Читать книгу The Doorstep Murders - Carolyn Wells - Страница 4

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IT was when the village fathers of Connecticut found names for their new settlements by searching the Scriptures that the balmy name of Gilead was bestowed upon a tiny hamlet in the western end of the long state.

Though perhaps no more pious than Canaan or Goshen or Sharon, it was probably no less so, although it had succumbed in some ways to the influence of modern times and many inventions.

One charm, however, it had retained in all its pristine beauty, and that was the village green. Long, oval-shaped, and well-kept as to grass and paths, it occupied the center of the village, and its waving “wine-glass” elms were the glory of the inhabitants, both old and newcomers.

On the outskirts of the little town were country clubs, riding clubs, even a new archery range, but in the heart of the village lay the revered green, and few dared or cared to misuse its shaded walks and comfortable settees. Paths criss-crossed it and the best and finest houses were grouped about it.

About in the middle of its length across the street on the south side was a business block, whereon stood the drug store with its stock of books, toys, and knick-knacks, the post office, the rather imposing Town Hall, and the inn. The last, rejoicing in the frankly ostentatious name of Top Hole Inn, was a long three-storied structure, with much expanse of railed veranda dotted with big wicker rocking chairs.

It was not like an English inn, in fact it was not like an inn at all, being more suggestive of a commodious country home to which additions had been made as circumstances required. Transients took rooms, of course, but families had suites or apartments, to which they returned summer after summer. For though Gilead itself was furiously hot in the dogdays, there were cool spots off toward the lake or up on the hills, which were seemingly left-overs of the Berkshires.

The front doors of the inn opened into a great hall with hospitable fireplace and further relays of rocking chairs. A booking desk in one corner and a green baize bulletin board gave the only effects of hotel life, and fresh dimity curtains and chintz-covered lounges betokened a tidy and tasteful housekeeper.

One of the suites on the ground floor belonged to Dr. Sherrill, a summer resident only, and greatly unwelcome to the all-the-year-round practitioner, old Dr. Forman. But many of Dr. Sherrill’s city patients were summer visitors or householders in Gilead, and, too, the pleasant-mannered physician easily made new friends.

One night, just after the middle of October, he was sitting on the veranda of the inn, awaiting some visitors. He was a firm believer in the dullness that all work and no play is said to contribute to the life of the average human being. And he felt that the average human being’s life is quite dull enough without any additional influences thereto. Wherefore he played as often and as variedly as he could manage it. He was an enthusiastic golfer and tennis player, a keen fisherman, and a good shot, and when the day was done he was always ready for a hand at bridge or a game of poker. And Saturday night, by all the laws of the Medes and Persians, was set aside for poker as religiously as the Druids observed their classic rites.

Six men played together every Saturday night, and though occasionally one or another was unavoidably absent the game went on regularly. The play was always at the home of Dr. Sherrill, in his cozy sitting room, a colorful place in contrast to his austere and whitely furnished offices. But the doctor sat on the veranda to welcome his guests and his bulky figure comfortably filled one of the big rockers.

Of less than average height, the physician was of more than average weight, and though he preached various diet rules to his patients he observed none of them himself. So, like the aged, aged man a-sitting on a gate, he kept on from day to day growing a little fatter. True, he often formed intentions of cutting out starches and sweets, but as is well known, to-morrow is the day to begin to reduce, and so the doctor kept on waiting for a to-morrow that never came.

More impressive, however, than his rounded figure was his striking face. Red and rosy were his cheeks, crimson his full lips, and his abundant hair and heavy mustache were of the tint known as brick red, though really of a veritable flame color. Not auburn or Titian, but a brilliant, glowing red that made it impossible for the startled stranger, observing him for the first time, to take his eyes off it.

Entirely unashamed of his hirsute coloring, in fact the doctor rather gloried in it; and he twinkled with amusement when, as he expressed it, he knocked somebody galley-west. The galley-west knocking was aided and abetted by his rather light, china blue eyes, which from beneath heavy red eyebrows could glower like a pirate’s. And, though usually mild and even-tempered, Dr. Luther Sherrill, if roused, would glower like a pirate and swear like one, too.

As a man turned in at the inn, Dr. Sherrill rose to greet him. Standing, the doctor showed even more clearly his excess of girth and lack of height. He was garbed in white flannels, which, though sounding simple enough, were really conspicuous because of their exaggerated cut and flare. His tie was of a pronounced green, and a peeping handkerchief matched in color.

Self-satisfaction beamed from his blue eyes and even seemed to radiate from his red hair as he welcomed his guest.

“Hello, Carman, hello, hello. Drop into this chair and wait for the rest. How are you?... Fine, of course… Fine—fine.”

