Citadel of Fear

by Francis Stevens

  “You have my sympathy, sir, and I understand your feelings entirely. But as to the invitation, ‘twould give me pleasure to visit you on some other day and in a manner more formal.”

  “If you feel yourself to have been injured by Genghis Khan, or if he damaged your property in any way, I shall be glad to — “

  “Nothing of the sort. I more than squared accounts with the poor ape in person. To tell the truth, there’s a deal of time on my hands now, and I’ve a fancy for animals. Would it trouble you should I run over tomorrow afternoon?”

  “Not at all. Do so, by all means.” Reed spoke with a great appearance of cordiality. “Come at any time, and ring the bell at the gate. Marco will let you in.”

  “Then thank you, and I’ll be going. By the way — ” He broke off with a laugh-then explained: “Your Genghis Khan knows the country hereabouts better than myself. He led me about and about, the way I’ve no notion at all what part of America I’m in now.”

  “This house is only a short walk from Undine,” smiled his host, “and Carpentier, where I suppose you wish to return, is the next station up the line. I keep no car, or I would send you back that way, but at least Marco can show you the road to the station. If you would care to-er-straighten your attire — “

  “And wash off the mud and the blood,” put in Colin. “‘Tis a fine idea, for I doubt they’d take me onboard in my present condition. But no need to trouble your man. I can find my own way, if you’ll point it and thanks to you.”

  “As you like.”

  Reed led the way upstairs and introduced him to a well-appointed bathroom.

  “Here is a clothes-brush, and help yourself to the soap and clean towels. I will wait for you in the hall below. You have half an hour for there is a train at ten five. Sorry I can’t offer you the services of a valet, but we live very simply, and Marco and Genghis Khan are my only servants.”

  “I’ve already been valeted by Genghis Khan,” jested O’Hara, “and do not care to repeat the performance. I’ll be with you in ten minutes, Mr. Reed.”

  Alone, as he brushed at his clothes, Colin reflected on the singular make-up of this household.

  “A mad daughter and a menagerie to care for, and he keeps one servant! Yet is it poverty that ails him? The one room I’ve seen is well-furnished enough, and here he has an elegant bathroom-clean towels by the dozen. And himself is not poorly dressed. Strange he’d not have one woman at least to be company for the unfortunate girl. And he says his beasts could not break loose! And that noise was the dragging of a cage! It would be a heavy cage that shook the house like that, though I myself find it hard to account for by any other cause. Nevertheless, had MacClellan a head on his shoulders he’d have found out this place and explored it. But no, he would not believe that Cliona’s wild beast was aught but human.”

  Having done the best possible by his clothes, he began cleansing his face and hands.

  “An odd thing, now I think of it, that the people hereabout kept quiet. So close to Carpentier, and the papers so full of it and all. How Mr. Chester Reed was not dragged into our business, man-monkey, stock-farm, and all, is a bigger puzzle than the other. I’ll be kind to the poor man and courteous, and perhaps tomorrow I’ll step on the tail of the whole mystery. There, I’m decent to pass in a crowd-and three minutes of the ten yet to spare.”

  He passed out toward the stair. As he did so a door opened at the end of the hall behind him, and hearing the soft click of its latch, he glanced around.

  There, framed in the doorway, stood the most melancholy and at the same time the most oddly beautiful figure that Colin had ever seen. She could be none other than Reed’s mad daughter, but the Irishman forgot that in amazement at her loveliness.

  What she thought of him O’Hara could not know. The slight parting of her lips and her wide eyes might have expressed either amazement, alarm, or expectation. Curiously enough O’Hara was convinced, both then and afterward, that her emotion was really the last named, though what she could expect of him, whom she had never before set eyes on, seemed hard to surmise. He was also convinced-and this belief was as lacking in practical foundation as the other-that she had some information to impart-something which it was highly important that he should know and which concerned them both.

  Heretofore O’Hara had compared all women with Cliona, to their disparagement, but here was one who could be compared to no one. She was herself alone and utterly a creature apart, almost unearthly, and who yet suggested in an odd way all the natural beauties of earth. So the darkness of her hair and eyes hinted at mystery of dusk and the recurring miracle of starshine.

