Seven Keys to Baldpate

by Earl Derr Biggers

  CHAPTER VI

  GHOSTS OF THE SUMMER CROWD

  "I wonder," Miss Norton smiled up into Mr. Magee's face, "if you everwatched the people at a summer hotel get set on their mark for thesprint through the dining-room door?"

  "No," answered Magee, "but I have visited the Zoo at meal-time. Theytell me it is much the same."

  "A brutal comparison," said the girl. "But just the same I'm sure thatthe head waiter who opens the door here at Baldpate must feel much thesame at the moment as the keeper who proffers the raw meat on the end ofthe pitchfork. He faces such a wild determined mob. The front rank ismade up of hard-faced women worn out by veranda gossip. Usually somestiff old dowager crosses the tape first. I was thinking that perhaps weresembled that crowd in the eyes of Mr. Peters now."

  It was past one o'clock, and Mr. Magee with his four mysteriouscompanions stood before the fire in the office, each with an eager eyeout for the progress of the hermit, who was preparing the table besidethem. Through the kindness of Quimby, the board was resplendent withsnowy linen.

  "We may seem over-eager," commented Professor Bolton. "I have no doubtwe do. It is only natural. With nothing to look forward to but the nextmeal, the human animal attaches a preposterous importance to hisfeeding. We are in the same case as the summer guests--"

  "Are we?" interrupted Mr. Magee. "Have we nothing but the next meal tolook forward to? I think not. I haven't. I've come to value too highlythe capacity for excitement of Baldpate Inn in December. I look forwardto startling things. I expect, before the day is out, at least twogold-laced kings, an exiled poet, and a lord mayor, all armed with keysto Baldpate Inn and stories strange and unconvincing."

  "Your adventures of the last twenty-four hours," remarked the professor,smiling wanly, "have led you to expect too much. I have made inquiriesof Quimby. There are, aside from his own, but seven keys in all to thevarious doors of Baldpate Inn. Four are here represented. It is hardlylikely that the other three will send delegates, and if they should, youhave but a slim chance for kings and poets. Even Baldpate's capacity forexcitement, you see, is limited by the number of little steel keys whichopen its portals to exiles from the outside world. I am reminded of thewords of the philosopher--"

  "Well, Peters, old top," broke in Mr. Bland in robust tones, "isn't shenearly off the fire?"

  "Now see here," said the hermit, setting down the armful of dishes withwhich he had entered the office, "I can't be hurried. I'm all upset, asit is. I can't cook to please women--I don't pretend to. I have to takeall sorts of precautions with this lunch. Without meaning to beimpolite, but just because of a passion for cold facts, I may say thatwomen are faultfinding."

  "I'm sure," said Miss Norton sweetly, "that I shall consider yourluncheon perfect."

  "They get more faultfinding as they get older," replied Mr. Petersungallantly, glancing at the other woman.

  Mrs. Norton glared.

  "Meaning me, I suppose," she rasped. "Well, don't worry. I ain't goingto find anything wrong."

  "I ain't asking the impossible," responded Mr. Peters. "I ain't askingyou not to find anything wrong. I'm just asking you not to mention itwhen you do." He retired to the kitchen.

  Mrs. Norton caressed her puffs lovingly.

  "What that man needs," she said, "is a woman's guiding hand. He's livedalone too long. I'd like to have charge of him for a while. Not that Iwouldn't be kind--but I'd be firm. If poor Norton was alive to-day he'dtestify that I was always kindness itself. But I insisted on his livingup to his promises. When I was a girl I was mighty popular. I had a lotof admirers."

  "No one could possibly doubt that," Mr. Magee assured her.

  "Then Norton came along," she went on, rewarding Magee with a smile,"and said he wanted to make me happy. So I thought I'd let him try. Hewas a splendid man, but there's no denying that in the years we weremarried he sometimes forgot what he started out to do. I always broughthim up sharp. 'Your great desire,' I told him, 'is to make me happy. I'dkeep on the job if I was you!' And he did, to the day of his death. Aperfectly lovely man, though careless in money matters. If he hadn't hadthat failing I wouldn't be--"

  Miss Norton, her cheeks flushed, broke in hurriedly.

  "Mamma, these gentlemen can't be at all interested." Deftly she turnedthe conversation to generalities.

