-
-
-
- |- -


The
Green Vase
By
W. R. CASTLE, JR.
*
This story, possessing a com-
bination of qualities that do not
often come together, is em-
phatically worth while. In its
characters, its setting, its careful
development of a perfectly
natural and notinfrequent human
situation, it shows workmanship
of something more than ordinary
talent. The initial problem, a
young woman marrying for love
a strong, ambitious man, whose
big heart she recognizes under
his surface vulgarity, while at
the same time she cannot deny
herself the rather dangerous
friendship of another man who in
social position, inborn refinement
and wealth represents all the un-
attainable things that her finer
self craves—this in itself would
have made a good story if worked
out simply and naturally, as at
first the book gives promise of
doing. But the sudden un-
foreseen, remarkable twist given
to events by the author produces
a novel of real strength and power,
one that arovokes though
dis-- 'sinthem.
ulpany \
ew York 2.
& Company
GM KOLK New York
orribsU).














Midnight at Mears House








We were busily engaged in running through the packet when
a slight noise made us look around (page 58)


Midnight at Mears House
A Detective Story
By
HARRISON JEWELL HOLT
Author of
**The CALENDARED Isles”
ILLUSTRATED BY
M. J. SPERO
NEW YORK
DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY

I912


CoPYRIGHT, 1912, BY
DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY
Published April, 1912


To
©. 33.3%.
IN WHOSE FRIENDSHIP
THE AUTHOR HAS FOR MANY YEARS
FOUND BOTH JOY AND INSPIRATION
THIS BOOK IS AFFECTIONATELY
DEDICATED





CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I I FIND MEARS HousE MASTERLESS . • • 3
II THE PARALYTIC MAN . . • - • . . I2
III I BEGIN TO DOUBT MY OWN EYES . - - 2O
IV ARTHUR TELLs ME SoME QUEER THINGs . - 3O
V WE DECIDE TO ASK HELP of THE BLIND . - 45
VI. A FACE AT THE WINDOW . - - • - 57
VII I STUMBLE UPON A CLUE . - • • - 68
VIII THE MAN IN THE GRAY FELT HAT . - - 77
IX STEPHEN GARTH . • - - • • • 88
X MARGARET DISAPPEARS . • - - - • IO2
XI Two STRANGERS ARRIVE - - - - • II3
XII GARTH DoEs AN AsToUNDING THING . . . 129
XIII A NIGHT OF SURPRISES • • - - - I4I
XIV BLINDMAN's BUFF . • - - - - - I5I
XV I DISOBEY ORDERS. • - - - - - I65
XVI JoNATHAN MEARS OFFERS A SUGGESTION . - I79
XVII EIGHT O'CLOCK CoMEs . • * * * - 188
XVIII ON THE SHORE ROAD . • • • • • I99
XIX I PLAY THE FooL ERRANT . • • - - 212
XX WE Go on A VAIN QUEST . - - - - 226
XXI GARTH MAKEs SoME AMAZING STATEMENTs - 236
XXII WE HIRE A BUTLER . • • • • • 247
Vii


viii CONTENTS
CHAPTER Pace
XXIII MRS. BARTLETT PUTs HER Foot Down . - 257
XXIV I MAKE A PROMISE AND BREAK IT . - - 270
XXV IN THE ToweR-RooM . - - - - - 281
XXVI GARTH TABLEs HIs CARDs . - - - - 292
XXVII AN INTERRUPTED STORY - - - * - 307
XXVIII I SEEK THE ANsweR To A RIDDLE . - - 317
XXIX WHY MARGARET WoULDN'T BID ME GooD-NIGHT 327


ILLUSTRATIONS
We were busily engaged in
running through the pack-
et, when a slight noise
made us look around
(page 58) •
“There is something queer
going on, something I do
not understand. It fright-
ens me.” (page 193)
He was sitting straight up with
both arms stretched out
in front of him and there
was a terrible rigidity
about him (page 316) .
“But since that night in the
tower-room I began to
understand what it really
was ” (page 331)
Frontispiece
Facing page
8O





Midnight at Mears House





MIDNIGHT AT MEARS HOUSE 5
heard the sound of her laughter in that house: it
seemed so foreign and unnatural, but none the less
gracious and pleasing. Even David Mears lost much
of his habitual taciturnity and gloom. It was won-
derful to see his sombre face light up when she came
into the room, and to note the change in his voice
when he spoke to her. Had she been his own daugh-
ter he could not have loved her more, nor could
she have been any fonder of him. It made me won-
der sometimes if I did not judge him too harshly.
Mears House was situated three miles from Shel-
burne Village on a bluff overlooking the sea. It had
been built of grey sandstone by a retired sea-captain
of ample means and a peculiar taste in architecture.
A great square tower three stories in height dwarfed
the rest of the house, and gave it a half-finished look,
which was further emphasised by its standing alone
on a sharp rise bare of trees. It had few windows,
and these were small, deep-set, and high, so that the
interior of the house was but poorly lighted. The
rooms on the ground floor were lofty, raftered, and
panelled in Spanish oak, and the furnishings were all
of rather a dark and gloomy character. A stone
stairway at the back of the big hall led to a second
story which contained five bedrooms. There was also
a sixth room in the tower which was never used. The
kitchen and servants' quarters were in an ell at the
back. A big wooden stable with outhouses stood on


6 MIDNIGHT AT MEARS HOUSE
lower ground some hundred yards away from the
house, connected with it by a circular driveway.
When David Mears bought the place it had long
been untenanted. He must have spent considerable
money putting the house in repair and refurnishing
it throughout. Externally, however, he did nothing
to improve the property, which included about sev-
enty-five acres of fine meadow-land and nearly as
much more of rough pasture and woods, so that it
soon became an ugly wilderness of weeds and bushes.
Even the grounds about the house were never cared
for till Margaret Ellis came. She persuaded him to
hire a man to look after them, and to have him lay
out a little flower-garden for her on the south side
of the house; but when she suggested clearing the
abandoned meadow-land and planting it, David
Mears shook his head. “I’m no lout of a farmer,”
he said; and when she laughingly asked him why he
chose to live on a farm then, he answered shortly,
“Because I choose to.” And that, so far as I know,
was the only reason he ever gave for settling in that
out-of-the-way spot. He had some strong motive for
doing so, of that there could be no question, since he
hated the country and took no pains to hide the fact.
Arthur and I often speculated as to what that motive
could have been, but though we gave free rein to our
imaginations, we never dreamed of anything so
strange and terrible as the actual truth.


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MIDNIGHT AT MEARS HOUSE 7
I must acquit Arthur, indeed, of any clear percep-
tion of his uncle's character, or the least knowledge
of the circumstances which drove him to live there.
His mother, an elder sister of David Mears, had
eloped at nineteen with the son of a wealthy old
Boston family, who had gone West to visit a college
chum in Mansfield where the Mears lived. She had
died a year later, when Arthur was born. His fa-
ther was killed soon afterward in a railway accident;
and he had been brought up by an aunt in strict
ignorance of his mother's relatives, of whom she did
not approve and of whom she never spoke. After be-
ing graduated from Harvard he had gone to Europe
to study art, and had spent some years there. It was
indeed quite by accident, in the course of a walking-
trip one summer after his return, that he had stum-
bled upon Mears House and learned who David
Mears was. He had fallen in love with that part
of the Maine coast, whose rugged bits of scenery
made splendid material for his brush; and although
David Mears felt no especial liking for him, he was
not averse to having someone to share his exile and
lighten the expense of running the place.
But though they had lived together for five years,
there existed no real intimacy between the two men
—they had too little in common. It was not ties of
relationship or affection which kept them under one
roof; but chiefly the fact that each found Mears


8 MIDNIGHT AT MEARS HOUSE
House so admirably suited as a dwelling-place, David
Mears for certain reasons of his own, and Keaton
because it afforded him unsurpassed opportunities for
practising his art as a sea and landscape painter.
Of his merits as an artist it would be absurd of
me to speak: I am ill-qualified to judge of such mat-
ters; but whatever his skill with pigments, he was
certainly an enthusiastic sportsman and a splendid
shot. I want no better companion with whom to beat
a covert, or watch for the rush of wings over the
decoys in the grey light of dawn. I had indeed but
one fault, or rather two, to find with him—his
ofttimes distressing lack of humour, and his hatred of
letter-writing. Though it was now nearly six months
since I had seen him, he had written to me but once
in all that time, and then only to ask me if I would
attend to some trifling law business for him. Of
Jonathan Mears, David Mears' brother, he said
nothing, though it seems hardly credible that he
should not even have mentioned the man's arrival;
for as I learned afterward it went far to upsetting
the peace and happiness of the whole household, and
produced an extraordinary change in David Mears
himself. But I was quite ignorant of all this when
I entered the train that October morning; and it was
with no thought of finding things any different at
Mears House that I looked forward to my visit
there.


MIDNIGHT AT MEARS HOUSE 9
The Deephaven Express was as usual much behind
time, and it was after ten at night when it finally
stopped with a series of protesting jerks at the tiny
flag-station of Shelburne. I had expected to find
Arthur waiting for me, and I was much surprised
and not a little annoyed that he was not there. In
all the years I had been coming to Mears House it
was the first time he had failed to meet me.
I lighted a cigar and walked up and down the plat-
form, listening impatiently for the sound of wheels.
After a while I decided to leave my gun and grips,
and walk along the Shore Road till I met him. The
night was very dark, but warm for the time of year,
with a hint of rain in the air. I had hardly got
beyond the edge of the village when a few drops fell,
and I was strongly inclined to turn back and regain
the shelter of the station; but as I felt sure that
Arthur could not be much longer coming, I decided
to keep on. I had gone perhaps half a mile farther
when I heard, some distance ahead, the sound of a
horse and carriage approaching rapidly. He was
certainly making up for lost time, I thought.
“Hello, Arthur !” I cried when the vehicle was
within hailing distance. “You’re a nice sort of a
host to get here an hour late. What the devil do
you mean by it?”
Instead of answering, the man in the buggy gave
his horse a lash with the whip, and dashed past me


IO MIDNIGHT AT MEARS HOUSE
without a word. He came within an inch of running
over me. I stood and stared after him in open-
mouthed amazement.
“Well, of all fool performances!” I muttered.
“A nice, hospitable set of neighbours Arthur's got!
Thought I was going to hold him up, I suppose, the
silly idiot.” I snorted at the absurdity of the idea.
There was nothing to do, however, but to plod along
on foot, which I did, still hoping that Arthur might
appear at any moment. But he did not come, and I
began to think that probably he hadn't received the
telegram I had sent him the night before, and so
wasn't expecting me till the next day. The Shelburne
telegraph service had always been very bad, I remem-
bered. It was time someone complained about it, and
I determined to do so the first thing in the morning.
It was a little before midnight when I finally
reached Mears House. The rain had ceased, and a
wind had sprung up, but the sky was still heavily
overcast. As I toiled up the driveway I could hear
the soft pounding of the surf, and a loose window-
blind banging on its hinges. There were no lights
in the house, and I had to fumble about in the dark-
ness to find the doorbell. I rang again and again,
but no one came. I went around under Arthur's
window and called to him, at first softly, then at the
top of my voice. He did not answer. I went back
and pounded on the door. Then I seized the knob


MIDNIGHT AT MEARS HOUSE II ,
and shook it violently. A second later I was sprawl-
ing on my hands and knees in the hall.
I scrambled to my feet, expecting to find Arthur
or one of the servants at my elbow—for the door, I
knew, was never left unlocked: David Mears saw to
that every night himself. He had an extraordinary
dread of thieves. To my amazement there was no
one there. I struck a match and peered about. One
glance around the big hall showed me that I was
quite alone. I was frankly puzzled. Someone, I
felt sure, had opened the door at the exact moment
that I shook the knob. Who was it? What had
become of him?
With a sudden uneasy sense of something wrong
I lighted a lamp that stood on the hall table, and
with it in my hand I started to explore the adjoining
rooms. The library door stood ajar, and I pushed
it open and went in.
Almost upon the threshold I came upon the dead
body of David Mears. He was lying doubled up on
his right side, his head over his left shoulder, his
wide-open eyes staring straight up at me with a
frightful look of fear and hatred.


CHAPTER II
THE PARALYTIC MAN
FOR perhaps a minute I stood there looking at him.
Then I backed slowly out of the room and shut the
door. I felt weak and dizzy, and I put down the
lamp and sat down with my head in my hands.
Gradually as my nerves got steadier I began to
feel irritated, even angry. “Why,” I thought,
“should I, a decent, orderly person with no love of
tragic adventure, no morbid craving for excitement,
be made to trudge three miles through the rain at
dead of night to find a man murdered in his library?
When by rights I should at this moment be abed and
asleep, why should I find myself keeping lonely vigil
outside a death-chamber?” It was absurd, prepos-
terous! I vowed that if there were another soul in
the house, I would find him and make him share the
horror of my discovery.
I picked up the lamp and began to climb the flight
of stone stairs at the back of the hall. Just as I
reached the top step I thought I heard someone mov-
ing stealthily on the floor below. I stood a moment
listening, and then, hearing nothing more, I went part
I2


MIDNIGHT AT MEARS HOUSE I 3
way down, where I could command a view of the
whole hall. If there had been anyone there a mo-
ment before, he had disappeared. The front door
stood wide open as I had left it in the excitement of
my sudden entry, and I hastened to shut and double
bolt it. Then I reclimbed the stairs and looked in
the rooms above.
They were all unlocked and empty—Arthur's,
which I entered first, half-dreading to find him mur-
dered also, David Mears' room, Margaret's, and the
two guest-chambers. Except the room in the tower,
which I knew was unfurnished and never occupied,
there remained only the servants’ quarters in the ell.
I was about to explore them when I heard someone
sneeze, someone in the tower-room. Why there
should be anything reassuring in the sound of a good,
hearty sneeze, I don't know. Very likely upon most
men in my position it would have produced quite the
opposite effect; but after the first start which it gave
me I breathed more easily. Doubtless it was from
relief at finding there was someone alive in the house
besides myself. And so without a second's hesitation
I made for the tower-room, and knocked at the
door.
As there was no answer, I pushed it open, and stood
facing a man seated in a big armchair at the farther
end of the immense room. Except for the lamp in
my hand, the room was unlighted, and at first glance


I4 MIDNIGHT AT MEARS HOUSE
I could see only that he was of huge bulk and aston-
ishingly bald, with a great hooked nose and small
beady eyes.
“Well,” he said sharply, “who are you and what
do you want?”
“I want your help,” I replied.
“Eh?” he snapped, leaning forward a trifle in his
chair and frowning at me. “Speak up, can't you?
I'm deaf.”
“I want your help,” I repeated in a louder
voice.
“You do, eh?” he growled. “Well, suppose you
answer my questions first as to who you are and what
you are doing in this house. It's a matter which I
think you'll admit may reasonably require an explana-
tion—that is, unless you're used to having strangers
burst into your room at all hours of the night,” he
added drily. “I’m not.”
“It's simple enough,” I returned, irritated at his
tone. “I heard someone sneeze in this room, and
I came to see who it was. You didn't answer my
knock, so I thought possibly I might have been mis-
taken and opened the door to find out if there was
anyone here or not.”
“Very good,” he said, studying me suspiciously
through his narrow slits of eyes; “but that doesn't
explain 59
“See here,” I broke in angrily. “What do you


MIDNIGHT AT MEARS HOUSE I5
take me for, a thief or a murderer? Do I look like
one?”
“No, no, of course not; but as I remarked before,
your coming was somewhat unexpected, and I'm nat-
urally curious to learn—”
“Who I am and what I am doing in this house,”
I interrupted.
He nodded.
“You shall,” I went on curtly, placing the lamp
on the table and sitting down facing him. “I don't
know who you are, either, for that matter,” I began,
“or how long you’ve been a member of this house-
hold; but very likely you know that Mr. Keaton was
expecting a visit from an old friend of his, Philip
Scarsden P”
He nodded again, still watching me closely. I
took some letters out of my pocket and passed them
over to him.
“Perhaps these will satisfy you of my identity,
Mr.—”
“Mears,” he put in, “Jonathan Mears.”
“Not David Mears' brother?” I exclaimed.
“Yes,” he said, looking quickly up at me. “What
of it?”
“I’ve bad news, terrible news for you,” I replied;
and I went on to tell him the circumstances of my ar-
rival, and of the gruesome discovery I had made.
He listened to me without a word, with hardly a


MIDNIGHT AT MEARS HOUSE 17
“Under the circumstances it's perhaps just as well
you are paralysed,” I said shortly.
“Otherwise people might think I murdered him
myself, eh,” he sneered. “It might well have come
to that sooner or later,” he added grimly. “I’m not
a very patient man under abuse, Mr. Scarsden, and
I wouldn't have stood for much more of his damned
laughter.”
“The man's dead,” I reminded him sharply, “and
whatever wrong he did you or anyone else, he's paid
for it. He was no great friend of mine either, but
for all that I don't intend to leave him lying there:
it isn't decent. And since you can't help me,”
I added, rising, “I’m going to rouse one of the
servants.”
“You can spare yourself the bother of looking for
them,” he said. “They all left yesterday, the second
lot within the week, too. Keaton's gone to town to
get others; but he'll have a hard time of it, I im-
agine, finding any who'll come here.”
I asked him why. -
“Think the place is haunted,” he explained.
“Some fool of a chambermaid got to hearing mys-
terious noises—voices in empty rooms, screams out-
side the house at night, people tapping on the win-
dow-panes, God knows what foolishness. She told
the rest about it, and scared 'em half out of their
wits. They left in a body. And the next batch hadn't


18 MIDNIGHT AT MEARS HOUSE
been here two days till they heard about it, and off
they went. There hasn't been anyone to cook a decent
meal half the time the last month. If I hadn't a
man of my own to look after me, I'd have starved
to death by this time.”
“Where is he?” I enquired.
“Drunk or drowned, I guess. I let him go deep-
sea fishing this afternoon. He ought to have been
back eight hours ago.”
“And when did Keaton expect to return?” I
asked.
“He didn’t tell me.”
“And Miss Ellis?”
“She's visiting friends somewhere in the White
Mountains, I believe: been away nearly a month.”
“We’re all alone in the house, then,” I said.
“Unless you count the old woman in ”—he meant
Mrs. Bartlett, the housekeeper, I knew—“and she's
laid up in bed with a cold.”
“Then I must get him upstairs by myself, if I can,”
I said.
“You ought not to have much trouble doing it,”
he remarked indifferently. “He doesn't weigh very
much. By the bye,” he called after me as I went
out, “I’m rather tired sitting here. You might help
me to bed when you're through.”
I was inclined to echo his remark about David
Mears lying there till he rotted for all he cared; but


MIDNIGHT AT MEARS HOUSE 19
I thought better of it, and made no reply at
all.
The big hall looked bigger and gloomier than ever
as I descended the stone staircase as quietly as I could,
listening intently for any sound and peering sharply
from side to side with an exaggerated caution for
which, I suppose, my overtaxed nerves were mainly
responsible. I certainly did not expect to find anyone
lurking there, and I am not ordinarily a timid man;
but I must confess to a feeling of relief when I found
the hall empty. I hesitated a moment, however, be-
fore entering the library—the horror of those star-
ing, upturned eyes shaking my resolution; but in
another moment I had got the better of this weak-
ness and opened the door.
I started back with a sharp cry of amazement.
The body had disappeared!


22 MIDNIGHT AT MEARS HOUSE
“Sure of it?” I repeated blankly. “Of course
I am. You don't think I dreamed it all, do you?”
“He has fainting spells once in a while,” he said.
“It may have been one of those.”
I shook my head.
“A man doesn’t look that way in a faint. If
you'd seen his eyes—” I broke off abruptly.
Arthur had gone suddenly as white as chalk, and
was swaying from side to side in his chair.
“What's the matter with you?” I cried. “Feel-
ing sick?”
“It's nothing,” he said hastily, struggling to con-
trol himself. “My nerves have gone back on me
lately. I'll be all right in a moment.”
I looked at him wonderingly. The last person
on earth that I should have suspected of nerves was
Arthur Keaton, and here he sat trembling before
me like an overwrought, hysterical woman. It
seemed impossible that the news of his uncle's death
should have upset him so. He pulled himself to-
gether finally.
“I’m going to look for the body,” he said. “I
think I know where it is.”
“You do!” I exclaimed. “Then I'll go with
you; ” but he wouldn't hear of it.
“You’re all tired out, and you’ve had nothing to
eat yet,” he reminded me: “neither has that poor
old codger upstairs—”


MIDNIGHT AT MEARS HOUSE 23
“Who can starve to death for all I care,” I in-
terrupted.
Arthur looked at me in surprise—I had spoken
hotly. -
“He’s a queer fish,” he admitted. “I didn't take
a shine to him at first; but he isn't really such a bad
sort when you come to know him.”
“I daresay not,” I remarked drily, “but I'm not
particularly anxious to cultivate his acquaintance.
However,” I went on, a little ashamed of myself,
“I don't mind getting breakfast for him, if you
want me to.”
“Come on, then, and I'll show you where things
are,” he rejoined. I followed him into the kitchen,
and there he left me to struggle with a frying-pan
and a coffee-pot, saying that he would be back soon.
Jonathan Mears was sitting just where I had
left him when I went upstairs a few minutes later
with the eggs and coffee. I had expected to find
him in a bad humour; but he greeted me pleasantly
enough, and said nothing about my not having come
back to help him to bed. He even complimented
me on the coffee, which he declared was the best he
had tasted in a long while. By daylight he looked
less huge and ugly, though he still reminded me of
some big bird of prey with his great hooked nose,
bald head, and beady little eyes. There was some-
thing about him, however—it may have been his


24 MIDNIGHT AT MEARS HOUSE
voice, or his smile, or possibly nothing more than
his pitiable condition—which lessened my dislike and
went far to remove the first unfavourable impression
I had got of him.
Singularly enough, when I told him of the dis-
appearance of the body, he asked me the same ques-
tion that Arthur had—was I quite sure David Mears
was dead when I saw him? Absolutely sure, I told
him, but for all that he seemed unconvinced.
“I suppose you think, just as Arthur does, that
he had a fit or something,” I said; “but you're
wrong, both of you. I'm as certain he was dead as
I could be if a dozen doctors had signed a certificate
to the fact.”
“And I’m quite as certain he was alive.”
I turned to find Arthur standing in the doorway.
“You’ve found the body?” I cried.
He nodded.
“Just where I expected to find it—on the beach
at the foot of the cliff. As soon as I heard your
story, Phil,” he went on, “I knew at once what had
happened. I felt sure you were mistaken in think-
ing he was dead, and that he had simply fallen in a
faint. He must have come-to while you were up-
stairs here, and gone out to get a breath of fresh
air. Either he was suddenly taken faint again just
as he reached the edge of the cliff, or else he made a
misstep in the darkness, and fell to his death.”


MIDNIGHT AT MEARS HOUSE 25
“He did nothing of the sort,” I retorted, “for
the simple reason that he never left the house alive.
I tell you again, I'm positive he was dead when I
came in. It's ridiculous to suppose I could have
been mistaken. If you'd seen his eyes, you wouldn't
have the slightest doubt about it.”
“I have seen them,” he said. “They have a
frightful look: it's only natural they should. He
must have known the instant he fell what—was in
store for him.”
“You forget they were the same when I saw
them,” I rejoined, “and no man ever looked like
that while he still had the breath of life in
him.”
“It seems to me,” interrupted Jonathan Mears
quietly, “that there's a very simple way of deciding
the matter. If, as Mr. Scarsden thinks, David was
dead when he saw him in the library, someone must
have carried him out of the house and thrown him
over the cliff; in which case there should be foot-
prints or other marks to prove it.”
“That's so,” I said to Arthur. “We ought to
be able to settle the question in no time; and you'll
find that I'm right,” I added.
Arthur made no reply, but turned abruptly, and
led the way out of the house and along the path to
the sea.
The shore there is in most places a sheer wall


26 MIDNIGHT AT MEARS HOUSE
of solid rock, split up and eaten away by the action
of the waves. It is full of great fissures and strewn
throughout its length with giant boulders. What
little beach there is is rough-carpeted with stones and
pebbles and washed clean of sand.
The body of David Mears was lying in a huddled
heap by the side of a great jagged rock upon which
he had evidently struck, for the whole back of his
head was terribly crushed and mangled. I was
spared another glimpse of his eyes—Arthur had al-
ready closed them; but his face wore exactly the
same malignant, fear-distorted expression I had seen
on it a few hours before.
Unlike his brother, David Mears was a small man,
and we had no trouble carrying him up to the house,
where we laid him on his bed, and spread a coverlet
over him. Neither of us spoke a word while we
were doing this. I saw Arthur shudder as he took
hold of the body, but he showed no other sign of
emotion except a feverish eagerness to finish the task.
I took off one of the dead man's shoes, and we set
out along the path to the cliff.
After the rain of the night before the ground was
still soft, even muddy in places. We had gone but
a few steps when we came upon a clear, deep foot-
print. I stooped down and put the shoe in it. It
fitted perfectly.
“You see,” said Arthur quietly, “I was right.”


MIDNIGHT AT MEARS HOUSE 27
I was too astounded to reply. Even then I could
not believe that David Mears had actually set foot
there. If he had, it was earlier in the evening before
I arrived, I was sure of that. Farther on we should
find other tracks, I knew; but I was wrong. Step by
step we followed the footprints to the very edge of
the cliff, to the exact spot below which Arthur had
found the body. There were no signs that anyone
else had been there.
I began to wonder if after all my eyes had not
played me a trick; if possibly David Mears had been
merely unconscious, not actually dead, when I first
opened the library door. I could not believe it.
We had not yet made a careful search of the dining-
room, I remembered. There must be something
there or in the library to throw new light on the
situation. I said as much to Arthur, and we hurried
back to the house.
The library yielded us nothing, but we had no
sooner entered the dining-room than Arthur stopped
short.
“There has been someone here!” he exclaimed.
“Look at that!” And he pointed to a massive
brass candlestick on the table. The candle in it had
burned nearly to the end, and the melted grease had
run down on one side and hardened in a little pool
at the base of it.
“I knew we should find something!” I cried ex-


28 MIDNIGHT AT MEARS HOUSE
ultantly; but my triumph over the discovery was
short-lived.
“After all it proves nothing,” said Arthur. “He
probably left it there himself.” And I had to agree
with him. Everything else in the room was in its
proper place: we hunted in vain for marks of an
intruder.
“We may as well give it up,” I said at last, “and
notify the town authorities. Perhaps they'll have
better luck.” But I doubted it; for I felt sure they
were possessed of no keener observation than my own.
Nor had I any reason to change my opinion when,
a few hours later, Captain Ezra Bicknell, the head of
the local police, a short, red-faced, very pompous
individual, and the village coroner—who was also
the town plumber, and appropriately enough of the
same name as his trade—had left, after going over
the premises, viewing the body, and hearing what
we had to tell them.
Both of them were quite as convinced as Arthur
that David Mears' death was due to his having fallen.
off the cliff. The footprints settled that matter con-
clusively for them; and they clearly thought my be-
lief that he had been murdered too absurd to be worth
serious consideration. In their opinion the absence
of any marks on the head or body other than those
resulting from the fall did away with the possibility
that he had been the victim of foul play, particularly


MIDNIGHT AT MEARS HOUSE 29
as they found nothing whatever to indicate that there
had been anybody in the house. Altogether they
could see no reason for thinking it anything but an
accident; and they had no doubt but that any coroner's
jury in the country would agree with them.
I was beginning to think so myself. The facts
certainly seemed to be all in favour of such a verdict;
and yet I felt sure that my eyes had not deceived
me, and that David Mears was lying dead there in
the library when I entered the house.


MIDNIGHT AT MEARS HOUSE 3I
nating anecdote there which invested what he said
with life and colour. He was quite evidently exert-
ing himself to distract our minds from the tragedy
and to interest us in pleasanter things.
I found myself wondering why he did it, why he
persevered in the face of our almost discourteous in-
difference; for both Arthur and I were too occupied
with our own thoughts to be appreciative listeners,
and he could not have failed to notice it. I was
not long in hitting upon the reason—the man dreaded
being left alone. He was afraid we would find his
company dull, and prefer being by ourselves, and so
he strove with all his might to be entertaining.
There was something quite pathetic about it, I
thought, and I felt a sudden pity for him. To be
chained to a chair or a bed all one's life, unable to
move a step, must be a frightful hardship, especially
to one of his active disposition. No wonder he had
hated David Mears for taunting him with his in-
firmity: it was a hideous thing to do, and I could
understand his saying frankly that he was glad of
his death.
But although my dislike of the man was gradually
disappearing, I was not yet ready to admit that my
first feeling of antipathy to him was based on nothing
stronger than mere caprice. Behind that smiling,
placid exterior lurked something sinister. Of that
I felt sure, though why I could not have told. There


32 MIDNIGHT AT MEARS HOUSE
was nothing actually evil about his face. It was
bold, predatory, unscrupulous, that was all. The
large, loose-lipped mouth spoke of sensuality and
greed, but not of cruelty or meanness. Even the
close-set, hawk-like little eyes had nothing furtive or
malignant in them. To look at him one would have
said that he was only the swollen husk of a man,
powerless alike for good or evil—a half-dead crater
of burnt out emotions in which no volcano of fierce
passions could possibly be smouldering.
Whether he was afraid of boring us if he talked
too much, or whether he was shrewd enough to guess
that we had private matters to discuss, he finally
suggested that we try to find out what had become
of his man, Randall.
“Unless the fool has tipped over and drowned,”
he said, “it’s high time he appeared. Perhaps you
wouldn't mind helping me to bed before you go?”
I remember thinking that Randall must be un-
usually strong; for it was as much as both of us could
do to lift him out of the chair and lay him on the
bed. While we were doing so I was clumsy enough
to tread heavily on his foot, and I was about to
apologise for my awkwardness when I saw that he
was quite unaware of it. An instant later I was
again reminded in an odd way of his condition.
We had propped him up against the pillows and
started to help him off with his dressing-gown when


MIDNIGHT AT MEARS HOUSE 33
he missed his scarf-pin. He had taken it out to cut
the leaves of a new book, he said, and must have
stuck it into the arm of his chair. Then he gave a
queer laugh and pointed down at his leg. There,
buried nearly to the head in the insensible flesh, was
the pin
“Not such a bad place for it,” he remarked cheer-
fully. “Always sure to have it handy. A pair of
dead stumps has its advantages after all, you see,
gentlemen: one can use 'em for pin-cushions.” The
conceit must have appealed strongly to his whimsical
sense of humour, for he was still chuckling over it
when we left him.
On our way downstairs I reminded Arthur of what
he had said that morning about having a great deal
to tell me.
“I’ve been waiting for a chance to all day,” he
replied; “but it's a long story, and there are some
things in it—I don't know what to think of them,” he
broke off. “I’ve been lying awake nights wondering
if they wouldn’t end by driving me crazy.”
“Nonsense!” I retorted. “There's nothing the
matter with you, I guess, that you need worry about.
You look a little short of sleep and fresh air, but
that's soon remedied. A week's shooting with me,
and you'll be as fit as they make 'em.”
He said nothing.
“If you've got something on your mind, out with


34 MIDNIGHT AT MEARS HOUSE
it,” I went on, “but don't talk any more rot like that:
it gets on my nerves.” I spoke jokingly, but I was
more than half in earnest; for I was still feeling
rather shaken, and I didn't relish the idea of having
him go on acting as though he were in the grip of a
nightmare. That kind of thing begins to have its
effect after a while even on an unimaginative, easy-
going person like myself.
I turned toward the library.
“Not in there!” he cried sharply. “I can't stand
being shut up in this house any longer. It sickens
me. Come for a walk.”
I was glad enough to do so, for it was a clear,
crisp afternoon; and we started at a brisk pace along
the cliffs. On our left lay the sea, quiet and spark-
ling. Stony pasture-land overgrown with bayberry
and juniper bordered the path, sloping down to a
green and brown patchwork of woods and fields,
beyond which we caught occasional glimpses of the
Braxton Marshes, already threatened by the incoming
tide. In another hour they would be under water—
all but the hay-cocks scattered like huge, inverted
acorns over their drab-coloured surface—and there
would be great commotion among the snipe and
plover. I longed for my gun and waders.
“I’d be willing to bet ten dollars,” I thought,
“that with my new 16-bore ‘Harrington’—”
“Do you wonder I thought he was going


MIDNIGHT AT MEARS HOUSE 35
mad?” I became suddenly aware that Arthur was
speaking.
“Who? What?” I said.
He stopped short and faced me with a bewildered
frown.
“Haven't you heard what I've been saying?” he
demanded.
“Not a word,” I admitted. “I got to thinking
what splendid sport we were missing over there"—
I waved my arm toward the marshes—“and so I just
woke up to the fact that you were talking.”
He laughed shortly.
“I might have known you'd think of nothing but
shooting as soon as we got in sight of the place.”
“You’re just as cracked about it as I am,” I re-
torted.
“I used to be, I know; but just now
“You act like a man who's seen his own ghost,”
I broke in. “You go about looking like an under-
taker. In these last six hours or so, ever since you
found me asleep in the library, you've hardly opened
your mouth. What the devil's the matter with you
anyhow?”
“I’ll be hanged if I know,” he replied. “That's
what bothers me. Perhaps when I’ve told you about
it, you'll be able to make some sense out of it. I
can't.”
“Go ahead,” I said, sitting down on a hummock
??


