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*








The Mystery of Hartley House
C L I FF O R D S. R. A. Y.M O N D


v- -º-º-º-º-º-
r;..
---- - - - - - - -
|.


THE MYSTERY OF
HARTILEY HOUSE
BY
CLIFFORD S. RAYMOND
- N E W YORK
G R O S S E T & D UN L A P
PU B L IS H E R S


º - -
- - ****) *-
. . .” . . .
- \ YA “”
Copyright, 1918,
By George H. Doran Company
Copyright, 1917,
By The Story-Press Corporation
Printed in the United States of America
*


:i
THE MYSTERY OF HARTLEY HOUSE





THE MYSTERY
OF HARTLEY HOUSE
CHAPTER I
RAN had been falling for five days when I first
saw Hartley House. The place had so much
local distinction that a village not far from the
estate was named Hartley, for it.
Even when drenched and dripping in a storm
which had lasted for five days in late May, the
spot was beautiful and charming; it had antiquity;
that rare thing in a new land. Its two thousand
acres, handsomely arranged for decorative and
agricultural purposes, lay along the river-bank,
with an indented and interesting littoral where the
river was two miles wide.
I had been an interne in St. Julian's Hospital,
and at the close of my last year Dr. Brownell had
asked me if my arrangements would make it pos-
sible for me to undertake a case which he thought
might be profitable and interesting to a young phy-
sician. It was that of Mr. Homer Sidney, the
owner of Hartley House.
7


8 THE MYSTERY OF HARTLEY HOUSE
*
“I never saw so strong a will to live,” said the
Doctor when he discussed the circumstances with
me. “The old man is indomitable. For that
reason he is interesting. He lives because he wills
to live, for some tremendous reason of which I
know nothing. It is enormous. You may live to
see him die; I am afraid I shall not—and he is
seventy and I am fifty.”
There was debate in my mind whether I should
undertake the case. I had no certain prospects.
I was exposed to the trying circumstances of a
young practitioner. My opportunity was to be
Dr. Brownell’s assistant, resident upon a case
which needed attention he could give only in
emergency.
I decided to accept. It may have been profes-
sional weakness, but in addition to the financial
certainty offered, there was a professional interest
aroused. If Dr. Brownell were attracted by a hu-
man being's will to live, there certainly was some-
thing superhumanly interesting about that human
being. I took the position, which was merely to
continue as interne in a home hospital of one
patient. -
The recollection of Hartley as I first saw it
remains as an enduring impression. The long
downpour of rain had given the place a spirit-
ual accent. One felt as if the soul were satu-
rated.


TEIE MYSTERY OF HARTILEY HOUSE 9
It is only occasionally in a normal mind that
weather works a spiritual effect. I thought my
mind was normal, but I felt the spiritual depres-
sion. Yet the landscape was wonderful. I never
have seen more of art and nature joined in this
country. It was alien—it was alien because it
had an obvious background. Time had worked
with it; many generations of people had lived in
and for it.
I took a buggy at the village livery-stable to
ride out. The driver said they would put my
trunk in a cart the next day and bring it out.
For the evening they had nothing but a buggy and
a tired horse.
The way for three miles was through ordinary
American small-farm land. Then it changed ab-
ruptly. Antiquity began to show. The driver
said we were in the Hartley House grounds.
I was so depressed by the rain, by my own uncer-
tainty, by thinking over the decision I had made
and seemed about to regret, by the dismal pros-
pects—or at least the uncertain prospects—that I
should have been glad for any sustaining human
association. At the end of my journey I soon
found such association and was thereafter happy
in it, but approaching the place I was apprehen-
ive. My driver had been, if not unapproachable,
t least stupid and dismal.
. It somewhat astonished me when suddenly he


10 THE MYSTERY OF HARTILEY HOUSE
began to talk. We were then about a half-mile
from the House.
“I wish you had come an hour earlier,” he
said.
“Why?” I asked. -
“I’m not a coward,” said the driver, “–at least,
no more than usual, but I don’t like to be in here.
alone, and I’ve got to go home alone.”
In a fashion he expressed what might have been
my mood if I had known more of the place. I
could sympathise with him. The rain had done
this for me.
“What have you to be afraid of?” I asked.
“Nothing in particular,” he said. “I don't be-
lieve what they say of this place at all, but even if
you don’t believe in a thing, you'll keep thinking
about it. I don’t believe in ghosts. I never saw
one, and I don’t expect to see one. I don't intend
to see one if I can help it.”
“Is something haunted around here?” I asked.
It seemed as if so beautiful a spot ought to have
this interest. He stopped his horse.
“I’m going back out of here like a scared pig,
he said, “–that is, if the old horse can stand it
But you’re going to live here for a while, and I’l
stop a minute to show you where they say th
ghost walks.”
He pointed to where the river had eaten a sub-
stantial bit out of the bank, making a pool or tiny


THE MYSTERY OF HARTLEY HOUSE 11
bay. The road, swerving toward the river here,
was within thirty feet of it. -
“It isn't natural for a man to kill his brother,”
said my driver, “and something unnatural comes
of it. A man killed his brother there, and some-
thing unnatural has come of it. That's why I'll
be just as well satisfied to get you to the house and
myself back out of here before dark. I’m not
superstitious or afraid, but I’d just as soon not be
here after dark, because you never know when
things come back.” -
“Get along, then,” I said. “They don’t interest
me. It looks like an ordinary place to me.”
“To me too,” said my driver. “And I don't
want it ever to look extraordinary.”
“Who Was killed there?” I asked.
“You’ll learn the story soon enough,” said the
driver, “if you’re going to stay in this house.
You'll learn it better than I can tell you.”
At the great coach-entrance of the old house I
paid the driver and let him go. He was anxious
to be gone. It was growing dark. Then I began
ringing the bell. -
At the third ringing there was a response, in
the form of a servant, a man, butler or door-man,
past middle age. He was crusty.
“What do you want?” he asked.
I explained that I was Dr. Michelson and wanted
nothing that I was not wanted for. I did not like
–


12 THE MYSTERY OF HARTLEY HOUSE
his manner and was not inclined to ignore it or to
propitiate him as ordinarily one would. He had,
at first sight, an extraordinary power of exaspera-
tion. At the time I did not understand my weak-
ness, but afterward I did. The man was abnormal
as an irritant.
Thus my appearance at Hartley House was so
unfortunate that if the servant's contumacy and
my resentment had had another moment, the door
would have been slammed in my face and I should
have been walking back to Hartley Station. At
that hesitant moment in my fortunes, a woman’s
voice intervened.
“Jed,” it said, “who's there?”
The servant opened the door wider, and I saw a
lady, a South American, I thought.
“I am Dr. Michelson,” I said.
“Yes, Doctor,” she replied, “we have been ex-
pecting you. I am Mrs. Sidney. Where is your
baggage?”
“I have only a hand-bag with me here,” I said.
“Come in,” she said, “Jed will take it.”
He did, but made me see the ill nature of his
reception of me and of his duty. He had also, at
the direction of Mrs. Sidney, to show me to my
Quarters.
“Jed,” I said, in my room, “we have not made
the best start for two people who may have to live
together for some time.”
-


14 THE MYSTERY OF EIARTLEY HOUSE
of trying to be happy. We are going to say good
night and allow you to settle yourself to new sur-
roundings in privacy. It is the kindest thing we
can do. Jed will show you to your room.—Jed,
take care of Dr. Michelson. Good night, Doctor.”
Mrs. Sidney stood beside Mr. Sidney as he was
speaking. I had thought at first seeing her that
she had been very beautiful and that now she was
very unhappy. Seeing her again, I retained my
first impressions.
Jed preceded me through corridors to my door
and left me surlily. As he closed the door, I
thought I heard another sound than that of the
clicking of the latch. I had. It was the throwing
of a bolt on the outside: Jed had locked me in. I
made sure of this by trying the door. It could not
be opened. Here was an astonishing situation for
a first night in a place. My impulse was to make
a noise and ask for an explanation, but on second
thought I did not. My room was on the second
floor, and I saw, looking out of the window, tº at
it would not be impossible to make a descent on
the outside in an emergency. I decided not to
begin my stay with a protest against any habits
of the house or occurrences in it. In the night,
was awakened out of a sound sleep with an idea
that I had been disturbed by noises, but nothing
I could hear sustained it, and I went to sleep again.


CHAPTER II
WAS up early, dressed and found that my door
had been unbolted. I examined the outside of
it for a bolt and had difficulty in finding one, so
ingeniously had it been concealed. The knob
seemed a part of the decoration of the panel, and
the bolt was of thin steel. I found it only by find-
ing the socket into which it could be shot.
Although the fact that I could open the door was
evidence that some one had been there early to
release me, the house was not yet astir, so far as
I could see. -
The rain had stopped, and although the woods
were dripping, there was a glorious, radiant sun-
light. The effect was exhilarating. It worked a
spiritual change. Orioles, a thrush, catbirds and
tanagers were singing in the near-by woods. Man,
said the morning, was made to be happy.
Exulting in pleasant emotions, I let myself out
of the main door and rejoiced in the beauty of the
place and the moment. Two mastiffs came run-
ning toward me from the lawn. They were friendly
and seemed to accept me because I appeared from
within the house. I took a short Walk across the
15


16 THE MYSTERY OF HARTILEY HOUSE
lawn toward the woods. The dogs followed me.
Then a gardener came with chains and led them
away. He asked me if I were the new doctor and
said if I had leisure during the day he wished I
would come to the cottage beyond the gardens. His
infant had a cough.
The house was astir when I reëntered. Jed was
the first person I saw, and to my astonishment he
was not only civil but pleasant and candid.
“Did you have a fair night, Doctor?” he asked.
“Sometimes a first night in a new place is dis-
turbed, and I owe you apologies. We have had
here occasion at times for locking doors on the out-
side as well as on the inside, and last night I forgot
myself and threw the bolt of your door. I am
occasionally in liquor, and last night I had a touch
too much.”
I smiled at his candour and said something jok-
ingly in comment.
“A servant can’t be blamed, Doctor, for that,”
he said, “if his master leads him into it. We have
coffee before breakfast. I’ll serve you anywhere.
The morning papers are in the library. There's a
porch off it with a good view. It's my favourite
spot of a morning. I recommend that you have
your coffee there.”
His friendliness was amusing, but I found his
suggestion good, and being fond of coffee, enjoyed
it with a half-hour of magnificent view and a
!
-


THE MYSTERY OF HARTILEY HOUSE 17
cigarette. The morning was odorous after the
rain.
When I had time that day to look at the house
and visit the grounds, I was the more impressed by
them. I am, it may be confessed, of a romantic
temperament which, I have reason to believe, is
disguised by methodical habit.
The house was a charming structural disorder
of L’s and wings, porches and balconies. It was
very old, and one could see where different genera-
tions had contributed to its growth. The walls
were backgrounds for hollyhocks or support for
climbing roses or ivy. It had plenty of sunlight,
but dense white-oak woods came close up. They
were thickened by viburnum and witch hazel, and
except where lanes ran through them, seemed im-
penetrable.
I held myself in readiness to attend my patient
at his convenience, but it was ten o'clock before I
was summoned. Mr. Sidney was pleasant and ani-
mated. -
“We must arrive at a schedule,” I suggested.
“This is a little too late in the day to satisfy Dr.
Brownell's ideas of what my duties are.”
“But, my dear Doctor,” he said, “I do not wake
until nine. I need my sleep. I do not go to sleep
until one.”.
“I should advise early hours,” I said.
“Of course you would, but you must remember


18 THE MYSTERY OF HARTILEY HOUSE
that you are dealing with a man, at the end of his
life, trying to make the most of it. I like to re-
main awake late.”
“Thon you must,” I said. “I shall consider it
settled to see you at ten.”
“And, I hope, sometimes to sit up with me until
one. Do you like chess?”
“I never played.”
“Luckily Jed does, just well enough to interest
me and have me beat him. Do you like wine?”
“A young doctor does not drink.”
“Luckily Jed does. It is a great satisfaction to
have some one whom you can beat at chess and
whom you can see enjoying wine. Doctor, I have
yielded to my friend Brownell's demand for con-
stant attention, but as you can see, there will not
be a great deal for a physician to do. I eat well,
I sleep well, and so long as my sensations are
pleasant, I want to live. They are not always
pleasant, but mostly they are so. I’d like to have
you as a new friend in the house. I like to be
talked to. I like to be read to. Will you relax
and be just a friend?”
“With pleasure,” I said, “so long as nothing in-
terferes with the physician.”
“That’s a bargain,” he said. “At three o’clock
this afternoon you shall read to me.”
During my spare time I walked about the
grounds. A part of the estate, about thirty acres,


20 THE MYSTERY OF HARTLEY HOUSE
He was offended and went away. At three
o'clock I saw my patient again, and he wanted
me to read to him. The room in which he sat was,
walled with bookshelves.
“Anything in particular?” I asked.
He asked for “The Master of Ballantrae.”
“It’s not your first time at it,” I suggested.
“No,” he said, “I have it read once every three
or four months.”
I read to him for an hour. Then he took a nap.
I had been told that any time I wanted to go
to the town I might tell one of the chauffeurs to
take me. I needed a thin file for the bolt on my
door. It annoyed me. I did not ask that whoever
threw it at night should know that it was gone.
It suited my purposes better that it should be gone
and the person who used it should think it was
still there. Therefore, after reading to Mr. Sid-
ney, I went to town for a thin file. ,
One sees a landscape the first time without per-
ception. On reseeing, perception begins. Real
perception is a matter of familiarity and study.
The second time over the road to Hartley helped
to familiarise me with it, and I could see that wita
closer acquaintance greater beauty would be dist-
closed.
The first aspect of beauty may so suggest its
remoteness, its spiritual distance from the ob-
server's possession and expectation as to produce


TEIE MYSTERY OF HARTLEY HOUSE 21
n a sensitive mind the unrest, the real pain, of a
desire for the unattainable. Certainly the beauty
pf a landscape grows warmer, glows more brightly,
as it is taken into the memory by association and
2xperience.
I got my file, and for greater sociability on the
return-trip I took the seat beside Charles, the
driver. The landscape became jovial and human.
The wood-thrush was singing to the twilight, and
the wonderful odours of a fresh and human soil
... rich with the experiences of many generations came
kindly to perceptive senses.
As we passed the pool, Charles referred to it.
“What is it?” I asked. “What's the story?”
“A man killed his brother there,” said Charles.
“He is now in the penitentiary at Alwick for life.
His brother's ghost, they say, comes back. I've
never seen it, but some people say they have.”
“Who Were the brothers?” I asked.
“They were the sons of the people who used to
own this place—the Dobsons.” He did not say
anything more of it and I did not question him.
I used the file on my bolt, leaving one end of it in
the socket. It could be thrown, but it could not
bar the door.


THE MYSTERY OF HARTLEY HOUSE 23
ley House prepared for abnormalities. There was
first, the man with the wonderful will to live which
had interested Dr. Brownell. There was, then, the
soul-saturating rain which met me. There was the
alien beauty of the House, the strange servant Jed,
the haunted pool, insignificant as it was, to a
rational being, the lovely woman who was so ap-
parently a tragic figure. There was the fact of my
being locked in my room the first night. There
were the forbidding defences of the place—walls,
dogs and keepers. I may be excused for taking a
fanciful view of my new surroundings.
Then there was Miss Sidney—Isobel. She came
into the dining-room an unexpected if not astonish-
ing phenomenon to me, who did not know that there
was a daughter in the family.
Mrs. Sidney presented me.
“How do you do?” said Miss Sidney, and she
seemed to find it tiresome that a stranger had taken
a place at the table. I felt very awkward, and be-
ing obnoxiously diffident, I had a bad time of it.
Jed served us, and the dinner was excellent. I
saw that the establishment was latitudinarian.
Although the ladies had only a glass of sherry
each, I was offered a variety of liquors. My habit
is abstemious except upon rare occasions, but I
was so embarrassed by Miss Sidney's boredom that
I took two glasses of champagne, and they made
me a more tolerable dinner-companion. It was


24 THE MYSTERY OF HARTLEY House
some champagne-stimulated remark on feminism
which caused Miss Sidney to stare at me as if I
were an animal which, being smooth-skinned, sud-
denly had grown a coat of fur.
She stared for an instant and then laughed.
She was quite frank. She had been bored; she had
become interested. I could see that she distressed
her mother. Mrs. Sidney, any one could know,
held to conventions as the salvation of life; Miss
Sidney did not.
I had a comfortable little glow of egotism, hav-
ing interested this young woman in myself, and
having lost all diffidence. Luckily I managed to
be less of a bore to the daughter without being
more of a scandal to the mother.
Isobel Sidney was a very attractive girl. I
guessed her age to be twenty-three. I also guessed
that candour and honesty were outstanding points
in her disposition. Her youth and her beauty were
magnetic, and I must confess that my romanticism
was touched instantly. I had seen just enough of
Mr. Sidney to understand how this girl could be
the daughter of Mrs. Sidney.
By the time dinner was over we had found a
pleasant agreement in ideas and taste. I was in
an ecstasy, full of the sensation which comes to a
diffident man, unaccustomed to women, when he
dares to think for the first time that he has been
interesting to a young and beautiful girl. It is


26 THE MYSTERY OF HARTLEY HOUSE
In the exalted state of egoistic emotions which I
have outlined, I went to Mr. Sidney's room after
dinner and sat with him for two hours. I began to
appreciate how charmingly his life was decorated.
A really rare subtlety of art was used to bring a
warm colour into this indomitable but feeble man’s
winter of life. I did not fully appreciate until
later what thought and care lay behind the un-
studied comforts and sensations Hartley House
offered.
Mr. Sidney was white-haired and very gracious.
His manner was a warm cordiality. It was not
precise. It was robust, but it was benignant.
Later I saw how his presence pervaded the place.
We had a cheerful talk. What he said sug-
gested to me that my world could not have been
more than a hundred years old at the most, and
that his included the period of inorganic evolution
in which the period of organic evolution is but a
pin-prick. Youth is startled by such conceptions
of life, but I had an interesting evening.
Before I said good night, Jed came in with two
bottles of wine. He stood and looked at me un-
pleasantly. I arose to go, and Mr. Sidney said:
“I think we shall like each other. At least, I
hope you will be comfortable, even happy. Ari
don’t be distressed about the wine. I don’t drilsk
it any more. Jed drinks it, and I enjoy seeing
him do it.”


CHAPTER IV
WHIPPOORWILL Was reiterant in the Woods
at night, and its call came from dark recesses
odorous and mysteriously veiled. Having said
good night to Mr. Sidney, I had gone to my room
with a book from the library. The night was
fresh, sweet-smelling and cool. I had read for sev-
eral hours when I heard the cut bolt in my door
thrown against the piece of metal which had been
left in the socket.
There was no transom above the door, and evi-
dently the threshold kept light from appearing be-
neath it. I had been reading, as I said, for three
hours at least, and whoever tried to bolt me in
had good reason to think I was asleep. The per-
son could have made certain by going out on the
lawn and looking up at my windows, but evidently
was sure I was sleeping. - -
I knew who the person was. It was Jed.
Knowing I was not locked in, I was undisturbed
and continued reading.
Shortly afterward I heard a woman's voice in
expostulation far down the hall. It arose abruptly
to a sharp cry, and I had to lay aside my book and
expose the fact that my door was not locked, a
27


28 THE MYSTERY OF HARTILEY HOUSE
• *.
thing I had not wanted to do until the secret of
its being locked could be discovered by revealing
that it was not.
I hurried out and down the hall. Jed had a
woman by the wrist. Both of them saw me com-
ing. She released herself from his relaxing grip
by a quick jerk and ran. He stood until I came
up.
“What is the matter?” I asked.
“What makes you think anything is the mat-
ter?” he asked.
“Don’t take me for a fool,” I said. “That was
Mrs. Sidney who screamed. You were holding her.
It seems to me it needs an explanation.”
“Who are you that you need an explanation?”
said Jed. .
“You are drunk again.”
“I know I am. If that's satisfactory to my em-
ployer, why should it bother you?”
“I doubt that it is satisfactory to your employer
that you should be making his wife scream at mid-
night. Look here: you’re a servant in this house.
What have you to say for yourself? I’m going to
have an explanation of this.” -
Jed had been surly and angry, but now he
grinned. -
“All right,” he said, “but if you want to be
decent about it, ask Mrs. Sidney first whether she
wants your help and your asking. That's my ad-


THE MYSTERY OF HARTLEY HOUSE 29
/
vice, young fellow. And while we’re asking, how
did you get out of your room? You're not sup-
posed to be out. We don't want people in this
house running around the halls at this time of
night.”
“I opened the door and came out. Why
shouldn’t I come out! I heard a scream and
Came.”
He looked at me as if he were doubting himself.
I think he was uncertain whether he had thrown
"the bolt or not. I think he decided that he had
not, although I was afraid that I had disclosed my
independence prematurely. If I were being locked
in for a purpose, it was unfortunate for me to reveal
the true situation until by revealing it I could de-
feat the purpose. It transpired later that I was
right in thinking Jed doubted himself and con-
cluded that he had not locked me in, but for the
time I was worried.
When I went back to my room, I was restless,
as one naturally would be, a stranger in so strange
a house. It was impossible to sleep and difficult
to read. I sat by the window and alternately
dozed and read until day broke and the wood-
thrush began to sing. Then, quieted, I went to
bed and had two hours' sleep.
I thought it wise to speak to Mrs. Sidney about
the incident of the night. She had seen me; she
knew I had talked to Jed; she might or might not


30 THE MYSTERY OF HARTILEY HOUSE
-
know that I recognised her. I might add to her
perplexities by speaking to her, but I might obtain
an insight into matters which would enable me to
act discreetly and usefully. If I remained igno-
rant of motives prevailing in the house, I might at
any time blunder into a serious mistake. It
seemed best to speak to Mrs. Sidney. She had the
explanation, and although I felt reluctant to risk
increasing her troubles and adding to her pain,
there was nothing to be gained, so far as I could
see, in not facing the facts. I knew enough to
realise that Jed occupied some position of strength
and that he was abusing his power and, new and
strange as I was to the place and its people, I
thought I must do what I could.
Mrs. Sidney, I could see when I spoke to her,
had been greatly disturbed, but she was Roman.
“It was nothing serious or important, Doctor,”
she said. “I’ll not say that it was pleasant or
that I liked it, but it had no significance. Jed is a
faithful and invaluable servant. He has a vice for
which he is not responsible. He was a perfectly
sober man when he came to us, and if he isn’t now,
it is our own fault. My husband corrupted him
without intending to do so. My husband, when he
was well and strong, loved to drink wine. He
drank it in great quantities and without any dis-
turbance of his sobriety or good nature. It mel-
lowed and at the time intensified life for him. He


THE MYSTERY of HARTLEY House 31
cannot use it now, on account of his health, but he
enjoys seeing the use of it, and Jed has been made
the victim of Mr. Sidney's vicarious enjoyment.
Jed is not always considerate of his position when
" he is not sober, but he never is dangerous, not even
when, like last night, he is exceedingly annoy-
ing.”
I admired the lady's resolution and fortitude,
but I did not think she was telling the truth—not
all of it. -
“That was the first time anything of the kind
ever occurred,” she said. “I am sorry it disturbed
you. I met Jed in the hall. He was not sober,
and he had a preposterous request to make. When
he has spent such an evening with Mr. Sidney, he
resents being a servant in the family. He wants
to be accepted as a member of the family.” -
“I have had something to do with that,” I sug-
gested.
“No doubt it has inflamed his egotism to have
you enter the family. The situation with him is
difficult. His pride was hurting him last night.
He had lost all sense of proportion. He was like a
child. He remonstrated with me: he was too im-
portant as Mr. Sidney’s crony to be merely our
servant! It was only a drunken mood, but he for-
got himself and grasped me by the wrist. I had
been trying to control him and restore his common
sense. Then I became indignant, and you heard
** ~


32 THE MYSTERY OF HARTILEY HOUSE
my voice. I am afraid it was shrill, but I was not
alarmed. I was merely indignant.”
“You speak of Jed, Mrs. Sidney,” I said, “as
if he were merely an annoying alcoholic, tolerated
when he is annoying, because of his general useful-
ness; but that does not explain why he tries to lock
me in my room while he is sober and before these
disturbances begin. That shows design and intent
to have a free hand when he makes the disturbance.
I do not like being locked in my room.”
“It is outrageous,” said the lady nervously. “I
did not know that it was done. I shall see that it
is not repeated.”
“I am not so sure you can.” I said, “and I wish
2 y -
you would not try. I have protected myself
against it, and I'd rather Jed did not give me any
more thought than he thinks is necessary now.”
“I am sure, Doctor,” said Mrs. Sidney, “that
you will understand Jed and the situation better
when you have been here longer. It may be annoy-
ing to you now, but we all here live for the pleas-
ure and comfort of Mr. Sidney, who is worthy of
all we can do for him. He did everything he could
for us while he was active, and if thoughts would
benefit us, he would be working for us now.”
Mrs. Sidney was determined to protect the secret
of the situation, and I had no right to cross-exam-
ine her. The next time I went to town I bought
myself a forty-five-calibre pistol.


CHAPTER V
LTHOUGH I was prepared for recurrent dis-
turbances, there were none. Within a week I
had found my way into a pleasant routine. Jed
seemed to be conscious that he had overstepped his
bounds. He was not apparently contrite, but he
was cautious. I asked Mrs. Sidney why Mr. Sid-
ney's authority should not be used as a check upon
the man's behaviour.
“That is the last thing that could be thought
of,” she said.
Jed held himself in check, and a week was with-
out incident. Then Miss Sidney went away to
make a visit. Her absence was a spiritual dis-
aster. Ecstatic and morose youth ! The beauty
of Hartley House became a hollow and dark mel-
ancholy, making sad sounds. Vibrant life had
gone from it. Its perfume was lost.
I cannot now tell quite what it was that made
Hartley House, a place so comfortable and genial,
at the same time a place so threatened. The threat
could not be ignored: it was there. The story of
the ghost at the haunted pool could have nothing
to do with it. The threat had tangible aspects.
Mrs. Sidney's worry, unspoken but graven in her
33


34 THE MYSTERY OF HARTLEY Helº"SE
-
º Tº
resolutely Roman face, was one evidence. Tº he
extraordinary behaviour of Jed was another. The
atmosphere of the place was one of mystery.
During the pleasant, peaceful, odorous summer
months, when our life was one of undisturbed rou-
tine, I never escaped the sense of dread. I hoped
the intangible would take shape; surely something
intangible that would be embodied, hung over the
house.
I may not be able to make this certainty appear
so vividly to you as it did to me. It permeated;
it was in the atmosphere; it hung over the woods;
it filled the house. It came with the odours of
blossoms; it was expressed in the summer winds;
it was threatened in the lightning which flashed
over the river. I could not reconcile, this effect to
such a cause as that feeble ghost-story of the pool.
I could not dread that ghost or feel its presence.
It was a benevolent ghost needed for decoration.
Every place with an obvious indication of many
years of habitation, with great lilacs and old pines,
with numerous hollyhocks and deep moss, ought to
have a ghost-story. Shall all the human beings
who must have lived in such a place have passed
away leaving no spiritual vestige of their lives?
Let one, at least, loving or hating the place, rein-
habit it, benevolently or malevolently.
I felt that Hartley House was old enough to
yield a tribute to human permanency, and that to
/


THE MYSTERY OF HARTLEY HOUSE 35
tº
do so it must have a ghost, some spirit interested
enough to come back and occasionally be tangible
in some one's imagination. The story of the pool
had been merely a tale, but as the place grew in
romantic interest, the need of such a story grew.
I wanted it to go with the ivy and the evergreens.
How did the pool get its reputation? Was it only
the conventional consequence of the fratricidal
crime committed at a lonely spot? Was it built of
ſnothing more than gossip? Had it no other con-
sistency than old women's talk and children's
fears?
I asked the people of the house, the servants, and
found that for them it was largely a superstition.
They all had been brought from the city, and only
a few, such as Jed, a gardener, the housekeeper and
the cook had been long enough in the house really
to be associated with it.
Jed was the only one that willingly would be in
the vicinity of the pool at night. The others might
laugh at the suggestion of terror, but they would
not willingly test their superiority to superstition.
If they had been really frightened, they could not
have been kept in service. They were not. The
place was large, comfortably inhabited and genial.
There was a touch of dread at one spot. They
avoided the spot, and it was negligible so long as
they did avoid it.
In the small town of Hartley there was more of


36 THE MYSTERY OF HARTILEY HOUSE
the legend than there was at Hartley House. To
the people who lived at a distance and came in con-
tact with the place only on occasions, it had an
alien, exotic air. Mr. and Mrs. Sidney had come
from South America, from Montevideo, where they
had lived many years. The circumstances of their
selection and purchase of the place were normal,
but the villagers spiced a great deal of gossip with
notions of the alienism, wealth, aloofness and odd
habits, concerning which gossip ran from our serv-
ants to the Hartley householders.
A latitudinarian, Lucullian family, such as the
Sidney family, would be strangely interpreted in a
little village. Therefore, in the village, the legend
of a ghost at Hartley House was more real than it
was on the place. The house was a much more
genial human fact than the village. Consequently
it was not, so far as I could discover, a valid reason
for a ghost-story. -
I have mentioned that my first morning at Hart-
ley House a gardener asked me to see one of his
children, which had a bad cough. The man had a
good deal of sickness in his family in the next few
months, and I was of considerable service. One
child had measles, another an alarming attack of .
croup, and a third, his oldest son, broke an arm in
falling out of a tree.
The gardener's name was Williamson. He had
been on the place almost from the time of Mr.


