The Blue Lights.
by Arnold Fredericks.
CHAPTER I
The big, mud-spattered touring car, which for the past hour had been plowing its way steadily northward from the city of Washington, hesitated for a moment before the gateway which marked the end of the well kept drive, then swept on to the house.
A man, stoutly built, keen of eye, showing haste in his every movement, sprang from the machine and ascended the veranda steps.
"Does Richard Duvall live here?" he inquired, curtly, of the smiling old colored woman who came to the door.
""Deed he do, suh. Does you want to see him?"
"Yes. At once, please. Tell him it is most important. My name is Hodgman."
The servant eyed him with cool disfavor. "Set down, suh," she remarked stiffly. "I"ll tell him you is here."
The caller watched her, as she disappeared into the house, then cast himself impatiently into a chair and lit a cigar.
He paid no attention to the attempts of two clumsy collie puppies to attract his favorable notice, but contented himself with making a quick survey of the wide comfortable veranda, with its big roomy chairs, the wicker table, bearing a great jar of red peonies, the smooth green lawns, swept by the late afternoon sun.
"Fine old place," he muttered to himself. "Wonder if I can persuade him to go?"
As the car which had brought Mr. Hodgman on his hasty trip from Washington dashed up to the front of the house, Grace Duvall, looking very charming in a blue linen dress, was just approaching it from the rear.
She held a pair of shears in her hand, and her ap.r.o.n was filled to overflowing with hundred-leaf roses. "d.i.c.k--oh, d.i.c.k!" she called, as she came down the long avenue of syringas and lilacs which led to the house. "The sweet peas are nearly ready to bloom."
Richard Duvall, looking as simply pastoral as though he had never tracked an international crook to cover, raised his head from the flower bed, in which he had been carefully setting out circle after circle of geranium plants.
"Are they?" he laughed. "That"s good. Now all we need is a few good hot days." He gathered up his trowel and rake, and started toward the barn.
Grace put her arm through her husband"s and together they strolled across the springy green turf, their faces smiling and happy. The honeymoon showed no signs of waning.
This lovely old country place, in southern Maryland, had been one of Richard Duvall"s dreams for many years, and after his marriage to Grace Ellicott, in Paris, it had become hers, as well. It was but a short time after their return to America that they decided to make it a reality.
Grace had encouraged her husband in the plan of giving up, for a time at least, his warfare against crime, his pursuit of criminals of the higher and more dangerous type, and had persuaded him to buy the farm which had once belonged to his mother"s people, and settle down to the life of a country gentleman.
His office was still maintained, under the able direction of one of his a.s.sistants, but Duvall gave little or no attention to its affairs. He was glad to withdraw, for the first time in over nine years, from active work, and devote his energies to early potatoes, prize dogs, hunters, and geranium plants--and, above all, to the peaceful enjoyment of his honeymoon, and the making of Grace the happiest woman in the world.
She, on her part, found in their present situation all the joys of existence for which she had longed. With little or no liking for the monotonous round of society and its duties, and a pa.s.sionate love of nature, she found in the many and complex duties of managing her part of their extensive estate a far greater happiness than any which city life could have offered her.
The considerable fortune which her husband"s clever work while in Paris had restored to her, had been safely invested in well paying securities, and she found her greatest joy in utilizing at least a part of her income in beautifying their new home.
Richard had steadily refused to make any use of the money. It was a matter of pride with him, that his own savings had enabled him to purchase the property; but when Grace proposed to build an addition to the house, to provide him with a more comfortable library and work room, or insisted upon having the roads throughout the place elaborately macadamized, he was obliged to submit to her wishes. In this way, they planned and built for the future, together.
The farm was a large one, comprising some two hundred acres, and the old stone house surrounded by white oaks and tulip poplars had once been a show place, before the declining fortunes of its former owners had caused it to fall into a state of mellow and time-honored decay. Now all was changed. Grace, with the able a.s.sistance of old Uncle Abe Turner, a relic of ante bellum times, spent hours daily in bringing order out of the chaos of tangled myrtle and ivy, overgrown box and hedge, thickets of syringa and lilac bushes and weed-grown lawns.