36 MIDNIGHT AT MEARS HOUSE
of dead ferns and relighting my pipe. “I’ll try to
keep my mind off the birds this time.”
“It started three months ago when Jonathan
Mears came,” he began. “Up to then things had
gone along the same as ever. I wasn't here when
he and Randall arrived, so I can’t tell you anything
about the meeting between him and Uncle David.
He wasn’t any too glad to see the paralytic man, I
guess—they hadn't set eyes on each other for thirty
years; but of course he couldn't very well refuse to
take him in, especially as he was dead broke and had
nowhere else to go. I wish to G—d he had l” He
paused an instant: then he went on.
“My Uncle David, as you know, wasn't an easy
man to get along with; but he was never anything
like what he got to be after his brother came. For
days at a time you couldn't get a word out of him;
and then he'd have the most childish fits of temper
about nothing at all. Some of the things he said to
me—well, if it hadn’t been for Margaret, I’d have
told him what I thought of him and cleared out.
The way he treated the paralytic man was the worst
of all. He'd go up to his room and sit there for
hours, sneering at him and making fun of his paral-
ysis, trying his best to goad him into a fury. I
could hear him sometimes from my room, and I won-
der Jonathan Mears didn't shoot him. Randall
used to come out, looking fairly sick with disgust


38 MIDNIGHT AT MEARS HOUSE
“If he weren't, I wouldn't care two straws what he
said.’
“I couldn't believe, though, that any man in his
senses would treat his own brother so; and yet in
other respects he acted rationally enough. When
Margaret was around he never lost control of him-
self, or said anything that could possibly hurt or
offend her, and she knew nothing of how he behaved
to his brother or me. If I'd told her, she wouldn't
have believed me, she was so fond of him. I've
often wondered how he could have made her care
for him as she did.”
“I suppose it was because she was the only human
being he ever felt the least affection for,” I said.
“You can imagine,” Arthur went on, “what a
pleasant time I had of it, trying to act as buffer
between the two men, expecting at any moment there
would be murder done, having to keep Margaret from
knowing anything about it, and at the same time
doing my best to appear as cheerful and light-hearted
to her as ever. No wonder I’m a wreck! It was
as fierce a job as any man was ever up against.
Maybe I wasn’t glad when she told me she was going
to make the Duncans a visit! I must have seemed
so, too; for she laughed and accused me of wanting
to get rid of her. I managed to make a joke of it,
but she gave me a rather queer look, as if she half
suspected something.


MIDNIGHT AT MEARS HOUSE 39
“And now I'm coming to one of the queerest
things about the whole business—the servants leav-
ing.”
“Jonathan Mears told me about that,” I put in.
“Said they got a notion the place was haunted—
heard a lot of queer noises that only spooks could
have made, and so forth.”
“The funny part of it is, they were right, too.
I heard some of the noises myself.”
I grunted sceptically.
“Your nerves must be in worse shape than I
thought,” I said. “You didn't happen to see any
sheeted ladies walking on the parapets or gliding
through the halls, did you?”
“No,” he rejoined soberly, “but I did hear
things—Oh, I don't expect you to take any stock in
it. I didn't myself at first; thought it was all rub-
bish naturally. Then one night I heard a scream
right below my window. I was sitting up reading a
novel. It was about eleven o'clock and everyone else
had gone to bed. In two shakes I was downstairs
and out the front door. I dashed around the corner
of the house, expecting to find one of the maids having
a fit, or being choked by a burglar—I had my Colt
ready to take a shot at him. It was light enough to
see clearly, though there was no moon. I didn't find
a living soul, or sign of one.”
“Sounds mysterious enough, I admit,” I said.


4O MIDNIGHT AT MEARS HOUSE
“Sure you weren't dreaming? People have been
known to fall asleep in their chairs late at night even
over the most exciting romances.”
“I’d like to believe it was a dream,” he replied.
“I’d feel a lot better.”
He spoke so earnestly that for a second I found
myself wondering if after all there might not have
been something queer about it; but I soon dismissed
the idea. Even if he hadn't been asleep, he was in
just the state to hear a scream in every gust of wind
rattling a blind or whistling down the chimney. I
know the tricks a man's senses play him when his
nerves are unstrung.
Arthur evidently realised that there was no use
trying to convince me of anything inexplicable in the
occurrence; for he said no more about it, but went
on to tell me of the trouble they had had getting
servants to stay, and of the fast increasing irascibility
and uneasiness of David Mears.
“It looked as though he was in desperate fear of
someone,” he said, “and every day that passed made
him worse. He got so he wouldn’t go out of the
house at all, and he spent hours putting new locks
and bolts on all the doors and windows. He even
sent for a set of burglar alarms which wouldn't work
when they came. All this may strike you as a joke,”
he continued, “but there's something mighty catch-
ing about fear, even when you know there isn't really


MIDNIGHT AT MEARS HOUSE 4 I
anything to be afraid of. I began to get nervous,
too, and I couldn't laugh myself out of it either.
“So when I heard him cry out a few nights ago—
he was sitting all alone in the library as usual—I
jumped up, grabbed my revolver, and ran downstairs.
I found him in his chair unconscious, a newspaper
open at his feet. I had the deuce of a time bringing
him to, and after I had he looked like a man who's
read his death-warrant. He was trembling all over.
“It's come, it's come, he kept muttering. ‘I knew
it would.”
“I gave him a good stiff swig of brandy, and
asked him what the trouble was. “It’s none of your
damned business!” he cried, and then in a sort of
whisper, “You can thank God it isn't.' I started
to pick up the paper. ‘Leave it where it is !” he
screamed. “Do you think I want you meddling in
my affairs! Haven't I told you before it'll be the
worse for you, if you do? Get out of here, you 5
I won’t repeat the names he called me. A blind fury
of rage seized me, and the next thing I knew I had
him by the throat. There must have been murder
in my face, I guess; for he cried out the word so that
it rang horribly in my ears, and brought me to my
senses. I let go my hold on him, and stood there
shaking like a leaf at the realisation of what I had
been near doing.
“He sat staring at me in dumb surprise. I sup-


42 MIDNIGHT AT MEARS HOUSE
pose he had come to think he could curse and insult
me all he pleased without my resenting it—I had
stood a good deal of it from him—and he seemed
too amazed at finding out his mistake to say a word.
We faced each other in silence for perhaps half a
minute: then I turned and left him. It was the last
time I saw him alive; for he kept to his room the
next few days, and yesterday morning Mrs. Bartlett
told me the servants had refused to stay any longer,
and that meant another trip to Boston after a fresh
lot. I thought of wiring you to meet me there, but
I had no idea you'd be able to get away a day sooner
than you expected to. If I'd received your tele-
gram
“David Mears would be alive now in all probabil-
ity,” I said.
“It all depends on when he had his attack, and
whether we should have heard him or not. If we’d
been upstairs at the time—it's a pity you didn't try
to rouse him.”
“Rouse him !” I repeated. “How many times
must I tell you that he was dead, stone dead when
I saw him? For Heaven's sake see if you can't realise
that! I should think from what you've just told me
that you'd be even surer of it than I am. He was
expecting an attempt on his life, that's clear enough.
A man doesn’t act the way you say he did without
there being a pretty strong reason for it. He went


MIDNIGHT AT MEARS HOUSE 43
in mortal dread of someone. Who was it? That's
what we must find out, and the first thing to do is
to get hold of that newspaper. That'll tell us, if
we're clever enough to put two and two together.
There must have been something in it—some mention
of the person he feared, probably—that bowled him
over. His not wanting you to pick it up showed that
it contained some reference of the kind, the clue to
some secret which he was afraid you'd discover.” -
“Quite possibly,” he returned, “but even if we
came upon the right item, we'd have no way of telling
it. You forget that we know nothing of his life
before he came here, or the people who were mixed
up in it.” -
“We’ve got to find out those things, then. Some-
body knows, that's certain. I shouldn't wonder if
Mrs. Bartlett could help us. She's been with him a
long while, hasn't she?”
“Yes,” he said, “but you might as well try to
get information out of a post. She's the closest
mouthed old party that ever lived, and she'd rather
have her hand cut off than tell you anything she
knows about him, especially anything discreditable.”
I suggested our questioning Jonathan Mears.
“He doesn't know any more about him than we
do,” Arthur replied. “He left home thirty years ago,
and from that day till he came here he hadn't seen
his brother or heard a word from him.”


44 MIDNIGHT AT MEARS HOUSE
“Where's he been all the time?” I asked.
“All over the lot—India, Africa, Australia, the
Hawaiian Islands, Mexico. He was trying to grow
rubber on the Isthmus of Tehuantepec, and making a
mighty poor stab at it, he told me, when he became
paralysed and had to quit. If it hadn't been for
that, I don't believe he'd ever have come back at all.
It must have been a pretty stiff dose for him to have
to beg David Mears to give him a home—there was
never any love lost between them, I guess, when they
were boys.”
“Well, it won't do any harm for us to have a
look at that newspaper, if we can find it,” I said.
“Let's go back and hunt for it.”


CHAPTER V
WE DECIDE TO ASK HELP OF THE BLIND
As we drew near the house, we caught sight of a
man walking bent over along the path to the cliff.
He had a magnifying glass in his hand, and every
few steps he stooped and squinted through it at the
ground; then he took a tape measure from his pocket,
and measured the distance between the places he had
been scrutinising; after which he entered the result
of his observations in a small notebook.
He was so busy doing this that he did not notice
us till we were close to him. Then he straightened
up, smiled, and called out cheerily:
“Good-afternoon, gentlemen. Lovely weather
we're having.”
He was a short, stockily built man, or rather boy
—for he could hardly have been over twenty-two
years old—with a shock of bright red hair and twink-
ling blue eyes. I knew at once that he must be a
reporter.
“Mr. Keaton and Mr. Scarsden, I suppose?” he
said.
We nodded.
45


46 MIDNIGHT AT MEARS HOUSE
“I’m glad to meet you.” He extended a hand
to each of us. “My name's Cassidy. I'm from the
‘Daily News. Our local man, Blodgett of the
‘Clarion, gave us the tip about Mr. Mears' death,
and the City Editor sent me down to get the
story.”
I stifled a groan, and murmured something about
being glad to see him. I had had some experience
with reporters, and I knew what we were in for—
flaring headlines in to-morrow's paper with faked
pictures of Arthur and myself, of the paralytic man
and Mrs. Bartlett, and photographs and diagrams
of the place all marked with heavy black crosses,
showing “where the body was found,” “where the
murder was committed,” “how the murderer made
his escape,” etc., etc. If I could have annihilated Mr.
Cassidy then and there, I would have done so gladly.
Our only hope, I knew, was in convincing him that
there was really nothing extraordinary about the
affair, that David Mears' death was simply an acci-
dent. Then, possibly, we might escape with no more
than a single-column “head,” or even a dozen lines
or so only on an inner page. His next remark, how-
ever, dispelled any such hopes.
“This really seems to be the goods,” he said,
smiling at us. “I was afraid when I started that
it would turn out only another fake, but after I'd had
a talk with Blodgett, I made up my mind right away


MIDNIGHT AT MEARS HOUSE 47
there'd been murder done. I didn't take any stock,
of course, in what those rubes, Bicknell and Plummer,
told me about its being an accident. People don't
walk off cliffs in the dark, except in novels; and as
for suicide—well, there’re too many pleasanter ways
of killing yourself.”
“I'm afraid you'll have a hard time proving it,”
I said. “I had a notion at first that it might have
been a murder, but I soon saw I was mistaken.”
Arthur looked at me in surprise, and Cassidy smiled
again.
“I don’t know about that,” he rejoined. “It
doesn’t look to me as though it would be so very
hard to prove. While I was waiting for you to
come back, I’ve been having a look around. These
footprints—”
“I shouldn't think you'd need a magnifying glass
to see them,” I interrupted. “They're certainly
clear enough.”
“Ever read Conan Doyle's stories?” he asked
ne.
“It takes more than a high-power lens and a tape
measure to make a Sherlock Holmes,” I observed
drily.
He reddened.
“I suppose you’ve made some startling discoveries
with them,” I went on in a tone which I tried to
make still more sarcastic.


48 MIDNIGHT AT MEARS HOUSE
“I’ve found out a couple of things,” he replied.
“One is that Mr. Mears didn't make these foot-
prints.”
“Didn't make them | "Arthur exclaimed. “How
do you know that?”
“Easy as rolling off a log. He didn't weigh
enough. I'm not any lighter than he was, I guess,
from what Plummer told me, and I’ve got small
feet, too. It's my one beauty.” He chuckled.
“And my foot, you notice, doesn't make nearly so
deep a mark as that.” He pointed to the impress
of David Mears' shoe in the mud beside his
OWn.
“Sure about that?” I asked, wondering why we
hadn't noticed it.
“Take a look at 'em,” he replied, offering me the
magnifying glass with a grin. It was true: the mark
of his shoe was only half as deep. I remembered
suddenly that it had been raining the night before,
and I smiled as I handed him back the glass.
“Unfortunately for the accuracy of your deduc-
tions, or whatever you call them,” I remarked, “it
had just stopped raining, and the ground was con-
siderably softer when these footprints were made than
it is now. That accounts for their greater depth,
I'm afraid.”
He shook his head.
“I thought of that, but the difference is too big;


MIDNIGHT AT MEARS HOUSE 49
it wouldn’t be nearly so great. Besides there's some-
thing else which proves he never made them—they're
too far apart. These tracks were made by a tall
man, a man over six feet, I should say, and he wasn't
more than five foot nine, I understand.”
I suggested that David Mears might have had
an unusually long stride for a man of his height.
“Supposing he had,” he said, “it seems to me he'd
have walked slowly, if he were just getting over a
fainting fit, and the marks of his feet would have
been closer together than usual. Isn't that so, Mr.
Keaton P”
Arthur agreed with him.
“What's your theory, then?” I asked—“that the
murderer put on Mr. Mears' shoes?”
“It's the only possible explanation.”
“But what'd he do after he'd thrown the body
over?” Arthur asked. “There aren't, or rather
there weren't, any other footprints when we looked
this morning, not a sign of one.”
“Of course not,” Cassidy answered rather impa-
tiently. “He wasn't ass enough for that. Either
he took off Mr. Mears' shoes at the edge of the
cliff and crawled away on his hands and knees till he
got rock under him, or 9%
“Your theory is all very fine, so far as it goes,
Mr. Cassidy,” I broke in; “but there are a few little
matters which you seem to have overlooked—the


5O MIDNIGHT AT MEARS HOUSE
absence of any tell-tale marks on the body, for in-
stance. How do you account for that?”
“He must have been killed by a blow on the head,”
he replied, “in the exact place he struck on when he
was thrown from the cliff.”
“Rather a strange coincidence, eh,” I suggested.
“The chances would be at least even of his doing
so.”
“But why did the murderer go to the trouble of
carrying him out of the house and pitching him over
the cliff P” Arthur persisted.
Cassidy looked at him rather pityingly.
“He wanted it to appear an accident, of course,
so as to avoid suspicion.”
“And he was hiding somewhere in the library or
the dining-room when I opened the door and looked
in P” I asked.
He nodded.
“Then,” I rejoined triumphantly, “there couldn't
be the slightest object in his doing what you say he
did; for he couldn’t have hoped to fool anyone into
thinking it an accident. He knew I had seen Mr.
Mears lying there dead.”
I never saw anyone more crestfallen for a moment.
Then an obstinate look came over his face.
“It seems all foolishness, I admit,” he said slowly;
“but he did it just the same. Those footprints
prove it.”


MIDNIGHT AT MEARS HOUSE 5 I
“They prove nothing at all,” I retorted, “except
the fact that even the most approved Sherlock
Holmes methods aren't always infallible. As I re-
marked before, Mr. Cassidy, it takes more than a
magnifying glass and a tape measure to make a crack
detective.”
He winced a trifle at my irony, but I could see
that he wasn’t satisfied yet that he was mistaken.
“He’d better come indoors and see if he can find
any traces of the murderer there, eh, Arthur?” I
went on. “We want you to be quite satisfied that
it was nothing but an accident, you understand, Mr.
Cassidy.” And I led the way into the house.
“If you'll let me use the phone a minute,” he said,
“I’d like to send in a little something for the ten
o'clock edition.”
“You’ll have to go to the village to do that,”
Arthur told him. “We haven’t a phone.”
“No use, then,” he returned cheerfully: “couldn't
possibly make it in time. It doesn't matter so long
as none of the other papers get wise.”
He spent more than half an hour pottering about
the library and the dining-room, most of the time
on his knees with the magnifying glass in one hand
and a pocket flashlight in the other; but if he found
anything of interest, he kept it to himself. He had,
however, the average newspaper man's curiosity and
lack of scruples in attempting to gratify it; but there


52 MIDNIGHT AT MEARS HOUSE
was something about his manner which took the edge
off his impertinence, and made it in fact rather amus-
ing than otherwise. We evaded or refused to an-
swer a good many of his questions, of course—Arthur
by this time understood my object in disavowing my
belief that his uncle had been murdered—and so Mr.
Cassidy got very little satisfaction out of us. He
felt rather hurt, I think, at our evident lack of trust
in him; for on taking leave of us he said:
“Well, gentlemen, I'm much obliged for what
you’ve been good enough to tell me. Sorry you don't
feel like loosening up more, for I’d like to help you
clear this thing up. It's a mighty interesting case.
Shouldn't wonder if I’d see you again soon. So
long.”
“Hang it all!” I said to Arthur when Cassidy
had gone, “I’m afraid our red-haired young friend
means mischief. He's bound to make a murder
mystery out of it, I guess, in spite of everything; and
then we'll have half a dozen of his confounded tribe
down on us to-morrow morning. Perhaps we'd have
done better to have taken him into our confidence,
and made him promise not to print anything till we
gave him permission.” -
He asked me if I thought there was anything in
Cassidy's notion about the footprints.
“The boy's quite right about them, I'm sure,” I
answered. “I wonder we hadn't sense enough to no-


MIDNIGHT AT MEARS HOUSE 53
tice it ourselves. He's proved for us that David
Mears didn't walk out of this house alive last night—
I knew I couldn't be mistaken about that; but we're
as far as ever from knowing who murdered him, and
why he, or they—for it doesn't look like a one-man
job to me—threw his body over the cliff. I tell you
what,” I cried, struck with a sudden thought, “we’ll
get Stephen Garth down here, and let him try his
hand at straightening this thing out.”
Arthur looked at me in amazement.
“That sociologist friend of yours?” he said. “I
didn't know he was a detective. Besides, I thought
you told me he went stone blind a couple of years
ago?”
“So he did,” I replied, “but for all that I'll bet
you he'll be able to see twice as far into this mess
as you or I can. It's brains, real detective brains,
we want, not eyes alone; and that's what you and I
seem to be shy on—the enterprising Mr. Cassidy has
shown us that. We need someone to do the heavy
thinking for us, and Garth is just the chap. He can
sit still and tell us what to look for. It'll be up to
us to find it.”
“We certainly need someone to help us,” Arthur
agreed; “but it seems a queer thing to ask a blind
man to run down a murderer.”
“It's not according to Hoyle, I know,” I said,
“but never mind that. Blind as he is, Garth can


54 MIDNIGHT AT MEARS HOUSE
give the ordinary smart Aleck of a detective cards
and spades, and beat him a mile. I know of sev-
eral cases in which he's done it. They weren't
murder cases, to be sure—he hates newspaper
notoriety too much, I imagine, to get mixed up in
anything of that kind; but they had two of the
best private agencies going south just the same, and it
didn't take him twenty-four hours to do the trick.
And I went on to tell him how Garth had got back
the gold paper-cutter that Lafayette had given Mrs.
Jack Keith's great-grandmother, and of his success
in finding old Peter Farnsworthy's will.
“In both cases,” I said, “the detective bureaus
sent their best men, and they insisted that the only
way to recover the paper-knife was to put all the
servants through the third degree, and if that failed,
to institute a secret search for it in the houses of Mrs.
Keith's guests—she had missed the paper-cutter at
the close of a small bridge party, and was sure one
of the women had taken it. Garth suggested that
she send each of the women a book, ostensibly to get
her opinion of it, and then a note, saying she had
missed the paper-cutter and thought she might pos-
sibly have left it in the book. A few hours later one
of the women called her up on the phone and said
she had found it. Garth guessed that she would be
only too glad to return it, if she were given a chance
to do so in such a way as to avoid, apparently, all


MIDNIGHT AT MEARS HOUSE 55
suspicion of her having stolen it. He knew that
such a woman often acts on an impulse which she
regrets as soon as she has had time to think it over;
and that all he had to do was to smooth the way for
her.
“In the case of the Farnsworthy will,” I explained,
“it took more than a shrewd knowledge of human
nature. Garth had to possess the knack of putting
himself mentally into old Peter Farnsworthy's place.
If he hadn’t been able to do this, he could never
have hit upon such an unlikely hiding-place for the
will as a bored-out hammer handle, except by the
merest accident.”
“I grant you that,” Arthur admitted, “but there's
quit a difference between finding a stolen paper-knife
or a missing will and solving a mystery of this kind;
besides, I thought you said he wouldn't care to get
mixed up in anything so sensational as a murder
case?”
“He’d be willing to make an exception for us, I
guess,” I told him, “especially as this isn't supposed
to be one. Cassidy may not try to make it out a
murder after all; and even if he does, we know what
the coroner's verdict will be. That ought to have
some weight with the other papers. I'm still hop-
ing,” I added, “that we can go ahead without being
pestered by a lot of fool reporters and wooden-headed
police agents.”


56 MIDNIGHT AT MEARS HOUSE
Arthur was still rather sceptical, I could see, re-
garding Garth's detective ability; but he made no
objection to my going to the village after dinner that
night and wiring him at Bar Harbor to join us
immediately, if he could.
“And now,” I said, “let’s have a look for that
newspaper.”


CHAPTER VI
A FACE AT THE WINDOW
IT had begun to grow dark in the library, and we
lighted the big lamp that hung from an oak rafter
in the centre of the ceiling and a smaller lamp on
the table at the farther side of the room near David
Mears' desk. The desk itself was a big roll-top one
of quartered oak. The lid was down but unlocked,
and we rolled it up and began our search.
There were a great many papers and documents
in the desk, all carefully and methodically arranged.
We came upon bundles and bundles of receipted bills
neatly tied with tape and marked in red ink, a file
of stock-market reports, some gaudy mining pro-
spectuses, several packages of letters sealed and
labelled “Private Correspondence,” a portfolio full
of maps and blue-prints showing unclaimed Govern-
ment land in various Western States, stacks of news-
paper clippings yellow with age, and much mis-
cellaneous matter—writing paper, envelopes, blotters,
rubber bands, and stamps; but no sign of the news-
paper we were after.
“Guess he must have burned it,” I said, after we
57


58 MIDNIGHT AT MEARS HOUSE
had ransacked the last drawer and cubby-hole. “It
isn’t here, that's certain, unless he cut the article out
and filed it away with these other clippings. Perhaps
we'd better see.” And I began to unfasten the
string around them.
We were busily engaged in running through the
packet when a slight noise made us look around.
Margaret Ellis stood in the doorway, her slender
figure scarcely distinguishable against the blackness
of the unlighted hall.
“Margy!” Arthur exclaimed—and in that single
word joy, surprise, enquiry, and anxiety were curi-
ously blended.
She came swiftly toward us, and as the light fell
upon her face I saw that she was struggling with
some strong emotion.
“What are you doing?” she demanded hurriedly.
“What right have you to touch his things?”
“If you will sit down—” Arthur began.
“I shall not sit down,” she broke in excitedly,
“until you answer me.”
“Very well,” he said quietly. “We were looking
for a paper.”
“His will, you mean,” she went on. “I should think
you might at least have waited till he was buried.”
Arthur flushed at the scorn in her voice.
“You are mistaken,” he replied in rather a hurt
tone. “We were looking for a newspaper.”


MIDNIGHT AT MEARS HOUSE 59
“A newspaper!” she repeated.
He nodded.
“We thought it might help us find who killed
him,” I put in.
“Killed him ” she cried, a sudden horror in her
eyes. “Why, what do you mean? I thought it
was an accident—the station-master told me so. He
said you found him lying dead on the beach, that
he had fallen over the cliff, and ”—her voice shook.
“It's too horrible!” she broke off. “I can't be-
lieve it. It isn’t true; I know it isn’t true.”
Arthur made her sit down, and we told her every-
thing, or nearly everything; for by tacit agreement
we said nothing of David Mears' cruelty to his
brother—there was no need to hurt her by speaking
of that. But we could not very well avoid telling
her of the scene in the library when Arthur had
found his uncle unconscious in his chair, the news-
paper we were hunting for at his feet, and of his
wild outburst of rage when Arthur had stooped to
pick the paper up; for it explained why she had
found us rifling his desk.
She could not or would not believe, however, that
David Mears had had an enemy on earth, and we
soon gave up trying to convince her that he had
been dreading an attempt on his life.
“It's all nonsense,” she declared. “He would
have told me about it: he always told me everything.”


6O MIDNIGHT AT MEARS HOUSE
There seemed little use in saying anything more
after that. In her eyes, we knew, he had been all
that a man should be; and to try to shake her faith
in him, to tear the veil from her eyes so that she
should see him in a new and terrible light was some-
thing neither of us cared to do. I recalled what I
had said to Jonathan Mears—the man was dead,
and whatever wrong he'd done he'd paid for. What
good could it do to blacken his memory in the mind
of the one being who had loved and admired him?
Arthur must have taken the same view of it as I
did; for he admitted that very likely we were mis-
taken in thinking that revenge might have been the
motive for the crime.
“It's quite possible,” he told her, “that his appar-
ent dread of someone was mostly my imagination, or
it may have been a delusion of his own that some-
body had designs against him.”
“That was it, of course,” she agreed. “He
couldn’t actually have been afraid of anyone. That's
a ridiculous idea! It's awful enough as it is.
Promise me,” she went on very earnestly, “that you
won't go on looking among his things. I can't bear
to have you. It seems dishonourable somehow, al-
most like—like desecrating his grave.”
In response to her appeal he got up, and pulling
down the lid of the desk, he locked it, and handed her
the key. She took it with such a sigh of relief


MIDNIGHT AT MEARS HOUSE 61
that I couldn't help wondering if after all she might
not know more of David Mears' private affairs than
she wished us to suppose. I had always thought her
candour itself; but women, even the youngest of them,
are born actresses, and it was not impossible, I
thought, that her anxiety to put an end to our search
was due to something besides distress at having us
lay inquisitive hands on his belongings. Was she
not afraid of what we might find?—afraid that we
might unearth some terrible secret which he had con-
fided to her?
I covertly studied her face while she was explaining
to Arthur how she happened to get back so much
sooner than we had expected—for she must have
started at least an hour before the telegram he had
sent could have reached her. It seems she had waked
up that morning with a curious feeling of uneasiness
and dread which she couldn’t shake off, and which
finally drove her into cutting short her visit at the
Duncans and taking the noon train to Shelburne. So
sure was she that something tragic had happened that
she received the news of David Mears' death with a
calmness which quite shocked her informant, the old
station-master.
But closely as I looked for some tell-tale sign to
confirm my suspicions, I found nothing. Her face
was as frank and guileless as a child's. She was in
fact scarcely more than a child anyway, despite her


62 MIDNIGHT AT MEARS HOUSE
nineteen years. I felt suddenly ashamed of my
doubts: they seemed base and unworthy. I wished,
though, that Arthur had not given her the key to the
desk; for I felt sure that there must be papers in
it which would throw light on David Mears' past,
and aid us in solving the riddle of his death.
As I listened half-absently to their talk, my eyes
kept returning to the desk, and annoyance at Arthur's
foolish compliance with the girl's request grew in me.
Why could he not have made her understand how
important it was for us to secure every scrap of
information that might possibly aid us in tracking
the murderer? Why had he not the courage and
good sense to refuse her wish? What folly it was for
him to put such an obstacle in the way of our suc-
cess merely to gratify the whim of an over-sensitive,
overwrought girl. It was quite like him, I reflected,
to sacrifice everything to his abnormal sense of honour,
though in this particular instance I suspected that it
was quite a different motive which had prompted him
to yield so readily to her desire. If we were to be
hampered and thwarted in our task by having first
to get her sanction to everything we proposed doing,
we might as well abandon our efforts then and there.
I at any rate had promised to do nothing so absurd.
If Arthur should refuse to help me, I would take
matters into my own hands. I would even break
open the desk itself, if necessary, and rob it of its


MIDNIGHT AT MEARS HOUSE 63
secrets. What harm could it do the dead man?
There would be no call for me to blazon abroad the
result of my discoveries. All I wanted was some
clue to guide me in finding the guilty man. Surely
the demands of right and justice would be better
served so than by a morbid reluctance to pry among
his papers through fear of bringing ugly facts to
light.
I was roused from these reflections by Margaret
rising.
“As soon as I’ve changed my things,”
“I’ll get dinner for you.”
“We'll help you,” said Arthur, “if you'll let us.
Mrs. Bartlett isn't up to much yet, I'm afraid.”
I was about to second his offer when I saw a man
staring in at us from the window opposite me. I
had a fleeting glimpse of a thin, sallow face, an ugly,
drooping mouth, and two pale, red-lidded eyes under
a crushed-down grey felt hat. The next instant he
had gone. Fortunately neither Arthur nor the girl
was looking at me, and with a sharp effort I mas-
tered the impulse to cry out and run to the window.
I could not, however, recover instantly from my as-
tonishment, and I saw from the surprised look Arthur
gave me that he had noticed it.
“What is it?” he said as soon as Margaret had
left. “What's the matter? You look as if you'd
seen a ghost.”
she said,


64 MIDNIGHT AT MEARS HOUSE
I did not stop to explain: I made a dash for the
door. In another instant I was out of the house,
and running toward the library window. But any
hopes that I had of capturing the man in the grey felt
hat were soon gone. The moment's delay while I
was waiting for Margaret to leave the room had
given him time to escape. Besides, it was absolutely
dark. He had only to run a few yards to be quite
safe from discovery. I pictured him chuckling to
himself at my futile efforts to find him. It made
me furious. At length, out of breath and angry, I
gave up the search and went back.
Arthur was waiting for me at the door.
“What in thunder have you been up to?” he de-
manded.
“Chasing butterflies,” I said crossly.
“Two-legged ones?”
I nodded.
“Thought you must have seen one at the window
by the way you acted. What did he look like?”
“He had a pasty face, rabbit-coloured eyes, and
a grey felt hat on.”
“It couldn’t have been Randall, then,” he said.
“Of course it wasn't Randall,” I snapped. “Why
should he come snooping round like that? He isn't
a peeping Tom, is he?”
“Not that I know of, but I don’t see who
else—”


MIDNIGHT AT MEARS HOUSE 65
“Some drunken hobo, probably,” I cut in, “with
a taste for rubbering. I'd have taught him to come
flattening his dirty nose against people's window-
panes, if I’d caught him.”
He shook his head.
“They never bother us. We're too far from the
railroad.”
“Perhaps it is one of the servants you engaged,
then. They ought to be arriving soon, hadn't
they?”
“Yes, but the man I hired as coachman was a
chunky, red-faced chap.”
“Well, I give it up,” I said, “unless—he's some
old friend of David Mears.”
Arthur gave a start.
“The man he was afraid of, you mean?”
“There may have been more than one of them,”
I replied soberly.
“But he would have heard of his death,” he
objected.
“Not necessarily,” I said, “and if he had, he may
be after something your uncle possessed, a letter or
a deed perhaps.”—I glanced significantly at the
locked desk. “If we only knew what that con-
tained,” I added, “we might be able to tell.”
He bit his lip.
“You think I'm a fool to have given her the key
to it! Very likely I am—from your point of view.


