The House of a Thousand Candles by Meredith Nicholson (page 5)

“Unjust,—my God, what do you expect me to take from you! Haven’t I known that you were in league with Pickering? I’m not as dull as I look, and after your interview with Pickering in the chapel porch you can’t convince me that you were faithful to my interests at that time.”

He started and gazed at me wonderingly. I had had no intention of using the chapel porch interview at this time, but it leaped out of me uncontrollably.

“I suppose, sir,” he began brokenly, “that I can hardly persuade you that I meant no wrong on that occasion.”

“You certainly can not,—and it’s safer for you not to try. But I’m willing to let all that go as a reward for your work last night. Make your choice now; stay here and stop your spying or clear out of Annandale within an hour.”

He took a step toward me; the table was between us and he drew quite near but stood clear of it, erect until there was something almost soldierly and commanding in his figure.

“By God, I will stand by you, John Glenarm!” he said, and struck the table smartly with his clenched hand.

He flushed instantly, and I felt the blood mounting into my own face as we gazed at each other,—he, Bates, the servant, and I, his master! He had always addressed me so punctiliously with the “sir” of respect that his declaration of fealty, spoken with so sincere and vigorous an air of independence, and with the bold emphasis of the oath, held me spellbound, staring at him. The silence was broken by Larry, who sprang forward and grasped Bates’ hand.

“I, too, Bates,” I said, feeling my heart leap with liking, even with admiration for the real manhood that seemed to transfigure this hireling,—this fellow whom I had charged with most infamous treachery, this servant who had cared for my needs in so humble a spirit of subjection.

The knocker on the front door sounded peremptorily, and Bates turned away without another word, and admitted Stoddard, who came in hurriedly.

“Merry Christmas!” in his big hearty tones was hardly consonant with the troubled look on his face. I introduced him to Larry and asked him to sit down.

“Pray excuse our disorder,—we didn’t do it for fun; it was one of Santa Claus’ tricks.”

He stared about wonderingly.

“So you caught it, too, did you?”

“To be sure. You don’t mean to say that they raided the chapel?”

“That’s exactly what I mean to say. When I went into the church for my early service I found that some one had ripped off the wainscoting in a half a dozen places and even pried up the altar. It’s the most outrageous thing I ever knew. You’ve heard of the proverbial poverty of the church mouse,—what do you suppose anybody could want to raid a simple little country chapel for? And more curious yet, the church plate was untouched, though the closet where it’s kept was upset, as though the miscreants had been looking for something they didn’t find.”

Stoddard was greatly disturbed, and gazed about the topsy-turvy library with growing indignation.

We drew together for a council of war. Here was an opportunity to enlist a new recruit on my side. I already felt stronger by reason of Larry’s accession; as to Bates, my mind was still numb and bewildered.

“Larry, there’s no reason why we shouldn’t join forces with Mr. Stoddard, as he seems to be affected by this struggle. We owe it to him and the school to put him on guard, particularly since we know that Ferguson’s with the enemy.”

“Yes, certainly,” said Larry.

He always liked or disliked new people unequivocally, and I was glad to see that he surveyed the big clergyman with approval.

“I’ll begin at the beginning,” I said, “and tell you the whole story.”

He listened quietly to the end while I told him of my experience with Morgan, of the tunnel into the chapel crypt, and finally of the affair in the night and our interview with Bates.

“I feel like rubbing my eyes and accusing you of reading penny-horrors,” he said. “That doesn’t sound like the twentieth century in Indiana.”

“But Ferguson,—you’d better have a care in his direction. Sister Theresa—”

“Bless your heart! Ferguson’s gone—without notice. He got his traps and skipped without saying a word to any one.”

“We’ll hear from him again, no doubt. Now, gentlemen, I believe we understand one another. I don’t like to draw you, either one of you, into my private affairs—”

The big chaplain laughed.

“Glenarm,”—prefixes went out of commission quickly that morning,—”if you hadn’t let me in on this I should never have got over it. Why, this is a page out of the good old times! Bless me! I never appreciated your grandfather! I must run—I have another service. But I hope you gentlemen will call on me, day or night, for anything I can do to help you. Please don’t forget me. I had the record once for putting the shot.”

“Why not give our friend escort through the tunnel?” asked Larry. “I’ll not hesitate to say that I’m dying to see it.”

“To be sure!” We went down into the cellar, and poked over the lantern and candlestick collections, and I pointed out the exact spot where Morgan and I had indulged in our revolver duel. It was fortunate that the plastered walls of the cellar showed clearly the cuts and scars of the pistol-balls or I fear my story would have fallen on incredulous ears.

The debris I had piled upon the false block of stone in the cellar lay as I had left it, but the three of us quickly freed the trap. The humor of the thing took strong hold of my new allies, and while I was getting a lantern to light us through the passage Larry sat on the edge of the trap and howled a few bars of a wild Irish jig. We set forth at once and found the passage unchanged. When the cold air blew in upon us I paused.

“Have you gentlemen the slightest idea of where you are?”

“We must be under the school-grounds, I should say,” replied Stoddard.

“We’re exactly under the stone wall. Those tall posts at the gate are a scheme for keeping fresh air in the passage.”

“You certainly have all the modern improvements,” observed Larry, and I heard him chuckling all the way to the crypt door.

When I pushed the panel open and we stepped out into the crypt Stoddard whistled and Larry swore softly.

“It must be for something!” exclaimed the chaplain. “You don’t suppose Mr. Glenarm built a secret passage just for the fun of it, do you? He must have had some purpose. Why, I sleep out here within forty yards of where we stand and I never had the slightest idea of this.”

“But other people seem to know of it,” observed Larry.

“To be sure; the curiosity of the whole countryside was undoubtedly piqued by the building of Glenarm House. The fact that workmen were brought from a distance was in itself enough to arouse interest. Morgan seems to have discovered the passage without any trouble.”

“More likely it was Ferguson. He was the sexton of the church and had a chance to investigate,” said Stoddard. “And now, gentlemen, I must go to my service. I’ll see you again before the day is over.”

“And we make no confidences!” I admonished.

“‘Sdeath!—I believe that is the proper expression under all the circumstances.” And the Reverend Paul Stoddard laughed, clasped my hand and went up into the chapel vestry.

I closed the door in the wainscoting and hung the map back in place.

We went up into the little chapel and found a small company of worshipers assembled,—a few people from the surrounding farms, half a dozen Sisters sitting somberly near the chancel and the school servants.

Stoddard came out into the chancel, lighted the altar tapers and began the Anglican communion office. I had forgotten what a church service was like; and Larry, I felt sure, had not attended church since the last time his family had dragged hint to choral vespers.

It was comforting to know that here was, at least, one place of peace within reach of Glenarm House. But I may be forgiven, I hope, if my mind wandered that morning, and my thoughts played hide-and-seek with memory. For it was here, in the winter twilight, that Marian Devereux had poured out her girl’s heart in a great flood of melody. I was glad that the organ was closed; it would have wrung my heart to hear a note from it that her hands did not evoke.

When we came out upon the church porch and I stood on the steps to allow Larry to study the grounds, one of the brown-robed Sisterhood spoke my name.

It was Sister Theresa.

“Can you come in for a moment?” she asked.

“I will follow at once,” I said.

She met me in the reception-room where I had seen her before.

“I’m sorry to trouble you on Christmas Day with my affairs, but I have had a letter from Mr. Pickering, saying that he will he obliged to bring suit for settlement of my account with Mr. Glenarm’s estate. I needn’t say that this troubles me greatly. In my position a lawsuit is uncomfortable; it would do a real harm to the school. Mr. Pickering implies in a very disagreeable way that I exercised an undue influence over Mr. Glenarm. You can readily understand that that is not a pleasant accusation.”

“He is going pretty far,” I said.

“He gives me credit for a degree of power over others that I regret to say I do not possess. He thinks, for instance, that I am responsible for Miss Devereux’s attitude toward him,—something that I have had nothing whatever to do with.”

“No, of course not.”

