Seven Keys to Baldpate

by Earl Derr Biggers

  CHAPTER XV

  TABLE TALK

  The seventh key! Mr. Magee thrilled at the mention of it. So ElijahQuimby knew the identity and the mission of the man who hid in theannex. Did any one else? Magee looked at the broad acreage of themayor's face, at the ancient lemon of Max's, at Bland's, frightened andthoughtful, at Hayden's, concerned but smiling. Did any one else know?Ah, yes, of course. Down the stairs the professor of ComparativeLiterature felt his way to food.

  "Is dinner ready?" he asked, peering about.

  The candles flickered weakly as they fought the stronger shadows; winterroared at the windows; somewhere above a door crashed shut. Close to itsfinal scene drew the drama at Baldpate Inn. Mr. Magee knew it, he couldnot have told why. The others seemed to know it, too. In silence theywaited while the hermit scurried along his dim way preparing the meal.In silence they sat while Miss Norton and her mother descended. Oncethere was a little flurry of interest when Miss Thornhill and Hayden metat the foot of the stairs.

  "Myra!" Hayden cried. "In heaven's name--what does this mean?"

  "Unfortunately," said the girl, "I know--all it means."

  And Hayden fell back into the shadows.

  Finally the attitude of the hermit suggested that the dinner was ready.

  "I guess you might as well sit down," he remarked. "It's all fixed, whatthere is to fix. This place don't need a cook, it needs a commissarydepartment."

  "Peters," reproved Magee. "That's hardly courteous to our guests."

  "Living alone on the mountain," replied the hermit from the dining-roomdoor, "you get to have such a high regard for the truth you can't putcourtesy first. You want to, but you haven't the heart."

  The winter guests took their places at the table, and the secondDecember dinner at Baldpate Inn got under way. But not so genially as onthe previous night did it progress. On the faces of those about him Mr.Magee noted worry and suspicion; now and again menacing cold eyes wereturned upon him; evidently first in the thoughts of those at table was alittle package rich in treasure; and evidently first in the thoughts ofmost of them, as the probable holder of that package, was Mr. Mageehimself. Several times he looked up to find Max's cat-like eyes uponhim, sinister and cruel behind the incongruous gold-rimmed glasses;several times he saw Hayden's eyes, hostile and angry, seek his face.They were desperate; they would stop at nothing; Mr. Magee felt that asthe drama drew to its close they saw him and him alone between them andtheir golden desires.

  "Before I came up here to be a hermit," remarked Cargancontemporaneously with the removal of the soup, "which I may say inpassing I ain't been able to be with any success owing to the popularityof the sport on Baldpate Mountain, there was never any candles on thetable where I et. No, sir. I left them to the people up on theavenue--to Mr. Hayden and his kind that like to work in dimsurroundings--I was always strong for a bright light on my food. WhatI'm afraid of is that I'll get the habit up here, and will be wantingCharlie to set out a silver candelabrum with my lager. Candles'd bequite an innovation at Charlie's, wouldn't they, Lou?"

  "Too swell for Charlie's," commented Mr. Max. "Except after closinghours. I've seen 'em in use there then, but the idea wasn't glory anddecoration."

  "I hope you don't dislike the candles, Mr. Cargan," remarked MissNorton. "They add such a lot to the romance of the affair, don't youthink? I'm terribly thrilled by all this. The rattling of the windows,and the flickering light--two lines of a poem keep running through myhead:

  "'My lord he followed after one who whispered in his ear-- The weeping of the candles and the wind is all I hear.'

  I don't know who the lord was, nor what he followed--perhaps the seventhkey. But the weeping candles and the wind seem so romantic--and so likeBaldpate Inn to-night."

  "If I had a daughter your age," commented Cargan, not unkindly, "she'dbe at home reading Laura Jean Libbey by the fire, and not chasing afterromance on a mountain."

  "That would be best for her, I'm sure," replied the girl sweetly. "Forthen she wouldn't be likely to find out things about her father thatwould prove disquieting."

  "Dearie!" cried Mrs. Norton. No one else spoke, but all looked at themayor. He was busily engaged with his food. Smiling his amusement, Mr.Magee sought to direct the conversation into less personal channels.

  "We hear so much about romance, especially since its widely advertiseddeath," he said. "And to every man I ever met, it meant somethingdifferent. Mr. Cargan, speaking as a broad-minded man of the world--whatdoes romance mean to you?"

  The mayor ran his fingers through his graying hair, and consideredseriously.

  "Romance," he reflected. "Well, I ain't much on the talk out of books.But here's what I see when you say that word to me. It's the nightbefore election, and I'm standing in the front window of the little roomon Main Street where the boys can always find me. Down the street I hearthe snarl and rumble of bands, and pretty soon I see the yellow flickerof torches, like the flicker of that candle, and the bobbing of banners.And then--the boys march by. All the boys! Pat Doherty, and Bob Larsen,and Matt Sanders--all the boys! And when they get to my window they wavetheir hats and cheer. Just a fat old man in that window, but they'll goto the pavement with any guy that knocks him. They're loyal. They're forme. And so they march by--cheering and singing--all the boys--just forme to see and hear. Well--that--that's romance to me."

