CHAPTER XXIII
DR. SPIDDERKINS IS ANGRY
“PERHAPS I made a mistake, and that wasn’t the book,” remarked Tom.
“Oh, that was the book. I am positive about that. I have a bad memory, but when it comes to books it is pretty good. Especially when you speak of it. I am positive I put those papers either in or under that book.”
“That’s what I think, too,” said Tom. “Maybe they have fallen down.”
He and the doctor made a thorough search. They took out all the books in that part of the library, and looked behind them. They even searched through several volumes on either side of the Fielding, but no papers were to be found.
“Have you another volume of Mr. Fielding?” asked Tom.
“I have, yes; but it is only a cheap reprint, and I never would put valuable papers in or under that. No, I am sure the papers were here, but they are gone. What had I better do?”
At that moment there came a knock on the door of the inner room, which the physician had taken the precaution to lock.
“Hark!” exclaimed Dr. Spidderkins. “I thought I heard some one knocking.”
“There was,” answered Tom.
The knock was repeated, louder than before, and a voice which Tom recognized as that of the mean housekeeper said:
“Come, come! I can’t stand here all day. I’ve got my work to do. Open the door, now, Dr. Spidderkins. I know you’re in there, with that boy. Boys can’t be trusted, that’s been my experience with ’em. You’d better open the door. I’m sure his feet are muddy and I can’t have my carpets all tracked up. Come, are you going to open that door, or not?”
“Isn’t—isn’t that some one speaking?” asked the aged physician, gently, as if there was the slightest doubt of it. Mrs. Sandow’s harsh voice could have been heard through the whole house.
“I—I think it’s the housekeeper,” said Tom.
“Of course; to be sure,” replied the doctor, in a tone of relief, as if a great uncertainty had been lifted from his mind. “It must be my housekeeper. I thought I recognized the voice, but I couldn’t quite place it. I am afraid—I’m very much afraid—that my memory is going back on me.”
Tom hadn’t the slightest doubt of it.
“Well, are you going to let me in?” demanded Mrs. Sandow again. “I’d like to know what you mean, Lemuel, by locking the doors on me. I just want to know what you’re up to! The idea of locking doors when I’m around. Come! Are you going to let me in?”
“Do you think I’d better?” inquired the doctor, of Tom. “She—she’s a Tartar, you know.”
“Perhaps you had better see what she wants,” suggested the telephone boy.
“That’s an excellent suggestion. I will act upon it.”
The doctor tiptoed to the door, and, placing his lips close against a panel, whispered as loudly as he could:
“What do you want?”
“What do I want?” repeated Mrs. Sandow. “I want to come in, that’s what I want. I have something to say to you. It’s important. Let me in at once.”
“You’ll have to wait a moment,” went on the physician.
“Wait? What for, I should like to know? Haven’t I been waiting here, and knocking until I’ve almost worn the skin off my knuckles? Why should I wait any longer?”
But the doctor did not reply. Instead he tiptoed over to where Tom stood, a curious spectator and listener to what was going on.
“Shall I—shall I let her in?” asked the aged physician of the boy.
Tom could not help smiling. This seemed a matter for the doctor alone to settle. Yet he asked advice upon it.
“I suppose you had better,” he replied.
“Yes, I suppose I had better,” repeated Dr. Spidderkins. “She’d get in, anyhow,” he added. “Oh, but she is a woman. There’s no use talking, she certainly is a Tartar. I—I don’t know when I ever met, or heard of, or read of, in all ancient history, for example, one to equal her. Lady Macbeth, perhaps. You recall Lady Macbeth, I presume?”
“Are you going to let me in, Dr. Spidderkins, or shall I have to go and get my duplicate keys, and open the door myself?” interrupted the harsh voice of the housekeeper.
“Did you hear that?” whispered the doctor. “Duplicate keys! I knew she must have some way of getting into this room. Once I found a copy of Dante, which I prized very highly, laid upside down on my table, and I’m almost certain that I left it right side up. But then my wretched memory——”
A rattling of the knob reminded him that the housekeeper was still waiting.
“Then you really think I’d better let her in?” again whispered the doctor to Tom.
“Very well, I will, but say nothing to her about what you told me.”
“I’ll not,” replied Tom.
The doctor unlocked the door. Mrs. Sandow, who had, just as the doctor suspected she would, made her way to the library, was seen standing in a belligerent attitude in that apartment.
“Well, it’s taken you long enough to open the door,” she snapped.
“Yes, we—we were very busy,” said Dr. Spidderkins.
“I’d like to know what that good-for-nothing boy is doing here all the while?” went on the angry woman.
