The Monk of Hambleton Part 15

"I think your burglar came in here and noticed the dagger--he probably had a flash--and decided it was just what he needed in his business!

He opened the desk with it, and unless he dropped it around somewhere when he was finished with it, I guess _I've_ been robbed, _too_."

"Huh. Wasn't valuable, was it?" asked Simon impatiently.

"Well, I don't care about losing it--thanks for your kind and sympathetic interest!" retorted his sister-in-law tartly. "Thank you, Bates, that's all."

"Yes, Miss Ocky." The old man bowed. "Good night, sir," he said, for the third time that night.

"I'll be off, too," said Miss Ocky, moving toward the door, where she lingered for a parting shot. "If I were you, Simon, I'd either have my locks seen to or else have my more valuable possessions nailed down.

Good morning!"

She was gone before he could think of an effective retort. He occupied himself briefly in dragging a heavy chair against the broken window, then put out the lamp and went into his study. Bed seemed to make no appeal, though there was a suggestion of weariness in the way he dropped into his chair before the desk. He was mentally tired.

Who had dealt him this latest blow--a shrewder one than he had confessed to Ocky. That notebook full of formulas, the results of a lifetime of experiment and research, would be worth more than a gold mine to a compet.i.tor. There were men in the business who would pay handsomely for the picking of Simon Varr's brain! But who had known that, and turned his knowledge to advantage by the crooked way of burglary?

Two names kept bobbing up in the back of his brain. Copley was one; Graham the other. Either might have done it, or they might have entered into an unholy partnership of crime. Both knew the value of the notebook, and both had seen it in his desk that evening. Where had they been since? He had not noticed either of them at the fire; had they been robbing his desk while they knew him safely absent?

No sentiment played any part in these cogitations. He measured the possibility of his son's guilt as coldly as if the young man had been a complete stranger--or an ex-convict. Measured it, perhaps, unconsciously, by his own standards of behavior. He had done things in his time that would have made a self-respecting burglar blush.

There was a third possibility. The Monk. Simon tried to shake off that thought. There was no sense in it. Queer how anything like that masquerader's mischief-making could get under a sensible man's skin--dig its way into his brain until it became an obsession! Suppose he _had_ set fire to the tannery--was that any reason to believe he had proceeded to further activities the same night? There was not a shred of proof connecting him with the burglary.

He yielded to the fascination that the sc.r.a.p of brown paper was beginning to exercise over him and drew it from the pigeonhole. He opened it and let his eye travel over the illiterate text to the threat at the end that was already known to him by heart: "Take heed to thy ways and mend them, lest thou be destroyed by the thunderbolts of wrath!" Then he started violently in his chair, for he had come upon the very proof he had thought lacking.

Beneath the last line of the message a few words had been scrawled with a blunt, blue crayon and then deeply underscored for emphasis. He stared at them, his face flushing and paling by turns, his lips soundlessly shaping the ill-formed characters.

"_Behold, the bolts are loosed!_"

_IX: Simon Seeks Advice_

The discovery that his unknown enemy after first firing the tannery had then rounded off a perfect evening by burglarizing his house threw Simon Varr into a state of mental confusion. Here was a saturnalia of crime condensed into the s.p.a.ce of a few hours. And the man's audacity was no less bewildering than his swift efficiency! Who, in this. .h.i.therto quiet township of Hambleton, had suddenly developed a brand of vicious courage that nerved him to commit arson and burglary? Simon reviewed an imposing procession of possible suspects until his brain wearied, and his wits, seeking vainly for light, were hopelessly at fault in a fog of conjecture.

It was nearly three o'clock before he laid an aching head on his pillow, it was nearly five before sleep came to him, but he was up at his usual hour and downstairs in his study by eight. Physically he was still tired, but the brief spell of slumber had at least rested his brain and cleared it against the problems of a new day.

However undeserving he might be of sympathy, mere humanity would suggest that it would be pleasanter, far pleasanter, to record that this day of all days in Simon Varr's life was peaceful and calm, but the truth is exactly the reverse. It was destined to be a day of bitterness and strife, terminating in actual violence.

The trouble began with Jason Bolt.

Lucy Varr did not descend for breakfast, nor did Ocky, who elected to depart from custom and have a tray brought up by Janet to her bedroom balcony. Simon ate his usual hearty meal with more deliberation than appet.i.te, and had barely returned to his desk when he heard the squeal of brakes that distinguished Jason's car from its numerous fellows.