“Fine, yes. Always am. Sorry the season’s so far along. Hate to go back to the city.”

“West later?”

“Yes, after I attend to some matters in New York. Troublesome bits, too. Oh, well, the world’s full of ups and downs.”

John Carman swung into a chair with the same large, free motion he would use in mounting a horse. He had lived much in the West, his was a show ranch though not a dude ranch. And for many years he had been sheriff—of a district in Wyoming where the job of sheriff was not an enviable one. Tall, gaunt, loose-limbed, yet not without a certain grace of movement, he was not at his best in civilian togs. He needed chaps and a few bits of Indian beadwork to give him his picturesque due. Also, a horse under him. His face was rugged, strong, and, unless he willed otherwise, absolutely devoid of expression. His family, especially his daughter, Peggy, read kindness and devotion in that face, but to most people it was as a closed book.

He looked anxious, mentally tired, and the doctor wondered what he was worrying about. But he knew better than to ask. Few asked questions of John Carman.

“Don’t wonder you hate to go,” Sherrill said, conversationally. “Your place is at its best now. Autumn foliage suits your shingled house. I’ll bet Miss Kate hates to leave. Doesn’t she, now? Miss Kate?”

“Kate? Oh, yes, she hates to go from here, but she loves the West. Always ready to go back there. Peggy, too. Though the child has friends here.”

“Peggy? I should say she had! She’ll never want for friends! What a girl! What a girl!”

“Yes, a great girl,” said Peggy’s father, his hard, deep blue eyes softening at thought of his idolized child. The change in those harsh eyes changed his whole face, and the sheriff from Wyoming Bad Lands became a gentle, tender-hearted, fatherly sort, with a smile of general good will.

And then Nichols came. Montcalm Nichols, the well-known criminal lawyer, former judge and onetime district attorney, whose will power and determination had sent more than one evil doer out of the world, either to imprisonment within four walls or beneath six feet of earth. A powerful personality, an obstinate, dictatorial nature, he ruled all with whom he came in contact, or else he broke the contact. He ruled his unattractive, uninitiative daughter, Anne, also his young and more spirited wife, Phyllis.

His second wife Phyllis was not Anne’s mother, who had died years ago. As a result of Montcalm’s tyranny, some said. But even those rumors did not deter beautiful Phyllis Somers from marrying the tyrant, and now, after a year or so, rumor was again busy with hints of marital infelicity.

But as Kate Carman declared, an angel from heaven couldn’t live with that Nichols man, he was simply insufferable.

Yet others disagreed with this dictum and opined that Phyllis Nichols was very far from being an angel and that the shoe was on the other foot.

In appearance Nichols was a man of culture and intellect. Well-groomed, well-dressed, always courteous, good-looking and good-natured, he concealed his iron fist in his velvet glove, but held it ready for instant use.

He ran up the inn steps and took a chair beside the railing.

“Good to be here early,” he said, smiling. “I love to see the citizens stroll by. Almost like Shepheard’s at Cairo.”

“Not a bit like it,” contradicted Carman.

“No, not really,” Nichols agreed. “I didn’t mean it, of course. And yet, why isn’t it the same? We sit here, on a piazza, there on a terrace, but in both cases we watch the populace throng by—with a due regard for the difference in numbers—”

“Yes,” laughed the doctor, “a slight variance that way, slight. Say, here three pass in ten minutes, there, three thousand in the same time.”

“About that,” Nichols nodded. “But that’s merely a difference in degree, not in kind.”

“And there’s no difference in kind?” asked Carman, his blue eyes twinkling.

“No,” declared Nichols, “not a bit. Both lots are human beings, full of human vanities, foibles, frailties, and crimes.”

“Full, too,” Carman added, “of generous impulses, kind hearts, and sacrificing souls.”

“One half of one per cent. of those,” Nichols sneered, “and the rest my selection. A crowd is a crowd, Carman, and their hidden motives are seldom good ones.”

“Glittering generalities,” said Sherrill, lightly. “An utterly futile argument. Your statements, gentlemen, are incapable of proof, and I refuse to listen to any more of them. Thank goodness I see three black crows approaching and they are right welcome.”

One short, straight path cut off a segment of the western end of the long green. At the southern outlet of that path was the inn. At the northern end of the same path, across the road, was the home of Antony Dane. And along that path, nearing the inn, came Dane and his two nephews, Bob Phillips and Guy Lawson.

Dane was the richest man in town, and was thought by many to be the finest as well. But not everybody agreed to the second argument. A big man, with an especially large face. One of those faces that seem to be just a plump oval of flesh with some features hastily tucked in. Smooth-shaven, but with crisply curly gray hair that was always in place, and, on a woman, would have seemed to be a very well-done marcel. His eyes were gray, too, and shrewd, with quick glances of interest or disapproval, as quickly fading to indifference.

