CHAPTER I.

THE MYSTERIOUS HOUSE.

Renfro Horn was quite sure that Captain Pete would never have spoken had he not dropped the rabbit. But the sound of its frozen body striking the hard crust on the top of the snow made the old man turn around to discover the reason for the sound. And at the same time he saw the rabbit he saw Renfro.

“Oh,” he snarled, “Spyin’ on me ag’in--sneakin’ on an old man’s own grounds.”

The jerking of his shoulders broke the string which held the other rabbits to his shoulder. A rattle like falling twigs. They were all on the top of the snow. With a rush the old man was down on all fours trying to roll them together.

Renfro stepped up to help him. And then he saw the three quails and stopped. One minute he stared at them: the next he stooped and fumbled with the tops of his shoes.

When he looked down at the ground again the quails were gone, and the rabbits in a close heap. Renfro knew what was under the pile, but he pretended not to have seen them. He remembered the notices the game marshal had had posted about quail hunting the week before.

Imprisonment and fine for the first offense. Captain Pete had one of these notices on his own big front gate.

“Pretty good luck?” Renfro twisted at the top button on his mackinaw. “Fourteen rabbits I should guess.”

“Twenty-two,” Captain Pete was proud of his good fortune. “And all shot in my own fields. You can go on, buddy. I’ll tote them down to my shack myself.”

“Down to the shack?”

Renfro asked the question. Captain Pete answered it. “Yes, I’m a stayin’ down there this winter. An old man like me can’t chop wood enough to keep the big house warm. I didn’t even try to. Moved down to the shack in September.”

With a last look at the pile of frozen rabbits Renfro walked slowly away down toward the road which led back to town. The three quails and the threatened fine were instantly forgotten. But a big question was in his mind.

If Captain Pete had been living in the shack ever since September, then who had been living in the big house? Four times recently, when he had been out on late walks like this one, he had seen queer lights spring from its windows.

They didn’t stay in one place but seemed to flash from one room to another. The last time they had been in the right hand room in the upper story and then suddenly had gone out and flashed in the lower left hand corner. He had thought it queer then, but had regarded them as certain proofs of Captain Pete’s queer mind.

Where the two paths, the short cut and the longer way round intersected, Renfro paused uncertainly. The short one meant a saving of at least a quarter of an hour and he would be on time for supper. The longer one would make him late and bring upon his head the reproofs of both his mother and father.

Yet he wouldn’t know about the lights if he chose the short cut. And he had to know about them tonight. Better risk his family’s wrath than miss a chance to solve this mystery.

And Renfro hurried down the long path which led past the big white house.

Just after he was out on the road he met Clint Moore, the boy who sold chestnuts on the Horns’ home street in the early fall. “Who’s living in the old Hall house?” Renfro asked him.

Clint whistled, “Just old dippy Captain Pete Hall,” he laughed. “An he’s worse off his nut than ever this winter. Don’t have no fire nor nothin’. We’d think he was dead if we didn’t see his lights of nights once in a while and see him agoin’ huntin’ past the house.”

Renfro stared at him. The dusk was beginning to get heavy, but he could still see Clint’s eyes and he knew he was telling the truth. He started to ask him another question when Clint said, “I’m going your way so we might just as well walk along together if you don’t mind. There’s a basket ball game in town tonight and I’m going to go and stay at my aunt’s.”

He talked on about the ball game but Renfro wasn’t listening. He was staring at the big Hall house which was less than a quarter of a mile ahead of them. It set back off the road another quarter of a mile and in front of it was a long row of pine trees.

They almost shut off all view of the old white shell whose original owners had claimed that it was “a palace with fourteen rooms.” But in the upper right hand corner of it a light was plainly visible to both boys and--

“There’s the old fellow now.” Clint pointed at the small window, thru the ragged blind of which were gleams of light. “Don’t see it often but some times--”

And then the light suddenly went out.

Renfro was silent. Captain Pete with his twenty-two rabbits and three quails was back in the woods. He was sure of that. But who could have had that light? And did Captain Pete really live in the shack now or had that been merely a story he had told to take Renfro’s attention away from the quails?

Renfro was still wondering about that when they reached the end of the car line and boarded the car which took them past his home. Clint would have to transfer at Liberty Avenue.

They were the only passengers on the car until three paper carriers with their big bulky paper bags got on a few blocks farther up the line. When each had finished carrying his own route he had waited for the others. Riding in together gave them a chance to talk over profits, new subscribers and the adventures they encountered on their routes.

