Читать книгу The Hermit of Proud Hill - Lilian Garis - Страница 7

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The girls were now back from the hermit’s shack and rather breathlessly talked about the experience, as they sat on the steps of Kay’s side porch.

“But what ever possessed you, Kay, to say all that to a perfectly strange man?” Cecy asked her friend in bewilderment.

“All that? You should know all the rest of it that was just seething inside me,” Kay replied. “Cecy, I just felt as if I were actually a—a—” She paused hesitatingly.

“Now, listen, Kay,” Cecy attempted to caution the excited girl, “Why don’t you go carefully about this? You know Mr. Thorsen warned you it was dangerous.”

“You mean waste more time? Of course you don’t, Cecy. Time enough has been wasted. I’m not afraid of Tom Johnson, and I’m tickled to death to have at last had a chance to speak to the hermit. Everyone said he was so queer, and strange. That he lived upon Proud Hill right back of Morgan Manor and that maybe he had something to do with the wild things that they say happen in the place.”

“Wild things? What, for instance?”

“Oh, scratching, and groaning and calling out at all hours. You know, the kind of stuff they always tack on to places they call haunted,” Kay indifferently explained.

“Well, Mr. Thorsen certainly did not look like one who would go in for that sort of thing,” Cecy answered. “Besides, we heard him singing and he has a good voice, don’t you think so?”

“Indeed, I do,” Kay agreed. “And did you notice how he stands like an actor? Ready to take off——”

“Not the tattooing on his arms,” Cecy interrupted. “He can never take that off. Aren’t they awful? No actor would disfigure himself that way.”

“I noticed that, of course. It’s a funny thing how some young men and boys go in for tattooing,” Kay went on. “But it’s a silly thing. And to think nothing will ever erase it,” she pondered. But only for a second, for the two girls really had more urgent matters to discuss than the why and wherefore of tattooing.

“But you know, Kay, I’m away behind you on the local excitement now,” Cecy reminded her. “I’ve been away from Melody Lane for quite a long time. Suppose you tell me something about the old Morgan place and why you have broken out in favor of hanging the arch conspirator, Tom Johnson.”

“Yeah,” drawled Kay, giving her almost forgotten scratched ankle a feel to see that the handkerchief bandage was not catching on the broken skin. She had flatly refused Cecy’s urgent plea to fix it up properly as soon as they could do so, Kay insisting there was nothing to fix. “I was just thinking about the little fly trap I fell into,” she said. “No one could expect a thing like that to hurt any one.”

“But it threw you off your wheel,” Cecy said.

“Yes, the old tree limb tangled me up. But the little ditch! What could that have been dug for?”

“Did it drain water from a hill, do you suppose?”

“No, it’s pretty flat just there. And the Henny-Penny boy said ‘he’ whoever he is, has traps all over the fields. Why, they couldn’t catch——”

“But there was barbed wire entangled there, you said,” Cecy interrupted.

“Say, I’ll bet that was put there to catch Mr. Thorsen’s cat,” exclaimed Kay suddenly. “That would injure a cat horribly if it tried to run along that path. The wire was hidden by the branches and piece of log, and the gutter was lined with it.”

“It might be put there to snare other animals as well as a cat,” Cecy argued. “But the point is, why should anyone be so silly, when traps can be bought so cheap and do the work so much better?”

“Cats keep away from traps,” Kay insisted. “And I’ve seen farmers cover rat traps with whole boxes of good cereals, spilled all over them, so the rats could only see and smell the grain. Well, let’s forget that, Cecy. We’ll watch out when we go over there again. However and whenever am I going to get a chance to tell you about the Morgan place mystery? Mother will be home soon——”

“And Carol expects me to herd the children in from the wilds, today. They’re so crazy about the woods they don’t exactly come running when I blow my police whistle.”

“Well, you know this much. The old Morgan place is really not very old and it’s a lovely place. I’ll describe it to you later. But it was the estate that had been cut up into a practical development, and sold to a few people around here for homes. My father had bought a lot and built his own home before he and Mother were married. For a few years, after they were married, Mother says, they were happy and everything went fine. But there was a nationwide business break and they couldn’t keep up the interest payments.

