“No.” Colin favored his prospective captor with a morose stare. “I’d no notion they’d be having it-so early.”
“Oh, they got it at headquarters. We tried to phone out to Mr. Rhodes here, but they said you didn’t answer. Line out of order?”
“Not that I know of.” Rhodes was nervous. He was becoming more and more positive that MacClellan was innocent of any knowledge dangerous to O’Hara, but at the same time there was imminent peril of his acquiring such information within the next few moments. O’Hara must be kept quiet until there was time for further conference.
“More likely something wrong with the operator,” he continued. “But I read the paper, MacClellan, and was just going to show it to the rest when you arrived.”
“And I was just on my way,” began O’Hara, but Rhodes forestalled him, speaking very loudly and quickly.
“It’s the bungalow again, Colin. The bungalow received another visitation last night!”
And pulling the folded newspaper from his pocket, he thrust it into O’Hara’s hands, pointing to the column in question and for the moment at least effectually distracting his attention.
Cliona, keyed to a worse calamity, laughed and exclaimed involuntarily: “Is that all?”
“Ain’t it enough?” MacClellan looked a trifle offended. No man likes to bear news of a mountain and hear it called a mole-hill. “I tell you, Mrs. Rhodes, it was enough to send me and Forester here shooting out to Carpentier within ten minutes after we got word of it. The news was phoned in by a milkman-name of Walker-and he said when he went up there to deliver the milk, there wasn’t, in a manner of speaking, any place to deliver it at. Said you’d been living there alone, Mr. O’Hara, and the way he talked we got the idea you was murdered and laid out in the ruins.
“So Forester, here, and me shot out there, and sure enough the place was pretty well smashed up, but not a sign of you or anybody else hurt. So on the train comin’ in we got talkin’ with the conductor-we central office men pick up lots of valuable clues just talking, here and there-and he says the night man told him how you and a lady went in town somewhere after eleven-thirty last night.
“Well, we was anxious to get in touch with you, just to let you know we’re on the job, so I tried to get Mr. Rhodes by phone. While I was trying, Forester, he called up the hotels and drew them blank, so I says the best thing was to come straight out here, and we did and here’s Mr. O’Hara, just like I thought.”
MacClellan was so enamored of his own perspicacity in locating Colin that he was quite good-natured again. But to that gentleman himself it seemed a childishly simple feat-particularly when compared to the one which he had suspected MacClellan.
He had meant to make the whole of last night’s doings known to the complacent detective, but now he hated to do it. Somehow MacClellan would arrogate to himself as much credit as if he had captured a desperate criminal in the red act of assassination. Besides, there was the bungalow. After waiting six weeks for that visit, it had come in earnest during his one night of absence!
“So the place was pulled down?” he asked slowly, scanning the headlines.
“Oh, no. That was Walker’s exaggeration. But it was pretty well wrecked up all right-worse than the first time. And Walker said that when he got up there, there was a horrible smell about the place. Some sort of chemical, I guess, though that may have been some more of his imagination. It didn’t look to me like there’d been any explosion.”
“I smelled something queer myself when we went inside.” This from Forester, an intelligent-looking but very young man. “Don’t you remember I called your attention to it?”
“Yes, and I said you was dreamin’,” snapped his superior. “If there was any smell it got out the windows before we reached there.”
Forester shrugged and subsided. But to O’Hara this talk of a mysterious odor called up a memory. The scene was a large, bare, dusty interior, illuminated by one leaping white ray. Faith, and it was a most unpleasant stench the place had been filled with! The front and the back door of that storehouse had stood open-open! And it was from Reed’s place that Genghis Khan had wandered all the way to Carpentier-and tried to strangle him! Had Khan “wandered”?
“I’ll be returning to the bungalow,” he announced.
“Oh, no!” To Cliona, Carpentier and its vicinity were by this time doubly enhanced with terror. “Colin, darling, promise me you’ll never go near there again!”