“I’m glad you have no harsh feeling toward her. It was unfortunate that Mr. Glenarm saw fit to mention her in his will. It has given her a great deal of notoriety, and has doubtless strengthened the impression in some minds that she and I really plotted to get as much as possible of your grandfather’s estate.”

“No one would regret all this more than my grandfather, —I am sure of that. There are many inexplicable things about his affairs. It seems hardly possible that a man so shrewd as he, and so thoughtful of the feelings of others, should have left so many loose ends behind him. But I assure you I am giving my whole attention to these matters, and I am wholly at your service in anything I can do to help you.”

“I sincerely hope that nothing may interfere to prevent your meeting Mr. Glenarm’s wish that you remain through the year. That was a curious and whimsical provision, but it is not, I imagine, so difficult.”

She spoke in a kindly tone of encouragement that made me feel uneasy and almost ashamed for having already forfeited my claim under the will. Her beautiful gray eyes disconcerted me; I had not the heart to deceive her.

“I have already made it impossible for me to inherit under the will,” I said.

The disappointment in her face rebuked me sharply.

“I am sorry, very sorry, indeed,” she said coldly. “But how, may I ask?”

“I ran away, last night. I went to Cincinnati to see Miss Devereux.”

She rose, staring in dumb astonishment, and after a full minute in which I tried vainly to think of something to say, I left the house.

There is nothing in the world so tiresome as explanations, and I have never in my life tried to make them without floundering into seas of trouble.

CHAPTER XXI

PICKERING SERVES NOTICE

The next morning Bates placed a letter postmarked Cincinnati at my plate. I opened and read it aloud to Larry:
On Board the Heloise

December 25, 1901.
John Glenarm, Esq.,
Glenarm House,
Annandale, Wabana Co., Indiana: DEAR SIR—I have just learned from what I believe to be a trustworthy source that you have already violated the terms of the agreement under which you entered into residence on the property near Annandale, known as Glenarm House. The provisions of the will of John Marshall Glenarm are plain and unequivocal, as you undoubtedly understood when you accepted them, and your absence, not only from the estate itself, but from Wabana County, violates beyond question your right to inherit. I, as executor, therefore demand that you at once vacate said property, leaving it in as good condition as when received by you. Very truly yours,
Arthur Pickering,
Executor of the Estate of John Marshall Glenarm.

“Very truly the devil’s,” growled Larry, snapping his cigarette case viciously.

“How did he find out?” I asked lamely, but my heart sank like lead. Had Marian Devereux told him! How else could he know?

“Probably from the stars,—the whole universe undoubtedly saw you skipping off to meet your lady-love. Bah, these women!”

“Tut! They don’t all marry the sons of brewers,” I retorted. “You assured me once, while your affair with that Irish girl was on, that the short upper lip made Heaven seem possible, but unnecessary; then the next thing I knew she had shaken you for the bloated masher. Take that for your impertinence. But perhaps it was Bates?”

I did not wait for an answer. I was not in a mood for reflection or nice distinctions. The man came in just then with a fresh plate of toast.

“Bates, Mr. Pickering has learned that I was away from the house on the night of the attack, and I’m ordered off for having broken my agreement to stay here. How do you suppose he heard of it so promptly?”

“From Morgan, quite possibly. I have a letter from Mr. Pickering myself this morning. Just a moment, sir.”

He placed before me a note bearing the same date as my own. It was a sharp rebuke of Bates for his failure to report my absence, and he was ordered to prepare to leave on the first of February. “Close your accounts at the shopkeepers’ and I will audit your bills on my arrival.”

The tone was peremptory and contemptuous. Bates had failed to satisfy Pickering and was flung off like a smoked-out cigar.

“How much had he allowed you for expenses, Bates?”

He met my gaze imperturbably.

“He paid me fifty dollars a month as wages, sir, and I was allowed seventy-five for other expenses.”

“But you didn’t buy English pheasants and champagne on that allowance!”

He was carrying away the coffee tray and his eyes wandered to the windows.

“Not quite, sir. You see—”

“But I don’t see!”

“It had occurred to me that as Mr. Pickering’s allowance wasn’t what you might call generous it was better to augment it—Well, sir, I took the liberty of advancing a trifle, as you might say, to the estate. Your grandfather would not have had you starve, sir.”

He left hurriedly, as though to escape from the consequences of his words, and when I came to myself
Larry was gloomily invoking his strange Irish gods.

“Larry Donovan, I’ve been tempted to kill that fellow a dozen times! This thing is too damned complicated for me. I wish my lamented grandfather had left me something easy. To think of it—that fellow, after my treatment of him—my cursing and abusing him since I came here! Great Scott, man, I’ve been enjoying his bounty, I’ve been living on his money! And all the time he’s been trusting in me, just because of his dog-like devotion to my grandfather’s memory. Lord, I can’t face the fellow again!”

“As I have said before, you’re rather lacking at times in perspicacity. Your intelligence is marred by large opaque spots. Now that there’s a woman in the case you’re less sane than ever. Bah, these women! And now we’ve got to go to work.”

Bah, these women! My own heart caught the words. I was enraged and bitter. No wonder she had been anxious for me to avoid Pickering after daring me to follow her!

We called a council of war for that night that we might view matters in the light of Pickering’s letter. His assuredness in ordering me to leave made prompt and decisive action necessary on my part. I summoned Stoddard to our conference, feeling confident of his friendliness.

“Of course,” said the broad-shouldered chaplain, “if you could show that your absence was on business of very grave importance, the courts might construe in that you had not really violated the will.”

Larry looked at the ceiling and blew rings of smoke languidly. I had not disclosed to either of them the cause of my absence. On such a matter I knew I should get precious little sympathy from Larry, and I had, moreover, a feeling that I could not discuss Marian Devereux with any one; I even shrank from mentioning her name, though it rang like the call of bugles in my blood.

She was always before me,—the charmed spirit of youth, linked to every foot of the earth, every gleam of the sun upon the ice-bound lake, every glory of the winter sunset. All the good impulses I had ever stifled were quickened to life by the thought of her. Amid the day’s perplexities I started sometimes, thinking I heard her voice, her girlish laughter, or saw her again coming toward me down the stairs, or holding against the light her fan with its golden butterflies. I really knew so little of her; I could associate her with no home, only with that last fling of the autumn upon the lake, the snow-driven woodland, that twilight hour at the organ in the chapel, those stolen moments at the Armstrongs’. I resented the pressure of the hour’s affairs, and chafed at the necessity for talking of my perplexities with the good friends who were there to help. I wished to be alone, to yield to the sweet mood that the thought of her brought me. The doubt that crept through my mind as to any possibility of connivance between her and Pickering was as vague and fleeting as the shadow of a swallow’s wing on a sunny meadow.

“You don’t intend fighting the fact of your absence, do you?” demanded Larry, after a long silence.

“Of course not!” I replied quietly. “Pickering was right on my heels, and my absence was known to his men here. And it would not be square to my grandfather, —who never harmed a flea, may his soul rest in blessed peace!—to lie about it. They might nail me for perjury besides.”

“Then the quicker we get ready for a siege the better. As I understand your attitude, you don’t propose to move out until you’ve found where the siller’s hidden. Being a gallant gentleman and of a forgiving nature, you want to be sure that the lady who is now entitled to it gets all there is coming to her, and as you don’t trust the executor, any further than a true Irishman trusts a British prime minister’s promise, you’re going to stand by to watch the boodle counted. Is that a correct analysis of your intentions?”

“That’s as near one of my ideas as you’re likely to get, Larry Donovan!”

“And if he comes with the authorities,—the sheriff and that sort of thing,—we must prepare for such an emergency,” interposed the chaplain.

“So much the worse for the sheriff and the rest of them!” I declared.

“Spoken like a man of spirit. And now we’d better stock up at once, in case we should be shut off from our source of supplies. This is a lonely place here; even the school is a remote neighbor. Better let Bates raid the village shops to-morrow. I’ve tried being hungry, and I don’t care to repeat the experience.”

And Larry reached for the tobacco jar.

