Читать книгу The Lonesome Swamp Mystery - Percy Keese Fitzhugh - Страница 8

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They did not stir from the spot for ten minutes, watching intently for the possible return of the queer yellow light reflected on the glass. But it did not come and the bit of dusty windowpane continued to show itself like a dark, blank eye behind the shutter.

Denis Keen stirred first.

“Now that we’ve come to a spectral decision, shall we go on to Price’s?” he asked with a faint chuckle. “Of course it’s impossible to attempt routing ghosts out of a home that’s always been theirs.”

“It just isn’t done, Unk,” Hal grinned, then grew serious: “But all fooling aside, it’s so queer and puzzling that it makes me mad. What makes me still madder is that we wouldn’t be allowed to break in and find out things if we could.”

“Then we better get right on to Price’s. The car ought to be dry but I’m not, and I’d like to get this shirt of mine dry enough to afford me some comfort on the way back to Ramapo.”

“All right, Unk,” Hal said with a note of regret in his voice. “I’ve clean forgotten that I’m soaking wet and I’d be willing to put it out of my mind for the rest of the night, if you were game to stick it out here with me and see what happens!”

“Stay here all night! Hal, that’s ridiculous. Besides nothing would happen that hasn’t happened in the past fifty years since this house has been built. The tramping of ghostly feet, the clanging of invisible chains and the moaning of voices long since stilled in life—it goes on day and night, year in and year out. You don’t suppose it would be any clearer to your mind just because you stayed out on this porch all night and listened! You’d come away in the morning just as puzzled as we young men were twenty years ago! Even then we considered it a sign of mind deterioration to accept these ghostly noises as supernatural phenomena. And yet....”

“And yet is right, Unk! And yet I’m not going to give in to this spirit business either! The whole thing has me started. I’ll chuck it for tonight on account of you and Mother. She’d be worried stiff if we didn’t get back by midnight, after all this storm. But boy, I’m coming back here some night soon, believe me! This Sharpe Mansion business may have stumped the public for fifty years, but I’m not so easy. The place will be all washed up when I get through investigating it. These ghosts won’t have a leg to stand on, Unk. I mean it, too!”

“Obviously, Hal,” Denis chuckled. “But the fact still remains that you have a pretty proposition on your broad shoulders. Do you intend to use nitro-glycerin when you make your grand entrance?”

“Nope, nothing so radical, Unk. I’m going to go about it in a perfectly legal manner. I’m going to get on the right side of one (or both, if necessary) of the trustees and get those keys. I’ll get ’em if I have to go up to Maine.”

“Good boy!” Denis applauded. “You’ve simply swept all argument aside. And now how about starting for the car?”

Hal followed his uncle down the broad steps in silence. They hurried along the broken flagging dodging the dripping foliage at every step. Then when they had almost reached the garden gate, they heard the sound of a car laboring up the steep hill.

“Let’s stay where we are, Unk!” Hal hissed. “Let’s see who it is.”

“But whoever it is, they’ll see your car parked opposite this gate,” Denis reminded him. “It won’t be any surprise....”

“I know, but it’s too late to do anything about it now. That car’s made the top of the hill already—hear it? You said no one came this way unless they had business in this region! Well, I want to see who’s got business around this neck of the woods.”

They crouched behind the ivy-covered gate and waited. Hal squinted through one of the upper interstices and saw two powerful headlights trained on his own roadster where it stood out of the ruts and under the trees opposite. Suddenly they heard the shifting of gears, the car lumbered along in low speed and when it drew alongside the roadster, it stopped.

It was a coupe, Hal saw, and was occupied by two men. The windows were open for the sound of their voices floated out on the still, damp air.

“Now what do yer suppose that’s doing here?” asked one, with a hoarse, rumbling voice.

“If yer wanta find out so bad, git out an’ nose aroun’ that house o’ spooks in there. Yer came near gittin’ yer nose into trouble once—this time you’ll be sure ter do the trick!”

“Who wants ter git inter trouble, hah? Ain’t I got enough on my mind that we sails up and down the pike waitin’ fer a clear coast fer this guy Lem? An’ he don’t show up after us layin’ low in them gloomy woods fer over an hour!”

“Yeah, an’ through the worst storm I ever seen. Well, ain’t yer better be gettin’ along an’ tellin’ the old man we either missed this bloke Lem or he missed us? Besides this roadster here looks ter me like the one yer gave the signals to and held up in the woods thinkin’ it was Lem.”

“Yeah, it does, come ter think uv it. More like it’s one o’ them spook fanciers what the old man says sometimes drives up here on windy, stormy nights so’s they can hear that moanin’. But the place is barred up worse ’n the big house so there ain’t no chance of ’em doin’ much but listen from the outside. Still, like you say, we better beat it ’fore they come pilin’ out, hah?”

“Come on, put yer foot on it!” was the harsh reply.

Soon the car was rumbling down the hill toward the Mill Pond. Hal and his uncle stood up and hurried out to the roadster. The engine started almost immediately.

“One of them was Frog Face,” Hal remarked as the car started forward. “I’d remember that face anywhere even a hundred years from now—thick lips, flat nose and bulging eyes! So they were out waiting for Lem, huh?”

“So Lem’s expected home!” Denis was saying, as if he had not heard Hal’s remarks at all. “It sounded as if they expected him to come in a car like yours, Hal. Wonder if this is his first visit since....”

“It would seem so, considering all the trouble Frog Face went to, to wait for him so he could signal him a clear road. Maybe I’m wrong, Unk, but it seems to me that they wouldn’t be so careful if Lem had been making visits home all this time without being discovered. Continued safety breeds carelessness and this expected visit of Lem’s bears all the earmarks of careful planning, doesn’t it?”

“It certainly does, Hal. Your deduction couldn’t be better. I, too, am convinced that this is Lem’s first visit home since the murder.”

Hal got the roadster under way, gave a furtive glance back at the dark, gaunt mansion, then undertook to try and get as near the coupe’s tail light as he possibly could.

“Funny,” he said half aloud, “that Lem Price should be expected home just tonight.”