Part 10

“No!” I answered; “why, I saw Pake on Washington’s birthday and he said nothing about going abroad.”

“He went in March,” Susie rejoined; “late in March, I think. He likes it down there.”

Somebody interrupted and we did not mention Pake again until after supper. Then we were all out on the long front porch, grouped about Susie. Buck and Tom Brundige and I, scattered among the ladies, had our cigars drawing well. Rex, as always, was smoking one cigarette after another. A V. M. I. cadet, a crony of one of Anna’s boys, was seated on one rail of the rustic bridge over the brook, twanging a banjo at three girls who sat on the other rail facing him. In the lulls of our talk and of the banjo, the chuckle of the brook over its pebbles emphasized the silence, into which broke the undertones of a pair of lovers, swinging in a hammock off to the right. The stars twinkled through the tree-tops, the cigar ends glowed red in the darkness, which was cloven by shafts of lamplight from the windows and mitigated afar to the left where, over the long black outline of the Blue Ridge a paling sky prophesied moonrise.

Somebody had been expecting a letter and had been disappointed and was mourning over it.

“I don’t understand about letters from Pake,” Susie remarked. “Sometimes we don’t get any letters for weeks, and then we get two or three, all at once. When we compare dates and postmarks we find that he writes every Wednesday and Saturday and mails the letters the very day they are written. How do you explain that, Billy?”

“I suppose,” I said, “that the letters come different ways, perhaps some by Lisbon, some by London, others perhaps other ways. That might explain it. What do you think, Tom?”

“I fancy,” said Brundige, “that you are probably right.”

“I had a letter from Pake to-day,” Susie went on. “I had not heard from him for a month. He says he don’t like his business quarters. He has an expensive office and he says it is dark and hot and stuffy and he is going to change just as soon as he can find something to suit him. He says he is looking round. But he says he is most comfortably located otherwise. He is boarding, as he expresses it, ‘up on Santa Teresa’; what does that mean, Billy?”

“Big, long hill,” I replied. “Four hundred feet high. Splendid view over the city and harbor. Fine air all night. Lots of places to board up there, and all good. How’s that now, Tom?”

“All correct,” Brundige corroborated me.

“I should think,” Rex put in, “that Pake would get into trouble down there.”

“What sort of trouble?” Anna demanded. “Pake never gets into trouble anywhere. What sort of trouble do you mean?”

Rex lit another cigarette.

“Oh,” he said, “I meant that down there those Dago Portuguese won’t stand any nonsense. They’re a revengeful lot, by what I hear. Pake might cut somebody out with a girl and get a knife stuck in him.”

“You’re teasing!” cried Anna, indignantly. “You’re always up to some teasing! You ought to be ashamed of yourself.”

And Susie rebuked him:

“You oughtn’t to suggest such awful things, Rex.”

“But I wasn’t suggesting anything awful,” Rex persisted, “and I wasn’t teasing. I only meant Pake would be likely to cause some heartburnings down there. Pake’s bound to be the same old Pake. He can’t change all of a sudden. He’s certain to have half a dozen girls thinking they have him on a string before he was there a week. Before he was there a month he had more than one girl on a string. Somebody’s bound to be jealous. Those Dagoes are a hot-blooded lot.”

“Pooh!” Buck cut in, “Pake don’t know enough Portuguese to flirt with any natives and all the Americans and English down there will understand flirting.”

“What’s the matter with some Dago being in love with an English girl or an American girl?” Rex persevered; “Pake might cut one out with a girl that speaks English.”

I saw that both Susie, who was naturally nervous, and Anna, who had been inseparable from Pake all through their childhood, were wrought up. I tried to intervene.

“Nonsense,” I said, “Pake might cut out any number of gallants and never get into any trouble. Rio is as peaceable as Baltimore. To begin with, he can’t flirt with any Brazilian girls, for no Brazilian girl is ever permitted to talk to a young man. Anybody going along the streets can see the fashionable Brazilians making love according to their custom. Toward sunset, when the heat is less fierce, the girls, all dressed up, lean out of the windows of the second floor drawing rooms. Their lovers stand on the other side of the street and look at them. A young man will stand that way two hours or more every afternoon for a year before he asks her father for a girl. That’s the fashion. How is it now, Tom?”

“Same way now.” Brundige corroborated me. “Lots of flirtation among the foreign set, though. But no danger of daggers or revenge. Rio is as peaceable as Washington. I never heard of any case of revenge or of jealousy leading to bloodshed. Never heard of a supposed case, except once.”