“I can’t imagine, I really can’t believe,” began the chaplain, “that Miss Devereux will want to be brought into this estate matter in any way. In fact, I have heard Sister Theresa say as much. I suppose there’s no way of preventing a man from leaving his property to a young woman, who has no claim on him,—who doesn’t want anything from him.”

“Bah, these women! People don’t throw legacies to the birds these days. Of course she’ll take it.”

Then his eyes widened and met mine in a gaze that reflected the mystification and wonder that struck both of us. Stoddard turned from the fire suddenly:

“What’s that? There’s some one up stairs!”

Larry was already running toward the hall, and I heard him springing up the steps like a cat, while Stoddard and I followed.

“Where’s Bates?” demanded the chaplain.

“I’ll thank you for the answer,” I replied.

Larry stood at the top of the staircase, holding a candle at arm’s length in front of him, staring about.

We could hear quite distinctly some one walking on a stairway; the sounds were unmistakable, just as I had heard them on several previous occasions, without ever being able to trace their source.

The noise ceased suddenly, leaving us with no hint of its whereabouts.

I went directly to the rear of the house and found Bates putting the dishes away in the pantry.

“Where have you been?” I demanded.

“Here, sir; I have been clearing up the dinner things, Mr. Glenarm. Is there anything the matter, sir?”

“Nothing.”

I joined the others in the library.

“Why didn’t you tell me this feudal imitation was haunted?” asked Larry, in a grieved tone. “All it needed was a cheerful ghost, and now I believe it lacks absolutely nothing. I’m increasingly glad I came. How often does it walk?”

“It’s not on a schedule. Just now it’s the wind in the tower probably; the wind plays queer pranks up there sometimes.”

“You’ll have to do better than that, Glenarm,” said Stoddard. “It’s as still outside as a country graveyard.”

“Only the slaugh sidhe, the people of the faery hills, the cheerfulest ghosts in the world,” said Larry. “You literal Saxons can’t grasp the idea, of course.”

But there was substance enough in our dangers without pursuing shadows. Certain things were planned that night. We determined to exercise every precaution to prevent a surprise from without, and we resolved upon a new and systematic sounding of walls and floors, taking our clue from the efforts made by Morgan and his ally to find hiding-places by this process. Pickering would undoubtedly arrive shortly, and we wished to anticipate his movements as far as possible.

We resolved, too, upon a day patrol of the grounds and a night guard. The suggestion came, I believe, from Stoddard, whose interest in my affairs was only equaled by the fertility of his suggestions. One of us should remain abroad at night, ready to sound the alarm in case of attack. Bates should take his turn with the rest—Stoddard insisted on it.

Within two days we were, as Larry expressed it, on a war footing. We added a couple of shot-guns and several revolvers to my own arsenal, and piled the library table with cartridge boxes. Bates, acting as quarter-master, brought a couple of wagon-loads of provisions. Stoddard assembled a remarkable collection of heavy sticks; he had more confidence in them, he said, than in gunpowder, and, moreover, he explained, a priest might not with propriety hear arms.

It was a cheerful company of conspirators that now gathered around the big hearth. Larry, always restless, preferred to stand at one side, an elbow on the mantel-shelf, pipe in mouth; and Stoddard sought the biggest chair,—and filled it. He and Larry understood each other at once, and Larry’s stories, ranging in subject from undergraduate experiences at Dublin to adventures in Africa and always including endless conflicts with the Irish constabulary, delighted the big boyish clergyman.

Often, at some one’s suggestion of a new idea, we ran off to explore the house again in search of the key to the Glenarm riddle, and always we came back to the library with that riddle still unsolved.

CHAPTER XXII

THE RETURN OF MARIAN DEVEREUX

“Sister Theresa has left, sir.”

Bates had been into Annandale to mail some letters, and I was staring out upon the park from the library windows when he entered. Stoddard, having kept watch the night before, was at home asleep, and Larry was off somewhere in the house, treasure-hunting. I was feeling decidedly discouraged over our failure to make any progress with our investigations, and Bates’ news did not interest me.

“Well, what of it?” I demanded, without turning round.

“Nothing, sir; but Miss Devereux has come back!”

“The devil!”

I turned and took a step toward the door.

“I said Miss Devereux,” he repeated in dignified rebuke. “She came up this morning, and the Sister left at once for Chicago. Sister Theresa depends particularly upon Miss Devereux,—so I’ve heard, sir. Miss Devereux quite takes charge when the Sister goes away. A few of the students are staying in school through the holidays.”

“You seem full of information,” I remarked, taking another step toward my hat and coat.

“And I’ve learned something else, sir.”

“Well?”

“They all came together, sir.”

“Who came; if you please, Bates?”

“Why, the people who’ve been traveling with Mr. Pickering came back with him, and Miss Devereux came with them from Cincinnati. That’s what I learned in the village. And Mr. Pickering is going to stay—”

“Pickering stay!”

“At his cottage on the lake for a while. The reason is that he’s worn out with his work, and wishes quiet. The other people went back to New York in the car.”

“He’s opened a summer cottage in mid-winter, has he?”

I had been blue enough without this news. Marian Devereux had come back to Annandale with Arthur Pickering; my faith in her snapped like a reed at this astounding news. She was now entitled to my grandfather’s property and she had lost no time in returning as soon as she and Pickering had discussed together at the Armstrongs’ my flight from Annandale. Her return could have no other meaning than that there was a strong tie between them, and he was now to stay on the ground until I should be dispossessed and her rights established. She had led me to follow her, and my forfeiture had been sealed by that stolen interview at the Armstrongs’. It was a black record, and the thought of it angered me against myself and the world.

“Tell Mr. Donovan that I’ve gone to St. Agatha’s,” I said, and I was soon striding toward the school.

A Sister admitted me. I heard the sound of a piano, somewhere in the building, and I consigned the inventor of pianos to hideous torment as scales were pursued endlessly up and down the keys. Two girls passing through the hall made a pretext of looking for a book and came in and exclaimed over their inability to find it with much suppressed giggling.

The piano-pounding continued and I waited for what seemed an interminable time. It was growing dark and a maid lighted the oil lamps. I took a book from the table. It was The Life of Benvenuto Cellini and “Marian Devereux” was written on the fly leaf, by unmistakably the same hand that penned the apology for Olivia’s performances. I saw in the clear flowing lines of the signature, in their lack of superfluity, her own ease, grace and charm; and, in the deeper stroke with which the x was crossed, I felt a challenge, a readiness to abide by consequences once her word was given. Then my own inclination to think well of her angered me. It was only a pretty bit of chirography, and I dropped the book impatiently when I heard her step on the threshold.

“I am sorry to have kept you waiting, Mr. Glenarm. But this is my busy hour.”

“I shall not detain you long. I came,”—I hesitated, not knowing why I had come.

She took a chair near the open door and bent forward with an air of attention that was disquieting. She wore black—perhaps to fit her the better into the house of a somber Sisterhood. I seemed suddenly to remember her from a time long gone, and the effort of memory threw me off guard. Stoddard had said there were several Olivia Armstrongs; there were certainly many Marian Devereuxs. The silence grew intolerable; she was waiting for me to speak, and I blurted:

“I suppose you have come to take charge of the property.”

“Do you?” she asked.

“And you came back with the executor to facilitate matters. I’m glad to see that you lose no time.”

“Oh!” she said lingeringly, as though she were finding with difficulty the note in which I wished to pitch the conversation. Her calmness was maddening.

“I suppose you thought it unwise to wait for the bluebird when you had beguiled me into breaking a promise, when I was trapped, defeated,—”

Her elbow on the arm of the chair, her hand resting against her check, the light rippling goldenly in her hair, her eyes bent upon me inquiringly, mournfully,— mournfully, as I had seen them—where?—once before! My heart leaped in that moment, with that thought.

“I remember now the first time!” I exclaimed, more angry than I had ever been before in my life.

“That is quite remarkable,” she said, and nodded her head ironically.

“It was at Sherry’s; you were with Pickering—you dropped your fan and he picked it up, and you turned toward me for a moment. You were in black that night; it was the unhappiness in your face, in your eyes, that made me remember.”

