The House of a Thousand Candles - Meredith Nicholson (top 50 books to read txt) 📗

whatever it was, was

clearly of some importance to myself, as my own apartments

in my grandfather’s strange house had been

chosen for the investigation.

 

Clearly, I was not prepared to close the incident, but

the idea of frightening my visitors appealed to my sense

of humor. I tiptoed to the front stairway, ran lightly

down, found the front door, and, from the inside,

opened and slammed it. I heard instantly a hurried

scamper above, and the heavy fall of one who had stumbled

in the dark. I grinned with real pleasure at the

sound of this mishap, hurried into the great library,

which was as dark as a well, and, opening one of the long

windows, stepped out on the balcony. At once from the

rear of the house came the sound of a stealthy step,

which increased to a run at the ravine bridge. I listened

to the flight of the fugitive through the wood until the

sounds died away toward the lake.

 

Then, turning to the library windows, I saw Bates,

with a candle held above his head, peering about.

 

“Hello, Bates,” I called cheerfully. “I just got home

and stepped out to see if the moon had risen. I don’t

believe I know where to look for it in this country.”

 

He began lighting the tapers with his usual deliberation.

 

“It’s a trifle early, I think, sir. About seven o’clock,

I should say, was the hour, Mr. Glenarm.”

 

There was, of course, no doubt whatever that Bates

had been one of the men I heard in my room. It was

wholly possible that he had been compelled to assist in

some lawless act against his will; but why, if he had

been forced into aiding a criminal, should he not invoke

my own aid to protect himself? I kicked the logs in the

fireplace impatiently in my uncertainty. The man slowly

lighted the many candles in the great apartment.

He was certainly a deep one, and his case grew more

puzzling as I studied it in relation to the rifle-shot of

the night before, his collision with Morgan in the wood,

which I had witnessed; and now the house itself had

been invaded by some one with his connivance. The

shot through the refectory window might have been innocent

enough; but these other matters in connection

with it could hardly be brushed aside.

 

Bates lighted me to the stairway, and said as I passed

him:

 

“There’s a baked ham for dinner. I should call it extra

delicate, Mr. Glenarm. I suppose there’s no change

in the dinner hour, sir?”

 

“Certainly not,” I said with asperity; for I am not a

person to inaugurate a dinner hour one day and change

it the next. Bates wished to make conversation—the

sure sign of a guilty conscience in a servant—and I was

not disposed to encourage him.

 

I closed the doors carefully and began a thorough

examination of both the sitting-room and the little bed-chamber.

I was quite sure that my own effects could

not have attracted the two men who had taken advantage

of my absence to visit my quarters. Bates had

helped unpack my trunk and undoubtedly knew every

item of my simple wardrobe. I threw open the doors

of the three closets in the rooms and found them all in

the good order established by Bates. He had carried my

trunks and bags to a store-room, so that everything I

owned must have passed under his eye. My money even,

the remnant of my fortune that I had drawn from the

New York bank, I had placed carelessly enough in the

drawer of a chiffonnier otherwise piled with collars. It

took but a moment to satisfy myself that this had not

been touched. And, to be sure, a hammer was not necessary

to open a drawer that had, from its appearance,

never been locked. The game was deeper than I had

imagined; I had scratched the crust without result, and

my wits were busy with speculations as I changed my

clothes, pausing frequently to examine the furniture,

even the bricks on the hearth.

 

One thing only I found—the slight scar of a hammer-head

on the oak paneling that ran around the bedroom.

The wood had been struck near the base and at the top

of every panel, for though the mark was not perceptible

on all, a test had evidently been made systematically.

With this as a beginning, I found a moment later a spot

of tallow under a heavy table in one corner. Evidently

the furniture had been moved to permit of the closest

scrutiny of the paneling. Even behind the bed I found

the same impress of the hammer-head; the test had undoubtedly

been thorough, for a pretty smart tap on oak

is necessary to leave an impression. My visitors had

undoubtedly been making soundings in search of a recess

of some kind in the wall, and as they had failed of

their purpose they were likely, I assumed, to pursue

their researches further.

 

I pondered these things with a thoroughly-awakened

interest in life. Glenarm House really promised to prove

exciting. I took from a drawer a small revolver, filled

its chambers with cartridges and thrust it into my hip

pocket, whistling meanwhile Larry Donovan’s favorite

air, the Marche Fun��bre d’une Marionnette. My heart

went out to Larry as I scented adventure, and I wished

him with me; but speculations as to Larry’s whereabouts

were always profitless, and quite likely he was in jail

somewhere.

 

The ham of whose excellence Bates had hinted was no

disappointment. There is, I have always held, nothing

better in this world than a baked ham, and the specimen

Bates placed before me was a delight to the eye—so

adorned was it with spices, so crisply brown its outer

coat; and a taste—that first tentative taste, before the

sauce was added—was like a dream of Lucullus come

true. I could forgive a good deal in a cook with that

touch—anything short of arson and assassination!