THE MYSTERY OF HARTLEY HOUSE 37
Sidney's purchase of it. He was attached to it,
proud of his work and fond of it and its results.
He had a neat little cottage beyond the gardens.
His wife was very pleasant and thought too much
of my services. Williamson himself was a fine
man, and I am interested in gardening. Conse-
quently, having to visit the family every day or
every other day, I formed a habit of talking with
him. -
When, by chance, I spoke of the ghost-story to
Williamson, with no more purpose than I ever had
had in these inquiries, I noticed that he was a bit
embarrassed.
“I am not a superstitious man, Doctor,” he
said.
“Neither am I,” I said. “I think we miss some-
thing by not being.”
“I take no stock in the stories about the pool,”
he said. “I’d just as lief pass it at midnight as
midday—almost.”
“Be honest, Williamson,” I suggested laugh-
ingly.
“Almost, I said,” he replied. “But I did see
something at the pool.”
He was a straightforward, unimaginative sort
of man. I was sure he was not about to indulge
in romance.
“I know something of these stories,” he said.
“I have not gossiped mine about—I was coming


38 THE MYSTERY OF HARTLEY HOUSE
from town late—after midnight. It was the sec-
ond year of our being here. It was in the fall or
late summer—I do not remember. As I came
along the road by the pool, I saw the figure of a
man standing by the edge of the river. It was
light enough for me to see that the figure was lean-
ing on a stick or cane. I stopped and was going
to call out, but for some reason—I don't know just
why—I didn’t. The figure did not move. I be-
gan to feel creepy and went on as gently as I could.
Fifty feet farther, I heard a rustling in the brush
and I thought I saw a face. I couldn't be sure, but
I thought I did. I know I heard a rustling. When
I got out in the open, I ran the rest of the way
home on the turf.”
“There was nothing very alarming about
that,” I suggested. My romance needed more
substance. “You saw a man and heard a
noise.”
“There was nothing in seeing a man and hear-
ing a noise,” said Williamson. “It was the
effect.”
“That was due to the hour and the place.”
“No, I'm not superstitious. I was not thinking
of the place. The man on the bank was different
from a man. I could not see why. I didn’t think
he was a man. It was not because I was scared—
at first. I became scared as I looked at him. He
did not move. He did not seem to be alive. When


THE MYSTERY OF HARTLEY HOUSE 39
I felt shivers starting up and down my back, I
knew I was scared. Then when I heard the
rustling, I went home as quickly and quietly as I
could.” -


CHAPTER WI
ED certainly was the most significant disagree-
able fact in the house, and his influence the
most significant malignancy. He had been so-
bered by the discovery of his attack upon Mrs.
Sidney, but as he began to recover from his dis-
comfiture, and as the sense of caution began to
lessen, he again asserted, or suggested, control,
particularly when he was drunk. He never al-
lowed Mr. Sidney to know this. In their strange
association at Horatian wine-feasts, Jed was tact-
ful, respectful, considerate and jovial.
To Mrs. Sidney he was at times courteous and
thoughtful, at other times disrespectful or even
brutal. Sometimes he seemed to frighten himself.
When I saw that he was again beginning to show
disrespect for her, I was for putting an end to it.
Mrs. Sidney was horrified when I said that Jed
could be brought to terms. She held up her hands.
“No, no,” she said. “Not in any event! Never,
please, speak to Mr. Sidney. Please never think
of it. Jed is invaluable to Mr. Sidney. He is
not so discourteous to me as you might think. He
is gruff, and drinking does not make him better,
40 -


THE MYSTERY OF HARTLEY HOUSE 41
but it is Mr. Sidney's whim that he should drink.
It would be unjust—don't you see it would be un-
just?—to make a point against him of behaviour
that Mr. Sidney causes. Please never mention it.”
She was very much in earnest and was not satis-
fied until she had my promise that I never would
speak to Mr. Sidney of Jed until I had her consent.
She then showed relief, and I felt more distressed.
Jed had some hold on this resolute lady that I
should have liked to break.
Jed's attitude towards me was a thing to drive
distracted a person who cared what it was. I did
not. He could be interesting, and then I was
interested in him. He could be stupid, and I
avoided him. He could be surly, and I ignored
him. He could be quarrelsome, and I fought him
back.
It seldom was a matter of sobriety or insobriety
with him. He was best natured to me at times
when he was most intoxicated. He was surliest at
times when he was perfectly sober. At other times
he quite reversed this. One never knew from his
physical condition what his disposition might be
at the time. -
He served at dinner when Mrs. Sidney, Isobel
and I, more ceremoniously than we cared to, dined.
Certain domestic ceremonies pleased Mr. Sidney
and he liked to know that in some respects the
baronial character of his place was being main-


42 THE MYSTERY of HARTLEY House
tained as he would have maintained it if he had
been active.
He thought form was valuable in passionate,
careless human existence, and that it softened
terrors, conquered animalism and dignified life.
No doubt he was right, but the ceremonies some-
times were more than three people would have
chosen for their own comfort. Jed When a servant
—he seemed to recognise occasions when he was
and occasions when he was not—was beyond re-
proach, but I knew the satisfaction he had behind
the proprieties in which he could mask his face.
He limited our conversation. He made Mrs. Sid-
ney unhappy. He had Isobel bored, and he had
me either manifestly unhappy or hiddenly furious.
He was pleased to distress us by being our perfect
servant. It was sheer malevolence. -
When he was in good nature, he frequently
sought me out for talks, and when he was in good
nature, I encouraged him. I did not want to open
up any secrets the house might have, merely to
learn what they were, but I knew Mrs. Sidney
needed help, and I thought I might give it if I
knew how. I also thought that Jed some evening
when pleasantly and good-naturedly drunk and
garrulous might say more than he intended. There
were many opportunities, but he never did.
One night—this was in September—I was walk-
ing about the place with the mastiffs at my side.


THE MYSTERY OF HARTLEY HOUSE 43
I stood a while at the edge of the woods looking at
the house. In its shadowy bulk it seemed fit con-
tainer of mystery. Only a few windows were il-
luminated. It was the river side of the house that
was bright at night.
I walked slowly across the lawn toward the side
where Mrs. Sidney's rooms were. A small bal-
cony opened off her sitting-room. I could hear her
talking to some one on this balcony. The person
she was talking to, as I heard in another moment,
was Jed. I was then almost under the balcony.
“I am a resolute man,” Jed was saying. “I’ll
have my own way. I’ll have what I want. I’ll
make you glad to come to terms. I’m a reasonable
man too. Now, admit that I've been considerate.”
I started to get out of hearing as quietly and
rapidly as I could, but I heard Mrs. Sidney, her
voice vibrant with indignation, say:
“I ought to have you whipped.”
“That is silly, unreasonable passion,” said Jed.
“I shall not hesitate to kill you,” said Mrs.
Sidney.
Then I went out of earshot. The fact that Jed
could threaten Mrs. Sidney in this fashion was in-
explicable. It could not be explained by his serv-
iceability to Mr. Sidney, great as that was. I
walked about for a while, distressed and depressed;
then I patted the heads of the mastiffs, went in-
doors and to my room.


44 THE MYSTERY OF HARTLEY HOUSE
An hour later I opened my door in response to
a light rap. Mrs. Sidney was there. -
“May I come in a moment?” she asked.
“Thank you. I have a request to make which you
cannot help but think is extraordinary—prepos-
terous.”
I placed a chair for her. She thanked me but
remained standing. I thought she must be in an
agony of mind, but she smiled.
“I hope it is to ask me to take Jed in hand,”
I said.
“No; it is to ask you to permit me to announce
the engagement of my daughter Isobel to you.
Don't be alarmed. It shall not make any differ-
ence in your life. It is a desperate expedient I am
using out of a difficulty.”
I felt as if I were in a spiritual fog.
“Is that the only way I can help you out?” I
asked.
“The only one,” she said. “I have thought of
everything.”
“Has it to do with Jed again?” I asked.
“With things I cannot possibly explain. Is
there any one who would be distressed by such an
announcement?”. -
“Not a soul,” I said, “–except Miss Sidney.”
“I would not cause pain,” said Mrs. Sidney.
“Are you sure there is no one?”
“Mrs. Sidney,” I said, “you are the only lady


THE MYSTERY OF HARTILEY HOUSE 45
who ever has given me a thought since I knew my
mother. I am merely wondering what Miss Sidney
will think of me in such a rôle. Will she under-
stand why I take it? I am not hesitating. I hope
I do not seem to be, but I know—I suspect—that
your decision is sudden.”
“Isobel’s affection for us is greater than her de-
mand for independence,” said Mrs. Sidney. “If
she knows that I asked you to consent to this an-
nouncement, she will think of you as a proved
friend.”
I had suggested all the precautions that were
reasonable. “You certainly may make any use
of me you want to,” I said. She thanked me and
said good night.
* -


CHAPTER VII
SOBEL’S view of our engagement was purely
comic. She may have had a second of spirit-
ual revolt, but comedy and consideration for her
mother asserted themselves. Mrs. Sidney, when
she told Isobel of the engagement, had me present.
The mother was really embarrassed, almost flut-
tered, but she was determined. Isobel was greatly
amused.
It may be imagined that I was not heroic. I
might better have been a wax figure taken from a
display-window; I felt like one, a thing with a wax
smile and no animation. I shall never be Olym-
pian, but I trust that never again shall I be so
shrivelled and insignificant.
Isobel corrected herself in a moment. She was
beautifully considerate of her mother.
“It is merely precautionary,” said Mrs. Sidney
uneasily. “It is quite impossible to explain. You
will have to accept my judgment, Isobel. Dr.
John,”—an odd halfway-house toward intimacy
she reached and stopped at, “Dr. John has been
kind enough to do as I asked him. I need and
want the support of my children in what I am
doing.”
i
46


THE MYSTERY OF HARTLEY HOUSE 47
I felt a touch of emotion at that. Uncon-
sciously, intent upon her main point, she had in-
cluded me at the fireside and had spoken of her
“children.”
“Anything you do or have done is all right,
Mother,” said Isobel, recovering from her sense of
humour. “Dr.—John—will not be unhappy—I
am sure—will you, Doctor? And I–Mother—I'll
get an advantage of you in this—see if I don't.”
“You mustn't try to, Isobel,” said Mrs. Sidney
anxiously. “I am doing the best I can.” -
Later in the evening I saw Isobel, finding her
alone in the library, where she was reading. I
went in to get a book before going to bed. She
was by a lamp near the fireplace, and she looked
very beautiful.
“I want to talk to you,” she said when she saw
me. “Do you know the explanation of this?”
“No,” I said. -
“You are not quite honest,” she said. “If you
do not know, you at least suspect.”
“What do I suspect?” I asked.
“A man engaged to a girl he never asked to
marry him might suspect that something was out
of the ordinary,” she suggested.
“Of course, something is extraordinary,” I said.
“Do you know what it is?”
“No, I don’t,” she said. “Why don't you sit
down?”
s


48 THE MYSTERY OF HARTLEY HOUSE
º
With a soft witchery of femininity she pervaded
and glorified the room, but she was peremptory. I
was not sullen, but I felt defiant.
“Because I don’t want to sit down,” I said.
Isobel smiled indulgently at me.
“Oh, sit down, Dr. John,” she said, “I want to
talk to you. We are engaged, you know, and en-
gaged people ought to have a talk after the event,
if not before.”
“You understand how this happened,” I sug-
gested. -
“I do,” she said. “My mother is frightened.
Jed has been trying to marry me.”
“What can give him the privilege of such in-
Solence " " I exclaimed.
“I imagine he is enamoured,” she said serenely.
“It may seem impossible to you.”
“You do yourself an injustice. You make light
of a matter that is distracting to your mother.”
“Not at all,” said Isobel. “I am perfectly cap-
able of getting along, but my mother does not know
it. I am engaged to you. Is not that considerate
Of her?” i
“Has this man approached you directly?” I
asked.
“He has been gallant, amorous, suggestive,
tender, soulful, aggressive, pleading, threatening,
subservient and—I think that is all—but only in
manner.”


THE MYSTERY OF HARTLEY HousE 49
“I don't understand it,” I said helplessly.
“Neither do I,” she said. “And I know just
enough to know that I shall not understand it. I
do not like to find a Romeo among the servants, but
I have learned to accept some strange conditions
here—among them you.”
“Don’t disturb yourself about me,” I said.
A good deal of my hurt pride must have found
expression in that remark.
“I am unjust,” she said. “I know that you are
doing what my mother wants done and that you are
not considering yourself. I shall be reasonable.
I want to make my mother's life as pleasant as it
can be made. I cannot understand everything that
she needs of me, but I know that you have done
everything that you could do for her. I do not
want to seem inconsiderate.” - -
“I want to do a great deal more than I seem to
be able to do,” I said. “The trouble is that I do
not know how to do enough.”
“Neither do I, Doctor,” said Isobel, “and it
would only make things worse if I tried to find
out more.” -
“I’d like to protect you and your mother,” I
said.
“We are indebted,” said Isobel, with a chill and
unkind restraint. Then she smiled and said:
“Good night, Doctor. If I am inconsiderate at:
any time, put it down to a naturally bad temper.”


CHAPTER VIII
+
ED had taken a small shotgun and had said that
he was going after rabbits, which were un-
usually numerous and threatened to be damaging
to the young brush about the place. It was an
October afternoon with a warm sun. An hour or
two after Jed had gone, I went out for a walk, go-
ing down by the pool.
Usually in a walk I went by the paths, and habit
had more or less formalised my procedure. To
avoid wasting a thought or making a choice, I went
nearly every time by the same way to the same
place and back again. Habit relieves one of de-
cision in small matters and thus simplifies life.
Occasionally, for some simple reason, one modifies
habit, and as I walked along this time I did. I
think it was some late golden-rod on a slope that
took me off the path and into the thickets.
I was in the brush for fifteen minutes, and it
happened that while I was there I saw from a little
prominence the figure of Jed on ahead with his
shotgun. He was some distance away, but I could
see that he was going stealthily from tree to tree
in an odd fashion for one hunting for rabbits. It
50


THE MYSTERY OF HARTILEY HOUSE 51
was as if he were stalking something rather than
trying to kick rabbits up out of the brush.
I went on toward the pool, but not by the path,
staying in the brush to look for fringed gentians.
Once again I saw Jed ahead of me. I came out on
the path and went on to the river-bank, where I sat
down.
The pool’s edge was studded with granite rocks
worn smooth. Above the high-water mark, a va-
riety of ferns grew. The current of the river, flow-
ing by a point of sheer Iock which protected the
pool at the north, sent eddies whirling in toward
the recessed bank. A piece of wood thrown in
might drift into the sluggish water close to the
bank, or it might go circling swiftly into the main
current again. -
Whenever I saw a piece of drift in the pool and
Watched its movements, I thought of the body of
the slain brother. It had been whirled out into
the current and had been carried downstream. On
the bank had been found a few torn bits of cloth-
ing—the sleeve of a coat, a collar spotted with
blood, a necktie and a piece of a white shirt. There
also had been found a heavy walking-stick, blood-
ied and with hair in the blood.
The story of the pool was always most fascinat-
ing, with i's suggested pictures, as one sat at the
river's edge, watching the river life and action, the
colours on the broad stream and in the hills beyond


52 THE MYSTERY OF HARTILEY HOUSE
it. A mile below, a ferry breasted the current;
sloops with brick came into the great bay from
around the far point to the north; dirty
fishing-boats went up and down; passenger
steamers passed by. It was a rich, fascinating
picture.
This day I had not been sitting on the bank five
minutes when I was startled by a shot from the
near-by thickets, and a bullet hit within two feet
of where I was sitting, knocking off the bark of a
tree. The report was not that of a small shotgun
such as Jed had carried. It was the report of a
rifle or pistol. -
The chipped bark showed that a bullet, not shot,
had hit the tree, and I was unpleasantly conscious
of what had happened. Jed had shot at me, prob-
ably with a large-calibre revolver. He could not
have had a rifle, unless he had one hidden in the
brush. I had seen what he carried, not only as he
left the house but as he was dodging through the
thickets.
It likely was a pistol or a revolver, and that was
why he had missed me. I was stupefied for an
instant, and I did not jump or start. I was mo-
tionless, not even looking around, but I was
thinking rapidly. A subconscious protective idea
formed almost instantly, and when the next mo-
ment another shot came from behind me, I fell
forward on my face, rolled a couple of feet to a


THE MYSTERY OF HARTLEY House 53
bush, turned my face in the direction from which
the shot came, got out my pistol and lay still.
After a minute or two which seemed a very long
time, Jed's face came in view in the brush. He
looked malevolent but seemed undetermined and
cautious. I think he was uncertain whether to
leave my body where it lay, and have it discovered,
or throw it into the river and have my disappear-
ance unexplained. His decision was given him
by the noise of a farm-wagon approaching on the
road, and he disappeared. I was ready to shoot
him if he came near me.
I was young and had youth's confidence, but
nevertheless this event would have sent me away
from Hartley if it had not been for Isobel and Mrs.
Sidney. They needed even my small help and I
had to remain. I had to remain but I had also to
protect myself. Another time Jed might not miss.
On the way back to the house I thought out a plan
which I believed would work. I inquired for Jed
and was told that he was with Mr. Sidney. I
found him there drinking, and my entrance gave
him a shock which he plainly indicated. His
fright made him so ugly that he was comic.
Mr. Sidney never liked to have his vicarious
drinking interrupted, but he always was good-
natured. -
“Well, Doctor,” he said, “what now? Is Jed
drinking too much for my health?’”


54 THE MYSTERY OF HARTILEY HOUSE
At that moment no possible amount of liquor
would have been too much for Jed. The Wretch
must have thought I was a ghost.
“Jed may drink himself to death, for all me,”
I said. “That probably is the best end he can
come to. I think he is gallows-meat, but I want
to talk to him when you can spare him.”
“We can’t spare Jed to have him hanged,” said
Mr. Sidney. “He’s too useful. Who else could
drink my wine of an evening? Go along with the
Doctor, Jed, and see what he wants. It's prob-
ably a matter of pills or powders for me.”
Jed was recovering from his shock, but he still
showed the effects of it.
“No hurry,” I said. “I’d rather wait a half-
hour. I’ll be in my room.”
I went there and Wrote two letters. Both were
to one point. They related circumstantially what
had happened that afternoon. One I addressed to
a lawyer I knew, and the other to Dr. Brownell.
Jed knocked at the door as I finished them. He
was still unnerved.
“I have something I want you to read,” I said,
and gave him the letters. He read them and
moistened his lips.
“You don’t need to talk, Jed,” I said. “I’ll
do all the talking that's necessary. I am not go-
ing away. I am going to stay right here, and
you'd better be very careful of my health. These


THE MYSTERY OF HARTLEY HOUSE 55
letters go out to-night. The men who get them will
keep their mouths shut so long as I am alive. If
anything should happen to me, whether you had
anything to do with it or not, you’d have a diffi-
cult time with a jury.” -
“It was a mistake,” he said. “I would not do
you any harm. I shot at a rabbit.”
“Twice with a pistol when you had a shotgun,”
I said. “You did I was the rabbit.”


CHAPTER IX
ED came to me the next day in one of his candid
moods.
“I did shoot at you yesterday,” he said.
“I know you did,” I replied.
“And you’re wondering why and you're won-
dering if I intend to do it again.”
“I don’t wonder at anything you do,” I said.
“And you know that if you do it again, the evi-
dence is prepared against you. I think I am per-
fectly safe. I know you are a coward.”
“No, I'm not a coward,” he said, as if he were
stating a fact and not making a boast. “I never
do anything without a purpose, and when I have
a purpose, I do it no matter what the conse-
quences may be. The reason I wanted to shoot
you was because you were engaged to Isobel. I
intend to marry Isobel. Now I know that you are
not going to marry Isobel. You are just the fool-
ish fence that her mother thought she could build
up around Isobel and keep me from trying to marry
her. Isobel doesn’t want you. She is laughing
at you. So we might as well be friends again.”
“You preposterous old fool!” I said. “You
56


TEIE MYSTERY OF HARTILEY HOUSE 57
senile alcoholic! You are a violation of decency.
You enfeebled, exasperating old goat! You would
sicken the moral conscience of a mummy. If you
ever associate your aspirations with the name of
Miss Sidney again, I’ll cut your throat with a
paper-knife.”
Jed smiled and made me feel ridiculous.
“I am a more intelligent man than you,” he said.
“You are too simple for the complexities of life.
You could not possibly be sufficient for a girl of
Miss Sidney's character. She would die of bore-
dom in six months. There is nothing preposterous
about my candidacy for Miss Sidney. I am older
than I’d like to be, but that is all.”
“You are a hideous old fool,” I said, “but I
think I can handle you, and I give you warning.”
“I am going to be quite friendly,” said Jed.
“You flatter yourself,” I said.
“Well, anyway,” he said, “I’m friendly.”
He proved to be so. The life of the house went
placidly from day to day. Isobel, with a sense of
our posturing toward each other, made mocking
gestures of affection which shocked her mother.
She particularly delighted to demonstrate, when
Jed was serving dinner. I thought she would end
by getting me shot in the back, but Jed had rated
me finally as unimportant, which did my egotism
no good. For such a rascal to discard me, for-
mally betrothed as I was to Isobel, in his scanda-


58 THE MYSTERY OF HARTLEY HOUSE
lous pursuit of that beautiful girl, was prepos-
terous.
If I had showed that I was vexed, it would only
have pleased him the more, and I refused to give
him the satisfaction of causing me to lose my
temper. Therefore, with his patronising wish to
be friendly and my forced resolution not to be
offended, we got along astonishingly well, consid-
ering the real animosity of our relations.
If Mrs. Sidney had known that I was idiotically
in love with Isobel, she would not have sought re-
lief from her distress by the arrangement which
made me her daughter's protective fiancé. The
only thing I could take credit for in this absurd
situation was that Mrs. Sidney was not allowed
to know the state of my feelings.
Although a fool, I had not presented myself as
one. Evidently my romanticism gradually got it-
self incased in a most unprepossessing shell of a
man and did not appear from behind this protec-
tion. I suppose I looked and acted like an emo-
tionless mechanism, a thing which prescribed pills,
could use a scalpel and tried ordinarily to be
polite and agreeable but was interested only in
carcasses and diseases. -
I was as sensible as a corrupting romanticism
would permit me to be. I knew that any affection
I might place in this fashion was a real and serious
emotional vice, which if not controlled might lead
&


THE MYSTERY OF HARTLEY HOUSE 59
to unhappiness. That consciousness had steadied
me, but it had not delivered me.
If Mrs. Sidney had known the helpless man with
whom she was dealing, her kindness would not have
permitted her to ask him for help which had to be
torment to him. She dealt with the exterior man.
I kept the interior man undemonstrative. I never
could blame myself for the affection I had for
Isobel.
She walked brightly through the old house of
tragedy—as surely it was, however hidden the
tragedy. She was the glint of sunshine in the
aisles of the dark woods, the odour of roses against
the wall. She had the charm of the hollyhocks,
the freshness of the hepatica in the spring, the
beauty of the wild rose in June.
If I showed my feeling more than a liver saus-
age shows a soul, I hope I may be punished. What
I thought of Isobel was my own affair, so long as
I kept it strictly my own affair.
A young man's affections are as the tendrils of
the bittersweet. They will get hold of something.
It may be the young man's tragedy that they fasten
on something worthy. It may be his tragedy that
they fasten on something unworthy. It may be his
tragedy that they reach out for something they can-
not attain and, striving to the utmost, drop hope-
less and dejected.
Young and romantic, I was old enough to be


60 TEIE MYSTERY OF HARTLEY HOUSE
sensible. Old enough? What must be confessed
by a physician who, with three years' experience of
the physical human horrors of a city hospital,
found that a physical sensation of numbness hit
him if he saw a certain girl unexpectedly—who
found that his professional seriousness was in-
creasing because he needed it as shelter for his real
Self?
I took myself in hand with as much energy and
promptness as I could, following the announcement
-of our engagement. I did not want to confess my-
self a fool. I did not intend to do so if I could
help it.
I overdid it. I became disagreeable. I kept as
much out of Isobel’s presence as possible. I never
willingly was alone with her. I did my best to
avoid meeting her or speaking to her. I must have
succeeded not only in making myself everything
I did not feel, but also in making myself obnoxious.
Isobel met the situation with her natural frank-
ness after I had been giving this demonstration of
myself for some time.
“Doctor,” she said, “this household necessarily
imposes friendships upon the people in it. I won-
der if we could not be a little more agreeable to
each other.”
I did not know what to say. I hoped not to be
a hypocrite, and I did not want to be absurd.
“I shall be glad to be as agreeable as I can,”
i
:


THE MYSTERY OF HARTLEY HOUSE 61.
I said after some mental stuttering. “I want to
be, but I am so awkward.” -
“I want to be too,” said Isobel; “and if we both
want to be, we shall not have to glower at each
* other every time we meet. Even mother does not
require it and father would detest it.”
Without saying anything more, she made me see
that I had used a cheap device to escape the
consequences of a foolish affection. The girl in
a very friendly fashion had shown me that my
avoidance of her was marked, cool and unreason-
able. It was wholly reasonable from my poor
standpoint, but from no other.
I saw that I was meeting my difficulty by run-
ning away from it, and I not only did not like the
timidity of escape in this fashion, but furthermore,
I did not like the opinion Isobel formed of me be-
cause of it. I had to face the music, and after that
I did. It ought not to have astonished me that I
felt better instantly. I knew that a coward only
increased his troubles.
I imagine if I had not seemed such a profes-
sional stick, such a thing aloof from human emo-
tions, Isobel would have been merely friendly and
kind. As it was, she was tantalising. She liked
me well enough, but that meant very little. If
she did not drive, ride, walk or play tennis with me,
she had a choice of the servants. It was I or
nothing.


THE MYSTERY OF HARTILEY HOUSE 63
ney was wholly devoted to him; I was engaged in
professional duties; and for Jed and the servants
in the house it was natural to be content with what
they had of life or with the performance of duties
for which they were paid and which they might
abandon at will. But this was Isobel’s life. She
was young, vibrant, beautiful, but vistas opening
into human prospects were closed to her. And
she was engaged to a piece of professional dead
wood who happened to be the only masculine
thing available when her mother was in great
distress.
I thought that this was the tragedy of age de-
stroying youth, no matter how lovingly. If I had
been a man capable of winning Isobel’s affections,
the romance of our lives might have had a perfect
setting in this charming spot. But when I con-
sidered that this wonderful young girl found only
me, aside from her parents, to give zest to life, I
was indignant.
I suffered an ecstatic unhappiness from which I
sought relief by severe mental discipline. Occa-
sionally I seemed about to have success and to
establish a mental control, but every time that
defence broke down.
Later Isobel said that as a woman she knew
of course that I loved her, but this is evident fic-
tion. She did no such thing, and it would be an
unkindness to her to think so. What was only


64 THE MYSTERY OF HARTILEY HOUSE
*
comedy if I were, as she thought I was, an indif-
ferent, unfeeling man, would have been cruelty if
it had been known that the position was mockery
of denied hopes.
Isobel used me to gain her liberty. She affected
familiarities and called me “John ” derisively, or
worse “dear ” or “old dear.” I protested, in more
pain than she could guess.
“We are engaged,” she said. “What should I
call you?”
“You might consider the fact that we are not
engaged,” I suggested.
“But we are. If we don't act as if we were,
you’ll not be any protection against Jed. Don’t
you want me to call you John?”
“Of course I do,” I said. “It's perfectly
straightforward, natural and proper.”
“Then it's the “dear? and ‘old dear' you object
to, and I perfectly delight in calling you ‘old dear.”
It fits so well—it is really wonderful. It is almost
a complete description as well as a charming ap-
pellation. I adore it.”
“I object to unnecessary freedom,” I said.
“But it helps to deceive Jed.”
“Nothing deceives Jed. He was deceived
only for a short while. Then he tried to kill
me. He apologised afterward for his mis-
take. He knows the character of our engage-
ment.”


THE MYSTERY OF HARTLEY HOUSE 65 -
“Just the same, he has not bothered mother since
then as he did before.”
“That is because he is a coward and I have him
where I can control him.”


