped out of the wood and walked down to the pier.