 

“Bates,” I said, as he stood forth where I could see

him, “you cook amazingly well. Where did you learn

the business?”

 

“Your grandfather grew very captious, Mr. Glenarm.

I had to learn to satisfy him, and I believe I did it, sir,

if you’ll pardon the conceit.”

 

“He didn’t die of gout, did he? I can readily imagine

it.”

 

“No, Mr. Glenarm. It was his heart. He had his

warning of it.”

 

“Ah, yes; to be sure. The heart or the stomach—one

may as well fail as the other. I believe I prefer to keep

my digestion going as long as possible. Those grilled

sweet potatoes again, if you please, Bates.”

 

The game that he and I were playing appealed to me

strongly. It was altogether worth while, and as I ate

guava jelly with cheese and toasted crackers, and then

lighted one of my own cigars over a cup of Bates’ unfailing

coffee, my spirit was livelier than at any time

since a certain evening on which Larry and I had

escaped from Tangier with our lives and the curses of

the police. It is a melancholy commentary on life that

contentment comes more easily through the stomach

than along any other avenue. In the great library, with

its rich store of books and its eternal candles, I sprawled

upon a divan before the fire and smoked and indulged

in pleasant speculations. The day had offered much

material for fireside reflection, and I reviewed its history

calmly.

 

There was, however, one incident that I found unpleasant

in the retrospect. I had been guilty of most

unchivalrous conduct toward one of the girls of St.

Agatha’s. It had certainly been unbecoming in me to

sit on the wall, however unwillingly, and listen to the

words—few though they were—that passed between her

and the chaplain. I forgot the shot through the window;

I forgot Bates and the interest my room possessed for

him and his unknown accomplice; but the sudden distrust

and contempt I had awakened in the girl by my

clownish behavior annoyed me increasingly.

 

I rose presently, found my cap in a closet under the

stairs, and went out into the moon-flooded wood toward

the lake. The tangle was not so great when you knew

the way, and there was indeed, as I had found, the faint

suggestion of a path. The moon glorified a broad highway

across the water; the air was sharp and still. The

houses in the summer colony were vaguely defined, but

the sight of them gave me no cheer. The tilt of her

tam-o’-shanter as she paddled away into the sunset had

conveyed an impression of spirit and dignity that I could

not adjust to any imaginable expiation.

 

These reflections carried me to the borders of St.

Agatha’s, and I followed the wall to the gate, climbed

up, and sat down in the shadow of the pillar farthest

from the lake. Lights shone scatteringly in the buildings

of St. Agatha’s, but the place was wholly silent.

I drew out a cigarette and was about to light it when

I heard a sound as of a tread on stone. There was, I

knew, no stone pavement at hand, but peering toward

the lake I saw a man walking boldly along the top of the

wall toward me. The moonlight threw his figure into

clear relief. Several times he paused, bent down and

rapped upon the wall with an object he carried in his

hand.

 

Only a few hours before I had heard a similar sound

rising from the wainscoting of my own room in Glenarm

House. Evidently the stone wall, too, was under

suspicion!

 

Tap, tap, tap! The man with the hammer was examining

the farther side of the gate, and very likely he

would carry his investigations beyond it. I drew up my

legs and crouched in the shadow of the pillar, revolver

in hand. I was not anxious for an encounter; I much

preferred to wait for a disclosure of the purpose that lay

behind this mysterious tapping upon walls on my grandfather’s

estate.

 

But the matter was taken out of my own hands before

I had a chance to debate it. The man dropped to the

ground, sounded the stone base under the gate, likewise

the pillars, evidently without results, struck a spiteful

crack upon the iron bars, then stood up abruptly and

looked me straight in the eyes. It was Morgan, the

caretaker of the summer colony.

 

“Good evening, Mr. Morgan,” I said, settling the revolver

into my hand.

 

There was no doubt about his surprise; he fell back,

staring at me hard, and instinctively drawing the hammer

over his shoulder as though to fling it at me.

 

“Just stay where you are a moment, Morgan,” I said

pleasantly, and dropped to a sitting position on the wall

for greater ease in talking to him.

 

He stood sullenly, the hammer dangling at arm’s

length, while my revolver covered his head.

 

“Now, if you please, I’d like to know what you mean

by prowling about here and rummaging my house!”

 

“Oh, it’s you, is it, Mr. Glenarm? Well, you certainly

gave me a bad scare.”

 

His air was one of relief and his teeth showed pleasantly

through his beard.

 

“It certainly is I. But you haven’t answered my question.

What were you doing in my house to-day?”

 

He smiled again, shaking his head.

 

“You’re really fooling, Mr. Glenarm. I wasn’t in

your house to-day; I never was in it in my life!”

 

His white teeth gleamed in his light beard; his hat

was pushed back from his forehead so that I saw his

eyes, and he wore unmistakably the air of a man whose

conscience is perfectly clear. I