CHAPTER X
RS. SIDNEY did not understand her daugh-
ter. That was not astonishing: Isobel was
a young American woman; Mrs. Sidney had Span-
ish traditions. Isobel came naturally, through her
father, to a candour which never ceased to amaze
and—occasionally—to distress her mother. Isobel
said what she thought. Her frankness came from
honesty of character. Her lovely mother regarded
life as something to be managed by reticence and
denial. Mrs. Sidney was esthetic, and if a fact
were unesthetic, she denied it and put it out of
her consideration. It was, to her, the only proper
thing to do.
To Isobel the proper thing to do was first to
make sure that a fact was a fact, and if experience
proved that it was, then to get it into its true
relation with other facts and accept it.
Isobel was a clever tennis-player and I a poor
one. She beat me three or four sets every fine
afternoon. She liked to drive a car and ride a
horse. I drove and rode with her.
When Isobel said for the first time that she
wanted to take me for a drive in the car, her mother
66


THE MYSTERY OF HARTLEY HOUSE 67
made a little gesture of dismay. Isobel stood be-
fore her and smiled.
“You know we are engaged, Mother,” she
said.
I thought of the hen at the pond's edge seeing
her brood of ducklings in the water. Mrs. Sidney
was not in a panic and she did not flutter, but her
distress was acute. She knew the girl had to de-
velop, and she knew that she had to live in North,
not South, America. But knowledge is not a com-
plete anodyne to pain.
Isobel took her mother's hand and kissed it, and
then her lips. She smiled in such an honest, frank,
perceptive fashion—I know that a smile can con-
tain all the human understanding in the world,
because I saw Isobel's—and then, holding her
mother's hand, she allowed Mrs. Sidney to have
the moment of distress with the intimate support
of her own presence.
It may seem a small struggle that mother and
daughter went through, but it did not seem small
to me who witnessed it, and it had no rhetorical
and little emotional expression.
Isobel knew her mother suffered, but she was
wise. Mrs. Sidney dreaded her daughter's adopted
mode of life, but knew her daughter.
“Good-bye, Mother,” said Isobel. “We sha’n’t
be gone long. Come on, John.”
That was the first time she had called me John


68 THE MYSTERY OF BARTV.EY House
honestly and without comedy. I knew her finesse.
She did it to give her mother the comfortable sense
that she was not going upon a wild adventure of
an automobile ride with an unrelated man but was
within the strict intimacy of the family.
Yet to me the small favour of using my first
name without derision was exhilarating. I felt as
if the way to the door had become rosy but un-
certain. I was a thing not as directly related to
my body as was necessary for precise control of
movement. A young fellow in love and hopelessly
* love is a container of lunatic emotions.
We went driving, Isobel at the wheel. She
liked to drive fast and I do not. I am timid. I
do not think that locomotion is a genuine human
pleasure. Possibly it is, behind either a fast or a
plodding horse. I prefer the plodding horse.
Locomotion then merely reveals gradually chang-
ing facets of the scene; one likes to see the manifold
aspects of a landscape unfold. But an automobile
driven as Isobel wanted to drive it revealed no
facets. It merely blurred the vision and gave the
idea that the satisfaction sought was a certain
amount of wind blown in the face. For such as
love it, not for me!
“That was a difficult scene, Doctor,” she
said.
I knew that was what she would call me next—
“Doctor.” I came directly down out of the clouds.
º


THE MYSTERY OF BIARTLEY HOUSE 69
“I know it was,” I said, “and I admired the
honest way in which you managed it.”
“I think I shall continue to call you John just
that way,” she said. “It seems more honest and
decent. After all, we are engaged.”


CHAPTER XI
OMETIMES Mr. Sidney could be taken out in
an automobile, of a warm, fair afternoon. It
was not often that his strength permitted this, but
whenever it did, I was glad not only to allow but
to suggest that he make use of all opportunities.
He had infinite resources of life in his own house-
hold and in his own character, but it was pleasant
for him to escape the narrow confines of his world
whenever it was possible.
He had a mood of serene contemplation on these
rides. Life, ending for him, found earthly condi-
tions still pleasant. I had seen him look at a field
of wheat, yellow in the sunset, with a pleasure
which plainly came from an acceptance of human
terms and earthly provision. His west-window
view of life was wholly placid.
The most beautiful of our river drives brought
us, within the limitation of Mr. Sidney's strength,
to the penitentiary at Alwick. It was a hideous
structure of barracks, work-rooms and walls, of
cells and armed guards; but it was in lovely sur-
roundings, and if we took the best roads, we came
naturally to the prison walls.
Mr. Sidney would look at the enclosure and the
70


THE MYSTERY OF HARTLEY House 71
guards in the turrets as if interpreting his own
life in the terms of prison existence. We may have
taken this drive by the prison road ten times when,
approaching it on another of our outings, Mr. Sid-
ney had the driver stop at the entrance.
“I feel very strong and well to-day, Doctor,” he
said, “and if you do not object, I think I should
like to go inside. I have seen the outside so many
times, I have a curiosity to see the inside.”
In a way I could understand his feeling. For
a number of years his life had been lived within
walls. I thought he wanted to seek assurance of
protection against self-pity by contrasting his
pleasant condition of confinement with that of un-
fortunate men whose sins had put them in con-
finement without comfort.
I consented, thinking that with Jed and me help-
ing him—we acted as his legs, guiding and sus-
taining his feeble motions—he was strong enough
to make the effort. I did not know whether it was
good or bad psychology to give him a sight of so
many imprisoned men, but my instinct suggested
that it would, in his case, be good. He was a logi-
cal, reasoning man—a rare phenomenon in the
human race. If he had been emotional and senti-"
mental, I should have had more doubt.
Mr. Sidney was important enough to be known
in the neighbourhood. The warden of the prison
came to meet him in the office as soon as we had
v


72 THE MYSTERY OF HARTILEY HOUSE
entered. He was a kindly man, recognisable as
such at first glance, I thought. He was not
a sentimentalist, I judged. A sentimentalist in a
prison can be a dreadful thing. He was merely a
human being executing human laws upon the per-
sons of human beings in the manner ordained out
of the experience of folk in their endeavour at
organisation, and doing it thoroughly, precisely
and kindly. That is the impression I got of him.
He was very cordial to Mr. Sidney, who himself
never showed more his aristocracy of democracy.
I am a democrat. I am most fond of an aristo-
cratic democrat. Such was Mr. Sidney.
Our charming old gentleman could not go
through the entire institution, and the warden led
him to the most accessible parts of the interesting
place. We saw the rattan-chair works and the
honour men in the gardens. We also took one
glance at a tier of cell-houses and peeped into the
dining-hall and into the chapel.
The warden would have had us stay to dinner.
“With your car here and the distance so short,”
he said in kindly hospitality, “I am sure Mr. Sid-
ney could stand it, and not only would Mrs. Wil-
liams and I love to have you as our guests, but the
convicts display themselves differently when their
work is done. Mr. Sidney would be interested to
study the character of the men as it is revealed
then.”


THE MYSTERY OF HARTLEY HOUSE 73
I had to interpose and forbid this. It would
have been too much of a physical strain upon Mr.
Sidney. I knew that the little diversion was in-
teresting him, and I was glad to have him inter-
ested, but I did not want to tax his physical
strength.
“I’m the doctor's servant,” he said. “I’ll look
into the library if you don’t mind, Warden, and
then we’ll obey the physician.”
Warden Williams led us to the library, which
contained a large collection of books. An elderly
convict was engaged in cataloguing some new
volumes which had just been taken out of
boxes. He was interested and paid no attention
to us.
Mr. Sidney looked at him for a few minutes.
“What did you say was his crime?” he asked
the Warden. -
“That's Dobson,” said Mr. Williams. “You
must know his story. He is the man who killed
his brother. You are living in the Dobson house.”
I looked at the frail, white-haired man with a
sudden shock of interest. This was the man who
had created the ghost-story at Hartley House. He
was fumbling registry cards and writing on them.
He was frail and insignificant. He had been once,
by legend, a sturdy, muscular, cruel brute. He
was now feeble and interested in cataloguing.
Mr. Sidney looked about the room.


74 THE MYSTERY OF HARTILEY HOUSE º
“This does not seem to be so well protected as
the other parts of the prison,” he said.
“It is not thought necessary,” said the warden.
“Escape from here might not be impossible for an
agile man. It is not impossible from any part of
the prison. It can only be made improbable. It
would be easier from here, but still difficult. But
this old man would be in a harder prison of depri-
wation and friendlessness outside than he is inside.”
“Do you mean that he is the man who made the
ghost-story I bought with my house?” Mr. Sidney
asked.
“That's all there is human of your ghost-story,”
said the warden.
“It is more than most ghost-stories have,” said
Mr. Sidney.


CHAPTER XII
COULD not believe the slightest particle in the
ghost-story. I am rationalistic. But as the
legend of the pond took shape, my imagination
began to give substance to its shadows.
I must be honest in confession and say that the
accumulating effect of the story was to stimulate
me to irrational emotions. There came times When
a soughing of the wind in the gables and eaves of
the house, the rasping of branches against the
walls, the dead black of darkness in a room, the
dead quiet of silence in a dark hall, gave me un-
canny sensations. Yet the place was genial and
cordial.
Mr. Sidney's joviality was the dominant note in
the house. An aging sick man might naturally
have been testy. He might have been impatient,
have had whims and crotchets. He might have been
irascible in his demands upon and acceptance of
service. But Mr. Sidney was always cordial and
considerate. A great deal of the time he spent in
bed. When he was not in bed, he sat in a great
chair, and very often a yellow Persian cat rested
on his knees. It was a difficult if not dangerous
75


76 THE MYSTERY OF HARTLEY HOUSE
matter for any one else than Mr. Sidney to touch
the cat, named Algol.
“The Winking Demon,” said Mr. Sidney, finger-
ing the cat's ruff as it lay on his lap, and purred.
I knew just enough of the star Algol and its vari-
ability to understand the whimsicality of an old
man's naming a cat for the winking sun. Algol in
Mr. Sidney's lap blinked at me, and the old man’s
genius for understanding and classification seemed
uncanny.
Mr. Sidney's room was of great size. It had two
fireplaces and a large cove of windows bulging
toward the West. At the Smaller of the two fire-
places he had his breakfast. Either at the large
fireplace or in the outward bulge of windows, he
had his dinner.
In spite of the Persian cat, Mr. Sidney had three
canaries in the room. Algol respected them after
a fashion that I thought uncertain. I have seen a
canary sitting on the cat's head, but I thought it
was a decided case of misplaced confidence. Algol
wanted that canary and would continue to want it.
He was deterred from natural action in the matter
by his affection for the strange but kindly master
who wanted cats and canaries to live together in
amity.
I had enough sense to recognise in Mr. Sidney a
very delicate voluptuary. Cats, canaries, log fires,
sunsets and such things increased the sum of his
:


7S THE MYSTERY OF HARTILEY HOUSE
!
quietly, but it was without intention to surprise my
patient. He was sitting in his large chair with
Algol on his knees. His eyes were closed, and on
his face was an expression of malevolence that was
almost demoniac. It was so startling that the
sight of it stopped me in my step and made me
feel more than uneasy, almost afraid. Mr. Sid-
ney was quiet, except that with one hand he stroked
Algol about the head and ears. The caress was
almost imperceptible in motion, but Algol was
purring so loudly that the sound filled the other-
wise quiet room.
The malevolence—the malignancy, hatred, con-
centrated essence of ferocity—in Mr. Sidney's face
would have stopped any one. To one who had af-
fection for him as I had, it was abhorrent to see
him so. It was a confession of something I did
not want to know. -
I was in fear that he might hear me and opening
his eyes, find that I had discovered him. I was
embarrassed and uncertain what to do. It was a
silly predicament, as I saw afterward. My part
was quite simple. I should have paid no attention
to any such phenomenon as the expression on a
man's face and have acted perfectly naturally.
The common-sense thing—and I consider myself
fairly sensible—was apparent afterward. It indi-
cates the astonishing shock of the thing that I was
unable to act sensibly. What was the expression


TEIE MYSTERY OF HARTILEY HOUSE 79 -
in an amiable, charming man's face, to knock a sen-
sible person out of all his senses? Here was a
dozing man merely toying with a cat's ears, and the
very sight of what was expressed in his face, made
me numb.
I cannot understand it now, the terrifying sen-
sation being one which disappeared as the recol-
lection of the emotions faded. What I did was to
back toward the door, open it as quietly as I could,
back out, and then re-enter the room noisily.
Mr. Sidney was looking at me smilingly. His
charm of manner never seemed more positive and
active.
“Hello, Doctor!” he said. “I needed company
and just your company. If you would only drink
Wine !”


CHAPTER XIII
BROKEN pipe in the laundry made it nece
sary to call a plumber from Hartley, and to
get quick service, it was agreed that we should send
a car for the man and his helper. -
The day was pleasant, and for the sake of the
drive I went with the driver. The plumber was a
fat man of the comic type. I thought he must be
the embodiment of all the plumbers' jokes. They
seemed to have created him; he was the product of
the comics.
I even asked him if he were sure he had all his
tools. I thought he would be sure to send us back
for a wrench. He was amiable, laughed at any-
thing or nothing and was saved from being a nuis-
ance only by an abounding animal optimism which
was infectious.
He was garrulous and talked of every minutia
of his daily experience, of his likes and dislikes, of
how radishes disagreed with him, of how he could
nourish himself on salt pork and cabbage. We
heard for a half-mile that he would never wear
overshoes or carry an umbrella, and that his wife
certainly remonstrated with him. For another
80


THE MYSTERY OF HARTILEY HOUSE 81
half-mile we got his idea of suitable underclothing
for winter. -
He was an interesting egotism, an indomitable
human being, heroic in his insignificance of thought
and experience, and with that insignificance unre-
vealed to him. Of such are the kingdom of
earth. *
Driving through the Hartley House grounds, we
came to the pool, and the plumber—named Harkins
—chuckled. Thus far, whenever he or something
else amused him, he had laughed. Now he chuckled
as if in recollection of an experience richer or
deeper than any he had been talking of.
“That place is going to be remembered by me,”
he said. “I have been out here only once since
the night I made a bet I was not afraid to sit on
the bank here for an hour. They’ve got a good
many stories of this place in town. I had been
drinking a little. I don't do it steady, but once in
a while I get out. You’ve got to do it to keep the
house going happy. Give the wife something to
talk about. My wife would rather scold me than
eat, and she loves her food.
“We were at the White Pigeon, having a good
time but thinking of going home, when some one
started on this Hartley House story. Everybody
had something to say, and I said that there was no
ghost that could scare me, at least no ghost that
ever was within a hundred miles of Hartley.


82 THE MYSTERY OF HARTILEY HOUSE
That's where I made a fool of myself. I’ve got to
admit that's where I made a fool of myself.
“I bet five dollars I would sit an hour on the
bank at this place. I forgot all about the dogs,
or I’d not have made the bet. Anyway, they
didn’t bother me. We got an automobile and
drove out here. The fellows left me at the pool
and went a mile back. They were going to take my
word for it. I was to stay an hour and then start
walking back. At the end of an hour they would
start toward me and pick me up. They had beer
and sandwiches. I had a couple of bottles and
some cheese and crackers.
“I sat down by the bank and opened a bottle
of beer. Somehow or other the fact that I was
showing I didn’t care about ghosts began to make
ghosts real things. I’d never given them any
thought. Now I began to think about them. I
guess I began to make them.
“I wasn’t afraid of that place. I'm not afraid
of any place unless I get to thinking about it, but
I got to thinking about this one. It was along in
October. A hoot-owl was somewhere back of me,
and there was a whippoorwill up toward the house.
“I’m used to hoot-owls and whippoorwills, but
I hadn't drunk more than half a bottle of beer be-
fore even these things began to sound different.
“The current of the river kept knocking at the
big rock at the up end of the pool, and you began


THE MYSTERY OF HARTILEY HOUSE 83
the dark. I’d have given ten dollars to quit, but
I got so that I didn’t want to move. I felt safer
sitting still.
“Then I began to hear things that I don't sup-
pose were making a noise at all. It may be it was
rabbits in the bush. I nearly died when I heard a
cry about fifty feet back of me. I did hear that.
I guess a ferret had got a rabbit. You know how a
rabbit cries—like a baby.
“I was sitting in the open, and I thought I’d
feel better if I got my back up against something.
So I crawled over to some bushes and sat down
behind them. -
“Maybe I had been there a half an hour, feeling
scary and uncomfortable, when I heard a regular
yell. There wasn't any fooling about that. It
sounded like some one being hurt but yelling not so
much because of the hurt as because he was
mad.
“You’ve heard fellows talking about their hair
standing on end. I never knew what it really
meant before, but my hair just stood right up. I
felt like some one was trying to scalp me, and I was
gooseflesh all over.
“It had been dark on account of clouds, but just
then the moon came out and lighted up the place.
There was a man standing on the edge of the pool,
just about where I had been sitting. He was lean-
to think that things were reaching for you out of `
>
- 7
s
s


84 THE MYSTERY OF HARTILEY HOUSE
ing with both hands on a cane and standing per-
fectly still. He didn't seem like a man. He
looked like one, but you had a feeling that he
wasn't one.
“I don’t want ever to be so scared again. I
didn't know who had yelled, but I thought this man
had, and I didn't think he was a man. I thought
he was a ghost. I’m not saying what I think now,
but if I had to, I’d say that I saw the ghost of this
place—and anybody that wants to laugh can
laugh. He can come down here at night and get
cured of laughing. -
“I couldn’t move for a while. The man stood
still, leaning on his cane. I watched him until
I began to feel that I could use my legs again. I
don't know why I was so scared, but I was. I
crawled away through the brush for a hundred feet
or so. Then I got up and ran.
“I heard that yell behind me again. I’ll bet
nobody around here ever ran a mile as fast as I
did. I scared the fellows who were waiting for me.
They didn’t poke any fun at me. They looked at
me and got that automobile started. We even left
the beer behind. I paid the bet, but they didn't
have any laugh on me. There isn't one of them
would come down here at night now.”
“When Was this?” I asked.
“Four or five years ago,” said the plumber.
“Some time in October.”


THE MYSTERY OF HARTLEY House, 85
We came to the house, and he went into the
laundry to fix the pipes.
“It doesn't look haunted around here,” he said
as he perceived the tangible joviality of the place,
“but you’ve got to get me out before dark.”
That was virtually the complete substance of the
Hartley House ghost—the picture of a man lean-
ing on a cane by the edge of the river. Romance
had to be content with it.


CHAPTER XIV
NE evening in late October which had turned
chill and brought up a high wind, Mr. Sidney
produced a new phenomenon. He had a strange
flash of strength. When I went to his room after
dinner I found him walking about without help.
Ordinarily, if he walked at all, Jed was his
strength.
“Occasionally I can do it, Doctor,” he said,
“The strength comes. I usually pay for it next
day, however.”
“I’d be very careful, then,” I suggested.
“Yes, but you do not know how grateful it is to
feel vigour once in a while,” he said, continuing to
walk forth and back in the room.
I sat down and watched him without remon-
strating. It was astonishing to see him so agile
and strong but I had learned that timid prudence
was very ineffective. I had confessed my inability
to understand him.
He did not seem to Want to continue life for the
purpose of preserving its sensations but for the
purpose of some accomplishment. His conditions
were so pleasant that it might be reasonable to
desire a prolonging of them. Evidently he was not
86 -


| THE MYSTERY OF HARTLEY HOUSE 87
-
set upon that. He was not trying to accomplish
anything. He did nothing. He had no unfinished
work. And yet his will to live, I knew, was a will
to see the fruit of something. He seemed to have
a spiritual incentive; something that had other
than a physical impulse controlled him and gave
him resolution.
I was marveling at his strange activity when
Isobel and Mrs. Sidney came in. Mr. Sidney pro-
posed whist, and we began a game. The wind in-
creased in violence, and the log fire grew in com-
fort. We had a pleasant game, disturbed for me
only by speculations as to the cause of Mr. Sidney's
strange animation and strength.
Shortly after ten o’clock the ladies said good
night, and Jed came in with a fresh log for the fire.
The wind had been increasing in volume, sound
and power. I was thinking of bed.
“Sit a while longer, Doctor,” Mr. Sidney urged.
“Jed and I shall be the better for some other com-
pany. This is the sort of night we like to sit up
to enjoy. Esthetically one ought to make the most
of such a night.”
Jed went out and presently came in again with
two bottles of Wine.
“What are we drinking to-night, Jed?” Mr.
Sidney asked.
“I thought the evening suggested a warm
sherry,” said Jed.


TEIE MYSTERY OF EI EY HOUSE 89
º
tions that are primitive. It suggests a threat and
increases the sense of shelter and comfort. We
sit like peasants about the fireplace and are in-
clined to legends.”
“And tell sad stories of the deaths of kings,”
said Jed, drawing his chair nearer to the fire and
spreading out his hands before it. He was drink-
ing more rationally now, sipping his wine instead
of gulping it. He had arrived at his desired state
and wished to maintain it.
Mr. Sidney seemed to feel a comfortable glow as
Jed drank. There was no doubt that by suggestion
he obtained physical sensations of stimulation and
joviality.
“If we had a ghost,” said Mr. Sidney, “it would
walk on such a night.”
The wind made an extraordinary attack upon
the windows as he spoke and sucked a soughing
sound from the chimney.
“Tell the Doctor the story of the pool,” Mr.
Sidney said to Jed. “We are in the comfortable
werewolf state. Let's have our legend. Do you
want to add a shiver to your contentment,
Doctor?” he asked.
“I want to hear the story,” I said.
“So do. I, once again,” said Mr. Sidney, “–on
such a night.” -
“This place once belonged to a family named
Dobson,” said Jed.


THE MYSTERY OF HARTLEY HOUSE 91
“Henrietta Dobson died when her son Richard
was nine years old and her other son Henry was
seven years old. James Dobson died two years
later, and the boys were parentless. This family
was an argument against families.”
“That's one of the heterodox notions I have in-
stilled in an innocent mind,” said Mr. Sidney.
“Jed, you must not repeat phrases in your narra-
tives. You parrot things and try to pass them as
observations.”
“You’ll have him surly in a moment,” I sug-
gested, “and then where is the story?”
“I never knew him surly,” said Mr. Sidney,
“and he could not be in his genial wine.”
Jed showed the flicker of a malignant glance in
my direction and went on with his story evenly and
good-naturedly.
“I don’t pretend to have all the details or to
understand it,” he said; “but from what I learn,
Richard Dobson, the elder brother, was strong and
brutal. Henry Dobson, the younger brother, was
frail and sensitive. I guess they hated each other
from the cradle.
“Dick, when he was four and Henry was two,
found ways of tormenting his younger brother.
The best thing Henry ever had from Richard was
contempt.” -
“I have known families of that nature,” said Mr.
Sidney. “Our conventions teach us to regard a


92 THE MYSTERY OF HARTILEY HOUSE
family tie as a sacrament. In many cases it is
only an odious obligation leading to tragedy.”
“Dick knew all of Henry's weaknesses,” Jed
continued. “Sometimes he would torture him
physically, by twisting his wrist or rolling him
over on the ground when young girls were around. .
Sometimes he would torture him without laying
hands on him.
“Dick was a thick-headed brute, but he had a
genius for cruelty. When their parents died and
the boys approached their majority, Henry was
almost an imbecile for fear of Dick.
“Dick wanted then to get his inheritance and
go out into the world, but the estate was left in
trust until both boys were of age. Dick came of
age and was obliged to wait two years for Henry.”
I was astonished by the succinct and philo-
sophical brevity of this ignorant man's narrative.
Mr. Sidney was at ease in his chair with his eyes
closed and a placid expression of pleasure on his
face. Jed was active in gesticulation as he talked.
That was the effect of the wine. The wind con-
tinued to pull at the chimney and scold in the
COrner’S.
“Jed has read a great deal to me,” said Mr. Sid-
ney without opening his eyes. “I think he has
become theatric.”
“Well,” said Jed, “to shorten a story, when
Dick, being twenty-one, found that he had to wait


THE MYSTERY OF HARTILEY HOUSE 93
two more years for Henry, he became more brutal
than ever. In some way or other, the night of the
murder the two brothers happened to meet in a
tavern in a village not far from Hartley House.
Henry did not want to go home with his brother,
but they both got drunk and they started to walk
home together.
“No one has been able to do much more than
guess at what took place, but it was known that
Richard was a brute and that Henry was scared
of him but was not a coward. They must have had
a violent quarrel.
“There was a cottage near the pool. The only
person in it at the time of the murder was a little
girl, whose parents were not at home. She was
awakened by cries and swearing. She said that
she heard one man say: “They’ll find you dead in
the morning.” Then she heard sounds of a struggle
and was scared and hid her head under the bed-
clothes.
“When her parents came home, she told them
what she had heard, and they went out with a
lantern to the place from which the noise came.
They found parts of Henry's clothing. The next
day Richard was found, ten miles away, still
drunk. He confessed that he had killed his brother
in a drunken rage.
“Afterward he said that he hadn’t, but he ad-
mitted that there had been a quarrel. It was a


94 THE MYSTERY OF EIARTILEY HOUSE
most celebrated trial. Richard was convicted,
though the State could not produce any indubitable
physical evidence of Henry's death. The conten-
tion over this evidence made the case noted.
“Richard Dobson is in the penitentiary at
Alwick now. Henry's ghost is what is supposed
to come back to the pool.”
The wind howled outside, and the fire burned
cheerfully. As a romanticist I felt rebellious.
The ghost-story lacked antiquity. A good ghost-
story would not have any human element in it a
prisoner in a near-by penitentiary. It was too
common a savour of the present.
“But Stevenson would have liked the story,”
said Mr. Sidney. “It has so much hate in it.
Probably it is because I live here where this tale
of hate has its scene that I enjoy “The Master of
Ballay-trae' So much.”


CHAPTER XV
HEN I said good night to Mr. Sidney and
Jed, I did not go to my room. A little
alcoholic stimulant to one unaccustomed to it will
break down routine. Jed drank a great deal and
kept to his habits steadily because they were based
upon an accustomed ration of alcohol. Extraor-
dinary habits were his normal.
I went to the library to select a book and take it
to my room. The fire in the library was burning
cheerfully. The wind had a clear sweep at the
windows. To a slightly exhilarated perception,
the circumstances were alluringly comfortable.
I found a good book but lost the inclination to
go to my room. I sat down in a comfortable chair,
having turned off all the lights except that of the
reading lamp. The library was large, and when
the reading lamp alone was lighted, there were deep
shadows and the room was largely in darkness.
I read for a while and then fell asleep. I had
no intention of doing that, but drowsiness came ir-
resistibly and I was gone before I could force my-
self to go to bed.
It was two o'clock when I awoke. The Wind had
- 95


96 THE MYSTERY OF HARTLEY HOUSE
died down. I felt restless and uneasy, not being
accustomed to falling asleep in this fashion. The
sensation of waking up and having perceptions
struggle to establish not only location but identity
was unpleasant.
I started then for bed but stopped at the main
door of the house on my way. I went to look to
the fastenings and found that Jed, whose duty it
was to close the house, had forgotten to lock and
bar the door. -
It was this incident of seeing the chain hanging
down and of going to the door that suggested a cure
for my unpleasant restlessness after the nap in the
library. I opened the door and went outside for a
Walk.
The moon in its last quarter was rising in a
cloud-filled sky. There was light one instant and
then dark. I expected the dogs to join me, but
In One Calne.
A challenge arose within me—to go down by the
way toward the haunted pool. It was the moral
taunt of a suggested cowardice. I thought of the
place and of all I had been told of it; and the in-
stinctive apprehension, perceptible as I stood on
the steps to the entrance, provoked the challenge.
It seemed imperative. It would have been a
moral retreat to go back into the house, as would
have been sensible, lock the door and go to bed.
That seemed like backing down in the face of an


THE MYSTERY OF HARTLEY HOUSE 97
inviting danger. These challenges are inconse-
quential, but they seem important to character.
I did not have the real moral courage, which was
to turn my back on the invitation and go indoors.
I went down the steps to prove to myself my confi-
dence in myself—thereby disproving it. -
When such an idea has worked its way into the
mind, it produces a distortion of perception. The
landscape was in changing light and shadow, as
the moon rode into and out of clouds. Familiar
objects got new significance. Inconsequential
noises took on purpose. As I walked along the
accustomed way, I felt uncertainty as to what
possibly might be behind me. This, I thought,
was a symptom of moral collapse. It then became
still more important to march myself down to the
pool and thus dispel spiritual vapours and to re-
establish common sense.
As I neared the pool, the moon went behind a
cloud. I came to a clump of bushes. The moon
came from behind its cover. There was a gentle
flood of returning light. I was in, or rather be-
hind, a screen of trees and brush. The pool was
fifty feet away.
At the edge of the pool a man was revealed in
the moonlight. He leaned on a stick.
The moon went behind another cloud, and the
figure on the bank became indistinct. It almost
disappeared. I stood still, with apprehensive


98 THE MYSTERY OF HARTILEY HOUSE
shudders working up and down my spine. The
phenomenon was outrageous and unbelievable.
The moonlight flashed out again for an instant. I
saw the figure again but persuaded or tried to per-
suade myself that I did not see it, to say to myself
that it was a bush twisted into extravagant shape
by my imagination.
The moon went under a great dark cloud. I
made a moral and physical retreat. I did not
run. That would have been an honest confession
and expression of desire. I was hypocritical and
walked, but my moral defeat was complete.
There was a man at the haunted pool.
I had seen him and something had deterred me
from speaking to him, finding out who he was or
why he was there.