I was intent upon the recollection, eager to fix and establish it.

“You are quite right. It was at Sherry’s. I was wearing black then; many things made me unhappy that night.”

Her forehead contracted slightly and she pressed her lips together.

“I suppose that even then the conspiracy was thoroughly arranged,” I said tauntingly, laughing a little perhaps, and wishing to wound her, to take vengeance upon her.

She rose and stood by her chair, one hand resting upon it. I faced her; her eyes were like violet seas. She spoke very quietly.

“Mr. Glenarm, has it occurred to you that when I talked to you there in the park, when I risked unpleasant gossip in receiving you in a house where you had no possible right to be, that I was counting upon something, —foolishly and stupidly,—yet counting upon it?”

“You probably thought I was a fool,” I retorted.

“No;”—she smiled slightly—“I thought—I believe I have said this to you before!—you were a gentleman. I really did, Mr. Glenarm. I must say it to justify myself. I relied upon your chivalry; I even thought, when I played being Olivia, that you had a sense of honor. But you are not the one and you haven’t the other. I even went so far, after you knew perfectly well who I was, as to try to help you—to give you another chance to prove yourself the man your grandfather wished you to be. And now you come to me in a shocking bad humor,—I really think you would like to be insulting, Mr. Glenarm, if you could.”

“But Pickering,—you came back with him; he is here and he’s going to stay! And now that the property belongs to you, there is not the slightest reason why we should make any pretense of anything but enmity. When you and Arthur Pickering stand together I take the other side of the barricade! I suppose chivalry would require me to vacate, so that you may enjoy at once the spoils of war.”

“I fancy it would not be very difficult to eliminate you as a factor in the situation,” she remarked icily.

“And I suppose, after the unsuccessful efforts of Mr. Pickering’s allies to assassinate me, as a mild form of elimination, one would naturally expect me to sit calmly down and wait to be shot in the back. But you may tell Mr. Pickering that I throw myself upon your mercy. I have no other home than this shell over the way, and I beg to be allowed to remain until—at least—the bluebirds come. I hope it will not embarrass you to deliver the message.”

“I quite sympathize with your reluctance to deliver it yourself,” she said. “Is this all you came to say?”

“I came to tell you that you could have the house, and everything in its hideous walls,” I snapped; “to tell you that my chivalry is enough for some situations and that I don’t intend to fight a woman. I had accepted your own renouncement of the legacy in good part, but now, please believe me, it shall be yours to-morrow. I’ll yield possession to you whenever you ask it,—but never to Arthur Pickering! As against him and his treasure-hunters and assassins I will hold out for a dozen years!”

“Nobly spoken, Mr. Glenarm! Yours is really an admirable, though somewhat complex character.”

“My character is my own, whatever it is,” I blurted.

“I shouldn’t call that a debatable proposition,” she replied, and I was angry to find how the mirth I had loved in her could suddenly become so hateful. She half-turned away so that I might not see her face. The thought that she should countenance Pickering in any way tore me with jealous rage.

“Mr. Glenarm, you are what I have heard called a quitter, defined in common Americanese as one who quits! Your blustering here this afternoon can hardly conceal the fact of your failure,—your inability to keep a promise. I had hoped you would really be of some help to Sister Theresa; you quite deceived her,—she told me as she left to-day that she thought well of you, —she really felt that her fortunes were safe in your hands. But, of course, that is all a matter of past history now.”

Her tone, changing from cold indifference to the most severe disdain, stung me into self-pity for my stupidity in having sought her. My anger was not against her, but against Pickering, who had, I persuaded myself, always blocked my path. She went on.

“You really amuse me exceedingly. Mr. Pickering is decidedly more than a match for you, Mr. Glenarm, —even in humor.”

She left me so quickly, so softly, that I stood staring like a fool at the spot where she had been, and then I went gloomily back to Glenarm House, angry, ashamed and crestfallen.

While we were waiting for dinner I made a clean breast of my acquaintance with her to Larry, omitting nothing,—rejoicing even to paint my own conduct as black as possible.

“You may remember her,” I concluded, “she was the girl we saw at Sherry’s that night we dined there. She was with Pickering, and you noticed her,—spoke of her, as she went out.”

“That little girl who seemed so bored, or tired? Bless me! Why her eyes haunted me for days. Lord man, do you mean to say—”

A look of utter scorn came into his face, and he eyed me contemptuously.

“Of course I mean it!” I thundered at him.

He took the pipe from his mouth, pressed the tobacco viciously into the bowl, and swore steadily in Gaelic until I was ready to choke him.

“Stop!” I bawled. “Do you think that’s helping me? And to have you curse in your blackguardly Irish dialect! I wanted a little Anglo-Saxon sympathy, you fool! I didn’t mean for you to invoke your infamous gods against the girl!”

“Don’t be violent, lad. Violence is reprehensible,” he admonished with maddening sweetness and patience. “What I was trying to inculcate was rather the fact, borne in upon me through years of acquaintance, that you are,—to he bold, my lad, to be bold,—a good deal of a damned fool.”

The trilling of his r’s was like the whirring rise of a flock of quails.

“Dinner is served,” announced Bates, and Larry led the way, mockingly chanting an Irish love-song.

CHAPTER XXIII

THE DOOR OF BEWILDERMENT

We had established the practice of barring all the gates and doors at nightfall. There was no way of guarding against an attack from the lake, whose frozen surface increased the danger from without; but we counted on our night patrol to prevent a surprise from that quarter. I was well aware that I must prepare to resist the militant arm of the law, which Pickering would no doubt invoke to aid him, but I intended to exhaust the possibilities in searching for the lost treasure before I yielded. Pickering might, if he would, transfer the estate of John Marshall Glenarm to Marian Devereux and make the most he could of that service, but he should not drive me forth until I had satisfied myself of the exact character of my grandfather’s fortune. If it had vanished, if Pickering had stolen it and outwitted me in making off with it, that was another matter.

The phrase, “The Door of Bewilderment,” had never ceased to reiterate itself in my mind. We discussed a thousand explanations of it as we pondered over the scrap of paper I had found in the library, and every book in the house was examined in the search for further clues.

The passage between the house and the chapel seemed to fascinate Larry. He held that it must have some particular use and he devoted his time to exploring it.

He came up at noon—it was the twenty-ninth of December—with grimy face and hands and a grin on his face. I had spent my morning in the towers, where it was beastly cold, to no purpose and was not in a mood for the ready acceptance of new theories.

“I’ve found something,” he said, filling his pipe.

“Not soap, evidently!”

“No, but I’m going to say the last word on the tunnel, and within an hour. Give me a glass of beer and a piece of bread, and we’ll go back and see whether we’re sold again or not.”

“Let us explore the idea and be done with it. Wait till I tell Stoddard where we’re going.”

The chaplain was trying the second-floor walls, and I asked him to eat some luncheon and stand guard while Larry and I went to the tunnel.

We took with us an iron bar, an ax and a couple of hammers. Larry went ahead with a lantern.

“You see,” he explained, as we dropped through the trap into the passage, “I’ve tried a compass on this tunnel and find that we’ve been working on the wrong theory. The passage itself runs a straight line from the house under the gate to the crypt; the ravine is a rough crescent-shape and for a short distance the tunnel touches it. How deep does that ravine average—about thirty feet?”

“Yes; it’s shallowest where the house stands. it drops sharply from there on to the lake.”

“Very good; but the ravine is all on the Glenarm side of the wall, isn’t it? Now when we get under the wall I’ll show you something.”

“Here we are,” said Larry, as the cold air blew in through the hollow posts. “Now we’re pretty near that sharp curve of the ravine that dips away from the wall. Take the lantern while I get out the compass. What do you think that C on the piece of paper means? Why, chapel, of course. I have measured the distance from the house, the point of departure, we may assume, to the chapel, and three-fourths of it brings us under those beautiful posts. The directions are as plain as daylight. The passage itself is your N. W., as the compass proves, and the ravine cuts close in here; therefore, our business is to explore the wall on the ravine side.”