66 MIDNIGHT AT MEARS HOUSE
You don't know what it means to me to—” He
broke off, and stood staring moodily at the floor.
“I think you did a very silly thing,” I said, “but
I understand perfectly why you did it: you're in
love with her.”
“What if I am?” he demanded.
“Nothing,” I returned drily. “It's none of my
business, of course; only I tell you plainly that if
you're going to let your feelings get the better of
your judgment, you might as well give up any idea
of helping find out who's responsible for your uncle's
death. You can’t play the lover and the detective
at the same time you know: it won't work, not in
this case anyway.”
“If you mean by that I’ve got to hoodwink and
deceive her, I wash my hands of the whole business
right now,” he replied angrily. “I won't play the
liar and the hypocrite for the sake of hanging a
dozen murderers.”
“Suit yourself,” I said shortly. “If you're afraid
of offending her by trying to get to the bottom of this
business, it's your own affair. Thank Heaven, I
haven’t got any such ridiculous scruples.”
He started to reply; then changed his mind, and
left the room without a word.
To say that I was thoroughly disgusted would be
to put it very mildly indeed. For a while I was
minded to quit the place, take the next train back


MIDNIGHT AT MEARS HOUSE 67
to New York, and leave the mystery of David Mears'
death to solve itself or remain unsolved. What busi-
ness was it of mine anyway? The dead man was
nothing to me. I had never cared for him in the
least; in fact I had heartily disliked him. Why,
then, should I put myself out to find his murderer
and avenge his death? Clearly the sensible thing
for me to do was to leave. And yet I could not
make up my mind to do so. I was under the spell
of that peculiar fascination which a mysterious crime
exercises on nearly everyone connected with it; and
I knew as I sat there frowning at the spot where I
had seen the murdered man lying that I should not
be able to shake off that morbid fascination. I knew
that no matter how far away I went, it would con-
tinue to haunt me, that I should speculate over it
by day and dream of it by night, that it would take
possession of my thoughts to the exclusion of all else.
And realising this, I gave up the idea of leaving
Mears House. Even had I known what further
tragedies were to be enacted there, and in what peril
I should soon find myself, my decision, I believe,
would have been the same.


CHAPTER VII
I STUMBLE UPON A CLUE
DINNER that night was a rather doleful affair. It
was after eight o'clock when we sat down to it, and
I, for one, was nearly famished. It could hardly
be said that Margaret shone as a cook. The soup
was not so bad—too little salt is a fault more easily
remedied than too much; but if there is anything less
edible than half-boiled fowl, I have yet to taste it.
By some miracle the potatoes were thoroughly fried:
otherwise we should have had to subsist mainly on
crackers and canned peaches and extremely weak
tea.
Nor was there what could be properly termed any
flow of soul among us to make up for the lack of
palatable food. Margaret spoke hardly a word.
Between Arthur and myself was the constraint of our
recent quarrel, which made it difficult for us to talk;
and like a spectre at the foot of the table, restrain-
ing us from speech, stood David Mears' empty chair.
I am sure we were all glad when the meal was
over. As Margaret and Arthur declined my help in
washing the dishes, I sat down again when they had
68


MIDNIGHT AT MEARS HOUSE 69
gone and lighted a cigar—more to propitiate my de-
frauded stomach than as the usual soothing adjunct
to digestion. As I smoked, my gaze travelled idly
about the room till it rested upon the big brass can-
dlestick smeared with melted tallow which we had
found that morning on the dining-table.
“If I were only another Sherlock Holmes now,”
I thought, “I should be able to reconstruct the entire
tragedy from that candlestick, supposing of course
the murderer used it. An intelligent smell of the
wick would tell me what particular brand of matches
he used to light it, and it would only be necessary to
visit the one dealer who kept them and get from him
a photograph of the man, or a sufficiently accurate de-
scription of him, to make his arrest a matter of only
trifling difficulty.” I chuckled at the absurdity of the
notion. It seemed, however, hardly more far-fetched
and ridiculous than some of the great detective's mar-
vellous exploits, which millions of readers have found
plausible enough, I daresay, though I was never one
of them.
Yielding to a sudden whim, I took down the can-
dlestick from the mantelpiece.
“I should at least be able to deduce a few simple
facts from a really scientific examination of it,” I
argued facetiously—“whether the criminal was right-
or left-handed, for instance, or wore ready-made
clothes, or if he was suffering from rheumatism or


7o MIDNIGHT AT MEARS HOUSE
the whooping-cough. It must be all here some-
where.”
I proceeded gravely to smell of the wick. It had
a decidedly burnt odour, due very likely, I imagined,
to its having been lighted. It humiliated me, how-
ever, to be unable to decide how it had been lighted.
I could not for the life of me make out whether the
murderer had used wax vestas, safety-matches, ordi-
nary parlour-matches, or those infernal things tipped
with sulphur commonly known as “hell-sticks.” He
might even have lighted it with one of those self-
igniting platinum-wire and alcohol devices, or with
flint and steel, or by rubbing two sticks together, for
all I could tell. -
I began to feel discouraged. Doubtless there were
imprints of his fingers as thick as flies and as plain as
billboards all over the candlestick itself, if I could only
find them. He would at any rate have left the dam-
ning mark of his thumb somewhere upon its shining
surface: they were always considerate enough to do
that—in the detective stories. It was part of the game.
But again I was doomed to disappointment. We must
have blurred the impressions through our inconceiva-
ble stupidity in touching the thing at all. We should
have known enough, I reflected, to have left it alone
till we had a chance to study it through a high-pow-
ered telescope. -
In despair I was about to put it back on the mantel-


MIDNIGHT AT MEARS HOUSE 71
piece when with a chuckle of amusement at the unpar-
donable slovenliness of my methods, I realised that
I was actually on the point of abandoning my efforts
without removing the great blob of hardened grease
on the base of the candlestick. Underneath that wax-
like covering what might not be hidden—perhaps the
name and address of the murderer neatly engraved?
or a slip of paper with his telephone number on it?
or a United States Cigar Store certificate? or the gold
filling from one of his front teeth?
Smiling as I thought of how chagrined Cassidy
would be at having overlooked so promising a clue,
I opened my penknife and began whittling away at
that precious chunk of tallow. Firmly determined to
be guilty of no further blunders, I whittled as slowly,
as methodically, as scientifically as possible. I scru-
tinised each shaving with the minutest care, debating
in my mind the expediency of having it analysed later
by a chemist on the chance of its containing some
faint, identifying aroma of tobacco, chewing-gum, or
whiskey.
“Nobody,” I thought gleefully, as I removed the
last coating of grease, “can say that I have let any
clue escape me this time through a reckless impa-
tience. I defy anyone to have done the work more
thoroughly.” And I threw a proud glance at the
heap of tissue-thin parings on the table beside me.
“And to think,” I murmured sadly, holding the


72 MIDNIGHT AT MEARS HOUSE
candlestick upside-down in front of me and slowly
revolving it, “that all my labour should be for—
nothing,” I was about to add; but instead I sat star-
ing silently at a bright crimson stain along the outer
edge of the base!
Jumping up, I held the candlestick nearer the light
and examined the sinister-looking blot more closely.
It looked exactly like blood; but to make sure I
snatched out my scarf-pin, pricked my finger with it,
squeezed out a few drops of blood, and smeared
them upon the base of the candlestick. They dried
almost instantly, making exactly the same sort of stain.
I had no longer any doubt that I had found the
object with which David Mears was murdered.
My first feeling was one of exultant satisfaction,
mixed with an unwarranted sense of pride in my
achievement; but it was soon followed by the sober-
ing reflection that I was still a long way from learn-
ing who had used that singular weapon in such deadly
fashion. My idea that David Mears had been the
victim of someone bent on revenge seemed less likely
in the light of this discovery. Anyone intent on mur-
der, I thought, would have come provided with a
revolver, a knife, or some other arm: he would not
have depended on a casual weapon such as a candle-
stick. Its use showed clearly enough that the act
was unpremeditated—that of a man suddenly and un-
expectedly called upon to defend himself from as-


MIDNIGHT AT MEARS HOUSE 73
sault, or forced to choose hurriedly between violence
or certain detection.
“A burglar ! That's who it was !” I cried half-
aloud. “What a fool I was not to think of it be-
fore.” Coincidently there flashed into my mind the
recollection of the man who had passed me in the
buggy the night before. “No wonder he was in such
a hurry!” I exclaimed. “That explains it.”
“Explains what?” asked Arthur, who had en-
tered the room without my hearing him.
“Close the door and I'll tell you,” I said, all
thought of our recent quarrel gone from my
mind.
“There's no need of that,” he replied shortly.
“She's gone upstairs.”
“So much the better,” I said. “There's no use
in her knowing anything about it: it would only make
her feel worse.” And somewhat theatrically, I'm
afraid, I took up the candlestick and held it out to
him.
“Look at that!” I cried triumphantly, pointing
to the crimson stain along the edge.
“Blood?” he exclaimed.
“Yes,” I said. “That explains how he was killed,
and if I’m not much mistaken, I know who killed
him.” And I told him how I had happened to find
the bloodstain, and my grounds for thinking that the
man in the buggy was the murderer. “I may be all


74 MIDNIGHT AT MEARS HOUSE
wrong, of course,” I added, “but it's a clue worth
following up at any rate, don't you think so?”
He was so long in replying that I repeated my
question impatiently.
“You may be right in thinking he was killed by
a burglar,” he said; “but I don't very well see how
it could have been the man who passed you in the
buggy. He wouldn't have been very likely, it seems
to me, to have run off before he finished the job.”
“Finished the job? What do you mean by that?”
“Someone must have thrown the body over the
cliff, you know.”
My face fell. I saw the solution of the mystery
which I had so jubilantly effected dissolving before
my eyes. The only thing I could think of to save it
was an accomplice in the crime; but though I sug-
gested this, I realised as I did so how weak an ex-
planation it was.
“He wouldn't have been apt to skip off and leave
the other fellow to get rid of the body,” Arthur ob-
jected. “Besides, it isn't very likely that the other
man, if there was one, would have risked getting
caught and taken for the murderer. And why, as
you yourself pointed out to Cassidy, should anyone
go to the trouble of carrying him out and pitching
him over the cliff when he knew you had seen him
lying dead in the library? I don't see either how
the body happened to be in the library, if your theory


MIDNIGHT AT MEARS HOUSE 75
about the burglar's being surprised by him in here is
correct. Why on earth should he go to all the bother
of dragging him in there? What object could he have
had 3?
“Oh, shut up!” I said with a rather sickly grin
at my own discomfiture. “There's no need of rub-
bing it in. You're right. So far as holding water
goes, my theory has any sieve I ever heard of beaten
a mile. It would make an ash-sifter look like a
sheet-iron bucket, I see that. Just the same,” I con-
tinued, “I’ll bet you anything you like that's David
Mears' blood there on the candlestick. Someone
killed him with it somehow, I feel sure of that.”
“I shouldn't wonder if that's so,” he began,
& 4 but—”
“Damn your “buts,’” I broke in cheerfully. “I
admit that I haven't brains enough to make head or
tail of it. All the more reason we should get some-
one who has. I'm going straight down to the village,
and send that wire to Garth.” And I got up.
But I had hardly done so when the doorbell rang.
We went together to answer it. A lout of a farmer's
boy stood there, holding a yellow envelope in his hand.
“Telegram for Mr. Jon'than Mears,” he blurted
out. “There's fifty cents charges on it.”
Arthur took the envelope and was about to pay
him.
“Hold on a minute,” I said. “I’ll get him to take


76 MIDNIGHT AT MEARS HOUSE
my wire to Garth.” And I went into the library to
write it while Arthur took the message upstairs to
the paralytic man.
He came down just as I was handing the boy my
note, and impressing upon him the importance of its
being sent immediately by giving him a quarter extra.
Jonathan Mears' telegram, Arthur informed me,
was from Randall, and read:
“Lost oars. Picked up by lumber schooner.
Back to-morrow morning.”
“Well, there's one mystery, at least, accounted
for,” I remarked as we locked the door and put out
the lights. “The fool must have drifted out to sea,
I suppose. Lucky he didn’t capsize. It'll be some
time, I guess, before Jonathan Mears lets him go
fishing again. What'd he say when he read the tele-
gram?”
“‘If a man's born to be hanged, you can’t drown
him,'” Arthur answered.
I chuckled. It was precisely the sort of remark
I should have expected the paralytic man to make.


CHAPTER VIII
THE MAN IN THE GREY FELT HAT
THE room I had always occupied at Mears House
was the larger of the two guest-chambers, the one
marked “Stephen Garth” on the floor-plan; but as
that room was in process of cleaning when the serv-
ants left, I was given the adjoining one over the
front hall next to David Mears' room.
Whether having his dead body so near me wore
on my nerves, or whether it was simply because, like
many people, I find it hard to go to sleep in a strange
bed, I tossed about for what seemed hours. Finally
I got up, put on my bathrobe and slippers, and began
to read. As a rule, this serves to make me drowsy
in no time; but half an hour later I was wider awake
than ever. In desperation I threw down my book,
a stupid treatise on International Banking Laws, and
started to take some simple physical-culture exercises
in hopes that they might drive my insomnia away;
but the only result was to make me feel hungry.
“That's what's the matter with me,” I thought;
“I’m starving. Of course I couldn't sleep.” I
groaned, remembering the half-raw chicken we had
77


78 MIDNIGHT AT MEARS HOUSE
had for dinner. There were, I knew, some tins of
tongue and devilled ham on the pantry shelves, and
one of these with a few crackers would serve at least
to take the edge off my hunger and perhaps bring
me sleep. It was a scheme worth trying, I decided;
so I lighted the bedside candle, and holding it in one
hand and shielding its flickering flame with the other, I
crossed the hall and stole quietly down the front stairs.
I was reminded as I did so of Christmas Eves long
ago when even more lightly clad I had crept stealthily
down the long flight of stairs at home, my heart beat-
ing fast with excitement and hope, to take a peep at
the long line of stockings hanging from the mantel-
piece. I found myself contrasting also my present
nocturnal venture with that of the night before when
I had left the paralytic man on the grim errand of
carrying up David Mears' lifeless body, and of the
disquieting doubts and fears which had then assailed
me. My worst dread now was of finding the pantry
cupboard locked; in which case I resolved to break it
open rather than return to face another period of
hungry wakefulness.
The cupboard was not locked, however, and it did
not take me long to secure a tin of devilled ham and
a handful of soda biscuit; but finding a can-opener
was not such an easy matter. I hunted high and
low for one in vain. My penknife would have done,
but I had left it upstairs in my trousers pocket; so


8O MIDNIGHT AT MEARS HOUSE
however, or else he was not of a bloodthirsty nature;
for he did not come near me. On the contrary, he
appeared to be standing perfectly still; for I could
catch no further sound of him. While I waited with
growing impatience for him to stir, I tried to make
up my mind what I should do. It would be absolute
folly, I realised, for me to confront him—armed as of
course he was—and ask him what he meant by dis-
turbing a gentleman intent upon a midnight gorge.
He would doubtless reply by shooting me full of
holes, which would mitigate my emptiness, to be
sure, but not in the exact way I desired. I concluded
that the best thing to do would be to stand perfectly
still until he either took his departure with as much
of the family plate as he cared for, or went into
the library or the front hall; in which latter case I
might be able to make my way out through the back
part of the house and up the back stairs to my room
without his hearing me. Then I could get my re-
volver and meet him, presumably, upon more equal
term S.
“Never again while I'm in this house,” I vowed,
“will I so much as venture into the bathroom with-
out a gun. It's tempting Providence.”
Having satisfied himself, apparently, that no one
had heard him enter, the man in the next room began
to move quietly about. I had left the pantry door
slightly ajar, and through this crack came occasional


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MIDNIGHT AT MEARS HOUSE 81
swift gleams of light which seemed to show that he
was using an electric torch. I thought that I might
be able to creep noiselessly to the door and catch a
glimpse of him by one of these furtive illuminations;
but before I could make the attempt, I heard him
go into the library, and I lost no time in stealing out
through the store-room and the kitchen into the back
hall, feeling my way cautiously step by step.
At the top of the back stairs I was unlucky enough
to tread on a loose board. It creaked appallingly;
and a second later I heard Mrs. Bartlett get heavily
out of bed, preparatory, I knew, to investigating the
nature of the disturbance. While I was hurriedly
debating whether to await her coming or make a dis-
creet dash for my room, she flung open the door and
confronted me. I had never seen her before in
négligée attire—her hair in curl-papers and minus
her false teeth—and the sight made me gasp. It
would, I am sure, have awed the boldest. Her size
—she was at least five feet ten inches tall and strong
as a man—and her majesty of demeanour quite made
up, however, for any trifling deficiencies of toilet.
“Well?” she demanded in the tone of one who
bids you say your prayers before taking revenge upon
you for some mortal injury.
“I’m awfully sorry to have disturbed you, Mrs.
Bartlett,” I stammered, “but you see I was hungry,
really frightfully hungry ” I stopped, aware


82 MIDNIGHT AT MEARS HOUSE
from her expression that my explanation left some-
thing to be desired.
“Well?” she repeated.
“And so I—I went downstairs to get something
to eat,” I added, pulling out the tin of devilled ham
and the crackers as mute witnesses of my veracity.
Her frown deepened as she saw them. I remem-
bered that she didn't approve of midnight lunches,
and I shoved them hastily back in my pocket.
“Well?” she said again, and I thought I detected
a growing impatience in her voice.
“Well, I got them, you see,” I remarked inanely.
“I—I was just taking them back to my room. I
came up the back way so—so as not to wake any-
body.”
“I see,” she said, surveying me from head to foot
with blighting scorn. The next instant she had
slammed the door in my face. I drew a long breath
and fled.
I had lost, however, several precious minutes,
which the burglar had undoubtedly made good use
of, I reflected, as I hunted for my revolver. By
this time he had probably got together his spoil and
gone, or he might be that very instant climbing the
stairs intent on further depredations. I considered
waking Arthur; but I decided not to. I should only
lose more valuable time doing so, and I had lost
quite enough as it was.


MIDNIGHT AT MEARS HOUSE 83
Clutching my revolver, I tiptoed carefully across
the hall in the dark—I had thought best not to take
the candle—and down the stairs to the landing,
where I stopped and listened for fully half a minute
without hearing a sound.
“Gone !” I said to myself, the thrill of my antici-
pated encounter suddenly leaving me. “Drat that
old shrew !”—only I fear that in my disappointment
I used a less polite word to designate Mrs. Bartlett.
“That's the second time to-day a woman has messed
things up. They're always doing it: confound 'em!”
Somewhat less cautiously I descended the remain-
ing stairs, stopped a second to get my bearings in the
opaque gloom of the hall, and then went straight to
the library door. As I stretched out my hand to
fumble for the knob, I caught the unmistakable
sound of rustling paper within. An unexpected
thunderclap could hardly have startled me more, so
sure had I been that the burglar had gone.
In a flash I was peering through the keyhole.
There at David Mears' desk, dimly visible by the
light of the electric torch which he held in his left
hand, sat the man in the grey felt hat whom I had
surprised that afternoon staring in the window. He
had pried the lid of the desk open, and was examin-
ing a packet of letters. I wondered what he was
after—some incriminating note he had written the
dead man probably: at least I could think of no other


84 MIDNIGHT AT MEARS HOUSE
reason which would make him take such desperate
risks.
For perhaps five minutes I crouched there, spying
on him as he searched with feverish haste through
the big heap of correspondence. Then with a sud-
den, avid gesture I saw him pounce upon one of the
envelopes in the pile spread out before him and
snatch the enclosure from it. It was evidently not
what he had been hunting for, however; for he gave
a low grunt of disappointment, and started to
get up. It was time for me to act. I opened the
door.
“Throw up your hands!” I cried, levelling my
revolver at his head.
He obeyed me with surprising readiness—extin-
guishing the electric torch as he did so.
Too enraged at the trick he had played upon me
to consider the consequences, I sprang blindly toward
him, to be met with a crashing blow on the head
which sent me reeling back against the wall. I
pulled the trigger of the revolver as I fell.
The next thing I was aware of was a burning sen-
sation in my throat. I opened my eyes to find
Arthur bending over me with a flask. Beside him
were Margaret and Mrs. Bartlett, eyeing me in evi-
dent anxiety and alarm. I felt flattered as well as
puzzled at finding myself the object of so much con-
sideration. Clearly I must have done something to


MIDNIGHT AT MEARS HOUSE 85
be the recipient of it, I thought, though I could not
recall what it was.
“Feeling better?” Arthur asked.
I nodded.
“What's all the row about?” I enquired.
“Don’t you remember?”
I shook my head.
“Have another swig of the brandy,” he suggested,
putting the flask to my lips.
I took a big swallow of it. It cleared my head in
no time. -
“Did he get away?” I asked. “Did I hit him?”
They looked doubtfully at one another.
“Well, why don't you answer?” I exclaimed peev-
ishly. “You’ve got tongues in your heads, haven't
you?”
“You mustn't excite yourself talking about it just
now,” said Margaret.
“Nonsense!” I cried. “I’m all right. I got a
little knock on the head, that's all. It won't hurt
me any to talk.”
“If you're sure it won't tire you too much,” Arthur
said, “you might tell us what happened. We heard
the shot and found you lying here unconscious.”
“I was hungry,” I began, carefully avoiding Mrs.
Bartlett's eye, “and I went down into the pantry to
get something to eat. I found a tin of devilled ham
and some crackers, and was just starting back with


86 MIDNIGHT AT MEARS HOUSE
them when I heard someone trying to break in at the
dining-room window.” I paused to take breath.
“Well”—it was Margaret, not Mrs. Bartlett, who
spoke—“what did you do?”
“Nothing. I just stood still and waited to see if
he would get in or not.”
“And when he did get in?” she asked eagerly.
“I still waited,” I replied.
She looked a trifle disappointed. I wondered if
she had expected me to dash in and leap at the man's
throat.
“Presently he came in here,” I continued, “and
then I stole out through the kitchen and up the back
stairs. I stepped on a loose board and waked up
Mrs. Bartlett. I didn't want to scare her by saying
anything about the burglar,” I went on hurriedly—a
sniff from her saying as plainly as words, ‘Oh, the
perfidy of man!”—“so I–er—merely told her I’d
been down to get something to eat.”
“Why didn't you wake me up?” Arthur
asked.
“I did think of doing so,” I said, “but I'd lost
so much time already I was afraid the burglar would
get away before I could rouse you; and then, too, I
wanted to have the honour of capturing him all by
myself. If I'd known how it was going to turn out,”
I added, after I had described my encounter with the
fellow, “I’d have been only too glad to let you in on


MIDNIGHT AT MEARS HOUSE 87
it. Nabbing men in grey felt hats doesn't seem to
be my strong point, I admit.”
“It was awfully brave of you to go for him that
way in the dark,” Margaret said.—I had apparently
atoned in her eyes for my earlier lack of courage.
“I’m glad you think so,” I said, “but as a matter
of fact it wasn't bravery at all, merely the sort of
thing any brainless idiot might have been expected
to do. I lost my head, that's all.”
“You were lucky not to lose your life, too,” put
in Arthur. “If he'd struck a little harder 9%
“I shouldn't feel so sore at having let him get
the better of me,” I interrupted.
“You came near hitting him anyway,” he said.
“Look at that.” And he held out to me a grey felt
hat with a bullet hole through the brim of it. I
turned it over curiously. It was a cheap, badly worn
hat, much stained and crumpled. Cut in stencil on
the sweat-band were the letters “S. G.”
“It's another clue at any rate,” I remarked, trying
to speak jestingly, though my head was aching furi-
ously. “We have only—”
And then the room grew suddenly dark; there
came a queer buzzing in my ears, and I lost conscious-
116SS.


CHAPTER IX
STEPHEN GARTH
“By the end of the week,” said the doctor three days
later, deftly inserting a clinical thermometer in my
mouth as he spoke, “I think you may safely get up.”
I glared at him and made futile efforts to speak.
As a result of the blow I had received from the man
in the grey felt hat, I had been down with a high
fever from which I was just recovering.
“You must allow me to congratulate you on hav-
ing made a remarkably quick convalescence, thanks
to an unusually strong constitution and a very thick
head—of hair,” he added gravely, though I could
see his eyes twinkle. “That blow you got would
have given most men concussion of the brain.”
I wondered if he meant to imply that I was lacking
in the essential requisite for such a gift, or whether
he merely intended to compliment me on the hardness
of my skull.
“Just the same,” he continued, making the most
of my defenceless condition, “I shouldn't let it hap-
pen again if I were you. Better keep in mind what
the Bible says about turning the other cheek.” And
88


MIDNIGHT AT MEARS HOUSE 89
he chuckled as though he had said something funny.
Then with exasperating slowness he leaned over and
removed the thermometer.
“If you'd left that confounded thing in there an-
other second,” I said savagely, “I’d have thrown
it at you, and if you think I'm going to lie here like a
bed-ridden old woman till the end of the week, you've
got another guess coming.”
“Suit yourself,” he returned cheerfully. “It’ll
be money in my pocket if you do get up sooner,
so I ought not to object; but I feel it my professional
duty to tell you that it will certainly bring on a
relapse.”
“Relapse fiddle-sticks!” I said. “I haven't any
fever now, and I don't intend to have any more:
neither do I intend to go on playing the helpless
invalid forever. I’ve had enough of it.”
“Suit yourself,” he repeated, busy washing the
thermometer and putting it back into its case. “If
you won't obey orders, you mustn't blame me for
what happens: I've given you fair warning.” And,
with a cheerful “Good-bye, see you to-morrow,” he
Went Out.
No sooner had he gone than I crawled out of bed
and staggered over to an easy-chair by the window.
It was more of an effort than I had thought it would
be. My head felt curiously light, and my legs
seemed several sizes too small for me and very


90 MIDNIGHT AT MEARS HOUSE
wobbly. Still, I remained firm in my resolve to show
Dr. Satterlee and the others that I was quite able to
be up and about once more.
My eagerness to learn what had happened during
the past three days—and in particular if Garth had
hit upon any explanation of David Mears' death—
demanded instant gratification. I had seen Garth
for a moment only on his arrival, but the doctor had
cut short my attempts to talk with him. In fact he
had scarcely let me exchange a word with anyone.
Arthur had been in to see me several times, but upon
him, too, silence had evidently been enjoined; for he
merely shook his head in reply to my questions.
“You’re worse than a Standard Oil magnate on the
witness-stand,” I told him. “Anyone would think
from the way you all act that I was really sick and
apt to die any moment, when as a matter of fact I'm
feeling fine—fine, I tell you.” But my looks must
have given the lie to my words, I suppose; for he
murmured something about my not getting excited,
and left the room.
Now, however, that I had made up my mind to
assert myself and put an end to Dr. Satterlee's ab-
surd tyranny, I would ask as many questions as I
liked and get answers to them, too, or know the
reason why. And in accordance with this resolve,
I picked up a small, old-fashioned dinner-bell that
stood on the table beside me and rang it vigorously.