CHAPTER XVI
REALLY violent change came into our lives.
A suggestion that Mr. Sidney go to the South
for the winter was acted upon, and within a month
I was separated from the place and people so im-
portant in my affections. Dr. Brownell had been
called to Hartley House by Mr. Sidney's discour-
aging condition. Our invalid had overtaxed him-
self the evening he displayed such activity in his
room, such unusual strength and agility. The fol-
lowing morning he was almost in collapse. I was
alarmed and telephoned Dr. Brownell, who came
Out at Once.
“You will see his will pull him through,” he said.
“If it were not for that, I should be alarmed. He
is very low.”
“I blame myself for permitting the unusual
exertion,” I said. “My judgment was deluded, I
think, by my happiness at seeing him so strong.
He really seemed strong. It did not seem fictitious
Or unnatural.”
Dr. Brownell said that the phenomenon was not
new in his experience with Mr. Sidney's case.
“I have had it six years,” he said, “and this is
the sixth time he has gone from unexplained and
99


100 THE MYSTERY OF HARTLEY HOUSE
w
unnatural strength to extreme and dangerous
weakness. And always in the fall—somewhere
about this time. Each time I have seen his will
assert itself and strengthen him in his exhaustion.”
I felt that I had been careless and was respon-
sible, but Dr. Brownell did not say so or, appar-
ently, think so. He came every day for a week,
and Mr. Sidney slowly regained his strength.
Only one referenee was made to the night I walked
to the pool and saw the figure at the river's edge.
The day I called Dr. Brownell I had been too
concerned and alarmed to pay much attention to
any one but Mr. Sidney and did not observe until
toward evening that Jed was malignantly un-
friendly again in his attitude toward me. Finally
he made it apparent by a bit of vicious insolence.
I had determined never again to take hold of that
nettle gingerly but to clutch it.
“What do you mean by that?” I asked.
“There is a plague of officiousness about here,
or has been since you came,” he said. “You locked
the front door last night some time, didn't you?”
“I found it open this morning, and after I had
walked about the grounds for a while I came in
and throw the bolt,” I told him.
He seemed unpleasantly astonished—jolted and
disturbed.
“You were abroad last night!” he exclaimed.
“You had locked me in, I know,” I said, “–or
40


THE MYSTERY OF HARTILEY HOUSE 101
thought you had. I found my door bolted when
I went back to my room. I wasn't in it when you
bolted it,” I added. “I was asleep in the library.
When I awakened I went outside for a moment.’
The door was unfastened. I bolted it when I came
in.”
Jed was more disturbed, and he showed it.
“Where did you go?” he asked.
“I walked around,” I said, “down by the river.”
His discomposure became acute. He looked sick.
“Where were the dogs?” I asked. “I didn't
see any.” -
He tried to smile.
“They were with me,” he said. “I was out, and
you locked me out. That's why I have been so in-
dignant. I came back and found I had to break
into the house. I was in a hurry. You wouldn't
have liked it yourself.”
“I don't like it myself. I don’t like being locked
in my room. I’ll not have it. I thought I had
given you to understand that it would not be toler-
ated. I do not want to annoy the family by com-
plaints, but I will not endure that.”
“Well, you can see the occasion for it. You
were loose last night, and your conscientious of
ficiousness made trouble. I knew your type, the
moment I set eyes on you. I said here's a trouble-
making person with a duty. You show it. Of
course, you had to bolt that door. You could not


102 THE MYSTERY OF BIARTILEY HOUSE
assume that it was open for a purpose. No thought
of anybody that might be outside? I knew you.
That's why we're safe only when you are locked
in your room.” º -
“Well, I'll not have it,” I insisted, “and you can
understand that. It is flat. Why do you have to
run around the grounds at night?”
“Do you have to be judge of my habits? If you
do, it may satisfy you to know that I frequently
have many duties to perform for Mr. Sidney in the
night. I frequently drink too much wine. I fre-
quently walk around the grounds to clear my head
and be able to do what is needed by Mr. Sidney.
You are a fine doctor! Didn't you see Mr. Sidney
was overexerting himself last night? Didn’t you
know he'd pay for it? I did, but I couldn’t stop
it. Who do you suppose was with Mr. Sidney all
night? I was. Your service was that of locking
me out. You ought to be manacled instead of
merely locked in. You're superserviceable. It's a
crime. Get Over it.”
My mind had jumped to a conclusion. -
“Were you at the pool last night?” I asked.
“Yes,” he said.
He was very ugly.
“You seem to be a Paul Pry,” he said. “You
ought to be manacled.”
I was not interested in Jed. I was thinking of
my figure at the pool. As embodied in Jed it did
not fascinate me.


CHAPTER XVII
R. BROWNELL suggested the winter trip to
the South. Mr. Sidney's vitality needed care.
ful nursing. It was important to protect him from
winter rigours, even as they could be modified in a
sick-room. The doctor said he himself felt the need
of a change. He prescribed one for both his pa-
tient and himself. He and Mr. Sidney made the
arrangements. Mrs. Sidney and Isobel were to go.
A steam yacht was to be leased and brought up
the river to the house landing. Mr. Sidney's trip
would involve no more exposure than that of being
wheeled or carried the short distance from the
house to the landing.
Arrangements went, ahead rapidly, and a sense
of desolation increased within me. Romantic folly
came to its accounting. The fairy story was to be
ended without youth's necessary “They lived hap-
pily ever after.”
The yacht came up to its mooring and lay by
the landing for a week while the provisioning was
being cared for. Hundreds of bottles of Mr. Sid-
ney's fine wines were put on board—for the un-
speakable Jed. I could imagine the delicate volup-
tuousness of Mr. Sidney in a warm night in

103


104 THE MYSTERY OF HARTILEY HOUSE
Southern waters with the great Canopus in the sky
and Jed halfway through his second bottle.
Isobel was eagerly anticipatory. Mrs. Sidney,
I thought, seemed merely to be resigned, with trepi-
dation. My prospects were wholly disconsolate.
But they improved.
First there was a cordial statement by Mr.
Sidney. -
“Doctor,” he said, “when we come back, we
shall wish we had not gone unless we can find you
again with us. In fact, I do not believe I’d submit
to these arrangements with any other understand-
ing. My friend Brownell tells me he cannot go
unless you relieve him of his practice. That is
the only consideration upon which I consent at all
to leaving you behind. Brownell has to get away.
He is getting old, you know.”
Mr. Sidney's smile made his pity of Dr. Brownell
a kindly irony but I thought he actually felt more
assured in expectancy than the famous doctor.
Dr. Brownell was even apologetic. He said he
was depriving me of an interesting voyage. If he
did not go, I should have been needed, but he
thought it important for his efficiency that he con-
serve his strength over the winter, and he asked me
to act as one of his assistants.
That was flattery. It was intended to be so.
Both Mr. Sidney and Dr. Brownell were delicately
considerate of emotions.


TEIE MYSTERY OF HARTLEY HOUSE 105
Mrs. Sidney was the one who offered me the real
balm.
“John,” she said, “we shall want you with us.
We shall miss you.”
“Don’t you think, Mrs. Sidney,” I suggested,
“that now we can consider this fiction terminated?”
“You mean your engagement to Isobel?”
“Surely.”
“No, please,” she said. “On the boat there will
be no problems. The community is too compact
and must be considerate. But when we come back,
I’ll need you just as before.”
Isobel said:
“Good-bye, John. Be at the landing when we
return. You’ll be the first person I want to see.”
I ought not to have been so disconsolate. These
were fair portents, but a portent does little to con-
sole a loss. I stood on the little dock and watched
the yacht go down the river. And when it had
disappeared below the point of land south of the
pool, all the world was sad and life had no pros-
pects to give it value.
Charles drove me to the city. I was a bit of
human driftwood for a week. It did not matter
that they were coming back. They were gone; that
was the disaster. It was in the present; the future
is too ambiguous for consolation or comfort.
I, disconsolate, miserable, moody and spiritually
unwell, could see only this tragedy: they were gone.


THE MYSTERY OF HARTILEY HOUSE 107
I had letters from the enchanted party in the
South. Mrs. Sidney wrote twice a week with great
affection. Mr. Sidney once a week dictated to Jed
a letter, cordial and jocular, for me. Occasionally
Jed added a sheet for himself, kindly or rasping
as the mood had him at the time.
Isobel also wrote, but with the greatest eccen-
tricity. While they were at Palm Beach I had a
letter a day from her for four days. Then I had
none for two weeks, although they remained at
Palm Beach. She made the postman a tragedian
for me.
In one letter this virginal imp wrote as if I
were her lover, and that letter was as the song of
the meadow lark from a snow-covered field in
March, as the odour of lilacs on a warm night in
May.
The Sidneys went to the Bahamas but did not
remain there. They wrote me that Mr. Sidney was
well. Dr. Brownell was convinced that all were
the better, himself included, for their experiment
and that Mr. Sidney's condition would permit a
longer voyage in his pleasant circumstances. Con-
sequently they were going on to South America.
Mr. Sidney wanted to revisit Montevideo.
Thereafter Mrs. Sidney wrote with such regu-
larity as circumstances and mail-boats would per-
mit, and Isobel as her caprice governed her. From
Montevideo I had a letter from Jed in a different


108 THE MYSTERY OF HARTLEY HOUSE
tone from his sarcastic banter and taunting. I
thought it was the letter of a man who had suf-
fered a shock. I could not say why I thought so,
but I thought something had disturbed him. His
letter in the main was a short record of trivial inci-
dent, interesting because I loved the people in-
volved, but it had an overtone. It was an overtone
of friendship. I gathered the idea that something
had changed Jed's view of life.
Early in March came letters saying that my
folks shortly would be on their way home, to arrive
after our uncertain spring had resolved itself
securely into weather safe for a feeble man who
had accustormed himself to luxurious tempera-
tures. I then felt invigorated, as by a promise
in March of hepatica. My winter was break-
ing up.
At a matinée-I continuing to go to inhale the
fragrance of sleek women with violets and orchids
—I met an old-time acquaintance, a dentist who
had been several years in South America. His
name was Alcott, Henry Alcott.
Alcott and I never had been intimate or affec-
tionate, but we greeted each other with ardour. J.
was lonesome. Alcott may have been. There is a
lonesomeness associated with a return to a place
which has forgotten you and receives you as an
alien.
We had dinner together and enjoyed our meet-


TEHE MYSTERY OF BIARTLEY HOUSE 109
ing. There was furtively, at dinner, a remi-
niscent amativeness in his conversation. It sug-
gested that he was smirking over exploits which he
might relate if his restraints were broken down. I
recalled with distaste that a bold and unesthetic
sensuality, a frank and disillusioned animalism,
had made him, in other times, disconcerting.
He had a talent for merely carnal stories. They
gained additional carnality in his telling of them.
He drank a good deal at dinner and wanted to go
to the theatre. . After the theatre we went to
supper and, with more drink, he began actually to
express himself.
I must have been given the record of half the
amatory experiences of South America for two
years. Alcott told them with gusto. The one
that fascinated me he did not emphasise more than
the others. As he told these stories he was trying
to convey the charm of sex-adventure in Latin
America. I think he wanted, by other instances,
to suggest his own adventures.
A man named Sinclair—that was as Alcott
remembered the name, but it might, he said, have
been St. John or Southgrove or Sergeant or any-
thing else beginning with S; it was long before
Alcott's time in South America, and he merely told
the story because it was a standardised episode—
this man Sinclair, an Englishman or a man from
the States, a fairly young man, anyway, and at-


110 THE MYSTERY OF HARTLEY HOUSE
tractive, had fallen in love with a most charming
young woman of excellent family.
Alcott could not remember whether this little
episode had been staged in Rio or Valparaiso or
Buenos Aires or where. His uncertainty suggested
the important scope that his own experiences em-
braced.
“It might have been in Montevideo,” he said.
He did not emphasise the remark, but the remark
subsequently emphasised the story for me.
Sinclair—Alcott thought we might as well agree
upon Sinclair as a name—had come out of some-
where or nowhere and had made a great deal of
money. When he fell in love, he was an advan-
tageous match. The parents accepted him gladly.
Sinclair and the young lady were married, but
he did not have the Latin genius for isolating and
guarding a woman. Neither did he have the genius
for completely interesting and absorbing a woman.
He was in the shipping business. He was a very
practical and business-ruled man but, Alcott had
heard, a genial and jovial man nevertheless.
Lovers came, as lovers will. The lady was too
charming and had too much freedom. She was
innocent and guileless, but her husband was not the
barrier needed. Alcott said he thought she was of
noble sort and was betrayed by her idea that human
beings had character.
He was not precise as to the dilemma she had


THE MYSTERY OF HARTILEY HOUSE 111
entered, how or why she entered it. A man of
reputation for discreet gallantry, a handsome man
of attractive culture, was encouraged by her frank
and unchilled attitude toward him to try a desper-
ate measure.
There was a designing servant in the house.
The lover corrupted the servant and was intro-
duced into the house. The husband was supposed
to be away on a business trip. He came back,
ahead of time, as husbands sometimes do, and
stopped at his club before he went home.
A friend of the lower saw him, and knowing what
was being essayed at the man's home, was aghast.
He induced other friends of the lover to try to
detain the husband on one jovial pretext or an-
other while he communicated with the house. He
was unsuccessful in his attempt to use the tele-
phone. The other men were unsuccessful in their
attempt to detain the husband. The friend began
a race with the husband to reach the house. Un-
luckily for him, the cab he took not only was pulled
by the faster horse but, he being conscious that it
was a race and the husband being unconscious
of it, his driver had reasons given him for
Speed.
It was unfortunate for the friend, because there
was a tragedy later, and he was its victim. He
arrived in time to warn the lover. The lady, ap-
palled by the appearance of the lover, aghast to


CHAPTER XIX
T may seem unreasonable that a story by a man
incidentally met, an indifferent acquaintance,
had started a solvent at work on my mysteries.
I am discussing, now, matters I had tried to keep
out of my consciousness. Things at Hartley had
insisted upon an explanation which I did not
want to find or give. I had put them out of my
mind time after time, but they always came
back. -
I could not kill a curiosity, although I was
shamed by it. I felt indecent in my almost in.
voluntary conjectures regarding Mrs. Sidney.
Circumstances did demand an explanation. No
one could perceive the strange facts of the house
and not speculate as to their cause. It might be
unpleasant to do so, but it was impossible not to
do so. The predominating fact, however, was that
my folks were coming home, and I knew that my
affection for Mrs. Sidney had become a sacrament
and my affection for Isobel a tragedy.
The yacht brought these dear people to the land-
ing in the river at Hartley House. I, in the city,
was called on the telephone by Isobel. There was
a dynamic value in the inspiration of her voice.
--
114


THE MYSTERY OF HARTLEY HOUSE 115
She was, in her greeting, cheery and wholesome.
It was a glad, clean “Hullo!”—crisp and jovial.
My people came home in May, and the day after
their arrival I went back to Hartley House with
my belongings, rejoicing, in an ecstasy, to take the
well-known ride into the wonderful world of fancy
and endeared companionship, by the haunted pool
and into the jovial household.
Jed, I knew as soon as I saw him, was changed
—not violently but in some fashion and per-
ceptibly. Mr. Sidney was not. His geniality
could not change. He made me feel that he had
missed me and was rejoiced to see me again. Mrs.
Sidney seemed, spiritually, to continue to lean on
me for support, a thing that I perceived in abase-
ment and with a sense of unworthiness and unre-
liability. Isobel was as wholesome as the air.
In the most pleasant circumstances life was re-
sumed at Hartley House.
Jed had not wholly lost his truculence and his
occasional flashes of malevolence, but he was sub-
dued. I thought he seemed furtive. He im-
pressed me as if he were guarding himself against
something he could not see, something he must
watch for over his shoulder.
I asked Mrs. Sidney if she had observed a change.
She said it had not occurred to her to think of it
as a change, but there had been a difference for
which she was grateful. She did not hate Jed—


116 THE MYSTERY OF HARTILEY HOUSE
he was so serviceable. When he ceased to annoy
or terrorise her, she was happy that he was in the
household to aid Mr. Sidney in his pursuit of genial
happiness.
She remembered that when they were making
their visit to Montevideo, Jed had gone down to
the docks and had come back obviously disturbed.
She had observed the fact without giving much
thought to it. She was not sure but that there
had been an amelioration of Jed since then. She
had regarded the event as insignificant. It might
have had a meaning, but if so, it was obscured.
Our days were of pleasant routine, but never-
theless, for reasons which I have tried to make
perceptible if not explicit, the expectation was
touched by dread. We had, for several months, no
outstanding incident or disturbing happening.
Mr. Sidney's health remained exceptionally good.
He created a new interest in his life: he had not
forgotten his visit to the penitentiary, and he was
eager to do what he could for the convicts.
Evidently he thought of his restricted life as
something not wholly alien, except for its comforts,
to theirs. The most that he could do was to send
books and occasionally to prepare a Sunday after-
noon program of music to be given by a small
orchestra which he had brought out from the city.
He never went back to the penitentiary, but once
a week either Jed or I drove over, and he was


THE MYSTERY OF HARTLEY HOUSE 117
interested in our accounts. Once he said to me:
“Occasionally I think of that old wreck of a
fellow in the penitentiary library. Probably it is
because he is the tangible thing of our ghost-story.
Do they talk much of that story?”
“I do not think that they talk much of it,” I
said, “but I have an idea that it is somewhere in
the background of nearly everybody's imagination
about here.”
“It is peculiar,” he said, “what a fascination a
ghost-legend has for unthinking people—or is it
really peculiar? It is their literature. I wish our
ghost would walk more of a windy night, such as
this.”
Jed was beginning to wear off the fine aspects of
his good behaviour. Some restless ambition tor-
tured this man, and some power he had not com-
pletely used invited him to make full use of it.
I had implored Mrs. Sidney to inform me in-
stantly if he became obnoxious again. I under-
stood how important it was to protect Mr. Sidney's
peace of mind, but I thought I had the upper hand
of Jed—although not understanding his case at
all—and could manage him.
Isobel, knowing that she was pursued by the
ridiculous ambitions of the man, found amusement
in it. I found only moral nausea. I could see
Jed's arrogance arising again, and twice of a week
I was awakened by his singing in the hallway as


118 THE MYSTERY OF HARTILEY HOUSE
he came from drinking in Mr. Sidney's room. I
was expecting something to happen; and something
did, but it was certainly not what I expected. It
opened up a new phase of the mystery.


CHAPTER XX
NE morning I was waiting for Jed to bring
my coffee to the pleasant room which he early'
in our acquaintance had recommended. Not the
least curious thing about Jed was the fact that
he seldom in his sober moments was anything
but a perfect servant when service was demanded.
It did not matter how serious and deadly the issue
might be between Jed and me as men; when the
matter lay between Jed and me as servant and
served, Jed was the servant.
It may have been habit, principle or policy. I
am not certain that it was not principle; I have
never seen a-man so abandoned as not to have ego-
tism. I think it was a principle with Jed to be
a good servant when he pretended to be one. He
had a larger part in the house, whatever that part
was; but his pride required that, when pretence or
duty made him a servant, he be an efficient serv-
ant. Therefore, no matter how things might stand
with us when, in the morning at an early hour, I
went to the room Jed originally suggested, I ex-
pected him to come with my coffee, and he always
diq.
119


120 THE MYSTERY OF HARTLEY HOUSE
It was my habit to arise at seven o'clock and be
dressed and in this room by half-past seven. By
this time the gardeners had taken the mastiffs and
Airedales to the kennels, and the lawns and groves
were safe. I usually read a book until Jed brought
the coffee and the morning paper. It was a luxuri-
ous and restful experience to have this hour each
day.
This morning in question I was reading placidly
when looking out the window, I was startled to see
a strange figure of a man on the lawn. He was
close to the house, almost under my window, and
I even could see that he wore earrings. He had a
handkerchief around his neck. He was swarthy
and black-haired. I thought he was Spanish, and
I thought he was a sailor. These were only im-
pressions, but they identified him for me later.
He was passive and was looking up at the house
in an interested but puzzled fashion, harmlessly,
one would have said, if the wholly unexpected
nature of his presence had not been in itself sig-
nificant.
Men wearing earrings were not so common of
sight as to allow one wearing them to be unnoticed.
Strangers of any kind seldom came our way.
Strangers of his kind were extraordinary. He was
looking up at the windows as if he sought the
answer to something that had interested if not
mystified him. I knew, in every instinct, that


122 THE MYSTERY OF HARTLEY HOUSE
He was so furious that he did not care how he
revealed himself to me.
The man on the lawn stood laughing for a
moment and then walked slowly away toward the
brush, into which he disappeared. Jed hung out
of the window watching him.
“Well, sir,” I said, “I think we have you under
a real restraint at last.”
“I was mad that the fellow should have come
up to the house that way. Some tramp !”
“And you dropped the coffee-tray and tried to
get my pistol. A perfectly natural proceeding on
seeing an unknown tramp !”
“We don’t want strangers about here,” he said.
“You don’t want that man,” I said. “And he is
not a stranger. When he saw you, he smiled as if
he had found what he was looking for.”
Jed was unhappy and showed it.
“I wish you were a friend, Doctor,” he said.
“I try to make you one. I will get you your
coffee.”
He sent in a maid to sweep up the breakage from
the coffee-tray, and presently he came with another
pot and cup. He had steadied down but was not
tranquil. -
“You know that man,” I said, “and you wanted
to kill him.”
“I never saw him before,” he said.
“You have had some sort of dealing with him.


TEIE MYSTERY OF HARTILEY HOUSE 123,
EIe has been hunting for you. He has found you.
I think we are going to find you more interesting,
Jed. The man will remain in the neighbourhood;
I think you are going to have some unpleasant
hours. The thought does not make me unhappy.”
“I wish I could find a friend in this house,” said
Jed. -
“I wish you could deserve one,” I said.


CHAPTER XXI
Y description of Hartley House has been so
sketchy and indifferent that it may not have
included mention of the formal gardens which took
in the river side of the place. They were charming
at all times but particularly so at sunset, when the
radiance was behind the western hills two miles
across the water and was reflected in the clouds
back off our own eastern hills. The shore at this
point was narrow, and the river was wide. Hills,
river and bottom-lands formed an intimate sanc-
tuary which evening glorified.
To the north the gardens terminated at a high
brick wall against which hollyhocks grew and now
were in gorgeous blossom. The hollyhock to me
connotes substantial human relationship. It sug-
gests a permanency in affections and a continuity
in life. People have lived, loved and suffered
where hollyhocks grow luxuriantly, and the holly-
hock preserves the tradition and the record of their
lives.
Jed had joined me in the garden, and we were
sitting on a stone bench facing the river not fifty
feet from the brick wall and the hollyhocks to the
124


THE MYSTERY OF HARTLEY HOUSE 125
north. Jed was expected within a quarter of an
hour to join Mr. Sidney. He seemed dejected and
worried—in a fashion timid, I thought.
When he came to sit down beside me, I resented
the intrusion for a moment; but knowing that he
had only a few moments in which to impose his
presence upon me, I did not make him feel any
more unwelcome than ordinarily he knew himself
to be. I don't know what fascination I had for
the man. I suppose every human being needs to
keep his isolation from becoming that of a pariah,
even if he chooses to isolate himself. Jed knew
that he had nothing like a friend in the house
except Mrs. Sidney, and evidently his egotism
demanded a friendly association upon some
other basis. But he found me a disappoint-
Iment.
A schooner deep in the water with brick from
up the river had just come in sight around a point
above, and with dirty sails spread to the light wind
was caught in the glorification of the water. A
catbird was hopping in and out of the shrubbery,
and even with Jed by my side I was sentient and
COntent.
It was not a noise that attracted my attention.
It must have been the sensation of being stared at.
I turned my head toward the wall to the north. In
line with the bench on which we sat, and just top-
ping the wall, was the head of the Spanish sailor.


126 THE MYSTERY OF EIARTLEY HOUSE
He and I looked at each other for what seemed
to be at least a moment. His earrings glittered.
His gaze was steady and both inquiring and pur-
poseful. Even in inquiry it seemed malignant,
with the malice which comes from a sense of
injury. -
I felt a decidedly unpleasant shock with th
creeps which come from a good ghost-story. If he
had appeared suddenly at full length somewhere
in the garden, walking about, it would have been
different. But just his head appearing above the
wall, and he perfectly unexpected, unexplained,
motionless and inquiring—it gave you the shivers
of a child frightened at night in the nursery.
“You’re poor company,” said Jed, “but I am
too, and I have to go to Mr. Sidney.”
I seemed not to hear him. It was not intended
to rebuff him; I was held by the Spaniard's eyes.
Jed went into a huff and said: “Oh, go to the
jlevil.”
Then he also turned and saw the head above the
wall.
He arose and stood looking at the Spaniard as
intently as the Spaniard was looking at him. This
situation lasted a full minute, without a movement
or word from one of us. Then the Spaniard's face,
graven in lines of malevolent purpose, softened into
a smile which expressed satisfaction with pros-
pects. And then the head disappeared suddenly.


128 THE MYSTERY OF HARTLEY HOUSE *
looked at Jed, who was as pitifully frightened as a
child in the dark. He made every demonstration
of fright except wailing. Then he braced himself,
recovered his courage and without saying anything
went into the house to join Mr. Sidney.


CHAPTER XXII
HEN I saw Mr. Sidney that evening he made
a remark in joke that Jed was ill and needed
my attention.
“I have not had the usual satisfaction of my
wine,” he said, “and I know it is because Jed is
not in condition.”
“I’m not well, Mr. Sidney,” said Jed. “I didn't
want to say anything about it, because I didn’t want
to interfere with your evening, but since you men-
tion it, I’ll admit it.”
“Go on along then, Jed,” said Mr. Sidney. “Go
and have the Doctor look you over.”
“I’m not sick,” said Jed almost angrily, “but
I know I’m bad company. I’ll go to bed.”
“You’d better, Jed,” said Mr. Sidney. “You’ve
almost soured my wine.”
“There's something wrong with the man,” I said
as Jed left, “but it isn’t physical.”
“So I imagined,” said Mr. Sidney. “He’s as
strong as an ox. He's got the constitution of an
onion. However, he's not himself to-night, and
that's all there is to that. Will you read to me?”
It was eleven o’clock when I went to my room.
I was glad of my release, although it had been a
129


130 THE MYSTERY OF HARTLEY HOUSE *
pleasant evening. For a dead or a dying man—for
a living and live man, for that matter—Mr. Sidney
had extraordinary manners and great charm. He
gave a dignity and worth to life by his very manner
of leaving it. In going from it, he proved it to be
'worth while—which, I suspect, is the highest ac-
complishment of the real gentleman.
He accepted life as something which, properly
lived, is innately valuable. It was a jewel to be
had and handed on. It was wonderfully cut and
with many facets, could be held and possessed for
a while, and given to others.
After I had gone to my room, I found myself
restless and thought I might find rest in a walk. I
expected to be joined by my friends the mastiffs
and Airedales as soon as I was outside, but not a
dog appeared. This was enough to be noticed, but
not enough, at the time, to be given significance.
The Airedales, after a day of confinement, fre-
quently ranged in a pack far over the grounds.
The mastiffs were steady, but they might find com-
pany, in the early part of night, in the kitchen or
garage. It was merely an incident to be noticed
that no dogs came to meet me. I walked about for
a while and reëntered the house with quieter
InerWeS.
I found that I was tired. Ordinarily I liked at
least an hour's reading just before bed, but this
night I wanted sleep.


THE MYSTERY OF HARTLEY HOUSE 131
I was grateful for the mood and the opportunity,
and I yawned once or twice as I got into my
pajamas.
I do not know when I went to sleep or how soon
thereafter I awakened. It was possibly only two
hours later. I did not look at my watch, for the
very good reason that other things at the time
were more important. A bright moonlight was
shining, and whatever had awakened me, the moon-
light showed me good cause to be awake. In a
window which the moonlight touched with full, il-
luminating force, was a face recognisable as that
of the Spanish sailor.
Again only his head was visible, but this time he
was in my bedroom window and seemingly trying
for entrance into my room. This may seem a more
ghastly proceeding than his appearance above the
wall early in the evening, but really it was not. I
had the shock of unpleasant astonishment, but I
felt, to my satisfaction, the ability to handle the
situation. I was not frightened by the appearance
of the head in my window. I suppose it is because
the appearance suggested burglars, and burglars
are conventional.
I lay quietly in bed and wondered how much
more than the head I should see. Just then I was
blinded by the light of an electric flash-light hitting
me full in the eyes.
A second later the flash was gone, the face in


132 THE MYSTERY OF HARTLEY HOUSE
the window was gone and a slight movement on
the gravel below showed me that my visitor was
gone. I got up and looked out. Although the
lawn was bright in the moonlight, no one was to
be seen. The Spaniard had disappeared into the
Woods.
To come to an understanding of the sailor's acts,
not much reasoning was needed: it was not my
room he was trying to enter, but Jed's. His flash-
light had not only shown that I was awake but
that he had the wrong man, and he had climbed
down and run into the woods. One mystery was
how he had escaped the dogs.