He came straight back to the study and threw himself into a chair, his round, good-humored face unwontedly grave.

"Well, Simon, here's a pretty kettle of fish!"

"There are several kettles of fish. Which do you mean?"

"Well--Billy Graham's, to commence with. He was around to see me an hour ago--"

"Was he sober?"

"Of course he was, don't be too unjust, Simon! Graham doesn't make a practice of drinking, and if he took one or two too many last evening, as he admits he did, I for one don't blame him. That confounded pup Langhorn told him what he overheard--"

"I know--I know all that. I have fired Langhorn and I have fired Graham." Simon's jaw tilted truculently. "What about it?"

"That's what I've come to ask. What about it? If you keep on at this rate, another week will see you down to bed-rock--reduced to one partner and one idle tannery. And some one seems determined to burn that up piecemeal!"

"I didn't see you there last night."

"No, thank goodness, I was in blissful ignorance of our latest trouble.

We have guests, you know. Mary and I took the Krechs to Barney's road house just to give them a taste of night-life in Hambleton. Mr. Krech and Barney spent the evening extemporizing c.o.c.ktails--"

"I'm not interested in your orgies. What did Graham have to say this morning?"

"Nothing that wasn't mighty decent, all things considered. He is sorry to go after all these years, but he doesn't question your right to fire him. He prefers to discuss the details attendant on his quitting with me--you have no objection?--and he is writing to Rochester to tell the Thibault crowd he accepts their offer."

"That doesn't break my heart. The sooner he gets to Rochester the better pleased I'll be."

"Oh, yes--because of Copley, I suppose, and the girl. Well--I guess Billy Graham isn't in the market for sympathy. He tells me that he is fairly familiar with the Thibault tanneries from hearsay and he is confident that he is taking them some tips that will make him solid with them from the start."

"Eh? What's that?" Suddenly intent, Simon Varr leaned forward and fixed a sharp gaze on the speaker. "What is he taking them? What did he refer to?"

"Why--nothing specific, Simon! No doubt he has picked up a score of useful tips during the time he has been a.s.sociated with us. We can't stop him from giving them the benefit of his experience; that's the sort of thing you must expect when you fire a good man without any reason except that he has a pretty daughter whom you can't keep your only son away from. I must say, Simon--"

"Must you? Please try not to!"

Jason complied with a shrug of his shoulders; why waste his breath on this human lump of obstinacy?

Varr relaxed in his chair again, thinking. He ran over the events of the previous night. Graham had drunk at least enough to render him irresponsible for his impulses and actions. He had seen the notebook lying on the desk. Enough time had elapsed between his departure and the alarm of fire to have enabled him to slip down the hill and fire the tannery. He might then have returned and watched his opportunity to break into the house. Yes--it was possible, physically, for him to be the guilty man. "Taking something valuable to Thibault?" The notebook? Would he have the brazen nerve to make such a remark if he were the thief? Yes! If Graham were the man, that identified him with the masquerading monk, and _he_ had nerve enough for anything!

It struck Simon--while his partner waited in glum silence--that it would be interesting to learn where Graham had been on the night before after leaving him in the study. To put it more bluntly--had the man an alibi? How did one go to work to learn such things, short of asking open questions? Varr shelved the problem temporarily, though an idea in the back of his head was slowly shaping itself into the answer. He would do nothing decisive until he had weighed things more carefully and was sure--

"How shall we replace Billy Graham?" said Jason Bolt, having fidgeted in silence to the limit of his patience. "Have you any one in mind?"

"Certainly I have!" snapped his partner, who had given not a thought to the matter until that moment. "D'you suppose I'd fire a man unless I saw my way free of that difficulty? There's old Maple; let him take hold when he is hungry enough to come back to work."

"Maple? A good, steady man, Simon, but not the sort I'd pick. Not a sc.r.a.p of initiative. He knows enough to do just what he's told to do, but--"

"That's the sort of man I want."

"And what you say goes! Don't trouble to point that out; I have heard it before. Do you mind, however, if I mention another man whom I've been thinking might fit in?"

"Well--who?"

"Copley. Your son. Don't look as if a snake had bit you! I think he would make up in intelligence anything he lacks in experience. He is quick to learn--"

"You may leave him out of your calculations."