“I’ll have to. Sure, every stitch of clothes I have but these are out there. You’d not have me sacrifice my entire wardrobe, Cliona?”
“You can send for them-besides, that’s not your reason!” she added suspiciously.
“And what if it’s not? In broad daylight! For shame, little sister, ‘tis not like yourself to be so unreasonable!”
“I don’t mean to be,” Cliona considered, while MacClellan turned away to examine a picture-and grin. He disliked this domineering Irishman as instinctively as O’Hara despised him, and it was highly amusing to hear him plead against petticoat rule as meekly as the least of his fellows. “You may go,” decreed Cliona at last, “if you’ll take these gentlemen with you.”
Rhodes laughed. “I’m going myself, so you’ll have quite a bodyguard, Colin.”
Somewhat to his surprise Cliona offered no objection to that. Perhaps she felt there was safety in numbers, and anyway, on reflection, a daylight expedition to the bungalow could rouse little dread. There must be people all over the place, too, as she had been told there were while first she lay there unconscious.
“Where’s the-the-Miss Reed?”
It was Rhodes who asked. All the time they talked, the girl had stood close to Cliona, partly in shadow and so motionlessly silent as to be practically forgotten by all save Colin. He never quite forgot her, but she had been pushed to the back of his mind by these more pressing matters.
“I think-perhaps she went back in the breakfast room. Shall I look for her?” Cliona made a motion toward the door, but her brother checked her, drawing her somewhat aside from the rest.
“‘Tis as well,” he said in a guarded tone, “that MacClellan does not see her just now. Who knows what the day may bring? I’ll not bid her farewell, either, for the poor lass might not understand. Just tell her I’ve gone and will return soon, and do you try and get at the truth of this business of her father. I’d not be surprised if there was real truth behind that. Be good to her and gentle-ah, I know there’s no need to say that! Were you ever aught else in your life, little sister? But indeed, I’m that troubled — “
“Colin, MacClellan says he has only another hour or so to spare. If we’re going we’d better start.” This from Rhodes.
“I’ll take care of her, Colin.” Cliona gave his arm a reassuring pat as he turned to obey Rhodes’ summons. But she looked after him with a sadness in her eyes.
Though so much younger, she understood Colin, as a mother understands a beloved son, and she knew that it was not only shame or despair for his deed at Undine that had taken all the buoyancy from his step, all the happiness from his face. She had seen him look at the girl he had brought here, heard his voice when he spoke of her-and the girl was so lovely-so hopelessly, pitifully lovely!
CHAPTER XX. The Fourth Visitation
O’HARA stood on the macadamized drive beneath the same tree from which Genghis Khan had reached for his throat two nights ago. MacClellan alone was with him, for at the last moment Rhodes had received a telephone call from his partner-that line was in working order, after all-begging that he come in town at once on a matter of considerable business importance.
O’Hara urged him to go, and in the end he did, but with a promise to join them later if possible. So they had run down to the city in Rhodes’ car, dropped its owner at his office, set Forester down at city hall-his superior having denied any need of the young man loafing away any more time on this job-and proceeded straight to Carpentier.
O’Hara was his own chauffeur, and he had MacClella
n in the tonneau, so at least he was spared any converse with him during the trip. Once at the bungalow, however, the detective gave his tongue and his opinions a loose rein.
As he had told them, this fresh bit of apparently objectless destruction bore a broad resemblance to the earlier attempt, save that this time its perpetrators had left no visible trace of themselves save their work.
Every room in the house had been visited, as if by a small invading whirlwind. An indiscriminating whirlwind, too, that had scattered and smashed with no regard for relative values.
A finely carved and heavily constructed sideboard which had escaped the first visitation had been broken to bits in the most difficult and painstaking manner. But equally the cheap deal table, at which Colin had taken supper the night before, lay about the kitchen in well-nigh unidentifiable fragments. In the bedroom that had been first Cliona’s and then Colin’s, nothing had been touched except the bed, and that was irrevocably smashed, even to the twisted mass of wire which had been the springs.
