Читать книгу The Hermit of Proud Hill - Lilian Garis - Страница 6

Table of Contents

It seemed to the girls, standing there in the lonely wood, that the silence which followed the lusty singing was more pronounced by contrast with the ringing tones just ended.

“Let’s hurry,” said Kay, crisply, as they went up the three short steps. Everything rose to a peak on Proud Hill and the hermit’s house was on top of that peak.

The door was strongly framed in a rough split tree binding, but the plain, unpainted panels were properly fitted with smooth new boards. It was evident that the maker was a skilled craftsman.

Kay knocked, and on the smooth board the sound was so loud and clear it seemed to reverberate over the whole surface. The two girls instinctively grasped each others hands. They waited. Not a sound, not even a step could they hear from the inside. A nosey little chipmunk streaked along the overhanging roof and sat up straight, like a sentinel, over the door frame, making faces at them.

Cecy knocked the second time. Tiger, the prisoner cat, brushed against the door and meowed his call to be let inside.

“We saved your cat! Here he is!” called out Kay, in sudden inspiration.

That did bring an answer. A step, then the door opened. A man of unusual appearance stood before them. He seemed neither old nor young, but wore a short brown beard and stood very straight; his bare arms crossed in front of him. Distinct blue tattoo marks on his right arm showed the American Eagle in bold emblem, and the girls quickly noticed that his skin was dark, while his eyes which now were focused upon them in a sort of mild surprise, were clear blue.

“My cat,” he said finally, and his deep voice matched his unusual appearance.

“Yes, we saved him. He was shut in the little house where the office used to be.” Kay’s words poured out eagerly; she seemed to be afraid he might disappear again behind the half open door.

“The little house? His office?” The man spoke with sharp indignation. “I thought he had something to do with Sinbad’s being away. Come in, Sinbad,” he ordered the very willing cat. “He is a good cat and would not stay away like that. I—I am much obliged——”

“Oh, you’re welcome,” Cecy hurried to say. “But we got into a lot of trouble saving your cat,” she spoke up quickly.

“Trouble?”

“Yes. We had to break a window to get him out and now we can’t find any of those Johnson people to pay the damage to. Or at least, to tell them we are willing to pay the damage,” Kay declared emphatically.

“The Johnsons? You want to find them? And you broke Tom Johnson’s window? Don’t try to find him, and keep away from that tribe. I’ll attend to the window,” said the man, whom Kay and Cecy both knew by now was none other than the Hermit of Proud Hill.

“Oh, could you really do that? That would be fine Mr.—Mr.——”

“You may call me Mr. Thorsen,” he said to Kay, with a restrained smile. “Everyone calls me the hermit, and I don’t mind that. But Mr. Hermit—” He paused to allow the girls their own conclusion on that possible absurdity.

“Oh yes, Mr. Thorsen,” said Cecy, gladly. He was a nice man, this hermit, and whatever was the reason for his peculiar manner of living alone in a cabin on Proud Hill, both girls felt sure it was a good one.

Of course Kay knew the story, and Cecy did not as yet. The two girls meeting after a long period of separation had not been afforded enough time for all that.

“There’s a little bench under that tree,” the man indicated. “Sorry, I can’t say come in.” There was a slightly foreign suavity in his manner as he invited the girls to sit on the bench, but they had no thought of accepting.

A rush of interest in the Morgan House affair almost left Kay tongue-tied. She knew the hermit was said to have had an original claim on the mystery place, and Tom Johnson was usually called the agent who managed it all. But she could hardly blurt out her hope of getting a customer for the mansion to a perfectly strange man, under these conditions. After all, the girls had only rescued his cat.

But the hermit didn’t know the courage of these girls and neither did he know Kay’s own secret motive behind her interest in the Morgan place. Tom Johnson had been her family’s enemy. He had taken from her mother and father their first home, and her mother had always said the shock had been a contributing cause to Kay’s father’s death. He had worried and worked harder than his strength allowed after they had lost their precious home. Kay was only a little child when all this happened, but she remembered the trouble, her mother’s constant crying and her own change from a happy home to a place of sorrow and shadows, a great loneliness without her beloved daddy.

“And there’s another girl a victim to Tom Johnson’s dishonesty too,” she was thinking, standing a moment at the hermit’s door; “a girl who may have deep blue eyes like this man, the hermit, has. He must be some relation to her.”

In that flash of thought about the girl who must be some relation to the hermit, Kay had actually touched upon her own hidden motive in all this land turmoil. For there had been a girl, everyone in Melody Lane knew that. She used to live in the Morgan house, a beautiful young girl, who, after the tragic, accidental deaths in that noted family, remained there a while with faithful servants. Then suddenly she disappeared, and the whole town started to whisper suspicions about the Johnsons. Kay was younger then but she too heard the stories of Viviene, the girl at the Morgan house.

