The Professor's Mystery Part 6

"Accidents, old fellow, accidents. The locked door was a mistake, unless somebody thought you were too dangerous a reprobate to leave at large.

The guinea was drunk, on your own showing. As for Lady, she has a better head than the average, but you can't get me to waste any time figuring out how any woman's mind works. I've been married three years."

"Well, I'm going to find out what it all means."

"It doesn't all mean anything. That's where your kaleidoscopic imagination gets to work. There isn't any conceivable connection between these details! and you talk as if they were veiled and awful hints all pointing one way. Your dragons are windmills, I tell you, and your helmet's a copper kettle."

"You'd think differently if you had been there. Besides, I know--" I stopped short. Bob was my friend, and whatever I chose to tell him was my own business; but even to him I was not betraying confidences.

"Bob," I said, "I can't prove it, even to you, but I know that there is something wrong; and I firmly believe that somehow or other all these things work into it. Now, if you can throw any light at all, help me out."

"I've told you all I know. I'm not exactly an intimate of these people, but I've known them off and on for three or four years, and there simply isn't anything unusual about them. They're just like every one else, only a little nicer--the last people on earth to act queerly or have a closet skeleton."

"At any rate, they seem to want to get rid of me," I said. "Well, they can't do it. If they've got some scandalous idea of me, they're going to apologize; and if they're in trouble, I'm going to make myself useful.

I've fallen into an adventure, and I'm going through with it."

"I'll tell you one thing," said Bob, very solemnly for him, "if there is any family secret, it's nothing against Lady. She's about as good and white and honest--but you don't need to be told that."

"No," said I, "I don't. And perhaps that's the reason."

I waited where I was for the rest of the week; partly because I was resolved not to put myself in the wrong afresh by following Miss Tabor's movements too immediately, and partly to give time for Bob's promised vindication of my character to take effect. I could not, however, believe that it would, in itself, make any great difference; for the more I considered, the more it seemed to me that I had been right in my suspicion, and that the whole empty charge had been merely an excuse for driving me from the house and a device for terminating the acquaintance.

I discovered during those few days the truth of the saying that to think is the hardest thing in the world; for my attempts to reason out the situation persistently resolved themselves into adventurous dreams and emotional reminiscences until I suspended judgment in despair and put the whole matter from my mind. And it was with an eager relief at last that I bade good-by to the Ainslies and retraced my journey. Bob had received in the meantime no answer to his letter; but by that time I was not to be surprised.

I took my old room at the inn, got myself into white flannels with leisurely determination, and set forth to call upon Miss Tabor. It was not hot, and all the air was clear with that sparkling zest common enough in autumn but rare in the heat of midsummer; and as I hurried along, the beauty of the world flowed over me in a great, joyous wave of hope and resolution. The little distance between the inn and the Tabors'

I covered before I realized it.

"Is Miss Tabor at home?" I asked the maid at the door.

She took my card and hesitated. "I'll go and see, sir," she said finally, and ushered me into the big living-room.

I was all alone; voices came dimly from other parts of the house, and the room where I sat was cool and pleasant. I found my heart beating a little faster, and wondered at myself. Presently the maid returned.

"Miss Tabor is not at home," she said.

Somehow, I had not expected it, and for a moment I stood looking at her foolishly as she held open the door. "She is in town, is she not?" I asked clumsily.

"I am not sure, sir; she is not at home, sir," the woman repeated woodenly.

I trudged back through the glare of the impossibly brilliant day sick with disappointment, and wondering if she had really been away. Could there be any reason why my card had not been taken to her? Had some general order gone out against me? Then I brought my imagination to a sudden halt. I was getting to be a fool. The probability was that the maid had simply spoken the truth; and in any case, the whole matter was easy of determination. At the inn I wrote a short note to Miss Tabor, saying that I was in town for a few days, regretting that I had missed her and asking when I should find a convenient hour to call. This despatched, I found myself in a state of empty hurry with nothing to do; and after supper and a game or so of erratic pool, I set out to walk off an incipient and unreasoning attack of blues.

By the time I had tramped through a couple of towns.h.i.+ps and turned toward home I was fairly cheerful again. Landmarks had begun to look unfamiliar in the gathering gloom, and I took my turnings a little uncertainly; so that it was with a thrill of surprise that I found myself on a crossroad that ran alongside the Tabor place. The great house was largely dark and peaceful. Windows below glowed dimly through the dusk; and above, a single square shone brightly. Two men were coming slowly up the long driveway in front, which paralleled the road on which I stood; and as they approached the house, it seemed to me that they were walking not upon the gravel of the drive, but upon the gra.s.s beside it. When they reached the steps they turned aside, and skirting the house with a more evident avoidance of paths, crossed a stretch of lawn to what appeared to be a stable or garage some distance behind it. There was a furtiveness about the whole proceeding that I did not like, and I stood still a moment watching. Presently a match was struck in a room above the garage, and the gas flared on. Then, after a little, one of the men came out, running quietly across the lawn until he came to a stop beside the house and directly before me. The light from the upper window fell upon him and he stepped aside into the shade, but not before I had plainly seen his face. It was Lady's half-brother, Doctor Reid.

He seemed excited, or perhaps anxious; for his movements were more jerky than ever, and he moved restlessly and continually as he waited in the shadow. Once or twice he glanced nervously over his shoulder, and I instinctively drew back under the bulk of a big maple beside the road.

Then he would move out beyond the edge of the shrubbery where he could see the lighted room above the garage, then return to his watching under the window. Once or twice he whistled softly. There was no answer, and at last I saw his hand go back and a tiny pebble tinkled against the gla.s.s. Then I held my breath, my heart hammering in my ears, for Lady Tabor had come to the window.