“Good! but this is just wall here—earth with a layer of brick and a thin coat of cement. A nice job it must have been to do the work,—and it cost the price of a tiger hunt,” I grumbled.

“Take heart, lad, and listen,”—and Larry began pounding the wall with a hammer, exactly under the north gate-post. We had sounded everything in and about the house until the process bored me.

“Hurry up and get through with it,” I jerked impatiently, holding the lantern at the level of his head. It was sharply cold under the posts and I was anxious to prove the worthlessness of his idea and be done.

Thump! thump!

“There’s a place here that sounds a trifle off the key. You try it.”

I snatched the hammer and repeated his soundings.

Thump! thump!

There was a space about four feet square in the wall that certainly gave forth a hollow sound.

“Stand back!” exclaimed Larry eagerly. “Here goes with the ax.”

He struck into the wall sharply and the cement chipped off in rough pieces, disclosing the brick beneath. Larry paused when he had uncovered a foot of the inner layer, and examined the surface.

“They’re loose—these bricks are loose, and there’s something besides earth behind them!”

I snatched the hammer and drove hard at the wall. The bricks were set up without mortar, and I plucked them out and rapped with my knuckles on a wooden surface.

Even Larry grew excited as we flung out the bricks.

“Ah, lad,” he said, “the old gentleman had a way with him—he had a way with him!” A brick dropped on his foot and he howled in pain.

“Bless the old gentleman’s heart! He made it as easy for us as he could. Now, for the Glenarm millions, —red money all piled up for the ease of counting it,— a thousand pounds in every pile.”

“Don’t be a fool, Larry,” I coughed at him, for the brick dust and the smoke of Larry’s pipe made breathing difficult.

“That’s all the loose brick,—bring the lantern closer,” —and we peered through the aperture upon a wooden door, in which strips of iron were deep-set. It was fastened with a padlock and Larry reached down for the ax.

“Wait!” I called, drawing closer with the lantern. “What’s this?”

The wood of the door was fresh and white, but burned deep on the surface, in this order, were the words:

THE DOOR
OF
BEWILDERMENT

“There are dead men inside, I dare say! Here, my lad, it’s not for me to turn loose the family skeletons,” —and Larry stood aside while I swung the ax and brought it down with a crash on the padlock. It was of no flimsy stuff and the remaining bricks cramped me, but half a dozen blows broke it off.

“The house of a thousand ghosts,” chanted the irrepressible Larry, as I pushed the door open and crawled through.

Whatever the place was it had a floor and I set my feet firmly upon it and turned to take the lantern.

“Hold a bit,” he exclaimed. “Some one’s coming,” —and bending toward the opening I heard the sound of steps down the corridor. In a moment Bates ran up, calling my name with more spirit than I imagined possible in him.

“What is it?” I demanded, crawling out into the tunnel.

“It’s Mr. Pickering. The sheriff has come with him, sir.”

As he spoke his glance fell upon the broken wall and open door. The light of Larry’s lantern struck full upon him. Amazement, and, I thought, a certain satisfaction, were marked upon his countenance.

“Run along, Jack,—I’ll be up a little later,” said Larry. “If the fellow has come in daylight with the sheriff, he isn’t dangerous. It’s his friends that shoot in the dark that give us the trouble.”

I crawled out and stood upright. Bates, staring at the opening, seemed reluctant to leave the spot.

“You seem to have found it, sir,” he said,—I thought a little chokingly. His interest in the matter nettled me; for my first business was to go above for an interview with the executor, and the value of our discovery was secondary.

“Of course we have found it!” I ejaculated, brushing the dust from my clothes. “Is Mr. Stoddard in the library?”

“Oh, yes, sir; I left him entertaining the gentlemen.”

“Their visit is certainly most inopportune,” said Larry. “Give them my compliments and tell them I’ll be up as soon as I’ve articulated the bones of my friend’s ancestors.”

Bates strode on ahead of me with his lantern, and I left Larry crawling through the new-found door as I hurried toward the house. I knew him well enough to be sure he would not leave the spot until he had found what lay behind the Door of Bewilderment.

“You didn’t tell the callers where you expected to find me, did you?” I asked Bates, as he brushed me off in the kitchen.

“No, sir. Mr. Stoddard received the gentlemen. He rang the bell for me and when I went into the library he was saying, ‘Mr. Glenarm is at his studies. Bates,’— he says—‘kindly tell Mr. Glenarm that I’m sorry to interrupt him, but won’t he please come down?’ I thought it rather neat, sir, considering his clerical office. I knew you were below somewhere, sir; the trap-door was open and I found you easily enough.”

Bates’ eyes were brighter than I had ever seen them. A certain buoyant note gave an entirely new tone to his voice. He walked ahead of me to the library door, threw it open and stood aside.

“Here you are, Glenarm,” said Stoddard. Pickering and a stranger stood near the fireplace in their overcoats.

Pickering advanced and offered his hand, but I turned away from him without taking it. His companion, a burly countryman, stood staring, a paper in his hand.

“The sheriff,” Pickering explained, “and our business is rather personal—”

He glanced at Stoddard, who looked at me.

“Mr. Stoddard will do me the kindness to remain,” I said and took my stand beside the chaplain.

“Oh!” Pickering ejaculated scornfully. “I didn’t understand that you had established relations with the neighboring clergy. Your taste is improving, Glenarm.”

“Mr. Glenarm is a friend of mine,” remarked Stoddard quietly. “A very particular friend,” he added.

“I congratulate you—both.”

I laughed. Pickering was surveying the room as he spoke,—and Stoddard suddenly stepped toward him, merely, I think, to draw up a chair for the sheriff; but Pickering, not hearing Stoddard’s step on the soft rug until the clergyman was close beside him, started perceptibly and reddened.

It was certainly ludicrous, and when Stoddard faced me again he was biting his lip.

“Pardon me!” he murmured.

“Now, gentlemen, will you kindly state your business? My own affairs press me.”

Pickering was studying the cartridge boxes on the library table. The sheriff, too, was viewing these effects with interest not, I think, unmixed with awe.

“Glenarm, I don’t like to invoke the law to eject you from this property, but I am left with no alternative. I can’t stay out here indefinitely, and I want to know what I’m to expect.”

“That is a fair question,” I replied. “If it were merely a matter of following the terms of the will I should not hesitate or be here now. But it isn’t the will, or my grandfather, that keeps me, it’s the determination to give you all the annoyance possible,—to make it hard and mighty hard for you to get hold of this house until I have found why you are so much interested in it.”

“You always had a grand way in money matters. As I told you before you came out here, it’s a poor stake. The assets consist wholly of this land and this house, whose quality you have had an excellent opportunity to test. You have doubtless heard that the country people believe there is money concealed here,—but I dare say you have exhausted the possibilities. This is not the first time a rich man has died leaving precious little behind him.”

“You seem very anxious to get possession of a property that you call a poor stake,” I said. “A few acres of land, a half-finished house and an uncertain claim upon a school-teacher!”

“I had no idea you would understand it,” he replied. “The fact that a man may be under oath to perform the solemn duties imposed upon him by the law would hardly appeal to you. But I haven’t come here to debate this question. When are you going to leave?”

“Not till I’m ready,—thanks!”

“Mr. Sheriff, will you serve your writ?” he said, and I looked to Stoddard for any hint from him as to what I should do.

“I believe Mr. Glenarm is quite willing to hear whatever the sheriff has to say to him,” said Stoddard. He stepped nearer to me, as though to emphasize the fact that he belonged to my side of the controversy, and the sheriff read an order of the Wabana County Circuit Court directing me, immediately, to deliver the house and grounds into the keeping of the executor of the will of the estate of John Marshall Glenarm.

The sheriff rather enjoyed holding the center of the stage, and I listened quietly to the unfamiliar phraseology. Before he had quite finished I heard a step in the hall and Larry appeared at the door, pipe in mouth. Pickering turned toward him frowning, but Larry paid not the slightest attention to the executor, leaning against the door with his usual tranquil unconcern.