  Mr. Peters at last seated the winter guests of Baldpate Inn, and openedhis luncheon with a soup which he claimed to have wrested from a can.This news drew from Professor Bolton a learned discourse on the tinnedaids to the hermit of to-day. He pictured the seeker for solitudesetting out for a desert isle, with canned foods for his body and cannedmusic for his soul. "Robinson Crusoe," he said, "should be rewrittenwith a can-opener in the leading role." Mrs. Norton gave the talk a morepractical turn by bringing up the topic of ptomaine poisoning.

  While the conversation drifted on, Mr. Magee pondered in silence theweird mesh in which he had become involved. What did it all mean? Whatbrought these people to Baldpate Christmas week? His eyes sought thegreat safe back of the desk, and stayed there a long time. In that safe,he was sure, lay the answer to this preposterous riddle. When histhoughts came back to the table he found Mr. Bland eying him narrowly.There was a troubled look on the haberdasher's lean face that couldnever be ascribed to the cruelty of Arabella.

  The luncheon over, Miss Norton and her mother prepared to ascend totheir rooms. Mr. Magee maneuvered so as to meet the girl at the foot ofthe stairs.

  "Won't you come back," he whispered softly, "and explain things to apoor hermit who is completely at sea?"

  "What things?" she asked.

  "What it all means," he whispered. "Why you wept in the station, why youinvented the story of the actress, why you came here to brighten my drabexile--what this whole comedy of Baldpate Inn amounts to, anyhow? Iassure you I am as innocent of understanding it as is the czar of Russiaon his golden throne."

  She only looked at him with unbelieving eyes.

  "You can hardly expect me to credit that," she said. "I must go up nowand read mamma into the pleasant land of thin girlish figures that isher afternoon siesta. I may come back and talk to you after a while, butI don't promise to explain."

  "Come back," pleaded Mr. Magee. "That is all I ask."

  "A tiny boon," she smiled. "I grant it."

  She followed the generous figure of the other woman up the stair and,casting back a dazzling smile from the landing, disappeared. Mr. Mageeturned to find Professor Bolton discoursing to Mr. Bland on some aspectsof the Pagan Renaissance. Mr. Bland's face was pained.

  "That's great stuff, Professor," he said, "and usually I'd like it. Butjust now--I don't seem in the mood, somehow. Would you mind saving itfor me till later?"

  "Certainly," sighed the professor. Mr. Bland slouched into the depths ofhis chair. Professor Bolton turned his disappointed face ceilingward.Laughing, Mr. Magee sought the solitude of number seven.

  "After all, I'm here to work," he told himself. "Alarms and excursionsand blue eyes must not turn me from my task. Let's see--what was mytask? A deep heart-searching novel, a novel devoid of rabid melodrama.It becomes more difficult every minute here at Baldpate Inn. But thatshould only add more zest to the struggle. I devote the next two hoursto thought."

  He pulled his chair up before the blazing hearth, and gazed into the reddepths. But his thoughts refused to turn to the masterpiece that was tobe born on Baldpate. They roamed to far-off Broadway; they strolled withHelen Faulkner--the girl he meant to marry if he ever got round toit--along dignified Fifth Avenue. Then joyously they trooped to a farmore alluring, more human girl, who pressed a bit of cambric to her facein a railway station, while a ginger-haired agent peeped through thebars. How ridiculously small that bit of cambric had been to hide somuch beauty. Soon Mr. Magee's thoughts were climbing Baldpate Mountain,there to wander in a mystic maze of ghostly figures which appeared fromthe shadows, holding aloft in triumph gigantic keys. Mr. Magee had sleptbut little the night before. The quick December dusk filled number seve
nwhen he awoke with a start.

  He remembered that he had asked the girl to come back to the office, andberated himself to think that probably she had done so only to find thathe was not there. Hastily straightening his tie, and dashing the tracesof sleep from his eyes with the aid of cold water, he ran down-stairs.

  The great bare room was in darkness save for the faint red of the fire.Before the fireplace sat the girl of the station, her hair gleaming witha new splendor in that light. She looked in mock reproval at Mr. Magee.

  "For shame," she said, "to be late at the trysting-place."

