Complete Works of Earl Derr Biggers, page 169
“Let him in,” bellowed the mayor. “Let the hound in. I guess I’ve got something to say to Mr. Hayden.”
There came to Magee’s ears the sound of opening doors, and of returning footsteps.
“How do you do, Cargan,” said a voice new to Baldpate.
“Cut the society howdydoes,” replied the mayor hotly. “There’s a little score to be settled between me and you, Hayden. I ain’t quite wise to your orchid-in-the-buttonhole ways. I don’t quite follow them. I ain’t been bred in the club you hang around — they blackballed me when I tried to get in. You know that. I’m a rough rude man. I don’t understand your system. When I give my word, I keep it. Has that gone out of style up on the avenue, where you live?”
“There are conditions—” began Hayden.
“The hell there are!” roared Cargan. “A man’s word’s his word, and he keeps it to me, or I know the reason why. You can’t come down to the City Hall with any new deal like this. I was to have two hundred thousand. Why didn’t I get it?”
“Because,” replied Hayden smoothly, “the — er — little favor you were to grant me in return is to be made useless by the courts.”
“Can I help that?” the mayor demanded. “Was there anything about that in the agreement? I did my work. I want my pay. I’ll have it, Mister Hayden.”
Hayden’s voice was cool and even as he spoke to Bland.
“Got the money, Joe?”
“Yes,” Bland answered.
“Where?”
“Well — we’d better wait, hadn’t we?” Bland’s, voice was shaky.
“No. We’ll take it and get out,” answered Hayden.
“I want to see you do it,” cried Cargan. “If you think I’ve come up here on a pleasure trip, I got a chart and a pointer all ready for your next lesson. And let me put you wise — this nobby little idea of yours about Baldpate Inn is the worst ever. The place is as full of people as if the regular summer rates was being charged.”
“The devil it is!” cried Hayden. His voice betrayed a startled annoyance.
“It hasn’t worried me none,” went on the mayor. “They can’t touch me. I own the prosecutor, and you know it. But it ain’t going to do you any good on the avenue if you’re seen here with me. Is it, Mr. Hayden?”
“The more reason,” replied Hayden, “for getting the money and leaving at once. I’m not afraid of you, Cargan. I’m armed.”
“I ain’t,” sneered the mayor. “But no exquisite from your set with his little air-gun ever scared me. You try to get away from here with that bundle and you’ll find yourself all tangled up in the worst scrap that ever happened.”
“Where’s the money, Joe?” asked Hayden.
“You won’t wait—” Bland begged.
“Wait to get my own money — I guess not. Show me where it is.”
“Remember,” put in Cargan, “that money’s mine. And don’t have any pipe dreams about the law — the law ain’t called into things of this sort as a rule. I guess you’d be the last to call it. You’ll never get away from here with my money.”
Mr. Magee opened the card-room door farther, and saw the figure of the stranger Hayden confronting the mayor. Mr. Cargan’s title of exquisite best described him. The newcomer was tall, fair, fastidious in dress and manner. A revolver gleamed in his hand.
“Joe,” he said firmly, “take me to that money at once.”
“It’s out here,” replied Bland. He and Hayden disappeared through the dining-room door into the darkness. Cargan and Max followed close behind.
Hot with excitement, Mr. Magee slipped from his place of concealment. A battle fit for the gods was in the air. He must be in the midst of it — perhaps again in a three-cornered fight it would be the third party that would emerge victorious.
In the darkness of the dining-room he bumped into a limp clinging figure. It proved to be the Hermit of Baldpate Mountain.
“I got to talk to you, Mr. Magee,” he whispered in a frightened tremolo. “I got to have a word with you this minute.”
“Not now,” cried Magee, pushing him aside. “Later.”
The hermit wildly seized his arm.
“No, now,” he said. “There’s strange goings-on, here, Mr. Magee. I got something to tell you — about a package of money I found in the kitchen.”
Mr. Magee stood very still. Beside him in the darkness he heard the hermit’s excited breathing.
