CHAPTER V
ROBBER’S ROOST, UNINCORPORATED
FROM a roadhouse two miles away Thaxton called up Mrs. Horoson, his housekeeper. Without giving her a chance to protest he told her there would be six, besides himself, for dinner that night and that a Mr. and Mrs. Mosely were occupying the violet room.
He bade her break the news to Miss Gregg, on the latter’s imminent return from Stormcrest, and to Miss Lane. Then he hung up, precipitately, and rejoined Chase in the road.
“Let’s hustle!” he adjured. “She may find where we are from Central and follow us. I can count on Horoson not to decamp even if the servants do. But every now and then I feel toward her as I used to when I was a kid and she caught me stealing Uncle Oz’s cigarettes. Hurry!”
It was within a half hour of dinner time when Vail and Chase, by devious back ways, returned to Vailholme and let themselves in at a rear door, preparatory to creeping upstairs to their rooms to dress for the seven-o’clock meal.
The dinner ordeal was one of unrelieved hideousness. But for gallant old Miss Gregg, the situation must have fallen asunder much sooner than it did. Thaxton Vail, at the table’s head, writhed in misery. He had absolutely no idea how to handle the unhandleable situation.
It was Miss Gregg who, unasked, took control of everything. Being wholly fearless, she had no normal terror of the austere Horoson or of the ever-sourer-visaged Vogel.
During the endless wait before dinner was announced she slipped out to the dining room. Thaxton was there, flustered and curt, trying to coerce his rebellious upper servants into setting the wheels of domestic machinery into motion.
Vogel already had given warning, proclaiming briefly but proudly the list of his former super-excellent positions, and repeating, as a sort of eternal slogan of refrain that he was a butler and not a boarding-house head waiter.
It was at this point that Hester Gregg took charge.
Grateful and sweating, Vail went back to the living room to listen gloomily to the Moselys’ recital to Chase and Doris of the various inns at which they had been either cheated or incompetently served. Though the couple did not say so in actual words, Thaxton was left to infer that Vailholme combined the worst qualities of all their tour’s other wretched stopping places.
As he listened to the tale, Miss Gregg swept into the room again with the pure exaltation in her eyes of one who has triumphed in a seemingly hopeless battle. Presently thereafter Vogel announced dinner.
As the party filed stragglingly into the dining room, Clive Creede came downstairs and joined them. He seemed a little better for his afternoon’s rest, but still looked sick and shaky.
Thaxton’s collie, as usual, accompanied Vail to the dining room, lying down majestically on the floor at the host’s left. From the shelter of Joshua Q. Mosely’s bulk appeared the obese police dog, who also had followed into the dining room. He disposed himself in a shadowy space, behind Mrs. Mosely’s chair, where every passing servant must stumble unseeingly over him.
“I hope you don’t mind our bringing Petty to dinner with us,” said Joshua Q., as they sat down. “He’s quite one of the family. The wife would as soon travel without her powder rag as without Petty. He goes everywhere with us. Nice collie you’ve got there. I notice you had to speak pretty firm to him, though, to keep him from pestering poor Petty. Collies aren’t as clever at minding as police dogs. Had him long?”
“He was bred by Mr. Creede, here,” answered Thaxton. “When Mr. Creede went overseas, he left him at Vailholme.”
“And when I got back,” put in Clive, speaking for the first time, and addressing Doris, “Macduff had clean forgotten me and had adopted Thax. So I let him stay on here. Funny, wasn’t it? I’ve heard collies never forget. I suppose that’s another nature fake. For Macduff certainly had forgotten me. At least, he was civil to me, but he’d lost all interest in me.”
Then fell a pause. Miss Gregg arose to the occasion by starting the conversation-ball to rolling again.