So everywhere things common and valuable were broken or left intact with the whimsicality of choice that distinguishes those three insentient destroyers-fire, storm, and concussion.
Yet there were no signs of an explosion, no fire had raged here, and, though a storm there had been, it must have been a strange one to have shattered windows and doors, ravaged inner rooms, and left roof and walls uninjured.
The milkman’s statement that he “came up to leave the milk and found no place to leave it” was not entirely unfounded. His custom had been to put O’Hara’s quart bottle of the healthful fluid on the front steps, but these steps, which were wooden, had been torn away and lay some distance off. Every one of the veranda windows was broken, sash and all, and the door was flat and in two pieces.
Having gloomily inspected the remains of his premises, Colin stood in the dining-room and listened with acute boredom to MacClellan’s views. Something small and bright-colored caught his eye, and stooping, he plucked it from amidst the sideboard’s debris. It was the last surviving remnant of that unfortunate Aztec godling-the head, minus its miter, and part of the red and blue tunic.
Colin stared grimly down at the still patiently smiling face.
“So they got you at last, little man,” he muttered, half-abstractedly.
The face smiled on-patient forever with the blindness of mankind.
“What’s that?” demanded MacClellan.
“Nothing.” Colin tossed the fragment aside, and led the way toward the door. “Just a bit of pottery that was worth a few thousand before we began receiving midnight callers. There’s no luck to this house-no luck all. I shall live here no more. Drop the case or keep on with it as you like-its a matter of no further interest to myself.”
This annoyed MacClellan. It annoyed him more than O’Hara’s insistence that he solve the previous case. There could be drawn an inference that the Irishman had lost all faith in his ability to solve anything whatever, but in that he was mistaken. O’Hara could not lose what he had never possessed.
“We shall continue to investigate,” he declared with stolid dignity. “We have sent word down the line to round up every hobo between here and headquarters, and — “
“Hoboes!” The ejaculation had a quality of bitter scorn that dissipated the last of MacClellan’s patience.
“Yes, hoboes!” he snapped. “If you’re so sure that I don’t know anything, then you have some good reason for being sure! When you get ready to tell it, let me know. I’m going back by train. Good day!”
Colin viewed his retreating figure with wide, amused eyes.
“And that’s the only really clever thing he ever said in his life! Good day to you, Mr. MacClellan! Sure, I’ll let you know-but not until I’m ready!”
The detective, on his early morning visit, had again called out a patrolman to stand guard over O’Hara’s possessions, and there he stood, MacClellan having departed in too great a rage to remember his patient sentinel.
“Go or stay as you please,” said O’Hara to the officer. “I’ll send up a man presently to pack what’s left worth packing and ship it in town. I doubt if I’ll return here myself.”
“I’ll see that your man makes a good job,” volunteered the policeman agreeably. O’Hara had just slipped a bit of green paper into his willing hand-extended for that purpose, perhaps from habit, discreetly and with back half turned.
“Thanks. I wish you would.”
As Colin climbed into the driving seat of his borrowed car he gave a last glance about the now desolate hilltop. Here and there strayed some idle and amateur seeker of “clues.” A reporter or so, ruthlessly repelled by the gloom-stricken Irishman, still hovered hungrily in the offing. One individual hurried toward him as he started the car. Had Colin looked he would have seen a lean, worn-looking man, white-haired, with the mark of an old scar across his lower forehead.
“Mr. O’Hara!” he called. “Hey, there! O’Hara! Wait a minute!”
“Go to the devil with the rest of ‘em!” muttered Colin without even a glance, and fairly shot out of hearing.
He wanted to get away from it all. He had by no means surrendered hope of achieving a final solution-in fact he was grimly certain that the solution would not be much longer delayed. But he was sick of the bungalow-sick of everything.