CHAPTER XIV
THE SIGN OF THE OPEN WINDOW
UNDECIDED, MR. MAGEE looked toward the kitchen door, from behind which came the sound of men’s voices. Then he smiled, turned and led Mr. Peters back into the office. The Hermit of Baldpate fairly trembled with news.
“Since I broke in on you yesterday morning,” he said in a low tone as he took a seat on the edge of a chair, “one thing has followed another so fast that I’m a little dazed. I can’t just get the full meaning of it all.”
“You have nothing on me there, Peters,” Magee answered. “I can’t either.”
“Well,” went on the hermit, “as I say, through all this downpour of people, including women, I’ve hung on to one idea. I’m working for you. You give me my wages. You’re the boss. That’s why I feel I ought to give what information I got to you.”
“Yes, yes,” Mr. Magee agreed impatiently. “Go ahead.”
“Where you find women,” Peters continued, “there you find things beyond understanding. History—”
“Get to the point.”
“Well — yes. This afternoon I was looking round through the kitchen, sort of reconnoitering, you might say, and finding out what I have to work with, for just between us, when some of this bunch goes I’ll easily be persuaded to come back and cook for you. I was hunting round in the big refrigerator with a candle, thinking maybe some little token of food had been left over from last summer’s rush — something in a can that time can not wither nor custom stale, as the poet says — and away up on the top shelf, in the darkest corner, I found a little package.”
“Quick, Peters,” cried Magee, “where is that package now?”
“I’m coming to that,” went on the hermit, not to be hurried. “What struck me first about the thing was it didn’t have any dust on it. ‘Aha,’ I says, or words to that effect. I opened it. What do you think was in it?”
“I don’t have to think — I know,” said Magee. “Money. In the name of heaven, Peters, tell me where you’ve got the thing.”
“Just a minute, Mr. Magee. Let me tell it my way. You’re right. There was money in that package. Lots of it. Enough to found a university, or buy a woman’s gowns for a year. I was examining it careful-like when a shadow came in the doorway. I looked up—”
“Who?” asked Magee breathlessly.
“That little blinky-eyed Professor Bolton was standing there, most owlish and interested. He came into the refrigerator. ‘That package you have in your hand, Peters,’ he says, ‘belongs to me. I put it in cold storage so it would keep. I’ll take it now.’ Well, Mr. Magee, I’m a peaceful man. I could have battered that professor into a learned sort of jelly if I’d wanted to. But I’m a great admirer of Mr. Carnegie, on account of the library, and I go in for peace. I knew it wasn’t exactly the thing, but—”
“You gave him the package?”
“That’s hardly the way I would put it, Mr. Magee. I made no outcry or resistance when he took it. ‘I’m just a cook,’ I says, ‘in this house. I ain’t the trusted old family retainer that retains its fortunes like a safety deposit vault.’ So I let go the bundle. It was weak of me, I know, but I sort of got the habit of giving up money, being married so many years.”
“Peters,” said Mr. Magee, “I’m sorry your grip was so insecure, but I’m mighty glad you came to me with this matter.”
“He told me I wasn’t to mention it to anybody,” replied the hermit, “but as I say, I sort of look on it that we were here first, and if our guests get to chasing untold wealth up and down the place, we ought to let each other in on it.”
“Correct,” answered Magee. “You are a valuable man, Peters. I want you to know that I appreciate the way you have acted in this affair.” Four shadowy figures tramped in through the dining-room door. “I should say,” he continued, “that the menu you propose for dinner will prove most gratifying.”
“What — oh — yes, sir,” said Peters. “Is that all?”
“Quite,” smiled Magee. “Unless — just a minute, this may concern you — on my word, there’s another new face at Baldpate.”
He stood up, and in the light of the fire met Hayden. Now he saw that the face of the latest comer was scheming and weak, and that under a small blond mustache a very cruel mouth sought to hide. The stranger gazed at Magee with an annoyance plainly marked.
“A friend of mine — Mr. — er — Downs, Mr. Magee,” muttered Bland.
