GHOSTS OF THE SUMMER CROWD
"I WONDER," Miss Norton smiled up into Mr. Magee's face, "if you ever watched the people at a summer hotel get set on their mark for the sprint through the dining-room door?"
"No," answered Magee, "but I have visited the Zoo at meal-time. They tell me it is much the same."
"A brutal comparison," said the girl. "But just the same I'm sure that the head waiter who opens the door here at Baldpate must feel much the same at the moment as the keeper who proffers the raw meat on the end of the pitchfork. He faces such a wild determined mob. The front rank is made up of hard-faced women worn out by veranda gossip. Usually some stiff old dowager crosses the tape first. I was thinking that perhaps we resembled that crowd in the eyes of Mr. Peters now."
It was past one o'clock, and Mr. Magee with his four mysterious companions stood before the fire in the office, each with an eager eye out for the progress of the hermit, who was preparing the table beside them. Through the kindness of Quimby, the board was resplendent with snowy linen.
"We may seem over-eager," commented Professor Bolton. "I have no doubt we do. It is only natural. With nothing to look forward to but the next meal, the human animal attaches a preposterous importance to his feeding. We are in the same case as the summer guests—"
"Are we?" interrupted Mr. Magee. "Have we nothing but the next meal to look forward to? I think not. I haven't. I've come to value too highly the capacity for excitement of Baldpate Inn in December. I look forward to startling things. I expect, before the day is out, at least two gold-laced kings, an exiled poet, and a lord mayor, all armed with keys to 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 inquiries of Quimby. There are, aside from his own, but seven keys in all to the various doors of Baldpate Inn. Four are here represented. It is hardly likely that the other three will send delegates, and if they should, you have but a slim chance for kings and poets. Even Baldpate's capacity for excitement, you see, is limited by the number of little steel keys which open its portals to exiles from the outside world. I am reminded of the words of the philosopher—"
"Well, Peters, old top," broke in Mr. Bland in robust tones, "isn't she nearly off the fire?"
"Now see here," said the hermit, setting down the armful of dishes with which he had entered the office, "I can't be hurried. I'm all upset, as it is. I can't cook to please women—I don't pretend to. I have to take all sorts of precautions with this lunch. Without meaning to be impolite, but just because of a passion for cold facts, I may say that women are faultfinding."
"I'm sure," said Miss Norton sweetly, "that I shall consider your luncheon perfect."
"They get more faultfinding as they get older," replied Mr. Peters ungallantly, glancing at the other woman.
Mrs. Norton glared.
"Meaning me, I suppose," she rasped. "Well, don't worry. I ain't going to find anything wrong."
"I ain't asking the impossible," responded Mr. Peters. "I ain't asking you not to find anything wrong. I'm just asking you not to mention it when 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 lived alone too long. I'd like to have charge of him for a while. Not that I wouldn't be kind—but I'd be firm. If poor Norton was alive to-day he'd testify that I was always kindness itself. But I insisted on his living up to his promises. When I was a girl I was mighty popular. I had a lot of 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. He was a splendid man, but there's no denying that in the years we were married he sometimes forgot what he started out to do. I always brought him up sharp. 'Your great desire,' I told him, 'is to make me happy. I'd keep on the job if I was you!' And he did, to the day of his death. A perfectly lovely man, though careless in money matters. If he hadn't had that failing I wouldn't be—"
Miss Norton, her cheeks flushed, broke in hurriedly.
"Mamma, these gentlemen can't be at all interested." Deftly she turned the conversation to generalities.
Mr. Peters at last seated the winter guests of Baldpate Inn, and opened his luncheon with a soup which he claimed to have wrested from a can. This news drew from Professor Bolton a learned discourse on the tinned aids to the hermit of to-day. He pictured the seeker for solitude setting out for a desert isle, with canned foods for his body and canned music for his soul. "Robinson Crusoe," he said, "should be rewritten with a can-opener in the leading rôle." Mrs. Norton gave the talk a more practical turn by bringing up the topic of ptomaine poisoning.
While the conversation drifted on, Mr. Magee pondered in silence the weird mesh in which he had become involved. What did it all mean? What brought these people to Baldpate Christmas week? His eyes sought the great 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 his thoughts came back to the table he found Mr. Bland eying him narrowly. There was a troubled look on the haberdasher's lean face that could never be ascribed to the cruelty of Arabella.
The luncheon over, Miss Norton and her mother prepared to ascend to their rooms. Mr. Magee maneuvered so as to meet the girl at the foot of the stairs.
"Won't you come back," he whispered softly, "and explain things to a poor hermit who is completely at sea?"
"What things?" she asked.