  "Power," translated Mr. Magee.

  "Yes, sir," cried the mayor. "I know I've got them. All the reformers inthe world can't spoil my thrill then. They're mine. I guess old Napoleonknew that thrill. I guess he was the greatest romancer the world everknew. When he marched over the mountains with his starving bunch--andlooked back and saw them in rags and suffering--for him--well I reckonold Nap was as close to romance then as any man ever gets."

  "I wonder," answered Mr. Magee. It came to him suddenly that in eachperson's definition of this intangible thing might lie exposed somethingof both character and calling. At the far end of the table Mrs. Norton'slined tired face met his gaze. To her he put his question.

  "Well," she answered, and her voice seemed softer than its wont, "Iain't thought much of that word for a good many years now. But when Ido--say, I seem to see myself sitting on our porch back home--thirtyyears ago. I've got on a simple little muslin dress, and I'm slender asElsie Janis, and the color in my cheeks is--well, it's the sort thatNorton likes. And my hair--but--I'm thinking of him, of Norton. He'stold me he wants to make me happy for life, and I've about decided I'lllet him try. I see him--coming up our front walk. Coming to call onme--have I mentioned I've got a figure--a real sweet figure? That'sabout what romance means to me."

  "Youth, dear?" asks Miss Norton gently.

  "That's it, dearie," answered the older woman dreamily. "Youth."

  For a time those about the table sat in silence, picturing no doubt theslender figure on the steps of that porch long ago. Not without ahumorous sort of pity did they glance occasionally toward the woman whomNorton had begged to make happy. The professor of Comparative Literaturewas the first to break the silence.

  "The dictionary," he remarked academically, "would define romance as aspecies of fictitious writing originally composed in the Romancedialects, and afterward in prose. But--the dictionary is prosaic, it hasno soul. Shall I tell you what romance means to me? I will. I see a mantoiling in a dim laboratory, where there are strange fires and strangerodors. Night and day he experiments, the love of his kind in his eyes, adesire to help in his heart. And then--the golden moment--the greatmoment in that quiet dreary cell--the moment of the discovery. A serum,a formula--what not. He gives it to the world and a few of the sick arewell again, and a few of the sorrowful are glad. Romance means neitheryouth nor power to me. It means--service."

  He bent his dim old eyes on his food, and Mr. Magee gazed at him with anew wonder. Odd sentiments these from an old man who robbed fireplaces,held up hermits, and engaged in midnight conferences by the annex door.More than ever Magee was baffled, enthralled, amused. Now Mr. Max
leeredabout the table and contributed his unsavory bit.

  "Funny, ain't it," he remarked, "the different things the same wordmeans to a bunch of folks. Say romance to me, and I don't see no dimlaboratory. I don't see nothing dim. I see the brightest lights in theworld, and the best food, and somebody, maybe, dancing the latest freakdance in between the tables. And an orchestra playing in thedistance--classy dames all about--a taxi clicking at the door. And mesending word to the chauffeur 'Let her click till the milk cartsrumble--I can pay.' Say--that sure is romance to me."

  "Mr. Hayden," remarked Magee, "are we to hear from you?"

  Hayden hesitated, and looked for a moment into the black eyes of MyraThornhill.

  "My idea has often been contradicted," he said, keeping his gaze on thegirl, "it may be again. But to me the greatest romance in the world isthe romance of money making--dollar piling on dollar in the vaults ofthe man who started with a shoe-string, and hope, and nerve. I see himfighting for the first thousand--and then I see his pile growing, slowlyat first--faster--faster--faster--until a motor-car brings him to hisoffice, and men speak his name with awe in the streets."

  "Money," commented Miss Thornhill contemptuously. "What an idea ofromance for a man."

  "I did not expect," replied Hayden, "that my definition would passunchallenged. My past experiences--" he looked meaningly at thegirl--"had led me to be prepared for that. But it is my definition--Ispoke the truth. You must give me credit for that."

  "I ain't one to blame you," sneered Cargan, "for wanting it noticed whenyou do side-step a lie. Yes, I certainly--"

  "See here, Cargan," blazed Hayden.

  "Yes, you did speak the truth," put in Miss Thornhill hastily. "Youmentioned one word in your definition--it was a desecration to drag itin--hope. For me romance means only--hope. And I'm afraid there are apitiful number in the world to whom it means the same."

  "We ain't heard from the young woman who started all this fuss over alittle word," Mr. Cargan reminded them.

  "That's right, dearie," said Mrs. Norton. "You got to contribute."