“Oh, come now,” smiled Magee. “Let’s tell our real names. I heard you greeting your friend a minute ago. How are you, Mr. Hayden?”
He held out his hand. Hayden looked him angrily in the eyes.
“Who the devil are you?” he asked.
“Do you mean,” said Magee, “that you didn’t catch the name. It’s Magee — William Hallowell Magee. I hold a record hereabouts, Mr. Hayden. I spent nearly an hour at Baldpate Inn — alone. You see, I was the first of our amiable little party to arrive. Let me make you welcome. Are you staying to dinner? You must.”
“I’m not,” growled Hayden.
“Don’t believe him, Mr. Magee,” sneered the mayor, “he doesn’t always say what he means. He’s going to stay, all right.”
“Yes, you’d better, Mr. Hayden,” advised Bland.
“Huh — delighted, I’m sure,” snapped Hayden. He strolled over to the wall, and in the light of the fire examined a picture nonchalantly.
“The pride of our inn,” Mr. Magee, following, explained pleasantly, “the admiral. It is within these very walls in summer that he plays his famous game of solitaire.”
Hayden wheeled quickly, and looked Magee in the eyes. A flush crossed his face, leaving it paler than before. He turned away without speaking.
“Peters,” said Magee, “you heard what Mr. Hayden said. An extra plate at dinner, please. I must leave you for a moment, gentlemen.” He saw that their eyes followed him eagerly — full of suspicion, menacing. “We shall all meet again, very shortly.”
Hayden slipped quickly between Magee and the stairs. The latter faced him smilingly, reflecting as he did so that he could love this man but little.
“Who are you?” said Hayden again. “What is your business here?”
Magee laughed outright, and turned to the other men.
“How unfortunate,” he said, “this gentleman does not know the manners and customs of Baldpate in winter. Those are questions, Mr. Hayden, that we are never impolite enough to ask of one another up here.” He moved on toward the stairs, and reluctantly Hayden got out of his path. “I am very happy,” he added, “that you are to be with us at dinner. It will not take you long to accustom yourself to our ways, I’m sure.”
He ran up the stairs and passed through number seven out upon the balcony. Trudging through the snow, he soon sighted the room of Professor Bolton. And as he did so, a little shiver that was not due to atmospheric conditions ran down his spine. For one of the professor’s windows stood wide open, bidding a welcome to the mountain storm. Peters had spoken the truth. Once more that tight little, right little package was within Mr. Magee’s ken.
He stepped through the open window, and closed it after him. By the table sat Professor Bolton, wrapped in coats and blankets, reading by the light of a solitary candle. The book was held almost touching his nose — a reminder of the spectacles that were gone. As Magee entered the old man looked up, and a very obvious expression of fright crossed his face.
“Good evening, Professor,” said Magee easily. “Don’t you find it rather cool with the window open?”
“Mr. Magee,” replied the much wrapped gentleman, “I am that rather disturbing progressive — a fresh air devotee. I feel that God’s good air was meant to be breathed, not barricaded from our bodies.”
“Perhaps,” suggested Magee, “I should have left the window open?”
The old man regarded him narrowly.
“I have no wish to be inhospitable,” he replied. “But — if you please—”
“Certainly,” answered Magee. He threw open the window. The professor held up his book.
“I was passing the time before dinner with my pleasant old companion, Montaigne. Mr. Magee, have you ever read his essay on liars?”
“Never,” said Magee. “But I do not blame you for brushing up on it at the present time, Professor. I have come to apologize. Yesterday morning I referred in a rather unpleasant way to a murder in the chemical laboratory at one of our universities. I said that the professor of chemistry was missing. This morning’s paper, which I secured from Mr. Peters, informs me that he has been apprehended.”
“You need not have troubled to tell me,” said the old man. He smiled his bleak smile.
“I did you an injustice,” went on Magee.
“Let us say no more of it,” pleaded Professor Bolton.
