The Vagrant Duke Part 29

"_Tone production--Exercises_," explained Peter, "and here's one on _The Lives of the Great Composers_. I thought you might be interested in reading it."

"Oh, yes. I am--I will be. Thank you ever so much----"

"Of course you can't do much by yourself just yet--not without a piano--to get the pitch--the key--but I've brought a tuning fork and----"

"But I've got the harmonium----," Beth broke in excitedly. "It's a little out of tune, but----"

"The harmonium!" asked the bewildered Peter. "What's that?"

Beth proudly indicated a piece of furniture made of curly walnut which stood in the corner of the room. There were several books on the top of it--_Gospel Tunes_--_Moody and Sankey_, a Methodist Episcopal hymn book, and a gla.s.s case containing wax flowers.

"We play it Sundays----," said Beth, "but it ought to help----"

"You play----!" he said in surprise.

"Aunt Tillie and I--oh, just hymns----." She sat, while Peter watched, began pumping vigorously with her feet and presently the instrument emitted a doleful sound. "It has notes anyhow," said Beth with a laugh.

"Splendid!" said Peter. "And when I've told you what to do you can practice here. You'll come soon?"

She nodded. "When?"

"To-morrow--sometime?" And then, "What's the matter with Wells?" he asked.

She frowned. "He just asked me to marry him. It's the twenty-seventh time."

"Oh----"

"I can't be botherin' with Shad--not on wash-day--or any other day," she added as though in an afterthought.

Peter laughed. He was quite sure that n.o.body would ever make her do anything she didn't want to do.

"He knows I was at the Cabin yesterday," she said in a low voice. "He was watchin'."

Peter was silent a moment, glancing at the books he had just brought her.

"Of course if he has any claim on you, perhaps----," he began, when she broke in.

"Claim! He hasn't," she gasped. "I'll do as I please. And he'd better quit pesterin' me or I'll----"

"What?"

She laughed.

"I'll put him through the clothes-wringer."

Peter grinned. "He almost looks as though you'd done that already."

And as she followed him to the door, "I thought I ought to tell you about Shad. When he gets ugly--he's ugly an' no mistake."

"Do you still think he'll--er--swallow me at one gobble?" he asked.

She stared at him a moment and then laughed with a full throat. "I hope he don't--at least not 'til I've had my singin' lessons."

"I think I can promise you that," said Peter.

She followed him out to the porch, where they looked about for Shad. He had disappeared. And in the "Lizzie," which had been panting by the side of the road, Peter was conducted by the soiled young man at the wheel to Black Rock House.

Nothing unusual had happened in his absence, nor had any other message or warning been posted, for Stryker, released for this duty, had searched all the morning and found nothing. "Hawk" was waiting, biding his hour.

Curiously enough, an astonishing calm seemed to have fallen over the person of Jonathan K. McGuire. When Peter arrived he found his employer seated on the portico in a wicker chair, smoking his after-supper cigar.

True, the day guards were posted near by and Stryker hovered as was his wont, but the change in his employer's demeanor was so apparent that Peter wondered how such a stolid-looking creature could ever have lost his self-control. It was difficult to understand this metamorphosis unless it could be that, having come to a decision and aware of the prospect of immunity, if only a temporary one, McGuire had settled down to make the best of a bad job and await with stoicism whatever the future was to bring. This was Peter's first impression, nothing else suggesting itself, but when he followed the old man up to his room and gave him the money he had brought he noted the deeply etched lines at nostril and jaw and felt rather than saw the meaning of them--that Jonathan McGuire was in the grip of some deep and sinister resolution.

There was a quality of desperation in his calmness, a studied indifference to the dangers which the night before last had seemed so appalling.

He put the money in the safe, carefully locked the combination and then turned into the room again.

"Thanks, Nichols," he said. "You'd better have some supper and get to bed to-night. I don't think you'll be needed." And then, as Peter's look showed his surprise, "I know my man better than you do. To-morrow night we shall see."

He closed his lips into a thin line, shot out his jaw and lowered his brows unpleasantly. Courage of a sort had come back to him, the courage of the animal at bay, which fights against the inevitable.

To Peter the time seemed propitious to state the need for the observation towers and he explained in detail his projects. But McGuire listened and when Peter had finished speaking merely shook his head.

"What you say is quite true. The towers must be built. I've thought so for a long time. In a few days we will speak of that again--_after to-morrow night_," he finished significantly.

"As you please," said Peter, "but every day lost now may----"

"We'll gain these days later," he broke in abruptly. "I want you to stay around here now."

On Friday morning he insisted on having Peter show him the tree where the placard had been discovered, and Peter, having taken lunch with him, led him down to the big sugar maple, off the path to the cabin. Peter saw that he scanned the woods narrowly and walked with a hand in his waist-band, which Peter knew held an Army Colt revolver, but the whine was gone from his voice, the trembling from his hands. He walked around the maple with Peter, regarding it with a sort of morbid abstraction and then himself led the way to the path and to the house. Why he wanted to look at the tree was more than Peter could understand, for it was Peter, and not he, who was to keep this costly a.s.signation.

"You understand, Nichols," he said when they reached the portico, "you've agreed to go--to-night--at eleven."

"I wish you'd let me meet him--without the money."

"No--no. I've made up my mind----," gasped McGuire with a touch of his old alarm, "there can't be any change in the plan--no change at all."

"Oh, very well," said Peter, "it's not my money I'm giving away."

"It won't matter, Nichols. I--I've got a lot more----"

"But the principle----" protested Peter.

"To H---- with the principle," growled the old man.

Peter turned and went back to the Cabin, somewhat disgusted with his whole undertaking. Already he had been here for five days and, except for two walks through the woods for purposes of investigation, nothing that he had come to do had been accomplished. He had not yet even visited the sawmills which were down on the corduroy road five miles away. So far as he could see, for the present he was merely McGuire's handy man, a kind of upper servant and messenger, whose duties could have been performed as capably by Stryker or Shad Wells, or even Jesse Brown. The forest called him. It needed him. From what he had heard he knew that down by the sawmills they were daily cutting the wrong trees.

He had already sent some instructions to the foreman there, but he could not be sure that his orders had been obeyed. He knew that he ought to spend the day there, making friends with the men and explaining the reasons for the change in orders, but as long as McGuire wanted him within telephone range, there was nothing to do but to obey.

He reached the Cabin, threw off his coat, and had hardly settled down at the table to finish his drawing, a plan of the observation towers, when Beth appeared. He rose and greeted her. Her face was flushed, for she had been running.