The two young men on either side of Antony Dane were, like their uncle, in dinner clothes, and all three carried light-weight topcoats over their arms.

Dane was punctilious in matters of etiquette and inexorable in matters of routine. It was his habit to have his two nephews with him always at dinner Saturday nights, and important indeed must be another engagement that would prevent their attendance. Young Phillips, who lived with his uncle, was free to dine where he liked the rest of the week, but Saturday must be observed. Guy Lawson, the other nephew, lived at the other end of the green, but he, too, was invariably his uncle’s guest Saturday nights at dinner.

Then, after dinner, the three went over to Dr. Sherrill’s for the inevitable poker game, which lasted until midnight or a bit later, and then the young men were free for another week.

Not that they chafed at this arrangement, but they sometimes wished Dane had chosen some other evening, for Saturday was by way of being a general gala night and they were popular with the younger generation.

As different as day and night, Phillips, the one who lived with his uncle, was known as Rosebud Rob, and the nickname carried with it no hint of effeminacy. It came about because Bob was seldom seen without a rosebud in his buttonhole, a whim that had become a habit because of the chaff it had called forth.

Bob was a little inclined to be perverse, and loved to do what was not expected of him. Also he had sudden and determined impulses to take important steps, to get married, to go abroad, to become an aviator—all such undertakings—but invariably his inclinations faded, his purposes fizzled out, and he never did any of the things. His uncle laughed good-humoredly and let the lad go his own way. The two lived alone in the big house, with a lot of servants, and not infrequently guests.

Antony Dane sometimes declared he was a connoisseur of comfort and an epicure of ease. This was true; he arranged his home and appointments with an eye single to his own physical comfort, which, incidentally, included Bob’s. Guy Lawson, the other nephew, could have lived at Danewood also, but he said the life there was too sybaritic for him. He preferred a little more sitting up straight, as he called it, and he had rooms with a kindly, capable woman in her pleasant house at the other end of the green.

Lawson was about thirty-five, six years older than Phillips, and far less of a society man. Rather of the patient, plodding type, and deeply interested in his chosen profession of architecture. He easily made enough from this to support himself, both by drawing plans and by writing articles for the journals. But he spent much time in evolving marvelous ideas for edifices of great beauty which never did and never were intended to materialize. Quiet, undemonstrative, even absent-minded, Guy kept his way an even tenor for the most part; the exceptions being, when the mood took him, to spend wild evenings at a dance hall or road house in company with hilarious companions. Such gayeties seemed to refresh him, and as their effect lasted for some weeks they were not of over-frequent occurrence. His uncle did not disapprove, but rather encouraged the pleasure seeking.

A fine-looking chap, Lawson was, even picturesque, by reason of his very white skin and very black hair. He wore also a small pointed black beard and a black mustache, so, with heavy black eyebrows above deep-set gray eyes, his face was a model for an artist. But he was entirely free from personal vanity, and proved this by a gold cap on an eye tooth, a jarring note that anyone who cared for appearance would have avoided. Of average size and strength, good at outdoor games and a perfect dancer, Guy was a general favorite and was beset with invitations, which he independently accepted or did not, as he chose.

He always enjoyed the Saturday-night poker party and also liked going to his uncle’s to dinner first. He sometimes said that Uncle Antony was all right but a little of him went a long way. How Bob could stick it to live there he couldn’t understand.

Yet Bob Phillips was well satisfied. His business ventures were spasmodic and unsuccessful, so as a rule he was taken care of by his uncle between engagements. Dane didn’t care, however, so long as Bob caused him no inconvenience, and in general the three relatives were harmonious.

To-night, as they crossed the green, laughing and chatting, they seemed all of an age and almost like three college lads out for a lark.

“Hurry up,” called out Dr. Sherrill, as they neared the inn. “It’s getting late in the season. Not many more of these orgies of ours. Come on in, we must lose no time.”

He led the way, and all six of the men went along the veranda to the door which opened directly into the doctor’s suite.

The sitting room, made ready for them, had its large center table cleared and set out with cards and chips. The lights were just right, the wood fire glowed pleasantly, and satisfactory chairs were in place.

The play began shortly, and went on, with varying fortunes to one or another with the fall of the cards.

“It’s the last of these parties for me,” said John Carman, in an interval of rest and refreshment. “I’m going for good the early part of next week. You’ll have to carry on without me.”

“Oh, no!” exclaimed Phillips, in a tone of dismay. “Not that I’m broken-hearted over your loss, old man, but I don’t want to lose Peggy from our midst.”

