The morning mail brought a letter from Searles acknowledging my congratulations on his play. While my enthusiastic praise pleased him, he was very scornful of my suggestions about available stars, and seemed even more depressed than when he talked to me.
"It's impossible for me to plan other work. 'Lady Larkspur' ate the soul out of me. I'm done; finished, clean out of the running. There's only this to report. I had a letter from Dalton saying that some time ago he asked at the hotel where he sent the script of 'Lady Larkspur' to know whether Miss Dewing had sent a forwarding address. He had to see the manager before he got any satisfaction, but he did learn that her accumulated mail had been called for by some one whose identity was not disclosed. Of course this isn't much to hang a hope on, but if that play is what I think it is and Miss Violet Dewing ever reads it she's going to jump for the telegraph office the moment she finishes the last act. I have no plans for returning East; the folks at home let me do as I please, and it's a relief to be in seclusion where I hear nothing of the doings of Broadway. I hope your ancient globe-trotting aunt still lingers in the Far East! Keep the ink flowing, son. That novel ought to be well under way when I get back."
The tale I had begun seemed utter trash in comparison with the story of Alice Bashford, in which, much against my will, I had become a minor character. I had rather prided myself on my ability to see through a plot in the first chapter of the most complicated mystery story, but there were points in this unwritten tale that baffled me.
I kept away from the house until dinnertime, when I was received quite as an old friend by Alice and Mrs. Farnsworth. The table talk was of Celtic poetry, and proved less disturbing to Antoine than the previous night's discussion of ghosts.
Their day had been spent, they explained, in a further examination of my uncle's Japanese loot, and they had taken a long walk beyond the estate's boundaries and were enthusiastic about the landscape.
"It's so beautifully peaceful all about here," Alice murmured. "I feel that I never want to move again."
"That's a real tribute to America," Mrs. Farnsworth remarked; "for Alice dearly loves new scenes. She inherited a taste for travel from her father, who put some new places on the maps, you know."
I didn't know and I wanted to ask questions about Alice's father, but as though anxious to frustrate such inquiries my aunt asked how close we were to the place made famous by Israel Putnam's spectacular escape from the British. She had read the story and would motor to the scene, she declared. It was quite clear that there were chapters in her life that were not to be opened for my perusal. No sooner had I caught a glimpse of a promising page than the book was politely closed. A curtain hung between the immediate present at Barton-on-the-Sound and other scenes and incidents of the girl's life; and Mrs. Farnsworth was equally detached from any tangible background. It seemed that I might meet them daily for the rest of my life in this same friendly fashion without adding a particle to my knowledge of them.
I became alert immediately when, as we rose from the table, Alice said, with the air of asking an unimportant favor:
"We were speaking last night of a man who has been asking for us here. His visits have alarmed the servants, but there is nothing to fear from him. You know"—she smiled at Mrs. Farnsworth—"it's rather he who seems to fear us; that, at least, is our impression, though we have no idea why he should do so. Still, it's rather good fun to find yourself an object of special attention and to be followed, even pursued. We've even led him on a little, haven't we, Constance?"
Mrs. Farnsworth laughingly admitted that they had led the gentleman on a trifle, "but with all circumspection," she protested.
"We met him here and there in Tokyo, and later were surprised to find him crossing on our steamer. We threw him off in the Canadian Rockies, where we stopped for a day, and eluded him in Chicago, where he was evidently lying in wait for us."
"Delightful!" I exclaimed.
"But please don't get the idea that the man annoys us," interposed Mrs. Farnsworth.
"Far from it!" cried Alice.
"You've seen enough of us perhaps to understand that we enjoy little adventures," said Mrs. Farnsworth. "The man pretends to be interested in Mr. Bashford's art treasures. Antoine's story about the disguise is rather against that; but we will give him the benefit of the doubt. What we are hoping is that something really amusing may come of his persistent pursuit. With you and the army of servants here we feel perfectly safe; so we're for giving him every chance to show his hand."
"He is the Count Giuseppe Montani," said my aunt, "who represents himself as a connoisseur—a lover of the beautiful."
"The mystery is solved! It is easy to understand why he has haunted the place."
"Yes; quite easy. Count Montani is very anxious to see the porcelains."
"I wasn't referring to the pottery; but I shan't press the matter."