“I advise you not to trifle with the law, Glenarm,” said Pickering angrily. “You have absolutely no right whatever to be here. And these other gentlemen—your guests, I suppose—are equally trespassers under the law.”

He stared at Larry, who crossed his legs for greater ease in adjusting his lean frame to the door.

“Well, Mr. Pickering, what is the next step?” asked the sheriff, with an importance that had been increased by the legal phrases he had been reading.

“Mr. Pickering,” said Larry, straightening up and taking the pipe from his mouth, “I’m Mr. Glenarm’s counsel. If you will do me the kindness to ask the sheriff to retire for a moment I should like to say a few words to you that you might prefer to keep between ourselves.”

I had usually found it wise to take any cue Larry threw me, and I said:

“Pickering, this is Mr. Donovan, who has every authority to act for me in the matter.”

Pickering looked impatiently from one to the other of us.

“You seem to have the guns, the ammunition and the numbers on your side,” he observed dryly.

“The sheriff may wait within call,” said Larry, and at a word from Pickering the man left the room.

“Now, Mr. Pickering,”—Larry spoke slowly,—“as my friend has explained the case to me, the assets of his grandfather’s estate are all accounted for,—the land hereabouts, this house, the ten thousand dollars in securities and a somewhat vague claim against a lady known as Sister Theresa, who conducts St. Agatha’s School. Is that correct?”

“I don’t ask you to take my word for it, sir,” rejoined Pickering hotly. “I have filed an inventory of the estate, so far as found, with the proper authorities.”

“Certainly. But I merely wish to be sure of my facts for the purpose of this interview, to save me the trouble of going to the records. And, moreover, I am somewhat unfamiliar with your procedure in this country. I am a member, sir, of the Irish Bar. Pardon me, but I repeat my question.”

“I have made oath—that, I trust, is sufficient even for a member of the Irish Bar.”

“Quite so, Mr. Pickering,” said Larry, nodding his head gravely.

He was not, to be sure, a presentable member of any bar, for a smudge detracted considerably from the appearance of one side of his face, his clothes were rumpled and covered with black dust, and his hands were black. But I had rarely seen him so calm. He recrossed his legs, peered into the bowl of his pipe for a moment, then asked, as quietly as though he were soliciting an opinion of the weather:

“Will you tell me, Mr. Pickering, whether you yourself are a debtor of John Marshall Glenarm’s estate?”

Pickering’s face grew white and his eyes stared, and when he tried suddenly to speak his jaw twitched. The room was so still that the breaking of a blazing log on the andirons was a pleasant relief. We stood, the three of us, with our eyes on Pickering, and in my own case I must say that my heart was pounding my ribs at an uncomfortable speed, for I knew Larry was not sparring for time.

The blood rushed into Pickering’s face and he turned toward Larry stormily.

“This is unwarrantable and infamous! My relations with Mr. Glenarm are none of your business. When you remember that after being deserted by his own flesh and blood he appealed to me, going so far as to intrust all his affairs to my care at his death, your reflection is an outrageous insult. I am not accountable to you or any one else!”

“Really, there’s a good deal in all that,” said Larry. “We don’t pretend to any judicial functions. We are perfectly willing to submit the whole business and all my client’s acts to the authorities.”

(I would give much if I could reproduce some hint of the beauty of that word authorities as it rolled from Larry’s tongue!)

“Then, in God’s name, do it, you blackguards!” roared Pickering.

Stoddard, sitting on a table, knocked his heels together gently. Larry recrossed his legs and blew a cloud of smoke. Then, after a quarter of a minute in which he gazed at the ceiling with his quiet blue eyes, he said:

“Yes; certainly, there are always the authorities. And as I have a tremendous respect for your American institutions I shall at once act on your suggestion. Mr. Pickering, the estate is richer than you thought it was. It holds, or will hold, your notes given to the decedent for three hundred and twenty thousand dollars.”

He drew from his pocket a brown envelope, walked to where I stood and placed it in my hands.

At the same time Stoddard’s big figure grew active, and before I realized that Pickering had leaped toward the packet, the executor was sitting in a chair, where the chaplain had thrown him. He rallied promptly, stuffing his necktie into his waistcoat; he even laughed a little.

“So much old paper! You gentlemen are perfectly welcome to it.”

“Thank you!” jerked Larry.

“Mr. Glenarm and I had many transactions together, and he must have forgotten to destroy those papers.”

“Quite likely,” I remarked. “It is interesting to know that Sister Theresa wasn’t his only debtor.”

Pickering stepped to the door and called the sheriff.

“I shall give you until to-morrow morning at nine o’clock to vacate the premises. The court understands this situation perfectly. These claims are utterly worthless, as I am ready to prove.”

“Perfectly, perfectly,” repeated the sheriff.

“I believe that is all,” said Larry, pointing to the door with his pipe.

The sheriff was regarding him with particular attention.

“What did I understand your name to be?” he demanded.

“Laurance Donovan,” Larry replied coolly.

Pickering seemed to notice the name now and his eyes lighted disagreeably.

“I think I have heard of your friend before,” he said, turning to me. “I congratulate you on the international reputation of your counsel. He’s esteemed so highly in Ireland that they offer a large reward for his return. Sheriff, I think we have finished our business for to-day.”

He seemed anxious to get the man away, and we gave them escort to the outer gate where a horse and buggy were waiting.

“Now, I’m in for it,” said Larry, as I locked the gate. “We’ve spiked one of his guns, but I’ve given him a new one to use against myself. But come, and I will show you the Door of Bewilderment before I skip.”

CHAPTER XXIV

A PROWLER OF THE NIGHT

Down we plunged into the cellar, through the trap and to the Door of Bewilderment.

“Don’t expect too much,” admonished Larry; “I can’t promise you a single Spanish coin.”

“Perish the ambition! We have blocked Pickering’s game, and nothing else matters,” I said.

We crawled through the hole in the wall and lighted candles. The room was about seven feet square. At the farther end was an oblong wooden door, close to the ceiling, and Larry tugged at the fastening until it came down, bringing with it a mass of snow and leaves.

“Gentlemen,” he said, “we are at the edge of the ravine. Do you see the blue sky? And yonder, if you will twist your necks a bit, is the boat-house.”

“Well, let the scenic effects go and show us where you found those papers,” I urged.

“Speaking of mysteries, that is where I throw up my hands, lads. It’s quickly told. Here is a table, and here is a tin despatch box, which lies just where I found it. It was closed and the key was in the lock. I took out that packet—it wasn’t even sealed—saw the character of the contents, and couldn’t resist the temptation to try the effect of an announcement of its discovery on your friend Pickering. Now that is nearly all. I found this piece of paper under the tape with which the envelope was tied, and I don’t hesitate to say that when I read it I laughed until I thought I should shake down the cellar. Read it, John Glenarm!”

He handed me a sheet of legal-cap paper on which was written these words:

HE LAUGHS BEST WHO LAUGHS LAST

“What do you think is so funny in this?” I demanded.

“Who wrote it, do you think?” asked Stoddard.

“Who wrote it, do you ask? Why, your grandfather wrote it! John Marshall Glenarm, the cleverest, grandest old man that ever lived, wrote it!” declaimed Larry, his voice booming loudly in the room. “It’s all a great big game, fixed up to try you and Pickering,—but principally you, you blockhead! Oh, it’s grand, perfectly, deliciously grand,—and to think it should be my good luck to share in it!”

“Humph! I’m glad you’re amused, but it doesn’t strike me as being so awfully funny. Suppose those papers had fallen into Pickering’s hands; then where would the joke have been, I should like to know!”

“On you, my lad, to be sure! The old gentleman wanted you to study architecture; he wanted you to study his house; he even left a little pointer in an old book! Oh, it’s too good to be true!”

“That’s all clear enough,” observed Stoddard, knocking upon the despatch box with his knuckles. “But why do you suppose he dug this hole here with its outlet on the ravine?”