  "A thousand pardons," Mr. Magee replied. "I fell asleep and dreamed of agirl who wept in a railway station--and she was so altogether charming Icould not tear myself away."

  "I fear," she laughed, "you are old in the ways of the world. A passionfor sleep seems to have seized the hermits. The professor has gone tohis room for that purpose. And Mr. Bland, his broken heart forgot,slumbers over there." She pointed to the haberdasher inert in a bigchair drawn up near the clerk's desk. "Only you and I in all the worldawake."

  "Pretty lonesome, isn't it?" Mr. Magee glanced over his shoulder at theshadows that crept in on them.

  "I was finding it very busy when you came," she answered. "You see, Ihave known the inn when it was gay with summer people, and as I sat hereby the fire I pretended I saw the ghosts of a lot of the people I knewflitting about in the dusk. The rocking-chair fleet sailed by--"

  "The what?"

  "Black flag flying, decks cleared for action--I saw the rocking-chairfleet go by." She smiled faintly. "We always called them that. Bitter,unkind old women who sat hour after hour on the veranda, and rocked andgossiped, and gossiped and rocked. All the old women in the world seemto gather at summer hotels. And, oh, the cruel mouths the fleethad--just thin lines of mouths--I used to look at them and wonder if anyone had ever kissed them."

  The girl's eyes were very large and tender in the firelight.

  "And I saw some poor little ghosts weeping in a corner," she went on; "afew that the fleet had run down and sunk in the sea of gossip. A littleghost whose mother had not been all she should have been, and the fleetfound it out, and rocked, and whispered, and she went away. And a fewwho were poor--the most terrible of sins--to them the fleet showed nomercy. And a fine proud girl, Myra Thornhill, who was engaged to a mannamed Kendrick, and who never dared come here again after Kendricksuddenly disappeared, because of the whispered dishonors the fleetheaped upon his head."

  "What wicked women!" said Magee.

  "The wickedest women in the world," answered the girl. "But every summerresort must have its fleet. I doubt if any other ever had its admiral,though--and that makes Baldpate supreme."

  "Its admiral?"

  "Yes. He isn't really that, I imagine--sort of a vice, or an assistant,or whatever it is, long ago retired from the navy. Every summer he comeshere, and the place revolves about him. It's all so funny. I wonder ifany other crowd attains such heights of snobbishness as that at a summerresort? It's the admiral this, and the admiral that, from the moment heenters the door. Nearly every day the manager of Baldpate has a newpicture of the admiral taken, and hangs it here in the hotel. I'll showthem to you when it's light. There's one over there by the desk, of theadmiral and the manager together, and the manager has thrown his armcarelessly over the admiral's shoulder with 'See how well I know him'written all over his stupid face. Oh, what snobs they are!"

  "And the fleet?" asked Mr. Magee.

  "Worships him. They fish all day for a smile from him. They keep trackof his goings and comings, and when he is in the card-room playing hissilly old game of solitaire, they run down their victims in subduedtones so as not to disturb him."

  "What an interesting place," said Mr. Magee. "I must visit Baldpate nextsummer. Shall--shall you be here?"

  "It's so amusing," she smiled, ignoring the question. "You'll enjoy it.And it isn't all fleet and admiral. There's happiness, and romance, andwhispering on the stairs. At night, when the lights are all blazing, andthe band is playing waltzes in the casino, and somebody is giving adinner in the grill-room, and the girls flit about in the shadowslooking too sweet for words--well, Baldpate Inn is a rather entrancingspot. I remember those nights very often now."

  Mr. Magee leaned closer. The flicker of the firelight on her delicateface, he decided, was an excellent effect.

  "I can well believe you do remember them," he said. "And it's no effortat all to me to picture you as one of those who flitted through theshadows--too sweet for words. I can see you the heroine of whisperingscenes on the stair. I can see you walking with a dazzled happy man onthe mountain in the moonlight. Many men have loved you."

  "Are you reading my palm?" she asked, laughing.

  "No--your face," answered Mr. Magee. "Many men have loved you, for veryfew men are blind. I am sorry I was not the man on the stair, or on themountain in the moonlight. Who knows--I might have been the favored onefor my single summer of joy."

  "The autumn always came," smiled the girl.