"I advise you not to; your remark was highly improper from a nephew to an aunt! I have told you about all I know of this Italian gentleman. I am going to ask a favor. He telephoned from Stamford this afternoon to know whether we had arrived, and I bade him call to-night. I should be glad if you would remain until he leaves. I should like to know what you make of him."
"Certainly," I assented, pleased that she had taken me into her confidence and deeply curious as to the Italian connoisseur. What she had told so frankly and plausibly did not, however, touch upon the matter of the interest shown by the American State Department in my aunt's arrival at Barton, which troubled me much more than the antics of the Italian who had followed the women across the Pacific.
Count Montani arrived shortly and was received in the drawing-room. The ladies greeted him with the greatest cordiality. As he crossed the room I verified the limp and other points of Antoine's description. His bearing was that of a gentleman; and in his very correct evening dress he hardly looked like a man who would disguise himself and attempt to rob a house. He spoke English all but perfectly and proceeded at once to talk a great deal.
"I was sad when I found I had so narrowly missed you at Seattle, and again at Chicago. You travel far too rapidly for one of my age!"
His age might have been thirty. He was a suave, polished, sophisticated person. Nothing was more natural than that he should pause in his travels to call upon two agreeable women he had met on a Pacific steamer. Possibly he was in love with Alice Bashford; this was not a difficult state of heart and mind for a man to argue himself into. She was even more strikingly beautiful to-night than I had thought her before. She was again in white—it was only in daytime that she wore black—and white was exceedingly becoming to her. As we talked she plied listlessly a fan—a handsome trinket of ostrich plumes. A pretty woman and a fan are the happiest possible combination. There is no severer test of grace than a woman's manner of using a fan. A clumsy woman makes an implement of this plaything, flourishing it to emphasize her talk, or, what is worse, pointing with it like an instructor before a blackboard. But in graceful hands it is unobtrusive, a mere bit of decoration that teases and fascinates the beholder's eye.
With all his poise and equanimity I was distinctly conscious that Montani's dark eyes were intent upon the idly swaying fan. I thought at first it was her hands that interested him as they unfailingly interested me, but when, from time to time, she put down the fan his gaze still followed it. And yet there was nothing novel in the delicate combination of ivory and feathers. I had seen many fans that to all appearances were just like it. Once, as she picked it up and lazily opened it, I saw him bend forward eagerly, then, finding that I had noted his eagerness, he rose, pretending that a brass screen before the fireplace had caught his eye and asked whether it was not a Florentine production, which shook my faith in his connoisseurship, as I had bought the thing myself from a New York brassworker who had made it to my order.
Montani spoke of the porcelains. "Oh, to be sure! They don't show to best advantage in electric light, do they? But I can have a few of the prize pieces taken into the dining-room," said Alice.
Mrs. Farnsworth had excused herself to finish a letter, and from my chair I could see her head bent over the big desk in the library. Alice rang for Antoine, and I followed her into the hall to offer my aid.
"Oh, don't trouble," she said. "Antoine can do anything necessary. Yes; thanks; if you will turn on the dining-room lights."
I was gone hardly half a minute. When I reached the drawing-room door Montani had crossed the room to the table on which Alice had dropped the fan and was examining it closely. He faced the door, and the moment he detected me exclaimed carelessly: "An exquisite little bauble! I am always curious as to the source of such trifles. I was looking for the maker's imprimatur. I know a Parisian who is the leading manufacturer of the world. But it is not his, I see."
As we stood talking of other things he plied the fan carelessly as though for the pleasure of the faint scent it exhaled, and when Alice called us he put it down carefully where he had found it.
He really did seem to know something about ceramics and praised, with lively enthusiasm, the pieces that had been set out on the table. One piece, as to whose authenticity my uncle had entertained serious doubts, Montani unhesitatingly pronounced genuine and stated very plausible reasons for his opinion.
On the whole, he was an interesting fellow. When he had finished his inspections he lingered for only a few minutes and took his leave, saying that he was spending the night at an inn near Stamford.
"Well," said Alice when the whir of his machine had died away, "what do you think of him?"
"A very agreeable gentleman," I answered. "If he doesn't know porcelains, he fakes his talk admirably."
"And as to fans—" suggested Mrs. Farnsworth.
