The Secret of the Storm Country Part 70

"My house is my own," he interjected. "If you watch yours, you'll have all you can 'tend to."

"I'll go," said the big man, hoa.r.s.ely, "but I don't say I won't come again, and I warn you, as I warned that squatter girl, when the time comes--"

"Get out!" snarled Deforrest, starting down the steps, "and get quick."

And the elder, not daring to stay, turned and went toward the pear orchard. It was then, that he glanced up and saw Tessibel and her little one at an upper window, watching with startled eyes for his departure.

The baby turned from the window and raised his arms to some one within, and a hand below a man's rough coat sleeve clasped the boy and lifted him up out of Waldstricker's sight.

Walking along the road to Ithaca, he reviewed the exciting events of the morning and tried to consider and determine the complications they involved. He was unable to find a motive for Frederick's dramatic announcement, although he did not for a moment doubt its truth. It was queer though that, after having kept still so long, he should blurt out his secret in that fashion. He considered his promise not to tell Madelene and concluded he'd been wise. Probably Frederick wouldn't live long anyway, and in the natural course of things, Madelene would soon be free and the Graves chapter ended. He wondered what had kept Tess silent all these years. How had she withstood his persecution even in her betrayer's presence and made no sign? He was glad she had, but he couldn't understand why. Evidently the girl's disclosure to Young wasn't going to make any difference in his brother-in-law's conduct. Suddenly, like a bolt shot into the midst of his revery, rose the question. Whose arm was that? Young was on the porch, the girl and the baby in plain sight at the window. But there was some one else, a man. He had seen his arm and coat sleeve.

"That's certainly peculiar," he ruminated. "I didn't know Young had any one else there. It may be all right, of course, but it seems mighty suspicious."

All the way home and all the evening, the thing bothered him. In every way imaginable he tried to account for that other man in Young's house.

He canva.s.sed the neighborhood. A chance visitor wouldn't be upstairs, and anyhow he'd have looked out to see the row with Young. But this man kept away from the window. He'd only shown his hand and arm. Whoever he was, he was hiding in Young's home.

Was his brother-in-law a party to it? A man couldn't be kept for any length of time in the house without his knowing it. Young and Tess were hiding someone! At bed time he decided that the next day he would find out who was the other man in Young's house. It might give him a hold on his obstreperous brother-in-law and the hateful squatter girl.

CHAPTER XLIV

SANDY'S VISIT

The next day, Ebenezer Waldstricker met Lysander Letts, just back from Auburn, loitering along Buffalo Street near the Lehigh Valley station.

The prison-pallor of the squatter's face and hands and the ill-fitting, cheap prison clothes on his big body made him conspicuous among the men on the street. Waldstricker pulled up his team.

"Sandy," he called, "come to the office when you're uptown. I want to see you."

An hour or so later, the squatter slouched into Waldstricker's private room.

The elder rose and greeted him.

"So you're out again?" The question was really a statement.

"Yes," a.s.sented Letts, sitting down on the edge of the chair, "an' I wouldn't a been if I hadn't been let out on good behavior. I made up my mind I wouldn't stay a minute longer'n I had to."

"I guess after this you won't be stealing dead bodies, will you?" asked the rich man.

"Nope, you bet I won't! I've enough of Auburn. It ain't like the Ithaca jail!... Heard anythin' of Tess Skinner?"

"Yes, she's got a boy over three years old."

Lysander nodded his head slowly, as if he'd received confirmation of a conclusion previously formed.

"Thought likely," he muttered. "Where air she livin'? I met Jake Brewer on the street an' he says she air left the shack."

"So she has, but not very far away.... Letts, I want you to do something for me. Are--or I might put it--do you still want to make up to the Skinner girl?"

Sandy's face grew dark with uncontrollable anger.

"I want to rip the skin offen her inch by inch," he snarled.

The other man gave a low, mirthless laugh. The picture of the girl he disliked so intensely, writhing in the great hands of the brute opposite him, appealed to the elder's sardonic humor.

"That wouldn't be a bad idea," he averred. "But she's got some one who won't see her hurt."

Letts jumped up and stepped close to the desk where the other was sitting. Here was a complication he hadn't antic.i.p.ated. He moistened his dry lips with a tobacco stained tongue and demanded,

"Who air he?... Air she married?"

"No, she's living in Graves' old place, the house I, now, own, with Deforrest Young."

"Ye mean, your wife's brother, the lawyer?"

Waldstricker nodded.

"An' ye say she air livin' with him?"

"Well not exactly that, I suppose, but she's keeping house for him.

She's got her child there, too."

"Has, eh?" said Sandy, dryly.

A wicked look came over his face and he slouched back into his chair.

Ebenezer went to his office window and looked into the street.

"Want to earn some money, Letts?" he demanded, without turning around.

"You bet! Ye bet I do!"

Ebenezer returned to his desk and sat down again facing his visitor.

"You'll have to go about this business carefully."

"Trust me," promised the squatter.

"I am. There's a mystery about Young's house--I mean, there's some one in it beside my brother-in-law, the Skinner girl, and the boy."

"Who air it?" The question was no perfunctory expression of interest.

Anything relating to Tess was vitally important.

"That's what I want you to find out. It's a man!"

"Mebbe it's the brat's pa," offered the other.

"No, it isn't, and by the way, you let up trying to find out about that."