MIDNIGHT AT MEARS HOUSE 9I
One of the new maids Arthur had engaged—a
plain-featured Irish girl still in her teens, to judge
from her lack of self-assurance as much as from her
youthful appearance—answered the bell. I asked
her to tell Garth that I would like to see him, and
a moment later he came in.
At the time of his coming to Mears House Garth
looked very much as he does to-day—a short, slight
man of about my own age, well-built and energetic,
but of a nervous rather than a muscular type of en-
ergy. He has grown a trifle stouter since, to be
sure, but otherwise I can see little change in him.
He was as bald then as he is now, and had the same
trick of carrying his head a little to one side, as
though the weight of it were too much for his neck
to support. I have never seen a head more beauti-
fully shaped than his, with a wide, high forehead,
dark eyes far apart and rather prominent—it was
hard to believe them blind—the nose and chin of an
old Roman Emperor, and a somewhat small but
finely modelled mouth.
His ears, however, were the most remarkable of
his features—not that they were unusual in shape or
size, but because they were so low as to appear almost
misplaced, and on account of their extraordinary
quality. I doubt if anyone was ever gifted with a
more wonderful sense of hearing. Certainly I have
never met anybody, even among those born blind,


MIDNIGHT AT MEARS HOUSE 93
describe it. It was rather as if he had some strange
invisible organ of sensibility, some occult medium, by
means of which he became aware of things seemingly
beyond his apprehension. Doubtless a psychologist
could state it far more intelligibly: I can only repeat
that he had some such way of sensitising himself, as
it were, so as to receive impressions not communica-
ble through the ordinary channels of the senses.
Just how much this faculty, combined with his
marvellously developed hearing, has aided him in his
work, it would be hard to say. Personally I think
he overestimates its value to him, and underrates the
part his brain has played in the mastering of these
abstruse problems. Without a very high degree of
mental acuteness, the clearest and soundest of reason-
ing powers, and what—for want of a better word—
I must call a sympathetic imagination, his unusual
psychical and auditory perceptions would, I feel sure,
have been of little help to him. It is, in my opinion,
far more to the brilliant qualities of his mind, his
marked analytical and synthetical abilities, and his
unrivalled skill as a constructive logician, that he
chiefly owes his success.
At the time of David Mears' death I did not know
Garth well; for though our acquaintance began dur-
ing my first year at the Law School when he was
taking a post-graduate course in sociology and eco-
nomics, we never became really intimate, and since


94 MIDNIGHT AT MEARS HOUSE
graduation I had seen him only at rare intervals. On
leaving Cambridge he had devoted himself wholly
to a practical testing-out of certain theories he had
formed regarding the effects of environment on char-
acter, and particularly in trying to determine what
ratio poverty and its attendant circumstances of ugli-
ness and squalor bore to crime. In common with
a good many later investigators of the subject, he
believed that statistics could be gathered to prove
that in proportion as a human being is deprived of
light, fresh air, proper food, and agreeable surround-
ings, his tendency toward crime directly increases;
and that it could be demonstrated beyond question
that by improving the vile, depressing, and unhygienic
conditions amid which the poorer classes of any large
community live, a vast saving could be effected in
the present huge cost of maintaining medical, re-
formatory, and penal institutions, to say nothing of
the incalculable gain that would thereby result in
producing an immeasurably superior class of
citizens.
The working out of this theory entailed upon him
the necessity of living almost entirely among the
lower elements of our population, and familiarising
himself through actual experience with their ways of
life. He had to spend his days in close, soul-deaden-
ing contact with the degraded, the vicious, and the
criminal. He became, in short, one of the submerged


MIDNIGHT AT MEARS HOUSE 95
tenth, only emerging from this underworld at infre-
quent intervals when the need of intercourse with his
own kind became unbearably insistent.
I happened to come across him during one of these
periodic reappearances, and I remember how shocked
I was at the change in him. He had lost altogether
that light-hearted, boyish air which had always made
him seem younger than his years in spite of his serious
turn of mind. He had now the look of a man who
has gone down into the depths and returned bearing
upon him the marks of that hideous descent. The
ghost of the old smile lighted up his face, however,
when he saw me. He was—an unusual thing for
him—in a conversational mood, and we spent the
entire evening talking. He spoke of his work with
that singular self-detachment which had always char-
acterised him—as if he were a disinterested observer
and chronicler of his own doings; and somehow they
gained rather than lost in effectiveness on that ac-
count. I have never forgotten some of the things
he told me in that quiet, unemotional voice of his—
things too depressing, too harrowing almost for ex-
pression. I wondered how he could speak of them
so calmly. It was, of course, partly because he had
lost the sense of their dreadfulness through long
familiarity with them; but it was due even more, I am
sure, to the outward impassiveness of the man's na-
ture. There was nothing of the passionate apostle


96 MIDNIGHT AT MEARS HOUSE
in him. A stranger might well have regarded him
as some mere de-humanised personification of scien-
tific zeal without love or sympathy for his fellow-
beings, though such an estimate of him would be as
far as possible from the truth.
I left him that night with mingled feelings of ad-
miration and pity—admiration for his rare spirit of
self-immolation, and pity touched with anger at the
thought of his sacrificing his life and all his splendid
gifts in what I could but regard as a vain and useless
endeavour.
It was some months afterward that I read of his
blindness—he had been helping a little lame boy in
the slums set off some fireworks, and a Roman candle
had exploded in his hand. The doctors thought he
would lose the use of both eyes. I flung the paper
down in anger at the injustice, the wanton cruelty
of it; and went to see him. “Rotten luck, isn’t it?”
he said cheerfully; and then after a pause, as if to
himself, “I don't believe I could have stood it much
longer anyway.”
He went to Europe soon after to consult some
famous Vienna oculist, and was gone more than a
year; but it did his eyes no good: he remained totally
blind. When he came back, he told me he had de-
cided to take up detective work. I wondered if he
were joking. He seemed aware of my surprise; for
he smiled, and remarked simply, “I don't wonder


MIDNIGHT AT MEARS HOUSE 97
you think I'm crazy, but wait and see.” I did not
have to wait long either; for it was not more than
a month later that Varley told me how Garth had
spotted an anonymous blackmailer for him, and a few
days after this Forsythe cornered me in the dining-
room of the Harvard Club, and insisted on telling
me about the recovery of his safe-deposit key. I
was about to tell him to go to the devil, when he
mentioned Garth's name, and then I listened eagerly
enough.
And before long I heard from other friends—
Randolph Stewart, Mrs. Jack Keith, old Francis
Applegate, Sydney Brewster, my cousins, the Thorp
twins—of Garth's activities. Many of his exploits
were not in themselves remarkable; but the fact that
a blind man was the author of them made them seem
so, of course. No one could understand how it was
possible for him to succeed with such a handicap—it
seemed as marvellous to me as to anybody; and I was
curious to find out how he did it. . But a press of
legal work kept me busy at the time; so that I had
no leisure to look him up; and when I found an
opportunity, he had left town.
As I told Arthur, I had never heard of Garth's
interesting himself in any case of unavoidable pub-
licity such as a murder mystery; and I was afraid
when he found out that David Mears had been the
victim of foul play, he would refuse to help us.


98 MIDNIGHT AT MEARS HOUSE
It was, indeed, largely with the intention of trying
to overcome his scruples that I had sent for him;
but to my relief I soon found that my fears were
needless. In fact I had no opportunity of express-
ing them; for after he had enquired how I was get-
ting on, he brought up the subject himself.
“I see you've been worrying for fear I shouldn't
care to be mixed up in a case like this,” he began.
“You needn't have been. I shouldn’t have come at
all, if I hadn't been willing to take my share of what-
ever notoriety may result from it.”
“I knew how confoundedly shy you were about
being in the limelight,” I admitted.
He smiled.
“If I’ve balked at it so far, it's been due chiefly
to my vanity, I'm afraid.”
“Your vanity?”
“Yes, I didn’t want to risk losing what little repu-
tation I’ve got by a public failure. I wanted to be-
come a little surer of myself before tackling anything
so big. Maybe I'm in too much of a hurry to do
so as it is. It would be more sensible of me, I
daresay, to get a little more experience on the quiet
first; but I’ve been itching to try my hand at some-
thing of the sort for a good while, and when I got
your wire, the temptation was too strong to resist.
Before long, probably, I shall regret having yielded
to it.”


IOO MIDNIGHT AT MEARS HOUSE
mitted, you'd better send for someone to open your
eyes for you.”
“Confound his impudence,” I growled, forget-
ting that I had only myself to thank for his unflatter-
ing estimate of our intelligence. “I hope to the
deuce he won't come butting in any more.”
“I don’t believe he will,” Garth replied, “after
what Keaton said to him. It was hardly in the
nature of an invitation.” -
“I suppose Arthur has told you everything about
the affair?” I went on.
“Practically everything, I imagine. I’ve jotted
down the main points of his story here ”—he took
some typewritten sheets out of his pocket. “You
might run over them,” he added, “and see if he's
left out anything of importance. It'll help to keep
them fresh in my mind, if you'll be good enough to
read them aloud.”
I did so, struck by the neatness and accuracy of
the writing. It was hard to realise that a blind
man had done it; and, as I learned later, on a small,
portable machine with a crowded keyboard which
he always carried about with him.
“I guess he's given you the main facts, so far as
I know them anyway,” I said when I had finished
reading. Except for a brief account of David Mears'
funeral, and mention of Randall's return, there was
nothing new to me in the narrative. “But I can't


MIDNIGHT AT MEARS HOUSE IOI
believe there's been nothing more doing since I've
been laid up. At the rate things happened the first
twenty-four hours after I got here, there ought to be
about ten more pages of these notes, and a list of
casualties a foot long beside.”
“‘It never rains but it pours,’” he reminded me.
“You can't expect such a water-spout as you got
caught in to last a week, though. I should think
you'd had excitement enough anyway to last you for
a while.”
“I suppose I have,” I replied. “I'd have ac-
quired a fatal craving for it, probably, if I’d had
any more; but I must confess I was beginning to like
it, and I hate to think it may be perfectly safe for
me to venture out after sunset now without a body-
guard, or to go to bed with no prospect whatever of
being murdered in my sleep.”
“It's all very well to joke about it,” he began,
when Arthur burst in upon us in a state of the wildest
excitement and alarm.
“Margaret,” he cried, “has disappeared!”


CHAPTER X
MARGARET DISAPPEARS
“DISAPPEARED!” I exclaimed, half rising from my
chair. “What do you mean?”
“Just what I said,” Arthur replied. “She's gone.
No one has seen her since nine o'clock this morning.
We've been looking for her for hours: we've hunted
everywhere.” He was quite distracted with grief
and anxiety.
“Pull yourself together,” I said, “and tell us
about it.”
“She started to walk to the village right after
breakfast—at least that's where she told the maid
she was going. No one seems to know whether she
actually went in that direction or not—but if she
did, she never reached it. I couldn't find anyone
there or on the road who'd seen her. It's nearly
six hours since she left. She ought to have been
back long ago, unless—My God!” he broke off.
“If anything has happened to her !”
“It won't help matters for you to go into hysterics
over it,” I told him. He needed a rough reminder
of the sort more than sympathy just then, it seemed
IO2


MIDNIGHT AT MEARS HOUSE IO3
to me. “You’ll need to keep cool, if you're going
to be any use finding her. I'm afraid I can't help
you much: it was all I could do to get as far from
my bed as this.”
He turned abruptly to Garth.
“Can you suggest anything?” he asked. “I’ve
sent Dent”—he was the new coachman—“ and Ran-
dall to search the woods for her, an 55
“You don’t know if she got any letters this morn-
ing, do you?” Garth interrupted.
Arthur seemed surprised at the question. z
“Why, yes,” he said, “three or four of them,
but I don’t see—”
“Find them, please, if you can. By the way, did
she seem at all worried before she left?”
“I didn’t see her,” he answered; “but I'll ask the
maid, if you want me to.” And he started to leave
the room. - -
“You might bring her back with you,” Garth
added. “I’d like to question her.” -
“What do you make of it?” I asked him when
Arthur had gone. “Do you think it's at all likely
that anything's happened to her, as Keaton fears?”
“There's no use speculating about it,” he replied,
“till we get at the facts. Then we shall have some-
thing to go upon.”
Despite the possibility that Margaret's prolonged
absence might have some sinister significance, I felt


IO4 MIDNIGHT AT MEARS HOUSE
sure that Arthur was worrying unnecessarily about it.
She had probably changed her mind about going to
town and gone for a walk instead. She might have
lost her way, or become tired and sat down to rest
and gone to sleep—I had done the same thing often
myself—or she might even have sprained her ankle;
but I did not believe that she had met with any seri-
ous mishap. The neighbourhood, as Arthur had him-
self assured me, was quite free from tramps or other
doubtful characters; so that the more I thought of it,
the less likely it seemed that she should have been
attacked by any such gentry. I realised, however,
how little such arguments would console me, were I
in Arthur's place; and so I did not speak of them
when he returned a moment later with the maid—a
thin, rather oldish woman, with a sallow, sharp-
featured face, and hard, defiant black eyes. She
looked, I thought, both nervous and frightened.
“Be so good as to tell us just what Miss Ellis
said to you before she left the house this morning,”
Garth began in an encouraging tone, as if he had
sensed the woman's embarrassment and wanted to
put her at her ease.
“She said she was goin’ to the village, just as I
told Mr. Keaton,” she replied shortly.
“Did she say how long she expected to be gone?”
“No, sir.”
“Or why she was going?”


MIDNIGHT AT MEARS HOUSE IO5
“No, sir.”
“Have you any idea why?”—He seemed to be
straining every nerve to catch what she said. I could
not understand it; for I knew he was not in the least
deaf, and she spoke distinctly enough.
“No, sir,” she repeated.
Garth's tension relaxed. His face grew suddenly
Stern.
“That's not the truth,” he said sharply.
She gave him a startled look.
“How do you know it ain't?” she snapped. “I
mean—”
“Never mind about that,” he broke in. “I want
a correct answer to my question.”
“I told you once,” she retorted sullenly.
“You told me a lie,” he said quietly, but there
was something threatening in his tone. “You ought
to know better than to lie to me—Maggie Sullivan.”
The woman gave a quick gasp, and what little
colour she had faded slowly from her face. She
stared at Garth with a strange mixture of fear and
bewilderment in her eyes.
“Well,” he said impatiently, “I’m waiting for
you to speak.”
For an instant she hesitated, making her choice,
as it seemed, between two evils.
“She went to meet someone, I think,” she blurted
out at last—“a gentleman I guess it was.”


106 MIDNIGHT AT MEARS HOUSE
Arthur faced her, his eyes blazing.
“You lie!” he cried fiercely.
She shrank back from him.
“Ask him,” she said, pointing at Garth.
“She's telling the truth, or what she believes to
be the truth,” he said. “I’m sure of that.”
“And I tell you she lies,” Arthur repeated angrily.
“You don't expect me to believe what she's just said,
do you?”—He laughed bitterly.—“If I did, I'd put
a bullet through my head.”
Garth seemed quite unmoved by his outburst.
“You’re anxious, I suppose, that Miss Ellis should
be found?” he asked quietly.
“What a question | " Arthur exclaimed.
“Very well, then,” Garth continued in a more de-
cisive tone, “I would suggest that you try to control
your feelings, and aid instead of hindering us to get
at the facts.”
“But I tell you—” Arthur began.
“It's quite natural, of course,” Garth broke in,
“that you should be unwilling to believe anything that
may seem to reflect in the slightest upon Miss Ellis;
but it strikes me you’re rather hasty in arriving at
such a conclusion. Suppose she did go to meet some-
one, as this woman says. There are plenty of pos-
sible reasons to explain her doing so besides the one
you have seized upon; you must see that.”
Arthur started to reply: then changed his mind.


MIDNIGHT AT MEARS HOUSE Io7
“Can you tell us anything more?” Garth went
on, again addressing the maid, whose frightened eyes
had never left his face.
“Only this, sir,” she said. “I think her goin'
had something to do with a letter she got this mornin’.
She was readin’ it when I came into her room, and
she seemed sort of excited like, as though there was
somethin’ in it that had got her all stirred up.”
Garth turned to Arthur, and asked him if he had
found any letters in Margaret's room.
“Yes,” he said, “but I've read them, and there's
nothing in any of them that could possibly account
for her disappearance.”
“I was afraid she would have taken it with her.
She may have left the envelope that it came in,
though. Would you mind seeing?”
Arthur went to look for it.
“You’re sure, are you,” Garth said to the maid,
“that you’ve told us everything?”
Again she seemed to hesitate.
“She took an envelope with her,” she said at last.
“I saw her snatch it out of her trunk and shove it
in her waist when she thought I wasn’t watchin’ her.”
Garth leaned a little forward.
“What sort of an envelope?” he asked.
“I didn’t get a good look at it,” she answered,
“but I sh’d say it was about that long.”—She held
her hands some ten inches apart.


IO8 MIDNIGHT AT MEARS HOUSE
“Legal business size,” I suggested.
Garth nodded.
“Was she dressed suitably for a journey?” he
enquired.
“She had her jacket and gloves on.”
“But she didn't take her travelling bag, or her
cloak, or anything else with her?”
“No, sir, not that I know of.”
“Very well,” he said curtly. “That is all: you
may go.”
With a look of manifest relief she turned and
hurried to the door.
I turned eagerly toward him when she had
gone.
“Where have you met her before?” I asked.
“It would take too long to answer that question
now,” he replied. “I’ll tell you some other time.”
Arthur came back just then with a much crumpled
envelope in his hand.
“I found this in the waste basket,” he said, holding
it out to Garth.
“Would you mind reading what there is on it?”
he asked.
Arthur flushed at his absent-mindedness.
“Certainly not,” he responded hastily. “It seems
to have been mailed here in the village,” he added
when he had read the superscription. “There's only
one postmark on it anyway.”


I IO MIDNIGHT AT MEARS HOUSE
almost absurd. I did my best, however, to give satis-
factory replies to them all, for I realised that he had
probably good reasons of his own for asking them.
While we were talking, Arthur moved restlessly
about the room, going to the window every now and
then to look out, and glancing continually at his
watch. He was evidently a prey to the most harrow-
ing thoughts, and half out of his head with anxiety
and alarm. It was no wonder, considering how he
worshipped the girl. Finally he muttered something
about going to see whether the coachman or Randall
had returned yet, and left us.
We sat silent for some time after he had gone.
Garth was, I knew, trying to piece together the vari-
ous bits of information we had gained in an effort
to construct out of them a plausible explanation of
Margaret's disappearance, and I was loath to inter-
rupt him.
“Why,” I thought, “should I not attempt some-
thing of the sort myself?” The result of my re-
flections was to convince me that the envelope which
the maid said she saw Margaret hide in her waist
must have had much to do with her going, if indeed
it was not the sole reason for it. Had it anything
to do with David Mears, I wondered? Somehow
the more I thought of it, the surer I became that
it had. I recalled my suspicion that the girl knew
more about her guardian's affairs than she wished us


MIDNIGHT AT MEARS HOUSE III
to suppose. If that were the case, might he not
have entrusted her with certain valuable documents,
fearing that an attempt might be made to rob him
of them? Or might she not have taken them from
his desk after it had been broken open by the man
in the grey felt hat? or even before that? She had
the key to it. But supposing this to be so, what could
have been her object in taking them away with her?
“If we only knew what was in that letter?” I
kept telling myself. I felt sure that the writer of
it was some friend or enemy of David Mears, bent
either upon helping her carry out some request of his,
or threatening to reveal ugly secrets about him unless
the papers were given to him. Had he for this
reason insisted upon a secret interview with her, think-
ing either to frighten her into parting with them,
or if that method failed, taking them from her by
force? Margaret, I knew, was not the sort of girl
to be easily intimidated. It seemed only too likely,
therefore, that this unknown enemy of her guardian's
—for I felt convinced that he was an enemy, not a
friend—had resorted to violence to get them. I
clenched my fists involuntarily as I pictured her at-
tacked by such a ruffian, and perhaps knocked sense-
less by a blow from him. No wonder Arthur was
half crazy at the thought of such a thing.
An exclamation from Garth interrupted my re-
flections.


I I2 MIDNIGHT AT MEARS HOUSE
“That's it, of course,” he said half aloud. “That
explains it!”
“Explains what?” I asked.
Instead of answering my question, he asked me to
ring the bell and tell the maid he would like to
speak to Mrs. Bartlett.
I did so, wondering what he could want of her;
but though Mrs. Bartlett came at once, and they
talked together for some time, my curiosity remained
ungratified; for so far as I could see, Garth learned
nothing at all from her. In fact he asked her only
two questions which seemed to me to have any bear-
ing on Margaret's disappearance—had she seen her
since breakfast, and had she any idea where the girl
could be?—to both of which she answered, “No.”
“Well, you didn't get much out of her,” I re-
marked disappointedly when she had left.
“I got what I wanted,” he replied, smiling.
“You did?” I exclaimed. “What was it?”
“I merely wanted to make sure that I was right.”
“Right about what?” I asked impatiently.
“In thinking that Miss Ellis never left the house.”


CHAPTER XI
TWO STRANGERS ARRIVE
Could Garth have seen my face at this announce-
ment, he would doubtless have laughed; for it must
have presented a very comical mixture of surprise
and bewilderment.
“You find it hard to believe?” he asked in an
amused tone. “I thought you might; and yet it's
the only logical explanation which will fit the
facts.”
I asked him why it was.
“There were three things,” he said, “which made
me think she had never left the house—first, the fact
that no one had seen her go; second, that if she had
gone without anyone's noticing it, someone in the
village would have seen her—”
“How can you be sure she intended going to the
village?” I broke in. “We have only the maid's
word for it. She may not have told you the truth.”
“I’ve good grounds for thinking she did,” he told
me. I wondered what they were.
“And your third reason?” I asked.
“The fact that Mrs. Bartlett lied to me when I
II3


II.4 MIDNIGHT AT MEARS HOUSE
asked her if she had seen Miss Ellis since breakfast,
and if she had any idea where she could be.”
“You seem to depend a great deal on your ability
to tell whether people are speaking the truth to you
or not,” I remarked.
“I do,” he replied. “It's of considerable assist-
ance to me in many instances.”
“I should think it might be,” I said drily. “With
such a wonderful knack as that you ought not to have
much trouble finding out anything. All you need to
do, it seems to me, is to keep on asking questions till
you get the right answer.”
“I wish it were as simple as that,” he replied,
smiling; “but there are a good many questions one
can't very well ask; and it's one thing to be con-
vinced in your own mind of a fact, and quite another
to be able to prove it to the satisfaction of a judge
and jury. Suppose, for instance, I were quite certain
that you had murdered David Mears, I should have
to be able to demonstrate the correctness of that be-
lief by bringing forward a chain of evidence which
would link you indubitably with the crime. It would
be useless for me to expect anyone to believe that
you were the murderer unless I could do this. The
mere fact that I could tell whether you were speaking
the truth or not in regard to the matter would be of
absolutely no value in securing your conviction. It
would be merely my word against yours.


MIDNIGHT AT MEARS HOUSE II5
“Regarding my ability to tell whether people are
lying to me or not,” he went on, “there is really
nothing remarkable about it, though I don't blame
you in the least for finding it hard to credit. It does
look as though I were claiming some rather super-
natural power, I daresay—a sort of mind-reading
gift, perhaps, which I haven't got at all. It's simply
a matter of ear, of being able to distinguish certain
hardly noticeable changes in the human voice, and
knowing what they mean. Almost anyone could
learn to do it, if he took the pains.”
“I can't quite believe that,” I said. “I’m sure I
couldn't anyway.”
“It isn't a lawyer's business to find out the truth,
I understand,” he returned drily.
“Perhaps that's why I'm so stupid about getting
it through my head how you knew Margaret had
never left the house,” I observed.
“The letter she got this morning had, of course,
everything to do with it,” he began. “Clearly
enough it was a request for her to meet the writer
of it somewhere, and it seems equally certain from
her actions—especially in taking that envelope from
her trunk—that she had made up her mind to grant
the request.”
“That's exactly the way I figured it out,” I said;
“but why didn't she go, if she'd made up her mind to?
There wasn't anything to hinder her that I can see.”


II6 MIDNIGHT AT MEARS HOUSE
“That puzzled me, too, for a while,” he replied,
“until I recalled what the maid had said about her
being all stirred up as she expressed it. It occurred
to me then that if the matter were serious enough
to disturb her so, there was a likelihood, a strong
probability even, that she would have talked it over
with someone before she went. There was only one
person, of course, besides Keaton whom she could go
to—Mrs. Bartlett.”
I began to catch what he was driving at.
“Then Mrs. Bartlett is responsible for her dis-
appearance?”
“I feel sure of it,” he answered.
“But what has she done with her?” I demanded.
“We’ve still to find that out; but I shall be very
much surprised if she hasn't been shut up all this time
in Mrs. Bartlett's own room.”
I whistled softly. An idea had just come to me
which might explain everything.
“By thunder!” I cried. “I believe you're right,
and what's more I think I know why she's kept her
a prisoner.” And I went on to tell him of my be-
lief that the envelope the maid had seen Margaret
put in her waist contained papers belonging to David
Mears that he had either given her to take care of,
or that she had taken from his desk since he was
murdered. I told him, too, what Arthur had said
about Mrs. Bartlett's devotion to the dead man, and


MIDNIGHT AT MEARS HOUSE 117
the impossibility of our persuading her to tell us any-
thing concerning his past.
“It looks to me,” I went on, “very much as though
she were afraid that the girl might be going to do
something which would result in bringing to light
an old scandal connected with her guardian; and yet,”
I added, “she was as fond of him as Mrs. Bartlett
was—more so, even—and a more loyal little soul
never breathed. She'd be the last to do anything to
blacken his memory, I'm sure. There must be some
other reason for it.”
It was some time before Garth spoke.
“I’m inclined to think you're on the right track
just the same,” he said at last. “Suppose we try to
find out?”
“How?” I asked; but before he could reply,
Arthur flung open the door.
“Thank God, she's back!” he cried.
I glanced quickly at Garth. Despite his blindness
we might almost be said to have exchanged looks.
“That's splendid news,” he told Arthur warmly.
“You bet it is !” I echoed. “Where on earth has
she been all the time?”
Arthur frowned slightly.
“She said she'd rather not tell me,” he replied.
“Well, that doesn't matter so long as she's back
safe and sound,” I remarked cheerfully, “and feels
properly sorry for having scared us all half to death.”


I 18 MIDNIGHT AT MEARS HOUSE
Evidently Arthur did not quite relish the bantering
tone in which I spoke; for he made me no reply.
Instead he turned to Garth.
“I’m sorry to have made you so much bother about
it,” he began, “and all for nothing—”
“Don’t mention it,” Garth interrupted. “I was
only too glad to try to be of some slight assistance
in finding her, and I'm still more glad that there's
no need of what little help I might possibly have
been able to give you.”
“Does Mrs. Bartlett know she's back?” I asked
Arthur.
“By Jove! I don't believe she does,” he replied.
“I’ll go and tell her. Poor old soul! She's
been so worried about her, she's hardly left her
room.”
I stole another look at Garth. If he felt elated
by this bit of news, his face showed no sign of it.
As soon as Arthur had gone, however, he turned to
me and smiled.
“It looks very much as if I were right, eh?” he
said.
“It certainly does,” I admitted; “but I'm hanged
if I see why she did it.”
“I’m going to ask her,” he said, rising.
“You’ll have a pleasant job of it,” I assured him,
laughing. “I'd rather tackle an old she-bear. Ten
to one she'll tell you to mind your own business, and


MIDNIGHT AT MEARS HOUSE II9
emphasise her remarks by hitting you over the head
with a broom stick.”
“I’ll risk it,” he replied cheerfully, and away he
Went.
It was half an hour before he came back.
“Well, what luck?” I asked. “I was thinking of
organising a relief expedition, if you had been gone
much longer.”
“I had the devil's own time of it.”—He grinned
ruefully.
I chuckled.
“I knew you would,” I said. “I suppose she de-
nied knowing anything whatever about it?”
“On the contrary,” he replied, “she told me quite
frankly that she had kept Miss Ellis locked up in
her room all the time. I told her right off the reel
that I knew she'd done so, and how I knew it. But
when it came to getting her to say why she did it,
I might as well have talked to a post. ‘It’s none of
your business, she snapped, and I'll be hanged if I
could get another word out of her. She shut up like
a clam.”
“It took you a good while to accomplish that
much,” I remarked.
“Oh, I haven't been all this time talking to Mrs.
Bartlett: I’ve been to see Miss Ellis, too.”
“The devil you havel ”I exclaimed. “And what
did she have to say?”


I2O MIDNIGHT AT MEARS HOUSE
“Precisely what Mrs. Bartlett did, though she put
her refusal to explain matters in more polite language.
She was very much disturbed when she found out
that I knew where she'd been. “Did Mrs. Bartlett
tell you?” she asked me. “She admitted it when I
accused her of having kept you shut up in her room,”
I answered. “But what made you think I was
there?” she said. I told her briefly how I came to
that conclusion. “You seem very clever, at finding
out things, she remarked coldly when I had finished.
“With such extraordinary ability you ought not to
have much difficulty in learning what more you want
to know without any help from me.” “I’m always
glad of any aid I can get, I replied humbly. She
hesitated a moment. When she spoke I was really
startled at the change in her voice. It was brusque,
almost threatening.
“‘I don't know what right you think you have to
pry into my affairs, Mr. Garth, she began. “I can
only say that I do not recognise any such right on
your part, and I refuse to answer your questions re-
garding matters which don't concern you in the
least.’”
“Now will you be good?” I murmured.
Garth continued without noticing my interrup-
tion.
“I tried to explain to her that I was doing my best
to solve the mystery of her guardian's death. ‘If


MIDNIGHT AT MEARS HOUSE I2 I
that's the case, she broke in, ‘you’re going about it
in a very queer way.' I asked her what she meant,
reminding her that it was necessary for me to learn
everything I could about David Mears' past. “I’m
convinced,” I added, ‘that you were intending to meet
someone who knew him.’ “How do you know that?'
she cried. “I’ve reasons for thinking that those
papers you were taking with you belonged to him,'
I answered. “They had nothing whatever to do with
him, she declared. “I’m sorry,' I said, ‘to be so
rude as to doubt that.' I heard her gasp. “I’m
not accustomed to having my word doubted, Mr.
Garth, she said angrily, ‘and by a stranger, too.
Perhaps, if you have no more insulting things to
say to me, you'll be good enough to leave the
room.’”
“Phew!” I interrupted. “You have put your
foot in it, haven't you? What did you want to call
her a liar for? I don't see what good that did.”
“I wasn’t absolutely sure she was lying, and I had
to make sure.”
“Well, it seems to me you might have done it a
trifle more diplomatically,” I said. “Now you've
gone and made an enemy of the girl, and you can't
expect 99
“I know that,” he broke in impatiently. “You
don't suppose I'm such an idiot as not to realise what
effect my remark would have on her?”


I22 MIDNIGHT AT MEARS HOUSE
“But hang it all!” I cried. “If you're going
to antagonise everyone mixed up in this affair, I
don’t see 35
“My dear fellow,” he interrupted, “I’m sorry
you don't approve of my actions, but possibly I may
be supposed to know what I'm about?”
I grudgingly admitted it.
“Well, then,” he continued quietly, “don’t be too
ready to find fault with my methods. There may
be less madness in them than you think. In this
particular instance I knew before I had talked with
her two minutes that she intended to do everything
in her power to prevent my finding out who murdered
her guardian.”
I stared at him incredulously.
“But why—?”
“I don't know why,” he rejoined. “I only know
that she does intend to; and such being the case, I
had nothing to lose and a great deal to gain by saying
what I did.”
In spite of the conviction with which he spoke, I
could not help doubting the truth of his assertion.
It seemed unbelievable that Margaret should put
obstacles in the way of our finding the murderer.
Surely she of all persons should be the most eager
to have him brought to justice. To picture her as
indifferent, as opposed to it even, seemed to me utterly
incredible. And yet I remembered how strongly she


MIDNIGHT AT MEARS HOUSE I23
had opposed our searching the desk, how relieved she
had looked when Arthur had locked it and given her
the key. Could it have been because she feared we
might find there a clue to the murderer? Had her
intended interview with the writer of the mysterious
letter been for the purpose of shielding in any way
someone she suspected of the crime?
I told myself angrily that I was crazy to imagine
such things, that Garth must be wholly wrong in
thinking she was determined to prevent his finding
the guilty man. It was all due to some mistaken im-
pression he had got of her, dependent for its correct-
ness on nothing weightier than a fantastic faith in
his ability to decide the most momentous questions
from the tones of one's voice! Even those wonderful
heroes of detective fiction put less of a tax on one's
credulity than this serene assumption of being able to
tell whether people were speaking the truth or not
merely from hearing them talk. I uttered an invol-
untary grunt at the absurdity of it.
“Still comparing me with Baron Munchausen?”
Garth enquired pleasantly.
“Not exactly,” I said, “but I'll admit my thoughts
were tending somewhat in that direction.”
“You can't quite stomach the notion of Miss Ellis
being set against our finding the murderer?”
“No, I can’t,” I admitted. “I’d almost as soon
suspect her of having killed him.”