No matter if he exposed Reed as the deus ex machina of these lawless manifestations; no matter if in exposing him he discovered the reason of Reed’s grudge, if he had one. No matter, even, if for one reason or another the killing of Marco should be publicly applauded as a righteous act-though that last seemed to him unlikely enough. No matter for anything. Was he not indeed linked by a “golden thread” to the one girl in the world for him-and was she not hopelessly, unquestionably insane?
He determined that he would not go back to Green Gables. She was safe in his sister’s keeping, and he determined that before yielding himself to the police he would have one final interview with Reed-providing that is, that he could easily locate him.
Yet before going on that errand, he brought the car to a halt before Bradshaw’s shop, entered and with a nod to the storekeeper made for the little telephone booth. But Bradshaw halted him.
“Say, Mr. O’Hara, your sister called up a while ago. Said the bungalow line was out of order. Did you find out — “
“Did Mrs. Rhodes want me, then? How long ago was that?”
“Oh, about an hour, more or less, the first time. She’s called twice since and says for you to phone her right away. Did that detective fellow — “
“Why didn’t you send up the hill after me?” demanded O’Hara indignantly.
“Nobody to send. Been looking around for a boy, but they’re all up round your place, I guess. Did you find out — “
“I did not!” O’Hara disappeared in the booth, banging the door in poor Bradshaw’s aggrieved face. That is, he tried to bang it, but the booth never having been built for his bulk, the attempt was a miserable failure.
In an uncomfortably stooped position Colin went through the customary struggle to get Green Gables from Carpentier through a matter of three exchanges, and in the end was rewarded by Cliona’s voice on the wire. She had been waiting anxiously for the call and before he could ask a question she imparted her news.
“Colin-she’s gone!”
“What? Who’s gone?” But he knew very well.
“That Miss Reed, or whoever she was. She’s gone-and I’ve been trying to get you for nearly two hours. Where have you been?”
“Here.” Colin’s voice was a trifle hoarse. Of course they would find her again-she had wandered away, but he would find her —
Again Cliona was speaking. She had, it appeared, seen her guest safely bestowed in the bedroom assigned to her use, and herself gone to lie down for a short time. When she returned to offer the girl a cup of tea the room was empty. She was nowhere in the house and her coat had also disappeared. And-“Colin, she had taken that dreadful green dress again!”
>
“Taken it? She didn’t wear it?”
“I–I’m afraid she did. The clothes I gave her were on the bed-they were laid out very nicely and in order, Colin dear-she must have had a beautiful bringing up — “
“Never mind consoling me, Cliona. What have you done to find her?”
It seemed she had sent every one of the servants to search the neighborhood and had tried to get in touch with him before notifying the police. And three reporters had been there already about the bungalow-and the servants had all returned with nevus, and she had waited and waited —
“Yes, to be sure. But do you tell me, darling. Did she say anything to you before you left her? Tell me word for word all she said. I may get some trace of her by it.”
“Let me think. I asked her about her father, but she would tell me nothing. She said that already she loved me, but only to you would she speak. She said: ‘I have seen kindness in the eyes of others than you, but it has been as the mockings of the shadow people. They went and returned not. But between me and my lord hangs a Golden Thread, and therefore there is trust between us.’ Something like that. I’m trying to remember exactly, but — “
“You’ve a wonderful memory, and you’re doing fine. And then?”
“Well, she seemed disturbed because you had gone to Carpentier, and asked me to take her and follow you. Then she said she left the reception hall because you disliked the fat, clean man-Mr. MacClellan, I suppose-so much that you were making her hate him. She hates Marco and you-you struck him. And she thought that striking Marco had made you sad, she knew not why. So she went away lest you strike the fat, clean man also. Forgive me, Colin, but you wanted to know exactly.”
“And so I do. Then?”
“That was all. When I wouldn’t take her after you, she asked to lie down in her room and she did. She wad so perfectly nice and-and pleasant that I never-never thought — “
“And why would you? There’s no blame at all to you, darling.” His exoneration of Cliona was quite mechanical, a matter of habit, for in truth his thoughts were not on her.
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