It was a gigantic task, yet a joyous one--as it ever is, to those who came to it with the love of nature in their hearts. To Grace, the plants and shrubs, the great strong oaks, the towering poplars, each seemed to have a distinct personality. Under her energetic hand, the place once more took on the aspect of well kept and orderly beauty which was such a contrast to its former down-at-the-heels appearance. It seemed as though the growing things realized the personal interest she took in them, and responded as they never respond to the ignorant or unsympathetic.
Richard was concerned with his fields of timothy and clover, his early corn, his berries and fruit trees, to say nothing of his collies, his prize cows and Kentucky horses. In such a life, time never hangs heavy--he was busy studying, planning, working, from morning to night, and his active mind soon convinced his capable overseer and the farm hands as well that, although Richard Duvall was by no means a professional farmer, he could still show them a thing or two when it came to the rotation of crops, the spraying of fruit trees, or the proper treatment of worn out soils. These were aspects of farming life which the hide-bound conservatism of the local farmers caused them to jeer at, as newfangled notions gotten from books. Later when they saw the man who farmed with his head as well as his hands gather in two bushels where they had barely been able to secure one, they began to sit up and take notice.
"I got the new hedges all set out today," Grace went on, as she patted her husband"s rather grimy hand. "They will be charming, against the gray stone of the wall. But we must have new gate posts. The old ones are likely to tumble into the road at any moment."
"I"ll have Martin come out tomorrow and look them over. There"s plenty of stone--down in the lower pasture. Why not carry the wall right along the whole front of the property? It ought not to cost a great deal."
"We will. And I"m going to have a new spring house built, too. The old one is falling to pieces." She looked up at her husband as he deposited the rake in the tool room and they started up the shaded walk toward the house. "Aren"t you glad, d.i.c.k, that we"re _alive_?"
He pressed her arm. "Well--I should say so, little girl! Why do you ask me that?"
"Oh--you know what your friends all said--that a man might as well be dead, as buried out here in the country. I think they are the ones who are not alive--cooped up in the city. Don"t you?"
Richard nodded. He was thinking for the moment of his former active life--when some battle of wits with a noted crook had kept him sleepless for nights. "It"s--rather different," he laughed. "Isn"t it?"
"Yes--and much better. Don"t you think so, dear? You wouldn"t want to go back to it--would you?"
"Not for anything in the world," he a.s.sured her, as he swept the newly seeded lawns with a contented glance. "I liked the other life, of course--the excitement, the danger of it; but this is better--much better. Here, Don!" he called to a graceful collie which was barking vociferously at some distant vehicle in the road. "Come here and be quiet." He turned with Grace to the great vine-covered side porch and sank contentedly into a rocking chair. "Well, little girl--it"s been a busy day, and I"m tired. We got the early rye all cut on the lower field today. Guess we"ll put in late potatoes, after it"s plowed. Here, Don--come back here! What"s the matter with you?" He rose and whistled to the dog, which was bounding across the lawn in the direction of the road. "Come back, I say!"
"It"s someone coming in," said Grace, uneasily. "In a machine. I wonder who it can be?"
"Possibly Hudson, the veterinary. He was coming today, to look at that heifer."
"He hasn"t a machine like that. This is a big touring car." She turned to her husband. "Hadn"t you better go in and fix up a bit, d.i.c.k? It may be company."
Duvall laughed. "If it is, they"ll have to take me as I am," he said; then again called to the dog.
A moment later the servant, who had interviewed the caller at the front door, came out to the side porch. "Gentleman to see you, Mr. Duvall,"
she said. "Seems to be in a powerful hurry, too."
"All right, Aunt Lucy," said Duvall as he made his way to the front of the house.
"Is this Richard Duvall?" the visitor asked, in a quick, almost peremptory tone, as the detective joined him.
"Yes. That is my name. What can I do for you?"
The newcomer rose nervously from his chair and began chewing upon his half-smoked cigar. "Had the devil of a time to find you, Mr. Duvall."
"You came out from Washington, I suppose," remarked the detective, wondering what his visitor could want with him.
"Yes. Got your address from Hicks, of the Treasury Department. He said you were about twelve miles out. I seem to have come about twenty."
"Perhaps you went around by way of Laurel. It"s much further, that way.
What can I do for you, Mr.----" He paused interrogatively.
The man looked up at him quickly. "My name"s Hodgman--Thomas Hodgman--of New York. I represent John Stapleton."
"John Stapleton, the banker?" asked Duvall, surprised.