I had not intended to mention Montani's interest in Alice's fan, and the remark surprised me.
"Oh, I saw it all from the library," laughed Mrs. Farnsworth. "My back was to the door, but I was facing a mirror. The moment you and Alice went into the hall he pounced upon the fan—pounced is the only word that describes it. He concealed his interest in it very neatly when you caught him examining it."
"Fans are harmless things," said Alice, "and if there's any story attached to this one I'm not aware of it. My father bought it in Paris about three years ago, and it has never been out of my possession except to have it repaired. There's a Japanese jeweller who does wonderful things in the way of repairing trinkets of every kind. I left it with him for a few days. I can't tell now which panel was broken, he did his work so deftly."
I took it from her and balanced it in my fingers. It was a beautiful piece of workmanship with the simplest carvings on the ivory panels.
"He couldn't have seen it anywhere before to-night," observed Alice musingly. "In fact, I hadn't used it at all for a year. It was really by mistake that my maid put it into my trunk when I went to Japan. I didn't want to risk breaking it again, so I've been carrying it in a hand-bag. The last day we were in Tokyo I think I had it in our sitting-room in the hotel, to make sure it wasn't jammed into the trunk again. We had a good many callers—a number of people came in to bid us good-by, but I'm sure Count Montani was not among them, and it would have been impossible for him to see it at any other time."
"Oh, there is nothing disturbing in the count's interest in the thing," said Mrs. Farnsworth with an air of dismissing the matter. "If it were a Jade trinket inscribed with Chinese mysteries, you might imagine that it would be sought by some one—I have heard of such things—but Alice's fan has no such history."
"We weren't very hospitable," said Alice. "I might have asked Count Montani to dine with us to-morrow; and we might even have put him up for the night in this vast house."
"Not with Antoine on the premises!" I exclaimed. "Antoine is convinced that the man is what we call in America a crook. And Antoine takes his responsibilities very seriously."
While I was breakfasting at the garage the next morning Antoine appeared and, waiting until Flynn was out of hearing, handed me a slip of paper.
"That's a New York automobile number," he said. "It was on the tag of that machine the party came in last night. I heard him saying, sir, as how he had motored up from the Elkton Inn at Stamford. Visitors from Stamford would hardly send in to the city for a machine."
I bade him wait while I called the Elkton by telephone. No such person as Giuseppe Montani had spent the night there or had been a guest of the house within the memory of the clerk. Antoine's chest swelled at this confirmation of his suspicions.
"If the man returns, treat him as you did last night—as though he were entitled to the highest consideration."
"He won't come back—not the same way," said Antoine. "He mentioned the Elkton just to throw you off. The next you hear of him will be quite different."
"You mean he'll come as a burglar?"
"That's what's in my mind, Mr. Singleton. Everything seems very queer, sir."
"Such as what, Antoine?"
"The widow has been telegraphing and telephoning considerable, sir."
"There must be no spying upon these ladies!" I admonished severely. "All the people on the place must remember that Mrs. Bashford is mistress here, and entitled to fullest respect."
He had hardly gone before Torrence had me on the wire to hear my report and to say that Raynor had left Washington for a weekend in Virginia.
"That lets us out for a few days, but I'll have to report that Mrs. Bashford is at Barton the moment I learn that he is back in Washington."
I assured him that nothing had occurred to encourage a suspicion that Mrs. Bashford was not all that she pretended to be. The day was marked by unusual activities on the part of the waiters and bell-hops. Instead of the company drills to which I had become accustomed they moved about in pairs along the shore and the lines of the fences. I learned that Antoine had ordered this, and the "troops" were obeying him with the utmost seriousness. The "service" on the estate was certainly abundant. It was only necessary to whistle and one of the Tyringham veterans would come running.
In spite of the complete satisfaction I had expressed to Torrence as to the perfect integrity and honest intentions of the two women, the curiosity of the American State Department and the visit of Montani required elucidation beyond my powers. At dinner they were in the merriest humor. The performances of the little army throughout the day had amused them greatly.
"How delightfully feudal!" exclaimed Alice. "Really we should have a moat and drawbridge to make the thing perfect. Constance and I are the best protected women in the world!"