As no one offered to enlighten her she glared at Tom.
“Did—er—did you want to speak to me?” asked the physician, and Tom waited anxiously for the answer. He thought it might have something to do with the matter in hand.
“Of course I want to speak to you,” said Mrs. Sandow. “Do you think I’d come all the way here from my kitchen, and waste my time knocking at locked doors, though for the life of me I can’t see why you should lock you door, for I’m sure I don’t want to take any of your old books, no matter what others may wish, but then of course——” Here Mrs. Sandow appeared to forget what she had started out to say, but she switched off on another tack and asked:
“Do you remember me telling you that the water pipes in the kitchen would need fixing?”
“I—er—I seem to remember——” began the doctor.
“No, you don’t remember, and that’s just the trouble. You don’t remember anything. You’d forget to eat if I didn’t call you.”
“Oh, now I remember!” cried the doctor. “It was about the furnace. You said we’d need a new grate. I knew I would remember that, because I associated it in my mind with a book about Alexander the Great, and——”
“No, no! Nothing of the sort,” interrupted Mrs. Sandow. “That was last year when the grate broke, and you had to get a new one. This is about the water pipes in the kitchen. What I came to tell you was that one had burst, the water is spouting all over the room, and we need a plumber right away!”
“Bless my soul! Why didn’t you say so at once?” asked the doctor, in some alarm.
“I would have, only you had your door locked, and an honest person can’t make her way about,” and the housekeeper looked very much hurt.
“I’ll get a plumber at once,” said the doctor. “I know where there is one, on this street, or is it the next street?—I can’t seem to remember now——”
“And the water is squirting all over the kitchen,” went on Mrs. Sandow. “It ought to be shut off, only I don’t know where to shut it off. That’s another secret about this house,” she added significantly.
“I think I can find out the place to shut it off,” said Tom. “Very likely it’s down in the cellar.”
“Humph! It’s a good thing you know something,” said Mrs. Sandow, with a sniff.
In a few moments the telephone boy had shut off the water, and the plumber had been summoned. That mechanic promised to come at once, and repair the leak.
“If you had attended to the pipe when I told you to,” went on Mrs. Sandow, when the excitement had somewhat calmed down, “this never would have happened.”
“I meant to,” said the doctor, “but I forgot——”
“You’re always forgetting,” interrupted his sister-in-law. “Some day you’ll forget to come home, or lose yourself and then——”
“I’ve lost something now,” exclaimed the doctor. “We were just hunting for something when you knocked, Mrs. Sandow. Have you seen——”
Tom was attacked with a sudden fit of coughing. He wanted to attract the doctor’s attention, and warn him not to speak of the papers.
“Bless my soul!” exclaimed the physician, when he saw what a spasm Tom was having. “That’s a terrible cough. You must take something for it. I would write you a prescription, only I have such a wretched memory that I might start to give you something for a cough, and end up by writing out directions how to cure the mumps. You haven’t the mumps, have you?”
“I had them once, and that was enough,” said Tom. “But, doctor, perhaps I had better call another time.”
Tom thought that if he went away, and came back, he would have a chance to speak to the physician alone, and warn him.
But the doctor did not seem to understand. He knew he had been looking for something, and that he had not found it. He appealed to the housekeeper, and Tom began to fear that all his plans would miscarry.
However, Mrs. Sandow, likely thinking that with such a poor memory to depend on she could obtain no information from the doctor, or else recollecting that her kitchen was covered with water from the burst pipe, hurried from the room. Tom saw his chance, and took it.
“I didn’t want to speak of the papers before her,” he said. “She might——”
“Oh, yes, it was papers we were looking for,” interrupted the doctor. “I remember now. We couldn’t find them. But they must be here somewhere. I’ll look in some other valuable books.”
But the papers were not to be found. Search as the two did, in all likely and unlikely places, the missing documents were not disclosed.
“I guess we can’t find them,” spoke Tom.
“It does look that way,” admitted the doctor. “I wonder what we had better do next?”
The aged physician seemed quite helpless in the face of this emergency.
“You had better come with me to see Mr. Boise,” suggested Tom. “He can tell you what to do. I may say to you, Dr. Spidderkins, that your estate is in danger.”
“In danger? From whom?”
“I am not sure that Mr. Boise would want me to tell you, but I will risk saying that he suspects Mr. and Mrs. Sandow.”
“What? Those two whom I have trusted in everything?”
“Mr. Boise suspects them, and also suspects a young lawyer in his office.”
“Oh, dear!” exclaimed the doctor. “I know nothing about business. All I know about is books. Do you suppose they have got everything I possess? I used to be a rich man.”