CHAPTER XXIII
HAT was explained the next day: they had not
been loose the night before; they had not been
released from their kennels. They were found
restless from an unexpected night of confinement.
They had not been out because the stableman who
had charge of them had spent the afternoon and
night in the village of Hartley, drunk.
It was an extraordinary and not an ordinary
proceeding for this stableman, who had been a
dependable character. It did not require much
suspicion to conjecture that he had been tampered
with in deliberate purpose to free the grounds of
the dogs for the use the Spanish sailor made when
he climbed up to my room.
The stableman, proved delinquent, was so ap-
parently contrite and innocent that it would have
been an injustice to punish or discharge him. He
had gone to the village in the early afternoon on
an assigned mission for the house. He had used
the opportunity to drink a few glasses of beer, for
which proceeding no one would blame him in Hart-
ley House. It seems that he drank two or three
glasses more than he intended to and, even beer
being in a fashion intoxicating, got into a condition
133


184 THE MYSTERY OF HARTLEY House
which made him amiable to the approach of a
stranger who succeeded in interesting him in the
immediate prospects of life, which then to him
were chiefly alcoholic.
He and the stranger had much talk and many
drinks. The stableman lost all sense of responsi-
bility, which was not strange, and proceeded from
beer to strong liquor, forgetting all his duties to
the house. In consequence he did not get home
that night, and the dogs were not loose.
Naturally one drew a direct line from this per-
formance to the appearance of the Spaniard at my
window, and there was natural wonder as to what
kind of confederate the Spaniard could have so
effectually to prepare the way for him.
The stableman expected nothing less than dis-
charge when he learned, from servants’ gossip,
what had happened as the result of his indiscre-
tions. He may have been astonished to discover
that there was no intent to punish him—I do not
know. But there was no such intent—only a very
earnest effort to find out what he had encountered.
The Spaniard had a confederate who was in-
genious and resourceful: that was evident. He
had made a deliberate play to get the dogs out of
the way the night the sailor made his attempt to
get into Jed's room, and had succeeded in almost
getting into mine.
Two days after the strange appearances of the


THE MYSTERY OF HARTILEY HOUSE 135
Spaniard, I was asked for and was told that a
gentleman desired to see me. I went to the office
of the house and saw a man who instantly sug-
gested the one who had entertained the stableman
so successfully. º
He was so easily described that it was a crime
for even a drunken stableman to have missed his
distinguishing characteristics, but at that, the
stableman had made identification possible. The
moment I saw the fellow I thought we were nearer
the solution of the mystery of Hartley House. I
did not care to be nearer to it, unless I could be
of help to people of whom I had come to be very
fond; but thinking that thus I could be of help,
I was eager to get the information needed.
He was a significantly insignificant-looking man:
that was his identifying mark. He seemed timid
and insecure of himself, apologetic for his intrusion
upon me and withal determined to do whatever it
was that was in his program. I wondered how so
shrinking an individual had played a jovial part
in a village tavern with yokels at drink. His card
indicated him to be a lawyer and gave his name as
Philetus M. Brown. He came directly to his sub-
ject—for which I thanked him—as soon as he had
made a brief preliminary of commonplaces of in-
troduction and greeting.
“I have asked for you, Doctor, because I know
of no one else here who will serve. I do not wish


TEIE MYSTERY OF HARTLEY HOUSE 137
to know many languages to make my small living.
My Spanish client does not know much if any Eng-
lish. He has been a man of precarious manner of
living, and it seems that several years ago he was
in the employ of Mr. Sidney.”
“Where Was that?” I asked.
The little man pulled at his coat-cuffs and smiled
again.
“My client being Spanish and Mr. Sidney hav-
ing lived many years in Montevideo, it might be
assumed that it was there,” he said. “It was there,
and my client came into possession of a document
—by dishonest means, I suspect—of which he now
retains only one page. I wish to leave a copy of
this page with you, and later to find out to what
extent it interests Mr. Sidney.”
“You mean—to find out if he will submit to
blackmail,” I said.
“I anticipated your remark,” he said. “I look
at the matter differently. If Mr. Sidney has some-
thing to conceal, we shall be glad to help him to
conceal it. I will leave a copy of the page from
the document with you, and with your permission
will see you later.” -
He handed me a long envelope and with a bow
asked to be shown to the door. Jed, not suspect-
ing that the little man had any connection with the
sailor, showed him out.
*


CEIAPTER XXIV
WENT to my room to examine the paper which
had been left with me. It was accompanied by .
an explanatory statement by “Att. Philetus M.
Brown.” I will give the explanatory statement
first. *
“Memoranda for Dr. Michelson: The accom-
panying typewritten sheet is a part of a document
stolen from Mr. Sidney in Montevideo ten years
ago by Alejandro Dravada, then a servant in the ca-
pacity of porter. Dravada preserves the original,
of which I have had several typewritten copies
made. Dravada had the complete document in
his hands, but only for a short while. He had dis-
covered, in the course of several years' service
under Mr. Sidney in Montevideo, that a strong-
box in Mr. Sidney's room was particularly guarded.
He supposed it contained jewels. He is, I should
judge, a person of small moral character and great
cupidity. He determined to steal the box, hoping
that its contents would enable him to get married
and set himself up in a small business.
“He succeeded in getting the box, by entering
Mr. Sidney's room, but before he could make his
138


THE MYSTERY OF HARTLEY HOUSE 139
escape he was unfortunate enough to be discovered
by another servant, known to you as Jed. Jed
levelled a revolver at my client and made him sur-
render the box.
“I can only conjecture here—frequently this
case has caused me to conjecture; but I think that
the man Jed, although he knew something valuable
was contained in the box, thought, as did my Span-
ish client, that it was personal property; and, un-
like my client, he was not careless of property
rights. This conjecture may not interest you, but
I imagine you asking: “Why did not Jed steal the
box he afterward took from my client?’ It was, I
think, because the man Jed was by nature honest,
and it was only when his inhibitions had been
broken down by the sight of another man commit-
ting a crime which had been easier for him to
commit, that he lost control of his morals. My
position in this matter is so equivocal that I feel
impelled to give you every conjecture I have been
able to form.
“The man Jed took the box. My client, des-
perate at finding himself robbed of his loot, armed
himself immediately and broke into Jed's room
shortly thereafter. He found Jed disconsolately
looking at a mass of papers, which was all the sup-
posed jewel-casket contained.
“In this disappointing occupation Jed was
aroused by the stealthy entrance of my client


140 THE MYSTERY OF HARTLEY HOUSE
through a window, but there was no conflict. Jed
pointed to the papers and laughed. My client was
shrewd enough to read Jed's emotions. He knew
that the treasure-trove had proved a soap-bubble.
He is a man of violent temper. In his double dis-
appointment he sprang at Jed, stabbed him in the
shoulder, seized the papers, scattered them about
the room and jumped out of the window.
“If this had been all, I should have no client in
this case. But in his rage Dravada, when he was
throwing the papers about, had unconsciously re-
tained one sheet in his clenched fist. He found it
in his fist when he came out of his senseless and
inordinate rage later; and then, his natural cu-
pidity and cunning reasserted, he realised that
something was being guarded in the box; that
something being only papers, it must follow that
the papers were valuable. He reproached himself
that his anger had defeated his judgment when it
was possible for him to take the entire contents of
the box. He did not dare go back: he had stabbed
Jed; the house might be alarmed. He had only
a single sheet of the guarded manuscript. It is a
copy of that sheet which you find here.
“I said I would give you my conjectures. You
will ask first why I am so candid in committing
to writing a communication of this nature. It is
because: first, I prefer to write it, owing to a physi-
cal timidity in conversation; and second, but


THE MYSTERY OF HARTLEY House 141
equally important, because I know the last thing
Mr. Sidney or any true friend of Mr. Sidney’s de-
sires is to have the story, of which this is a page,
made public.
“I do not know what this story is, but I know
who does know what it is. That person is the man
Jed—now, as before, a servant of Mr. Sidney. I
have made sufficient inquiry as to the position of
Jed in the household of Mr. Sidney to know that he
retains the manuscript found in the box, or if he
does not retain it, knows its contents.
“The visit of Mr. Sidney and his family to
Montevideo this winter betrayed Jed's whereabouts
to Dravada. He came north after they had sailed.
His cupidity has determination. I think your man
Jed appreciates that. I think from what Dravada
has told me, in his simple boasting fashion, that
Jed was dismayed to see him again in Montevideo.
“My client's first impulse, having followed Jed
to the United States, was to get at this secret by
force or theft, but he sees the physical difficulties
in the way; and being, except in his violent mo-
ments, a reasonable man, he has had recourse to an
attorney to obtain such settlement as his knowl-
edge may be worth.
“I do not wish to defend my course in the
matter. I suggest merely that Mr. Sidney and all
concerned will fare the better for having a man of
consideration and discretion, such as I flatter my-


142 THE MYSTERY OF HARTLEY HOUSE
self I am, intervening between them and a man
of the moral completion indicated by my client. I
shall be at your disposal, Doctor, within any rea-
sonable time. I leave it to your judgment to handle
the matter within Hartley House.”
The copy of manuscript which accompanied
the letter was as follows:
“. . . . would be fatal to the success of what
I have done and intend to do if this confession were
to be found. It might be asked, then, why expose
myself and my happiness to the chance of discovery
of things which I may lock forever by simply for-
getting. It is sufficient answer to that question to
admit that for me I could not be content unless it
were certain that what I have done should be
known. I want the record of it preserved. When
I am dead I want the record of it known. It
increases my satisfaction to know that I shall
cause moralists to be indignant. I want to be
known as a criminal. I want my crime to be talked
about. I want it remembered. That is the savour
of my life. It would be impossible for me to ob-
tain a sufficient satisfaction unless I made it pos-
sible for the story of a crime to be known sometime.
So long as I live, I shall need and seek conceal-
ment; but I should not be happy unless I could
anticipate disclosure. My crime . . . .”
.


TELIE MYSTERY OF HARTLEY HOUSE 143
That Was all.
Several persons—two at least: Dravada and Att.
Brown—knew as much as I had read. Three per-
sons, in the house, Mr. Sidney, Mrs. Sidney and
Jed, knew the story completely.
It was this knowledge which had given Jed his
control in the house, Mrs. Sidney her unhappiness
and Mr. Sidney some of his pleasures.
º


CHAPTER XXV
HE search for a solvent of the Hartley House
mysteries was insistent. Alcott's incidental
remark came back to me: “It might have been
Montevideo.”
I felt uncomfortable to recall this, ashamed and
abashed, as if in recalling it I had done something
to lower myself in my self-respect. I had to go to
Mrs. Sidney with the information and insinuations
Attorney Philetus M. Brown had given me. My
desire was to protect her from precisely this kind
of trouble; my necessity was to carry the trouble
to her. I had to know how to act.
By way of preliminary I told her of the three
appearances of the Spaniard and then of the ap-
pearance of the lawyer. When I offered her the
sheet of paper containing a transcript of a page of
Mr. Sidney's diary, her hands trembled, but she
took the sheet resolutely. She was greatly alarmed
but regained her composure.
She read the page hurriedly and then more care-
fully and, it seemed, with relief.
“I have to deal with these men,” I said, “and
I must know how to do it. They can be dealt with
144


º
~
~
THE MYSTERY OF HARTLEY HOUSE 147
by criminal law if there is no reason why protection
should not be sought in that fashion.”
“There is,” said Mrs. Sidney, “and I cannot
tell you the reason.”
“You know that I do not ask for it,” I said.
“You know there is something very strange
about this house?”
“That was evident in twenty-four hours,” I said,
“but it means nothing to me. I am not curious.
I merely want to know how to deal with these
men.”
“It is not a lack of confidence in you that keeps
me from telling what is wrong here,” said Mrs.
Sidney. “It would be a relief to do so. There
have been times when I could hardly keep myself
from taking the help and protection which your
knowledge of the situation would give me. It has
been hard to stand it all alone, John.”
I was glad, for the first time consciously, that
my name was John. It had an honest, straightfor-
Ward sound, suggesting the plain, honest dealing
that might be needed in this house.
“The reason I do not tell you, John,” said Mrs.
Sidney, “is because I would not have another con-
science distressed. You could never again be really
happy if you knew the story of which this sheet is
a page. You could not do me any good if you
knew it. You would only torment yourself.”
“So much for that,” I said. “I take yºur judg-
*


146 THE MYSTERY OF HARTLEY HOUSE
--
ment. But how am I to deal with these fellows?”
Mrs. Sidney hesitated.
“I don’t know,” she said. “I’m sure I don't
know.” -
“Do you know a man named Dravada?” I
asked. “Did you know him when you lived in
Montevideo? Can you tell me anything about him
without telling something that you do not want
to? 25 -
“I can tell you about Dravada,” said Mrs. Sid-
ney. “Mr. Sidney was head of a shipping firm.
Dravada had been a sailor. He had come to be a
porter or stevedore about the docks. We needed
a porter at home, and Mr. Sidney brought this man
from the docks to fill the position. He was a docile
creature, very strong and useful, and never annoy-
ing. . . . . Now I will tell you as much as I
possibly can without doing you a great injustice.
“We had lived in Montevideo fifteen years when
Jed came to us. He has been with us ever since.
Mr. Sidney began writing the manuscript, of which
this is a copy of one sheet, the year Jed came. It
was a postponed desire which grew stronger as it
was denied.
“The only reason I do not tell what the manu-
script contains is because I value your peace of
mind. I know from my own experience that your
conscience ifever would be at rest if you had full
knowledge, and yet you would be entirely helpless.
|


THE MYSTERY OF BARTLEY HOUSE 147
So out of consideration for you I shall not tell you
more than I have to.
“Mr. Sidney never has had the slightest scruple
as to what he has done; he rejoices in it. You have
spoken of his will to live; what I am holding back
from you would explain it. He says in this page
of his manuscript which you have seen that it per-
fects his satisfaction to leave a record of his crime.
I know that it does. I understand that he had
to have it known after his death that he had done
What he had.
“Jed's family name is Arliss. He was a sailor
on a British ship which sailed from Montevideo to
Liverpool, and he became tired of sea work. Mr.
Sidney had seen him about the wharf and had been
attracted to him. They had talked enough for Mr.
Sidney to learn of Jed's ambition for a comfort-
able life on shore. Mr. Sidney gave him the chance
to realise it in our house.
“Jed, after he was taken into the house, found
that Mr. Sidney used great precautions with some-
thing which he locked in a box. When Dravada
came, he also saw the box which Mr Sidney seemed
to guard so carefully. Dravada decided to steal
whatever was in the box. Jed found him in the
act. They fought, but Jed retained the contents—
Mr. Sidney's manuscript.”
“Then Jed knows the secret?” I asked.
“He does.”


* CHAPTER XXVI
ROWN, the lawyer, came to Hartley House the
next day to see me. I think he regarded his
plan of blackmail as irresistible. I wonder that he
did not have an express Wagon and a large chest
with him. He was amiable and expectant.
“You have decided,” he said as Jed, having
brought him to me on the porch, went away. He
had his cane and his gloves and his nap-worn suit.
“You get nothing,” I said, “and may act upon
that information.”
The disappointment was unpleasant to him. If
I wanted to dramatise the effect, I'd say it was
catastrophic. He sat down suddenly in the near-
est wicker chair, and his face became ugly in ap-
pearance.
“You must know, Doctor,” he said, “that I am
nerved to the performance of my duty by the
thought of a wife and two daughters for whom I
have provided indifferently. I will not say that
their situation is desperate, but it may make me
desperate. I feel that we have a claim here which
might easily be adjusted.”
“You use a number of euphemisms for black-
mail,” I said, “and none of them conceals your
149


150 TEHE MYSTERY OF HARTLEY HOUSL
meaning. If your wife and daughters are in
need, you might approach Mrs. Sidney as the
almoner of Mr. Sidney's charities. That, at least,
would be an honest statement of your case, and it
might be effective.”
He brightened at once.
“I thank you for a lesson in procedure,” he said.
“We shall consider it upon such an understand-
ing.”
I saw the mistake I had made.
“I assure you,” I said, “you may consider noth-
ing upon the terms you wish to have considered in
this house. If your family is in need, you may
present the case as a case of need. It will be
wholly unrelated to your present demand. Your
attempt at blackmail is so unconsidered that you
may go shriek to the world or to the prosecuting
attorney. The family is not interested in you or
your client.”
The shabby little fellow seemed to get blue-nosed
and blue-lipped in disappointment.
“I am sure you cannot have considered your
interests,” he said.
“What interests?” I asked.
“The interests of the family. Mr. and Mrs.
Sidney certainly do not want a scandal.”
“Certainly not. How are they threatened with
One?”
“But the manuscript indicates one.”


THE MYSTERY OF HARTILEY HOUSE 151
“Does it? I have read it, and I know nothing.
You have read it. What do you know?”
“I can read English,” he said with spirit. “I
can understand that when a man uses the word
‘crime,’ he means crime. I read in Mr. Sidney's
handwriting that he had committed a crime and
that he was committing an indiscretion in putting
the account on paper.”
“I cannot correct your convictions,” I said.
“You must use your best judgment. You have
our permission to do anything that suggests itself
to you.”
“You’re going to brazen it out,” he cried.
“We are not going to do anything at all,” I said,
“not seeing any necessity for doing anything. I
might merely suggest to you that there are legal
provisions against blackmail.”
The quiet little man, with his notions of profit
evaporating, suddenly became savage and des-
perate.
“I can’t be fooled with,” he cried. “I know you.
You won’t assail me with a blackmail charge, be-
cause you do not dare. You think I do not know
enough, but you will not take a chance of prose-
cuting me. I know I am guilty and can be pun-
ished unless I have a real hold on this family. I
have taken the chance that I have a real hold. It
was not certain, but now I know it. It is not
enough of a hold, but it is enough to keep you from


152 THE MYSTERY OF HARTLEY HOUSE
making trouble for me, and I’ll see that soon it
will be enough to make you listen to me.”
“You may do anything you want to do,” I said.
He became quiet and cunning again.
“Then, if you don’t mind, I’d like to speak to
Jed,” he said.
I rang for him. *
When Jed came, the little shabby lawyer became
excited again and got up out of his chair to shake
his finger at Jed.
“You are in for trouble,” he said. “We know
what you have, and we'll get it. They don’t dare
stop us, and I want to give you notice that you are
marked. That’s all. You’ll be followed and
hounded and run down in the end, and there’ll be
an end to this superciliousness here. It may be
when you’re dead.
“That’s a threat, and the people in this house
can make the best of it. I’m in this case to stay,
and my Spanish client is not easily discouraged or
controlled. You have chosen to deal with us in
this fashion. Now we'll deal with you in our
fashion. We'll get the rest of this evidence, and
we'll make you pay ten times more than we'd be
willing to settle for now. We’ve got an equity in
this matter, and we're going to collect it. We know
all about you, my friend Jed, and we’ll show you
that we do. Where's my cane and hat? I’m go-
ing to get out of here. You'll regret it.”


THE MYSTERY OF HARTILEY HOUSE 153
“Jed,” I said, “show the gentleman where the
door is and don't let the dogs attack him on the
way out.”
A disappointed shyster went away in a hurry.
I was not only perplexed but alarmed. Of the
rapacity of the little man, of his lack of conscience
and morals, I had no doubt at all. My only ques-
tion was whether he could make his malevolence
and cupidity effective.
Jed showed him to the door and then came back.
I could see that he was frightened nearly to death.


CHAPTER XXVII
HAD begun to understand Jed better. He had
periods in which passion unsettled his reason
and destroyed his normal restraints. In these
passions he was dangerous. His mind then seemed
to be in a tempest. He became malevolent and
abusive. -
He did not remain constantly under the domi-
nance of these passions. His case would have been
simple to understand if he had been constantly
pressing a purpose, but he was not. His rascality
was not adroit and it was not consistent. He
could have ruined what was left of Mr. Sidney's
colourful life but he never was to the old man any-
thing but a considerate servant, except when he
seemed rather to be a jovial friend. He had a
strong affection for Mr. Sidney. When I fully
perceived that, I had begun to understand Jed.
He was a periodic villain to every one except Mr.
Sidney.
His experiences with the Spaniard and the
lawyer unnerved him for a week. I was glad to
see retribution at his door, but when I saw how he
kept an amiable and jovial composure in the pres-
|
154


TEIE MYSTERY OF HARTLEY HOUSE 155
ence of Mr. Sidney, I had reluctantly to concede
to myself that I had an unworthy feeling of ad-
miration for the rascal. -
He was greatly terrified, for reasons which he
knew better than I, at the idea of death. It was
physically and spiritually abhorrent to him. I
had talked enough with him to know that he was
an unnatural egotist, although nearly all egotists
are natural. - -
Dissolution as a certainty is not a comfortable
thought to any human being, but it is supportable.
chiefly because the ordinary, human being admits
it once into his perceptions and then denies it. Jed
was such an unnatural egotist that he could not
deny the idea. He constantly embraced it and con-
stantly was dismayed by it. He was too important
to have been born without purpose and to die with-
out accomplishment. That thought terrified and
agonised him. He was dying all the time men-
tally. - …”
Jed was glad to drink heavily because it reduced
his world to endurable form. When he was alcohol-
ised he was jovial and the world was jovial. He
feared prospects. He was not particularly afraid
of things that stood before him. In the first week
after the episodes of the Spaniard and the lawyer,
he said several times:
“I wouldn’t mind if I had them where I could
deal with them.”


156 THE MYSTERY OF HARTLEY HOUSE
I realised that it was the invisibility of his
danger which made him long for something dan-
gerous in tangible form. If the Spaniard and the
lawyer had wanted to devise an exquisite torture
for their victim, they could have adopted no better
expedient than that of disappearing. Their ab-
sence abandoned Jed to his imaginings.
He made a wonderful showing of stoicism, but I
saw him break down completely three times the
first week when nerves got the better of him. In
spite of the satisfaction his discomfort gave me, I
felt sorry for him.
“Those fellows are harmless, Jed,” I said.
“Why don't you regard them as such?’”
“I don't fool myself, Doctor. They are not
harmless. I wish I knew their scheme. It’s this
waiting in the dark that paralyses me. If they’d
come out openly, I’d feel relieved, even if it made
the danger imminent.”
“Why don't you go away?”
“This is the only place I possibly could be safe.
There is a protection here.”
“Why don’t you conform to these men's de-
Sires?”
“Do you know this secret, Doctor?”
“I do not. I do not want to know it.”
“You are a strange man. Well, I'm a strange
man myself. Believe me or not, merely for Mr.
Sidney's sake I’d not tell them or help them, even


TEIE MYSTERY OF HARTLEY HOUSE 157
if there were no advantage to me in not telling.”
“You admit there is an advantage?”
“I know I seem a scoundrel.”
“You mean you know you are one.”
“No, I’m not, not a thorough one,” he said
stoutly. “I’ve had a narrow life. I’ve wanted a
better one. I’ve had ambitions and aspirations.
I had a romantic, reading boyhood. I’ve read
nearly all the fiction there is, good fiction. I’ve
had a hard life. I owe it to myself not to die dis-
appointed with nothing accomplished. I’ve got to
live some of the romance I’ve imagined. I’m go-
ing to do it—I’m going to do it.”
“So you terrorise a couple of women! Well,
thank God you’ce terrorised by a couple of men.”
Day after day went by, and there was no hint
of action by the shyster and no sign of the Span-
iard. Even Jed, I think, grew a bit calmer. I
must concede that even in his greatest panic there
was no indication of it when he was with Mr. Sid-
ney. A curious composition of character was in
this man. I think his code of morals was complete
in an idea of service to his employer.
His attendance upon Mr. Sidney was exacting,
and a strain upon his strength and nerves. The
most cheerful sick-room—and Mr. Sidney's was
cordial—is a test of endurance of the people who
have to live their lives there.
Jed needed diversion, but he was afraid to take


158 THE MYSTERY OF HARTLEY HOUSE
it, even in the formal garden or in the immediate
vicinity of the house. He evidently felt the se-
curity of the walls and feared to leave it. This
wore on him.
“I’m not sleeping well, Doctor,” he said.
“What I ought to do,” I replied, “is to prescribe
some drugs which would enslave you and make you
sleep very well, very long, very soon.”
“But you won’t,” he said with a smile, “because
you’ve got a conscience and it would bother you;
and that’s why I like and trust you.”
“Thank you for nothing,” I said, “but what you
need is more air and diversion.”
“I don't dare go out. I don’t know what they
are up to. It's this dreadful suspense.”
“I’ll go out with you,” I said. “We can take
a car for an hour's drive. It will rest you and
relieve the tension.” -
“We both can go armed,” he suggested eagerly.
Why did I care whether this fellow was physi-
cally well or ill? There is something in a physi-
cian which leads him to disregard the moral char-
acter of persons physically in need of care. It's
their bodies, not their souls or minds, that concern
us. Men to their trade! Nevertheless I strove
for a bargain with him.
“I am engaged to Miss Sidney, Jed,” I said.
“You have some means of terrifying her mother.
Because you have that power, two men have the


THE MYSTERY OF HARTLEY HOUSE 161
better than you think I do. You'll torment your-
self until you do something you’ll regret.”
“Go to the devil,” said Jed.
Isobel and I had been progressing as rationally
as two young people could, situated with regard
to each other as we were. She pestered me but
frequently was kind.
She knew I enjoyed a sensuous mood if I could
hear the piano when I was unoccupied and relax-
ing, and it was a part of her unobtrusive kindness
that if I were sitting in the library of an evening,
just before dinner, she would go into the music-
room across the hall and play for a half-hour as
if to amuse herself.
One evening I had been reading and Isobel had
gone to the piano. I had put my book down on my
knees as she began to play. Then I was aroused
by perceiving, without seeing, that something was
Inear Ime.
I turned suddenly and saw Jed. He was not
three feet behind my chair. His face revealed dis-
order of mind.
“Do you want a cocktail?” he asked.
“No,” I said.
Isobel touched the keys of the piano, as a player
done with a mood may do to express surfeit or
conclusion.
“Not a mild one?” Jed asked, persisting.
“Well, then, very weak,” I said.


162 THE MYSTERY OF HARTLEY HOUSE
I took up my book again and forced myself, as
discipline, to read. I had not been able to do it
so long as Isobel played, but now that she had
stopped I might at least try.
* I made an effort. I tried to keep my attention
on the type. It was no use. After fifteen minutes'
reading I found that I had not turned a page.
Neither had Jed brought the cocktail. I was rest-
less and disgusted with myself. I got up and
walked about the library. I went to the front
entrance to find if a few deep breaths in the open
would not produce tranquillity.
As I stood at the entrance Isobel came running
‘toward it. I heard her before I saw her. She was
running and gasping. She came up the steps, saw
me, controlled herself and tried to appear undis-
turbed. She might have succeeded, but a sleeve of
her gown was torn from her waist and had fallen
to her wrist.
“What has happened to you?” I asked.
“Nothing,” she said.
“You were running.”
“A little exercise.”
“Look at your sleeve,” I said.
She clutched at it as if she had become conscious
of it for the first time, and then ran by me and
indoors.
We met at dinner twenty minutes later. Isobel
had on another gown. Jed did not serve us.


THE MYSTERY OF EIARTLEY HOUSE 163
Dinner was delayed ten minutes. Then two maids
undertook the service. Mrs. Sidney asked for Jed.
One of the maids said that he had not appeared and
they were doing the best they could without him.
“Why, what can have happened to Jed?” Mrs.
Sidney exclaimed.
“What did happen to Jed?” I asked Isobel after
dinner when we were alone.
“I don’t know,” she said.
“Who tore your sleeve?”
“Jed,” she said with resolute frankness.
“Where is he?”
“I don’t know.”
“Where were you when he did it?”
“At the edge of the woods. I had gone out for
a bit of air—just across the lawn. Jed appeared.”
“What did he say?”
“I don't know—something incoherent, violent;
and he took me by the sleeve. I was not fright-
ened, but I drew back suddenly. My sleeve ripped
out. We were at the edge of the woods. Three
men appeared, strangled Jed before he could cry
out, picked him up and carried him off.”
I spent the evening with Mr. Sidney and told
him that Jed was ill. He was concerned, and I
made the lie a kindly one.
“It is insignificant,” I said. “With his habits
he must occasionally pay a price. A touch of in-
digestion this time.”