"What it all means," he whispered. "Why you wept in the station, why you invented the story of the actress, why you came here to brighten my drab exile—what this whole comedy of Baldpate Inn amounts to, anyhow? I assure you I am as innocent of understanding it as is the czar of Russia on 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 now and read mamma into the pleasant land of thin girlish figures that is her afternoon siesta. I may come back and talk to you after a while, but I 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. Magee turned to find Professor Bolton discoursing to Mr. Bland on some aspects of the Pagan Renaissance. Mr. Bland's face was pained.
"That's great stuff, Professor," he said, "and usually I'd like it. But just now—I don't seem in the mood, somehow. Would you mind saving it for me till later?"
"Certainly," sighed the professor. Mr. Bland slouched into the depths of his 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 excursions and blue eyes must not turn me from my task. Let's see—what was my task? A deep heart-searching novel, a novel devoid of rabid melodrama. It becomes more difficult every minute here at Baldpate Inn. But that should only add more zest to the struggle. I devote the next two hours to thought."
He pulled his chair up before the blazing hearth, and gazed into the red depths. But his thoughts refused to turn to the masterpiece that was to be born on Baldpate. They roamed to far-off Broadway; they strolled with Helen Faulkner—the girl he meant to marry if he ever got round to it—along dignified Fifth Avenue. Then joyously they trooped to a far more alluring, more human girl, who pressed a bit of cambric to her face in a railway station, while a ginger-haired agent peeped through the bars. How ridiculously small that bit of cambric had been to hide so much beauty. Soon Mr. Magee's thoughts were climbing Baldpate Mountain, there to wander in a mystic maze of ghostly figures which appeared from the shadows, holding aloft in triumph gigantic keys. Mr. Magee had slept but little the night before. The quick December dusk filled number seven when he awoke with a start.
He remembered that he had asked the girl to come back to the office, and berated himself to think that probably she had done so only to find that he was not there. Hastily straightening his tie, and dashing the traces of 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 with a 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 a girl who wept in a railway station—and she was so altogether charming I could not tear myself away."
"I fear," she laughed, "you are old in the ways of the world. A passion for sleep seems to have seized the hermits. The professor has gone to his room for that purpose. And Mr. Bland, his broken heart forgot, slumbers over there." She pointed to the haberdasher inert in a big chair drawn up near the clerk's desk. "Only you and I in all the world awake."
"Pretty lonesome, isn't it?" Mr. Magee glanced over his shoulder at the shadows that crept in on them.
"I was finding it very busy when you came," she answered. "You see, I have known the inn when it was gay with summer people, and as I sat here by the fire I pretended I saw the ghosts of a lot of the people I knew flitting about in the dusk. The rocking-chair fleet sailed by—"
"The what?"
"Black flag flying, decks cleared for action—I saw the rocking-chair fleet go by." She smiled faintly. "We always called them that. Bitter, unkind old women who sat hour after hour on the veranda, and rocked and gossiped, and gossiped and rocked. All the old women in the world seem to gather at summer hotels. And, oh, the cruel mouths the fleet had—just thin lines of mouths—I used to look at them and wonder if any one 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; "a few that the fleet had run down and sunk in the sea of gossip. A little ghost whose mother had not been all she should have been, and the fleet found it out, and rocked, and whispered, and she went away. And a few who were poor—the most terrible of sins—to them the fleet showed no mercy. And a fine proud girl, Myra Thornhill, who was engaged to a man named Kendrick, and who never dared come here again after Kendrick suddenly disappeared, because of the whispered dishonors the fleet heaped upon his head."
"What wicked women!" said Magee.
"The wickedest women in the world," answered the girl. "But every summer resort 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 comes here, and the place revolves about him. It's all so funny. I wonder if any other crowd attains such heights of snobbishness as that at a summer resort? It's the admiral this, and the admiral that, from the moment he enters the door. Nearly every day the manager of Baldpate has a new picture of the admiral taken, and hangs it here in the hotel. I'll show them to you when it's light. There's one over there by the desk, of the admiral and the manager together, and the manager has thrown his arm carelessly 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 track of his goings and comings, and when he is in the card-room playing his silly old game of solitaire, they run down their victims in subdued tones so as not to disturb him."
"What an interesting place," said Mr. Magee. "I must visit Baldpate next summer. 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, and whispering on the stairs. At night, when the lights are all blazing, and the band is playing waltzes in the casino, and somebody is giving a dinner in the grill-room, and the girls flit about in the shadows looking too sweet for words—well, Baldpate Inn is a rather entrancing spot. I remember those nights very often now."
Mr. Magee leaned closer. The flicker of the firelight on her delicate face, he decided, was an excellent effect.
"I can well believe you do remember them," he said. "And it's no effort at all to me to picture you as one of those who flitted through the shadows—too sweet for words. I can see you the heroine of whispering scenes on the stair. I can see you walking with a dazzled happy man on the 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 very few men are blind. I am sorry I was not the man on the stair, or on the mountain in the moonlight. Who knows—I might have been the favored one for 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 me when I say that I have no part in this strange drama that is going on at Baldpate? Won't you credit it when I say that I have no idea why you and the professor and Mr. Bland are here—nor why the Mayor of Reuton has the fifth key? Won't you tell me what it all means?"
