Rayton: A Backwoods Mystery Part 13

Rayton shot a brief, but imploring glance at her.

"What I mean is--ah--why should David Marsh get the card? I hope--I mean I can't see--ah--I can't see any a.s.sociation between a chap like David and----"

He fell silent, became very red, and blinked at the fire.

"Please go on," she whispered. "_Please_ tell me what you think, for I know you are honest, fearless and sane, Mr. Rayton. You must forgive me for speaking so frankly--but that is what Jim says of you. You were saying that you cannot see any connection between David Marsh and--and what?"

Reginald took a deep breath and squared his shoulders.

"Between Marsh and those others who received the marked cards," he said.

"First, it was the young sailor, the chap in the navy--the Spaniard's winning rival. Next it was your father--a man of character and--and breeding. Now David Marsh gets the card! That seems absurd to me. It seems like a man going out to kill a partridge with an elephant gun.

It--it does not look to me like a continuation of the--the same idea at all."

"Why not? Please be quite frank with me. Why does it seem different?"

"But really, Miss Harley, I--I have no right to air my--my opinions."

"I want you to. I beg you to. I am sure your opinions will help me."

"If anything I can say will make you feel easier, then I'll--I'll go ahead. What I'm driving at is, that the navy chap was the kind of chap your grandmother might have become--ah, very fond of. Perhaps she was.

He was a serious proposition. So with your father. The others who were fond of your mother saw in him a real rival--a dangerous man. But--it is not so with Marsh. He is not big. He is not strong. The truth is, if you forgive me for saying so, there is no danger of--of your caring for a chap like David Marsh. There! So the case is not like the others, and the old idea is not carried out. Fate, or the rival, or whatever it is, has made a stupid mistake."

He glanced at the girl as he ceased speaking. Her clear face was flushed to a tender pink, and her eyes were lowered.

"There is a good deal of truth in what you say, Mr. Rayton," she murmured. "It sounds like very clear reasoning to me. And you are right in--in believing that I do not care at all for David Marsh, in the way you mean. But may we not go even farther in disproving any connection between this case and the other two?"

For the fraction of a second her glance lifted and encountered his.

"Even if David happened to correspond with that young sailor of long ago, or with my dear father, the rival is missing," she said uncertainly. "The rivals were the most terrible features of the other cases."

Rayton got nervously to his feet, then sank down again.

"There would be plenty of rivals--of a kind," he said. "That is the truth, as you must know. But like poor Marsh, none is--would be--worth considering. So, you see, fate, or whatever it is that plays this game, is playing stupidly. That is why I think it nothing but chance, in this case--the whole thing nothing but the maddest chance."

"You have eased my mind very greatly," she said.

The Englishman bowed and rose from his chair. "I am glad," he said simply. "Now I must be starting for home. I left Banks and Goodine working over a moose head that Banks got yesterday."

"You do not think d.i.c.k Goodine set fire to David's camp, do you? There is bad blood between them, you know," she said anxiously.

"He was with us all yesterday and the day before," he answered, "so I knew he had nothing to do with it."

At the door the young woman said, "I am very glad you came over this morning." And then, with an air of sudden awakening to the commonplaces of life, "Did you come for anything in particular? To see Jim, perhaps?"

she asked.

"No. Oh, no," he answered, hat in hand. "I just came--that is, I just happened along."

He was halfway home when he remembered the saucepan.

CHAPTER IX

RAYTON CONFESSES

Old Timothy Fletcher, Captain Wigmore's servant and companion, was more of a mystery to the people of Samson's Mill Settlement than the captain himself. He was not as sociable as his master, kept to the house a great deal, and moved with a furtive air whenever he ventured abroad. In speech he was reserved to such an extent that he seldom addressed a word to anybody but Wigmore, and in manner he was decidedly unpleasant. He was neither liked nor understood by his neighbors. He did not care a rap what the people thought of him, and yet, with all his queerness and unsociability, he possessed many common human traits. He served the captain faithfully, had a weakness for rye whisky and Turkish cigarettes--weaknesses which he indulged on the sly--and spent much of his time in the perusal of sentimental fiction.

The afternoon of the day on which Mr. Rayton went across the fields to borrow a saucepan was bright and warm. The morning had promised rain, but a change of wind had given to late autumn a few more hours of magic, unseasonable warmth and glow. Timothy Fletcher, shod with felt, went to the door of the captain's bedroom and a.s.sured himself that the worthy gentleman was deep in his after-luncheon nap. Then he tiptoed to his own chamber, produced a paper-covered novel and a box of cigarettes from a locked trunk, and crept downstairs again. In the kitchen he changed his felt-soled slippers for a pair of boots. He crossed the garden, the little pasture beyond, and entered a patch of young firs and spruces. He walked swiftly and furtively, until he came to a little sun-filled clearing, on a gently sloping hillside. Here he found his favorite seat, which was a dry log lying near a big poplar. He seated himself on the log, leaned back against the poplar, lit a fat cigarette, and opened the book.