“I think,” she said, “there ought to be a S. P. C. A. law against naming animals till they’re grown. People call a baby pup ‘Fluffy’ or ‘Beauty.’ And then he grows up to look like Bill Sikes’ dog. For instance, there’s nothing ‘petty’ about that big police dog. Yet when he was a—”
“Oh,” spoke up Mrs. Mosely, “his name isn’t really ‘Petty.’ ‘Petty’ is short for ‘Pet.’ His real name’s ‘Pet.’ He—”
Willis Chase cleared his throat portentously. Leaning far across the table, he addressed the miserable Thaxton.
“Landlord!” he began, in awful imitation of the pompous Joshua Q. Mosely. “Landlord, me good man, I—”
“Shut up!” snarled Vail, under his breath, glaring murderously.
A smile of utter sweetness overspread Willis Chase’s long countenance.
“Tut, tut!” he chided, patronizingly. “Don’t cringe, when I address you, my honest fellow! Don’t be servile, just because I am a gentleman and your own lot is cast among the working classes. I have every respect for the dignity of labor. I don’t look down on you. In Heaven’s sight all men are equal—landlords and gentlemen and day laborers and plumbers and senators and bootleggers and authors and—”
“That sounds fine in theory, Mr.—Mr. Case, is it?” boomed Joshua Q. “But it don’t work out always in real life. Not that I look down on a man just because he’s got to run an inn or a boarding house to make a living. Nor yet I don’t really look down on day laborers. Nor yet on plumbers. Not even on authors—when they keep their place. But what’s it to profit those of us who’ve made good and won our way to the leisure classes, as you might say? What’s it to profit us if we’re to be put on a level with folks who get paid for serving us? Money’s got to count for something, hasn’t it? If a man’s got the brain and the genius and the push to pile up a fortune, don’t he deserve to stand a notch higher than the boob who ain’t—who hasn’t? Don’t he? Position means something. It—”
“And family, too!” chimed in Mrs. Mosely, with much elegance of diction. “I always tell Mr. M. that family counts every bit as much as money, or it ought to. Even in these democratic days. I believe in family. I don’t boast of it. But I believe in it. While I don’t brag about my grandfather being the first Governor of—”
“Grandfathers!” sighed Willis Chase, ecstatically. “Now you’ve touched my own hobby, Mrs.—Mrs. Mousely. I—”
“Mosely,” corrected Joshua Q., with much dignity. “And—”
“To be sure,” apologized Chase, meekly. “My mistake. But I murmur ‘Amen!’ to all you say about family and grandfathers. I even go a step beyond. I even believe in pride of great-grandfathers.”
“Why—why, cert’nly,” assented Mrs. Mosely, albeit with a shade less assurance. “Of course. And—”
“My own great-grandfather,” expounded Willis, unctuously, “my own great-grandfather, Colonel Weilguse Chase, was the first white man to be hanged in New Jersey. Not that I brag unduly of it. Yet it is sweet to remember, in this age of so-called equality.... Landlord, these trout are probably more or less fit to eat. But my doctor forbids me to guzzle fish. I wonder if I might trouble you to order a little fried tripe for me? I am willing to pay extra for it, of course. Nothing sets off a dinner like a side dish of fried tripe. Or, still better, a nice juicy slice of roast shoulder of tripe. But, speaking of family—”
“I’m afraid you don’t just get my point, Mr. Case,” interposed Mrs. Mosely. “I mean about family. I don’t believe in pride of ancestors—merely as ancestors. But I believe in being proud of ancestors who achieved something worth while. Do you see the distinction?”