"I mustn't," she replied, shaking her head. "I can trust no one—not even you. I mustn't believe that you don't know—it's preposterous. I must 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 big for me by far—taken it up bravely when I was out in the sunlight of Reuton. But when I saw Upper Asquewan Falls, and the dark came, and that dingy station swallowed me up, something gave way inside me and I felt I was 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 things will change. I hope they will."
"Listen," said Mr. Magee. "I am telling you the truth. Perhaps you read a novel called The Lost Limousine." He was resolved to claim its authorship, tell her of his real purpose in coming to Baldpate, and urge her to confide in him regarding the odd happenings at the inn.
"Yes," said the girl before he could continue. "I did read it. And it hurt 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 in these 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. I want 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 The Lost Limousine was quite gone.
"I want him to make me feel with his people," the girl went on seriously. "Perhaps I can explain by telling you of something that happened to me once. It was while I was at college. There was a blind girl in my class and one night I went to call on her. I met her in the corridor of her dormitory. Somebody had just brought her back from an evening lecture, and left her there. She unlocked her door, and we went in. It was pitch dark in the room—the first thing I thought of was a light. But she—she just sat down and began to talk. She had forgot to light the gas."
The girl paused, her eyes very wide, and it seemed to Mr. Magee that she shivered slightly.
"Can you imagine it?" she asked. "She chatted on—quite cheerfully as I remember it. And I—I stumbled round and fell into a chair, cold and trembly and sick with the awful horror of blindness, for the first time in my life. I thought I had imagined before what it was to be blind—just by shutting my eyes for a second. But as I sat there in the blackness, and listened to that girl chatter, and realized that it had never occurred to her to light a lamp—then for the first time—I knew—I knew."
Again she stopped, and Mr. Magee, looking at her, felt what he had never experienced 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 his people as I felt for that girl that night. Am I asking too much? It need not be for one who is enmeshed in tragedy—it may be for one whose heart is as glad as a May morning. But he must make me feel. And he can't do that 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 you immensely—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 Baldpate Inn. You have only to ask, and I am your ally."
"Thank you," she answered. "I may be very glad to ask. I shall remember." She rose and moved toward the stairs. "We had better disperse now. The rocking-chair fleet will get us if we don't watch out." Her small slipper was on the first step of the stair, when they heard a door slammed shut, and the sound of steps on the bare floor of the dining-room. Then a husky voice called "Bland".
Mr. Magee felt his hand grasped by a much smaller one, and before he knew it he had been hurried to the shadows of the landing. "The fifth key," whispered a scared little voice in his ear. And then he felt the faint brushing of finger-tips across his lips. A mad desire seized him to grasp those fingers and hold them on the lips they had scarcely touched. But the impulse was lost in the thrill of seeing the dining-room door thrown open and a great bulk of a man cross the floor of the office and stand beside Bland's chair. At his side was a thin waif 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 of the newcomers.
"Hello, Cargan," he said. "Hello, Lou. For the love of heaven, don't shout 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 old high-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 me Baldpate Inn was the best place—say, this is one on Andy Rutter. Why didn't you get it out and beat it?"
"How could I?" Mr. Bland asked. "I haven't got the combination. The safe was left open for me. That was the agreement with Rutter."
"You might have phoned us not to come," remarked Lou, with an uneasy glance 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. They can'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 think I'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 to the group below.
"Good evening, gentlemen," he said suavely. "Welcome to Baldpate! Please don't attempt to explain—we're fed up on explanations now. You have the fifth key, of course. Welcome to our small but growing circle."
The big man advanced threateningly. Mr. Magee saw that his face was very red, his neck very thick, but his mouth a cute little cupid's bow that might well have adorned a dainty baby in the park.
"Who are you?" bellowed the mayor of Reuton in a tone meant to be cowering.
"I forget," replied Mr. Magee easily. "Bland, who am I to-day? The cast-off lover of Arabella, the fleeing artist, or the thief of portraits 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 Baldpate hermits, 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. I don't want you here. Understand?"
To Cargan's side came the slinking figure of Lou Max. His face was the withered yellow of an old lemon; his garb suggested shop-windows on dirty side streets; unpleasant eyes shifted behind a pair of gold-rimmed glasses. 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. "I was 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 police Upper 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 be happy to have your company to dinner. Your command that I withdraw is ill-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 came from the trio in the dusk. "Silence gives consent," he added gaily. "You must excuse me while I dress. Bland, will you inform Mr. Peters that we are to have company to dinner? Handle him gently. Emphasize the fact that 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 say not. Put on your prettiest gown, my lady. I've invited the mayor to dinner."