I24 MIDNIGHT AT MEARS HOUSE
“That's because you're lacking in imagination,”
he remarked.
“I’ve always understood,” I retorted, “that too
vivid an imagination was the greatest handicap a
detective could have; that it made him suspect every-
body, and set him chasing after a lot of imaginary
clues that led nowhere.”
“There's a good deal of truth in that idea,” he
replied; “but it isn't the vivid imagination that's to
blame: it's the fact that it's allowed to run riot with-
out any logical supervision. To succeed in solving
any mystery a man must have imagination and lots
of it. He must be able to conceive a limitless number
of hypotheses to account for it—just as a scientist
must be able to presuppose a number of theories to
explain certain molecular affinities, for example.
Where the average man blunders is because he lacks
the necessary reasoning powers to enable him to select
the right hypothesis from the others. His mind is
not sufficiently keen to prevent him from taking the
false theory for the true one, or else he becomes so
prejudiced in favour of one particular theory that he
is wilfully blind to its defects.
“The same thing holds true in detective work,”
he went on. “One must be able to imagine a myriad
possible explanations of a crime—the more the better;
but he must be equally ready to discard any or all
of them, should the actual facts prove them untenable.


MIDNIGHT AT MEARS HOUSE I25
It won’t do, however, to reject any possible explana-
tion simply because at first glance it seems too fanciful
and unlikely to be worth considering.”
“But you don't mean to tell me,” I said, “that
you think Miss Ellis is connected in any way with
the crime?”
“Why not?” he asked.
“Why not!” I repeated hotly. “I’ll tell you why
not—because she's a fine, sweet-natured girl, not a
bloody-minded murderess.”
“I grant you that,” he replied calmly; “but you
haven't answered my question logically.”
“Logic be damned !” I exclaimed, exasperated at
the idea of his harbouring such a monstrous suspicion.
He laughed.
“That sounds a trifle odd from a lawyer; but
before you get angry enough to throw something at
me, I'll confess that there's no reason for suspecting
her of having had anything to do with her guardian's
death. I only advanced the supposition to give you
a chance to exercise that logical discrimination in
rejecting untenable hypotheses of which we were
speaking: instead of which you have given a very
striking illustration of the commonest method people
employ in making up their minds on such matters—
jumping to a conclusion as their feelings prompt them
without stopping to think. In other words they take
their emotions for a guide in place of their reason.


126 MIDNIGHT AT MEARS HOUSE
Possibly, considering how little reasoning ability most
people have, they do well to adopt this method,
though it can scarcely be recommended as a sure way
of arriving at the truth.”
“I suppose not,” I growled, a little irritated at
being made the unwitting subject of a psychological
experiment; “but you can hardly blame me for get-
ting mad at such a fool idea, and telling you plainly
what I thought of it.”
“I don’t blame you in the least,” he rejoined,
smiling; “but it won't do, I see, for me to turn my
imagination loose when you're around. I'll promise
after this to keep a leash on it.”
I told him he'd better, if it was apt to indulge
in any more such crazy antics as that.
“But seriously, Steve,” I went on, “I’m anxious to
know what you make of this whole affair. Have you
any idea who killed him, what the motive could have
been, and why ?”
“Hold on l’’ he protested. “I can’t answer more
than six questions at once.”
“Go ahead, then, and answer them one at a time.
Remember, I’ve been waiting three whole days to
find out.”
“It won’t take me long to,” he replied. “One
little ‘No’ will do for the whole lot. Does that
satisfy you?”
“No,” I said disappointedly, “it doesn't. I


MIDNIGHT AT MEARS HOUSE I27
hoped you'd got some ideas on the subject by this
time.”
“Well, perhaps I have,” he admitted; “but I'd
be afraid to mention them. You'd think me crazy.”
I grunted impatiently.
“How about that blood stain I found on the can-
dlestick?” I said. “Do you think there's any chance
of a burglar having killed him?”
“I hope to find out within the next hour,” he re-
plied.
“The deuce you do!” I said. Then I burst out
laughing. “You’re expecting some sort of a tele-
pathic communication from him, I suppose,” I began,
when the sound of wheels on the driveway below
caught my attention, and I broke off to see who it was.
A light runabout—which I recognised as the prop-
erty of Silas Downs, the station-master—was just
drawing up at the door. In it sat two men whom I
had never seen before. One of them was a tall,
thin man, perhaps forty-five or fifty years old, with
a clean-shaven, hatchet face, keen and eager looking.
The other was some years younger, of a shorter
heavier build, and coarser features, his upper lip
marred by a half-grown bristly red moustache. He
was rather flashily dressed, and seemed very ill at
ease. He hesitated an instant before getting out, and
apparently asked a question of the older man, who
nodded impatiently in reply.


128 MIDNIGHT AT MEARS HOUSE
“Who can they be?” I demanded, after describ-
ing them to Garth. “They don't look like re-
porters.”
“The tall, thin chap is Stimpson of the Coats-
Miller Detective Agency,” he replied promptly, “and
the other one is undoubtedly your friend of the candle-
stick.”


CHAPTER XII
GARTH DOES AN ASTOUNDING THING
I HAD not recovered from my astonishment before
the maid appeared, and said there were two gentle-
men downstairs to see Garth.
“Show them up here, please,” he told her, “un-
less,” he added, turning to me, “you're afraid it will
tire you too much.”
“Nothing of the sort!” I exclaimed. “I wouldn't
miss seeing them for anything. It won't hurt me
half so much as to sit here wondering what you're
talking about.”
“All right,” he said, “only don’t let Dr. Satterlee
blame me if he finds you a wreck to-morrow.”
A minute later the two men came in. The younger
man—whom I could not yet believe to be actually
my hypothetical burglar—was evidently in something
closely approaching a panic. Fear had drained all
the blood from his face and brought out a cold sweat
on his forehead. His eyes wore the desperate, hunted .
look of a trapped animal. If ever guilt were written
plain on a man's face, it was on his. I felt suddenly
that I had been right after all in my theory as to
I29


I3O MIDNIGHT AT MEARS HOUSE
how David Mears had been killed, and that his mur-
derer stood before me. It gave me a keen thrill of
excitement.
Garth introduced me to Stimpson, and asked them
to be seated. Then he turned to the other
Iman.
“Now, Parsons,” he said quietly, “I want you to
tell us all about it—just what you did on the night of
October 15th, and what part, if any, you had in the
death of Mr. Mears.”
“I didn't have nothing to do with it,” cried the
man in a thick, choking voice. “I swear ??
“Begin at the beginning,” Garth told him. “You
left his employ about a month ago, I believe?”
“The thirteenth of September it was, sir, and
nobody can say I didn't do my work right and proper,
or that I warn’t always sober and respectful. But
ther' was some things he hadn't no right to expect
me to do, and when I told him so—”
“Never mind about that,” Garth interrupted.
“You had a row with Mr. Mears before you went:
we know that. I daresay he was as much to blame
for it as you were. It doesn’t matter. Go on with
your story.”
Parsons, however, seemed curiously eager to make
it plain to us that he was quite justified in leaving
David Mears' service, and that though the treatment
he had received at the latter's hands was enough,


MIDNIGHT AT MEARS HOUSE I3 I
as he expressed it, to “drive a man crazy,” he had
borne it all with the temper of a saint, and “hadn't
laid up no grudge against him.”
By dint of repeated interruptions and much sharp
questioning Garth succeeded finally in getting from
him a fairly coherent account of his actions the night
I arrived at Mears House. He admitted that he
had broken into the dining-room about eleven o'clock
with the intention of stealing the silver before David
Mears locked it up as usual in the library closet on
going to bed; and that when he got in, he heard some-
one talking with David Mears in the library. He
did not know the man's voice, but he thought it
sounded like Mr. Keaton's. On looking around he
found, much to his disgust, that the silver had already
been locked up, and though he knew that he could
hardly hope to force the closet door without being
heard, he resolved to wait and make the attempt after
David Mears had gone to bed.
While he waited, the men in the next room got
talking louder and louder, until finally they were quar-
relling fiercely. Then he heard the sound of a blow
followed by a heavy fall, and fearing that it might
arouse someone and that he would be discovered, he
made his escape. He had left a buggy at the en-
trance to the driveway, and he drove back toward
town as fast as he could go. When I had stepped
out into the middle of the road, he thought I was


MIDNIGHT AT MEARS HOUSE I33
“You lie!” said Garth sternly. “I had hoped
it would show you the folly of lying to me any more;
but if it doesn't—” He paused ominously.
The butler looked desperately around, as if seek-
ing some possible way of escape—Stimpson watched
him as a cat watches a mouse. Then a beaten look
came over his face; his whole body relaxed; I almost
expected to see him slide from his chair to the
floor.
“Well,” Garth repeated, “are you going to tell
me, or not?”
“I reck'n I might as well,” muttered Parsons.
He gulped two or three times and moistened his lips
with his tongue.
“I done it,” he said at last.
I drew a long breath. Instead of the feeling of
satisfaction, of triumph which I had expected to ex-
perience on finding the murderer, I was conscious
only of a keen pity for the man, mingled with a sense
of shame at being a witness of his undoing. A sud-
den loathing for the whole dreadful business and the
part I had played in it swept over me.
“Tell us how you did it,” Garth said.
“It was after the other feller had gone,” Parsons
began sullenly. “They'd had a row like I told you,
only ther warn’t no blow struck. I was waitin’ for
him to go upstairs, but he started for the dining-
room instead. I didn't have no time to get out—I


I34 MIDNIGHT AT MEARS HOUSE
was close to the library door, and I knew if he got
the chance, he'd shoot me; so I grabs the candlestick
off the mantelpiece and steps behind the door just as
he opens it. Then—I let him have it. I didn't in-
tend to kill him,” he added under his breath, his face
twitching. “So help me God!”
“And you left him lying there?” Garth
asked.
The butler hesitated an instant before replying.
“No, sir, I dragged him into the library.”
“So as to make it seem that the other man had
killed him?”
“Yes, sir.”
“What did you do then?”
“I put the candlestick back on the mantelpiece,
and cleared out as quick as I could. I was in too
much of a hurry to get away to stop to see if he
was hurt bad or not.”
Garth remained for a moment deep in thought.
“I don’t think there is anything more I want to
ask of you,” he said finally. “You may go.”
To say that all three of us were astounded at his
words would scarcely convey an adequate idea of
their effect upon us. Both Stimpson and I stared at
Garth in perfect bewilderment. Parsons seemed even
more amazed, if possible. He looked like a man
struggling in the grip of a nightmare.
“You don’t mean to say you ain't goin' to have


MIDNIGHT AT MEARS HOUSE I35
me pinched?” he said at last—wonder, incredulity,
and hope contending for the mastery of his voice and
reflected alternately in his face.
“No,” said Garth, “you may go back to your
job; but I warn you that if you make the slightest
effort to run away, it will mean your instant
arrest.”
I wondered if I were dreaming. I had just heard
this man confess to a murder—his guilt was stamped
so plainly on his face that it needed no further con-
firmation—and Garth was coolly proposing to let him
go scot-free!
Stimpson recovered from his surprise before I did.
He took a step forward.
“I hardly see, Mr. Garth,” he began, “how you
Can 9%
“One moment, Stimpson,” Garth interrupted.
“You are not here to question my acts, nor do I
feel called upon to explain them to you. I hired
you to do certain things on the strict understanding
that your work was to be carried on with the utmost
secrecy, and exactly according to my instructions.
Isn’t that so?”
“Yes, sir, it is, but 95
“Such being the case,” Garth went on, “I shall
expect you to live up to your agreement, and not to
interfere in any way with my arrangements. Is that
clear to you?”


136 MIDNIGHT AT MEARS HOUSE
“Yes, sir,” repeated Stimpson; “but I must say,
sir, that I’d feel a good deal easier in my mind, if
you'd tell me 35
“Later I will,” broke in Garth, “but for the
present you'll have to be satisfied with my assurance
that it's all right. There shall be no miscarriage of
justice, I promise you.”
“Very well, sir,” said the detective slowly—he was
itching, I could see, to snap his handcuffs on Parsons'
wrists—“I’ll do as you say, sir; but "–he shook his
head doubtfully—“it’s irregular, sir, very irregular
indeed.”
“Quite possibly,” Garth admitted drily.
The detective turned to Parsons.
“Come along,” he said gruffly.
The butler got to his feet—he seemed still in a
state of muddled stupor—and staggered after him to
the door.
I sprang up.
“Hold on | " I cried.
Stimpson wheeled about, blocking the doorway,
and his thin, eager face brightened.
I turned to Garth.
“You have some good reason, I suppose, for do-
ing such an unheard-of thing as this,” I said, “but I
don't propose to sit here and see that man go free
till I know what it is.”
A sudden anger darkened his face. He seemed


MIDNIGHT AT MEARS HOUSE I37
on the point of making me some biting retort; but
he changed his mind, and smiled ironically.
“You can wait downstairs, Stimpson,” he said,
“till I send you word.”
The two men went out.
“Now, then,” he asked coldly, “what is it you
want to know?”
“What you mean by letting that man go,” I
answered, “after his confessing that he killed
him P”
“Because I'm practically sure he didn't kill him.”
“Oh, you are, are you!” I cried. “Well, it
seems to me he ought to know a little about it him-
self. I don't suppose you'll tell me this time that he
was lying?”
“No, he was telling the truth.”
“Why don't you have him arrested, then?” I
demanded.
He looked surprised.
“Haven't I just told you that I feel practically
sure he didn't kill him?”
“See here, Garth—” I began angrily.
“I wouldn't get excited about it, if I were you,”
he broke in calmly. “It won't do your fever any
good, and there isn't really anything to get excited
over. Just because Parsons himself believes he killed
him, doesn't prove that he did. On the contrary
what I’ve learned from him makes me almost certain


138 MIDNIGHT AT MEARS HOUSE
that the murder was committed by someone else, and
that the blow Parsons struck him with the candle-
stick did no more than stun him.”
“How can you be sure of that?” I asked scep-
tically.
“I’m not wholly sure of it,” he replied. “If I
were I shouldn’t arrange to keep him under a strict
surveillance, but all the facts we’ve discovered so far
tend to prove it. I need hardly remind you that it
wasn’t possible for Parsons to have taken the body
out of the house and thrown it over the cliff, or point
out to you the absurdity of someone else doing it, if
David Mears was already dead when he came to
murder him. It should, therefore, be perfectly clear
to you that the butler can hardly be the man we're
after.”
I said nothing.
“Of course,” he went on, “he's guilty of two
serious offences—attempted burglary and felonious
assault; and later he'll be made to answer for them;
but it would be exceedingly unwise to press those
charges against him just now, you must see that.”
I realised that beside exposing us to the badgering
of reporters and the blundering interference of the
police, it would make it very much harder also for
us to find the real criminal.
“Yes,” I said, “I suppose that's so.”
“Possibly, then, my unwillingness to have Parsons


CHAPTER XIII
A NIGHT OF SURPRISES
DESPITE my determination to disregard Dr. Satter-
lee's advice and play the invalid no longer, my head
was swimming so from sitting up all the afternoon
that I regretfully abandoned my intention of going
down to dinner, and crawled meekly back to bed
as soon as Garth had gone. I must have fallen asleep
almost immediately; for, as I learned afterward, I
made no reply when the maid knocked at my door
to ask what I would have to eat; and it was several
hours later before I woke up.
That I should have waked at the exact moment I
did may have been merely a coincidence, or it may
have been due—as the psychologists would doubtless
prefer to think—to some mysterious warning from
my subliminal self. At any rate I did awake, with
all my senses extraordinarily alert, to a vivid con-
sciousness of impending danger. What that danger
was I realised instantly. There was someone in my
room Although it was absolutely dark and I could
neither see nor hear anything, I was quite sure of it.
I took my revolver noiselessly from under my
I4I


I42 MIDNIGHT AT MEARS HOUSE
pillow, and listened. Outside I could hear nothing
but the soft wash of the waves. The house itself
was as quiet as the grave; and yet I felt certain that
within a few yards of me, perhaps within reach of my
arm, stood somebody. I strained my ears to catch
the sound of his breathing, longing for the comfort-
ing assurance of the electric light switch at my own
bedside in New York. One turn of it, and I should
have had the intruder at my mercy.
As it was I could do nothing but lie still and wait
for him to move. But while I waited, my finger
on the trigger, it occurred to me that it might be
Garth or Arthur, who had stolen in quietly to see
that I was all right, and who kept still and carried
no light for fear of waking me. It would be a fine
thing, I reflected, to shoot one of them instead of a
burglar! I was strongly tempted to cry out,
“Who’s there?” but caution kept me quiet.
I found it impossible after a while, though, to lie
still any longer. There were matches on the table
beside me, and very slowly and carefully I felt about
till I had found them. Then I took three, and hold-
ing their heads close together I struck them all alight
at once, sitting straight up in bed as I did so with
the revolver outstretched in my other hand. There
was no one there.
I sat staring about the empty room until the
matches began to burn my fingers. Then I got up,


MIDNIGHT AT MEARS HOUSE I43
and lighting a candle, I looked in the closet and under
the bed. The bathroom door was closed, but the
hall-door was wide open. The intruder must have
slipped out that way, I decided. I blamed myself
for not having stirred sooner. By this time he had
doubtless escaped from the house altogether. I could
not hope to capture him now, even had I felt equal
to making the attempt, which I did not. Already
my overstrung nerves had commenced to relax, leav-
ing me weak and dizzy. I had no choice but to go
back to bed, or else arouse some other member of
the household.
No doubt that is what I should have done, but
at the time it struck me as an unnecessary and foolish
proceeding. The burglar would have escaped long
before I could hope to wake anybody. I began to
wonder also if there had actually been anyone in
my room after all. I had been perfectly sure of it
a few minutes before; but the conviction was based
on nothing so solid and undeniable as the evidence
of my senses: it was no more than a strange, in-
explicable assurance, which for all I could tell might
be merely a delusion. The more I thought of it, the
more likely it seemed.
I blew out the candle and went back to bed, dis-
gusted with myself for having been so foolishly
alarmed. And without more ado, I turned over and
went to sleep.


144 MIDNIGHT AT MEARS HOUSE
It seemed but an instant later when I was again
wide awake. There could be no doubt this time
as to what had aroused me; for in my ears still rang
the scream of a frightened woman. I heard it again
as I scrambled hastily out of bed—a sharp, agonised
cry that broke horribly upon the silence. In another
second I had lighted the candle, seized my revolver,
and darted out into the hall. There was no mistak-
ing the quarter from which the cries had come—they
had issued, I was sure, from Margaret's room.
I burst in just in time to see a man's hands loose
their grip on the window-sill. Rushing to the win-
dow, I stuck my head out and peered down into the
blackness. I could see nothing, but I heard some-
thing that sounded like a groan, and I fired twice
in the direction of the sound. Then I wheeled about
to find Mrs. Bartlett and Arthur at my elbow. And
a queer looking trio we must have been—Arthur and
I in our pyjamas, and Mrs. Bartlett a towering white
figure in her night-gown and curl-papers. But we
were too disturbed just then to think of how we
looked, too amazed and alarmed to do anything but
stare questioningly at one another and about the
empty room. Margaret was not there!
Arthur was the first to recover from the shock of
the discovery. A half-strangled cry burst from him,
and he dashed out of the door and across the hall
to the stairs. I started to follow him when some-


MIDNIGHT AT MEARS HOUSE I45
thing stopped me. It was the sound of a moan from
the curtained alcove. Mrs. Bartlett darted toward
it ahead of me, and looked in. I heard her gasp.
Then she turned and faced me, frowning.
“This is no place for you,” she snapped. “You’d
better go back to your room.”
I stood my ground.
“If she's badly hurt,” I said, “you may need my
help in looking after her. I’ll wait here till I
know.”
She flashed an angry look at me.
“I can attend to her myself,” she replied curtly.
“It isn't proper for you to be here anyway.”
Serious as the situation was, I could not help
smiling—so absurd did it seem for her to be con-
cerned over conventionalities at such a moment. But
I had no wish to argue the matter with her: it was
more important that Margaret should be looked after
without delay; and so I merely nodded and went out.
I was annoyed, though, to hear her lock the door
after me, as if she feared I might change my mind
and burst unceremoniously in again. -
“Really,” I thought with some irritation, “she
might give me credit for better manners than that.”
I paused a moment, undecided whether to go in
search of Arthur, or to rouse Garth and tell him
what had happened. It struck me as queer that he
should not have come himself to find out. He could


I46 MIDNIGHT AT MEARS HOUSE
hardly have slept through it all, I thought. Even
if Margaret's screams hadn't waked him, the shots
I had fired must have done so; and with his extraor-
dinary ability to find his way about unaided, there
was nothing to have prevented his joining us. I
began to feel vaguely alarmed about him. Possibly
I had not been mistaken after all in thinking that
somebody had been in my room when I awoke the
first time. If so, he might have paid Garth a visit
as well, and with more sinister results. The possi-
bility unnerved me for an instant. Then I pulled
myself together, and crossing the hall, I rapped loudly
on his door. There was no answer. I found the
door unlocked, and went in, fully expecting to find
him either drugged or murdered. He was not there.
The bed had not been slept in at all.
“What can it mean?” I asked myself. “Why
didn't he go to bed? Where has he gone? What
has become of him?”
A slight noise made me whirl quickly about.
Garth stood in the doorway, holding an automatic
revolver pointed straight at me.
“Up with your hands!” he cried.
For a second I forgot his blindness and stared at
him in open-mouthed astonishment.
“Be quick about it!” he added sharply.
Involuntarily I started to obey him. Then the
humour of the situation struck me and I laughed.


MIDNIGHT AT MEARS HOUSE I47
He lowered his revolver instantly and took a step
toward me.
“Why the devil didn't you speak?” he demanded.
“I came within an ace of shooting you. It would
have served you right if I had.”
“I’m thankful you didn't,” I said. “You had
that confounded gun pointed straight at me.”
“I thought I located you pretty accurately,” he
remarked, sitting down on the bed and beginning to
take off his coat. “Phew! I'm tired !”
“I should think you might be,” I said, “if you've
been chasing 'round all night. What have you been
doing?”
“I’ll tell you about it to-morrow,” he replied,
yawning.
“You’ll tell me about it right now,” I declared,
“or I'll know the reason why.”
“Pass me my pipe and tobacco, then, or I'll be
asleep before I’m half through.”
I got them for him, remembering as I did so that
I hadn't said a word about the attack on Margaret.
“Perhaps after all you'd better let me tell my
story first,” I said. “It may be more impor-
tant.”
“Fire away,” he returned cheerfully.
I began by telling him of my waking up and think-
ing someone was in the room.
“You can skip that,” he broke in, smiling. “I


148 MIDNIGHT AT MEARS HOUSE
was the mysterious person that disturbed your slum-
bers.”
“You were !” I exclaimed. “Then I'm mighty
glad I decided not to shoot.”
“Yes, it was just as well you didn't,” he agreed.
“It might have spoiled everything.”
“I might have killed you, if that's what you
mean.”
He chuckled.
“I really thought once you were going to shoot
at me,” he said. “I was immensely relieved when
you changed your mind about it. I was standing
within a foot of you,” he went on, “when you woke
up and began fumbling under your pillow for your
revolver. I thought first of speaking to you, but I
decided it would be a good chance to see whether
I could move about so quietly you wouldn't hear
me—you have pretty keen ears, so I knew it would
be a fair test of my ability. Your heavy breathing,
of course, helped a great deal. Finally I guessed
you were becoming rather restless and that you
wouldn’t lie quiet much longer, so I slipped out just
as you were making such a racket trying to find the
matches.”
“But why on earth did you want to come into my
room at all?” I asked.
“I thought you were going to tell your story first,”
he reminded me. I stifled my curiosity and pro-


MIDNIGHT AT MEARS HOUSE I49
ceeded to do so. He listened to me without betray-
ing the slightest surprise, or even asking a single
question.
“Well,” I broke off, irritated at his indifference,
“I guess I’ve told you everything. You seem about
as much interested in it as though I’d been reading
a last year's Presidential Message aloud to you.”
“On the contrary,” he said, “I’m very much in-
terested—to know how you happened to get such an
extraordinarily mistaken idea of what actually took
place.”
“Huh?” I ejaculated.
“To be more explicit,” he continued briskly, “I
should like very much to learn—first, why you thought
it was Miss Ellis who screamed, secondly how you
came to the conclusion that she had been attacked
by a burglar, and lastly why you should suppose
that it was she whom Mrs. Bartlett found in the
alcove.”
“You don’t mean to tell me it wasn't shel ”
“It certainly was not.”
“Then who the deuce was it?”
“Maggie Sullivan.”
“And it was she whom I heard scream?”
“No,” he said, “it was me.”
I stared at him incredulously.
“But what's become of Margaret?” I asked.
“If that wasn't her—”


CHAPTER XIV
BLINDMAN's BUFF
“LET me say at the start,” Garth began, “that
you'll find it hard to believe some of the things I'm
going to tell you, especially as I shan’t mention cer-
tain suspicions of mine—”
I interrupted him to say that I was sorry he didn't
trust me enough to do so.
“Good Lord! it isn't that,” he replied. “I
know, of course, that you wouldn't purposely do or
say anything that might interfere with my plans.
Unfortunately it isn't one's intentions that are to
blame always in such matters. What I'm afraid of
is that you’d unconsciously betray such knowledge—
the more you tried not to, the likelier you'd be to
do it.”
“You don't give me credit for much self-con-
trol,” I grumbled. “I’ve had some practice, you
know, in keeping my mouth shut.”
He admitted it, but went on to say that I should
have to be a very skilful actor indeed to keep anyone
from guessing that I shared his suspicions.
“I don't want to hurt your feelings, Phil,” he
I5I


I52 MIDNIGHT AT MEARS HOUSE
continued, “but it really wouldn't do to take the
chance. I'm sure you'll agree with me later that I
was right about it. You see,” he added very ear-
nestly, as I remained silent, “it means a good deal
to me to succeed in this affair. If I failed through
neglecting to take every possible precaution, I should
feel pretty badly about it, and I shouldn't wonder if
you would, too.”
“You bet I would,” I assented warmly. “I’ve set
my heart on your making good, and if you want to
keep an ace or two up your sleeve to spring when
you get good and ready, I won't complain so long
as you'll let me have a look at the rest of your hand
once in a while.”
“Good!” he cried heartily. “I’m glad to hear
you talk like that. I was afraid you might get mad
at me and quit, and I don't know how I could get
along without you.”
I assured him that he needn't worry about that.
“I intend to keep on looking over your shoulder
till the last card is played,” I said; “and if you
need anyone to help rake in the chips or watch out
for any funny business, I'll be right on deck.”
He thanked me, and said that he hoped he
wouldn’t have to put too great a strain on my pa-
tience.
“Oh, forget it,” I cut in cheerfully, my good-
humour quite restored, “I’m getting all kinds of


MIDNIGHT AT MEARS HOUSE I55
“Yes,” he admitted rather reluctantly, “bu 5 *
“You’d rather not tell me. Never mind: go on.”
“After he'd left I began to get worried for fear
he might have paid you a visit while I was dozing;
so I went in to see if you were all right.”
“End of Chapter Two,” I murmured. “Time
for the plot to liven up a little.”
“You’re right,” he said. “I’d hardly got back
to my room when I heard the door into the ell open,
and Maggie Sullivan came out into the hall.”
I asked him how he knew it was she.
“By her walk, of course,” he replied. “It's as
easy to tell anyone from his walk as from his voice:
it has the same individuality. The distinguishing
characteristics are more marked in some cases than
others, however. She has, for instance, a peculiar
way of shuffling her feet which no one could mistake
who had once remarked it.
“She crossed the hall,” he continued, “and
knocked softly on Miss Ellis' door. It was opened
at once, and she went in. A moment later Miss
Ellis came out alone and started downstairs. I fol-
lowed her.”
“Weren't you afraid of being seen?” I said.
“I had to risk that, of course,” he replied; “and
as I didn’t know whether she carried a light or not,
I waited at the head of the stairs till she reached the
front door. She was quite a while getting it open-


156 MIDNIGHT AT MEARS HOUSE
I could hear her rapid breathing as she struggled
with the heavy bolts. Finally she succeeded, and I
heard her ask a question of someone outside. The
reply, in a man's voice, was so indistinct that I didn't
catch it; but it seemed to satisfy her, for she turned
and led the way into the library.
“As soon as I heard the library door close, I
stole down and crouched outside it. ‘Got 'em with
you?' I heard him say. She shook her head evi-
dently; for he asked her why not. “I wanted to
make sure first that you had a right to them, she
replied. “I ain't goin’ to argue with you all night
about that, he said. “You know as well as I do
that he hadn't no right to them.’ ‘That may be
true,” she returned—I could tell from her voice that
she was growing a little frightened—" but I must
have some proof of it before I give them to you.’
‘Well, then, he growled, “read this.’ And appar-
ently he took a letter from his pocket and handed it
to her.
“A second later I heard a stifled cry and the sound
of a brief struggle. “I guess that'll hold you for a
while, he muttered, “long enough for him to clean
up your room anyway.' I had heard a slight noise
upstairs a few minutes before which I had attributed
to the maid moving about. I strained my ears now
to catch any further sound, and presently I heard
what were unmistakably a man's footsteps overhead,


MIDNIGHT AT MEARS HOUSE 157
and then a faint, scraping noise as of a drawer being
pulled out.
“I ran to the head of the stairs and screamed
twice to wake you and Keaton up. Then I darted
back again and flattened myself against the wall be-
side the library door just as it was thrown open and
Miss Ellis' assailant rushed out. As he did so I
brought the butt of my revolver down with all my
might. It was a lucky blow; for it hit him squarely
on the head and knocked him senseless. I dragged
him into the library, closed the door, and spoke to
Miss Ellis. While I was getting the handkerchief
off her wrists and the gag out of her mouth, I heard
you fire two shots, and then heard Keaton running
downstairs and out of the house. I expected you to
follow him; but as you didn't, I got Miss Ellis to help
me tie the fellow's hands and feet, and then I car-
ried him into the lavatory and turned the key on
him.”
“Bully for you!” I cried, jumping up and start-
ing for the door.
“Hold on 1" he said. “Where are you going?”
“Where am I going?” I repeated. “To have a
look at him, of course.”
“You mustn't do that,” he said sharply.
“Why not?” I demanded in amazement.
“I can't tell you why.”
“But, good Heavens, man!” I broke out. “What


158 MIDNIGHT AT MEARS HOUSE
possible objection can you have to it? I may know
who he is. In fact I'm sure I do; and in any
case—”
“I must trouble you to remember that I have
something to say about it,” he rejoined curtly, “and
remind you of your promise.”
“Tell me at least what the fellow looked like,”
I begged. “You must have learned that from Mar-
garet. Was he rather short and thin with a pasty
face, reddish hair, an ugly drooping mouth, and rab-
bit-coloured eyes?”
He shook his head.
“That doesn't tally at all with the description of
him she gave me. She said he had black hair and
a big black moustache.”
I suggested that it might have been a false one.
“It was,” he admitted, “and a rather poor imi-
tation, too, I should say. What do you think?”
He took the moustache out of his pocket and tossed
it over to me. It was a very cheap affair: I hardly
saw how it could have deceived anyone.
“His hair, though, was his own, I guess,” he
continued with a smile. “At any rate I couldn't
get it off, and I pulled pretty hard.”
“He might have dyed it,” I observed hopefully,
more certain than ever that it was the man in the
grey felt hat. I was strongly tempted to disregard
Garth's wishes and make sure; but I regretfully gave


MIDNIGHT AT MEARS HOUSE I59
up the idea, though I could not imagine why he was
so unwilling for me to have a look at the man.
“What are you going to do with him?” I asked.
“Leave him there till morning,” he replied. “It
won't hurt him any. And now that I’ve reached the
end of Chapter Seven at last,” he added with another
yawn, “maybe you'll let me get a little sleep?”
I reminded him that he hadn't told me yet who
the mysterious burglar was, or why Mrs. Bartlett
didn't want me to know it was the maid she had
found in the alcove.
“What happened to her anyway?” I asked.
“Was she sand-bagged, or half strangled, or what?”
“I don’t believe she was much hurt,” he replied.
“Your other two questions I must leave unanswered
for the present. You ought to be able to answer one
of them for yourself.”
“As to why Mrs. Bartlett wouldn't let me look
into the alcove, you mean?” -
He nodded.
“I suppose it was because she didn’t want me to
know that Margaret had gone out?”
“Partly that,” he agreed.
I wondered what other reason there could be.
Perhaps she was afraid of what the maid might say,
or else she wanted to question her alone. What a
fool I had been to think it simply a matter of pro-
priety that made her so anxious to get rid of me !