  She was tall and slender, and her height and slim, bare arms made one think of dryads that live in willow-trees and come out to dance at moonrise. Her hair hung down in rippling, dark curls over the green gown she was dressed in, and Colin saw the beauty of her hair and did not perceive that the gown was so worn and old that it hung in tatters about her bare ankles, and so threadbare in places that her white limbs shone through it.

  Her face was long and oval, and her large eyes were too bright, as if suffused with unshed tears. She had the loveliness of night, and the sorrowful beauty of forest pools that hold the stars and the trees in their bosoms.

  That was the wonder which appeared to Colin O’Hara.

  But had he not been Colin O’Hara, or had he ever loved any other woman save his sister, then it may be that the wonder would not have appeared to him. So he might have seen only a slim girl in a torn, green gown; beautiful, perhaps, — but thin and very melancholy.

  And how should either of them guess of a former meeting? Fifteen years are a gulf to swallow memories, and in fifteen years a girl-baby finds magic indeed to change her. Their first glance for each other was of recognition; but it was not a recognition to save suffering. Being not of the flesh and earthly it spared them no after pain.

  Colin had no idea of how long he had stood there, staring at the girl and waiting for the message she had for him. But it could hardly have been more than a few moments until Reed’s voice floated up to him from below.

  “Is that you, O’Hara? You haven’t long to catch that train.”

  Colin roused with a start, and the girl, who had seemed on the very edge of speaking, laid two slim fingers on her lips in a gesture of silence and slipped back into her room.

  O’Hara went down the stairs like a man descending out of a dream. He did not know what had happened to him, but that something had happened he was gloriously aware. Every nerve and fiber of his giant body tingled with vivid life, and had she not made that gesture of silence and warning, he would have gone to the girl, not to Reed.

  The latter met him at the stair-foot with a glance sharply suspicious.

  “I heard you stop there on the floor above. Did my daughter speak to you? Poor child, she is as ready to address a stranger as her own father!”

  Colin came to earth with a jolt. That, then, had been the mad girl, Reed’s daughter! And he had-he had-Why, he had done nothing; only life had for him turned a somersault and seemed right-sideup for the first time. But mad! Was it madness that gave her that elfin look, that made her so differently, so marvelously beautiful?

  “I had no word from your daughter, sir,” he replied gravely and sadly, for he was wishing he had. “Will you show me the road to the station?”

  “You will have no trouble in finding it. Go out the gate, turn to your right, and keep straight on by the wall. From where it ends you can see the lights at the station. Good night, sir!”

  The door closed with needless sharpness as Colin went down the steps. Then it opened again.

  “If you want any further directions,” Reed called, and there was a strange hint of laughter in his voice, “ask the gatekeeper!”

  And once more he banged the door.

  Colin had turned at the first word, had seen Reed standing in the lighted doorway, and had caught an odd impression of some trifling difference in his appearance. He stood stock-still o
n the drive, staring at the shut dooor. Then he scratched his bare head reflectively.

  “Ask-the-gatekeeper!” he muttered. “Now, what in the devil did the fool mean by that-and him laughing when he said it? And what was it about him now-oh, his hand!”

  That hand had been out of its pocket at last, and it had been large-white-furry.

  “To keep a glove on one’s hand is not strange,” thought Colin, “but why the like o’ that white fur one? Mr. Reed, Mr. Reed, ‘tis a man of mysteries you are, both small and large, and I do not like you! But your daughter — “

  It was hard enough to follow the path in the dark, and twice he thought he had lost his way. At last a gleam of light ahead resolved itself into the gaslight on the pike outside. Against its yellow radiance the gates hung, an elaborate silhouette, and he could see the red sheen of the ivy-covered lodge.

  Then, as he came toward it, a slight sound came to his ears. Straining eyes dazzled by the light beyond, it seemed to him that in the side of the lodge facing the grounds a door stood open. Yes, there was an oblong blackness there, blacker than the shadowed ivy about it and near the center of the oblong-a whitish oval patch-a face?