“Oh, it was the way of him!” explained Larry. “He liked the idea of queer corners and underground passages. This is a bully hiding-place for man or treasure, and that outlet into the ravine makes it possible to get out of the house with nobody the wiser. It’s in keeping with the rest of his scheme. Be gay, comrades! To-morrow will likely find us with plenty of business on our hands. At present we hold the fort, and let us have a care lest we lose it.”

We closed the ravine door, restored the brick as best we could, and returned to the library. We made a list of the Pickering notes and spent an hour discussing this new feature of the situation.

“That’s a large amount of money to lend one man,” said Stoddard.

“True; and from that we may argue that Mr. Glenarm didn’t give Pickering all he had. There’s more somewhere. If only I didn’t have to run—” and Larry’s face fell as he remembered his own plight.

“I’m a selfish pig, old man! I’ve been thinking only of my own affairs. But I never relied on you as much as now!”

“Those fellows will sound the alarm against Donovan, without a doubt, on general principles and to land a blow on you,” remarked Stoddard thoughtfully.

“But you can get away, Larry. We’ll help you off to-night. I don’t intend to stand between you and liberty. This extradition business is no joke,—if they ever get you back in Ireland it will be no fun getting you off. You’d better run for it before Pickering and his sheriff spring their trap.”

“Yes; that’s the wise course. Glenarm and I can hold the fort here. His is a moral issue, really, and I’m in for a siege of a thousand years,” said the clergyman earnestly, “if it’s necessary to beat Pickering. I may go to jail in the end, too, I suppose.”

“I want you both to leave. It’s unfair to mix you up in this ugly business of mine. Your stake’s bigger than mine, Larry. And yours, too, Stoddard; why, your whole future—your professional standing and prospects would be ruined if we got into a fight here with the authorities.”

“Thank you for mentioning my prospects! I’ve never had them referred to before,” laughed Stoddard. “No; your grandfather was a friend of the Church and I can’t desert his memory. I’m a believer in a vigorous Church militant and I’m enlisted for the whole war. But Donovan ought to go, if he will allow me to advise him.”

Larry filled his pipe at the fireplace.

“Lads,” he said, his hands behind him, rocking gently as was his way, “let us talk of art and letters,—I’m going to stay. It hasn’t often happened in my life that the whole setting of the stage has pleased me as much as this. Lost treasure; secret passages; a gentleman rogue storming the citadel; a private chaplain on the premises; a young squire followed by a limelight; sheriff, school-girls and a Sisterhood distributed through the landscape,—and me, with Scotland Yard looming duskily in the distance. Glenarm, I’m going to stay.”

There was no shaking him, and the spirits of all of us rose after this new pledge of loyalty. Stoddard stayed for dinner, and afterward we began again our eternal quest for the treasure, our hopes high from Larry’s lucky strike of the afternoon, and with a new eagerness born of the knowledge that the morrow would certainly bring us face to face with the real crisis. We ranged the house from tower to cellar; we overhauled the tunnel, for, it seemed to me, the hundredth time.

It was my watch, and at midnight, after Stoddard and Larry had reconnoitered the grounds and Bates and I had made sure of all the interior fastenings, I sent them off to bed and made myself comfortable with a pipe in the library.

I was glad of the respite, glad to be alone,—to consider my talk with Marian Devereux at St. Agatha’s, and her return with Pickering. Why could she not always have been Olivia, roaming the woodland, or the girl in gray, or that woman, so sweet in her dignity, who came down the stairs at the Armstrongs’? Her own attitude toward me was so full of contradictions; she had appeared to me in so many moods and guises, that my spirit ranged the whole gamut of feeling as I thought of her. But it was the recollection of Pickering’s infamous conduct that colored all my doubts of her. Pickering had always been in my way, and here, but for the chance by which Larry had found the notes, I should have had no weapon to use against him.

The wind rose and drove shrilly around the house. A bit of scaffolding on the outer walls rattled loose somewhere and crashed down on the terrace. I grew restless, my mind intent upon the many chances of the morrow, and running forward to the future. Even if I won in my strife with Pickering I had yet my way to make in the world. His notes were probably worthless, —I did not doubt that. I might use them to procure his removal as executor, but I did not look forward with any pleasure to a legal fight over a property that had brought me only trouble.

Something impelled me to go below, and, taking a lantern, I tramped somberly through the cellar, glanced at the heating apparatus, and, remembering that the chapel entrance to the tunnel was unguarded, followed the corridor to the trap, and opened it. The cold air blew up sharply and I thrust my head down to listen.

A sound at once arrested me. I thought at first it must be the suction of the air, but Glenarm House was no place for conjectures, and I put the lantern aside and jumped down into the tunnel. A gleam of light showed for an instant, then the darkness and silence were complete.

I ran rapidly over the smooth floor, which I had traversed so often that I knew its every line. My only weapon was one of Stoddard’s clubs. Near the Door of Bewilderment I paused and listened. The tunnel was perfectly quiet. I took a step forward and stumbled over a brick, fumbled on the wall for the opening which we had closed carefully that afternoon, and at the instant I found it a lantern flashed blindingly in my face and I drew back, crouching involuntarily, and clenching the club ready to strike.

“Good evening, Mr. Glenarm!”

Marian Devereux’s voice broke the silence, and Marian Devereux’s face, with the full light of the lantern upon it, was bent gravely upon me. Her voice, as I heard it there,—her face, as I saw it there,—are the things that I shall remember last when my hour comes to go hence from this world. The slim fingers, as they clasped the wire screen of the lantern, held my gaze for a second. The red tam-o’-shanter that I had associated with her youth and beauty was tilted rakishly on one side of her pretty head. To find her here, seeking, like a thief in the night, for some means of helping Arthur Pickering, was the bitterest drop in the cup. I felt as though I had been struck with a bludgeon.

“I beg your pardon!” she said, and laughed. “There doesn’t seem to be anything to say, does there? Well, we do certainly meet under the most unusual, not to say unconventional, circumstances, Squire Glenarm. Please go away or turn your back. I want to get out of this donjon keep.”

She took my hand coolly enough and stepped down into the passage. Then I broke upon her stormily.

“You don’t seem to understand the gravity of what you are doing! Don’t you know that you are risking your life in crawling through this house at midnight? —that even to serve Arthur Pickering, a life is a pretty big thing to throw away? Your infatuation for that blackguard seems to carry you far, Miss Devereux.”

She swung the lantern at arm’s length back and forth so that its rays at every forward motion struck my face like a blow.

“It isn’t exactly pleasant in this cavern. Unless you wish to turn me over to the lord high executioner, I will bid you good night.”

“But the infamy of this—of coming in here to spy upon me—to help my enemy—the man who is seeking plunder—doesn’t seem to trouble you.”

“No, not a particle!” she replied quietly, and then, with an impudent fling, “Oh, no!” She held up the lantern to look at the wick. “I’m really disappointed to find that you were a little ahead of me, Squire Glenarm. I didn’t give you credit for so much—perseverance. But if you have the notes—”

“The notes! He told you there were notes, did he? The coward sent you here to find them, after his other tools failed him?”

She laughed that low laugh of hers that was like the bubble of a spring.

[Illustration: “I beg your pardon!” she said, and laughed.]

“Of course no one would dare deny what the great Squire Glenarm says,” she said witheringly.

“You can’t know what your perfidy means to me,” I said. “That night, at the Armstrongs’, I thrilled at the sight of you. As you came down the stairway I thought of you as my good angel, and I belonged to you, —all my life, the better future that I wished to make for your sake.”

“Please don’t!” And I felt that my words had touched her; that there were regret and repentance in her tone and in the gesture with which she turned from me.

She hurried down the passage swinging the lantern at her side, and I followed, so mystified, so angered by her composure, that I scarcely knew what I did. She even turned, with pretty courtesy, to hold the light for me at the crypt steps,—a service that I accepted perforce and with joyless acquiescence in the irony of it. I knew that I did not believe in her; her conduct as to Pickering was utterly indefensible,—I could not forget that; but the light of her eyes, her tranquil brow, the sensitive lips, whose mockery stung and pleased in a breath,—by such testimony my doubts were alternately reinforced and disarmed. Swept by these changing moods I followed her out into the crypt.