For a whole hour Timothy read steadily, chapter after chapter, and smoked four cigarettes. Then he placed the book face down upon his knee.

The sun was warm and the air soft and fragrant. He closed his eyes, opened them with an effort, closed them again. His head sank back and settled slightly to the left. The book slid from his knee. But he gave it no heed.

He awoke, struggling violently, but impotently. He opened his eyes upon darkness. He cried out furiously, and his voice was beaten thunderously back into his own ears by an enveloping blanket. He knew it for a blanket by the weight and feeling of it. His back was still against the familiar poplar tree, but now it was pressed to the trunk by something that crossed his chest. His hands were bound to his sides. His ankles were gripped together.

Now it happened that a large widow, named Mrs. Beesley, came to the little hillside clearing just before sunset. She had been hunting through the woods all the afternoon for an herb that enjoys the reputation, in this country, of being a panacea for all ailments of the stomach. Now she was on her way home.

Rounding the big poplar, she beheld a shapeless, blanket-swathed, rope-bound form lumped against the trunk. She did not see the ropes clearly, nor fully comprehend the blanket; in fact she received only a general impression of something monstrous, bulky, terrific. She uttered a shrill scream, and, for a few seconds, stood spellbound. A choking sound, m.u.f.fled and terrible, came from the shapeless bulk, and one end of it began to sway and the other to twist and wag. Mrs. Beesley turned and ran for her very life.

Instinct, rather than reason, directed Mrs. Beesley's fleeing feet toward the clearings and farmsteads of the settlement. She left the haunted woods behind her, crossed a lumpy pasture at an amazing pace, sprang into the middle of a brush fence, and fought through without a halt, sighted a house with a male figure in the foreground, and kicked her way toward these signs of protection with such high action that her elastic-sided boots acknowledged themselves frankly, and Captain Wigmore's suspicions of white stockings were confirmed. She arrived with such force as to send the frail old captain reeling backward across an empty flower bed. Following him, she reclined upon the mold.

"Bless my soul!" cried the captain. "Why, it is Mrs. Beesley! My dear Mrs. Beesley, what the devil is the matter with you? Allow me to help you to your feet. You'll ruin your gown in that bed, I'm sure. Did you see a bear?"

She had no breath for words, just then, and her legs felt as if they had melted. Wigmore possessed himself of her fat hands, set his heels in the edge of the flower bed, and pulled. He suggested a small terrier worrying a large and sleepy pig. Presently he desisted from his efforts, retreated a few paces, and wiped his face with his handkerchief.

"Collect yourself, my dear Mrs. Beesley," he pleaded. "I'm afraid you'll catch your death sitting there. Come now, try to tell me all about the bear--and try to rise."

The widow found her voice, though she did not move.

"It weren't a b'ar, captain," she cried. "Sakes alive! No b'ar 'u'd scare me like that. Don't know what to call it, captain. The devil, I reckon--or a ghost, maybe--or a annerchrist. You better git yer gun, captain, and go back and take a look. Oh, lor'! Oh, sakes alive! I never thought to see the day Mary Beesley 'u'd jump fences like a breechy steer!"

"Calm yourself, Mrs. Beesley," returned old Wigmore, "and tell me where you saw this creature. Did it chase you?"

"It was in the little clearin' where the spring is," replied the widow.

"No, it didn't chase me, captain, as far's I know. I didn't look 'round to see. It jes' growled and wiggled--and then I lit out, captain, and made no more to-do about a fence than I would about crossin' a hooked mat on the kitchen floor."

"Come in and sit down, Mrs. Beesley," said Wigmore. "I'll get my man Timothy and go up to the spring and look 'round. I haven't a doubt about it being a bear."

Wigmore went through the house shouting vainly for Timothy Fletcher.

Then he went out to the road and caught sight of Benjamin Samson in the distance. He whistled on his fingers and waved a hand violently to the miller. Benjamin came to him as fast as his weight allowed.

"What's bitin' you, cap'n?" he asked.

"There is something by the spring up in the little clearing," said Wigmore--"something that frightened Mrs. Beesley, and growled and wagged itself. She is in the house, recovering from her fright. She ran like a deer."

"Then I'll bet it wasn't a man up by the spring," said Benjamin.

The captain let this mild attempt at humor pa.s.s without notice.