We extracted all the fun possible from the idea that the estate was under siege; that Alice was the chatelaine of a beleaguered castle, and that before help could reach us we were in danger of being starved out by the enemy. They called into play the poetry which had so roused Antoine's apprehensions, and their talk bristled with quotations. Alice rose after the salad and repeated at least a page of Malory, and the Knights of the Round Table having thus been introduced, Mrs. Farnsworth recited several sonorous passages from "The Idyls of the King." They flung lines from Browning's "In a Balcony" at each other as though they were improvising. The befuddlement of Antoine and the waiter who assisted him added to the general joy. They undoubtedly thought the two women quite out of their heads, and it was plain that I suffered greatly in Antoine's estimation by my encouragement of this frivolity. Mrs. Farnsworth walked majestically round the table and addressed to me the lines from Macbeth beginning:
"Glamis thou art, and Cawdor; and shalt be What thou art promised,"
while Antoine clung to the sideboard listening with mouth open and eyes rolling.
Later, in the living-room, Alice sang some old ballads. She was more adorable than ever at the piano. It was a happiness beyond any in my experience of women to watch her, to note the play of light upon her golden head, to yield to the spell of her voice. Ballads had never been sung before with the charm and feeling she put into them; and after ending with "Douglas, Douglas," she responded to my importunity with "Ben Bolt," and then dashed into a sparkling thing of Chopin's, played it brilliantly and rose, laughingly mocking my applause.
I left the house like a man over whom an enchantment has been spoken and was not pleased when Antoine blocked my path: "Pardon me, sir."
"Bother my pardon; what's troubling you now?" I demanded.
"It's nothing troubling me, sir; not particularly. If you give me time, I think I'll grow used to the poetry talk and playing at being queens. It's like children in a family I served once; an English family, most respectable. But in a widow, sir——"
"God knows we ought to be glad when grown-ups have the heart to play at being children and can get away with it as beautifully as those women do! What else is on your mind?"
"It's about Elsie, sir." I groaned at the mention of Flynn's German wife. "I'm sorry, sir; but I thought I should report it. It was a man who came to see her this afternoon. You was out for your walk, and Flynn had taken the ladies for a drive, so Elsie was alone at the garage. This person rode in on the grocer's truck from the village, which is how he got by the gate. As it happened, Pierre—he was a waiter at the Tyringham, a Swiss, who understands German—had gone into the garage for a nap; he's quite old, sir, and has his snooze every afternoon."
"He's entitled to it," I remarked; "he must be a thousand years old."
"From what he heard Pierre thought the man a spy, sir. He wanted Elsie to steal something from the house, it was a fan he wanted her to take most particular, and it was to be done soon, to-day if she could manage. It was for the love of the Fatherland that he wanted her to do it. Did you notice, sir, that Mrs. Bashford didn't have the fan to-night? Not that one she carried last night."
I had noticed that she had substituted a tiny Japanese fan for the one that Montani had inspected so eagerly. When I spoke of the change she had said the other was too precious for every-day use, and she meant to keep it locked up.
"I hate to bother you, sir, knowing you——"
The mention of the fan had brought me to an abrupt halt. I resented having the thing thrust at me in the ecstatic mood in which I had left the house, but the visit of the German-speaking stranger was serious, and Antoine knew that his story had startled me. He told me further that the man had carefully outlined to Elsie just how she could take advantage of her freedom of the house to appropriate the fan when the ladies were out and the servants off the second floor. She was to be paid for her assistance; two hundred dollars had been promised; even more had been suggested. Elsie and the stranger had left the garage and passed out of ear-shot before Elsie fully consented; but Pierre had given Antoine the impression that she would make the attempt.
"It was to be for the Kaiser, for Germany," declared Antoine bitterly. "And she was to be careful about Flynn. I always thought Flynn was straight—I did indeed, sir!"
"I think Flynn and his wife are both honest, but we'll take no chance. Warn the guards to be on the alert. We don't want Elsie to get the idea that she's being watched; so tell the men to keep away from the garage. I'll keep an eye on the Flynns. You go home and go to bed...."
The deep calm of the country night had settled upon the shore, and the Flynns' quarters were perfectly tranquil. It didn't seem possible that an international episode was in process of incubation in that quiet neighborhood. I began to think that the general distrust of the German woman by her associates might be responsible for Pierre's story. But, viewed in any light, I had a duty to perform. If Elsie had visited the house and purloined the fan, she would be very likely to get rid of it as quickly as possible, and I determined to keep watch. I drew the blinds, got into my dressing-gown and, reinforcing the lampshade with a newspaper to deaden the light, proceeded to read.