He was quite distressed, but Tom hastened to assure him that he thought the plot had been discovered in time.
“I left everything to Mr. and Mrs. Sandow,” went on the physician. “I gave them money whenever they wanted it, and I signed the checks they made out for the tradesmen’s bills. Now to think how they have repaid me!”
“We had better hurry down to the office,” urged Tom. “I think Mr. Boise will be waiting for you.”
“Very well, I will go at once. Let me see, where did I put that book I was reading? Oh, here it is. I think I will take it along with me. It may calm my mind.”
He started from the library, Tom following. The doctor got to the door, and was going out, when the telephone boy called his attention to the fact that he had neither hat nor coat on, and there was a cold March wind blowing.
“Bless my soul! I forgot all about a hat,” admitted the aged physician. “I am getting quite forgetful. I was wondering where I could get a copy of the first edition of Carlyle’s Sartor Resartus. I have only a common edition, and I want a rare one. Thank you,” he added, as Tom handed him his hat and coat from the rack.
“Where are you going, Lemuel?” asked Mrs. Sandow, as she suddenly appeared in the hall.
“I—I am going out,” answered the doctor mildly.
“Going out? This cold day! You forgot you were to sign some checks for the grocer and butcher.”
“I thought I made out those checks.”
“No; they were for the milkman and the coal dealer.”
“Well, I suppose I must make them out.”
“Perhaps they will do when we get back,” suggested Tom, for he had an idea the woman was only carrying out the general plan of herself and her husband, to cheat Dr. Spidderkins out of as much money as possible by getting him to sign extra checks.
“What do you know about it, young man?” asked Mrs. Sandow sharply.
“The doctor is in a hurry to get to his lawyer’s office, and I thought the checks might wait until he returned.”
“Are you going to a lawyer’s office?” asked Mrs. Sandow, with suspicion in her tone.
“I—I believe so—or was it the book store?” replied Dr. Spidderkins.
“The lawyer’s first, and then, if you like, to the book store,” answered Tom with a smile at the old man’s eccentricities.
“You had better stay in,” suggested Mrs. Sandow, in more gentle tones. “It is very cold out, and perhaps I can go for you.”
Dr. Spidderkins hesitated. It was easy for Tom to see that the woman exercised considerable control over the aged physician. But the telephone boy was determined to frustrate her schemes.
“We had better hurry,” said Tom, taking hold of the old man’s arm. “Mr. Boise will be waiting for us.”
“Yes—yes, we must hurry,” assented the doctor. “I’ll be back soon, Mrs. Sandow, and perhaps,” he added significantly, “you will not be so glad to see me.”
“Not glad to see you? Why, I am always glad to see you, Lemuel,” said the woman, with a whine. “I am very fond of you. I was only anxious for your own good, when I spoke.”
“And for your own, and your husband’s,” thought Tom.
The woman saw it would be useless to protest further. Tom and his aged friend left, boarded a car, and were riding toward the law office.
Once there Mr. Boise soon explained to the doctor the plots of Mr. and Mrs. Sandow. The documents, which had come in the mail to Mr. Cutler, proved to be deeds and mortgages which the physician had, unknowingly, signed the night before. They transferred the control of most of his property to his rascally relatives.
“Is it too late to prevent the loss of my estate?” asked the doctor.
“Well, I am afraid you will lose some of it,” replied the lawyer. “They have been deceiving you for a long time, and, very likely, they have a good share of your money now. You have been so wrapped up in your books, that you did not know about it.”
“Can’t we prevent them from getting away with it?” asked Dr. Spidderkins, as he seemed to rouse to sudden anger at the thought of the manner in which he had been swindled.
“Yes, perhaps, if we act promptly.”
“Then let’s act promptly!” exclaimed the physician. “We’ll go back to my house and we’ll clean the rascals out, bag and baggage! I’m an old man, but when I get roused up I’m as good as a young one!”
To look at him one would not doubt this, for the doctor seemed to have grown several years younger. He had been carrying a book but now he thrust it into his pocket as if it was of no value. He was thoroughly in earnest.
“Come on,” he said, to Tom and Mr. Boise. “We’ll go and see if we can’t end their plots! I’ll have something to say to Mr. and Mrs. Sandow that they won’t like.”
“That’s the way to talk!” exclaimed Mr. Boise admiringly. “You’ve been too much engrossed in your books heretofore, Dr. Spidderkins.”
“I guess I have. I need some honest persons to look after me. Well, maybe I’ll get them, after this affair is over.”
Accompanied by Tom and Mr. Boise the doctor went back home, to “clear the rascals out,” as he expressed it several times, on the ride to the Back Bay district.