Again the hermit was speaking.

“You girls,” he began very slowly, as if weighing every word, “have saved my cat. I thank you for that. Sinbad is my closest friend—now.” He paused while the big tiger cat pushed in and out against him. Yes, Sinbad could be a real friend to a lonely man; the girls could see that. “But you must not go near that place again,” the man warned solemnly.

“Oh, but I must,” Kay contradicted. “In fact, I hoped Mr. Johnson would give me work there,” she said finally.

“Work there! A girl like you!” he exclaimed.

“But I know a girl who did work there and she said she got a good salary. I have business training and I could do as much as she could,” declared Kay.

“Maybe more,” he admitted. “But you see, Tom Johnson, well, we’ll say he knows her folks,” he tried to finish the threatening argument. “But please, young ladies, I do know. You should not go there. I’ll fix the window and he’ll never know it had been broken.”

He was moving to close the door. Both girls realized it might be a mistake to press him further just then, but Kay knew she must come back here again and ask him about Tom Johnson’s land deals. How did he become owner of so much land in this beautifully wooded place still called by the quaint name of Melody Lane? Once the beautifully outlined rural place was merely an enclosure for some sequestered stately homesteads, but even when great winding thoroughfares had been built from township to township, that enclosure and its immediate surroundings were still called Melody Lane.

Included also was the much disputed Morgan place and Kay knew that her own father’s and mother’s first home-land had actually been a part of that estate. Tom Johnson had taken that from them, and now Kay Findley was determined to find out if he had any right to have done so. His reputation was unsavory, but he had been too smart to be caught. People were afraid of him. He went blustering about getting innocent men and boys to do his bidding, giving them a few coins, but really scaring them into submission.

Kay knew he had always been considered “a big bluff, a four flusher, a bully and a crook.” Surely such a reputation would have been, and really was, enough to make folks keep their distance, but Kay wasn’t afraid of him. She was willing to “beard the lion in his den,” and here she was actually looking for him. And she had just broken his window, too.

If only Kay had had time to tell Cecy Duncan a little more of all this old story, perhaps Cecy now might be more helpful in this critical few minutes. Kay was really in a panic trying to find an excuse that would not seem too abrupt.

“Mr. Thorsen,” she began, as Cecy edged up closer to her, “I am sure you could help me if you—would——”

“Help you?”

“Yes. You see, my father—he is dead now—was defrauded by this man Johnson, and I’m determined to dig up all the records and prove that my mother has a right to a small part of the Morgan place.” There she had blurted it all out and could feel her cheeks burning from the effort.

“The Morgan place! Your father’s? What is your name?” the man asked in surprise.

“Kay Findley. My father was Gerald Findley——”

“Gerald Findley?”

“Oh, yes. Did you know him?” Kay asked eagerly.

“Gerald Findley,” the man said again, his eyes seeming to see something in the distance, over by the much disputed and mysterious Morgan place. “And he too was a victim?”

“Come on, come on,” begged Cecy, tugging at Kay’s arm. “Let’s go; he looks—queer,” she whispered.

But Kay only smiled at the man standing before them. She seemed fascinated and had no idea of giving in to Cecy’s alarm. This was her chance and she was not running away from it.

“Yes, Mr. Thorsen,” Kay said slowly, “my father was one of the victims of that deal that gave Tom Johnson half of Melody Lane. And that’s why I’m determined to get at—the records,” she said cautiously. “I’m going to get work in that real estate office in the woods and some day find out what papers are hidden among the books.”

“Oh, no, I beg you; don’t try that,” the hermit exclaimed. “It would be—dangerous.”

“But another girl has worked there,” Kay retorted.

“But that other girl’s folks and Johnson’s; weren’t they—related?”

“Oh, yes, that’s so. I hadn’t thought of that,” Kay admitted.

“Besides, do you think he would leave important papers among books in the woods?” scoffed the hermit.

“I had considered that, of course,” Kay replied. “But letters and statements on books——”

“I see what you mean, young lady, but don’t touch it. I beg you.” He stood very erect now and Cecy thought he must surely have been an actor. “I too would like to find some of those papers,” he added after a pause, “but I can assure you, they are not in that office in the woods.”

They had to leave then, but once they both looked back in strange silence for two active, alert girls, like Kay and Cecy.

The hermit was standing on his doorsill, framed in the trees that clustered about the shack. Sinbad, his faithful cat was pressing against him, but the man seemed to be looking past the sunset over to the Morgan place.