At One-Thirty - Isabel Ostrander (book reader for pc .txt) 📗

the detective could speak. Wetmore added, in mounting excitement: “I read in the papers that you were on that case. Gaunt! I believe that’s why you called me up! What’s the connection, anyway? By Gad! anything to do with Hitchcock getting out of Sing Sing just at the same time? What the dev—”

“No—no!” Gaunt laughed easily. “You’re way off, Mr. Wetmore. It’s true enough that I’m handling the Appleton affair—or trying to—but I’ve got a lot more on hand, besides. Some of them are civil cases—financial, you know. I wanted the inside details of the Smith, Hitchcock V. Gregory failure purely as a side issue on one of them. By the way, did you know either of the two remaining partners?”

“Knew ‘em both—Smith better than Hitchcock, though.”

“What was Hitchcock like?”

“Little, fat man, about forty-five; dressed like a sport; high liver, good fellow—you know the type. Widower with one son at college, when the crash came.”

“And Smith?”

“Oh, Smith was just the opposite. Tall and grave and dignified; no sport at all; director in a lot of banks, vestryman of the church—that sort. He had a funny walk, come to think of it. Dragged one foot behind him—hurt in a runaway accident, I believe.”

“What was his full name? Oh, but, of course, I can look that up. I needn’t take any more of your time, Mr. Wetmore.”

“That’s all right; I know it like my own. It was James Arbuckle Smith.”

“Thanks very much. I’m glad you could give me the details. It’s saved me a lot of time; although I’m afraid it’s taken yours…. By the way, Mr. Wetmore, why don’t you have that office clock of yours fixed?”

“Clock! What’s the matter with it?”

“I just heard it strike eleven, and it isn’t a quarter of the hour yet, for my own clock here on the mantel always whirs at the quarters.”

“You’re too sharp for me. Gaunt. I’m glad you’re not working on a case against me. Let me know when you are going to start investigating me, and I’ll take to the woods.”

Both men laughed, and Gaunt called:

“Well, don’t forget to send me that list of the firm’s customers…. Good-by.” And he resolutely hung up the receiver.

“Miss Barnes,” he continued, turning to his secretary, “there’s a pile of letters there—nothing important, I think; but you’d better answer them today, please. I’ve got to take a run out in the country.”

He pressed the bell, and, when Jenkins appeared, asked:

“Is Saunders waiting outside with the car?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Get my coat and hat, and tell the cook to put up a lunch for Saunders and me, with hot coffee in die vacuum bottle, right away.”

In a few moments, the simple preparations were made, and they started down-town, headed for the Battery and the Staten Island Ferry. Gaunt wished to take the same route as Garret Appleton had, in his nocturnal visit of three weeks before, to that little farmhouse near New Brunswick. Saunders knew the roads well, and they skimmed through Staten Island, then over the ferry to Perth Amboy. Out in the real country once more, they paused by the roadside, master and man, and ate their luncheon together with great satisfaction. Then on again^ until they passed through the sleepy little village of Metuchen and beyond its farther outskirts.

“Go on about a quarter of a mile, then stop at the first house, and ask if the people within know where the Smiths lived—the James A. Smiths. If they can’t tell you, drive on another quarter of a mile, and ask again. Keep on asking until you find someone who can tell you. Then go there.”

“Very good, sir.’^

From the third house, Saunders emerged triumphant.

“It’s a half-mile down the road, sir; the fifth house from here on the left?”

“All right. Go ahead.”

Saunders drove slowly, and finally brought the car to a stop.

“Well, sir,” he said, rather doubtfully, “I’m sure this is the house the man told me. I counted straight, coming along. But it can’t be, because its all closed up, and looks deserted.”

“That is the house, I think. What is on each side of it?”

“Corn-field on the left, and a big white farmhouse, with red barns and stables set away back from the road, on the right. ‘Cross the way, nothin’ but cow-pasture an’ fields, where rows of somethin’ green’s been growin’, as far as you can see.” Saunders’ lack of enthusiasm over a bucolic existence was evidenced by the tone in which he delivered his description.

“What is the farmhouse like—the one right here, which is closed up, I mean?”

“It’s awful little, but real cozy-lookin’,” Saunders remarked critically, surveying it. “The yard is full of flowers, and the house has been repainted lately. There’s a little bit of a stable, back— you could hardly get the car in it—and a vegetable garden and two hen-houses. That’s about all.”

“Drive up to the big farm, now; the one with the red bams.”

Saunders obeyed, and they were greeted at the door by a stout, good-natured woman, who vigorously silenced the dogs’ clamor by assailing them with the broom.

“The men-folks is all out in the fields, gittin’ in the pumpkins an’ winter beets. We’re reel late with it; but we’ve been dretful short-handed this fall, an’ thank goodness there ain’t be’n what you might call an honest frost, yet!” she rattled oflF, volubly. Then drawing a fresh breath, she asked: “Who air you wan tin’ to see?”

“The owner of that little farmhouse down there,” Gaunt replied, pointing vaguely in the direction from which they had come.