His tone told us all there was a story coming. He was sitting next to Susie and we all hitched our chairs nearer.

“What was that, Tom?” Buck asked.

The women all looked towards Brundige. Rex lit another cigarette. The rest of us lit fresh cigars.

“It was a fellow named Orodoff Guimaraes,” Brundige began. “Guimaraes, in Portuguese, is like Smith in English, only more so. It seems as if half the Fluminenses, as they call the people of Rio, are named Guimaraes. This Orodoff Guimaraes was a cousin and namesake of a wealthy and respected wine-merchant and rather traded on the relationship and identity of the name. He was one of those dandies who swarm in all South American cities, young men with little or no income, a great sense of their own importance, a taste for expensive pleasures, a love of ease and comfort, ungovernable passions, and an insane devotion to the latest fashion in clothes.

“Most of such idlers have no income and are too proud to have any business. This Orodoff Guimaraes was better off in both respects. He inherited a small property in real estate, and he made some money in life insurance. He had a desk in a third floor office in a building he owned, 49A Rua de Alfandega, one of the principal business streets of the old down-town part of Rio. He rented the first and second floors of the building at good rentals, and he rented desk-room on the third floor; all the back office and all the front office except his own small desk.

“He used to spend the most of his mornings at that desk, idling. He sometimes had business that took him out, sometimes he pretended he had. But mostly he just sat at his desk, reading papers, smoking cigarettes or doing nothing at all. It was a pleasant place to do nothing in, a big room, nearly thirty feet wide, more than thirty feet long, with a high ceiling and three tall French windows down to the floor, all three always open. They faced south, so that they needed no awnings and they let in no glare and plenty of breeze. The office was light, but not too light, cool and airy, an ideal loafing place.

“When he was not loafing in his office Guimaraes was always making love to some girl or going through the motions of making love. No girl would have him, for no girl’s father would let her marry him; he was not well enough off to marry, though he managed to dress well as a bachelor. So girl after girl whom he made love to married some one else, or got engaged to some one else. Three of them got engaged, but never got married. Their bridegrooms died before the wedding day.

“In each case Guimaraes made friends with his rival, got quite chummy with him, and induced him to rent a desk in his office. In each case the rival was killed by falling out of one of the French windows of the office, forty odd feet to the pavement of the Rue de Alfandega. In each case it was an accident. In each case Orodoff Guimaraes was out of his office when the accident happened. But while no one could say a word against Guimaraes, after the third accident no Fluminense who had been exposed in any way to Orodoff Guimaraes’ real or apparent rivalry for any girl could be induced to rent desk room in his office. The deaths could not be imputed to him, but the coincidence of the rivalry, the friendship, the renting of a desk and the fall from the window, in three different cases, was more than even the slow-thinking fashionable Fluminenses could stand. It got on their nerves. If he hadn’t committed three murders out of revenge, it seemed as if he had. Of course, he couldn’t have hypnotized the victims when he was half a mile away and made them throw themselves out of the window or caused them to walk out of the window, but somehow everybody felt as if that was just about what he had done.

“And each case was spooky, too. In each case the victim’s desk was close to one of the windows; in each case Orodoff Guimaraes was out, but there were two other men, renters of desk-room, at desks further back in the office; in each case the other men, seated at their desks twenty feet and more away, had been talking across the room to the victim; in each case the other men, different men each time, had turned round to look at something on their desks, had heard no sound, no movement, no cry, but when they looked round again found themselves alone in the room, and, going to the window, saw the victim crushed on the pavement below.”

He stopped.

“Why don’t they have a railing or a balustrade across the open window?” Rex inquired.

“Custom,” Brundige rejoined. “Custom rules everything down there; custom rules everything all over South America. In Rio all upstairs offices have French windows down to the floor. It’s a hot climate and no window has a rail or even a bar across it. To have unobstructed windows is the custom.”

“Fool custom!” said Buck.

Just then Leslie came out and joined us. She had been attending to her household duties, or giving orders about breakfast, or entertaining a boarder or something like that.

After she was settled next to Rex she said:

“I had a letter from Pake this morning. He says there are some fine girls down there in Rio. Says he has had no end of fun with them. He must have been in a good humor when he wrote that letter. It’s a long letter and very funny. He tells how he pretended to make love to a girl, just to annoy a fool of a dude who was always making eyes at her, how at first the dude was mad, how he saw the joke and behaved real sensibly. Pake says they got to be real good friends. He tells it all very well. I’ll read it to you to-morrow.”