Mr. Magee walked about the room. Warily the professor turned so that the other was at no instant at his back. He looked so helpless, so little, so ineffectual, that Mr. Magee abandoned his first plan of leaping upon him there in the silence. By more subtle means than this must his purpose be attained.
“I suppose,” he said, “your love of fresh air accounts for the strolls on the balcony at all hours of the night?”
The old man merely blinked at him.
“I mustn’t stop,” Magee continued. “I just wanted to make my apology, that’s all. It was unjust of me. Murder — that is hardly in your line. By the way, were you by any chance in my room this morning, Professor Bolton?”
Silence.
“Pardon me,” remarked the professor at last, “if I do not answer. In this very essay on — on liars, Montaigne has expressed it so well. ‘And how much is a false speech less sociable than silence.’ I am a sociable man.”
“Of course,” smiled Magee. He stood looking down at the frail old scholar before him, and considered. Of what avail a scuffle there in that chill room? The package was no doubt safely hidden in a corner he could not quickly find. No he must wait, and watch.
“Good-by, until dinner,” he said, “and may you find much in your wise companion’s book to justify your conduct.”
He went out through the open window, and in another moment stood just outside Miss Norton’s room. She put a startled head out at his knock.
“Oh, it’s you,” she said. “I can’t invite you in. You might learn terrible secrets of the dressing-table — mamma is bedecking herself for dinner. Has anything happened?”
“Throw something over your head, Juliet,” smiled Magee, “the balcony is waiting for you.”
She was at his side in a moment, and they walked briskly along the shadowy white floor.
“I know who has the money,” said Magee softly. “Simply through a turn of luck, I know. I realize that my protestations of what I am going to do have bored you. But it looks very much to me as if that package would be in your hands very soon.”
She did not reply.
“And when I have got it, and have given it to you — if I do,” he continued, “what then?”
“Then,” she answered, “I must go away — very quickly. And no one must know, or they will try to stop me.”
“And after that?”
“The deluge,” she laughed without mirth.
Up above them the great trees of Baldpate Mountain waved their black arms constantly as though sparring with the storm. At the foot of the buried roadway they could see the lamps of Upper Asquewan Falls; under those lamps prosaic citizens were hurrying home with the supper groceries through the night. And not one of those citizens was within miles of guessing that up on the balcony of Baldpate Inn a young man had seized a young woman’s hand, and was saying wildly: “Beautiful girl — I love you.”
Yet that was exactly what Billy Magee was doing. The girl had turned her face away.
“You’ve known me just two days,” she said.
“If I can care this much in two days,” he said, “think — but that’s old, isn’t it? Sometime soon I’m going to say to you: ‘Whose girl are you?’ and you’re going to look up at me with a little heaven for two in your eyes and say: ‘I’m Billy Magee’s girl.’ So before we go any further I must confess everything — I must tell you who this Billy Magee is — this man you’re going to admit you belong to, my dear.”
“You read the future glibly,” she replied. “Are your prophecies true, I wonder?”
“Absolutely. Some time ago — on my soul, it was only yesterday — I asked if you had read a certain novel called The Lost Limousine, and you said you had, and that — it wasn’t sincere. Well, I wrote it—”
“Oh!” cried the girl.
“Yes,” said Magee, “and I’ve done others like it. Oh, yes, my muse has been a nouveau riche lady in a Worth gown, my ambition a big red motor-car. I’ve been a ‘scramble a cent, mister’ troubadour beckoning from the book-stalls. It was good fun writing those things, and it brought me more money than was good for me. I’m not ashamed of them; they were all right as a beginning in the game. But the other day — I thought an advertisement did the trick — I turned tired of that sort, and I decided to try the other kind — the real kind. I thought it was an advertisement that did it — but I see now it was because you were just a few days away.”
“Don’t tell me,” whispered the girl, “that you came up here to — to—”
“Yes,” smiled Magee, “I came up here to forget forever the world’s giddy melodrama, the wild chase for money through deserted rooms, shots in the night, cupid in the middle distance. I came here to do — literature — if it’s in me to do it.”
The girl leaned limply against the side of Baldpate Inn.