“Silas owns it—my husband. I’m Mrs. Horner. Won’t you git out, an’ set awhile?” The good woman bustled about, setting chairs on the little porch, and emitting an uninterrupted flow of words as she did so. “I’m reel sorry about the house; but we can’t let it. ‘Twouldn’t be right. The folks that had it have got a lease on it, all paid up in advance for some months to come, an’, though they’ve gone away, they may come back, any time. They’ve left all their furniture in it, an’ put lots of improvements besides.”

Saunders helped his employer from the machine, and guided him to a chair; then, turning to the woman, he laid his hands across his eyes for a moment, significantly. She nodded in quick, compassionate comprehension, and disappeared suddenly into the house, to reappear almost at once with a tray, on which were two glasses and a brimming pitcher of buttermilk.

“Thought you might be thirsty after your ride/’ she remarked hospitably, as she poured out a glassful, and thrust it into Gaunt’s hand, then turned with the tray to the grinning Saunders.

“You look ‘s if you’d come a good ways. I was out in one of them sky-hootin’ things once— but not any more! We went over a thank-youma’am the driver wasn’t expectin’—we bounced right up in the air! Silas came down on his thumb, an’ sprained it, an’ I bit my tongue clear through. … But about the house—”

“This buttermilk is delicious,” remarked Gaunt^ who loathed it. “It was kind of you to think of it, Mrs. Homer.”

“I just made butter this momin,” she remarked. “But my cows ain’t doin’ so well this fall—”

“About the house,” the detective interrupted, doggedly. “A man and his wife named Smith lived there, didn’t they?”

“Yes. I declare you’re the third party in three days that’s been here askin’ about them Smiths! It’s them you want to know about, an’ not the house, a-tall!”

“It is, Mrs. Horner,” Gaunt acknowledged frankly, with his winning smile. “My interest in them is a friendly one. I think I knew them years ago, and I wanted to find them again. Was the name James A. Smith?”

“Them’s the very people, I expect!” she exclaimed, her risen suspicious quelled, as much by his manner as his words.

“Was Mr. Smith tall and thin, and did he walk a little lame, sort of dragging one foot behind him?” the detective continued.

Mrs. Homer nodded vigorously. ‘

“That’s him! An’ Mis’ Smith was kinder sickly, an’ wore a false front that a child could see through.” y “Yes, yes!” Gaunt cried hasdly, while Saunders turned respectfully away, and began to examine his tires with a great show of interest, his shoulders shaking. “They are the people I am looking for. I can’t imagine why they went away, or where.”

“No more can Silas an’ me,” returned the hostess. “Goin’ off sudden like that, an’ leavin’ no address— though, to be sure, they didn’t have no mail once in a dog’s age. We didn’t know they was thinkin’ of it till the day before they left, when Mr. Smith come up and asked Silas ‘bout a wagon to take them an’ their trunks to the station. When I went down to take her the even’s milk—they bought eggs an’ milk an’ butter an’ chickens from us, an’ hams an’ sausage-meat in the fall—I asked Mis’ Smith where they was goin’ an’ when they’d be home again, an’ all she said was: ‘We’ve been called away suddenly. I don’t know yet when we’ll be back.’ Their trunks was checked through to New York, Silas says, an’ all the way to the station Mis’ Smith kep’ worryin’ ‘bout missin’ the train, an’ her husband tryin’ to quiet her. ‘We ought to have started earlier,’ Silas says she kep’ sayin’. ‘You know, James, what’s at stake! If we don’t catch this train, we may miss the steamer. So I guess they was goin’ somewheres by boat from New York, most likely.”

“When did they leave?” Gaunt asked.

“Two weeks ago last Wednesday, on the eight o’clock train.”

“It seems strange,” the detective commented. “How long have they been living here? I lost track of them a good while ago.”

“Goin’ on four years.”

“Did they have many visitors?”

“No. Mis’ Smith’s two sisters came out from the city once in a great while, an’ twice in the last few months, a man come out in a big automobile, like your’n, to see Mr. Smith.”

“When was the last time he came?”

“Just a week before they left. I guess they was city folks themselves, afore they come out here; for they didn’t know much about the country, leastways livin’ like this. Seems ‘s if they must Ve been reel wealthy, an’ lost their money; for Mis’ Smith didn’t know a thing about housework, an’ never could learn, no more than Mr. Smith could do gardenin’. My niece, Ellen Louise —that’s over to Trenton now, takin’ a course in a business college—used to run down every day, an’ clean up, an’ cook their dinner for ‘em, an’ they had one of Silas’s hired hands twice a week to look after their vegetable garden. Mis’ Smith learned, though, to tend her flowers reel nice, an’ she loved ‘em.”

“You love them, too, don’t you, Mrs. Homer? But let me tell you that your phlox would be hardier if you would plant a purple and white together in one clump, instead of separating it with dahlias and asters.”

“Good land!” Mrs. Homer pushed back her chair, and stared at him. “I—I thought—”

“And your path is bordered with them. I could not help smelling them as I came up from my car…. But tell me, Mrs. Homer, you say the Smith’s put improvements in the house?”

“Yes. For all they lived so simple an’ plain, just like us, they seemed to hev money to spend on anything they wanted. They put a bathroom in when they first come, an’ a little engine in the cellar to pump water up to the tank, an’ enlarged the porch. Las’ spring they painted the house. Mis’ Smith had a lovely pianner, an’ she played beautiful, an’ they had more