Renfro tried to listen to them and to Clint at the same time. His questions about Captain Pete had reminded Clint of an old hired man they had once had. He had known Captain Pete Hall before he got to be so queer. There had been a brother who had been wild to get rich. He and some confederates from another city had made counterfeit money in the little shack on the Hall place.

“Captain Pete found their outfit but he didn’t know his brother was one of the counterfeiters so he went to the sheriff about it and the whole gang was arrested. His brother got the stiffest sentence of the whole lot.

“He hated Captain Pete then,” Clint went on with his story. “He said that when he got out he was goin’ to kill him. Worryin’ about that upset Pete’s mind.”

When Renfro asked him about the time at which the brother was to be free again Clint shook his head. The hired man had never told him anything about the length of the sentence Pete’s brother had gotten. He had told all of the story he knew. His mother had once said that Captain Pete’s brother was dead. “Better off that way than the way Pete is,” he laughed.

When he got off at the corner several other passengers entered the car. Renfro studied them--the man with the beetling eyebrows and weak mouth, the woman with the near seal coat and the genuine diamonds. There was something queer about them. The papers recently told the story of a jewelshop theft. Renfro began to wonder.

The carrier boys jostled against him as they went to leave the car. The little one was bragging about a ride he had taken on the patrol wagon the night before. There had been some trouble in the street on which his route lay and the corner police had taken him along to help give directions about the location of some houses.

And then Renfro’s own street was called. With an effort he left the interesting couple, the lively wide awake carrier boys, and the two men in uniform. His own avenue lay before him, placid and uninteresting. The bright street lights made every corner on it as visible as if it were in the day time.

He ran up the great stone steps to his own home. He opened the door, entered the hall and knew he was late for supper. With a dash he was up stairs and to the bath room to wash his face and hands.

And down stairs in the dining room his parents were discussing him. His father, tall and thin and patrician looking, adjusted his horn rimmed spectacles and said once more that he knew his son was queer. Otherwise why would he walk alone as he did? If he didn’t go out to some queer spot he walked around the home yard. Why, once he had counted one hundred trips Renfro had made around the house, his head down and his feet moving at a fairly rapid pace.

Other thirteen year old boys were playing ball or visiting in the drug stores. It was uncanny--this way he had of walking alone.

Mrs. Horn, also tall and thin and socially graceful, rustled her stiff silk dress and frowned. She too, thought Renfro was queer. But she was sure it was all due to the detective stories he read continually. Mary had told her that morning of seeing a light under his door at about three o’clock one night, at half past one on another, and when she had slipped down there had found that he was reading.

“They are about horrible crimes,” she shuddered. “It worries me so that I cannot sleep. I am afraid he will cultivate criminal tendencies. What he reads will influence him, I’m sure. Now I read of a boy--”

Mr. Horn shook his head. “Nonsense,” he said shortly. “There’s no criminals in our families. Renfro is a little queer. None of us boys was the least bit like him. But he’s clever with all his queer streaks. Why in that continued story--that detective one he coaxed me to read, he had the mystery all solved before the last chapter was published.”

Well, Mrs. Horn was determined of one thing. If Renfro had to read such queer stories he should not do it in the middle of the night. “I’ll change his room,” she said with emphasis. “There is that old music room right across from--”

“From mine,” Renfro finished in the door way. “And I’d like to have it for my own library,” he added and walked to the table.

His unsatisfactory explanation of his walk half angered his father. But he did not know what to say about it. The report card Renfro had brought home a few days before had been almost perfect. He couldn’t command him to hurry from school to study. He was just ready to mention some errand he had at his office when Mrs. Horn spoke.

“Renfro,” her voice was fretful and accusing. “I needed you this afternoon to go out to Captain Pete Hall’s for me. It’s rabbit season now and I wanted some for dinner tomorrow. I waited over an hour for you and then I drove out there by myself.”

She shivered. “It’s an uncanny place--that big house is. The shrubbery has grown everywhere and the weatherboards and shutters which have dropped off the house lay just where they have fallen. It was like working my way thru a maze to get to the door. And what made it worse it was just getting dark and--”

“And Captain Pete wasn’t home,” Renfro finished for her remembering again the three quails, the rabbits and the shack story the old man had told back in the woods.

Mrs. Horn gave him a severe look. She allowed no one to interrupt her without giving them a reproof.

“Yes, he was,” she snapped back, “but he didn’t have any rabbits for sale. What was worse he said he wouldn’t have any at all. He mumbled something about not going to hunt this season and shut the door in my face.”

With a gasp Renfro half rose from his chair, stared at his mother, heard his father’s gruff command to behave himself, and settled back in his seat again, smoothing out his napkin with a great effort. But his eyes remained round and his mouth opened and closed several times before he spoke.