The Vagrant Duke Part 25

"I thought so for a while, but she said she was only sick. She never lies to me."

"She seemed very much disturbed."

"Her nerve's not what it used to be--especially since Mr. McGuire's taken to seein' things----"

"You don't believe then that she could have seen John Bray--that he had come back again last night?"

"Why, no," said Beth, turning in surprise. "I never thought of it--and yet," she paused, "yes,--it might have been----"

She became more thoughtful but didn't go on. Peter was on the trail of a clew to the mystery, but she had already told him so much that further questions seemed like personal intrusion. And so,

"I'd like to tell you, Beth," he said, "that I'm your friend and Mrs.

Bergen's. If anything should turn up to make you unhappy or to make your aunt unhappy and I can help you, won't you let me know?"

"Why--do you think anything is goin' to happen?" she asked.

His reply was noncommittal.

"I just wanted you to know you could count on me----" he said soberly.

"I think you've had trouble enough."

"But I'm not afraid of Jack Bray," she said with a shrug, "even if Aunt Tillie is. He can't do anything to me. He can't _make_ me go to New York if I don't want to."

She had clenched her brown fists in her excitement and Peter laughed.

"I think I'd be a little sorry for anybody who tried to make you do anything you didn't want to do," he said.

She frowned. "Why, if I thought that bandy-legged, lantern-jawed, old buzzard was comin' around here frightenin' Aunt Tillie, I'd--I'd----"

"What would you do?"

"Never you mind what I'd do. But I'm not afraid of Jack Bray," she finished confidently.

The terrors that had been built up around the house of McGuire, the mystery surrounding the awe-inspiring prowler, the night vigils, the secrecy--all seemed to fade into a piece of hobbledehoy buffoonery at Beth's contemptuous description of her recreant relative. And he smiled at her amusedly.

"But what would you say," he asked seriously, "if I told you that last night Mr. McGuire saw the same person your Aunt Tillie did, and that he was terrified--almost to the verge of collapse?"

Beth had risen, her eyes wide with incredulity.

"Merciful Father! McGuire! Did he have another spell last night? You don't mean----?"

"I went up to his room. He was done for. He had seen outside the drawing-room window the face of the very man he's been guarding himself against."

"I can't believe----," she gasped. "And you think Aunt Tillie----?"

"Your Aunt Tillie talked to a man outside the door of the kitchen. You didn't hear her. I did. The same man who had been frightening Mr.

McGuire."

"Aunt Tillie!" she said in astonishment.

"There's not a doubt of it. McGuire saw him. Andy saw him too,--thought he was the chauffeur."

Beth's excitement was growing with the moments.

"Why, Aunt Tillie didn't know anything about what was frightening Mr.

McGuire--no more'n I did," she gasped.

"She knows now. She wasn't sick last night, Beth. She was just bewildered--frightened half out of her wits. I spoke to her after you went home. She wouldn't say a word. She was trying to conceal something.

But there was a man outside and she knows who he is."

"But what could Jack Bray have to do with Mr. McGuire?" she asked in bewilderment.

Peter shrugged. "You know as much as I do. I wouldn't have told you this if you'd been afraid. But Mrs. Bergen is."

"Well, did you _ever?_"

"No, I never did," replied Peter, smiling.

"It does beat _anything_."

"It does. It's most interesting, but as far as I can see, hardly alarming for you, whatever it may be to Mr. McGuire or Mrs. Bergen. If the man is only your great-uncle, there ought to be a way to deal with him----"

"I've just got to talk to Aunt Tillie," Beth broke in, moving toward the door. Peter followed her, taking up his hat.

"I'll go with you," he said.

For a few moments Beth said nothing. She had pa.s.sed through the stages of surprise, anger and bewilderment, and was now still indignant but quite self-contained. When he thought of Beth's description of the Ghost of Black Rock House, Peter was almost tempted to forget the terrors of the redoubtable McGuire. A man of his type hardly lapses into hysteria at the mere thought of a "bandy-legged buzzard." And yet McGuire's terrors had been so real and were still so real that it was hardly conceivable that Bray could have been the cause of them. Indeed it was hardly conceivable that the person Beth described could be a source of terror to any one. What was the answer?

"Aunt Tillie doesn't know anything about McGuire," Beth said suddenly.

"She just couldn't know. She tells me everything."

"But of course it's possible that McGuire and this John Bray could have met in New York----"

"What would Mr. McGuire be doin' with him?" she said scornfully.

Peter laughed.

"It's what he's doing with McGuire that matters."

"I don't believe it's Bray," said Beth confidently. "I don't believe it."

They had reached a spot where the underbrush was thin, and Beth, who had been looking past the tree trunks toward the beginnings of the lawns, stopped suddenly, her eyes focusing upon some object closer at hand.

"What's that?" she asked, pointing.

Peter followed the direction of her gaze. On a tree in the woods not far from the path was a square of cardboard, but Beth's eyes were keener than Peter's, and she called his attention to some writing upon it.

They approached curiously. With ironic impudence the message was scrawled in red crayon upon the reverse of one of Jonathan McGuire's neat trespa.s.s signs, and nailed to the tree by an old hasp-knife. Side by side, and intensely interested, they read: