“By the way, Mr. Stevenson,” I asked casually, “what’s your business?”
“My business,” he said promptly. Then looking at me with one of his disconcertingly keen glances, Stevenson said — “As a matter of fact I haven’t any business now: I’ve retired from active life. Not but what it was active enough once,” he added, in a sort of undertone.
But I had had my lesson: I wasn’t going to try any more questions on him. His clean-shaven lips had set like a trap. He lighted an excellent cigar, and I noticed that the fingers which held the match were capable looking and steady.
“There’s a big marsh,” he said in his abrupt way: “it backs up close behind Hathaway’s house.”
“What makes you speak of it?” Ruggles asked quietly. “Do you think—”
“I don’t think much of anything about it,” said our strange visitor. “Only it’s big enough and thick enough grown up to make a good place for a man to hide in, if he wanted a place where it would be hard to find him. I saw a light out there three or four nights ago, but I couldn’t find anything when I went out and hunted until sun-up with a flash light.”
“If you’re ready, we’ll go out to your house with you,” said Ruggles. “Throw some stuff into a hand bag, Crane, while I do the same. Ready in five minutes.”
Chapter IV
Servants Frightened Off
IN even less time we were in Stevenson’s car and instantly we were on our way up Riverside Drive. Stevenson drove the car himself, a fact which Ruggles welcomed, for he said to me in a whisper:
“No chauffeur. Stevenson does things with his own hands when he can — a good, safe rule to follow when possible; and good, too, in this case, because there’s no one to overhear us.”
But it was not until we had swung into the parkway which paralleled the Bronx River that Ruggles spoke again, and this time it was to ask Stevenson to pull up and park for a little. Then, when the car came to a stop, Ruggles began swiftly:
“How long have you lived where you do now? Are you married? Have you a family? Have you been confidential about yourself with your nearest neighbors? Be as brief as you can, for we’ve no time to waste!”
“Lived where I do fifteen years,” Stevenson shot back, a bit crustily. “Bachelor. Housekeeper and one servant. Only living relatives two nephews in Europe. Never tell neighbors anything.”
“Good,” said Ruggles. “You boil things down well! Crane and I are your two nephews, from Europe. Crane’s name, for the time being, is Howard, and I’m Paul — Howard and Paul Stevenson. We’re living with you, uncle Lemuel. Introduce your postman to us, that way, to-morrow morning.”
“What?” demanded Lemuel Stevenson.
“Yes,” said Ruggles. Then, with his nearest approach to real anger, “I say, don’t waste time! You’ve asked Crane and me to come into this, and we’ve come. You don’t realize it yet; but what you’ve blundered into by sheer accident is a life and death matter! Not your life or death — Mr. Hathaway’s!”
“Old Hathaway,” scoffed Stevenson. He settled himself obstinately in his seat and scowled at the lovely curve of the parkway, banked by the first, fresh green of early spring. “I see, now, I was a fool to feel as I did last night, a fool to go to you. Not that you weren’t cute to guess I peeked in through their windows, but a fool to think old Hathaway was in danger from anything.
“Garlic bulbs! Hathaway’s simply an old lunatic who ought to have a couple of keepers to stop him from treading down my flower beds! Well, I’ve got the thing straight at last, Mr. Ruggles, and,” with a glance at his watch, which, like himself, was fat and prosperous looking, “there’s just time for me to drive you and your friend back to your rooms and have you there in time for lunch.” He started his motor.
But before he could start swinging the car around Ruggles said tensely: “The garlic bulbs which old Hathaway looked for were for his protection from a danger more terrible and an enemy more merciless and cruel than you or Crane or I have ever known. It was not for garlic bulbs that Mr. Hathaway was looking that memorable hour in your garden — he was looking for life, and he knew it, if you don’t, Mr. Stevenson.
“You were not a fool when you asked for help in this matter: it was the wisest thing you ever did in your life. Trust me for forty-eight hours and see how soon this car of yours can get us to your house in Deersdale. I’m interested to see, among other things, that suit case which you — borrowed last night from your new neighbors.”
“That suit case,” Stevenson cried sharply. “I’d forgot all about it! I don’t know what possessed me to take it last night! I don’t, Mr. Ruggles! Honestly, I don’t! I’d never done such a thing in my born days before! It was just because I was so upset by looking into that living room, through that window and seeing that revolver and those devilish dogs and their growling that way — and their keeping so still, those black dogs!
“All I meant was to see what was inside the suit case, then heave it back over the fence. Then, when I saw old Hathaway in my flower bed and his eyes — and his raving about garlic bulbs, I—”
He stopped short. “Do you figure any one of them saw me there at the window? No, I wasn’t close enough. Or heard me? No, for there was soft grass under my feet. And old Hathaway — had his back to me — when I got to him — anyway, there wasn’t any moon — garlic bulbs?”
The spring of the car flung Ruggles and me back against the seat. Into second gear, then into high, and we were flying up the parkway at forty miles an hour. Like many another man who has got into a hole much deeper than he first realized, Lemuel Stevenson wanted action, swift, abrupt action to relieve his charged nerves.
It seemed only a few minutes before we reached Deersdale, and he swung the car off the smooth bed of the parkway and into an unpaved road which almost immediately began to climb up, up, and up into the hills, which were closely covered with beech, birch, cedar, and, now and then, a leprous-looking sycamore.
It was within half an hour of noon, but the sky was overcast. A glance at the speedometer showed that we had left the railroad station at Deersdale only a short three miles behind us, and yet the country on either side of the narrow, dirt road over which Stevenson was driving his car at high speed seemed a wilderness.
Then the road began to descend sharply, disclosing a valley through which a small river ran, scarcely more than a stream here, swelling into a small pond there, at other points appearing to lose itself altogether in patches of swamp.
“There, over there,” said Stevenson, slowing his car down and pointing to the left with one hand, “is where my land begins; and along this road we’re running on now. That’s my wall, there; and I planted that hedge myself. And that’s my house — you can just see the top of it over those pines. And that house over there, just this side of that bit of swamp, is the Hathaway’s. Well, well, I wonder what’s that for?” he broke off abruptly.
A taxi, with one trunk on the running-board and two boxes on the seat beside the driver, had just come out through the gate into which Stevenson was in the act of turning his car. The taxi had passed and was off up the road before Stevenson could hail it.
“I wonder,” he began again, clearly very much puzzled. “I wonder who—”
We were right in front of the porte-cochère now, and a grocer’s truck was just visible at the side door; as we looked the grocer’s boy came staggering out of the house with a battered little old trunk on his shoulder.
“What’s the meaning of this?” Stevenson demanded, springing out of our car and walking with angry strides to the boy. “That trunk belongs to my housekeeper, and I forbid you to touch it.”