166 TEIE MYSTERY OF HARTLEY BIOUSE
we had reason also to believe that he could be
brought out to Hartley House without much diffis
culty.
Two days later the detectives reported that the
lawyer had disappeared from all his accustomed
places and that it might require some time to get
trace of him. -
Jed had been gone four days when one of the
maids asked for a month’s leave. Her mother was
very sick, she said. Mrs. Sidney agreed willingly,
although disliking to have an unfamiliar servant in
the house to fill this maid’s place for the time she
would be gone. Anna, the maid, said that a very
close friend of hers would be glad of an opportu-
nity to have a month in the country. Mrs. Sidney
took Anna's recommendation with some relief.
The day Anna went away a very pretty girl was
met at the train by the chauffeur. She was the
thirty-day maid. I saw her as she came in. I
thought her manner did not indicate domestic
service, but afterward I found that in spite of ap-
pearance she was very deft and competent. With
Jed gone, such of his duties as could be done by the
maids were given them; and this new servant,
Agnes, was so efficient in the dining-room that she
took over what Jed had done there.
Mr. Sidney liked attractive women about him,
and Agnes pleased him with her bright, pretty ap-
pearance and good-humoured serviceability. In


THE MYSTERY OF HARTLEY HOUSE 167
*
three or four days he was glad to have her assigned
to duties which Jed had done for him. In little
over a week Agnes had fitted into the routine of the
house perfectly.
Up to this time nothing had been heard of Jed,
but on the ninth day of his disappearance the de-
tectives telephoned that they had the lawyer.
McGuire was the detective-superintendent's name.
“I am not to understand what is back of this
case,” he suggested, telephoning.
“It is not necessary,” I said. “If he is willing
to come here in your custody, that is enough. I
think he will be, if you give him to understand that
it may be the short way out of a great deal of
difficulty.”
The next day McGuire, the detective, came with
the lawyer, who apparently was trying to keep
from looking as frightened as he felt.
“I’ll have you understand I came of my own
volition,” he said.
“With Mr. McGuire representing your volition,”
I suggested. -
“Do you care to have him know the nature of
the business that has come up between us?”
“If you do, I am willing,” I said. “I do not
know any law, but I am sure you are near the peni-
tentiary on two charges.”
“I think I’ll look about the grounds for a
while,” said McGuire. -


168 THE MYSTERY OF HARTLEY HOUSE
“I’ll be glad to show you around in about five
minutes,” I said.
“I’ll just take a look,” he replied. “That will
be enough, and I’ll be back in five minutes.”
“What do you expect to gain by this?” the law-
yer asked when the detective had gone.
“What did you fear to lose by not coming?” I
asked. “Suppose we make our dealing plain. You
were one of a party of three that abducted the
servant Jed. We want him released and returned
here where he is needed.”
“You are talking nonsense,” said the lawyer.
“I came with your detective because I thought
that at last this household was prepared to deal
reasonably with a reasonable man.”
“You thought so because you thought the house-
hold had been terrorised by the disappearance of
Jed. It has not been. We intend that Jed shall
not come to any harm if it can be prevented by us,
and we want him returned here where he is
needed.”
“I am astonished that you should have wasted
my time in such a preposterous supposition,” said
the lawyer. “I have only one matter to take up
with this family. You know what that is. We are
wasting time—I have wasted too much already.”
“Where is Jed?” I asked.
“That's none of my business.”
“It will be made yours.”


CHAPTER XXX
VER since Jed had disappeared I had been
accustomed to taking certain responsibilities
with regard to the house. The element of security
entered as a question. I knew we were in circum-
stances which demanded—at least asked—precau-
tions. I went about the house at night to see to
locks, in a supervision of the duties the servants
performed in closing the place—one I took on my-
self without saying anything about it.
Hartley House was large, with many wings. It
was nearly a half-hour's work to visit all the en-
trances and see to bolts. Many of the halls and
corridors were dark, and I carried an electric flash
to use when needed.
I did not say anything of my assumed duties, but
I suggested to Mrs. Sidney that, considering the
state of the house, it would be wise to tell the
household that all doors would be locked at ten
o'clock. Mrs. Sidney thought this good policy and
the servants were so informed.
I made my rounds about midnight, passing the
night until then with Mr. Sidney in a poor effort
to substitute for the wine-drinking Jed. The
night which had our new phenomenon as a develop-
ment I started through the house at midnight. I
170


THE MYSTERY OF HARTLEY HOUSE 171
had gone from Mr. Sidney's room to my own, had
put on a smoking-jacket and slippers, put my re-
volver in my pocket and had laid my watch on
the dresser.
I went downstairs and examined the bolt, lock,
and chains on the doors at the main entrance. In
the halls leading from these doors there were elec-
tric buttons, and the house being presumably closed
for the night and darkened, I went from hall to
hall, from door to door, lighting my way by pushing
the buttons and turning off the lights when I had
satisfied myself. In two wings, one to the north
and one to the south, there was no electric wiring.
In the halls of these wings I went along easily
enough with an occasional flash of the little light
I carried.
Jed's room was in the south wing on the second
floor. The windows of the hall toward the east
showed the waning moon just rising above a grove
of oak mixed with larch, and I stopped at one of
the windows to admire the quiet scene and consider
my own condition. I suppose a young man, even
a stick of a man, knowing Isobel and seeing a moon
coming up over a massed grove of oak mixed with
larch, must have given a moment's attention to
himself.
Before I could become as pensive as I certainly
should have, uninterrupted, I was attracted—not
startled but turned—by a noise at the farther end


THE MYSTERY OF HARTLEY HOUSE 173
in it—it had no recesses or furniture to offer con-
cealment—and found the door locked from the out-
side. -
By this time I had my senses fully recovered.
I ran to the nearest window and was just in time
to see two figures, one in white, the other indistinct,
at the far edge of the lawn, running. They ran
into the woods, and while I stood at the window,
trying with a painful consciousness of stupidity
and ineptitude to decide upon a course of action, I
heard an automobile-engine start in the lane be-
yond the woods.


CBIAPTER XXXII
ARTLEY HOUSE had a general office where
the business of the estate was handled. It
was to one side of the main entrance.
I had promised to be an extraordinary person
in meeting extraordinary circumstance, but all I
did was to go to the office and, lighting the lights,
sit there. I was in the extreme dejection of a
weakling when the door opened and Isobel came in.
“What are you doing up?” I asked.
“I’ll ask the same thing of you. What are you
and the whole household doing, awake and mov-
ing?”
“I did not know the whole household was stir-
ring,” I said.
“It is, and I was awakened. I did not want to
arouse Mother if she was sleeping, but I did want
to know what had set the whole place in motion at
this hour of the night.”
I told her that housebreakers had been surprised
at work and had escaped.
“If you have been disturbed,” I suggested,
“probably your father has also. You had better
go to his room and tell him that the servants have
been flustered by a burglar-scare, and then you had
178


THE MYSTERY OF HARTILEY HOUSE 179
better go to your mother's room and stay with her
until things quiet down.”
That seemed sound enough advice, but when
Isobel had gone I was left wondering again what to
do next. It was out of the question to notify the
authorities. The thieves had stolen something
which, from what I knew of it, I preferred to have
in their hands rather than in the possession of the
police. \
Our detective agency I could trust, but I did not
want to communicate with any one but McGuire,
the superintendent, and there was no need of tele-
phoning him until later in the morning.
The case, as I thought it over, came to this: The
Spaniard and the attorney, by the aid of a con-
federate, a woman, had obtained possession of the
diary containing the secret of Hartley House.
They would soon be heard from. Their plan was
to bleed the family and to continue to bleed it as
long as the suppression of the secret remained im-
portant, which would be during Mr. Sidney's life,
if not longer. Mrs. Sidney might be so involved
that it would be necessary, afterward, to shield her.
It might even be that Isobel would be forced to
protect her father's name and her mother's name,
out of respect for their memory, if not out of con-
sideration for herself.
It was evident that the thieves would remain in
touch with Hartley House. They would not dis-


TEHE MYSTERY OF HARTLEY HOUSE 181
O’clock in the morning—there was a pale sugges-
tion of light in the windows—when Mrs. Aldrich,
the housekeeper, came to the office. She was an
imperturbable lady of disciplinary habit and ordi-
marily unruffled dignity, but now she was dis-
turbed.
“Doctor,” she said, “Agnes, the new maid, can-
not be found. She is not in her room. Her bed
has not been touched. Most of her belongings and
her suit-case are gone. Her trunk is in her room,
but it contains nothing of any value—only a few
aprons, a white muslin dress and a pair of soft
slippers. I came to you with this probably unim-
portant domestic incident, thinking that—well, the
occurrence of the night might have some connection
with this girl.”
“How did Agnes usually dress, Mrs. Aldrich?”
I asked.
“The dress is prescribed while on duty; it is
black. Agnes, I observed, when not engaged wore
White.” -
“I think Agnes probably was involved in the
matter,” I said.
“We have always so dreaded to take a new serv-
ant,” said Mrs. Aldrich, “but Agnes came recom-
mended for the month by a very faithful girl who
wanted a month’s leave. Has anything of great
Value been taken?”
“Nothing of any intrinsic value whatever, Mrs.


182 THE MYSTERY OF HARTLEY HOUSE
Aldrich. I imagine the robbers were alarmed be-
fore they found any jewels or plate.”
“That's a consolation, in any event,” said the
housekeeper; “but we never shall be able to take
in a new servant again with any ease of mind.”
The chauffeur telephoned as Mrs. Aldrich went
away. The chase in the night had been useless, as
might be expected, and I told him to return home.
It was full day by this time, and I called McGuire
of the detective agency at his home. I told him I
was as certain as a person could be in the circum-
stances that the man running with the woman
across the lawn in the moonlight was the shyster
lawyer, and the woman was a maid who had found
a month's employment in the house.
Mrs. Aldrich brought me a light breakfast, and
one of the gardeners came to say that the dogs had
been found in the woods. They had been fed
drugged meat and were sick and even now barely
able to stand.
I was preparing to go to Mr. Sidney’s room when
the telephone rang again. It was a call from the
village of Horwich, forty miles east, a place of some
repute, or ill repute, for the number and character
of its drinking-places and road-houses. It was off
main-travelled roads but was much frequented by
people who wanted the kind of entertainment to be
found there.
The man calling me said he was the constable of


TEHE MYSTERY OF EIARTLEY HOUSE 187
the story I wanted to know, I decided to remain
unidentified, have a bottle of beer—from the bar-
tender, who came half-heartedly from the con-
stable's narration—and thus as an eavesdropper
get what I came to get in direct conversation.
I had my bottle of beer, and the bartender went
back to the group, dominated by the squat, talka-
tive fellow.


CHAPTER XXXIV
E was not the comic type of constable. He
showed intelligence and decision, but evi-
dently he was fond of a story when he had it to
tell. He was saying:
“I was up late because there was a bad set at
the Half Day, and Bill Dailey thought he might
have trouble with them before he got them on their
way. About one o'clock they had a quarrel, with-
out anything but talk, divided into two sets and
went away in two cars toward the city. Bill said:
“Some that looks the worse don’t make half the
trouble you get unexpected from quiet-looking
ones.’ I said that sometimes was so, and we talked
for a half-hour. -
“Then Bill said there evidently wasn't going to
be any more business to-night and sent the bar-
tenders and waiters home. They closed everything
but the bar. Bill and I split a bottle of beer, and
Bill said he’d be going himself. It was nearly one-
thirty then, and I thought I’d wait up for Number
Eleven at two o'clock and see if any one got off.
“Bill gave me the keys and told me to shut the
place up. I had another bottle of beer and was
188


190 THE MYSTERY OF HARTLEY HOUSE
and he threw his arms in the air, wriggled all over,
laughed and fell on the old fellow and kissed him.
The old boy struggled and kicked, but the foreigner
just picked him right up and kissed him on both
cheeks.
“That old boy was mad when he got loose. The
foreigner let go of him and tried to kiss the girl,
but she laughed and got behind me.
“‘Not me!’ she said. “Give it to the bar-
tender.”
“‘If, he does, I’ll brain him,” I said.
“The foreigner let out a whoop. The old boy
was all ruffled up. He was scrubbing his cheeks
with his handkerchief.
“‘This is unthinkable,” he said. “It is beyond
expression. You human pig! Dog of a man—
slobbering beast!” Then he stopped speaking
English and said a lot of things the foreigner
understood, but it didn’t make him mad. His eyes
just sparkled. He put a dollar on the bar and
pointed to the whisky again.
“‘Bring our drinks over here,” said the old boy,
pointing to one of the tables in a far corner of the
I’OOIn.
“‘It’s past closing time here,” I said.
“‘I thought this place was open all night,” he
said. “I was informed it was.” -
“I wanted to know what the whole business
was about, so I told him that we kept open accord.


THE MYSTERY OF HARTLEY HOUSE 191
ing to the trade and that I was willing to serve
them. They sat down, and the two men talked.
The girl didn’t seem to have the language. The
foreigner was excited. The old boy kept wiping
his eyeglasses. He wasn’t showing as much nerv-
ousness as the foreigner, but he was pleased over
something. -
“I kept behind the bar, as near their table as I
could, and pretended to play solitaire and wait for
their orders, watching them as much as possible
and trying to make out what they were talking
about. Pretty soon they wanted another round of
drinks. When I served them the old boy wanted
to know if he could telephone to the city. He paid
me the toll, and I showed him the telephone-booth
and heard him give his number. It was River 4600.
“When he got his party, he said: ‘Is that you,
Sim? Everything is all right. Yes, as expected.
Let him go.”
“That was all. He went back to the table. I
noticed that he kept tight hold all the time on a
leather case. When they got to talking again, the
foreigner kept pointing toward the case and began
to get more excited. As near as I could make out
what was happening, as they kept on talking and
motioning, it was the black leather case the for-
eigner wanted, and the other man wouldn’t let him
have it.
“Finally the old boy got up with the case held


192 THE MYSTERY OF HARTILEY HOUSE
tight under his arm and went toward the door
with the girl, and the foreigner following him, and
the foreigner talking fast and loud. They got out-
side and all got into the car, the girl beside the
old boy, who was driving, and the foreigner behind.
“As the old boy started the car, the foreigner
made a grab for the case, but the old boy was too
quick for him and dropped it to the floor. The
car swerved toward the ditch.
“‘You can’t drive a car that way,” I said.
‘You’d better tell that fellow to lay off.”
“‘I’ve told him,” said the old boy. “If he keeps
on bothering me, I’ll tell him with a gun. He'll
kill all of us.”
“So they started, but they hadn’t gone a quarter
of a mile when I heard the girl scream. I got my
motor-cycle, which was out in front, and went down
the road after them. There was sure going to be
an accident if the foreigner kept grabbing at the
man at the wheel. They must have been going
pretty fast. I chased them a mile and a half, and
several times I heard the girl cry out ahead in the
dark.
“I was within two hundred yards of them when
the girl screamed louder than ever, and I heard a
crash. I knew they’d get it, and they had. The
car had gone into a tree at the side of the road.
“The old boy was dead, and the girl was uncon-
scious—but the foreigner was gone.”


CHAPTER XXXV
TVFIE constable looked at me for an instant as
if uncertain whether to regard my manner of
getting his narrative as altogether friendly.
“You were telling what I wanted to know,” I
suggested. “I came in because I was directed to
inquire for you there. I did not care to make my
identity known to the people in the room. I
thought we should have more listeners than our
business needed. I did not interrupt you, but it
was without intent of gaining information that I
did not expect to gain otherwise.”
“It's all right,” said the constable. “You see
through me, though. I was just thinking how un-
comfortable I ought to have been with you listen-
ing, and I was pretty near getting sore. The first
thing is the identification of the body. For the
time being, it is in the station-house.”
There was no possible doubt, even before I
looked at the face, from which the constable drew
the sheet which covered the body as it lay on a
bench. The shabby little lawyer's rascally schemes,
timid but villainous—necessary, probably, in his
gnarled and unhappy life—were closed by death.
A deputy of the coroner was present, and he took
194


TEIE MYSTERY OF HARTLEY HOUSE 195
a deposition by me which gave merely the dead
man's name, stated that he had called several times
at Hartley House on business and that I had no
personal knowledge of the manner in which he came
to his death.
That was all the authorities needed of me. A
maid by the name of Agnes Mitchell had been given
temporary employment at Hartley House. It was
undoubtedly she who was the companion of the
man who had been killed.
“They never get too old,” said the deputy.
That explanation satisfied his comfortably
sophisticated view of life. The man was past
middle life; the girl was pretty—an automobile,
a road-house, some drinks, a smash-up. They
wrote this story into the coroner's records day after
day; it was a formula. The deputy could not
understand the presence of the foreigner or the
significance of the leather case. The ordinary
story sometimes had variants. He was sure of his
essentials. The decoration did not matter.
I asked the constable where I might see the maid
and whether she was too badly injured to talk to
any one. He said that she had been taken to the
nearest hospital, which was ten miles away. He
did not know how serious her injuries were. I
had my driver take me to the hospital and found
that as a representative of the family for which she
was employed I might talk to her.


THE MYSTERY OF HARTLEY HOUSE 197
She knew of my nightly rounds and planned to
avoid them. She had spent several nights hunting
through Jed's belongings without success. The
lawyer was getting impatient. She wanted to have
the business done and get her fee, which was to
be a large one. The nervous insistence of the
attorney for the despatch of the matter, and the
girl’s desire to get away, led to a determination
to have done this particular night if the article
could be obtained.
The lawyer was to have an automobile waiting
on the road beyond the oak grove. He was to be
by the small door, through which the maid escaped.
She ransacked Jed's room in the fashion of which
I saw the result, and found the box cunningly
hidden in his bed-springs in a manner so contrived
that except to careful investigation it seemed to be
a part of the structure of the bed.
Agnes said that she had planned to make her
escape after my round of the house, but her excite-
ment at finding the thing so earnestly sought be-
trayed her into incautiousness.
The lawyer's plan was to take the road we would
think them less likely to take in case there were
pursuit, and for that reason had gone toward Hor-
wich. The Spaniard was not expected to meet
them, but he knew they intended to go through
Horwich, and he knew approximately the time they
would get there if they were successful. The train


198 THE MYSTERY OF HARTLEY HOUSE
which stopped at Horwich to let off passengers
allowed him to act upon a plan which his sus-
picions of his lawyer's good faith suggested. He
thought that if the lawyer saw a barroom light he
would stop for a drink.
He was in Horwich unexpectedly to meet the girl
and the lawyer. The scene in the Half Day bar-
room followed. The Spaniard was determined to
have possession of the manuscript. The lawyer
was determined he should not have it. They
struggled as the lawyer tried to drive the car, hav-
ing several narrow escapes from the ditch.
Then the Spaniard, in a rage, abandoned all cau-
tion and threw himself bodily on the lawyer, who
lost control of the car and hit a tree. That was
all the girl knew. -
“We were anxious, Agnes,” I said, “to learn the
reason for this extraordinary attack upon Jed, and
for the theft of the manuscript. Did they tell you
what they expected to find?”
“No,” said the girl. “I was just to get the
manuscript.”
“Did you read it?”
“No, I knew it must be the one.”
I thought a while, trying to make up my mind
what further to do with the girl. Finally I
said:
“Agnes, I am inclined to compromise with the
law. You are guilty of a theft, a very strange


THE MYSTERY OF HARTILEY HOUSE 199
one which you do not understand and which we
want to understand. I will prefer no charges
against you now, and without forecasting the
future, I may intimate that no charges ever will
be preferred against you if I may have you re-
moved to Hartley House, where you will have every
care, but where you must remain under a sure but
unobtrusive surveillance until we give you permis-
sion to go. In this I am not unmoved by consid-
erations of your youth and your future, which
make this crime more deplorable.”
In spite of her pain the girl smiled.
“You would amuse the police,” she said.
“Why?” I asked.
“Why do you suppose the lawyer hired me for
this job?” -
“Because you were available, suitable and easily
tempted.”
“Because I am a thief and know the business
and have a record.”
That was a facer, but it did not change the
present need.
“You have less reason, then, for wanting to
come to the attention of the police again.”
“I have no reason at all.”
“Then you will come to Hartley House as I
suggested?” -
“Sure, if you can get me there without killing
me.”


200 THE MYSTERY OF HARTLEY HOUSE
I made the necessary arrangements, and Agnes
set out on her return in an ambulance.
The servant who opened the door as we drove
up was Jed.


CHAPTER XXXVI
ED made a point of imperturbability and ap-
peared in the doorway in his most serviceable
mood, with the manner which was the utmost
provocation at times to persons who knew him to
be more nearly master than servant in the house.
I could not help showing, by a start and by the
expression on my face, that I was astonished by
his reappearance. This pleased him. When he
acted, he liked to produce effects. He looked in-
quiringly at the ambulance and then inquiringly at
me. By that time I was able to accept him as a
usual part of the household.
“Get some one to help you with a stretcher,
Jed,” I said. “Agnes, a maid, has been hurt.
Then tell Mrs. Aldrich I should like to see her
in the office as soon as it is convenient.”
“Yes, sir,” said Jed. -
Mrs. Aldrich came immediately, and I told her
that the girl Agnes was to be treated with every
consideration and that if it were possible to have
the other maids regard her kindly so as not to make
her feel obloquy, it would be only Christian.
Mrs. Aldrich was a very stanch churchwoman,
201


202 THE MYSTERY OF HARTILEY HOUSE
and I could see in the tightening of her lips that
such soft treatment of a woman caught in crime
did not satisfy her ideas of morality. However,
she said nothing in protest, and I hastened to do
what I could for her scruples.
“We do not understand this case at all,” I said,
“and consequently we do not understand the girl;
but this much is certain: nothing of any intrinsic
value has been taken, and Agnes is to be treated
charitably and not made to feel that she is a pariah
in this house; any one who makes her feel isolated
is doing an unkindness to the family.”
“Everything shall be as nearly as you want it
as possible,” she said primly, “but I must say, for
my own self-respect, that the girl betrayed her
trust, whether she is a thief or not. Personally, I
cannot condone it.”
“I would not change your principles, Mrs.
Aldrich,” I told her. “They are invaluable not
only to you but to us. But we want this girl
treated kindly.”
She went out dissatisfied, but I knew she would
do her best. Jed came in, still in his superserv-
iceable mood.
“Would you like some coffee, sir?” he asked. I
was tired and did want a stimulant.
“Yes, Jed, I would—thank you,” I said as
heartily as I could, determined to break down his
triumph of imperturbability by a commonplace


TEIE MYSTERY OF HARTLEY HOUSE 203
*
handling of him. When he brought the tray, I
told him to sit down.
“I have many duties, sir,” he protested.
“There seems to be an accumulation of things in
my absence.”
At that reference to his recent experience he
allowed himself to smile for an instant.
“Sit down,” I said. “Your schemes have come
to a bad end in this house. It will do you no good,
and it may destroy the family. Things are beyond
your control or my control. The Spaniard has the
manuscript he was after. Your power is gone. It
is transferred to him.”
“I did not know there was a manuscript,” he
said.
“Don’t act the hypocritical fool,” I said. “You
know that lawyer brought me a page from it.”
“So you are familiar with this affair!”
“I am not. I only know what has happened
since I came here. I do not want to know any
more.”
“You are wise. There is nothing but unhappi-
ness and danger in knowing. It is not news to me
that Dravada has Mr. Sidney's diary. They re-
leased me after they learned that the manuscript
had been found and that the lawyer and Dravada
had it.”
Jed then sat down and told what had happened
to him. I was very angry, remembering Isobel as


THE MYSTERY OF HARTLEY HOUSE 205
might have overcome the Spaniard, but the des-
perate little lawyer, in a frenzy of activity, had
been just bold and strong enough to interfere so
that Jed had been made helpless. Another man
had come breathlessly to help. Jed had been
bound and gagged. He had been hustled into the
screen of woods and beyond them to a waiting
automobile.
His captors, in the automobile, had headed for
the city and entered it after midnight. They had
taken their prisoner to a tenement on the East
Side. For several days the lawyer and Dravada
had tried to extort the secret from Jed by threats.
They had tried to buy it by promise of an equitable
division of profits. The lawyer had been quite
frantic part of the time, Jed said, bounding about
in an ecstasy of rage. At other times he had been
friendly and persuasive.
He had held out to Jed's cupidity that he as an
attorney could make a much better bargain with
the Sidney household than Jed and that Jed might
confidently expect more as his share than he could
get if he continued to act for himself.
“That, of course, was ridiculous,” said Jed by
way of comment, explaining to me why he had not
treated on a business basis with the attorney. “I
never would have subjected Mr. Sidney to such an
ordeal, and money never has been my object.
What I have wanted was a complete life. But I


206 TEIE MYSTERY OF HARTLEY HOUSE
could not tell the attorney how absurd he was.”
Dravada had been savage and wanted to try tor-
ture, but the attorney, enraged as he frequently
became in his failure and disappointment, would
not permit this and had got a trustworthy rascal
of his acquaintance, named Sim, with two other
men, to keep a constant guard over Jed with a view
not only to prevent his escape but to keep Dravada
from doing him harm or taking him away. '
The lawyer, both dismayed and enraged by Jed's
obstinacy, had finally thought of corrupting some
one in the house to find and steal the manuscript.
The best he had been able to do was to persuade a
maid to prove false enough to introduce the real
thief.
“Dravada and the lawyer never had any hesi-
tancy at having their quarrels in the room where
they held me,” Jed said. “Dravada wanted to
stick needles under my finger-nails and burn my
toes, drill my teeth and prod the nerves. Brown
had a horror of physical pain. I do not think he
had any moral scruples. He hated pain so much
himself that he suffered physically if he knew some
one else was suffering.
“He also was a bit of a drunkard. That little
lawyer was very interesting. Life was a terrible
thing to him. It was all twisted and distorted.
It never could have given him anything he wanted.
He thought he wanted money. The only thing that


TEIE MYSTERY OF HARTILEY HOUSE 207
could have done him any good was what he got
when the car ran into the tree.
“ He and Dravada became very suspicious of
each other. Brown was afraid Dravada would
corrupt the fellow Sim, torture me and get the
story. Dravada was afraid Brown would corrupt
some one in Hartley House and get the manuscript.
Each one feared that the other would succeed inde-
pendently and get away without making a division.
“ Dravada pretended to be satisfied when Brown
told him that he must not appear near Hartley.
When they thought they were going to succeed in
tealing the manuscript out of my room, Brown
proved to Dravada that the only one of them that
could go to meet the maid was Brown. Dravada
appeared to accept that as reasonable, and he must
have put Brown off his guard, because Brown told
him all the plans.
“Dravada knew that Brown was a bit of a
drunkard. Brown killed down his horror of
life whenever he could—Mr. Sidney wants me to
heighten his appreciation of life by drinking a
bottle or two. Two different schemes for the use
of intoxicants!
“Dravada used to be very stupid, but his cupid-
ity has given him a sort of intelligence. He al-
lowed Brown to think he was perfectly satisfied,
but he wasn’t at all. By seeming to be satisfied he
learned all about the details of the plan, and he


CHAPTER XXXVII
NTIL I felt the relief following Jed's explana-
tion that the blackmailers had stolen only a
decoy, I did not fully realise into what despondency
our predicament up to that time had thrust me.
If Mr. Sidney's diary were being read by unscrupu-
lous men, we might expect anything.
The lawyer, whose shrewdness and lack of morals
made him formidable, was dead. The Spaniard
would soon discover his disappointment and would
be furious. I thought the physical danger to Jed
was greater than ever and found some pleasure in
telling him so. -
He was convinced of that himself and was not
happy.
“Why don't you end your rascality?” I urged
him. “Why don’t you give the manuscript to Mrs.
Sidney and allow her to make whatever disposition
she wants of it? Then your conscience will be
easy—your position in this house will for the first
time be tolerable to a decent man, and your physi-
cal security will be promoted.”
" **would not. He seemed to hesitate for a mo-
ment, but his purpose was too long fixed and too
much a part of his life.
209


* 210 THE MYSTERY OF HARTLEY HOUSE
*
-
*
_^
“I certainly would not do it out of fear,” he
said. “I might out of consideration for other
people, but that would be another form of weak-
ness. You cannot understand me. There is no
use of talking about it.”
“A plea of being misunderstood is about the only
thing you need to be wholly despicable.”
“I did not say I was misunderstood,” Jed
replied without temper. “I said you could not
understand, which is quite different, and true.
You are a simple, dogmatic, satisfied man with no
intricacies of character or thought. You think
and talk like a copy-book. You may know some-
thing of the physical insides of people, but you
know nothing of their moral or spiritual insides.
You know as much about people as a clockmaker
knows of a clock. So you wouldn’t understand.
Unless you can lay down a rule from a copy-book,
you don't know what to say to life.” -
“I know rascality, cruelty, dishonesty, knavery
and duplicity when I see them at work,” I said,
“and I never saw more of these qualities in one
embodiment than are in your carcass.”
“Copy-book—copy-book!” said Jed.
“Here's something more from the copy-book.” I
said: “If you continue to torment and terroris
Mrs. Sidney, or try to annoy Miss Sidney, J’ll .
a way to stop you if I have to make use L.
Vada.” -


N
~
TEIE MYSTERY OF HARTILEY Houss 213
“Suppose we try to get along each in his o or
way without telling the terrible things we inteno,
to do,” Jed suggested. *-
~
He no longer was surly with me, and I seemed
to have lost my ability to enrage him. Conse-
quently he had much better command of himself
than I had of myself. I felt that he had the better
of the controversy and knew that he must be con-
scious of it. We parted with my telling him that
there would be no possible truce or peace between
us unless he respected the women of the household.
He bowed.
“Anything else, sir?” he asked; and then he
departed as the servant.
Mrs. Sidney's relief to find that the robbery had
proved only a hoax on the robbers was such as
would come from escape from tangible horrors.
The lady had been keeping control of herself, as
was necessary to protect her husband and daughter
from her own agony of mind and to keep the house-
hold from finding significance in what could be
passed over as a trivial piece of robbery.
When she learned that the alarm was over, she
relaxed limply in her chair, and I feared that she
might collapse; but in a moment she had struggled
back to command of herself. Then she excused
herself and went into her bedroom—for prayer, I
knew.
Mr. Sidney's joy at the return of Jed was robust,
~
--


YSTERY OF HARTLEY HOUSE
to bed very tipsy with two bottles of
I found him in the hall as I went
e house. He was singing, but when
ughed and said:
good old moral copy-book—thinks
→ ... e clocks.”
I knew we’d hear again and soon from Dravada,
but not in what manner. Naturally I was appre-
hensive, and no doubt Jed was more so, although to
save himself from my contempt he tried to conceal
his fears. -
The Spaniard could not be expected to accept his
failure as final. He would try again. That ex-
pectation was fulfilled in a disconcerting fashion.
Thus far we had been dealing with chance, with
apparitions and threats. We now came to deal
with inevitability. Our experiences had been dis-
agreeable, but they had not presented unescapable
consequence. We had a choice of ways. Now we
entered a way from which there was no escape.
Four days after Jed's return a man came to
Hartley House and inquired for me. He was a
detective. His name was Morgan; he was the head
of the Morgan Metropolitan Detective Agency. I
thought on first seeing him—while yet wondering
what his business with us could be, and yet know-
ing instinctively that it had to do with Dravada
—that this newcomer had more than a suggestion
of shrewd malevolence in his face.