Leslie was bubbling with merriment, as unconscious as possible and very girlish. But about the rest of us the atmosphere seemed to tingle. I could feel, as it were, the spiritual tension. Buck asked, thickly:

“Did he tell you the fellow’s name?”

“No,” said Leslie cheerfully. “He never mentioned his name. But he says they are real good friends.”

Just then the banjo party on the little bridge stood up. We heard cheerful greetings and recognized Mattie’s voice. She had strolled over on foot, her home being a very short distance down the road.

She came up on the porch, a big, solid matronly young woman. I caught a glimpse of her plump face as the lamplight through the open doorway struck on her, her brown eyes smiling merrily.

Buck sat down on the porch floor, his feet on the steps, his back against a pillar. Mattie took his chair. She also took charge and control of the conversation.

“Alf drove to Hagerstown right after supper,” she said. “He ought to be back soon. I told him I was coming over here and he’ll come right here when he comes out.”

This was in answer to my query.

“I had a letter from Pake this morning,” she went on. “He says he’s got a new office that suits him perfectly. He says he didn’t need as much room as he had, so he’s taken desk room only in the office of a friend of his, some kind of Brazilian name, I couldn’t spell and can’t pronounce it. He says it’s a dandy place on the third floor, big, high room, plenty of floor space to move about in and nice fellows at the other desks. It’s bright and cool and airy, three big French windows open down to the floor.”

Then, quite suddenly, as she paused, I felt the Alders enveloped in an atmosphere of tragedy and gloom. The Hibbards excelled in self-control; not one of them uttered a sound. There was a long silence. I could hear the ripple of the brook. The first rays of the late moon, just clearing the top of the Blue Ridge, struck through the maples.

Anna spoke first:

“Have you that letter with you, Mattie?”

“Yes,” Mattie replied cheerfully. “I brought it along.”

“Give it to me,” Anna said; “Billy and I will try to make out that name.”

“Billy can do it, I’ll bet,” spoke Mattie brightly.

Anna, the letter in her hand, stood up.

“Come on, Billy,” she said.

I went.

I was surprised at her asking me instead of Brundige. I had never been intimate with Anna. Susie I had known well and Mattie better, but Leslie, in the old days, had merely smiled and seldom spoken, so that I could not tell whether she liked me or not, while Anna had seemed to avoid me.

I should have expected her to call Brundige, for Tom had been in Rio longer than I, and much more recently.

She stood by the refrigerator in the back hall by the side door and leaned against it, her brown hair almost golden against the lamp that stood on the refrigerator.

“I daren’t look at the letter,” she said. “You read it, Billy.”

I found the name and it was Orodoff Guimaraes. Also, at the end of the letter he told Mattie to write to him at his office address, Rua de Alfandega, 49A.

“Come!” said Anna, in a fierce whisper.

I followed her through the side door and out into the tepid windless moonlight.

She made for the barn.

The atmosphere of gloom and tragedy deepened about us. The moonlight seemed weird and ghastly, the shadows of the trees grim and menacing, the silence like that of a graveyard.

Anna leaned against the barnyard gate.

“Could I send a cablegram to Rio de Janeiro for thirty dollars?” she queried.

“A long one for less,” I said. “When I was down there the rates were sixty-five cents a word. That’s many years ago. The rates can’t be over half that now. You could cable a letter for thirty dollars.”

“I have three ten-dollar bills,” she said. “Barton gave them to me for emergencies just before I left Washington.”

“I have more than that in my pocket,” I said. “Between us we are sure to have more than enough.”

“Do you suppose,” she asked, “that I could send a cable from Jonesville this late Saturday night?”

“We might try,” I said.

“If we can’t,” she pressed me, “will you drive into Hagerstown with me?”

“Yes,” I promised.

“Oh,” she said, “I can’t bear it. I can see him lying dead on those cruel paving stones. I can’t bear it.”

I remembered that, just as Rex and Leslie had been inseparable all through their childhood, so Anna and Pake had been comrades from the cradle on. I said nothing.

“Can you hitch up without the lantern?” she demanded.

“Has the stable been altered?” I asked.

“Not a bit,” she said.

In fact my hand in the dark found in the same places what might have been the same hickory harness-pegs and on them what seemed like the same old sets of harness.