  It disappeared abruptly, and when Colin came up to the little lodge there were only a closed door and silence. Any windows there might be were hidden by the clinging ivy.

  As the gates were unlocked, Colin had no desire to disturb Reed’s repulsive servant. The gates opened at a touch and he went his way.

  CHAPTER XVII. A Surprise and a Disappointment

  THE following day brought Colin a surprise as great and in a way, more disconcerting than had been given him by Genghis Khan when he descended upon him out of an oak-tree the evening before.

  Cliona arrived at the bungalow, and she was a Cliona indignant and filled with the just wrath of a woman deceived. She was so angry that she had forgotten all dread of the place and marched into the dining-room unannounced, like a small avenging angel.

  Colin was alone. Mrs. Bollinger had made good her resolve and renounced his service in a wonderfully spelled note, which a small boy thrust under the front door that morning. So Colin had cooked his own breakfast and luncheon. He was a good cook, within the limits of his cuisine, as this ran chiefly to wild game “of which he had none,” fried ham, eggs, flapjacks, and coffee. There promised to be a certain monotony of diet unless he could persuade some other Mrs. Bollinger to dare the goblins of the bungalow.

  He was somewhat sadly reflecting upon this fact when Cliona surprised him. Unexpectedly long though his residence here had been, and though the continuance of its secrecy had seemed a daily increasing miracle, yet the worst he had anticipated was discovery by his brother-in-law, who might have got wind of his presence there through the gossip of some Carpentierian in business circles. He would be unlikely to carry word of it to his wife, but would investigate on his own account.

  For Cliona herself to descend upon him was lightning from a clear sky, and he had never felt more astonished and embarrassed in his life. He choked on his coffee, but this was fortunate. By the time he was able to speak he had thought of something to say.

  “Cliona, my dear,” he beamed, coming around table with outstretched arm, “it’s a fine thing to see you looking so well and all!”

  But she ran away from him, barricading herself behind a chair. She regarded her brother scornfully.

  “You lied to me!” She was fairly ablaze with the white-hot anger that occasionally flared up in both the O’Haras. “You lied, and you never went away at all!”

  Because he was dear to her, the discovery of his incomprehensible deception had hurt her intolerably. As she had written him, her health and strength had practically returned, and she had begun to go about much as usual.

  While in the city shopping, she had chanced to meet a lady whose husband owned an extensive property adjoining Rhodes’ former possessions at Carpentier.

  Cliona could not understand the woman’s meaning when she said: “Your brother looks so well, Mrs. Rhodes. I often see him, though only at a distance.” Then it had all come out.

  Cliona said nothing to her husband. This was between her and Colin, and as soon as Rhodes left her to return to his office, she took the first train to Carpentier.

  “Why, no,” confessed Colin, halting to run his fingers through his hair and reflect. “Sure, I didn’t go away. Did you think I would really travel off to the far end of the earth and leave you so sick and all? I — “

  The matter of the lie Colin excused on the ground that if he had told the truth Rhodes would have insisted on coming with him, or at least occasionally sharing his nightly watch. Cliona shuddered at the thought. She heard the story of his last night’s adventure, somewhat toned down and denatured, for Colin had no notion of increasing her concern for him.

  He told her of his suspicion that Reed’s strange “stock-farm” was responsible for her own experience, and in that case, of course, there was no danger in his remaining at the bungalow. Reed would now take the utmost care that none of his creatures, whatever they might be, should again escape.

  But even to her O’Hara could not bring himself to tell of Reed’s daughter. Deranged or sane, to him she was sacred, a vision bestowed upon him by the friendly gods, and he would not speak of her.

  “So I am going there again this day,” he concluded, “and when I come away I may have news to phone you or not, but at least if such a creature is there as your ears informed you of, and your eyes saw the white claw of him, he will not be hard to pick out. So let me live here a while longer, Cliona, and do you go back to Tony. Then in a few days I will join you, and perhaps I’ll visit St. Augustine with yourselves.”