TEIE MYSTERY OF HARTLEY HOUSE 213
Before he was through his interview with me, or
rather his inquiries of me, I knew that inevitability
had entered our case. We were no longer pro-
gressing at the mercy of opportunity or chance.
Morgan was fate. The whole aspect had been
altered. Morgan, a muscular, black-haired, sor-
did, unscrupulous man of action and obviously
of queer action, was pure Greek tragedy
to us.
He was a curious instrument of such abstract
justice. He served fate as if it had sworn out a
police-court warrant. As a nemesis he was a
clown, or at least a beadle or a bailiff. The man-
ner in which he served inevitability will appear.
Mr. Sidney's crime, I soon saw, whatever manner
or kind of crime it had been, was one of unescap-
able consequence.
“A man named Dravada,” said Morgan, after we
had looked at each other in interrogative hostility
for an instant, “has come to our agency with a
very strange tale. From what I learn of the things
he and his disreputable attorney have done, I can
see that they are heading directly into the peni-
tentiary. I understand that the lawyer is dead
and that all their schemes are closed. Dravada
has come to our agency, and I have come directly
to you. I want you to understand our methods of
doing business. They are honest. The paper Dra-
vada carries about with him says that a crime has


214 THE MYSTERY OF HARTLEY HOUSE
been committed. Are you familiar with that
paper?”
“I have seen what a blackmailing lawyer said
was a copy of a sheet in the possession of Dra-
vada.”
“You never saw the rest of the manuscript?”
“I do not know anything about it.”
“I am not much of a literary man,” said Morgan,
taking from a black leather case a manuscript
which he handed to me, “but I’ve read “The Moon-
stone,’ and this looks to me like a couple of chap-
ters copied out of it. Probably you are familiar
with “The Moonstone.’”
“I have read it several times.”
“Then what do you make of that manuscript?”
I looked at several of the pages. The manu-
script was a copy of part of “The Moonstone.”
“I am right, then,” said Morgan. “‘Moon-
shine’ it had better be called. That's the manu-
script the maid stole out of your man Jed's room
and that Dravada took after the lawyer had been
killed. Here's my reasoning—maybe you will be
interested: This man Jed and this fellow Dravada
worked for Mr. Sidney in Montevideo. Dravada is
a thief; Jed isn’t much better. Dravada got one
sheet of a manuscript that had something to do
with a concealed crime. Jed got the rest of the
manuscript, so Dravada says. Dravada has been
trying to make Jed go fifty-fifty. He has been try-


THE MYSTERY OF HARTLEY HOUSE 215
ing to get the rest of the manuscript. He'll mur-
der Jed yet.
“Now here's the way I look at it: A man like
Jed does not go to the trouble of copying a couple
of chapters of ‘The Moonstone' and planting the
copy in his room just to devil a desperate fellow.
like Dravada. He does it for a purpose. That
proves he has the real manuscript. That proves
there is a concealed crime. Our agency is inter-
ested in finding out what that crime was. Do I
make myself clear?”
“Your meaning is much clearer than your
words,” I said.
“How am I to take that?” he asked.
“You know best,” I replied.
“I see we'll get into some misunderstanding
here,” he said. “As an agent of the law I am
interested in this case. Are you? Is this family
interested?”
“I am not, and the family is not.”
“I’ll take your word for it, but I’ll see Mr.
Sidney.”
“It is quite impossible. He never sees callers.
I am his doctor. I should forbid it.”
“Then I’ll see Mrs. Sidney.”
“That also is impossible. I am her represen-
tative.”
“Well, I’ll talk to Miss Sidney.”
“That also is out of the question.”
~


216 THE MYSTERY OF HARTLEY House
“I suppose you're something to Miss Sidney
too.”
“I am her fiancé.”
“You are a little bit of everything around here.
Well, how about seeing this man Jed?”
“That can be arranged,” I said, and I rang for
Jed. When he came in, I said:
“Jed, this is Mr. Morgan, of the Metropolitan
Detective Agency. He wants to talk to you.”
“Yes sir,” said Jed, and I went out of the room.
In about twenty minutes Jed came to me again.
“Mr. Morgan wishes to speak to you once more,”
he said.
“Well?” I said, looking at him inquiringly.
“A downright, direct and positive sort of a per-
son,” he said, smiling, “but although keen, not a
real intelligence. He is waiting for you, sir.”


218 THE MYSTERY OF HARTLEY HOUSE
You may not be interested. Maybe no one here is
interested, but I’m interested. Do you get that,
Mr. Doctor, Mr. Representative, Mr. Fiancé? I’m
interested.”
“You’ll please interest yourself in taking your
departure,” I said.
“In a minute. I’m wasting my time. But one
minute more while I tell you something. This case
is going to be gone into. There's a crime concealed
somewhere which will do our agency good to dis-
cover. We sha’n’t do it for money. We shall do
it for publicity. The advertising will be worth
thousands of dollars to us. Do you understand
me?”
“I know you can make life very miserable for
us for a couple of days. You will have to use your
own judgment.” -
“I can pack that lawn out there with reporters
and photographers from the city. They’ll overrun
your grounds. They'll climb the sides of your
house. They’ll see and talk to Mr. Sidney. Take
my word for that. They’ll see and talk to Mrs.
Sidney and to Miss Sidney. I can bring that down
to you by midnight.”
“The house has some protections,” I said. '
“You might suggest that to the newspaper people
for their own good.”
“The shyster and that common thief Ann Forth
got in, didn’t they?”


THE MYSTERY OF HARTILEY HOUSE 219
“I don’t know Ann. Forth.”
“No, but you know Agnes Mitchell. Well, you
know Ann Forth, man. Say, you simpleton, you
don't know what you’re up against. This story
just as it stands—copy of sheet from manuscript—
Spaniard—running off with Jed—theft of manu-
script—death of shyster—Ann Forth back in
house—hidden crime—millionaire recluse—beauti-
ful daughter—haunted house—it's copy for every
paper in the country.”
I knew it and was appalled by the certain pros-
pects.
“It would be a very cruel and useless thing to
do,” I said, “but as I told you, you must use your
own judgment.”
“That is, you appeal to my charity to give up
this legitimate and valuable publicity; and yet I
cannot get any coöperation in this house.”
“No one,” I answered, “is appealing to your
charity or any other quality you may have. I
simply tell you that what you suggest is cruel and
useless and to do as you like. The kind of co-
operation you want I do not know. You have
talked to Jed. We are not interested in this child's
nursery story you are following, and I do not
intend to have people who are not well disturbed
by the questioning of a detective.”
I knew how to deal safely with Morgan, but the
method was out of the question. I should indeed


220 THE MYSTERY OF HARTLEY HOUSE
have been a simpleton if I had not known. All I
had to ask was “How much?”
We were wholly resolved against paying black-
mail, knowing that it was only a gradual descent to
ruin. It was better to go in one direct plunge if it
were fated.
Morgan looked at me steadily for a few moments
as if giving me a chance to listen to the voice of
reason. His method had been perfect. He was
beyond a legal suspicion, and I knew he was dan-
gerous.
“Well, young man,” he said at last, “we are
both wasting time—at least I am. But it's only
fair to you to tell you that this is not the end of
the case. It’s the kind of a case we like, something
tough and difficult. We may not make any money
out of it, but when we are ready, we at least shall
be paid in publicity. You needn’t be afraid of the
reporters and photographers just now. It's too
good a case to waste that way. There's always
that, no matter what we turn up.
“This case is just good enough to spend some
money on. It's just good enough to send a
couple of men down to Montevideo. I’ll tell you
in advance that that is what we’re going
to do.
“I don’t know whether we’ll take our friend
Dravada or not. You can tell Mr. Arliss that we
don’t know. Dravada is very mad. He doesn't


THE MYSTERY OF HARTILEY HOUSE 221
take an affair of this sort very easily. He takes it .
bad. He's less of a literary man than I am. He
never had read “The Moonstone.” He didn’t care
for it, either. He doesn’t like moonshine when he
is looking for gold.
“Dravada is a fool and a thief, and it is a
wonder he has not run straight into the peniten-
tiary. It's my guess that he and the shyster and
Jed would all be in the penitentiary now if there
wasn’t something in this house that protected
them. That's just my guess, but I'll take a
chance on it.
“So we'll go into the life of Mr. Sidney with a
fine-tooth comb, and we’ll do it well. We are ac-
customed to doing such things well. And we’ll do
this well. We'll get something here or in South
America. We'll follow that something until we
know why Jed copied two chapters of “The Moon-
stone’ and hid them in a box built in the springs
of his bed.
“Then we’ll come back here and ask for a little
more coöperation in serving the purposes of the
law, and if we don’t get some help, the reporters
and photographers will be swarming on the lawn.
That's all, Mr. Doctor.”
I knew at first glance that Morgan's face was
malevolent. Now I saw it extraordinarily so.
“I’ll have Jed show you the door,” I said.
“And tell him we do not know whether we take


222 THE MYSTERY OF HARTILEY HOUSE
Dravada to South America or not. It will make
him happy.”
Jed was scrupulously the servant as we dis-
missed Mr. Morgan.


CHAPTER XXXIX
HAT was the fashion in which inevitability
entered the house. We were no longer dodg-
ing chance. Morgan surely and certainly repre-
sented fate. It had become only a matter of time
when in one fashion or another the security of this
home, so carefully studied, would be invaded suc-
cessfully. That was apparent. It might be that
Morgan would be able to expose us to nothing more
than the publicity he mentioned. But that was
sufficient; it would be destructive.
From the time this detective came until the end,
I felt that our calamity was surely ordered.
Morgan had little more directly to do with us.
He proved to be scarcely more than an episode,
but nevertheless he was the inevitable cause which
had disaster certain as its consequence. A new
intent governed the prospects of Hartley House.
These miserable events seemed to have violated
sanctuary. Hartley House to me had been wholly
built in romance. Its place was not in the worka-
day world—that invested but did not touch it. Its
time-nurtured beauty gave it both dignity and iso-
lation. This sanctuary had been broken into and
defiled by preposterous events, and it was several
2.
223


224 THE MYSTERY OF HARTLEY House
days before I found that the place wholly regained
its kindly aspect, before the tarnish came off its
charm.
It is because a cherished thing is not stark ma-
terialism that it can be outraged by matters which
do not affect it materially. It is a thing of associa-
tions, with vistas back into the memory and pros-
pects into the imagination. Hartley House had
been built partly by the architects and builders of
many generations, but partly also by me. My build-
ing was of luminous gossamer spun by the fancy
and coloured by the affections. In a few days, for-
tunately, the careworn, bleak aspect which the
place threatened to assume wore away and van-
ished. There remained the sense that the house
was beleaguered by enemies, but with Morgan gone,
the threat became intangible. Possibly the threat
had something to do with gradually enhancing the
charm of the establishment—what an east wind
does for a crackling fire. A sense of shelter comes
with a pelting rain.
I had telephoned McGuire, telling him of Mor-
gan's part in the new turn of events, and he later
informed me that two of the Morgan agency opera-
tives had sailed for South America, taking Dravada.
with them. The hunt had begun—but a long way
off.
The hunters knew as much of the quarry as I
did, and I had no way of knowing whether it was


THE MYSTERY OF HARTLEY HOUSE 225
likely that they could find a trail back to Hartley
House. It was impossible not to feel uneasy.
Dravada had been to me, whatever he had been to
Jed, merely an incident grotesque and extravagant,
a preposterous dash of colour in odd conditions.
The lawyer had been resourceful and cunning
enough, but his actions had to be those of a slinking
feral animal. He was not to be greatly feared, but
Morgan was. He had the machinery for the work.
His cupidity was aroused. Every rascal who
smelled the mystery of Hartley House became eager
to follow the scent into the strong-box of the house.
I thought I was not assuming enough responsi-
bility. Whatever could be done by one man was
poor protection against resolute marauders. I
asked Mrs. Sidney again if it would be of service
to give me the secret of the house. I told her I
was far from certain that my reliability and trust-
worthiness had been established, but if they had
been, and if the question were merely one of fidelity
and stanchness, I hoped I could be regarded loyal.
“If only those qualities were involved, John,”
said Mrs. Sidney, “you could have the inmost
secrets of my soul. I would trust you with any-
thing anywhere, but for your own salvation I would
not have this terrible thing in your consciousness.
Knowledge of it would curse you. It will me un-
less there is expiation in a great love, and exculpa-
tion in self-sacrifice. Jed's soul is gone beyond


228 THE MYSTERY OF HARTLEY HOUSE
went to find her. If I were in my intolerable
moods, I stuck close to my place of hiding, and if
trying to read, saw nothing but a girl and heard
nothing but a voice calling “John,” a call signifi-
cantly proprietary, I thought, with a damnable
suggestion of domesticity in it—damnable to me
to whom it was a false suggestion, a torment, an
unreal voice from a mirage.
With the return to normality, with Jed back and
immediate alarms quieted, our family routine was
reëstablished. Dinner, which had been less the
sociable occasion that it might have been, because
of Jed's malevolent superserviceability, became a
pleasant event. Something like a family bond had
been joined, and Jed, for reasons sufficient to his
eccentric character, did not make a pest of his
service.
Heretofore Jed had made it a point to restrict
and embarrass our attempts at easy conversation.
Now he withdrew and left us to ourselves. This
was a thing to be grateful for, and we were thank-
ful, although favours from Jed were to be weighed,
appraised, dissected and analysed.
It was owing to this extraordinarily favourable
disposition that I, coming to dinner one evening in
a sullen mood, had opportunity to take up a subject
Which concerned me.
“Mrs. Sidney,” I said when Jed had placed the
coffee-tray beside her and had retired, “I must ask


230 THE MYSTERY OF HARTLEY HOUSE
do things because I am engaged to John. Well, I
intend to remain engaged and to do the things—
and I love you both.”
And by George, she danced up and kissed her
mother and kissed me.


232 THE MYSTERY OF BARTLEY HOUSE
Jed was an amiable servitor, bantered by Mr.
Sidney from time to time. Isobel’s animation was
as infectious as her father's, but Mrs. Sidney, I
thought, had a look of apprehension in her eyes
which was something apart from the pleasant smile
on her face. She seemed to find the occasion sig-
nificant, and I wonder that I had to read my diary
* to be refreshed in memory.
When I had read it, I also saw the significance,
and turning the page in the record of the year be-
fore, I read: “Mr. Sidney is in a condition of ex-
haustion which might be called a complete and
dangerous collapse. . . . . Dr. Brownell, sum-
moned in alarm, says that during his acquaintance
with the case this transition overnight from ex-
traordinary activity to exhaustion has been noted
once every year and at approximately the same time
of the year, if not precisely on the same date.”
The apprehension which Mrs. Sidney could not
wholly conceal had this good foundation. Mr.
Sidney was in the periodic miracle of renewed
health and strength, but for whatever cause, he
would be found to-morrow morning in a precarious
condition of weakness.
The event seemed so certain that I thought it
best to acquaint Dr. Brownell that night of the
premonitory symptoms.
I first thought of arousing the chauffeur to drive
me to the village or at least to bring a car around,


THE MYSTERY OF HARTLEY HOUSE 233
but recalled that at the late hour, after midnight,
the village would be sound asleep and the station-
agent, who was also telegraph-operator, might not
relish being aroused. So I decided to telephone a
message to Dr. Brownell's residence in the city, to
be given to him immediately if he were awake or
as soon as he arose in the morning. I did not want
to be overheard, by any chance, by any one, in tele-
phoning this premonitory message, and thought
that the office would be my most secure place.
The house was not yet in full darkness when I
came down the stairs to the main hall. It was
lighted, and the stairway leading directly to Mr.
Sidney's room was lighted, which indicated that
Jed was still with Mr. Sidney.
The Office door never was locked. I did not
want Jed blundering in on me while I was tele-
phoning. He would be along presently, I thought,
and I decided to go out on the main portico until
by the extinguishing of the lights I should know
he was on his way to bed.
I was on my way to act on this plan when the
light in the stairway leading to Mr. Sidney's room
was extinguished, and I knew Jed was on his way
downstairs. I did not have time to reach the
entrance. I doubted that I even had time to re-
trace my steps. I did not want to meet Jed. So
I stepped into a sort of little lounging space off the
hall, which was quite dark.


234 THE MYSTERY OF HARTLEY HOUSE
In a few minutes Jed went by, humming, not
singing. I had expected him to be very tipsy, con-
sidering the jovial mood of Mr. Sidney; it had even
occurred to me that once a year, on a certain date
—one to be commemorated—Mr. Sidney joined Jed
in the wine and that this caused the relapse. But
Jed was not drunk; his step was steady.
He was turning out the lights, but he was revers-
ing the reasonable process. He went down the hall
to the light at the stairway leading to his room and
turned it out. Then he came back, past the recess
in which I stood, turning out lights as he went, and
the last light he extinguished was the one at the
foot of Mr. Sidney's stairs.
. Now the hall was in complete darkness and was
quiet. Jed, like myself, I guessed, was in hiding
—but for what reason?
Then I heard the faintest stirring near by. It
came nearer. I tried to keep from breathing audi-
bly. I could hear another person's breathing. It
was Jed, beyond doubt. He came into the recess
where I stood. It was only five or six feet deep
but fully twenty feet long. He was at one end, as
nearly as I could judge. I was at the other. -
The situation, a product of supercaution, had
grown ridiculous and also a bit ghastly. Here
were Jed and I, standing in utter darkness in *
small recess in the hall, he not knowing of my
pres. Thee, I not knowing his purpose.


THE MYSTERY OF HARTLEY HOUSE 235
I decided to make my escape. I had, as usual,
my electric flash in my pocket. If he heard me and
challenged me, I could throw the light on him, chal-
lenge him, say that I was on my way to the tele-
phone to consult Dr. Brownell and make him ex-
plain. His position was the awkward one. I had
an idea that even if he heard me he would not chal-
lenge.
I made my escape without noise—or if I made
any, Jed did not care to inquire; and I found the
office door in the dark. I intended merely to use
the ſlash, find the telephone and do my errand in
the dark. But I had just flashed the light once
about the room when I heard a person at the door.
This was not a stealthy person; the hand that
touched the doorknob was resolute. By this time
nothing rational seemed reasonable. The house of
mystery had so asserted itself that one, hearing a
noise, hid. Before me, revealed in the single flash
of light, was a tall clock—and I was flattened
against the wall the further side of that great clock
before the person at the door was in the room.
The person carried a candle—and it was Mr.
Sidney. He was completely dressed and wore an
overcoat and a cap which came down over his ears.
His hands were gloved, and he was well protected
against more severe weather than that of this crisp
October night.
His candle lighted the large room but dimly, and


236 THE MYSTERY OF HARTLEY HOUSE
I felt secure, seeing immediately that he had a
definite object. He went to the corner of the room,
took up a heavy cane which I had often seen stand-
ing there, and with it in his hand went toward the
door as if his business in the room were done.
As he did so, I saw his face plainly in the candle-
light. It was wholly changed: it indicated feroc-
ity, hate, malevolence, a bitter sense of injury—a
terrible face, hardly recognisable as that of our
gentle, courteous, jovial Mr. Sidney. He closed
the door and was gone.
When Mr. Sidney had been gone a moment, I
heard him open the front door and heard him close
it after him. I should have followed him to the
front door, but Jed was somewhere in the hall. I
waited at the half-open door of the office. Pres-
ently I could hear Jed coming down the hall, care-
lessly now. He also went to the front door, and I
heard it opened and closed again.
I went to a window of the office which gave a
view of the lawn. I could see one figure slowly
crossing the open space toward the path leading
down to the river. Jed was standing just outside
the shadow of the house.
The further figure—Mr. Sidney, as I knew—
passed into the dense black of the thickets by the
path. Then Jed stepped forth and went quickly
across the open. I went to the front entrance and
stood on the porch.


CHAPTER XLI
THE hunter's moon was at full, and the place
was luminous in a soft, misty yellow light.
Late as it was in the year, a whippoorwill was call-
ing in the oak grove, a circumstance which my
nerves could have omitted from the conditions of
this strange night.
I had tremors, frankly—felt the presence of
tangible dangers, unseen, and of intangible terrors.
I never felt such oppression, doubt, distress and
dismay in my life. My patient was on a strange
errand far beyond any strength I ever knew him to
have; and Jed, whom I always dreaded, was follow-
ing him.
It may be wondered why I was not instantly in
chase and why I stood worried and indecisive. The
only explanation is that I knew, as surely as one
could know anything by reason and conjecture,
that whatever was happening this night had hap-
pened this same night for a number of years in
the past, and that whatever it was, it had direct
connection with the secret of the place which Mrs.
Sidney so earnestly desired me not to possess. For
these reasons, or upon this instinct, I acted as I
did and stood on the porch listening to the unnatu-
237


238 THE MYSTERY OF HARTLEY HOUSE
rally late whippoorwill and looking out toward the
dark recesses of Woods and thickets which stood at
the edge of the yellow moonlight.
The tension was so great that I got a distinct
shock when out of this wall of darkness came a
figure running into and across the moonlit space
toward the house. I knew it must be Jed, and I
waited where I stood as he approached. He barely
had come into the shadow of the house when an-
other figure came out of the dark wall of the
thickets and came slowly across the moonlit space.
Jed, running up the steps, saw me and gasped
in astonishment, but recovered himself with won-
derful promptness.
“Inside, man, inside, and act natural,” he cried.
“Come,”—taking me by the arm, “in the office.”
He was so certain and so commanding that I did
just what I was told.
“Into the office, man,” he said, still clutching
me. “What are you doing abroad? This night
of all nights! But no matter. Into the office, and
turn on the lights. Turn on the lights in the hall
—not all of them, but some of them.”
He ran to do it himself and was all flutter and
activity. Then he ordered:
“Into the office now, and act natural. You’re a
man of genius: think of something we could natu-
rally be doing at this time. Think quick, man; it's
beyond me. What are we doing here? Good Lord,


THE MYSTERY OF EARTILEY HOUSE 239
what are you doing here? I could have managed
it without you. Why did you have to be on the
scene? And I can think of nothing!”
“You have severe cramps in the stomach,” I
said. “It’s not to be wondered at, considering the
way you abuse your stomach. I may say you are
the only human being I ever was glad to see drink-
ing himself to death. You have now some pre-
monitory symptoms of gastritis. You have got me
up. If I do not have a collar and tie on it will
look more natural 35
I tossed these articles and my coat behind a
couch.
“And possibly if you were less clad it would help
the illusion.”
Jed rid himself of collar, tie and coat and dis-
posed of them in the same fashion.
“Now, I imagine,” I said, “we are reasonably
convincing as physician and sinner. What are
your symptoms?”
“You’re a man of genius!” Jed exclaimed.
“Wait a minute.”
He ran to the window, concealing himself behind
a curtain. -
“He’s almost here,” he said as he looked out on
the ghastly white lawn. Then he came running
back.
“The door had better be opened,” he said, and
he threw the door to the office open. Then he sat


240 THE MYSTERY OF HARTLEY HOUSE
in one of the chairs and began to whine loudly.
“It's an acute, shooting pain, Doctor,” he said
loudly and then he whispered: “What ought it to
be?”
I heard the front door open and shut.
“I have often told you,” I said with loud pro-
fessional dignity, “that there is a penalty attached
to such habits as yours. Have you any nausea?”
“Sick as I can be with pain,” said Jed, groaning
tremendously.
“I don't mind at all being aroused, Jed,” I said,
just loud enough to carry to the person approach-
ing and to sound to him as if it were a normal tone
to Jed with me in the office. “That is a fair part
of my business here.”
I knew Mr. Sidney was standing in the doorway.
So did Jed. Neither of us betrayed our knowledge
until the strange apparition which we knew to be
there said: -
“Up so late, Doctor? Up so late, Jed?”
“Why, Mr. Sidney!” I exclaimed.
He was, indeed, an extraordinary-looking being.
He had controlled his voice and his manner. Dis-
cipline was fixed in his soul. But he had not con-
trolled his expression. It was of the wildest ex-
citement. And yet how he tried to preserve the
normalities, taken as he was in such strange cir-
cumstances!
“Mr. Sidney!” I exclaimed again and my


THE MYSTERY OF EIARTLEY HOUSE 241
wonder was not simulated. “You abroad to-night
at such an hour !”
He made a violent effort to keep his composure,
and succeeded.
“I felt so well, Doctor,” he said, “and I see so
little of the place I love so much, that I took the
only chance I had—this wonderful October moon
and my faithful physician asleep and off guard, as
I thought—to steal out a moment. But Jed »
Here purpose took hold of him again and defied
concealment; he became excited and caused me
to have double dread of his to-morrow. “Jed, call
the penitentiary,” he commanded. “There's a con-
vict escaped. I met him as I walked down the
lane toward the river. Call the penitentiary in-
stantly. He ran when he saw me, but I recognised
him. It was that old fellow I saw working in the
library at the prison. Call quickly.”
Jed took up the telephone.
“Tell them he ran east toward the main road,”
said Mr. Sidney in great agitation. “He saw me
and ran. But I recognised him. There could not
be any doubt.”
Jed had the penitentiary on the telephone. Yes,
a convict, long trusted, had walked out of the
prison gates. It was the old man in the library.
They were hunting for him—had been for three
hours in several different parties, not because
they feared to have him escape, but because he


CHAPTER XLII
R. BROWNELL came in the morning and
found Mr. Sidney, as was expected, in ex-
treme exhaustion. I explained that our patient
had been, as usual the night prior to his alarming
collapses, very animated and that after midnight
- he had stolen out of the house for a walk about the
grounds, had encountered a convict escaped from
the penitentiary and had come back in great excite-
ment.
Restoratives were given Mr. Sidney, but Dr.
Brownell said he responded with more difficulty
and more slowly than on other occasions. For
several days he lay quite passive, as nearly inani-
mate as a living person could be. His features
were immobile but not expressionless. . They
seemed cast in one form, and the expression, I
was very sorry to note, was unpleasant. I was
sorry because I knew that was a false represen-
tation of a kindly man. -
It was not a striking expression. It might not
have been noted by a person who had not seen Mr.
Sidney's face convulsed on several occasions in an
agony of bitterness. His immobile features, as be
lay unconscious, were set; and the expression, ii.
243