It was on toward one o'clock and I was dozing when a sound roused me. A door on the Flynn side of the hall creaked; there was silence, then I heard furtive steps on the stair. I snapped out my light and peered out of the window just as Elsie's robust figure disappeared into the shadows. I was about to follow when the creaking of the Flynn door was repeated. In a moment another peep through the shade showed me Flynn himself, and he, too, quickly vanished. Here was a situation indeed! If Elsie was keeping tryst with her co-conspirator of the afternoon and her husband was spying upon her, a row of large proportions was likely to result at any moment. I leaned from the window as far as I dared, and saw the woman close to the wall at the farther end of the building. The scene was well set for trouble, and I was wondering what I could do to avert a disturbance and the exposure of the foolish woman when the whole matter was taken out of my hands.
"You fool! You scoundrel!" she bellowed in German. "That you should think me a plaything to commit a robbery for you! That I should steal from my mistress to satisfy you, you piece of swine-flesh!"
I had often heard Elsie vocally disciplining her Irish husband and knew the power of her lungs and the vigor of her invective, but she seemed bent upon apprising the whole commonwealth of Connecticut of the fact that she was vastly displeased with the person she was addressing, who was certainly not Flynn. Amid sounds of a scuffle and the continuous outpouring of billingsgate the light over the garage door flashed on suddenly and disclosed Flynn in the act of precipitating himself into the fray. Elsie had grasped, and was stoutly clinging to a tall man who was trying to free himself of her muscular embrace. Her cries meanwhile included some of the raciest terms in the German dictionary and others—mouthfuls of frightfulness—that I didn't recognize.
When I reached the open Flynn was dancing round the belligerents like an excited boxer, occasionally springing in to land a blow; and all the while Elsie continued to address her captive and the world at large in her native tongue. Flynn was rather more than sixty, and Elsie was not much his junior, while the invader was young and agile. The man had loosened one arm and drawn a revolver with which he was pounding Elsie in the face. I knocked the gun from his hand with my walking-stick and shouted to Elsie to let go of him. Her shouts had roused the guards and, hearing answering cries and the beat of hurrying feet on the walks, he redoubled his efforts to escape. I had hardly got my hands on him when with a twist of his body he wrenched himself free and sped away in the darkness.
I hadn't gone far in pursuit of him before I tripped over the skirts of my dressing-gown and fell into a bed of cannas. This would have been less melancholy if Flynn, hard behind, hadn't stumbled over me and, believing he had captured the enemy, gripped my legs until I could persuade him to let go.
The lights now flared on all the walks and driveways, and Antoine was bellowing orders to the guards to surround the sunken garden. I surmised that the fugitive, surprised by the attack, had lost his bearings and was now far from the boundary wall back of the garage from which presumably he had entered the grounds. With the Sound cutting off his exit beyond the residence, there was a fair chance of catching him if Antoine's veterans were at all vigilant.
I found Antoine, armed with a club and swinging a lantern, majestically posed at the nearer entrance to the garden. With a swallow-tail coat over his night-shirt and his nightcap tipped over one ear, he was an enthralling figure. As he strode toward me his slippers flapped weirdly upon the brick walk. "There's somebody in the garden, sir," he whispered huskily. "The troops has it surrounded." No general in all history, reporting in some critical hour the disposition of his army, could have been more composed.
"You have done well, Antoine. Shall you dig in until morning or go over the top now?"
"As you say, sir. It's better you should take charge."
I walked round the garden and found his men well distributed, but the old fellows were exceedingly nervous. "It's a bit suspicious, sir, that he broke for the garden," remarked Antoine.
"He broke for the garden," I suggested, "because his line of retreat was cut off and he had to go somewhere."
"It's queer, though, sir, when Dutch has been sleeping on the long bench down there by the fountain. You know how we feel about him, sir, he being of that race."
"Dutch told me he was camping in the tool-house," I answered.
"The boys drove him out, sir, and he took to the garden."
