What more do you want? Now what have you all got to say? You"re so smart!"
No one had anything to say, not even Detective Ferrett. All he could do was whistle perplexedly. The overworked, thin, trembling arm of poor Mrs. Haskell had reached out and dealt him a knockout blow, under the exclusive auspices of Pee-wee Harris, mascot of the raving Ravens, scout of the first cla.s.s, master of good turns, defender and exponent of good scout law Number Two, First Bridgeboro, New Jersey, Troop, Boy Scouts of America!
[Footnote 3: Specifications he probably meant.]
CHAPTER x.x.xIII
THE MYSTERY
It was many days before all the bits of this strange puzzle were put together and the full truth revealed. As the condition of the invalid improved his memory returned to him. This wonderful effect of the operation on his skull was noticeable first in the recollection of trifles and disconnected events in his life. Usually he got these confused at first but each item in the marvelous catalogue of the brain was finally put in its right place.
His piecing together the events of his life was like the gathering up of the broken pieces of a bowl and the successful reconstruction of it by patiently fitting in the fragments here and there. It was a marvel and a delight to the scouts who visited him constantly, to watch him searching for things in the darkness, as one might say, and bringing them home to patch together the broken picture of his past.
But how came that injury, discovered by the merest chance, which had wrapped his early life in a blackness like the blackness of night?
Haskell never told of this connectedly, for he could neither speak of it or think of it without becoming greatly agitated. And that tragic occurrence was never made known to his aged mother.
But these were the facts which were gradually brought into the light.
Joe Haskell and his brother had been twins. Long before their father died Bob Haskell had done much to bring shame and worry to the veteran who had fought in the confederate cause, and whose end was hastened by his dishonest, worthless son.
Hicksville proved too small for this enterprising scamp who, after rifling the cash drawer in the railroad station, withdrew from these scenes of limited opportunity to spread his wings in the great metropolis of New York.
Joe and his mother never heard of him again. The stunted affections and criminal tendencies of the one son seemed compensated for in the other, who remained the dutiful and loving companion and support of his mother until the great war called him. He received his training at a southern camp and was later transferred to Camp Merritt, which was an embarkation camp. Had it not been for a certain occurrence he would have sailed with the swarms of boys who went across in the spring and summer of 1918. But he never went to France.
On a pleasant Sunday morning in April of that year, Joe Blythe started for Woodcliff to dine at the home of a family he did not know--the home and family of Miss Bates. As we know, he never reached that hospitable roof. We do know, however, that in an isolated shack in the woods not far from camp were found his wallet containing his leave of absence, an unmailed letter to his mother, and Miss Bates" card.
How came he to that shack? It was in a bypath sometimes followed by soldiers, he said. He said he paused there to get out of a shower. This statement was at least partly verified by the authorities who secured reports that it did rain on that day.
Joe Blythe said that in that shack he met his brother, shabby, desperate. Did the brother know that Joe was a soldier in the camp? Very likely. Was he lying in wait for him in that secluded spot? That also seems probable. That his brother attacked him, hitting him with an old sash-weight, is certain. Who shall say what actually transpired between these brothers in that lonely spot?
But the proven facts of Bob Haskell"s career are these. He escaped from Canada after committing burglary and a brutal murder. He tried at one American recruiting station after another to find safety in military service, and was rejected as unfit wherever he applied.
Neither Joe nor anyone else knows what was in the mind of this defective, desperate, frantic wretch when he sought the neighborhood of Camp Merritt. No one knows whether the horrible plan which he executed had been previously conceived.
But this is certain, that he struck his brother on the head and laid him low and took from him not only his uniform but his memory as well. One thing he did not take, because he did not want it, and that was a little trinket containing their mother"s picture which Joe had always worn.
We may picture Joe Haskell lying in that dank, musty shack, bleeding, unconscious, for hours. How long he lay there no man shall say. We may picture him wandering forth, in an ill-fitting suit of civilian clothes, demented, broken, dazed. Of his wanderings, likewise, who shall tell the full truth? He visited a place called Blytheville and took the name of Blythe. He visited great cities, so he said. He was in the west. He was in jail for vagrancy. He watched some cows for a farmer. He remembered nothing of his past. He was sheltered by the Salvation Army somewhere.
He was a wanderer over the country.
And so in time he wandered to New York. There he fell in with men who were interested in demolishing the old camp. Probably they had no faith in him. They did not reckon that he would fall in with a troop of scouts who, in the good cause of pitying friendship, would make the old shacks of the deserted reservation echo to the sound of their saws and hammers, and the music of their merry laughter.
And the brother?