“Which stall?” I asked.

“Laddie’s old stall,” she directed me; “call her Nell.”

I harnessed the mare and led her out to the carriage shed. Anna climbed into the buggy. I opened the gate into the grove and closed it after she had driven through. At the far end of the grove I got out of the buggy again and let down the bars. After I had put them up and was at last in the buggy she handed the reins to me.

“Nell can trot,” she said.

Nell trotted, the snaky black shadows lay inky dark across the road. We tore past Grotto station. We neared Jonesville. I had no sense of ineptitude or futility in what we were trying to do. I did not feel I was on a wild goose chase. I did not feel absurd. I took our errand most seriously. We were on our way to warn Pake against the devilish machinations of a fiend who had contrived and compassed three ingenious murders. We were racing against time to warn him before it was too late. I was wrought up to the highest pitch of excitement over the gravity and urgency of our mission.

We found the telegraph operator still awake. We persuaded him to do as we asked. Anna wrote and I amended till we agreed on:

“Change your office immediately. Do not enter it again on any account. Get another office at once. Act instantly; this is a matter of life and death. Explanations by letter.

“ANNA.”

When the cablegram was sent off we drove homeward, at Nell’s natural pace, which was not slow.

We felt only partly relieved.

A dozen times Anna sighed:

“I hope we were in time; oh, I hope we were in time!”

The atmosphere of gloom and tragedy pursued us as we returned, enveloped the Alders when again we were seated on the porch.

Hardly were we seated when Mattie’s husband came. I had heard he had been consumptive, but had recovered completely. He looked to me like a dying man; haggard, gray-cheeked, sunken-eyed, trembling. He greeted people like a sleep-walker.

As soon as greetings were over he said:

“Buck, I want to talk business to you a moment.”

Buck stood up. He had the Hibbard faculty of intuition and unexpectedness. I was used to both, of old. But I was very much astonished when he pinched me as he passed and indicated that I was to come, too.

In the back hall by the refrigerator Alf looked up at Buck like a hunted animal at bay.

“My God, Buck,” he said. “How’ll we ever break it to the girls?”

“Break what?” Buck queried, his voice dry and thin.

“There was a cablegram for you at Hagerstown,” Alf replied. “Beesore had sense enough not to telephone it out here. He saw me and gave it to me. Pake’s dead.”

“Let’s look at the cablegram,” Buck said thickly.

He looked, holding it closely to the kerosene lamp on the refrigerator.

Then he handed it to me.

I read:

“E. P. Hibbard instantly killed by a fall from a window.

“G. SWANWICK.”

1913

THE MESSAGE ON THE SLATE

THE MESSAGE ON THE SLATE

MRS. LLEWELLYN had always held--in so far as she ever thought about the subject at all--that to consult a clairvoyant was not merely an imbecile folly, but a degrading action, nearly akin to crime. Now that she felt herself over-masteringly driven to such an unconscionable unworthiness she could not bring herself to do it openly. Anything underhand or secretive was utterly alien to her nature. She was a tall woman, notably well shaped, with unusual dignity of demeanor. The poise of her head would have appeared haughty but for the winning kindliness of her frequent smile. Her dark hair, dark eyes and very white skin accorded well with that abiding calm of her bearing which never seemed mere placidity in a face habitually lighted with interested comprehension. Like a cloudless springtime sunrise over limitless expanses of dewy prairies, she was enveloped in an atmosphere of spacious serenity of soul, and her appearance was entirely in consonance with her character. She was still a very beautiful woman, high-souled as she was beautiful and exceedingly straight-forward. Yet to drive in open day to a house bearing the displayed sign of a spirit-medium was more than she could do. Bidding her footman call for her later, much later, at her hairdresser’s, she dismissed her carriage at the main entrance of a department store. Leaving it by another entrance, she took a street car for the neighborhood she sought. The neighborhood was altogether different from what she had anticipated; the houses, by no means small, were even handsome; not least handsome that of the clairvoyant. And it was very well kept, the pavement and the steps clean, the plate glass window panes bright, the shades and curtains new and tasteful, the silver doorknobs and door-bell fresh polished. There was a sign, indeed, but not the flaming horror her imagination had constructed from memories of signs seen in passing. This was a bit of glass set inside the big, bright pane of one of the parlor windows. It bore in small gold letters only the name, SALATHIEL VARGAS, and the word, CLAIRVOYANT.