"Nasty of the boys, I should say. If that interloper should murder him——"
A yell rose from the midst of the garden, followed by a crash and an instant later by a splash that interrupted another yell. I snatched Antoine's lantern and ran down the steps toward the scene of commotion. When I reached the circular pool the jet was still playing gayly, but the waters on one side were in furious agitation. Two men were rolling and tumbling about as though bent upon drowning each other. I swung the lantern over them just as Dutch got upon his feet, gripping his antagonist by the collar. He flung him backward over the stone curbing of the pool and fell upon him in the walk with a swish of wet garments. The guards from the outer edges of the garden had clambered down and they gathered about us as I began questioning Dutch.
Dutch, undoubtedly enjoying his victorious encounter, was tearing open the prostrate captive's collar to give him air and with his knees clamping the man's body was disposed to delay the story of his adventures to increase its dramatic effect.
"It happens this evenin'," he began, spouting water, "that I seen Elsie, who's been sneakin' me meals to the old stables, an' she says to me: 'Dutch,' she says, 'they's all ag'in us here, callin' us Huns, an' we gotta show 'em we's good Americans,' she says. An' she tole me a feller been to see 'er 'at wanted 'er to rob the house fer 'im, he thinkin' 'er likely to do ut fer love o' the Kaiser. She said as 'ow she'd nail 'im when he comes to-night to git a fan she's promised to lift fer 'im. She said that'd prove she wasn't no Dutchwoman and recommended if I got the chance to do the same. I thought nothin' wuz goin' to happen an' wuz sleepin' on me bench here in the garden when the hollerin' at the garage woke me up. I sits quiet, listenin' an' this guy drops into the garden an' wuz crawlin' past me bench an' I pinches 'im. He wuz fer havin' a fight, an' we knocks over one of the big urns an' lit in the tank. He says it's a thousand bones an' ye turn me loose, he says, an' I soused 'im ag'in fer that."
The man was still choking from the sousings and Dutch turned him over and pounded him vigorously on the back, assisted by Zimmerman, the obliging valet, who had seized the occasion to show his hand on the side of the Allies. "Shall I telephone for the Barton police, sir?" asked Antoine with an extreme exaggeration of his professional manner.
This obviously was the thing to do, but I feigned not to hear the question while I debated the matter. It was plain that many things relating to the capture were veiled in mystery: that if Mrs. Bashford and her companion were involved in an international tangle and had in their possession something that vitally concerned the nations at war, common chivalry demanded that I handle the arrest of Montani's agent in such manner as to shield them. I was thinking hard and in my perplexity even considered sending a messenger for Torrence; but he was already suspicious and would be very likely to summon Raynor immediately and precipitate a crisis I was not prepared to face. To invite the attention of the American State Department to the increasingly complex situation would not be giving my aunt the chance I meant she should have to clear herself.
The captive had got upon his feet and stood dazedly staring at us. He refused to answer my questions, even when I suggested that if he could give a satisfactory account of himself he would be released. He only doggedly shook his head. When I asked if he had been hurt in his bout with Dutch he smiled and extended his arms in denial. He was a very decent-looking fellow, blue-eyed and smooth-shaven, who seemed to accept his plight with a degree of good humor.
I decided that as nothing would be gained by sending him to the Barton calaboose that night, I would assume the responsibility of detaining him until I had groped my way through the haze of suspicions and circumstances that enveloped him.
"Get some dry clothes for this man and lock him up in the tool-house. Be sure he has blankets, and you'd better give him some hot coffee."
The captive manifested relief at my decision and broke his silence to thank me, which he did in very good English. His submissiveness only deepened my perplexity, but I couldn't help laughing as he walked away surrounded by the "troops," with Dutch leading the way—Dutch fully conscious that he had vindicated himself and disposed to be rather disdainful of his comrades.
I hurried to the house, where I found Alice and Mrs. Farnsworth ministering to Elsie, who had been taken there by their order. Elsie, sharing with Dutch the honors of the night, lay on a davenport, where she had received first aid. Alice rose from her knees as I entered, gathering up strips of bandages, and turned to me laughingly.
"Elsie's injuries are not serious; only disagreeable bruises in the face. There will be no scars, I'm sure. We'll keep her at the house for a few days until she's quite fit again. Surely any one who has questioned Elsie's loyalty ought to be satisfied now."
"You certainly managed it very cleverly, Elsie. We're all