244 THE MYSTERY OF HARTILEY HOUSE
seemed to me, was one of hate, indomitable, steady,
enduring hate.
Dr. Brownell came once every three days for two
weeks, during which time Mr. Sidney's recovery
was painfully slow. His mind cleared and became
active long before any strength came back to his
body. As soon as his mind did clear, he was, in
disposition, his former self. His eyes would banter
the people about him with quizzical unworded in-
terrogatories, even when he felt it too much an
effort to speak. I thought that if such a thing
were possible in so gentle a man, he was even
gentler than ordinary. I am not exaggerating
when I say that the benignity of the man was
seraphic.
He was so content, so tired, so thoughtful of
others, so insistent that this room should have
none of the glooms of a sick-chamber. His
canaries loved him, and by snapping his fingers
he could bring them in an ecstasy fluttering and
chirping about his head, a proceeding which the
Persian cat, lying at the foot of the bed, eyed with
an interest I distrusted.
I thought I saw a change of mood in him. There
was, if I was right, a less insistent claim upon life.
There was a yielding, an appearance of physical
and spiritual acceptance of the law of three score
and ten. If I were not deceived by little and im-
pressive signs I noted, Mr. Sidney was substituting


THE MYSTERY OF HARTILEY HOUSE 245
complacently the will to die for the will to live
which had been in him conspicuously indomitable.
On Dr. Brownell's last visit, he confirmed what
was in truth a fear.
“Has Mr. Sidney, to your knowledge,” he asked,
“recently found a supreme satisfaction in any
event?”
“None that I know of,” I said. “Why?”
“He is changing. He is different now from any-
thing I ever knew him to be. I always have be-
lieved that his case was out of our province, and
that life and death, for him, depended upon resolve
and that the resolve had a purpose. You have not
found things wholly normal here, have you?”
“No, I haven't.”
“There is something here,” said Dr. Brownell.
“I don’t know what it is. You don’t know What it
is, but depend on it, something of importance to
Sidney has happened. It may not have satisfied
his life's resolve, but I think it has. For the pres-
ent, he does not need me—possibly never again.”
Jed observed the change in Mr. Sidney. After-
ward I knew that he was a much more acute ob-
server than I, for the good enough reason that his
observation had a background of knowledge which
I lacked. There was, no doubt directly as the con-
sequence of this, an unbelievable change in Jed.
He was very fond of Mr. Sidney. In our unhappy
experiences with him, we had overlooked this fact


246 THE MYSTERY OF HARTLEY HOUSE
and had failed to use it as we could have. His
affection for Mr. Sidney was the one thing greater
than his cupidity and self-love, with their attendant
train of malevolence, violence, surliness, brutality
and treachery.
He was convinced that Mr. Sidney was about to
die, and the thought affected him tremendously.
He became gentle; he abandoned his rasping man-
ner—which, indeed, he never had carried into Mr.
Sidney's room, but which was an intermittent
provocation elsewhere. He was more than ever
with Mr. Sidney, and each evening, after the others
had gone, they had a bottle of wine which Jed
drank; but he did not go singing down the halls
afterwards. He was quiet and considerate, cour-
teous to Mrs. Sidney and thoroughly friendly to
me. He never was noticeably grief-stricken in the
sick-room, but several times I came upon him unex-
pectedly elsewhere and found him apparently down
in spirits.
“What's the matter with you, anyway, Jed?” I
asked him.
“Doctor,” he said, not in the least offensively,
“you’ll never find the secret of people in a copy-
book.”
October went and the brown month of November
took even the white-oak leaves, and the woods stood
in monochrome. Isobel and I rode every morning,
and just before the early sundown we usually took


THE MYSTERY OF HARTLEY HOUSE 247
a short walk, to rustle the brown leaves underfoot
and enjoy the sweetness of crisp air filled with the
odours of a seemly decay underfoot. Soon after
sunset we were in Mr. Sidney's room. He greatly
enjoyed to have the family about him, not engaged
in entertaining him or waiting on him, but occu-
pied in any amusement or work that could be
undertaken by his fire.
Isobel and I frequently played cards and ate
apples. We read, aloud for Mr. Sidney's benefit.
He did not get stronger physically. The only
time he left his bed was to sit in an invalid chair,
for not more than an hour, by the fire.
Jed had a cot moved in and spent the night with
him. He did not want the nurses to have this
office, and as he was perfectly competent, I con-
sented. -
November went quietly. We had Thanksgiving
dinner in Mr. Sidney's room, and his joviality made
it a very pleasant event. Snow came with early
December and gave us a more intensive indoor life,
with the place sparkling in new beauty outside.
Early snow, falling upon so baronial an estate,
made the yule-log and the boar's-head possible in
the imagination of even this generation.
It was an intensely happy and intensely unhappy
experience for me. Mr. Sidney, I was convinced,
would not live to the hepatica season. Isobel had
permitted him to follow the changing seasons from


CHAPTER XLIII
HE day before Christmas came with a driving
Snow which set in with an east wind early in
the morning. It was such a snow as makes a
child's wonderland, obliterating the usual aspect of
the winter out of doors and building a realm of
purest white. It was a real Christmas snowstorm,
heavy, persistent and driving but not unkindly.
Even to men and women, a child's imagination
returned under the magic of this scene—the grey
sky, darting, tossing snowflakes, woods and brush
mantled in white which clung to trunk and branch.
The storm continued all day long.
In the afternoon Morgan of the Metropolitan
Agency came, driving with difficulty through the
drifted banks of snow in the roads, to see me
again. I was full of apprehension as I told Jed
to show him in. His mood was different from what
it had been before, when he almost raged out of
the house. It seemed to me everybody's mood was
changing.
Nevertheless a child’s fancy came into my mind.
Outside was the storm through which travelled
fierce animals of northern forest, and here, out of
the storm, came the werewolf.
249


TEIE MYSTERY OF HARTLEY HOUSE 251
preposterous even for me. I’ll tell you that we
are not investigating Mr. Sidney any more. We
are looking for another person, and I believe we are
going to find him. Then we are going to find some
One else. Doctor, I tell you, if you don't know it,
as you say, it is the strangest case I ever have
known. It is one of hate. Mind, I’m only
guessing.”
That touch was so impressive that I betrayed an
emotion. He saw it. -
“I had you there,” he said.
“Mr. Morgan,” I said, “you will not believe me,
and for that reason it is useless for me to say and
keep on saying that I know of nothing here I could
help you on. You suggested something to me just
now, and you saw that you had done so. But that
was because of a coincidence immaterial to what
you call a case.” -
“Very well,” said Morgan. “I did not expect
to get ahead by coming here, but I want to be fair
and reasonable. You do not know anything, but I
am not allowed to talk to any one who might
know.” -
“You have talked to Jed,” I said. “You cannot
reasonably expect to be allowed to annoy the ladies
of the house or to flutter the servants. Mr. Sid-
ney is very ill and very weak. Even you would
refrain from introducing your case to him if you
saw him. If we seem to avoid your inquiries,


256 THE MYSTERY OF HARTILEY HOUSE
he could control his words and acts, he could not
control the expression of his face.
Mrs. Sidney accepted the event with a serenity
which I discovered afterward was born of a long-
fixed resolution. For her a life of compromise
with conscience was over, and what remained of
life was to be accepted and devoted to expiation of
a crime she felt she shared with her husband, to
whom her devotion was more compelling than the
dictates of her moral nature."
For years her life had been a denial of her moral
instincts—happy, in spite of that, because of her
great devotion to the wonderful man she loved.
The chapters which he dominated in her book were
ended. With tenderness she laid them aside.
Isobel did not permit herself indulgence in any
weakness. What had happened was written in the
contract of life. In later full knowledge of Isobel,
I never ceased to admire the wonderful acceptivity
with which she met her trials. Nothing came to
her with catastrophic shock. She had reality with-
in her vision, and she perceived.
For myself I saw the end of a mode of life which,
even when unhappy, had been ecstatically so. My
reason for being in Hartley House lay dead in bed.
I should look back, I knew, many times, as a
struggling practitioner, possibly in poorer districts
of the city, possibly in a small town, to the strange
but beautiful time when I was at Hartley. This


CHAPTER XLV
ED drew a chair up to the fire by my side. It
was with a strange feeling of relief that I ac-
cepted the significance of the manuscript he car.
ried.
“I’m a strange man, Doctor,” he said by way of
beginning. “You’d never understand me. I'm a
strange man and I do strange things. I’m go-
ing to do one now. I’ve seemed conscienceless,
haven't I?”
“I’ve never tried to conceal my opinion of you,”
I said.
“No, you haven’t. I like a candid man. That's
why I've always liked you, although I can’t say
much for your intelligence. But you’re honest.
I'm not honest, but I’m intelligent. I’ve looked
at my life as something to make the best of, and I
haven't been foolish about scruples. I am a ma-
terialist. A conscience is very easily handled, but
an empty belly is not so easily ignored.
“I’ve managed my chances, and I have not al-
lowed sentimentalism to stop me when something
real was to be gained. It's a real world, not a
fanciful one. That's the way I think.”
“Half the people would be swinging on gallows,”
260


THE MYSTERY OF HARTLEY HOUSE 261
I suggested, “if your amiable ideas prevailed gen-
erally.”
“That's more of the copy-book stuff that's so ir-
ritating,” he said. “The only thing extraordinary
about me is my candour. My ideas do prevail, but
the people who adopt them have less frankness.
They act the way I do, but they try to conceal it
even from themselves. It's a real world governed
by real appetites and glossed over. But what I
want to say is that I’m going to do a strange thing.
You'll probably think it an act of contrition. It
isn’t at all, but you’ll think it so. However, that's
unimportant.
“You may not know it, but I was very fond of
Mr. Sidney. He was the best friend I ever had or
ever shall have. -
“Now, I have guarded against acting impul-
sively or sentimentally. I know I am in an acutely
emotional condition. I have guarded against that.
I am still considering the world as a real world and
myself as a real creature in it. And here's the way
I figure it. Mr. Sidney's death has taught me that
materialism is not enough. It is necessary, but
there is something else. I’ve got to find another
something else. That’s more important than any
money or comforts—physical—that I can find.
“Where is this something else to be found again
if not right here in this family? I have determined
to remain in your service after you marry Miss


TEIE MYSTERY OF HARTLEY HOUSE 263
“You understand that in giving it to you I
surrender unconditionally. I know it, but I want
friends. The only one I had is dead; I must make
Other ones.”
The extraordinary fellow shook my hand, left
the manuscript in my lap and went out, a more
pathetic figure of sorrow than I ever expected to
see in Jed. -
I went at once to Mrs. Sidney. Jed, I said, had
left the diary with me. Would it serve any useful
purpose for me to read it, or should it not go
directly to the fire?
“I think you should read it, John,” she said.
“I told Jed so. He is very shrewd. His judg-
ment and mine in this case agree.”
I went back to the office, put a log on the fire and
sat down to read the diary.


CHAPTER XLVI
SHALL not pretend to give more than an idea
of the manuscript I read there by the fire that
night. It was narrative and reflection and con-
tained the story of the life of Arthur Dobson,
known to me heretofore as Mr. Sidney. I shall
give extracts from it:
A family is an odious imposition of cruel con-
ventionalities upon individuals who, accepting con-
ventions, however odious and cruel, are helpless.
The bond of blood is one no animal (animals being
rationalistic) tolerates, even recognises, but it is
imposed upon human beings, who find that the
most antagonistic natures must reconcile them-
selves to an arbitrary rule of life which can come
only to hideousness.
There were in our family two children, my
brother Richard and myself. Our parents were
the ordinary folk who marry and have a family.
My father was an uncommunicative man, whether
from a habit of silence or a lack of anything to
say, I do not know.
Ordinarily he sat dumb at the table or in the
living-room, saying nothing except by way of com-
264


THE MYSTERY OF EIARTILEY HOUSE 267
I remember with a still-agonised vividness my
experience in finding a snake in my bed. He had
put it there. He used his superior strength to
torture me physically. He dominated me spirit-
ually. He made life a hell, such a hell as life
can be made only for a child by mistreatment,
when reality has not starkly asserted itself, when
proportions are not established and when illusions
can be kindly or hideous.
Richard and I grew up to this fashion, I in
terror of him and his malevolence. When I was
fifteen, mother died. She had been an unassertive
mother. Circumstances and conditions were be-
yond her strength of mind or body, but she had
been a friend, and I missed her cruelly. It was
really a terrible loss at a time when I much needed
a friend.
At her funeral, Richard amused himself sticking
a pin in my leg, enjoying my really Spartan deter-
mination to endure the pain. . . . . I say that I
resent the tyranny of the family. What did I have
in common with this young powerful beast? My
brother? The thought of relationship sickened me.
I hated the brute. The fact that we had the same
parents established an unnatural, not a natural,
relationship.
As we grew older, Richard's diabolical habits
became only shrewder, not less assertive. He con-
trived the most ingenious schemes for my torment.


268 THE MYSTERY OF HARTILEY HOUSE
He humiliated me whenever possible before other
boys and, better for his purpose, before girls.
My father put us out to school together, and this
suited Richard's purpose admirably. How I hated
this thing that bore my name and my blood! It
became an indomitable hate. It exists to this day.
No human being ever was so hated by another as
my brother Richard was by me—and is—is to this
moment and will be hated while a breath remains
in my body.
When I was eighteen, my father died, and Rich-
ard and I inherited the estate under a trusteeship
to continue until I was twenty-one. Richard was
then twenty. In another year he attained his ma-
jority. He was profligate and wild, a heavy
drinker, a coarse, cruel boor, a licentious young
ruffian who had suffered twice in actions brought
by weak and unfortunate girls.
It irritated him beyond expression that he had
to wait the slow process of my coming of age before
he could come into his share of the property. His
constant demeanour toward me was violent. Sev-
eral times I tried to establish the reasonable rela-
tions which ought, in convention, to exist between
brothers. It was quite hopeless, and my hate for
this boor came to be an intense passion. It re-
mains as a passion now.
I may not be able to satisfy any one that this was
the inevitable consequence of the treatment given


CHAPTER XLVII
ERE followed a section of the manuscript
from which, as I recognised, the page Dra-
vada had taken, was missing. Then it continued:
I became a little more assertive of my rights and
dignity, with the result that our quarrels were
more violent. I tried to fit myself physically to
meet Richard, but he was very sturdy, and his
profligate habits had not yet undermined his
health. When I resisted him physically, he had
the better of me. Three times he knocked me un-
conscious. Once I was ill in bed a week as the
result of a beating he gave me.
Frequently he threatened that he would kill me.
He said this often and openly, with every evidence
of earnestness and determination. Later that
counted against him. -
I was not cowed, and with the great hatred
firmly rooted, I was willing to accept the unequal
struggle with him. It was a joy to hate him, fight
him, even to be beaten by him. I had regained
enough courage to seek sociability. It was diffi-
cult, because his refined sense of cruelty led him to
270


THE MYSTERY OF HARTLEY HOUSE 275
It would have damned any aggressor in the opinion
of any body of men. Every one who knew any-
thing of the case, Richard himself included, was
convinced that I had been murdered. The doubt
which remained merely served to get Richard a
life sentence instead of the gallows. Popular psy-
chology condemned him. The lack of essential evi-
dence was ignored.
I waited until I knew what his fate was, and
then, rejoicing, I left the country. I had no pros-
pects and few plans, but my inclination was to
go to South America, and I followed it.
My hatred never ceased. It grew as a passion,
at first a disturbing one, later a satisfactory one.
I wanted this man to suffer. Nothing that he can
suffer will properly pay him—at least it will not
pay my score.
Some day, I know, for I have the determination,
I shall return to Hartley House as its owner, al-
though esteemed an alien, with a false name, a false
life and a great joy. What is a family that I
should not enjoy my perfect revenge upon this
brute who made fifteen y, ars and more of my life,
in its most impressionable form, an undesirable
thing when it was most desired?
I shall go back to Hartley House, and if life
and health be spared me, I shall make it and life
in it jovial, and if strength be spared my will, the
knowledge that my brother Richard is suffering for


276 THE MYSTERY OF HARTLEY HOUSE
the murder of a dead live man shall be the cosey
north wind in the eaves below which burn my
cheerful fires.
This is my crime, and if it causes no one dear
to me later to suffer, I want it known. Some day
I shall go back as a man wholly unknown to people
who knew the Dobsons. I shall be what I have
been, Alfred Sidney. I shall buy the old place. I
shall know that Richard Dobson is suffering a most
equitable but illegal punishment in a penitentiary
close to the place where I shall live in the circum-
stances which a great deal of money will enable
me to set up.
That is my natural revenge upon a fiend who
happened to come of the same parents as I. Hate
is a wonderful friend.


CHAPTER XLVIII
ED came into the room again as I finished read-
ing, and put another log on the fire. Then he
sat down in a rocking-chair by the fire.
“They met that night, you know,” he said after
he had rocked a while.
Probably it was not astonishing that I had a
curious derailment of ideas. There had been the
impact of this discovery against my perceptions,
and I was not paying much attention to Jed.
“They?” I said.
“Arthur and Richard Dobson,” said Jed. “Mr.
Sidney and his brother, who is over there in the
penitentiary.” º
“They met what night?” I asked.
Jed was patient.
“They met the night last fall,” he explained,
“when you found Mr. Sidney leaving the house, the
night I found you outside, the night we pretended
I was sick, the night he came in here and had us
call the penitentiary to say a convict had escaped.
That night, he met his brother. His brother was
the convict.”
Jed was rocking and talking to the fire.
“Mr. Sidney—Arthur Dobson ” he said,
277


THE MYSTERY OF HARTLEY HOUSE 279
“The night I am reminding you of,” he said,
when he thought the air was fresh again, “he met
Richard Dobson at the pool and recognised him.
The poor old fool, Dick, had walked out of the
penitentiary. He had every opportunity to do so.
The warden would have let him out if he had asked
to go. He was helpless outside. He did not have
a place to get a rag or a crust. But he wanted to
escape.
“There must have been something in his mind
about this night and this place. Arthur Dobson
found his brother standing by the pool. I was fifty
feet away, hidden by the bushes. I could see the
two old men in the moonlight, and when Arthur
Dobson began to speak, I could hear distinctly.
“‘Well, Richard,’” said Mr. Sidney, “we are
here again.”
“Richard Dobson quavered in a weak, senile
tone, almost a falsetto: “Who are you?”
“‘I'm your brother Arthur,” said Mr. Sidney.
“What are you doing here?’
“Richard Dobson must have known that he was
confronted by a ghost. He made a shrill little
sound, as an old woman might. I was palsied.
The situation was tremendous. I didn’t know what
would happen, and I didn’t know what to do. Mr.
Sidney was calm as an oyster.
“‘I am your brother Arthur, Richard,” he said,
‘and I am not dead. I haven’t been dead. You


TEIE MYSTERY OF HARTLEY HOUSE 281
man, an alcoholic of no account except to him, and
he is dead.”
“There is only one thing to do,” I said. “Rich-
ard Dobson must be on his way to freedom to-
morrow. We shall have to see to that.”
Jed aroused himself for an instant.
“You copy-book moralist!” he said. “You
would interfere with a genial, lovable man’s mag-
nificent hate just because he is dead and your
scruples have become important. You ought to
choke. Let the brute Dick Dobson rot in prison.
It’s his desert.”
“It can’t be done, Jed,” I said. “To-morrow
we'll go to Alwick prison and explain.”


THE MYSTERY OF HARTLEY HOUSE 283
º
Jed had one more flash of spirit as we started
for the penitentiary.
“You poor old copy-book fool of a moralist' " he
said. “Why can’t your insignificant conscience be
satisfied without doing a lot of damage to no good
end? Hang you moralists' You wreck life.
Richard Dobson can't live outside the penitentiary.
He has no money, no way of making any, no place
to go, no friends. You are going to throw him out
of his home. You are going to torture him with
the knowledge that his life was wasted in prison
when he was a free man in law. You are going
to destroy the Sidney family.”
“Richard Dobson saw his brother,” I said, “that
night at the pool.”
“He saw a ghost,” asserted Jed. “Or if he
didn't see a ghost, he must want to stay in the peni-
tentiary. If he knew it was his brother, why
didn’t he demand an enquiry and his freedom?
Either because he saw a ghost or because he does
not want his freedom. You can have it either way
you want. You are going to force him out of the
only place he has to live, and you are going to give
him the tragedy of knowing how his life was
Wrecked.”
“He is a rich man,” I said. “Half the old Dob-
son estate is his. All of it is his. His brother was
legally and is now actually dead.”
“You are a worse man than I was,” said Jed.


284 THE MYSTERY OF HARTLEY HOUS...M.
“I never interfered with Mr. Sidney's scheme of
punishment. You are trying to. His scheme was
just.”
“What's the use of this debate?” I exclaimed.
“You are morally incapable of right-doing.”
“And you are a foolish collection of pious
axioms,” said Jed.
When we came to the penitentiary entrance, we
encountered Morgan of the Metropolitan Agency.
He stopped me.
“You had me fooled,” he said. “I really
thought you didn't know.”
“I did not know,” I said.
“Didn't you!” he exclaimed. “You are here
to see Richard Dobson. I followed my hunch. I
have the answer to this thing. I know why this
man Sidney never was younger than twenty years.
You are here to see Richard Dobson because you
are representing Arthur Dobson.”
“Arthur Dobson is dead,” I said.
“I know he is—as a name; but he is alive as
Sidney.”
“Mr. Sidney is dead,” I said. “We have come
here to tell Richard Dobson that he can go free.
I did not know who Arthur Dobson was until last
night.”
As Morgan stood before us on the penitentiary
steps, I thought how true had been my conception
of him as the inevitable. Mr. Sidney had out-


THE MYSTERY OF HARTLEY HOUSE 287
Of all the obvious things I might have said to
this man who for a long time had terrorised the
Sidney household, none seemed pertinent. They
would have been imprecations and reproaches.
They would have dealt with the past. He, as if
he had a clean slate, was dealing with the future.
It did Mrs. Sidney and Isobel no good to tell Jed
that he had been a rascal and was unfit to advise.
“If you go to Mrs. Sidney,” said Jed, “she will
sacrifice herself and everybody else. Go to Miss
Sidney and tell her that the family must pay Mr.
Morgan twenty thousand dollars. He'll want
fifty thousand dollars. He'll take twenty. Give
it to him in five annual installments. At the end
of five years he'll be harmless. You and Miss
Sidney will have established yourselves, and Mor-
gan’s story will be a dried-up walnut.”
The proposal was so repulsive that I did not
answer Jed. He said a great deal more in a great
deal of bitterness, chiefly against me and what he
conceived to be my moralistic ideas.
When we had returned to Hartley House, Jed
said:
“Do at least one thing: ask Miss Sidney what
she prefers.”
I had no right and no inclination to make a
decision which concerned the family and not me.
I did not want to speak to Mrs. Sidney—Jed was
right: her conscience might permit only the answer


292 THE MYSTERY OF HARTILEY HOUSE
“I do not. I think of it as my real life. The
rest of my existence will be the sacrifice.”
“You are a simple sort of a person, John.”
“I presume so. I have no reason to think other-
Wise.”
“Where did you get your ideas of women,
John?”
“I have no ideas of women. I am not pre-
sumptuous or, in that fashion, egotistic.”
“Yes, you are,” she said.
“I don't think you are right in saying that.”
“You are presumptuous about me.”
“I am not!” I exclaimed in hurt pride.
“You are,” she said. “You presume that I am
not in love with you.”
THE END


\
ZANE GREYS NOVELS
May be had wherever books are sold. Ask for Grosset & Dunlap's list
THE LIGHT OF WESTERN STARS
A New York society girl buys a ranch which becomes, the center of frontier war:
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surprising climax brings the story to a delightful close.
THE RAINBOW TRAIL
The story of a young clergyman who becomes a wanderer in the great westerº
uplands—until at last love and faith awake.
DESERT GOLD
The story describes the recent uprising along the border, and ends with the finding
of the gold which two prospectors had willed to the girl who is the story's heroine.
RIDERS OF THE PURPLE SAGE
A picturesque romance of Utah of some forty years ago when Mormon authority
+ alſº The prosecution of Jane Withersteen is the theme of the story.
THE LAST OF THE PLAINSMEN
This is the record of a trip which the author took with Buffalo Jones, known as the
preserver, of the American bison, across the Arizona desert and of a hunt in “that
wonderful country of deep canons and giant pines.”
THE HERITAGE OF THE DESERT
A lovely girl, who has been reared among Mormons, learns to love a young New
Englander. The Mormon religion, howeyer, demands that, the girl shall become
the second wife of one of the Mormons-Well, that's the problem of this great story.
"THE SHORT STOP
The young hero, tiring of his factory grind, starts out to win fame and fortune as
a professional ball player. His hard knocks at the start are followed by such success
as clean sportsmanship, courage and honesty ought to win.
RETTY ZANE
* This story tells of the bravery and heroism of Betty, the beautiful young sister of
º old Colonel Zane, one of the bravest pioneers. º
THE LONE STAR RANGER
After killing a man in self defense, Buck Duane becomes an outlaw along, the
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THE BORDER LEGION
Joan Randle, in a spirit of anger, sent Jim Cleve out to a lawless Western mining
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On # way, she is captured by a bandit band, and trouble begins when she shoots
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THE LAST OF THE GREAT SCOUT3, -
By Helen Cody Wetmore and Zane Grey
The life story of Colonel William F. Cody, “Buffalo Bill,” as told by his sister and
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LAl) LIE. Illustrated by Herman Pfeifer.
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THE HARVESTER. Illustrated by W. L. Jacobs.
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FRECKLES. Illustrated.
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A GIRL OF THE LIMBERLOST. Illustrated.
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AT THE FOOT OF THE RAINBOW. Illustrations in colors.
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THE SONG OF THE CARDINAL. Profusely illustrated.
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R. M. BOWER’S NOVELS
May be had wherevor books are sold. Ask for Grosset and Dunlap's list.
SHIP OF THE FLYING U. Wherein the love affairs of Chip and
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THE HAPPY FAMILY. A lively and amusing story, dealing with
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HER PRAIRIE KNIGHT. Describing a gay party of Easterners,
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THE RANGE DWELLERS. Spirited action, a range feud be-
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THE LURE OF THE DIM TRAILS. A vivid portrayal of the
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THE LONESOME TRAIL. A little branch of sage brush and the
recollection of a pair of large brown eyes upset “Weary.” David-
son's plans. -
THE LONG SHADOW. A vigorous Western story, sparkling with
the free outdoor life of a mountain ranch. It is a fine love story.
GOOD INDIAN. A stirring romance of life on an Idaho ranch.
FLYING U RANCH. Another delightful story about Chip and
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THE FLYING U'S LAST STAND. An amusing account of Chip
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THE UPHILL CLIMB. A story of a mountain ranch and of a
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THE PHANTOM HERD. The title of a moving-picture staged in
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THE HERITAGE OF THE SIOUX. The “Flying U" boys stage
– fake bank robbery for film purposes which precedes a real one
* for lust of gold.
THE GRINGOS. A story of love and adventure on a ranch in
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STARR OF THE DESERT. A New Mexico ranch story of mys-
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THE LOOKOUT MAN. A Northern California story full of action.
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*
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HANDSOMELY BOUND IN CLOTH. ILLUSTRATED.
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MAVERICKS.
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A TEXAS RANGER.
How a member of the most dauntless border police force earried
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of thrilling adventures, followed a fugitive to Wyoming, and then
passed through deadly peril to ultimate happiness.
WYOMING.
In this vivid story of the outdoor West the author has captured
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*
RIDGWAY OF MONTANA.
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BUCKY O'CONNOR,
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CROOKED TRAILS AND STRAIGHT.
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BRAND BLOTTERS.
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GRoss ET & DUNLAP, PUBLIs HERs, New York


THE NOVELS OF
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CLARA LOUISE BURNHAM
May be had wherever books are sold. Ask for Grosset & Dunlap's ºbst.
#EWEL: A Chapter in Her Life.
Illustrated by Maude and Genevieve Cowles.
A story breathing the doctrine of love and patience as exemp-
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of the immortality of her love.
JEWEL'S STORY BOOK. Illustrated by Albert Schmitt.
A sequel to “Jewel,” in which the same characteristies ef
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THE INNER FLAME. Frontispiece in color.
A young mining engineer, whose chief ambition is to become
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has a way opened to him to try his powers, and, of course, he
is successful.
THE RIGHT PRINCESS.
At a fashionable Long Island resort, a stately English woman
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interestiºg home. Many humorous situations result. A de-
lightful love affair runs through it all.
THE OPENED SHUTTERS.
Illustrated with Scenes from the Photo Play.
A beautiful woman, at discord with life, is brought to realize,
oy her new friends, that she may open the shutters of her soul
to the blessed sunlight of joy by casting aside self love.
THE RIGHT TRACK.
Frontispiece in color by Greene Blumenschien.
A story of a young girl who marries for money so that she cas
enjoy things intellectual. Neglect of her husband and of her
two step children makes an unhappy home till a friend brings &
sew philosophy of happiness into the household.
'CLEVER BETSY. Illustrated by Rose O'Neill.
The “Clever Betsy'' was a boat—named for the unyielding
spinster whom the captain hoped to marry, Through the two
Betsy's a delightful group of people are introduced.
Ask for Complete free list of G. & D. Popular Copyrighted Fiction
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