Galusha the Magnificent Part 17

"Yes. What are you lookin' like that for?"

"Oh, nothin'. I thought maybe you was chasin' after Lulie. I see her meanderin' over this way a little while ago."

"LULIE?"

"Um-hm. Looked like her."

"Was there--was there anybody else?"

"We-ll, I wouldn't swear to that, Cap'n Jeth. I didn't SEE n.o.body, but--G.o.dfreys mighty! What's that thing?"

The thing was the brown derby. Galusha, crouching behind the tomb, had been holding it fast to his head with one hand. Now, startled by Pulcifer's statement that he had seen Miss Hallett, he let go his hold.

And a playful gust lifted the hat from his head, whirled it like an aerial teetotum and sent it rolling and tumbling to the feet of the pair by the cemetery gate.

Jethro Hallett jumped aside.

"Good Lord! What is it?" he shouted.

"It's a--a hat, ain't it?" cried Raish.

From around the tomb hastened Mr. Bangs.

"Will you gentlemen be good enough to--to stop that hat for me?" he asked, anxiously.

The light keeper and his companion started at the apparition in speechless astonishment.

"It's--it's my hat," explained Galusha. "If you will be kind enough to pick it up before--Oh, DEAR me! There it GOES! Stop it, stop it!"

Another gust had set the hat rolling again. Captain Jethro made a grab at it but his attempt only lifted it higher into the air, where the wind caught it underneath and sent it soaring.

"Oh, dear!" piped the exasperated Galusha, and ran after it.

"Who in tunket IS he?" demanded Jethro.

Mr. Pulcifer gazed at the thin little figure hopping after the hat. The light of recognition dawned in his face.

"_I_ know who he is!" he exclaimed. "I fetched him over t'other night in my car. But what in blazes is he doin' here NOW?... Hi, look out, Mister! Don't let it blow that way. If you do you'll--Head it OFF!"

The hat was following an air line due east. Galusha was following a terrestrial route in the same direction. Now Raish followed Galusha and after him rolled Captain Jethro Hallett. As they say in hunting stories, the chase was on.

It was not a long chase, of course. It ended unexpectedly--unexpectedly for Galusha, that is--at a point where a spur of the pine grove jutted out upon the crest of a little hill beyond the eastern border of the cemetery. The hat rolled, bounced, dipped and soared up the hill and just clear of the branches of the endmost pine. Then it disappeared from sight. Its owner breathlessly panted after it. He reached the crest of the little hill and stopped short--stopped for the very good reason that he could go no further.

The hill was but half a hill. Its other half, the half invisible from the churchyard, was a sheer sand and clay bluff dropping at a dizzy angle down to the beach a hundred and thirty feet below. This beach was the sh.o.r.e of a pretty little harbor, fed by a stream which flowed into it from the southwest. On the opposite side of the stream was another stretch of beach, more sand bluffs, pines and scrub oaks. To the east the little harbor opened a clear channel between lines of creaming breakers to the deep blue and green of the ocean.

Galusha Bangs saw most of this in detail upon subsequent visits. Just now he looked first for his hat. He saw it. Below, upon the sand of the beach, a round object bounced and rolled. As he gazed a gust whirled along the sh.o.r.e and pitched the brown object into the sparkling waters of the little harbor. It splashed, floated and then sailed jauntily out upon the tide. The brown derby had started on its last voyage.

Galusha gazed down at his lost headgear. He rubbed his chin thoughtfully. Then he turned and looked back toward the hollow by the front door of the old church. From the knoll where he stood he could see every inch of that hollow and it was untenanted. There was no sign of either human being or of a bicycle belonging to a human being.

Mr. Bangs sighed thankfully. The sacrifice of the brown derby had not been in vain.

CHAPTER V

An hour or so later when Martha Phipps, looking out of her dining room window, saw her boarder enter the front gate, his personal appearance caused her to utter a startled exclamation. Primmie came running from the kitchen.

"What's the matter, Miss Martha?" she demanded. "Eh! My savin' soul!"

Mr. Bangs' head was enveloped in the scarf which his hostess had lent him when he set forth upon his walk. It--the scarf--was tied under his chin and the fringed ends flapped in the wind. His round face, surrounded by the yarn folds, looked like that of the small boy in the pictures advertising somebody-or-other's toothache cure.

"My savin' soul!" cried Primmie, again. She was rushing to the door, but her mistress intervened.

"Primmie," she ordered, briskly, "stay where you are!"

She opened the door herself.

"Come right in, Mr. Bangs," she said. "No, don't stop to tell me about it, but come right in and sit down."

Galusha looked up at her. His face was speckled with greenish brown spots, giving it the appearance of a mammoth bird's egg. Primmie saw the spots and squealed.

"Lord of Isrul!" she cried, "he's all broke out with it, whatever 'tis!

Shall I--shall I 'phone for the doctor, Miss Martha?"

"Be still, Primmie. Come in, Mr. Bangs."

"Why, yes, thank you. I--ah--WAS coming in," began Galusha, mildly.

"I--"

"You mustn't talk. Sit right down here on the lounge. Primmie, get that rum bottle. Don't talk, Mr. Bangs."

"But, really, Miss Phipps, I--"

"Don't TALK.... There, drink that."

Galusha obediently drank the rum. Martha tenderly untied the scarf.

"Tell me if it hurts," she said. Her patient looked at her in surprise.

"Why, no, it--ah--it is very nice," he said. "I--ah--quite like the taste, really."

"Heavens and earth, I don't mean the rum. I hope that won't HURT anybody, to say the least. I mean--Why, there isn't anything the matter with it!"

"Matter with it? I don't quite--"

"Matter with your head."

Galusha raised a hand in bewildered fashion and felt of his cranium.