16O MIDNIGHT AT MEARS HOUSE
I blamed myself, too, for not having followed Arthur
in pursuit of the man who had dropped from the
window. Single-handed he might have been no
match for the fellow, and his failure to return might
mean that he had been struck down, perhaps killed
by the man.
“What can Keaton be doing all this time?” I
enquired. “He ought to have got back long ago.”
“He’s still hunting for Miss Ellis, I guess. He
thinks someone ran off with her, you know, and of
course he won't give up searching for her until ??
A pounding on the front door interrupted him.
“That's him now !” I cried. “I’ll go and let
him in.”
Garth got up instantly.
“I’ll go with you,” he said—I was surprised to
note how eager he looked.
I took the candle—it had burned nearly to the
socket—ran downstairs, and opened the door to find
myself confronted by a very tall, broad-shouldered
young man whom I had never seen before. We
stood for an instant staring at one another without
saying a word. Then he caught sight of Garth.
“Hello, Mr. Garth,” he said. “You’re Mr.
Scarsden, I suppose,” he added, turning to me.
I nodded.
“Well, it's a damned shame to disturb you at
such an unholy hour,” he went on pleasantly, “but


He was sitting straight up with both arms stretched out in
front of him and there was a terrible rigidity
about him (page 316)





MIDNIGHT AT MEARS HOUSE I61
I forgot the key to the tower-door. I ought to have
been back a lot earlier, but I got into a little game
down at the village”—he smiled—" and you know
what that ‘just one more jack-pot' means? I
thought I'd never be able to break away.”
“You're Mr. Randall,” I said.
He gave me a surprised glance.
“Forgot you didn't know me,” he said. “I’m
glad to see you're able to be about again.”
I thanked him, regarding him with a good deal
of interest. He had a very pleasant, boyish face, a
wide humorous mouth, light blue eyes, and close-
cropped, tow-coloured hair that made him look
younger than his real age, which I took to be about
twenty-five. I was agreeably surprised both at his
appearance and his manner. He did not look at all
like the usual sick man's attendant, or a servant of
any kind.
“To make matters worse,” he went on, “I
stepped on a stone in the dark and turned my ankle.
It doesn’t amount to anything,” he added hastily,
“but I should have been here a good deal sooner
otherwise.”
“I’m afraid I must have brought bad luck with
me,” Garth said to him, smiling, “ or else the place
is hoodooed. First David Mears is murdered; then
Mr. Scarsden is nearly killed by a burglar; and now
to-night the house is entered again—”
?


162 MIDNIGHT AT MEARS HOUSE
“You don't say so!” Randall broke in. “No-
body hurt this time, I hope?”
“One of the maids got a crack on the head, but
it's nothing very serious, I imagine.”
“Tell me about it,” he said. “How'd they get
in? Who discovered 'em? Did they steal any-
thing?”
Garth told him briefly what had happened.
“And to think I missed it all!” he exclaimed.
“It's just my luck. Nothing ever happens when I'm
around—wouldn't in a thousand years. Let's have a
look at the chap you caught,” he went on. “Hanged
if I see how you managed to do it.” And he looked
admiringly at Garth.
To my astonishment Garth made no objection to
his proposal; but turned and led the way to the
lavatory. Halfway across the hall I saw something
which made me cry out and dart ahead of him. The
door of the lavatory stood ajar.
“He's got out!” I shouted.
It was true. He had evidently succeeded in un-
tying his hands and unlocking the door with a skele-
ton-key of his own, or else his accomplice—the man
I saw drop out of Margaret's window—had managed
to elude Arthur, and had returned and released him.
I looked reproachfully at Garth.
“If you'd only let me come down when I wanted
to—” I began.


MIDNIGHT AT MEARS HOUSE 163
“It's no good rubbing it in,” he protested. “I’ll
admit it looks very much as though I'd made a fool
of myself.”
“Oh, I don’t know about that,” Randall ob-
served consolingly. “Nobody would have supposed
there was one chance in a thousand of his getting
out. Too bad, though, after all the trouble you
took to nab him ”
“He can’t have been gone very long,” I said to
Randall. “I wonder you didn't meet him.”
“I wish I had,” he replied with a rather wry
smile. “I'd have made him help me back to the
house.”—I had forgotten all about his ankle.
“Hurting you much?” I asked.
“Oh, no,” he said cheerfully; “but I'd be much
obliged if one of you would help me upstairs. Sorry
to be such a confounded nuisance.”
I gave him my shoulder to lean on. At the
threshold of the tower-room he thanked us and bade
us good-night.
“Don’t bother to come in with me,” he said.
“I can fix it up all right myself. The old man won’t
be in a particularly hospitable frame of mind, I'm
afraid.” He grinned. “Must have slept through
all the racket, I guess, or he'd have kicked up a row
long before this.”
A moment later we heard Jonathan Mears ask-
ing him where he had been, accompanying the en-


164 MIDNIGHT AT MEARS HOUSE
quiry with remarks and references which would look
exceedingly out of place in print.
“He certainly has a fine command of language,”
I observed. “I wonder Randall doesn't bat him
over the head.”
Garth smiled, but said nothing.
Day was just beginning to dawn as I paused out-
side his door. The rumble of a farmer's wagon
reached us from the road below.
“We’ve certainly had an exciting enough night,”
I said. “I shall be quite satisfied to take it easy
to-morrow, though I was looking forward with a
good deal of interest to seeing your prisoner. I
don’t wonder you felt so badly at finding him gone.”
He smiled again.
“I hoped he would be,” he replied; and with a
cheerful “Good-night,” he entered his room and
closed the door, leaving me to wonder what he could
possibly have meant.


CHAPTER XV
I DISOBEY ORDERS
IT was nearly noon when I woke up, feeling very
much better in spite of my all but sleepless night.
My first thought was of Arthur. Had he returned?
And if not, what had happened to him?
I got up, slipped on my bathrobe, and rang the
bell. To my surprise Maggie Sullivan answered it
instead of the gawky chambermaid, who, it seemed,
had been too scared by the fracas of last night to
stay any longer. She had a black-and-blue spot on
her left temple, but otherwise she seemed none the
worse for her encounter with the burglar.
“Has Mr. Keaton returned?” I asked her.
She seemed surprised at the question.
“I didn't know he'd gone out, sir,” she said.
“Has he breakfasted yet?”
“Yes, sir; he had breakfast very early before any
of the others was down.” -
“See if he's in his room, please.”
She came back and reported that he was not there.
I asked her to look for him downstairs, and to tell
Garth that I’d like to speak with him. She was
I65


MIDNIGHT AT MEARS HOUSE 167
would be to find me so much better. My legs still
felt a little queer, but otherwise I was apparently all
right again.
I decided I would go for a walk after I had had
a look under Margaret's window and seen what
traces I could find of the man who had dropped from
it. But though I found two fairly plain heel-marks
showing where the fellow had landed, the ground
was too hard after the recent frost to reveal any
further footprints. I was turning away when I saw
a man coming toward me from the stable who I
decided must be Dent, the new coachman. He was a
short, chunkily built man of forty or thereabouts,
with clear blue eyes, florid complexion, and a rather
stupid but honest looking face.
“A note for you from Mr. Garth, sir,” he said,
touching his cap and fumbling in his coat pocket.
“He told me I was to give it to you myself, sir,
as soon as you come out.” And he handed me an
unaddressed, sealed envelope. Within was another
envelope, blank also but unsealed, and a half-sheet of
note-paper on which was typewritten:
“DEAR PHIL.—On no account leave the house till
I return. If neither Keaton nor I show up by eight
o'clock to-night, send the enclosed telegram to Stimp-
son. Yours in great haste,
“STEPHEN GARTH.”


168 MIDNIGHT AT MEARS HOUSE
“Well, I'm damned !” I muttered when I had re-
read the note a couple of times. What could it
mean? Possibly the message to Stimpson might tell
me. I opened the second envelope and read:
“Three black cats on a red-hot stove. Horses
can’t drag them apart without delay. Canned
tongue comes high, but we must have it.”
“Precisely,” I thought. “I might have known
it would be code-written.”
Dent coughed discreetly.
“Beg pardon, sir,” he said, “but I forgot to say
that Mr. Garth asked me to be sure and tell you
not to let nobody know you got a note from him, sir.”
“He needn't have worried about that,” I re-
turned curtly. “It wouldn’t have occurred to me to
do so.”
“No, sir,” he said hastily, “of course not, sir.
I trust you're feelin' quite yourself again to-day,
sir.” He touched his cap and turned away.
“Stop!” I cried. “I want to ask you a few
questions.”
He faced about.
“When did Mr. Garth give you this note?” I
asked.
“About two hours ago, sir.”
“Was Mr. Keaton with him?”


MIDNIGHT AT MEARS HOUSE 169
“Yes, sir.”
“Did Mr. Garth tell you where he was going?”
“Yes, sir,” he said after a moment's hesitation.
“Tell me where they went.”
He hesitated again before replying, and shifted his
position awkwardly.
“I’m very sorry, but I can't tell you that, sir,”
he stammered. “Mr. Garth told me—”
“Nonsense!” I broke in sharply. “He couldn't
have meant me not to know.”
He grew more embarrassed. Finally he blurted
Out:
“He mentioned partic'larly, sir, as I wasn't on no
account to say nothin’ to you about it. “Don’t tell
nobody where we’ve gone, Dent, he says, ‘especially
Mr. Scarsden. Them were his exact words, sir, and
he made me promise—”
I stopped him with a curt word of dismissal, and
walked away. I felt both humiliated and angry.
What could Garth be thinking of, I wondered, to
tell things to a servant which he didn't want me to
know? Why should he make such a mystery of the
affair? It was ridiculous of him to treat me as
though I were an irresponsible babbler incapable of
keeping a secret. I resented it so much that I in-
stantly determined to disregard his injunction and
to spend the afternoon shooting. It was just the
sort of a day for partridges, warm and still, and I


17o MIDNIGHT AT MEARS HOUSE
knew a spot—an old brush pile half a mile off in a
clearing in the woods—where I felt sure of finding
SOrne.
It was half-past two, and already the sun was
fairly low when I set out. Dent was sitting beside
the stable door, polishing the brass trimming on a
piece of harness. He looked very much surprised
at seeing me. I even thought for an instant that he
was about to remonstrate with me for going; but he
merely said, “Good-afternoon, sir,” and went on
with his work. A moment later, however, as I
turned to pick up my gun after climbing the pasture
fence, I saw him hurrying toward the house; and I
wondered if Garth had told him to remain on guard
there in case I went out. For a moment I thought
of going back; but just then I heard the distant
drumming of a cock-partridge.
“I shan’t be gone more than a couple of hours
anyway,” I thought. “Besides he had no right to
expect me to stay cooped up in the house all the after-
noon without even telling me why I should.” And
I went on.
I found the shooting even better than I had hoped
for. If I had had a good dog with me, I could have
bagged a dozen birds, I am sure. As it was I got
five before it grew too dark to see clearly; and I
returned in high spirits. As I passed the stable I
looked about for Dent, but he was nowhere in sight.


MIDNIGHT AT MEARS HOUSE 171
Evidently he was still on guard in the house. And
sure enough when I went in I saw him stretched out
in a chair at the farther end of the hall.
“Well, Dent,” I called out cheerfully, “I trust
you’ve had a pleasant afternoon.”
He made no reply. I chuckled.
“Come, come,” I cried in a louder tone, still
chuckling as I crossed the hall, “what would Mr.
Garth say if he knew—”
I broke off, struck with something queer about his
appearance, and hurried toward him. It was too
dark for me to see his face distinctly, but as I bent
over him I smelled something sickishly sweet, and I
knew at once what had happened—he had been
chloroformed ! -
I stood there for an instant, too horrified to move.
Then I seized him by the shoulders and shook him
roughly.
“Wake up!” I shouted. “Wake up, man!”
I might as well have spoken to a corpse. His head
was sunk on his chest—it wagged to and fro in an
unnatural, lifeless way when I shook him; his arms
dangled inertly at his sides: there was no semblance
of life in him.
I opened the window and dragged the chair close
to it. Then I got a bottle of whiskey from the side-
board and forced some of it down his throat. It had
no effect. He still lay limp and motionless, to all


172 MIDNIGHT AT MEARS HOUSE
appearances dead. It was minutes—minutes that
seemed hours—before I was able to detect the faint-
est heart-beat, the least quiver of his eyelids; and
it was many minutes more before I stopped plying
him with whiskey and chafing his hands and wrists,
and sank exhausted into a chair.
“Half an hour, perhaps fifteen minutes more, and
I should have come too late!” I kept thinking. It
sickened me afresh with the whole business. What
was the meaning of all these tragic happenings?
Who were these unknown enemies of ours? Which
of us would be their next victim? I had a gloomy
presentiment that we were powerless to guard against
them; that despite all our precautions, they would
prove too much for us; and that sooner or later there
would be other deaths beside that of David Mears.
I tried in vain to shake off these depressing feelings.
Dent's narrow escape had left me nervous and un-
strung; and I would gladly have seized upon any
pretext just then for quitting Mears House and going
back to New York.
I realised suddenly that it had grown quite dark,
and I got up and lighted a lamp. Dent was look-
ing a good deal better. Quite a bit of colour had
come back to his face, and his eyes had a new light
in them.
“Feeling better, eh?” I asked.
He nodded.


MIDNIGHT AT MEARS HOUSE 173
“I’ll be all right in a minute or two now, sir,”
he declared. “If my head didn't feel so queer—”
“Better lie still a while longer, and not try to
talk,” I cautioned him. “You had a pretty close
call, you know, and it won't hurt you any to take it
easy for a while.”
He obeyed me rather reluctantly: it was plain that
he was worrying over his failure to make good as a
watchman, and that he was eager to tell me about it.
Presently he began:
“After you left, sir, I come up to the house
“As Mr. Garth told you to?”
“Yes, sir, he said I should, if you went out, sir;
and for me to stay here till you come back.”
“What for?” I asked.
“He didn't tell me why, sir, but I kinder thought
he’d a notion ther might be somethin wrong goin'
on, sir. Leastways he wanted me to keep my eyes
open, and ”—he groaned—“you see what a mess I
made of it, sir.”
“You did the best you could, I'm sure, Dent,”
I said. “It wasn't your fault, I know ??
“It was my fault, beggin' your pardon, sir,” he
broke in gloomily. “I hadn't never ought to have
set down here. I might have knowed I’d go to
sleep—what with the warm fire, and the cup o' tea
I'd had—”
“Who gave you the tea?” I interrupted.
9%


I74 MIDNIGHT AT MEARS HOUSE
“Nora, sir”—Nora McCarty was the name Mag-
gie Sullivan had given as hers when she came: only
Garth and I knew that it was not her right one—“I
hadn't been here more'n half an hour when she
brought it in to me. ‘Here's somethin’ to warm you
up, Dent,” says she. ‘I made it a-purpose for you,
and I hope you'll like it.’”
“Very kind of her, I'm sure,” I observed drily.
“Yes, sir; so I told her, sir,” he replied.
“And you don't remember anything more after
that, I suppose?”
“No, sir,” he admitted shamefacedly. “I must
have gone to sleep right away, I reck'n.”
“Very likely,” I said. “Did anything happen be-
fore that?”
“I had a bit of a row with Mr. Randall, sir.
He wanted me to go and harness up the runabout
for him. He said he had to go to Rockford on an
errand for Mr. Mears.”
“And you refused?”
“Mr. Garth told me on no account to leave the
house, sir.”
“What did Mr. Randall do?”
“He was pretty mad about it, sir; but finally he
went and hitched up himself. I was standin' by
the door when he drove by, and I seen he'd got the
breechin’ on all wrong, so I yelled after him, but
he didn't pay no attention to me.”


MIDNIGHT AT MEARS HOUSE I75
I asked him if he had seen anything of Margaret
or Mrs. Bartlett.
“They both of them went out together not twenty
minutes after you'd gone, sir,” he replied.
“That left nobody in the house but you and the
maids, except of course Mr. Mears?”
“No, sir.”
“And you've no recollection whatever of being
chloroformed?” I persisted.
He shook his head.
“Not the least, sir. I don’t remember nothin'
about it.”
“Well,” I said, “it’s very strange. I should
hardly have thought it possible.”
“It does seem mighty queer, sir,” he agreed.
I began to wonder if he had actually been chloro-
formed. Perhaps Maggie Sullivan had merely
spilled some of it on his coat to avoid the suspicion
of having put knock-out drops in his tea. I was
strongly minded to hunt her up at once, and accuse
her of it, but I realised that it would be a silly thing
to do. I had no real proof against her; and it
would only put her more on her guard and make
it so much harder for Garth to trap her, if she were
really guilty.
I felt sure of one thing, however—that another
attempt at robbery had been made, and, I feared, a
successful one. The thief or thieves had had every-


176 MIDNIGHT AT MEARS HOUSE
thing their own way this time, I reflected—an empty,
unguarded house, and plenty of time to work in.
They would have only their own stupidity to blame,
if they hadn't got what they were after. I decided
to look around and see what traces of them I could
find.
Although he was still feeling pretty shaky, Dent
insisted on going with me, and together we went
through the lower rooms in the front part of the
house. Nothing seemed to have been disturbed in
any of them, nor could I find anything missing.
Clearly it was not ordinary valuables they had been
after. At Garth's suggestion Arthur had, I knew,
removed the contents of David Mears' desk, with
Margaret's sanction, and locked them up in his own
room; so they could have stolen nothing from it.
The silver in the dining-room was untouched—I
heard Dent sigh with relief at that discovery—and
none of the locked drawers where the smaller pieces
were kept had been broken open.
“Well, Dent,” I said, “I guess there's no need
of your staying any longer. You'd better go back to
your room and rest. I'll ring for you, if I want you.”
“Very well, sir,” he said. “I hope you'll find
everything all right upstairs, sir, though it don't seem
likely they'd go away empty-handed. I made quite
sure the silver'd be missing, sir, and I can’t think
why it ain't.”


MIDNIGHT AT MEARS HOUSE 177
“I wouldn’t bother my head trying to, if I were
you,” I said. “The main thing is that it's here,
every bit of it, apparently.”
Then I went to the French window, and opened it.
“Off with you now,” I said, smiling, “and mind
you lie down for at least an hour.”
He started to go: then stopped and faced me.
“I ain’t thanked you yet for saving my life, sir,”
he began awkwardly:
“I should hope not!” I replied, “since it was
my fault that it needed saving at all, if it really did.
If I’d stayed at home as Mr. Garth wanted me to do,
it wouldn’t have; so I really owe you a vote of thanks
for being so obliging as to take my place.”
“It's very kind of you to say so, sir,” he answered
gravely; “but I want you to know that I won't forget
it.”
“But that's precisely what I want you to do,
Dent,” I expostulated. “For Heaven's sake, don't
say any more about it.”
“All right, sir, but if I can ever do anything 39
“Yes, yes, of course,” I interrupted impatiently;
“but never mind about that now. I hope you'll
have a good nap,” I added, “and wake up feeling
as fit as ever.”
“Thank you, sir,” he said, “but I don't believe
I need it. I'll be ready any time you want me—
afore eight.” And he went out.


178 MIDNIGHT AT MEARS HOUSE
“Before eight?” I repeated to myself as I locked
the window. “What did he mean by that?” I
had said nothing to him of Garth's instructions to
me in case he and Arthur should not have got back
by then. He must have given Dent special direc-
tions which would, of course, include his telling me
at last where they had gone. “At any rate,” I
thought, “I shan't have to wait much longer to
find out.” It was already after six.
I found everything in my room exactly as I had
left it; and I could not see that anything had been
touched in any of the other rooms—Garth's, or
Arthur's, or David Mears'. Margaret had evi-
dently returned before I did, for I could hear her
moving about in her room; but I decided not to
disturb her. She might resent my questioning as
she had Garth's, and it was after all no affair of
mine whether she had been robbed of anything or
not. I was curious to learn, however, if Jonathan
Mears had seen or heard anything of the burglars;
and so I knocked loudly on his door, and getting no
reply, I opened it part way and spoke to him.
He did not answer.
I pushed the door wide open and struck a match.
My surprise at his silence instantly disappeared. He
sat there tied hand and foot, with a handkerchief
bound across his eyes and another stuffed into his
mouth.


CHAPTER XVI
JONATHAN MEARS OFFERS A SUGGESTION
I LOST no time in freeing him.
“Ugh!” he grunted when I had got the gag out
of his mouth, “you were a long while coming.” He
glared at me as though I had been purposely slow
about it.
“Nice sort of a place this is,” he went on angrily,
“where a man can't take a nap in his own room in
the middle of the afternoon without being waked up
by someone shoving a dirty handkerchief down his
throat, and finding himself blindfolded and trussed
up like a damned fowl!”
I said nothing. I didn’t blame him for feeling
angry about it.
“I don't know why in thunder I was ever such
a crazy fool as to come here anyway,” he con-
tinued savagely. “A God-forsaken hole, if ever
there was one—no one with any brains to talk to,
nothing to do but eat and sleep and read from one
day's end to another, with a blasted fool to look
after me who's always off somewhere when I want
him.” He paused for breath.
“Heavens! I almost wish he were alive again,”
179


18O MIDNIGHT AT MEARS HOUSE
he muttered presently—and I knew he was thinking
of David Mears. “It added some interest to life
at any rate—gave me something to hate, and that's
better than nothing.”
I began to grow tired of his railing.
“I came here,” I said, “to see if you could tell
me anything of what's been going on in this house
this afternoon. I thought, perhaps, you might have
seen or heard something 95
“With my eyes blindfolded, and deaf as I am?”
he interrupted sneeringly.
I had some difficulty in keeping my temper.
“Since you can't,” I went on curtly, “I won't
trouble you any longer. Mr. Randall will no doubt
be back soon.” And I turned to go.
In a twinkling his whole manner changed. Every
trace of his irritation disappeared. He leaned
eagerly toward me.
“What's your hurry?” he asked. “It's nowhere
near dinner time yet surely, and that confounded man
of mine may not be back for hours—he has such a
plaguey mania for meeting with accidents. Sit down
and stay a while, won't you? You must make allow-
ances for an old man's bad temper,” he added, smil-
ing. “It’s none too good at the best, I'm afraid,
and this sort of treatment doesn’t improve it any.
It wasn't very decent of me to growl at you the way
I did. I'm sorry for it.”


MIDNIGHT AT MEARS HOUSE 18I.
I sat down reluctantly, and he began to tell me
more about what had happened to him. He must
have been pretty sound asleep, he thought; for other-
wise he didn't see how his assailants could have bound
and blindfolded him without waking him up—he felt
sure there had been more than one of them, though
he had not heard them speak. So far as he could
judge, it must have been about half-past three when
he awoke, or shortly after Dent had been drugged.
It made me surer than ever that Maggie Sullivan
had been in league with them.
“You’ve had a pretty tough time of it yourself,
I understand,” he said when he had finished telling
me of his misadventure.
I assured him that my illness hadn't really
amounted to anything, and that I was feeling all
right again.
“It's no joke just the same getting a crack on the
head like that,” he observed. “I’ve had more than
one of them in my time, and I know what they're
like. You had your nerve with you to tackle the
fellow in the dark that way.”
“It was a fool thing to do,” I replied shortly.
“I deserved what I got for trying it.”
“You haven't any idea who he was, I suppose?”
he asked.
I shook my head.
“Well, I have,” he astonished me by saying, “I


182 MIDNIGHT AT MEARS HOUSE
may be all wrong, of course,” he went on, “but it
looks to me as though it must have been some old
pal of his—of David's, I mean.”
“That's plain enough,” I returned disappointedly.
“A stranger wouldn't be likely to break into the
house just to steal an old letter from his desk.”
“Precisely,” he said.
“But it doesn't help us much to know that,” I
went on. “He may have had a number of old pals
for all we know, any one of whom might have done
it. The point is—which one?”
“If I'm not mistaken, his name is James H.
Ryder,” replied Jonathan Mears quietly. “He
was discharged from the Plainsville Penitentiary
October tenth.”
I sat bolt upright in my chair, and gaped at him.
“How did you find that out?” I cried.
He seemed to enjoy my amazement.
“Well, I got to puzzling over this affair, and the
more I thought of it, the more likely it seemed to
me that the man who murdered him must have been
some old enemy of his.”
“What made you think that?” I enquired.
“The look you saw in his eyes for one thing, and
the fact that he'd been scared half out of his wits
for some time before his death.”
“You noticed that, too?” I exclaimed.
“No one could have helped noticing it. Why,


MIDNIGHT AT MEARS HOUSE 183
even when he was doing his best to madden me, I've
seen him break off right in the midst of his damned
laughter and go white, as a sheet at some little noise,
and he was always looking over his shoulder as if
he expected somebody to jump at him. I tell you
the man went in constant fear of his life.”
I made no reply: he was but echoing what I had
told Arthur.
“When I heard of your mix-up with the burglar,”
he went on, “I was certain he'd been killed out of
revenge, and by the very man who struck you
down.”
“But why on earth should he have come back?”
I said.
“Revenge was not his only motive,” he replied.
“It was robbery as well. That paper you saw him
hunting for 9%
“Must have been an important one,” I broke in,
“to be worth taking such risks for.” And again I
was but repeating what I had thought as I watched
the man in the grey felt hat through the key-hole
of the library door.
“Important to him, at any rate,” he agreed:
“otherwise he would scarcely have ventured to come
a second time for it. Your arrival the night of the
murder must have prevented his getting it then.”
I nodded: it seemed a very reasonable supposition.
“It was then,” he said, “that I decided to tele-


184 MIDNIGHT AT MEARS HOUSE
graph a man named Roberts I used to know back
home, and ask him if he knew of anyone that David
used to be thick with, who—like myself—might not
be altogether paralysed with grief at his death. He
mentioned several people,” he continued drily, “and
added a few facts about each one which made me
pick this fellow, Ryder, as being the most likely one
of the lot to have done it.”
“What did he tell you about him?” I asked.
“He said that Ryder had been a sort of cat's-paw
for David and another man named Ellis 35
“Not Margaret's father?”
“I rather think so,” he said, “though I'm not
at all sure of it. It seems they got Ryder to help
them in fraudulently acquiring titles to a lot of Gov-
ernment land ”—I recalled the mass of maps and
blue-prints we had found in David Mears' desk—
“and when the graft was found out, they sawed it
all off on him, and he got fifteen years in the pen
for it.”
There flashed into my mind the picture of David
Mears sitting senseless in his chair, the open news-
paper at his feet; and I felt sure that the item in
it which had bowled him over must have had to do
with Ryder's release from the penitentiary.
“By Heavens!” I cried. “I believe you're
right;" and I told him of Arthur's last interview with
his uncle, and of my suspicions as to what had caused


MIDNIGHT AT MEARS HOUSE 185
David Mears such a shock. His deep-set, little eyes
sparkled with interest as he listened to me.
“If it turns out that he was in the neighbourhood
at the time,” I added, “the case against him will
look pretty black.”
“That's what you ought to find out as soon as you
can,” he said. “I’ll write again to Roberts, if you
like, and ask him to find out where Ryder went when
he got out of jail. It might be a good plan, too, to
put a detective on his track. It's a clue worth fol-
lowing up.”
“I should say it was,” I returned. “That was a
good idea of yours, writing home. I told Arthur I
thought you might be able to help us; but he said
you’d been away so long you wouldn’t know any
more about his uncle's past than we did. It didn’t
occur to either of us that you might have friends
there still who could give you the information we
wanted.”
“I don't wonder you didn't think of it,” he said.
“It was just a piece of good luck that Roberts hadn't
died or moved somewhere else long ago.” Then his
face darkened, and he chuckled grimly.
“It would be rather a joke on me,” he said, “if
I should be the means of getting David's murderer
hanged, seeing how I hated him—and do yet,” he
added, scowling. “If that's the case, I shall be sorry
I meddled in the affair at all. If I hadn't got so


MIDNIGHT AT MEARS HOUSE 187
should crop out occasionally in a way to make one
hate and even loathe him.
He looked up at me presently with the ghost of a
smile on his face.
“Don’t mind me when I talk like that,” he said
almost pleadingly. “I don't mean half I say. Of
course I shall be glad to help you catch this man
Ryder, or whoever it is that's responsible for David's
death. I only wish you or Arthur or your blind
friend, Mr. Garth, would drop in oftener to see me.
You don't realise, perhaps, what it means to me to
have someone beside Randall to talk with once in a
while.”
I rose and held out my hand to him. I was a
good deal moved by his appeal.
“I think I understand a little at any rate,” I said
soberly.
His face lighted up.
“I hoped you would,” he said simply as he grasped
my hand.
I bade him good-night and left him. The big
clock in the hall below was just striking seven as I
entered my room.