  "It would never have come for me," he answered. "Won't you believe mewhen I say that I have no part in this strange drama that is going on atBaldpate? Won't you credit it when I say that I have no idea why you andthe professor and Mr. Bland are here--nor why the Mayor of Reuton hasthe fifth key? Won't you tell me what it all means?"

  "I mustn't," she replied, shaking her head. "I can trust no one--noteven you. I mustn't believe that you don't know--it's preposterous. Imust say over and over--even he is simply--will you pardon me--flirting,trying to learn what he can learn. I must."

  "You can't even tell me why you wept in the station?"

  "For a simple silly reason. I was afraid. I had taken up a task too bigfor me by far--taken it up bravely when I was out in the sunlight ofReuton. But when I saw Upper Asquewan Falls, and the dark came, and thatdingy station swallowed me up, something gave way inside me and I felt Iwas going to fail. So--I cried. A woman's way."

  "If I were only permitted to help--" Mr. Magee pleaded.

  "No--I must go forward alone. I can trust no one, now. Perhaps thingswill change. I hope they will."

  "Listen," said Mr. Magee. "I am telling you the truth. Perhaps you reada novel called _The Lost Limousine_." He was resolved to claim itsauthorship, tell her of his real purpose in coming to Baldpate, and urgeher to confide in him regarding the odd happenings at the inn.

  "Yes," said the girl before he could continue. "I did read it. And ithurt me. It was so terribly insincere. The man had talent who wrote it,but he seemed to say: 'It's all a great big joke. I don't believe inthese people myself. I've just created them to make them dance for you.Don't be fooled--it's only a novel.' I don't like that sort of thing. Iwant a writer really to mean all he says from the bottom of his heart."

  Mr. Magee bit his lip. His determination to claim the authorship of _TheLost Limousine_ was quite gone.

  "I want him to make me feel with his people," the girl went onseriously. "Perhaps I can explain by telling you of something thathappened to me once. It was while I was at college. There was a blindgirl in my class and one night I went to call on her. I met her in thecorridor of her dormitory. Somebody had just brought her back from anevening lecture, and left her there. She unlocked her door, and we wentin. It was pitch dark in the room--the first thing I thought of was alight. But she--she just sat down and began to talk. She had forgot tolight the gas."

  The girl paused, her eyes very wide, and it seemed to Mr. Magee that sheshivered slightly.

  "Can you imagine it?" she asked. "She chatted on--quite cheerfully as Iremember it. And I--I stumbled round and fell into a chair, cold andtrembly and sick with the awful horror of blindness, for the first timein my life. I thought I had imagined before what it was to beblind--just by shutting my eyes for a second. But as I sat there in theblackness, and listened to that girl chatter, and realized that it hadnever occurred to her to light a lamp--then for the first time--Iknew--I knew."

  Again she stopped, and
Mr. Magee, looking at her, felt what he had neverexperienced before--a thrill at a woman's near presence.

  "That's what I ask of a writer," she said, "that he make me feel for hispeople as I felt for that girl that night. Am I asking too much? It neednot be for one who is enmeshed in tragedy--it may be for one whose heartis as glad as a May morning. But he must make me feel. And he can't dothat if he doesn't feel himself, can he?"

  William Hallowell Magee actually hung his head.

  "He can't," he confessed softly. "You're quite right. I like youimmensely--more than I can say. And even if you feel you can't trust me,I want you to know that I'm on your side in whatever happens at BaldpateInn. You have only to ask, and I am your ally."

  "Thank you," she answered. "I may be very glad to ask. I shallremember." She rose and moved toward the stairs. "We had better dispersenow. The rocking-chair fleet will get us if we don't watch out." Hersmall slipper was on the first step of the stair, when they heard a doorslammed shut, and the sound of steps on the bare floor of thedining-room. Then a husky voice called "Bland".

  Mr. Magee felt his hand grasped by a much smaller one, and before heknew it he had been hurried to the shadows of the landing. "The fifthkey," whispered a scared little voice in his ear. And then he felt thefaint brushing of finger-tips across his lips. A mad desire seized himto grasp those fingers and hold them on the lips they had scarcelytouched. But the impulse was lost in the thrill of seeing thedining-room door thrown open and a great bulk of a man cross the floorof the office and stand beside Bland's chair. At his side was a thinwaif who had not unjustly been termed the mayor of Reuton's shadow.