Carman looked a bit annoyed at this informal reference to his daughter and returned, a little stiffly:

“Oh, the girl’s glad to go. She’s rather fed up with this imitation country life. She longs for the ranch and the horses.”

“I want free life and I want fresh air, and Lasca, down by the river Dee, or wherever he was,” quoted Montcalm Nichols, gayly.

“Down by the Brandywine, wasn’t it?” asked Dane, looking idiotic on purpose.

“No,” said Guy, seriously, “it was down by the Rio Grande,” and they all chaffed him on his erudition.”

Quiet and unannoyed, Lawson went on: “Sudden decision, Carman? I thought you were staying through October.”

“I did intend to, but some matters have turned up that must be attended to. I may have to return here for a few days—and maybe not.”

He left the situation thus in the air, and they all picked up the cards again.

It was well after midnight when Phillips made the first suggestion of going home.

“I thought,” his uncle said, “we’d stay a bit later to-night as it’s getting toward the end of the run.”

“You can,” Rosebud Rob returned, fingering the small pink blossom yet fresh on his lapel. “But I’ve the very devil of an ulcerated tooth, and I’m going to slide.”

“Why didn’t you yell sooner?” asked the doctor, sympathetically. “I’ll fix you up.”

“No,” said Bob, determinedly, “I’d rather go home. I’ve drops there the dentist gave me. He’s treating it. It’s something fierce, but I won’t mix the prescriptions. You can jolly well stay awhile, Uncle Tony. I’ll just run along.”

“Oh, well, we’ll have one more round or so,” agreed Dane.

“I want to go soon,” Lawson told them. “I—I’m—”

“I know,” laughed Bob. “Guy’s going to a night club! I can always tell by his apologetic air!”

“Well, what if I am?” and Lawson braved the shouts of the crowd. “Why shouldn’t I? Anybody want to go with me?”

“I’d go in a minute but for this nuisance,” Bob declared, his hand clasping his swelling cheek.

No one else volunteered to go, but Dane said, “Oh well, I guess we’ll call it a night, then.”

“Yes,” agreed Carman, “I’m for getting along. And I may be up here a week from to-night. If so, I’ll sit in.”

“Your important business be settled up by that time?” Lawson asked, casually.

“I hope so. But it means communications with my Western office—”

“Western communications corrupt good manners,” sang out the irrepressible Bob, and Carman nodded a smiling assent.

There was more or less chaff and some handshaking and good-nights, and then Dr. Sherrill opened his front door and stepped out on the veranda with his guests.

A beautiful night, clear and cool, no moon, but myriads of bright stars. Lawson, always with an eye for the beautiful, stood looking across the green to where the village church raised its white Colonial spire.

“How a church does add to the scenery,” said Phillips, noting the other’s gaze.

“Yes,” Guy said, “but it’s all fine. The green with its trees, and the houses beyond, and the hills for a background, and the white road disappearing in the distance—”

“In the general direction of the Small Hours Club, as you may say,” put in his uncle.

“Yes, in that general direction,” Guy laughed back, “and for me it’s a specific direction, which I shall proceed to follow. Good-night, everybody. Good-night, Uncle Tony. Hope your tooth lets up, Bobs.”

They all trooped down the steps and stood in a group for a minute as Lawson whistled for a taxicab.

For Gilead, though an old town, was modern enough in some ways, and if it possessed but few taxicabs they were good ones and available when wanted.

A cheerful-looking red one drew up to the curb, and as Guy got in he said to the driver, “Stop at the drug store first, and then out to the Small Hours Club.”

“Happy days,” Bob called out, and immediately betook himself across the green to his uncle’s house.

“I’ll walk around the long way,” Antony Dane said to the other two men.

“Come on,” Carman invited. “Want to stop in at my house?”

“No, not to-night. Pretty late.”

“Go on around with me,” Nichols put in. “I’ll be lonesome.”

The short path across the green from the inn to Dane’s place was only a few moments’ walk. But to go round the whole length of the green meant fifteen or twenty minutes at least. Going to the right, when leaving the inn, one passed first the post office, then the Town Hall, then the drug store, and on the next block arrived at Carman’s home.

All this on the south side of the green. Turning around the end of the long oval, a pedestrian would pass the house where Guy Lawson lived, and several others, all pleasant and attractive homes. Then rounding the end, one went along the north side of the green, where the finest houses were to be found. This main road along the green showed, for the most part, darkened homes, and at one of them Nichols and Dane parted company. This was Nichols’s house, an imposing affair of turrets and gables.

“Come in,” he said, hospitably, but Dane declined, saying it was late enough to be bedtime.

Alone, then, the last of the three home goers, Antony Dane reached his own beautiful and comfortable rooftree and went up the front steps.