"A gentleman I have never met, maybe there will be two of them,--but we must pretend they are our very good friends."
"Why, William, are you crazy?"
"No, ma"am!" and then he whispered something to her, although they were alone, and she, too, opened her eyes very wide but promised to keep her mouth shut.
The visitors came, two quiet gentlemen with good manners and simple habits. Mr. and Mrs. Sutton decided they should be some long lost cousins from the west who were in the country for their health. Thus they explained their visitors to Billy and Mag and their neighbors. They brought a small Ford runabout which they used a great deal.
Mr. Sutton had a long conference with Mr. Carter. There was some more opening of eyes and shutting of mouths.
"What a fool I have been!" cried that gentleman. "I can see it all now.
Lewis Somerville tried to make me see but I was quite hard on the boy.
Well! Well! What is to be done?"
"Nothing! Just bide our time."
"See here, Sutton, I believe there was method in that man"s madness when he got two electric light systems. He told me to order one and then said his secretary had ordered one, too. Pretended he had not told me to, and then was tremendously kind and magnanimous about it. I began to think maybe I had not understood,--you see my head hadn"t been very clear for business for many months and I mistrusted myself. I"ll wager anything that that extra battery is running a wireless station at Weston."
"Geewhilikins!" exclaimed the elder Sutton in very much the same tone his son might have used. "This business is growing very exciting."
Sometimes the two quiet gentlemen visitors at Preston would go out for an airing in their little car, and finding a secluded spot in a pine woods, one of them would cleverly convert himself into an Armenian pedlar with a pack filled with cheap lace and jewelry. Then he would make the rounds of the cabins. He could speak almost no English when doing this part and seemed not to understand any at all. He visited every house in Paradise and from there made his way to Weston. His heavy, blue-black beard and long straggling hair so completely disguised him that the count never dreamed the man he saw at his kitchen door haggling with his colored cook over some coa.r.s.e pillow shams was the same smooth-faced gentleman he had met that morning driving with his neighbor Sutton.
As a book agent, the clever detective gained access to the count"s library and actually sold him a set of Ruskin. As telephone inspector, he got much information desired, and as a government agricultural expert, he was favored with a long, intimate talk with the owner of Weston.
Old Blitz, the German farmer near Preston, came in for his share of visits, too, from pedlars and book agents, etc. The mills of the government were grinding slowly but they were grinding exceeding small.
The neighborhood was in absolute ignorance of the fact that their delightful count was being watched. His comings and goings were known.
He had few secrets. It was learned by the detectives that he was not a Hungarian at all but his father was Austrian, his mother Prussian. He had been sent to this country by his government to make trouble among the negroes and to buy up tracts of land for future emigration. When the world was to be Prussianized, fair Virginia was not to be neglected.
The raid on Grantly was traced absolutely to his lectures and the teachings of Herz, the so-called secretary. The only thing that had gone wrong was that the negroes had acted sooner than their masters had planned. Their object had been to have a general uprising and they wanted it to be timed about when war was declared. Their schemes had not been directed against poor old Grantly especially, but against all the whites, with a view of keeping the darkies out of the army.
Herz turned out to be a full-blooded Prussian, who had lived in Cincinnati for about five years. He was a trusted spy of his government and had done wonderful work for them in Mexico. He was really the brains of the partnership and de Lestis the mixer. When de Lestis went off on his long business trips to Chicago and New York it developed he had been across the water several times, bearing with him maps and information that must be personally conducted.
A wireless station was suspected but it was difficult to locate.
"Look in the pigeon house," suggested Mr. Carter, still bearing a grudge against the atrocity that had ruined his beloved roof line.
There it was, as neatly installed an instrument as one could find with the extra batteries doing the work perfectly. The telephone inspector found it quite easily. The pigeon house was a hollow sham. There was a reason for making it so large since the wireless was to have an inner chamber.
The net was drawing more closely around the two men but they, scornful of the intelligence of the stupid Americans, went unconcernedly on, laying their plans and hatching their deviltries. Many a laugh they had over the automobile accident.
"Those darkies before a clever lawyer would have been our undoing," they admitted to one another.
The night school was discontinued for the time being and the poor colored people got back into their one time rut. Tempy resumed her labors at Grantly, a sadder and wiser girl. She no longer slept amidst the unwashed dishes but seemed anxious to become as good a servant as her sister Chloe. Sam, the factotum, returned in time to put in the garden.
CHAPTER XXIV
THE CARRIER PIGEON
There came a day in mid-April that will always be remembered by the dwellers in Valhalla. Herz had walked home from school with Douglas, and contrary to his custom, had come in when they reached the house. He was in a strange, fierce humor and it seemed to Douglas as though his near-sighted eyes were boring holes in her. She could not keep her mind and talk off the war and whenever war was mentioned he became very glum.
"Now that we are at war, will you not enlist?" she asked. "If you are a true American, I do not see how you can help it."
"My eyes would debar me. Near-sighted men can"t always serve where they would like to," he answered rather bitterly. "You see good in no one but a soldier."
"Why, not at all!" blushed Douglas. "Of course, when my country is at war I want our young men to be willing to fight. Being a girl is all that keeps me here. You might work in a munition factory and help that way."
"Ah, I should like that! Would you think more of me if I could help your country in some way?"
"Your country, too!"
Herz had come so close to her as they stood in the middle of the quaint old living-room that Douglas felt a desire to run away. She welcomed the sight of Helen running across the lawn from the direction of Grantly.
"Guess!" panted Helen, bursting in on them. "I have seen James Hanks! He was sneaking out of the kitchen at Grantly. Had been in to see Tempy, I reckon. The man is crazy about her. Miss Louise saw him, too, and has "phoned Mr. Sutton. I fancy he is on the way over here now with those western cousins of his. Funny men, aren"t they? Miss Ella says she never heard of either Mr. or Mrs. Sutton"s having any western kin, and she has known them and all their people for pretty near a century. I believe they are detectives myself, trying to find those runaway darkies."
While Helen was giving out this information, Herz stood as though he had turned to stone. His face was white with a red spot on each high cheek bone.
"Where is your carrier pigeon?" he asked Douglas abruptly.
"The cage hangs on the porch."
He drew from his pocket a small note-book and wrote rapidly in it.
Tearing out the sheet, he strode to the porch, and with a small rubber band he quickly attached the note to the foot of the docile bird that he had grabbed from the cage without even a "by your leave."
"What are you doing?" demanded Douglas. Was the man crazy?
"Stop!" cried Helen. "Count de Lestis gave that bird to my sister."
"Yes, and she was to send him a message. This is the message. It is as he would have it, I am sure. You remember he told you he would rather someone would seek him than search him. He shall have his choice."
He carried the pigeon out on the lawn and freed it. The clever bird rose in a spiral flight and then started straight towards Weston and its mate. Without a word, Herz left the girls and started towards Weston, too, taking a line almost as straight as the one the pigeon had chosen.
"Is he crazy, Douglas?"
"I think he is something worse. I believe he is afraid of detectives."
The count and his confederate got away,--although they were captured later on in North Carolina. The faithful red car carried them off rapidly. De Lestis was waiting for his one time secretary at the cross roads by Paradise.
"Did you destroy the papers and maps?" gasped that gentleman as he sprang into the car.
"How could I when your call was so urgent? I brought all the money, though. Those fools will never find the wireless. They have no imagination. And I have the grey paint to put my darling here in her uniform."
That night, after having speeded for hours, the two men drew the little red car into the woods where they painted her a dingy grey. The count had purchased the paint only the day before at the country store.
"In case of an emergency!" he had told Herz.