“Certainly,” agreed Chase, with much profundity. “And I feel the same way. Now, out of all the millions of white men, great and small, who from time to time have infested New Jersey, there could be but one ‘first white man’ hanged there. And that startling honor was reserved for my own great-grandfather. Not that I brag of it—as I said. But people like you and myself, Mrs. Mousely, can at least be honestly proud of our ancestors. Now, I suppose our genial landlord here—”
“Luella!” boomed Joshua Q. Mosely, in sudden comprehension. “This—this person is pokin’ fun at you. I’ll thank you, young man—”
“Speaking of family,” deftly intervened Miss Gregg, while Mosely and Vail, from opposite sides of the table, looked homicide at the unruffled Chase, “speaking of family, Clive, you remember the Bacons, who used to live just beyond Canobie, don’t you? Your father asked pompous old Standish Bacon if he happened to be descended from Sir Francis Bacon. He answered: ‘Sir Francis left no descendants. But if he had, I should be one of them.’ He—”
“If Mr. Case thinks it is a gentlemanly thing to insult—” boomed Joshua Q., afresh.
“That’s just like Bacon,” cut in Clive Creede, coming to the old lady’s rescue. “My father used to say—”
Then he fell silent, as though his tired mind was not equal to further invention. He did not so much as recall the possibly mythical Bacon, and he had not the energy to improvise further.
But Miss Gregg’s mind was never tired, nor was her endurance-trained tongue acquainted with weariness. And before Mosely could boom his protest afresh, she was in her stride once more.
“You’re right,” she assured Clive. “He was just that sort. If Standish Bacon had lived in Bible times, he’d never have been content to be one of the Apostles. He’d have insisted on being all twelve of them and a couple of the High Priests thrown in. Doris, you’ll remember the time I told him that?”
“Yes,” assented the girl, breaking involuntarily into the queer little child-laugh that Vail loved. “I do, indeed. And I remember what he answered. He—”
“If Mr. Case—” blustered the undeterred Mosely.
“I’d forgotten that part of it,” purred Miss Gregg, ignoring Joshua Q. “I remember now. He said, in that stiff old-fashioned way of his: ‘Madam, you exaggerate. Yet in all modesty I may venture to believe that if I had lived in Bible times, my unworthy name might have had the honor to be mentioned in that Book of Books. Lesser folk than myself were mentioned there by name. Fishermen and tanners and coppersmiths and the like.’”
“No?” exploded Vail. “Did Bacon really say that? The old windbag! And you let him get away with it, Miss Gregg? I should have thought—”
“No,” replied the old lady, complacently. “I can’t say I really ‘let him get away with it.’ At least, not very far away. I’m afraid I even lost my gentle temper, and that for once in my life I was just a little rude. I said to him: ‘Why, Standish Bacon, you couldn’t have gotten your name in Holy Writ if you’d lived through every one of its books. You couldn’t even have gotten in by name if you’d broken up one of St. Paul’s most crowded meetings at Ephesus. The best mention you could have hoped to get for that would have been a verse, tucked away somewhere in the middle of a chapter, in the Epistle to the Ephesians. A verse like this: “And it came to pass in those days that a Certain Man of Ephesus busted up the meeting!”’ Bacon didn’t like it very well. But he—”
Joshua Q. Mosely and his glaringly indignant wife had been shut out of the talk as skillfully as Miss Gregg’s ingenuity could devise. But mere ingenuity cannot forever hold its own against a bull-bellow voice. Now as the old lady still rambled on, Joshua Q. burst forth again:
“Excuse me for speaking out of turn, as the feller said!” he declaimed. “But I want this Case person to know— Hey, there!” he broke off, in dismay. “What’s happenin’?”
For again the substance of his diatribe was shattered.
This time the needed and heaven-sent interruption did not come from Miss Gregg, but from Macduff and Petty.
Thaxton, absent-mindedly, had tossed a fragment of trout to Macduff on the floor beside him. He had long since dropped into the habit of giving the collie surreptitious tidbits during the course of a meal. Macduff was wont to accept them gravely, and he never begged.
But to-night, from his post behind Mrs. Mosely’s chair, the ever-hungry police dog caught sight of the tossed morsel. He lumbered forward to grab it. Macduff daintily picked up and swallowed the food, a second before Petty could seize it.
Angry at loss of the prize and at another dog daring to get ahead of him, Petty launched himself at the unsuspecting collie, driving his teeth into Macduff’s fur-armored neck.