CHAPTER XVII
EIGHT O'CLOCK COMES
SOMETHING happened at dinner that night of such a
trivial character that it seems hardly worth mention-
ing; yet it played a most important part in the series
of events that followed. Dinner was ordinarily at
half-past six, but we waited nearly an hour for Arthur
and Garth before sitting down. Both Mrs. Bartlett
and Margaret were anxious to know where the two
men had gone, and inclined, I could see, to doubt
my professed ignorance of their whereabouts. It was
not surprising that they should.
“I quite agree with you,” I said when Margaret
repeated that it seemed very strange they shouldn't
have left word where they were going; “but as they
probably expected to be back long before this, very
likely they didn't think it worth while to do so.”
She looked at me searchingly for an instant.
“I believe you know more about it than you are
willing to tell us,” she said suddenly.
“You’ve a perfect right to think so, of course, if
you choose,” I answered with what dignity I could
muSter.
188


MIDNIGHT AT MEARS HOUSE 189
She made no reply, but I could see she wasn't sat-
isfied with my reply. A moment later she asked me
what Dent had been doing in the house that after-
11OOn. -
“Mrs. Bartlett and I saw him sitting in the front
hall when we came back from our walk. I spoke to
him, but he didn't answer me. I suppose he was
asleep.”
“Doubtless,” I said.
“But what was he doing there?” she persisted.
“How should I know?” I replied lightly. “Wait-
ing to speak to Arthur about something, perhaps, or
Mr. Randall may have rung for him.”
“Was he there when you came back?” she
asked.
“He was,” I admitted, “and very much disturbed
when I roused him to find he had been asleep. He
told me he'd got tired waiting, and that the open
fire must have made him drowsy.” I stole a glance
at Maggie Sullivan as I spoke, but her sallow face
was as expressionless as ever.
“I asked you,” Margaret continued, “because I
missed something from my room when I returned.”
“Indeed? And you think Dent took it?”
She hesitated before answering me. -
“I don't like to think so,” she said at last; “and
yet—I don’t see who else it could have been.”
“Was it anything of value?” I enquired.


190 MIDNIGHT AT MEARS HOUSE
“Oh, no,” she said hastily. “It was only an old
photograph.”
“I should hardly suppose Dent would have any
particular craze for pictures,” I observed, “but of
course there's no telling—even stable boys have been
known to show a fondness for photos of famous
actresses and the like. I imagine, though, that the
photograph you lost was not of that description?”
“It was a picture of my father,” she replied.
I was so surprised that I leaned quickly back in
my chair, and my elbow hit the tray on which the
maid was just bringing me the coffee, and knocked
it from her hands, spilling half the contents of the
cup over me. I substituted a harmless “Confound it
all!” for the natural expletive that rose to my lips
as I sprang up and began wiping my dripping coat
with a napkin.
“I’m sorry to be so clumsy,” I said apologetically.
Maggie Sullivan glared at me as she stooped to pick
up the broken china, and Mrs. Bartlett frowned
slightly; but Margaret continued to regard me as
gravely as though nothing had happened.
“Bring Mr. Scarsden another cup of coffee,
Nora,” was all she said.
I heard something just then, however, which made
me forget all about the coffee and my splashed dinner-
jacket. It was the hall-clock striking eight. I stood
listening to it, half expecting to hear the door-bell


MIDNIGHT AT MEARS HOUSE I91
ring also; for up to that moment I had felt sure
Garth would be back before the time he had set.
As the last stroke of the hour died away, I laid down
my napkin and turned to the two women, who were
looking wonderingly at me.
“I don’t think I'll wait for the coffee after all,”
I said slowly, “if you'll excuse me.” And I bowed
to them and left the room.
As quickly as I could I changed my dinner clothes
for the rough tweeds I had worn shooting, put a
sweater on under my coat, stuffed my revolver, a
box of cartridges, and another of matches in my
pockets, and stole quietly down the back stairs and
out to the stable. It was unlighted. I pounded on
the door and shouted to Dent, but got no answer. I
concluded that he had gone to the house to meet me,
and that I had missed him by going out the back
way; so I hurried around to the front door and rang
the bell.
Margaret opened it. She started back with a cry
of astonishment at seeing me.
“I thought it was Arthur,” she said, her expres-
sion one of questioning bewilderment; but I was not
in the mood just then to enter into explanations.
“Has Dent been here?” I asked.
“No,” she replied.
“That's queer!” I muttered. “Are you sure no
one has come in the front way since dinner?”


192 MIDNIGHT AT MEARS HOUSE
“Quite sure,” she said. “I’ve been reading in
the music room ever since then, and I should have
heard the door open.”
“He must be in the back part of the house, then,”
I said in some perplexity; for I had looked in the
kitchen window on my way from the stable.
“I’ll ask Nora to see,” she said, but I told her
I would rather go myself.
Dent was not there; nor had he come in for his
dinner at all, the cook told me. I should have pre-
ferred after finding this out to slip out the back door
as I had done before, and so avoid the questions
which I knew Margaret was waiting to ask me; but
unfortunately I had left my cap on the hat-rack in
the front hall, and I did not relish the idea of going
without it. -
She was standing where I had left her on the
threshold of the music room when I returned; and as
I crossed the hall, I noted—incongruously enough—
how white her throat and arms were, and how ex-
quisitely slim and graceful she looked in her close-
fitting black gown. I realised with a start that she was
no longer a child. It was an odd moment for mak-
ing such a discovery, but dread and anxiety had
probably sharpened my perceptions.
She took a few quick steps toward me, her eyes
shining with suppressed excitement.
“You didn’t find him?”


MIDNIGHT AT MEARS HOUSE I93
I shook my head.
“He was to meet you here at eight?” she asked.
“I rather expected him to,” I admitted.
“And you were going to join Arthur and Mr.
Garth, weren't you?”
I said nothing.
“I thought so,” she added. “Yet you told me
you didn’t know where they had gone.”
“I don't,” I said bluntly, looking straight in her
eyes.
“Then how–?”
“Dent knows,” I broke in; “but he had instruc-
tions not to tell anyone.”
“It's very strange,” she said. “I don't under-
stand it at all. Why shouldn't Mr. Garth want you
to know?” -
“I’ve been asking myself that question all day,”
I replied, “and I haven't hit upon the answer yet.”
She was silent for a moment. Then she said sud-
denly:
“There is something queer going on, something I
don’t understand. It frightens me.”
“I don’t think you need be alarmed,” I said re-
assuringly.
“I suppose it's very silly of me, but after last
night”—she drew a long breath—“I'm afraid to
be left here alone with only Mrs. Bartlett and the
maids. Couldn't I go with you?”


MIDNIGHT AT MEARS HOUSE I95
angrily what I could have been thinking of to con-
sider for an instant such an absurd idea as taking
her with me. I would tell her plainly that it was
quite impossible for me to do so, nor would I waste
more precious time either in explaining why. I
would merely bid her good-night and go.
My mind was resolutely made up on this point
when a moment later she reappeared. She had
changed her black gown for a short, dark-blue walk-
ing skirt and a soft white sweater. She wore a brown
fur toque and a pair of high laced boots with ridicu-
lously small, thick soles. It was a very becoming
costume. . •
“I didn't keep you waiting long, did I?” she
said. “I brought this with me,” she added, smiling,
“in case we should be attacked; ” and from some
invisible hiding-place she produced a tiny blue-bar-
relled revolver.
Then a most singular thing happened. I opened
my mouth to tell her she could not go; and what I
said was, opening the door for her as I spoke:
“I hope you're dressed warmly enough. We shall
find it pretty cold, I'm afraid.” -
“I’m nearly boiling,” she replied, “this sweater
is frightfully thick.”
I followed her out, wondering what madness pos-
sessed me. Even then it was not too late for me
to assert myself and send her back.


198 MIDNIGHT AT MEARS HOUSE
“I can't make you, of course,” I answered; “but
I'd feel very much better about it, if you would.”
She shook her head obstinately.
“You’ll think it horrid of me to insist on going
with you when you don't want me; but I simply can't
stand the idea of being left practically alone there.
I should go crazy.”
“Very well,” I said. “If that's the way you feel
about it, I’ve nothing more to say, except to hope
that you may not regret it.”
“Which way do we go now?” she asked.
“To the village,” I replied. “I have a telegram
to send.”


2OO MINDIGHT AT MEARS HOUSE
“I don't think so,” she said after a moment's
reflection. “It sounds more like a riddle.”
“It's certainly crazy enough for one,” I admitted.
“What can ‘Three black cats on a red-hot stove'
mean?”
“Trouble,” she replied promptly.
“Undoubtedly,” I agreed, laughing; “but it isn't
customary, you know, to use eight words in a telegram
when one would do. If you can make any sense
out of the rest of the message, I'd like to hear it.”
“‘Only prompt action can prevent serious dis-
aster. Come at once and say nothing to any-
body.’”
“Bully!” I exclaimed, “but confess that you drew
on your imagination for all that.”
“Not at all,” she answered indignantly. “The
second sentence about wild horses not being able to
drag them apart without delay means, of course, that
the case is a very desperate one, and that part about
canned tongue is surely clear enough.”
“I didn't find it so,” I remarked humbly, wonder-
ing how near she had come to getting it right; “but
perhaps that's because I never was any good at guess-
ing things. I shall spend all my spare time after this
poring over the ‘Nuts to Crack’ columns. But
seriously,” I went on, “I’d give a good deal to know
where Arthur and Garth are at this moment, and to
be sure they're all right.”


2O2 MINDIGHT AT MEARS HOUSE
but did not move. I seized him by the shoulders
and dragged him to the side of the road.
“I suppose I’d better make sure he hasn’t been run
over or anything,” I said, and I lighted another
match. Margaret gave a little cry.
“Why, it's the man who's been bringing us lob-
sters lately!” she exclaimed. “He seemed like such
a nice old man, too.—What did you say?”
“Nothing,” I rejoined hastily. “I can't find any-
thing the matter with him,” I announced presently,
“so I guess it will be all right to leave him here to
sleep off the effects—”
“Leave him here—like that!”
“We can't very well take him with us, you know.
If he hasn't got over it when we return—”
“I never heard of anything so inhuman,” she
broke in hotly. “He might die before we got
back.”
“There isn't the slightest danger of it,” I assured
her. “The kindest thing we can do is to leave the
old rascal here to sleep it off.” But I could not make
her think so.
“You can go ahead and send your telegram, if
you want to,” she said. “I’ll wait here for you.”
“You know very well that I can't leave you alone
with him. He might come-to while I'm gone and
murder you. Do be sensible and come along. We've
wasted an awful lot of time already.”


MIDNIGHT AT MEARS HOUSE 2O3
She shook her head.
“I shall stay here,” she repeated. I felt again
like shaking her.
“Very well,” I said. “If you insist on behaving
so ridiculously, I suppose we shall have to sit here
till your lobster-catching friend wakes up. Then we
can escort him home, make him a nice hot cup of
tea, and put him comfortably to bed. It'll be a de-
lightfully romantic ending to our little adventure.
I hope you don’t mind if I smoke while we're wait-
ing?”
“Not in the least,” she replied coldly.
I proceeded to fill my pipe and light it. She sat
down on the low stone wall that separated the strip
of grass beside us from the adjoining pasture. I
sat down on the wall, too—several yards away from
her. Through a swampy hollow in the pasture be-
hind us a tiny brook gurgled softly.
Its gentle music was drowned presently by a suc-
cession of startling discords that came from the
ancient and unregenerate lobster man. He had be-
gun to snore. I have heard many people snore, but
nothing to compare with him either in volume of
sound, or variation in tune and pitch. It was a
masterly performance—the prelude being usually a
series of adagio snuffles culminating in a snort for-
tissimo, followed by a shrill, flute-like piping that
ended in a grunt; but occasionally he improvised upon


2O4 MINDIGHT AT MEARS HOUSE
the main theme in a way that must have made the
frogs envious. We sat silent for perhaps five min-
utes, listening to him. Then we both burst out
laughing. -
“He makes such perfectly killing noises,” she
gasped. “Did you ever hear anything like it?”
“Never,” I admitted. “I'm curious to find out
what the effect would be if I poured some water down
his throat. Do you suppose it would clog the works,
or rust any of those little pipes?”
“Don’t make me laugh any more,” she pleaded
breathlessly, “ or I shall be too lame to move.”
“Well, I'm going to try it anyway,” I said. “It’ll
probably stop the music, but it may wake him up and
let me get that telegram off sometime to-night. This
old hat of his will do nicely to fetch the water in.
I shan’t be gone more than a minute.” And I
picked up the lobsterman's old sou’-wester and started .
down to the brook.
I was just stooping to dish up some water when
I heard a scream. I was up the bank and over the
wall in a twinkling. Neither Margaret nor the
drunken man was there. In another second, how-
ever, I caught sight of her sitting huddled against
the wall.
“What's the matter?” I cried. “Are you
hurt?”
She did not answer me. An instant later I was


MIDNIGHT AT MEARS HOUSE 2O5
kneeling beside her, a lighted match in my hand,
peering anxiously into her face. It was deathly
white; her eyes were closed; her head had fallen
sideways against one of the big boulders of the wall.
She looked like a tired child asleep.
As gently as I could I put my arm about her, and
laid her head on my shoulder. Then I struck an-
other match. It showed me something I had not
noticed before—the whole front of her dress had
been torn open, and a thin trickle of blood was
oozing from an ugly looking scratch on her throat.
At sight of it I must have lost my head completely;
for the next thing I knew I was kissing her tender
flesh in a passion of rage and pity.
When I came to my senses, I took off my coat,
made a pillow of it for her head, and darted down
again to the brook. A few handfuls of the icy water
dashed in her face brought her to. She opened her
eyes and looked wonderingly up at me.
“What happened?” she asked faintly. “Why
am I all wet this way?—I remember now,” she
went on. “Someone seized me and threw me against
the wall. I must have hit my head on a stone.”
Then she gasped. “Why, my dress is all torn, and
—and the envelope is gone!”
“You mustn't excite yourself about it,” I said
soothingly—she was trembling all over. “We shall
be able to get it back for you, I'm sure. What you


2O6 MINDIGHT AT MEARS HOUSE
must do now is to lie still and rest.” But she paid
no attention to me.
“Who could it have been?” she persisted.—“Not
that old fisherman, surely?”
“It must have been,” I replied. “He’s gone
anyway.”
“But I don’t see ??
“He was shamming,” I said. “He must have
known we were coming, and pretended to be drunk
to get a chance to rob you. I might have known
those snores were too good to be true.”
“Then he isn't really a fisherman at all?”
“I’ll bet he never caught a lobster in his life,”
I said. “It was just a clever dodge of his to dis-
guise himself that way so he could come to the house
any time he wanted to.”
“But who can he be?” she demanded.
“If I'm not much mistaken,” I said, “he's the
man I found in the library, the man who attacked
you there last night, the same man who wrote you
that letter.”
She shrank away from me with a little cry as
though I had struck her.
“You know who it was, then, that wrote to me?”
—There was a strange mingling of incredulity and
dread in her voice.
“Yes,” I said quietly, “I believe I do.”
“And does Mr. Garth know?”


MIDNIGHT AT MEARS HOUSE 2O7
“I don’t think so.”
“Promise me, then, that you won't tell him,” she
begged.
I hesitated a moment: then I promised.
“Would you mind telling me,” I asked, “why
you don't want him to know?”
“I can't tell you that,” she said. “Please try to
believe that I have a very good reason 5 *
“I’m quite willing to,” I interrupted quietly. “I
thought, perhaps, I might be able to help you; that
was why I asked.”
“I wish you could !” she cried with an intensity
that amazed me. “I wish there was someone
Listen,” she broke off, “I hear somebody coming.”
“You must be mistaken,” I was about to say when
I heard the dull ring of a horse's hoofs some distance
off. I guessed at once who it was.
“That must be Randall,” I said. “If it is, he
can take you home.”
“I’d rather not go with him,'
“I don’t like him.”
“Then I'll ask him to let me drive you back.”
“But your telegram?” she reminded me.
“I’ll get him to send it first,” I said. “We can
wait here till he does.” And I got up and went out
into the middle of the road.
I was right about its being Randall. He was
naturally astounded to see me, and to learn what
5
she said quickly.


2O8 MIDNIGHT AT MEARS HOUSE
had happened. I told him about Garth and Arthur,
and asked him if he would send the wire to Stimp-
SOn.
“Of course I will,” he replied. “I hope Miss
Ellis isn't much hurt, and that we shall be able to
catch the fellow—he must be a damned clever scoun-
drel. This seems to be the very deuce of a place
for queer things to happen,” he went on, “and I miss
'em all, of course ! It's just as I told you last night
—nothing would ever happen in a thousand years
when I'm around.”
I told him to cheer up, that his luck might change
before long.
“I don't believe it,” he replied gloomily, gathering
up the reins, and turning the horse around. “I’ll be
back inside half an hour,” he added, as he drove off.
I looked at my watch: it was half-past ten.
“That telegraph operator is probably in bed and
asleep by this time,” I thought. “I hope Randall 'll
make him get up and send the message. It ought
to have gone two hours ago—and would, too, if I
hadn’t been such a fool as to let Margaret come with
me.” And yet, curiously enough, I did not regret it.
“Well, that's all fixed,” I said, crossing the broad
strip of grass between the wall and the road, and
sitting down again beside her. “It's really too bad
of me, though, to keep you waiting here another half-
hour just to get that telegram off.”


2 IO MIDNIGHT AT MEARS HOUSE
gripped the revolver in my pocket, however, as I rose
and walked slowly toward him.
“Yes,” I said in answer to his question, “Mears
House is a little over a mile from here. Keep
straight ahead till you come to a couple of big stone
posts.”
“Thanks,” he replied courteously. “Perhaps you
can tell me also if I shall find Mr. David Mears
there?”
I stared at him stupidly without replying.
“It's a queer hour to make a call, I know,” he
went on apologetically, “but I have some very im-
portant matters to discuss with him and my time is
limited.”
I found my tongue at last.
“Mr. Mears,” I said slowly, “has been dead
nearly a week.” -
He took a step toward me, and thrust his head
forward in an odd gesture of surprise and incredulity.
“Dead!” he exclaimed.
“I’m amazed,” I said, “that you shouldn't have
heard of it. It was in all the papers.”
“I haven’t read the papers lately,” he replied.
“I’ve been too sick.”
“It seems queer they didn't tell you of it in the
village.”
“I haven’t been in the village since I got here
Friday.”


MIDNIGHT AT MEARS HOUSE 2 II
“The very night David Mears—died !” I ex-
claimed.
“What cursed luck!” he muttered, and then in a
louder tone: “If I hadn't put off going to see him
till I was feeling better, I might have got my business
with him all settled. As it is—”
“Possibly I can be of some assistance to you,” I
interrupted. “I’m staying at Mears House, and I
think I can arrange an interview for you with either
Mr. Mears' nephew, Mr. Keaton, or with his
brother, Mr. Jonathan Mears, if you would care
to have me. If you'll give me your name and ad-
dress, I'll let you know.”
“That's very kind of you,” he replied gratefully.
“I have no address just at present; but I shall be
staying somewhere in the village, and I'll call at the
post-office for your note.”
“And to whom shall I address it?” I asked.
For the fraction of a second he seemed to hesitate.
Then he said quietly:
“To James H. Ryder.”


CHAPTER XIX
I PLAY THE FOOL ERRANT
THAT I did not cry out at hearing his name was
simply because I was too amazed to speak. Had he
told me that he was the Czar of Russia, I should have
found it no harder to believe—so certain had I been
of James Ryder's identity, so positive did I feel that
this man could not possibly be he.
It was some seconds before I recovered sufficiently
from my astonishment to realise that he had left me,
and was walking slowly down the road toward the
village. I hurried after him.
“Stop a minute!” I cried.
He turned around and waited for me to catch
up with him.
“You must excuse my rudeness,” I began, “ in
not saying good-night to you, but the fact is that your
name rather bowled me over. It's the same as that
of an old friend of mine, and it brought back recollec-
tions which made me forget my manners, I'm afraid.”
“I thought you seemed a trifle upset,” he replied
pleasantly; “so I decided to make off without bother-
ing you further.”
2I2


MIDNIGHT AT MEARS HOUSE 2I3
Then I acted on an impulse born of a sudden, un-
reasoning conviction of the man's honesty.
“Mr. Ryder,” I said, “I haven't been quite frank
with you. I know, or think I know, who you are
and what your business was with David Mears. Up
to a moment ago I had believed another man to be
you, and I was dazed at finding out my mistake.
There are some matters connected with Mr. Mears’
death,” I continued, “which I should like very much
to talk over with you; for I feel sure you can throw
light on them. I can't tell you what they are now,
but if you will come to see me in the morning ??
“I shall be very glad to,” he broke in, “at any
hour that is convenient.”
“Good,” I replied. “Suppose we say some time
between ten and eleven, then?” .
“That will suit me perfectly,” he answered.
I took leave of him and walked slowly back to
Margaret, wondering if I had not done a very foolish
thing. If he had had anything to do with the mur-
der of David Mears, I could hardly expect him to
keep his appointment with me. In that case I had
merely succeeded in rousing his fears, and he would
doubtless lose no time in putting as many miles as
possible between us; or he might remain in the neigh-
bourhood under an assumed name—I should not be
able to recognise him; for it had been too dark for
me to see him clearly. I had only the vaguest notion


2I4 MIDNIGHT AT MEARS HOUSE
of what he looked like—a short, slight man of middle
age with nothing distinctive about him.
And yet I did not see what else I could have done.
I could scarcely have charged him outright with the
murder, or insisted upon his accounting to me for his
actions since his arrival. I was somewhat reassured
as to the outcome of it all by my belief in his inno-
cence, altogether groundless as that belief was.
I found Margaret very curious to learn who the
man was, and why I had talked with him so long.
Her astonishment when I told her was as great as
my own had been.
“Did you find out if he wrote me that letter?”
she asked.
“No,” I said, “it never occurred to me to ask
him, but I'm positive he didn't.”
“But it was signed with his name,” she objected,
“and there were things in it that I don't see how
anyone else could have known.”
I told her that I felt sure just the same that he had
had nothing to do with it.
“And you still think it was written by the man
who robbed me just now?” she asked.
“Yes,” I said. “What his object was in im-
personating Ryder I can't imagine, but then I don't
know what was in the envelope.”
“Neither do I,” she replied. “My uncle”—she
always called David Mears that—“gave it to me only


216 MIDNIGHT AT MEARS HOUSE
right to them, and he could do as he liked about the
rest of it. I never saw her so angry. “You’ll do
nothing of the sort!' she cried. ‘Have you no re-
gard for Mr. Mears' good name? Do you want to
bring disgrace upon it, and upon yourself, too?
Don't you see that was just why he gave you the
papers, so Ryder couldn't prove anything against
him? Now he's trying to fool you into parting with
them, but you shan’t do it.”
“I told her that if my uncle had wronged the
man, it was my place to make him what reparation
I could; but I couldn't seem to make her understand
it. “You must be crazy, she kept saying, ‘to think
of doing such a thing, and you shan’t leave this room
till you've promised me not to.' I wouldn't promise,
but of course she couldn't keep me there all day;
and as soon as I got a chance I sent Nora with a
note, saying that if he would come to the house late
that night, I would see him. You know what hap-
pened?”
“Yes,” I said, marvelling at the accuracy with
which Garth had guessed her intentions, and still
more puzzled as to why he had purposely given the
bogus Ryder a chance to escape. Did he know who
the man was? I wondered.
“I wish we knew what was in that envelope,” I
said. “That might explain why this man whom we
both thought was Ryder went to such extraordinary


MIDNIGHT AT MEARS HOUSE 217
lengths to get hold of it. You say you haven't any
idea what it contained?”
“Not the slightest.”
I asked her if anyone had had a chance to open
the envelope.
“It was locked in my trunk till yesterday,” she
replied, “and since then I’ve had it with me every
moment.”
“I don't see, then,” I said, “how that scoundrel
could possibly have known what was in it? You
are sure, I suppose, that the seal hadn't been tampered
With ?”
“Not perfectly sure, but I don't think it had.”
“Well, I give it up,” I said. “Perhaps Garth
will be able to explain it.”
“But you promised not to say anything to him
about it,” she reminded me.
“Surely,” I returned in some surprise, “you can't
have any objections to my doing so now that we know
Ryder is not the man we thought?”
“Mr. Garth was very rude to me,” she said coldly.
“I don't wish to be under any further obligations
to him.”
I said no more about it. I could hardly blame
her for feeling toward him as she did. He had
been a fool to treat her so cavalierly. No girl of
any spirit would forgive him for having told her
she lied.


218 MIDNIGHT AT MEARS HOUSE
It was long past the time for Randall to return,
and I was growing more anxious every minute about
Garth and Arthur. If they had returned, I felt sure
Arthur would have come in search of us. Yet, of
course, it was out of the question for me to leave
Margaret and go back to the house alone; and I
hid my impatience as best I could. She must have
noticed it, however, for finally she suggested that
we should not wait for him any longer.
“I feel quite able to walk,” she declared, “and
I know you must be anxious to get back.”
I admitted reluctantly that I was.
She rose at once.
“Let's go, then,” she said.
“If you'll promise to tell me the instant you get
the least bit tired?”
“Honour bright,” she replied, smiling.
I made her take my arm—solely as a necessary
precaution against sun-stroke, I assured her gravely;
and we started. It was still as dark as ever; but
our eyes had become more used to it, so that the
dusky channel of the road took clearer shape before
us and we did not have to watch our steps so care-
fully.
We trudged on for some time, exchanging hardly
a word. She seemed little inclined to talk, and I
was still trying to guess who the man in the grey
'felt hat could be and what those papers were which


22O MIDNIGHT AT MEARS HOUSE
weak. “Well, I'm afraid I—I can't go much
farther—”
I caught her in time to prevent her falling.
“I certainly deserve the title of Squire of Dames,”
I thought savagely, divided between rage at my own
stupidity in not having noticed that anything was
the matter with her, and admiration at her pluck in
keeping on till she fainted. “A fine hero of romance
I should make, first letting the heroine be robbed and
nearly murdered, and then making her walk till she
drops. The least I can do to make up for it is to
carry her the rest of the way home.”
I thought it would be easy enough; for she could
not have weighed much over a hundred pounds, and
I was rather proud of my strength—but I had not
gone far when my heart was pounding at a great rate
and my breath coming in short, quick gasps. This
was, of course, simply because I had been sick in bed
two days, and had nothing whatever to do with the
fact that her head was resting against my cheek and
that I held her warm, lithe body pressed closely
against me. I assured myself almost fiercely that I
should have felt the same if I had been carrying a
sack of meal; and as if in derision at such a notion,
the breeze blew a strand of her hair across my
face and filled my nostrils with the sweet odour
of it.
There was something so like an unexpected caress


MIDNIGHT AT MEARS HOUSE 22 I
about it that I stopped short, trembling all over.
Then with a quick surge of my blood I strained her
to me more closely, and strode on as if she were a
mere feather in my arm. I whispered her name once
or twice, but I was glad she did not answer me; for
I feared she would have refused to let me carry her
any farther, and I grudged every step of the distance
I had yet to go. I did not even think how absurd
it was that I, an old bachelor of nearly forty who
had always prided myself on my unsusceptibility to
feminine allurements, should experience such poignant
pleasure at having this unconscious slip of a girl so
close to me. It did not occur to me to try to analyse
my emotions, to find out if I could why it was that
her nearness affected me so strongly that I walked like
a man in a dream, blind and deaf to all ordinary
sights and sounds.
I was not even aware that someone was approach-
ing, nor did I hear him call me by name till he had
done so twice. Then I saw that it was Dent, and
that he seemed very excited. Even then, however,
I did not connect his coming with the disappearance
of my friends, and I asked him rather blankly what
he wanted.
“Mr. Keaton and Mr. Garth, sir,” he stammered
—“they haven't come back yet.”
His words were like a dash of cold water, waking
me with a start from the mental drowsiness which


222 MIDNIGHT AT MEARS HOUSE
the dominant grip of my emotions had brought upon
me. The dumfounded look on his face at seeing
Margaret in my arms helped me to realise how much
more like a fool errant than a knight errant I had
been acting. By some odd quirk of memory there
flashed into my mind Hotspur's rebuke to his wife—
“This is no time to play with mammets or to tilt
with lips"—and I seemed to see it written in his
glance.
The idea of Dent's quoting Shakespeare, even
dumbly, stirred me to sudden and incongruous laugh-
ter, which caused him to regard me with an expres-
sion of bewilderment akin to alarm.
“Cheer up, Dent,” I said, restraining my mirth,
“I haven’t gone utterly mad, though I don’t wonder
you think so. You know, or perhaps you don't know,
what Dryden or some other old party once said—“A
little nonsense now and then is relished by the best
of men.” What possessed me to make such a per-
fectly asinine remark, I can't say. Perhaps it was
because I was still partly under the influence of my
recent attack of giddiness.”
“Yes, sir,” said Dent respectfully.
“You are naturally somewhat surprised,” I con-
tinued in the same strain of senseless levity, “to find
me playing the Squire of Dames at such a time; but
I must tell you in self-defence that the rôle was prac-
tically forced upon me: it was not of my own choosing,


224 MIDNIGHT AT MEARS HOUSE
I helped her in, and had my foot on the step when
Dent jogged my elbow.
“Will you drive back here, sir,” he whispered,
“as soon as you've left the young lady?”
I nodded to him and gathered up the reins.
“I'm afraid this is really the last stage of our
adventure,” I said sadly to Margaret when we had
started, “unless the horse is obliging enough to fall
down and break his neck, or we are set upon by
highwaymen. Aren't you sorry?”
She made no reply.
“Well, I am anyway,” I declared heartily. “I
shall never forgive Dent for having cut short the best
part of it.”
She drew a little away from me.
“I shall be very grateful to you,” she said coldly,
“if you will never mention the subject to me
again.”
“Very well,” I replied, more hurt than I could
have believed possible by her tone, and wondering
stupidly why she should be so offended. “I’m sorry
I said it, but it's true.”
She received my remark in silence, and for the
remainder of the short drive neither of us spoke.
Mrs. Bartlett was waiting for us at the front door,
and I had hardly stopped the horse before Margaret
jumped out. She did not even bid me good-night.
I turned and drove slowly back to where Dent


MIDNIGHT AT MEARS HOUSE 225
waited for me—thinking not of him, nor of Garth,
nor of Arthur, but of a stray lock of hair which
like a caress the wind had blown mockingly against
my face.