April in the terrible year of 1918 was the month of all months when troops were sent abroad by the thousands, half equipped, untrained, as fast as the speeding transports could carry them. It was a time of weakening hope, of misgivings, of confusion and frantic hurry. Men, men, men, whether they were soldiers or not, so only that they were men! Few know of the frenzied haste in the embarkation camp those days. Few will ever realize how near the war came to being lost.
For Bob Haskell there was no returning consciousness and only the silent records of the War Department could speak for him, reporting his supreme sacrifice under a name but a part of which was his own. That he lived in camp as his brother for at least a few hours in that time of unquestioning rush and inevitable disorder seems probable enough. That he fell in the fighting, under the name of Joseph Haskell, we know.
So at least the uniform which he stole was not dishonored. And since he paid for his crime with his own life, and in the way that he preferred, may we not follow his brother"s good example and let his checkered memory rest in peace? Joe never told his mother more than this, that it must have been his brother who was killed in France. She never knew who struck him down.
Another episode is not so easily explained, for it is bound up with Joe Haskell"s mental condition while he was with the scouts. That is the episode of the windmill. About that he seemed to remember but little. No doubt the calling of the voice which he thought was his mother"s was a pure hallucination. It was like a little flash of light in his darkness.
Yet it might have been that the peculiar sounds aroused certain memories.
One very strange fact, however, is certain, and that is that he did find the trinket with his mother"s picture on that lonely, wind-swept tower.
The voice which had called him had not mocked and deceived him. How came that little trinket there?
The only answer that we have to this question is the theory of Pee-wee Harris, wearer of the stalking badge, and, as his very nickname shows, the friend of birds. He claimed that a wren, or one of the mischievous, pilfering birds of that group had carried the locket to its nest in the old windmill. It is true that certain birds carry such glittering trifles to their nests and it is well known that wrens forage in old buildings and often build in windmills. There were a few wisps of straw to give color to Pee-wee"s ingenious theory.
But when it comes to building, Pee-wee himself is a master builder of castles in the air.
And there you are.
CHAPTER x.x.xIV
SEEIN" THINGS
On a certain fair day in the autumn Joshua Hicks stood in the doorway of the Hicksville post office and contemplated the chickens which were congregated on the store platform waiting for the mail. He looked as if he had been standing there uninterruptedly since we last saw him. His octagon-shaped spectacles were exactly half way down his nose, and his nose was just as long as it was on the day we made his acquaintance--if anything, a little longer. He was waiting for the big daily event in Hicksville, the arrival of the train.
But a bigger event than that was to arouse Hicksville. When the train arrived a solitary figure got out, a young man with a suitcase, who waved his hand familiarly to Joshua and called, "h.e.l.lo, Josh," as he strode away up the road.
For a minute Josh could only stare and say, "By gum." Then he took off his spectacles and wiped them as if they were responsible for the strange thing he had seen. But this, when he replaced them, only made the hurrying figure stand out clearer to his vision.
"Marthy," said he, re-entering the post office and addressing his daughter, "I jes" seed a ghost; as sure as I"m standin" here, Marthy, I seed the ghost of Joey Haskell. It got off the train jes" as sure as I"m standin" here, Marthy, and called out ter me and went up the road. I seed it plain."
"Same as you seed the goblins in Hiram Berry"s cornfield before prohibition," said Marthy, who was not to be startled out of her rustic calm by any of her father"s visions. And she continued sorting the mail which consisted of a newspaper and two letters.
"If folks is dead and yer see "em, it"s sperits, ain"t it?" Joshua demanded.
"If folks is dead they don"t come to Hicksville, I reckon," said the girl.
One might suppose that Hicksville would be just the very place folks would go to, if they were dead. Be that as it may the young man was no ghost. He was just a little pale, and he looked as if he might have known much suffering, but he was no ghost.
Up the little lane he went where goldenrod was blooming and where some of the birds that had beaten him on the journey southward were flitting and chirping in the trees. A little brook that bordered the narrow, fragrant way seemed hurrying along at his side, laughing in its pebbly bed, as if to give him a welcome home. Straight ahead he went till he came to the little white house. In the tiny front window hung a small faded square of cloth which might once have been red, and in the center of this was a crude homemade star of gold, but all the pristine brightness had gone from it.
The young man opened the door, laid down his suitcase, stepped into the little sitting room, and taking down the tattered, faded symbol called out, "What"s this doing here? If that isn"t like Hicksville! The war over two years and--"
Just then the astonished and frightened face of a little, wizened old lady appeared in the kitchen doorway.
"_Mother!_"
Then in another moment he was helping the trembling form to a chair and laughing and stroking the gray hair and putting his arm around that thin, wrinkled neck.
It was almost too much for her. She looked at him with a kind of terror in her poor old eyes, as if she thought he was not real, and she clung to him as if she were drowning.