  "Asleep," bellowed the big man. "How's this for a watch-dog, Lou?"

  "Right on the job, ain't he?" sneered the thin one.

  Mr. Bland started suddenly from slumber, and looked up into the eyes ofthe newcomers.

  "Hello, Cargan," he said. "Hello, Lou. For the love of heaven, don'tshout so. The place is full of them."

  "Full of what?" asked the mayor.

  "Of spotters, maybe--I don't know what they are. There's an oldhigh-brow and a fresh young guy, and two women."

  "People," gasped the mayor. "People--here?"

  "Sure."

  "You're asleep, Bland."

  "No I'm not, Cargan," cried the haberdasher. "Look around for yourself.The inn's overrun with them."

  Cargan leaned weakly against a chair.

  "Well, what do you know about that," he said. "And they kept telling meBaldpate Inn was the best place--say, this is one on Andy Rutter. Whydidn't you get it out and beat it?"

  "How could I?" Mr. Bland asked. "I haven't got the combination. The safewas left open for me. That was the agreement with Rutter."

  "You might have phoned us not to come," remarked Lou, with an uneasyglance around.

  Mr. Cargan hit the mantelpiece with his huge fist.

  "By heaven, no," he cried. "I'll lift it from under their very noses.I've done it before--I can do it now. I don't care who they are. Theycan't touch me. They can't touch Jim Cargan. I ain't afraid."

  Mr. Magee, on the landing, whispered into his companion's ear. "I thinkI'll go down and greet our guests." He felt her grasp his arm suddenly,as though in fear, but he shook off her hand and debonairly descended tothe group below.

  "Good evening, gentlemen," he said suavely. "Welcome to Baldpate! Pleasedon't attempt to explain--we're fed up on explanations now. You have thefifth key, of course. Welcome to our small but growing circle."

  The big man advanced threateningly. Mr. Magee saw that his face was veryred, his neck very thick, but his mouth a cute little cupid's bow thatmight well have adorned a dainty baby in the park.

  "Who are you?" bellowed the mayor of Reuton in a tone meant to becowering.

  "I forget," replied Mr. Magee easily. "Bland, who am I to-day? Thecast-off lover of Arabella, the fleeing artist, or the thief ofportraits from a New York millionaire's home? Really, it doesn't matter.We shift our stories from time to time. As the first of the Baldpatehermits, however, it is my duty to welcome you, which I hereby do."

  The mayor pointed dramatically to the stair.

  "I give you fifteen minutes," he roared, "to pack up and get out. Idon't want you here. Understand?"

  To Cargan's side came the slinking figure of Lou Max. His face was thewithered yellow of an old lemon; his garb suggested shop-windows ondirty side streets; unpleasant eyes shifted behind a pair of gold-rimmedglasses. His attitude was that of the dog who crouches by its master.

  "Clear out," he snarled.

  "By no means," replied Magee, looking the mayor squarely in the eye. "Iwas here first. I'm here to stay. Put me out, will you? Well, perhaps,after a fight. But I'd be back in an hour, and with me whatever policeUpper Asquewan Falls owns to."

  He saw that the opposing force wavered at this.

  "I want no trouble, gentlemen," he went on. "Believe me, I shall behappy to have your company to dinner. Your command that I withdraw isill-timed, not to say ill-natured and impolite. Let us all forget it."

  The mayor of Reuton turned away, and his dog slid into the shadows.

  "Have I your promise to stay to dinner?" went on Magee. No answer camefrom the trio in the dusk. "Silence gives consent," he added gaily. "Youmust excuse me while I dress. Bland, will you inform Mr. Peters that weare to have company to dinner? Handle him gently. Emphasize the factthat our guests are men."

  He ran up the stairs. At the top of the second flight he met the girl,and her eyes, he thought, shone in the dark.

  "Oh, I'm so glad," she whispered.

  "Glad of what?" asked Magee.

  "That you are not on their side," she answered.

  Mr. Magee paused at the door of number seven.

  "I should say not," he remarked. "Whatever it's all about, I should saynot. Put on your prettiest gown, my lady. I've invited the mayor todinner."