“Then old Tom Johnson grabbed the property. But I’ve found out he had changed the government terms and was overcharging both in interest and payments on the principal. That’s how he got the places; he took more than ours. It would be easy enough to prove that he stole the homes, for the legal papers are on file. What I have to get is the old contracts to prove payments made to him more than covered the government’s requirements. It’s those seemingly innocent little papers, the personal contracts of the first owners of the land, that I imagine might be left in the office in the woods. There are some old boxes packed up with papers you can see through the windows. I’m just dying to sort them out,” said Kay, significantly.

“Why, Kay, isn’t that a pretty big job for just a girl?” Cecy exclaimed. “Why wouldn’t your mother have done all that investigation and sue for her rights if it really could have been done?” Cecy wanted to know, reasonably enough.

“It does look that way, doesn’t it?” Kay replied. “But when the crash broke, losing their home was simply the last straw. Though Mother has never said so actually, she made up her mind to forget it all, sort of live it down, you know.” Kay’s subdued voice betrayed choking emotions.

“Of course,” soothed Cecy. “When it was gone and your father, too, was gone, it is easy to understand why a woman would do that. Which house was theirs? One of those pretty white cottages——?”

“That’s another thing. Mother has never pointed out our home to me. I asked her, but she took me in her arms and cried about it, and begged me never to ask her again. That was a few years ago. But lately when she asked me to file some old papers, I saw a note or something and I know the map number of the property on the old Morgan estate.”

“Look, Kay!” Cecy interrupted. “A boy is coming in here, on a wheel——”

“It’s Henri, the boy who picked me up in the fields when I fell off my wheel. What can he want?”

The boy was pumping up the little hill leading to the side porch where they sat.

“Hello, Henri!” Kay called out. “Want me?”

“Yep,” answered Henri. “Who does this belong to?” He was holding out Cecy’s camp kerchief, waving it like a banner in the breeze.

“Oh, that’s mine!” Cecy exclaimed. “I lost it over in the woods——”

“Sure you did.” Henri was off the wheel now and held out the bit of silk to Cecy. “And maybe I didn’t have a time getting it.” The boy of few words meant a lot by that; his expression was very eloquent.

“Where did you find it?” Kay asked.

“Well, I found it hanging on a bush but that isn’t where I got it. I got it in a fight with Mamie Johnson and I guess she’s got a swelled jaw.” He rubbed his own jaw as he said that. After all, one jaw was as good as another, perhaps he was thinking.

“Go ahead, tell us about it,” begged Kay. She knew asking him questions would never get a story out of Henri.

“Not much to tell. I was over there and Mamie came sneaking up like she always does. I dived for the handkerchief on the bush and she just lit on me like she had dropped out of a tree. That girl is more like something wild than just a girl,” he tried to explain.

“You mean that tall, thin girl that goes around barefoot?” Kay asked.

“That’s her. Ain’t she a tomboy?” Henri put it up to Kay.

“Yes. She does act like one. But go ahead. You had to fight for the handkerchief? Why?”

“Because she saw that busted window and she said whoever broke it was wearing that handkerchief.”

“Suppose she did? What of it?” pressed Cecy.

“Don’t you see? She knew it was a camp neck-tie and she was going to prove that the girl who broke the window was from a certain camp. You wouldn’t like that, would you?” he sneered. Girls seemed slow thinkers to Henri.

Kay and Cecy exchanged knowing glances. He was a smart boy, this Henri, and had already helped them out of two dangers. One was the rescue of Kay when she spilled off her wheel, and now by fighting for the neckerchief and getting it away from the wild Mamie Johnson.

“Thanks, Henri,” Cecy said to him. “You’re a good friend, and we both appreciate your help. You see, this Johnson business is new to me, and although my friend Kay thought she knew all about old Melody Lane, even she is not sure of that now. Do you know these Johnsons well?”

“I’ll say,” drawled Henri. “If you know them at all you better know them well and don’t let them sneak up on you.”

Just then the two girls and the boy stopped talking to look up at an airplane sailing in from the West, and seeming to come in line with Kay’s place.

“That’s a stranger,” Henri said, meaning the plane, his neck still strained back to get a good view. “Wonder what a plane is doing over here so far from the airport?”

Without venturing to guess an answer, the girls watched the noisy airship. Then, just as it was passing over the garage back of Kay’s house, still high, too high for the girls to make out its lettering or number, they saw an object come floating down through space.

“What’s that?” exclaimed Kay excitedly.

“Something falling—” But Cecy’s remark was cut short. The object had hit the roof of the garage with a bang, bounced up again, and now was rolling down to the drive.

“A bag!” yelled Henri. “I’ll bet there’s a message in it!”