  To this she finally agreed, stipulating, however, that he should telephone her daily so that she might know he was safe.

  “Night and morning I’ll phone you,” Colin promised. “And now will you sit at my table, Mrs. Rhodes, and enjoy the elegant menu provided by my fine Irish chef? There’s little variety, but plenty of quantity, which, you know, is the main thing as shown in my own person!”

  After all, except her husband, there was no one in the world so nice as Colin. Her wounded affection healed by the knowledge that his deception had been carried out for the purpose of avenging her own wrongs, the two had a very merry meal together, and later Colin rode with her to the train.

  Before paying his call, O’Hara determined to obtain some outside information regarding his new acquaintance, Chester Reed. For this purpose there seemed no one more convenient than the station agent, for Undine, excelling therein most such small suburban points, boasted a real, live agent. O’Hara found him to be a pleasant young fellow, ready to handle passengers with admirable impartiality.

  Yes, certainly he knew Mr. Reed. Reed had bought the old Jerrard place a year ago last April. Beautiful old estate. Dated clean back to revolutionary days, and been in the Jerrard family ever since, till-well, Mr. Charles Sutphen Jerrard was the last of ‘em. Too bad he had to come such a cropper. Five years ago it was. Hanged himself in the gatelodge.

  His creditors had been trying ever since to rent or sell the place at a decent profit, but nobody seemed to want it till this man Reed came along. Makes a place mighty unpopular to have a memory like that hanging over it. Say, if you’d hear some of the stories about that gatelodge-what? Oh, well, Reed had taken the place anyway, and didn’t seem to care a tinker’s cuss for all the dead Jerrards that ever walked. Not the sort that cared to have living outsiders about, though.

  Yes, be believed Reed did handle some breeds of stock. His animals were brought there on the hoof, or in crates and boxes, and he for his part had never seen that any of them were unusual. Just sheep and calves, chickens and rabbits. Nothing even very fancy, so far as he had noticed.

  Here a man who was lounging against a packing-case put in his word.

  “Y’know, that guy Reed is funny. When he first come here he give out that he was goin’ in for what he called ‘scientific stock raisin’.’
There’s two or three real stock-farms hereabout, and some fellows went and offered him some nice prize stock, but he says no, he don’t want nothing like that. What he was goin’ to begin on must be imported….

  “So he puts up a lot of wire fencin’, the strongest I ever seen, an’ then outside o’ that he shuts in the Jerrard grounds with high board fences all along Llewellyn Creek and the other sides away from the pike. Then he nails up ‘No Trespass’ signs about every five feet, like he was goin’ to start a dynamite factory.”

  “Well,” broke in the agent, “he has a right to keep people off his grounds, hasn’t he?”

  “I ain’t sayin’ he ain’t. I’m only tellin’ you what a funny guy he is. You only gotta look at the poor old house to see that. What’d he want t’stick that big round cupuly thing right in the middle of the roof for-huh? What’s a cupuly got to do with stock raisin’? Then he imports this here fancy stock, and-haw! Say, I got a good look at a lot of it when it come in. By jiminy, they was the commonest, orneriest bunch o’ cattle that anybody ever turned out in the road to get rid of! They was — “

  “There were some fine Belgian hares in the last shipment,” cut in the agent.

  “Them brown rabbits, you mean? I dunno nothin’ about them-but, say I do know cattle. I was raised on a real stock-farm. Them calves and sheep of his couldn’t sneak up on a blue ribbon that was give out by a blind judge at midnight! An’ the poultry-oh-h, my!”

  Here his feelings overcame him. He fairly doubled up with mirth.

  All this was very puzzling to O’Hara. Had not Reed distinctly stated that his farm was not for the purpose of breeding ordinary domestic animals?

  “And what do you think of his taste in monkeys?” he suggested tentatively.

  Both his informants seemed to take this query as delightfully facetious. The agent had appeared inclined to defend Reed, but he, too, laughed saying: “That bleached out man of his is the limit, isn’t he? I always said he was more like a white rat than a human being, but I guess an albino monkey does come nearer the mark.”