  "Yes," agreed the girl with the "locks crisped like golden wire," "Iwill. But it's hard. One's ideas change so rapidly. A moment ago if youhad said romance to me, I might have babbled of shady corners, ofwhisperings on the stair, of walks down the mountain in themoonlight--or even on the hotel balcony." She smiled gaily at Magee."Perhaps to-morrow, too, the word might mean such rapturous things tome. But to-night--life is too real and earnest to-night.Service--Professor Bolton was right--service is often romance. It maymean the discovery of a serum--it may mean so cruel a thing as theblighting of another's life romance." She gazed steadily at the stolidCargan. "It may mean putting an end forever to those picturesque paradespast the window of the little room on Main Street--the room where theboys can always find the mayor of Reuton."

  Still she gazed steadily into Cargan's eyes. And with an amused smilethe mayor gazed back.

  "You wouldn't be so cruel as that," he assured her easily; "a niceattractive girl like you."

  The dinner was at an end; without a word the sly little professor rosefrom the table and hurriedly ascended the stairs. Mr. Magee watched himdisappear, and resolved to follow quickly on his heels. But first hepaused to give his own version of the word under discussion.

  "Strange," he remarked, "that none of you gets the picture I do.Romance--it is here--at your feet in Baldpate Inn. A man climbs themountain to be alone with his thoughts, to forget the melodrama of life,to get away from the swift action of the world, and meditate. He isalone--for very near an hour. Then a telephone bell tinkles, and a youthrises out of the dark to prate of a lost Arabella, and haberdashery. Ashot rings out, as the immemorial custom with shots, and in comes aprofessor of Comparative Literature, with a perforation in his derbyhat. A professional hermit arrives to teach the amateur the fine pointsof the game. A charming maid comes in--too late for breakfast--but inplenty of time for walks on the balcony in the moonlight. The mayor of amunicipality condescends to stay for dinner. A battle in the snowensues. There is a weird talk of--a sum of money. More guests arrive.Dark hints of a seventh key. Why, bless you, you needn't stir fromBaldpate Inn in search of your romance."

  He crossed the floor hastily, and put one foot on the lower step ofBaldpate's grand stairway. He kept it there. For from the shadows of thelanding Professor Bolton emerged, his blasted derby once more on hishead, his overcoat buttoned tight, his ear-muffs in place, histraveling-bag and green umbrella in tow.

  "What, Professor," cried Magee, "you're leaving?"

  Now, truly, the end of the drama had come. Mr. Magee felt his heart beatwildly. What was the end to be? What did this calm departure mean?Surely the little man descending the stair was not, Daniel-like,thrusting himself into this lion's den with the precious package in hispossession?

  "Yes," the old man was saying slowly. "I am about to leave. The decisioncame suddenly. I am sorry to go. Certainly I have enjoyed these chancemeetings."

  "See here, Doc," said Mr. Bland, uneasily feeling of his purple tie,"you're not going back and let them reporters have another fling atyou?"

  "I fear I must," replied the old man. "My duty calls. Yes, they willhound me. I shall hear much of peroxide blondes. I shall be asked againto name the ten greatest in history,--a difficult, not to say dangeroustask. But I must face the--er--music, as the vulgar expression goes. Ibid you good-by, Mr. Bland. We part friends, I am sure. Again becomforted by the thought that I do not hold the ruined derby againstyou. Even though, as I have remarked with unpleasant truth, thehonorarium of a professor at our university is not large."

  He turned to Magee.

  "I regret more than I can say," he continued, "parting from you. My eyesfell upon you first on entering this place--we have had exciting timestogether. My dear Miss Norton--knowing you has refreshed an old man'sheart. I might compare you to another with yellow locks--but I leavethat to my younger--er--colleagues. Mr. Cargan--good-by. My acquaintancewith you I shall always look back on--"

  But the mayor of Reuton, Max and Bland closed in on the old man.

  "Now look here, Doc," interrupted Cargan. "You're bluffing. Do you getme? You're trying to put something over. I don't want to be rough--Ilike you--but I got to get a glimpse at the inside of that satchel. AndI got to examine your personal make-up a bit."

  "Dear, dear," smiled Professor Bolton, "you don't think I would steal? Aman in my position? Absurd. Look through my poor luggage if you desire.You will find nothing but the usual appurtenances of travel."

  He stood docilely in the middle of the floor, and blinked at the grouparound him.

  Mr. Magee waited to hear no more. It was quite apparent that this wiselittle man carried no package wildly sought by Baldpate's winter guests.Quietly and quickly Magee disappeared up the broad stair, and tried theprofessor's door. It was locked. Inside he could hear a window bangingback and forth in the storm. He ran through number seven and out uponthe snow-covered balcony.

  There he bumped full into a shadowy figure hurrying in the oppositedirection.