“You seem to know a good deal about this place, and I suppose I can’t object to your familiarizing yourself with your own property. And the notes—I’ll give myself the pleasure of handing them to you to-morrow. You can cancel them and give them to Mr. Pickering,— a pretty pledge between you!”

I thrust my hands into my pockets to give an impression of ease I did not feel.

“Yes,” she remarked in a practical tone, “three hundred and twenty thousand dollars is no mean sum of money. Mr. Pickering will undoubtedly be delighted to have his debts canceled—”

“In exchange for a life of devotion,” I sneered. “So you knew the sum—the exact amount of these notes. He hasn’t served you well; he should have told you that we found them to-day.”

“You are not nice, are you, Squire Glenarm, when you are cross?”

She was like Olivia now. I felt the utter futility of attempting to reason with a woman who could become a child at will. She walked up the steps and out into the church vestibule. Then before the outer door she spoke with decision.

“We part here, if you please! And—I have not the slightest intention of trying to explain my errand into that passage. You have jumped to your own conclusion, which will have to serve you. I advise you not to think very much about it,—to the exclusion of more important business,—Squire Glenarm!”

She lifted the lantern to turn out its light, and it made a glory of her face, but she paused and held it toward me.

“Pardon me! You will need this to light you home.”

“But you must not cross the park alone!”

“Good night! Please be sure to close the door to the passage when you go down. You are a dreadfully heedless person, Squire Glenarm.”

She flung open the outer chapel-door, and ran along the path toward St. Agatha’s. I watched her in the starlight until a bend in the path hid her swift-moving figure.

Down through the passage I hastened, her lantern lighting my way. At the Door of Bewilderment I closed the opening, setting up the line of wall as we had left it in the afternoon, and then I went back to the library, freshened the fire and brooded before it until Bates came to relieve me at dawn.

CHAPTER XXV

BESIEGED

It was nine o’clock. A thermometer on the terrace showed the mercury clinging stubbornly to a point above zero; but the still air was keen and stimulating, and the sun argued for good cheer in a cloudless sky. We had swallowed some breakfast, though I believe no one had manifested an appetite, and we were cheering ourselves with the idlest talk possible. Stoddard, who had been to the chapel for his usual seven o’clock service, was deep in the pocket Greek testament he always carried.

Bates ran in to report a summons at the outer wall, and Larry and I went together to answer it, sending Bates to keep watch toward the lake.

Our friend the sheriff, with a deputy, was outside in a buggy. He stood up and talked to us over the wall.

“You gents understand that I’m only doing my duty. It’s an unpleasant business, but the court orders me to eject all trespassers on the premises, and I’ve got to do it.”

“The law is being used by an infamous scoundrel to protect himself. I don’t intend to give in. We can hold out here for three months, if necessary, and I advise you to keep away and not be made a tool for a man like Pickering.”

The sheriff listened respectfully, resting his arms on top of the wall.

“You ought to understand, Mr. Glenarm, that I ain’t the court; I’m the sheriff, and it’s not for me to pass on these questions. I’ve got my orders and I’ve got to enforce ’em, and I hope you will not make it necessary for me to use violence. The judge said to me, ‘We deplore violence in such cases.’ Those were his Honor’s very words.”

“You may give his Honor my compliments and tell him that we are sorry not to see things his way, but there are points involved in this business that he doesn’t know anything about, and we, unfortunately, have no time to lay them before him.”

The sheriff’s seeming satisfaction with his position on the wall and his disposition to parley had begun to arouse my suspicions, and Larry several times exclaimed impatiently at the absurdity of discussing my affairs with a person whom he insisted on calling a constable, to the sheriff’s evident annoyance. The officer now turned upon him.

“You, sir,—we’ve got our eye on you, and you’d better come along peaceable. Laurance Donovan—the description fits you to a ‘t’.”

“You could buy a nice farm with that reward, couldn’t you—” began Larry, but at that moment Bates ran toward us calling loudly.

“They’re coming across the lake, sir,” he reported, and instantly the sheriff’s head disappeared, and as we ran toward the house we heard his horse pounding down the road toward St. Agatha’s.

“The law be damned. They don’t intend to come in here by the front door as a matter of law,” said Larry. “Pickering’s merely using the sheriff to give respectability to his manoeuvers for those notes and the rest of it.”

It was no time for a discussion of motives. We ran across the meadow past the water tower and through the wood down to the boat-house. Far out on the lake we saw half a dozen men approaching the Glenarm grounds. They advanced steadily over the light snow that lay upon the ice, one man slightly in advance and evidently the leader.

“It’s Morgan!” exclaimed Bates. “And there’s Ferguson.”

Larry chuckled and slapped his thigh.

“Observe that stocky little devil just behind the leader? He’s my friend from Scotland Yard. Lads! this is really an international affair.”

“Bates, go back to the house and call at any sign of attack,” I ordered. “The sheriff’s loose somewhere.”

“And Pickering is directing his forces from afar,” remarked Stoddard.

“I count ten men in Morgan’s line,” said Larry, “and the sheriff and his deputy make two more. That’s twelve, not counting Pickering, that we know of on the other side.”

“Warn them away before they get much nearer,” suggested Stoddard. “We don’t want to hurt people if we can help it,”—and at this I went to the end of the pier. Morgan and his men were now quite near, and there was no mistaking their intentions. Most of them carried guns, the others revolvers and long ice-hooks.

“Morgan,” I called, holding up my hands for a truce, “we wish you no harm, but if you enter these grounds you do so at your peril.”

“We’re all sworn deputy sheriffs,” called the caretaker smoothly. “We’ve got the law behind us.”

“That must be why you’re coming in the back way,” I replied.

The thick-set man whom Larry had identified as the English detective now came closer and addressed me in a high key.

“You’re harboring a bad man, Mr. Glenarm. You’d better give him up. The American law supports me, and you’ll get yourself in trouble if you protect that man. You may not understand, sir, that he’s a very dangerous character.”

“Thanks, Davidson!” called Larry. “You’d better keep out of this. You know I’m a bad man with the shillalah!”

“That you are, you blackguard!” yelled the officer, so spitefully that we all laughed.

I drew back to the boat-house.

“They are not going to kill anybody if they can help it,” remarked Stoddard, “any more than we are. Even deputy sheriffs are not turned loose to do murder, and the Wabana County Court wouldn’t, if it hadn’t been imposed on by Pickering, lend itself to a game like this.”

“Now we’re in for it,” yelled Larry, and the twelve men, in close order, came running across the ice toward the shore.

“Open order, and fall back slowly toward the house,” I commanded. And we deployed from the boat-house, while the attacking party still clung together,—a strategic error, as Larry assured us.

“Stay together, lads. Don’t separate; you’ll get lost if you do,” he yelled.

Stoddard bade him keep still, and we soon had our hands full with a preliminary skirmish. Morgan’s line advanced warily. Davidson, the detective, seemed disgusted at Morgan’s tactics, openly abused the caretaker, and ran ahead of his column, revolver in hand, bearing down upon Larry, who held our center.

The Englishman’s haste was his undoing. The light fall of snow a few days before had gathered in the little hollows of the wood deceptively. The detective plunged into one of these and fell sprawling on all fours,—a calamity that caused his comrades to pause uneasily. Larry was upon his enemy in a flash, wrenched his pistol away and pulled the man to his feet.

“Ah, Davidson! There’s many a slip! Move, if you dare and I’ll plug you with your own gun.” And he stood behind the man, using him as a shield while Morgan and the rest of the army hung near the boat-house uncertainly.

“It’s the strategic intellect we’ve captured, General,” observed Larry to me. “You see the American invaders were depending on British brains.”

Morgan now acted on the hint we had furnished him and sent his men out as skirmishers. The loss of the detective had undoubtedly staggered the caretaker, and we were slowly retreating toward the house, Larry with one hand on the collar of his prisoner and the other grasping the revolver with which he poked the man frequently in the ribs. We slowly continued our retreat, fearing a rush, which would have disposed of us