She softly raised it and leaned out, her face very white in the darkness.

"Is that you, Walter?" she called under her breath.

"Yes," he answered, "I have him in the garage. All clear in there? He mustn't be seen, you know, mustn't be seen at all."

She laid her finger on her lips and nodded. Then the window closed silently and she was gone. Reid turned and ran back to the garage. When he came out again the other man was with him, and they crept past me among the shrubs, talking softly. The other man was tall, with a breadth of shoulder and thickness of chest that would have done credit to a professional strong man; yet his voice came in an absurd treble squeak, with an odd precision of articulation and phrasing.

"It is very important that we shall go quietly," he was saying.

"Of course, of course," Reid whispered. Then they pa.s.sed beyond hearing under the shadow of the house. Presently I saw them again, silhouetted against the gray wall. They were standing close together upon the narrow terrace that ran between the driveway and the side of the house, and Reid was fumbling at a pair of French windows. They opened with a faint click; and motioning the other man before him, he stepped in, closing the windows after them.

I walked on, full of an impatient wonder at this new mystery, which, like its predecessors, would neither fit into any reasonable explanation nor suffer itself to be put aside as unmeaning. In front of the house I pa.s.sed a big limousine, drawn up by the roadside, its engine purring softly and its lamps boring bright tunnels through the gloom. I knew it for the Tabors' by the monogram on the panels; and as I went by, I noticed the chauffeur lying sleepily back in his seat puffing at a cigar. Of course it had brought the stranger, and was waiting to take him back; but on what errand a man could be brought to the house like a guest and sneak in at a window like a thief was a question beyond me to fathom.

After all, I thought, as I reached my room, what business was it of mine? By every canon of custom and good taste I should accept my rebuke and drop quietly out of the lives of the Tabors. By staying I was forcing myself upon them, certainly against the wishes of Doctor Reid and Mr. Tabor, and possibly even against those of Miss Tabor, herself.

Nevertheless, I made up my mind perversely. Of course, if Miss Tabor wished it, I should go, but unless she told me to go herself and of her own free will, canons of politeness might go hang; rightly or wrongly, I would see the thing to a finish.

CHAPTER VII

SENTENCE OF BANISHMENT CONFIRMED WITH COSTS

I went to bed with my natural pleasure in the unexpected surfeited into a baffled irritation. I was the more annoyed when the morning brought no answer to my note; nor did the arrival of Doctor Reid about the middle of the forenoon tend to improve my state of mind. I found him fidgeting on the veranda, winding his watch and frowning at the furniture.

"Good morning, Mr. Crosby, good morning," he began. "I came down to have a few minutes' talk with you, but," he looked again at his watch, "I'm on my way down to my office and I find I'm a little late. Would it trouble you too much to walk along with me? Sorry to ask you, but I'm late already."

I got my hat, and we hurried out into the glaring suns.h.i.+ne. Reid gave the impression, I discovered, of being a much faster walker than he actually was; I had no difficulty in keeping up with him. Something of the same quality was noticeable in his conversation.

"Beautiful morning. I always like to get in a little exercise before work. Beautiful morning for a walk. Fine. Fine. Now about that note of yours. No reason at all for your coming back here, you know.

Acquaintance must be entirely broken off. No excuse whatever for going on with it. Impossible. Perfectly impossible."

I bristled at once. "Is that a message from Miss Tabor or an objection on the part of the family? I'd like to understand this."

"By my--Miss Tabor's authority, of course. Certainly. She regrets the necessity you impose on her of telling you that she can't receive your call. Maid told you yesterday she was not at home. Civil answer. No occasion for carrying the matter any further. Nothing more to be said.

Nothing." He looked at his watch again and kicked the head off a feathery dandelion.

"Mr. Tabor told me," I said, made deliberate by his jerkiness, "that I was not a fit acquaintance for his family. That was absurd, and by this time he knows it. If I'm forbidden to call, that settles the matter; but there's got to be some sensible reason."

"Certainly that settles the matter. Nothing more to be said. Nothing at all against your character. I don't know anything about that. Haven't heard a word about it. Nothing against you. Mrs.--Miss Tabor doesn't wish to see you, that's all. Very unpleasant position for you. I see that. Very unpleasant for me to say so. But you bring it on yourself.

Ought to have stayed away. Nothing else to do."

"Do you mean to say," I demanded, "that now that my reputation is cleared that makes no difference?"

"Exactly. No objection to you, whatever. Must have been all a mistake.

Very unfortunate. Very much to be regretted. Simply, you aren't wanted.

Very distressing to have to say this. You ought to have seen it. Nothing for you to come back for. Nothing to do but to drop it. Drop it right where it is. Nothing to be done."

The situation opened under me. Indefinite slander had been at least something to fight about, but to this there was simply no answer. I felt like a fool, and what was worse, like an intrusive fool; and I had a sickening sense that all the delightful kindliness of the days at the beach might have been the exaggeration of unwilling courtesy. But another moment of that memory brought back my faith. For me, I was certainly in the wrong, and probably an officious idiot. Yet the one thing of which I could be sure was Lady's honesty. I was not running from my guns just yet.

"You make me out an intruder," I retorted. "Well, that's been the whole case from the first. All along, I've done nothing out of the ordinary course of acquaintance with an ordinary family. But your family isn't ordinary. You put up invisible fences and then accuse me of trespa.s.sing.

I don't want to drag your skeleton out of the closet; but a blind man can see that it's there. If you had a counterfeiting plant in the house, for instance, I could understand all this nonsense. It's too palpably manufactured."