The collie resented this egregious attack by writhing out from under his assailant, wrenching free from the half-averted grip, and flying at the police dog’s throat.
In a flash of time an industrious and rackety dog fight was in progress all over the dining room.
One of the maids screeched. Every one jumped up. A chair was overturned bangingly. Mrs. Mosely shrieked:
“The brute is murdering poor darling Petty! Help!”
Excited past all caution, she dashed between the rearing and roaring combatants just as Thaxton Vail recovered enough presence of mind to shout imperatively to his collie.
At the command Macduff ceased to lay on. Turning reluctantly, he walked back to his master. Joshua Q. Mosely, meantime, had flung his incalculable weight upon the bellicose Petty, pinning the luckless police dog to the floor. The fight was over.
Mrs. Mosely’s shrill voice, raised in anguish, soared above the hubbub.
“He’s bitten me!” she cried, nursing a bony finger whose knuckle bore a faint abrasion from the glancing eyetooth of one of the warriors. “That wretched collie has bitten me!”
Then it was that Joshua Q. Mosely proved himself a master of men and of situations. Holding the fat police dog by the studded collar, he drew himself to his full height.
“Come up to the room, Luella!” he bade his hysterical wife. “I’ll wash out the cut for you and bind it up nice. If it’s bad, we’ll have a doctor for it. As for you,” he continued, glowering awesomely upon Vail, “you’re just at the first of what you’re going to get for this. You tried to keep us from stopping here. Then you egged on one of your other guests to insult Mrs. M. at the table. And now your dog attacks ours and then bites my wife. We’re going to the room. To-morrow morning we’ll have breakfast in it. You can send up the bill at the same time. Because I don’t mean to sully my eyes or Mrs. M.’s by looking on your face again. As soon as breakfast’s over we are leaving. At the first police station I shall lodge complaint against you for maintaining a vicious dog, a menace to public safety. And I’m going to write this whole affair to my counsel and instruct him to institoot action. Come, Luella.”
Out of the room they strode, Petty lugged protestingly along between them. Miss Gregg broke the instant of dread silence by saying decisively:
“I’m not surprised. I make it a rule never to be surprised at anything said or done by a man who calls his wife ‘Mrs. M.’ or ‘Mrs. Any-Other-Initial,’ or who speaks of ‘the room.’ And their fat dog was the only one of them that didn’t eat fish with a knife. Just the same, Willis, you ought to be spanked! I’m ashamed of you. It was all your fault; for trying to be funny with people outside your own class. That’s as dangerous as massaging a mule’s tail, and ten times as inexcusable.”
“I’m awfully sorry,” said Chase, remorsefully. “Honestly, I am. The only bright side to it is the man’s promise that we’ll not see either of them again. I’m sorry, Thax. I—”
Down the stairs clattered two pairs of bumpily running feet. Into the dining room burst a flamingly red and bellowing Joshua Q. Mosely, his wife spluttering along at his heels.
“We been robbed!” squealed Mosely, too upset to remember to boom.
“What?” gasped Vail, as the others stared open-mouthed.
Mosely repeated his clarion announcement:
“Robbed! Mrs. M.’s jewel case pinched right out of her locked bag. Twelve thousand dollars’ worth of joolry stolen. It was there when we come down to dinner, and now it’s gone, and the bag is busted open. I—”
“What are you talking about?” demanded Thaxton. “You can’t have been robbed—here! What—?”
“Can’t, hey?” roared Mosely, his emotion scaling to the secondary stage. “Can’t, hey?” he reiterated as he advanced on Vail with swinging fists. “Well, we have! You’ve had us cleaned out! You run a robber’s roost here, you dirty thief!”
Furious past further articulate words, Joshua Q. shook a hamlike fist in Thaxton’s astonished face. Vail stepped in under the flailing arm. Then he proceeded, quietly and scientifically, to knock the giant down.
After which, everything happened at once.