I sat down on the usual chair without a back, just inside the door, and stared out at the darkening street. The whole affair had an air of unreality. Now that I was there, I doubted the necessity, or the value, of the journey. I was wet and uncomfortable. Around me, with Cresson as a center, stretched an irregular circumference of mountain, with possibly a ten-mile radius, and in it I was to find the residence of a woman whose first name I did not know, and a man who, so far, had been a purely chimerical person.
Hotchkiss had penetrated the steaming interior of the cave, and now his voice, punctuated by the occasional thud of horses’ hoofs, came to me.
“Something light will do,” he was saying. “A runabout, perhaps.” He came forward rubbing his hands, followed by a thin man in overalls. “Mr. Peck says,” he began, - “this is Mr. Peck of Peck and Peck, - says that the place we are looking for is about seven miles from the town. It’s clearing, isn’t it?”
“It is not,” I returned savagely. “And we don’t want a runabout, Mr. Peck. What we require is hermetically sealed diving suit. I suppose there isn’t a machine to be had?” Mr. Peck gazed at me, in silence: machine to him meant other things than motors. “Automobile,” I supplemented. His face cleared.
“None but private affairs. I can give you a good buggy with a rubber apron. Mike, is the doctor’s horse in?”
I am still uncertain as to whether the raw-boned roan we took out that night over the mountains was the doctor’s horse or not. If it was, the doctor may be a good doctor, but he doesn’t know anything about a horse. And furthermore, I hope he didn’t need the beast that miserable evening.
While they harnessed the horse, Hotchkiss told me what he had learned.
“Six Curtises in the town and vicinity,” he said. “Sort of family name around here. One of them is telegraph operator at the station. Person we are looking for is - was - a wealthy widow with a brother named Sullivan! Both supposed to have been killed on the Flier.”
“Her brother,” I repeated stupidly.
“You see,” Hotchkiss went on, “three people, in one party, took the train here that night, Miss West, Mrs. Curtis and Sullivan. The two women had the drawing-room, Sullivan had lower seven. What we want to find out is just who these people were, where they came from, if Bronson knew them, and how Miss West became entangled with them. She may have married Sullivan, for one thing.”
I fell into gloom after that. The roan was led unwillingly into the weather, Hotchkiss and I in eclipse behind the blanket. The liveryman stood in the doorway and called directions to us. “You can’t miss it,” he finished. “Got the name over the gate anyhow, ‘The Laurels.’ The servants are still there: leastways, we didn’t bring them down.” He even took a step into the rain as Hotchkiss picked up the lines. “If you’re going to settle the estate,” he bawled, “don’t forget us, Peck and Peck. A half-bushel of name and a bushel of service.
Hotchkiss could not drive. Born a clerk, he guided the roan much as he would drive a bad pen. And the roan spattered through puddles and splashed ink - mud, that is - until I was in a frenzy of irritation.
“What are we going to say when we get there?” I asked after I had finally taken the reins in my one useful hand. “Get out there at midnight and tell the servants we have come to ask a few questions about the family? It’s an idiotic trip anyhow; I wish I had stayed at home.”
The roan fell just then, and we had to crawl out and help him up. By the time we had partly unharnessed him our matches were gone, and the small bicycle lamp on the buggy was wavering only too certainly. We were covered with mud, panting with exertion, and even Hotchkiss showed a disposition to be surly. The rain, which had lessened for a time, came on again, the lightning flashes doing more than anything else to reveal our isolated position.
Another mile saw us, if possible, more despondent. The water in our clothes had had time to penetrate: the roan had sprained his shoulder, and drew us along in a series of convulsive jerks. And then through the rain- spattered window of the blanket, I saw a light. It was a small light, rather yellow, and it lasted perhaps thirty seconds. Hotchkiss missed it, and was inclined to doubt me. But in a couple of minutes the roan hobbled to the side of the road and stopped, and I made out a break in the pines and an arched gate.
It was a small gate, too narrow for the buggy. I pulled the horse into as much shelter as possible under the trees, and we got out. Hotchkiss tied the beast and we left him there, head down against the driving rain, drooping and dejected. Then we went toward the house.
It was a long walk. The path bent and twisted, and now and then we lost it. We were climbing as we went. Oddly there were no lights ahead, although it was only ten o’clock, - not later. Hotchkiss kept a little ahead of me, knocking into trees now and then, but finding the path in half the time I should have taken. Once, as I felt my way around a tree in the blackness, I put my hand unexpectedly on his shoulder, and felt a shudder go down my back.
“What do you expect me to do?” he protested, when I remonstrated. “Hang out a red lantern? What was that? Listen.”
We both stood peering into the gloom. The sharp patter of the rain on leaves had ceased, and from just ahead there came back to us the stealthy padding of feet in wet soil. My hand closed on Hotchkiss’ shoulder, and we listened together, warily. The steps were close by, unmistakable. The next flash of lightning showed nothing moving: the house was in full view now, dark and uninviting, looming huge above a terrace, with an Italian garden at the side. Then the blackness again. Somebody’s teeth were chattering: I accused Hotchkiss but he denied it.
“Although I’m not very comfortable, I’ll admit,” he confessed; “there was something breathing right at my elbow here a moment ago.”
“Nonsense!” I took his elbow and steered him in what I made out to be the direction of the steps of the Italian garden. “I saw a deer just ahead by the last flash; that’s what you heard. By Jove, I hear wheels.”
We paused to listen and Hotchkiss put his hand on something close to us. “Here’s your deer,” he said. “Bronze.”
As we neared the house the sense of surveillance we had had in the park gradually left us. Stumbling over flower beds, running afoul of a sun-dial, groping our way savagely along hedges and thorny banks, we reached the steps finally and climbed the terrace.
It was then that Hotchkiss fell over one of the two stone urns which, with tall boxwood trees in them, mounted guard at each side of the door. He didn’t make any attempt to get up. He sat in a puddle on the brick floor of the terrace and clutched his leg and swore softly in Government English.
The occasional relief of the lightning was gone. I could not see an outline of the house before me. We had no matches, and an instant’s investigation showed that the windows were boarded and the house closed. Hotchkiss,