CHAPTER XX
WE GO ON A VAIN QUEST
BoTH Dent and Randall were standing just where
I had left them by the side of the road when I drove
up. The coachman, from force of habit, I suppose,
went at once to the horse's head, though the poor
beast was too discouraged at being cheated out of
its expected rest to need holding. Randall came
straight to me.
“Dent and I have been having a row,” he said,
“because he won't tell me where your friends are.
I made him admit that he knows, but he seems to
think he would be eternally damned, if he told me.
I believe he suspects me of having designs on them.”
He laughed pleasantly.
“Dent is extremely good at keeping secrets,” I
replied, “but I don’t imagine he'll have any scruples
about telling me. If you'll get in and take the reins,
I'll speak to him.”
He did so, and I jumped out and beckoned Dent
aside.
“Where are they?” I asked.
“Thornton's Ledge, sir,” he answered in a muffled
voice.
226


228 MIDNIGHT AT MEARS HOUSE
in about half an hour. You'll come with us, I sup-
pose?”
“Will Il" he exclaimed. “Well, I guess rather!
You don't think I'm going to miss the first chance
I've had to get mixed up in all this queer business—
not so you'd notice it. I'm willing to bet you a box
of cigars, though, that the fireworks won't go off,
if I'm there: they never do.”
We crowded in beside him, and Dent turned the
horse about and drove past the entrance to Mears
House down the Shore Road in the direction away
from the village. I made him tell us as we drove
along what he had been doing since he left the house.
Garth had told him, he said, to go straight to
Plummer's Point, and if he didn’t meet them on the
way, to get a boat and row over to the ledge; but
though Arthur had given him minute directions how
to find the place, he had become confused in the dark,
missed the trail which led through the woods to the
Point, and taken another trail that brought him out
finally into the road again. He wasted more time
finding the right path, and when he did reach the
point it was after ten o'clock. Seeing a boat drawn
up on the beach, he concluded that they had returned
while he was wandering around in the woods, so
he went back to the house. He learned from Mrs.
Bartlett that they had not got back. She told him
also that Margaret and I had gone out right after


MIDNIGHT AT MEARS HOUSE 229
dinner, that she was afraid we had met with an acci-
dent, and made him promise to go in search of us.
“We both seem to have made a fine mess of it,”
I said when he had ended his story. “I don't see
what they went to the island for anyway, or why
they should stay there so long.”
“Perhaps their boat got loose and left them
marooned,” Randall suggested.
“But Dent says he saw the boat,” I objected.
“It may have been someone's else he saw.”
“Possibly,” I admitted, “but what puzzles me is
why there should be a boat there at all. No one
lives on the island now to my knowledge, and hasn't
since old Thornton died three years ago. There's
nothing but a miserable old tumble-down hut on it
not fit for a dog to stay in.”
Dent, who had been driving very slowly for the
past few minutes and scanning the roadside with great
care, brought the horse to a sudden stop.
“It's somewhere hereabouts that the path begins,
sir,” he said.
We jumped out and tied the horse to a tree.
After poking about for a moment Dent found the
trail, which was nearly hidden by a thick growth of
underbrush. I didn’t blame him for having missed
it the first time: it was a miracle he had found it at all.
It had been dark enough in the road, but when
we entered the woods we had almost to feel our way.


232 MIDNIGHT AT MEARS HOUSE
“This is where Mr. Garth said they were coming,
Sir.”
I felt a sudden chill strike through me. Had they
been lured here and murdered? I asked myself.
“Quick!” I cried to Randall.
In half a dozen strokes he had sent the nose of the
boat ashore. Dent grabbed the painter and leaped
out, Randall and I at his heels.
“Stay here till we come back,” I said to the coach-
man; and an instant later I had opened the door of
the shack, stepped inside, and struck a match.
It was empty. I gave a grunt of relief, but my
fears were not long in returning; for if they had been
done away with, I reflected, their bodies might have
been thrown into the water or carried off. I lighted
another match: Randall did the same; and we hunted
eagerly about for any evidences of foul play.
The interior of the shack consisted of but a single
room, containing beside a rickety cot-bed and a dilapi-
dated chest of drawers, only an old, cane-bottomed
chair with a great hole in it, and a small rusty stove.
Beyond discovering a store of crackers, coffee, sugar,
bacon, and tinned things—showing that someone had
been living there recently—we found only odds and
ends of rubbish. There was nothing to show that
Garth and Arthur had visited the place.
“If they've actually been here,” I said when we
had ended our search, “which I don’t more than half
*.


MIDNIGHT AT MEARS HOUSE 233
believe in spite of what Dent says, it seems strange
they didn't leave a note, telling us where they had
gone. They must have known we should come to
look for them.”
“I should have thought so, too,” he replied, “but
maybe they counted on meeting us on their way back.”
“That's what's bothering me,” I rejoined. “If
they got some passing fisherman to take them off,
why didn't he land them at the Point?”
“It might have been too far out of his way, if he
was in a hurry to get ashore.”
It seemed a likely enough explanation; but for all
that I could not succeed in shaking off the fear that
Thornton's Ledge had been the scene of a tragedy.
There was nothing to be gained, however, by our
staying any longer, and we went back to the boat.
I asked Dent again if there wasn't a possibility that
he had been mistaken in thinking this their destina-
tion; but he refused to admit it.
“Mr. Garth told me they were comin' here, sir,”
he repeated stubbornly. “I couldn't have made no
mistake about that.”
The wind, which was blowing off-shore, had fresh-
ened considerably while we were in the shack, and
we had a hard time of it getting back. After a few
minutes, Randall was glad enough to let me “spell ”
him a while; and as Dent knew little about rowing,
Randall and I took turns at the oars. Both of us


234 MIDNIGHT AT MEARS HOUSE
were pretty well exhausted when we reached the cove,
and I was feeling so drowsy from having gone the
greater part of two nights without sleep that had it
not been for my anxiety, I should have thrown myself
down on the beach and taken a nap.
I left the oars where I had found them under the
bush, and we stumbled back along the trail to the
road. And there another surprise awaited us—the
horse and runabout had disappeared.
Randall greeted this discovery with a great burst
of laughter. He sat down and laughed and laughed,
as if the prospect of a further tramp of two miles
were the funniest thing in the world.
“I don’t see where the joke comes in,” I grumbled.
“Where's your sense of humour?” he said. “If
this isn’t a horse on us!—no pun intended. We steal
someone's boat to take a row, and someone steals
our horse to take a ride. Poetic justice, that's what
they call it. I was wrong after all to bet you nothing
would happen if I came along. The fireworks
haven't gone off, to be sure, but everything else has—
oars, friends, horse 95
An exclamation from Dent interrupted him.
“Here's a note, sir,” he cried, “pinned to the
tree.”
I struck a match and read aloud:
“Sorry, but had to have it.—Garth.”


MIDNIGHT AT MEARS HOUSE 235
Randall whistled.
“Cool of him, I must say,” he remarked, “but
maybe they'd come a long way. I was right, you
see, about their getting ashore.”
I was too angry to care about that. After all the
trouble and anxiety I had been to on Garth's account,
to have him calmly appropriate the horse and run-
about in this way was like a slap in the face.
“Why the deuce,” I said savagely, “couldn't he
and Keaton have walked the rest of the way as well
as we could?”
“It does seem a little like crowding the mourners,
doesn't it?” Randall rejoined cheerfully, “but we
may as well make the best of it. They say walking
is fine exercise.”
I merely grunted in reply, and set off for Mears
House at the best pace I could.
It was nearly four o'clock when we arrived, and
long before then the painful necessity of keeping
awake and moving had claimed my entire attention.
Somehow or other I dragged myself upstairs and
across the hall to my room. Then without bothering
even to take off my coat and shoes, I threw myself
on the bed, and in ten seconds I was sound asleep.


MIDNIGHT AT MEARS HOUSE 239
ance, and of Dent's meeting us on the way back–
and I had taken pains to treat the whole episode in
as unromantic and matter-of-fact a way as I could.
“Of course, if you say so, that settles it,” I re-
marked. “I beg your pardon for having seemed,
momentarily, to doubt your diagnosis. I'll try my
best after this to remember I'm in love. Kindly
remind me, will you, if I should chance to forget it
occasionally?”
“Gladly,” he said, “but I don't believe there'll
be much need for me to.”
“I’m really curious to learn how you found it
out,” I went on. “Was I muttering her name in
my sleep when you came in?”
“No, it was what you didn't tell me of your ad-
venture of the Shore Road, and the tone of your
voice when you were speaking of her that made me
suspect it.”
I burst out laughing.
“You know what Bill Nye said to the chap who
accused him of snoring, and insisted that he heard
him do so?—“Young man, you mustn't believe every-
thing you hear. If that's the extent of your evi-
dence against me, I shan’t worry much about it.”
“I shouldn't, if I were you. You might have
gone much farther and fared a great deal worse.
She's a very charming girl: I hope you’ll invite me
to the wedding.”


242 MIDNIGHT AT MEARS HOUSE
fore then Keaton was positive I was wrong in think-
ing he had gone to the ledge; and when the boat
was near enough for him to see who was in it, he
began to laugh. “Hanged if it isn't that poor old
codger who's been bringing us lobsters!” he chuckled.
—I had a hard time of it persuading him that the
rascal must be disguised.
“He beached the boat and hid the oars under a
bush. We waited ten minutes longer before leaving
our hiding-place and starting for the ledge. By the
time we got there it was almost dark.”
“You must have been mad enough after all the
trouble you'd gone to not to find anything in the
shack but a lot of dry grub,” I broke in.
Garth looked amazed.
“You don't mean to tell me you didn't discover
that anything was missing?” he said.
“No, we didn't.”
“You weren't at all surprised, then, to find no
clothing or personal belongings of any sort there?”
“By Jove! I never thought of that,” I said.
“There was something else in the shack, then, when
you and Arthur arrived? What was it?”
“A small wooden chest with my own initials,
S. G., burned in the lid.”
I thought at once of the felt hat with the same
letters stamped in the sweat-band.
“What was in it?” I asked him eagerly.


MIDNIGHT AT MEARS HOUSE 243
“I don’t know.”
“You don't know!” I repeated.
“It was locked and we couldn't break it open,”
he explained; “so we brought it away with us.”
“And that was why you took the horse?”
He nodded.
“We couldn't have carried it much farther: it
was a choice between leaving it beside the road or
taking the runabout.”
“And you haven't opened it yet?”
“No, I thought you might like to assist at the
ceremony.”
I told him that I should, and asked him how they
had got it ashore.
He said that after they had given up hope of
Dent's coming and had resigned themselves to stay
on the ledge until morning, a belated fisherman had
passed within hail and taken them off; but as Randall
had guessed, he had refused to go out of his way to
put them ashore at the Point, and had landed them a
few miles farther on.
“You must have been mighty careless about fasten-
ing the boat,” I said.
“Someone came and took it while we were in the
shack,” he replied; “the owner of the chest, if I'm
not mistaken.”
I reminded him that he and Arthur had taken his
boat.


244 MIDNIGHT AT MEARS HOUSE
“He must have had another boat hidden some-
where near,” he said. “Very likely he found a hand-
kerchief or something else one of us had dropped
along the trail, which made him suspicious, and he
came back. When he found the boat gone, he took
the other one and rowed after us—it was dark enough
so that he ran little risk of being seen—and towed
our boat back with him.”
“It doesn't sound very probable,” I objected.
He asked me how I explained the fact of the
boat's being there when Dent reached the cove.
“It may have been someone's else boat,” I said.
“Which is even more improbable,” he declared.
“Keaton tells me that old Thornton was the only
person that ever kept a boat there, and that no one
uses the cove now as a landing-place—the condition
of the path shows that. But that isn't the only reason
why I feel practically certain that we have your
drunken friend to thank for our pleasant evening on
the ledge. The very fact that he was desperate
enough to play such a risky game on you to get a
chance to rob Miss Ellis is pretty sure proof that
he knew we'd discovered his hiding-place, and that
it wouldn’t be safe for him to remain in the neigh-
bourhood much longer.
“My notion is that as soon as he'd marooned us
on the ledge, he made up his mind to take advantage
of our absence, and the presumably unguarded con-


MIDNIGHT AT MEARS HOUSE 245
dition of the house, to rob her. Then when he found
she'd gone out with you, he sneaked along behind
till he'd made sure you were going to the village,
cut around ahead of you, and—succeeded at last in
getting what he has been after so persistently.”
“And what the deuce has he been after—money?”
“I don’t think so,” he answered, “not in the
shape of actual cash or salable securities, at any rate.
I’ve a notion 95
“What is it?” I asked impatiently, as he paused.
“I can't tell you that now.”
“Have you any idea,” I persisted, “who the
fellow is? I thought, of course, it was Ryder, after
what the paralytic man told me, but it can’t be.”
“That's another question which I’d rather not
answer.”
“Hang it all!” I said irritably. “I don't see
why you can't tell me what you think about it.”
“I told you why once,” he replied soberly, “and
you said then—”
“That I wouldn't bother you with questions; but
you promised to let me have a look at your cards
once in a while, and it seems to me I'm seeing mighty
few of them.”
He seemed rather hurt.
“I’m sorry,” he said, “that you think I'm not
giving you a square deal; but there are things con-
nected with this affair so queer that it makes me


246 MIDNIGHT AT MEARS HOUSE
wonder at times if I haven't let my imagination make
a fool of me in the theory I've formed to account for
them. However, we ought to know before long
whether I'm right or not.”
“I hope so, I'm sure,” I grumbled, “but it doesn’t
seem to me we're any nearer a solution. If we'd
been able to catch the man in the grey felt hat—or
rather to keep him after you'd caught him—we'd
have accomplished something; but now that he's got
what he was after, we shan’t see any more of him,
that's certain.”
“I wouldn't be too sure of it,” he remarked quietly.
“I expect him to pay us another visit to-night.”
“What!” I cried. “You mean he's coming back
to steal something else?”
“I didn't say so,” he replied. “I merely said
that I expected him to pay us another visit.”
“Of a purely social character, I suppose? Or
perhaps he's coming to give Margaret back those
papers he stole from her.”
He smiled enigmatically.
“Don’t you think you've kept Mr. Ryder waiting
about long enough?” he enquired.
I sprang up.
“I’d forgotten all about him,” I said. “Come
down with me and hear what he has to say.”


248 MIDNIGHT AT MEARS HOUSE
to do with his settling in such an out-of-the-way spot
as Mears House.
I had expected that Ryder would show some bitter-
ness and animosity toward the dead man—it would
have been only natural that he should have; but
his was apparently one of those natures in which
time lessens instead of increases the desire for re-
venge; for there was nothing in the way he spoke
of the man who had wronged him so deeply to show
that he cherished the least resentment. He was quite
frank, however, in admitting that he had told David
Mears that he would hunt him up and kill him as
soon as he got out of jail, and that he firmly intended
to do so.
“For a long while,” he said, “I used to count the
weeks before I should be free to carry out my threat;
but later I came to see things differently. It didn't
seem worth while to spend the rest of my life in
prison, or to be hanged or electrocuted, just for the
sake of settling an old grudge. I was determined,
though, to make him right the wrong he'd done me,
in a measure at least, by clearing my name. It was
for that purpose I came here; but unless he left cer-
tain private memoranda—which he probably de-
stroyed long ago—among his papers, I’ve come too
late.”
“It was a pity you weren't able to call on him
the day you arrived,” said Garth. “I understand


25O MIDNIGHT AT MEARS HOUSE
“How did you know who it was?” he cried, fear
as well as surprise in his voice.
“That doesn't matter,” Garth returned. “What
does matter is that you have lied to us about your
actions. Your object in doing so I won't pretend to
state, but it seems to me you'd do well to realise
that it places you in a rather unenviable position.”
“You think I killed him l” exclaimed Ryder ex-
citedly. “You think that?”
“It makes no difference what I think,” said Garth
curtly. “What we're after is the truth. I would
suggest that you bear that in mind, and tell us what
you actually did that afternoon—and night.”
His voice was stern, almost threatening. Ryder
seemed to shrink at the sound of it, and his pale face
grew a shade whiter; but when he spoke I could
detect none of the former nervousness and dread in
his voice.
“I was a fool,” he said, “not to be quite frank
with you; but I was afraid if I told you the actual
facts, you wouldn't believe me, and that if you knew
where I’d been, you’d be sure I killed him.”
“Then you were here the night David Mears was
murdered?” I broke in.
“Yes,” he said, “I was here, on the grounds,
within fifty yards or so of the house all the evening.”
“You must have seen me or heard me, then, when
I came. I made racket enough trying to get in.”


MIDNIGHT AT MEARS HOUSE 25 I
He shook his head.
“I didn't see or hear anyone,” he replied. “I was
lying in a faint the whole time. It sounds incredible,
I know. That's why I kept quiet about it.
“I reached Shelburne about two o'clock Friday
afternoon,” he continued. “I was feeling pretty well
done-up—I’d been under the weather for a couple
of days; but I decided to try to walk here, sick as I
was. It took me nearly five hours to do it. Every
little while I had to stop to rest, and twice I fainted
dead away. My head was swimming so the last
half-mile that I hardly knew where I was going.
When I got almost up to the house I had another
dizzy spell, and I wandered off the drive and sat
down.
“The next thing I remember was waking up, shiv-
ering with chills and fever. I looked at my watch:
it was half-past one. I got up and started to walk
back to the village. How far I got before I
fainted again, I don't know. It was light when I
woke up and found a man bending over me, asking
me something. He helped me into his wagon and
took me home with him. I was out of my head most
of the time for the next two days: then I had a rapid
turn for the better, and day before yesterday I was
able to get up. I wanted Mr. Sparks to take me to
the village with him yesterday afternoon; but he in-
sisted that I wasn’t well enough to go, and that I


252 MIDNIGHT AT MEARS HOUSE
must stay there till I got stronger; but I was im-
patient to see Mr. Mears, so I stole out of the house
after supper without either he or his wife seeing me.
I took the wrong branch where the road forked and
came a good bit out of my way. Then I saw Mr.
Scarsden.
“When he told me Mr. Mears was dead, it struck
me all of a heap; and when I found that he'd been
killed—for I guessed by the way he spoke he hadn't
died a natural death—on the very night I arrived,
I saw at once how black the case would look against
me if it were known I’d been here. If I hadn't
been afraid of exciting suspicion, I'd have cleared
out at once—I came near doing so as it was—but I
decided finally it would be better for me to see him
and say nothing of where I'd been. That, gentle-
men, is the truth of the whole matter. You can be-
lieve it or not as you like.”
But for the fact that Ryder had lied to us in the
first place, I should have been strongly inclined to
credit his story, improbable as it sounded; for he had
told it without the least hesitancy or apparent equivo-
cation; but when I recalled the circumstances and the
motive he had had to commit the crime, I did not
know what to think. It was Garth who broke the
silence.
“I believe your story, Mr. Ryder,” he said gravely,
“but as my chief reason for doing so is one that


254 MIDNIGHT AT MEARS HOUSE
prefer,” he added, “that no one else knows who you
are, or why you are here. Perhaps"—he hesitated
a trifle—“you'd have no great objection to playing
the part of a servant for so short a time?”
“I’d much prefer to,” returned Ryder quickly.
“I don't care to be an object of charity, if you can
call it that.”
“Could you fill the rôle of butler, do you think?”
Garth asked him.
A faint smile crossed Ryder's face.
“I ought to be able to,” he said. “I’ve been
doing it for the warden for the last five years.”
“Good!” Garth cried. “That's a splendid way
out of the difficulty. We need someone who can be
trusted to wait on the table properly, too,” he added.
“Our present waitress is altogether too fond of
flavouring things to suit her own taste. I smelt
that stain on your dinner coat the instant I came
into your room,” he told me later. “It was lucky
you took that cup of coffee externally instead of
internally. She put the same sort of stuff into it,
I guess, that she did into Dent's tea.”
Then he asked me if I would find Keaton and
bring him back with me.
I found Arthur just leaving his room, and told him
of my meeting with Ryder the night before, of the
damaging admissions we had got from him regard-
ing his whereabouts the night of the murder, and of


256 MIDNIGHT AT MEARS HOUSE
“Why, yes,” he replied, “that's the very size I
wear.”
I glanced quickly at his feet, and noted with some-
what of a shock that the shoes he had on were almost
identical in shape with those David Mears had worn
the night of his death. I spoke of it as soon as he
had gone.
“The circumstantial evidence against him is cer-
tainly piling up,” Garth observed, smiling. Then
he continued soberly: “It's just such ridiculous, mean-
ingless coincidences as that which send heaps of inno-
cent men to the gallows.”
“I suppose so,” I said; but despite his refusal to
attach any importance to the discovery, the fact that
the shoes which Ryder wore would, I felt sure, have
fitted exactly in the footprints Arthur and I had found
leading to the cliff, went far to shake my growing
belief in the man's innocence. Whether Arthur
shared this feeling or not I had no chance to find out,
for just then Maggie Sullivan knocked on the door
and announced luncheon.
“I was about to propose that we have a look at
the contents of the mysterious chest,” Garth said,
“but we shall have to put off opening it until later.”


CHAPTER XXIII
MRS. BARTLETT PUTS HER FOOT DOWN
“THAT's everything there is in it,” I said, throwing
a disgusted look at the heap of old clothes, shoes,
dirty linen, cheap haberdashery, and paper-covered
novels I had taken from the chest Garth had brought
back with him from Thornton's Ledge. “There
isn't a thing here,” I went on, “to show who the
owner of this precious truck is. Rather tough on
you and Arthur after all the trouble you took to
bring it back with you.” -
“Fortunes of war, my dear fellow,” he said cheer-
fully. “It was worth taking a chance on. Your
friend of the grey felt hat must be a very crafty
sort to take such unusual precautions against visitors.
Sign of a guilty conscience, I'm afraid.”
I said nothing, but began to tumble the things
back in the chest. I had just finished doing so when
someone knocked.
“Come in, Mrs. Bartlett,” Garth called out. “I
hope you didn't get a bad fall,” he added, as she
entered. “It was you, wasn't it, I heard tumble
down a few minutes ago?”
257


MIDNIGHT AT MEARS HOUSE 259
forth a protest from a much less strict and particular
person than she.
It seems she had had occasion to speak to Maggie
Sullivan—or Nora as she called her—about something
quite late at night soon after her arrival; and not
finding her in her room, she asked her the next morn-
ing where she had been. She had intimated that it
was none of Mrs. Bartlett's business, that she had a
perfect right to go out when she chose and to be gone
as long as she pleased. It was on the tip of Mrs.
Bartlett's tongue to tell her to pack up her things
and leave; but she remembered how hard it had be-
come to get servants to stay, so she contented herself
with giving her a sharp scolding and forbade her to
be out so late again. Maggie Sullivan had smiled
impudently, as if to imply that she cared nothing for
her orders; and this had angered the housekeeper so
much that she determined to keep a strict watch on
her.
So she sat up the next night—the night Margaret's
room had been entered—and about ten o'clock saw
the maid steal past her door and go downstairs.
Mrs. Bartlett followed her; but by the time she had
reached the door she had disappeared, so she returned
to her room and waited for her to come back. She
supposed she must have gone to sleep—though she
felt sure she hadn't; for it seemed to her that she
was wide awake when she heard the screams and then


262 MINDIGHT AT MEARS HOUSE
know no more about waiting on the table, I expect,
than the man in the moon, if he don't turn out to be
an ex-convict who'll murder us all in our beds.”
“I wouldn't worry about that, if I were you,” he
assured her. “The man comes very well recom-
mended. He served fifteen years in his last place,
and they'd have been glad to have kept him longer,
but he found his duties rather too confining.”
“H-m,” she said. “Well, he can't be any worse
than her, that's one comfort.” With which optimis-
tic remark she left us.
“Our friend, Maggie, seems to have been mak-
ing herself popular all around,” Garth observed.
“It’s about time to call a halt on her activities, I
guess, or she'll end by becoming a nuisance.”
I quite agreed with him, though I had hoped we
should be able to catch her doing something which
would have warranted us in lodging a complaint
against her with the village authorities, and having
her locked up in jail for a while. I suggested this
to Garth, but he seemed to think we should have
difficulty in proving anything against her.
“By the way,” I said a moment later, “isn't it
about time Ryder was back? He's been gone long
enough to buy a dozen suits of clothes.”
“I shan’t be much surprised if he doesn't come
back,” he said.
“You mean he may be guilty after all, and that


264 MINDIGHT AT MEARS HOUSE
“I'm afraid I can't just now.”
“Oh, very well,” I grumbled. “Suit yourself
about it. I'm going for a walk,” I added, rising—
“that is, if you think it's safe for me to do so.”
“Perfectly,” he said gravely, “so long as you keep
out of the way of Keaton and Miss Ellis.”—They
had gone out together soon after luncheon.
I glared at him and left the room without replying.
“As if it made a particle of difference to me
whether she goes walking with him or not,” I thought
angrily, as I strode along the path bordering the
cliffs. I wondered again how he could be so stupid
as to think I was in love with her, when on the con-
trary I felt distinctly annoyed at her for not having
bidden me good-night the evening before, and quite
ashamed of my brief fit of sentimental weakness on
the Shore Road. If there had been a moon, I should
have laid it to that. As it was I set it down entirely
to the fact that I was still a little light-headed after
my fever. It would be a warning to me not to let
my emotions get the better of my common-sense again.
I would take pains to show her the first possible chance
that I regretted the whole episode as much as she did,
and that I was far from being the romantic, love-
struck individual that Garth—and possibly she her-
self—thought me.
As I made this resolve I came face to face with
her at a sharp turn in the path. She was alone,


MIDNIGHT AT MEARS HOUSE 265
and I saw to my surprise that she had been crying.
“Is anything the matter?” I asked stiffly. “I
thought Arthur came with you.”
“Nothing,” she said coldly. “He—went back
another way.”
I stood aside to let her pass. She looked at me
rather oddly for an instant: then to my amazement
she began to laugh, a little hysterically, I thought.
“Men are such queer creatures,” she murmured.
“More so than girls?” I said.
“Perhaps not, on the whole,” she admitted, “but
in such different ways.”
“For example?” I said.
“No girl would ever ask a man to marry her more
than once.”
“That shows you don't read the papers carefully,”
I retorted. “There was a case reported only the
other day of a woman remarrying a man she had
already been divorced from twice. It happened in
Chicago, it's true 33
“You know perfectly well I didn't mean that,”
she interrupted. “I meant that no girl would ask
a man more than once to marry her.”
“Women are proverbial for their caution,” I ob-
served. “She’d be dead sure, of course, before she
asked him that there wasn't one chance in a thousand
of her being turned down.”
“Very likely, but that doesn't make it any the


268 MIDNIGHT AT MEARS HOUSE
I don't approve at all of—what happened last night.
If Margaret had asked me, I should have forbidden
her to go with you.”
“I wish you had,” I said. “I did my best to
prevent her going.”
“Indeed?” she remarked drily. “Well, I trust
it won’t occur again. Since Mr. Mears' death I feel
responsible for her actions; and it isn't at all proper
for her to do such things; you must realise that.”
“Quite so,” I murmured. “I shall do my best,
I promise you, to prevent anything of the sort hap-
pening again. And so Nora has gone, has she?” I
went on hastily. “Any special reason for her sud-
den departure?”
“She called me a meddling old fool,” Mrs. Bart-
lett replied stiffly.
“Dear me!” I said. “What did you to do to
call forth such an unkind and libellous remark as
that ?”
“I caught her talking again with that good-for-
nothing old reprobate—”
“Not the man in the grey felt hat!”
“I never noticed what sort of a hat he wears,”
she said.
“The old fisherman, I mean,” I explained.
She nodded.
“He came here to the house?” I asked incredu-
lously.


MIDNIGHT AT MEARS HOUSE 269
“No,” she said. “She went down through the
pasture-lot toward that clump of scrub-oaks to meet
him.”
I asked her if she were sure it was he.
“I can't say positively that I am,” she answered,
“but I guess there ain't much doubt about it, though
for all I know she may have been carrying on with
every Tom, Dick, and Harry in the neighbourhood.
It wouldn’t surprise me in the least.”
“You asked her, I suppose, what she was doing?”
“She didn't give me a chance. As soon as ever
she saw me she began calling me names, and I told
her to pack up her things and get out as quick as
she could. Dent's just taken her to the village. I
was never so glad to get rid of anyone in all my life.
If ever there was an impertinent, aggravating 3 *
She was interrupted by Arthur coming in. He
looked very much disturbed about something.
“I’d like a word with you, Phil,” he said, and led
the way into the library.


MIDNIGHT AT MEARS HOUSE 271
pod. Margaret and you are both very normal per-
sons. Given a sufficient number of tastes in common
—which you have—propinquity, aided by mother na-
ture, will do the rest. Sooner or later you’ll inevi-
tably marry: there isn’t the slightest doubt of it.
And such being the case 5 *
“You talk like a damned fool,” he broke in irri-
tably.
“You’re quite welcome to think so,” I said, “if
it gives you any satisfaction; but I hope you'll change
your mind about going away just now, for it'll be
rather awkward for Garth and I to stay on here with-
out you.”
“I don’t see why,” he objected. “I shan’t be
gone more than a week.”
“Suppose anything happens while you're away?”
“To Margaret, you mean?”
“To any of us,” I said. “Really I think you
ought to stay till we’ve cleared up the mystery of
your uncle's death.”
He made an impatient gesture.
“It may never be cleared up,” he returned.
“There doesn’t seem to be any immediate prospect
of it, you'll admit. I can’t see that Garth has ac-
complished a thing so far.”
“He may have something up his sleeve that we
know nothing about,” I urged. “I don't believe he's
been here this long without finding out a good deal,


272 MIDNIGHT AT MEARS HOUSE
though he's so infernally close-mouthed I can't get a
word out of him.”
“I don’t believe he knows a bit more about it
than we do.”
“All the more reason, then,” I declared, “why
you should stay and help clear the matter up.” But
though I spent the greater part of an hour arguing
with him, I could not shake his determination to go.
Margaret and he must have had a real lovers' quarrel,
I decided, and he was foolishly bent on not seeing
her again till she had had time to regret her part
in it. Doubtless he thought he was doing a wise
thing in going away for a time; but if I had been in
his place, I am sure I should have acted differently.
Running away always struck me as a silly proceeding
under any circumstances.
Dinner-time came without bringing our new butler,
and we had to do as best we could with no one to
wait on us. I could not see that Margaret seemed
to mind Arthur's going, though she was not the sort
of girl to show it, if she had. I doubted very much
if it had improved his chances any. She would be
more likely, I thought, to resent it as a palpable at-
tempt to make her feel sorry, or else she would regard
it with the same sort of tolerant amusement that one
does the sulkiness of a spoiled child.
Maggie Sullivan's departure didn't seem to surprise
Garth much.


MIDNIGHT AT MEARS HOUSE 273
“I hope we’ve seen the last of her,” he remarked
later as we sat smoking together in my room. “She's
a very trying person to have around.”
“On account of her fondness for doctoring other
people's drinks, you mean?”
“Not altogether that,” he replied, “but her going
makes things a good deal easier.”
“It will certainly be a relief to Mrs. Bartlett,” I
agreed.
“Not alone to her,” he said.
“So you’ve been keeping tabs on her actions, too,
have you?”
“That's about all I have been doing,” he rejoined.
“Then you knew all along what Mrs. Bartlett told
us about her?”
He nodded.
“As a matter of fact she didn't find out half she's
been up to. She said nothing, you'll remember, of
her rifling the trunk in which Keaton locked up the
contents of David Mears' desk, or of her entering
Mrs. Bartlett's own room and going through her
things. She didn’t even hear her open the mysterious
chest this morning—”
“Great Scott!” I broke in, “if she's been up to
all that mischief, why did you let her get away?
Why didn't you have her arrested long ago?”
“I hope to show you why very shortly,” he said,
“and when the time comes,” he continued earnestly,


274 MIDNIGHT AT MEARS HOUSE
“I want you to do exactly as I tell you without an in-
stant's hesitation. If you should fail to—”
“You needn't worry about that,” I said rather
stiffly. “I won't, I promise you.”
“Remember that promise,” he said gravely. “A
great deal may depend on it. You'd better lie down
now and get a little sleep.”
“Sleep!” I exclaimed.
“Well, if you won't take a nap, I will,” he re-
joined. “The man in the grey felt hat isn't likely
to make his appearance for a couple of hours yet.
If he does, you can wake me.” And he was soon
fast asleep in his chair.
I relighted my pipe and picked up a book, but I
was in no mood to read. My imagination was too
busy trying to discover the explanation of Garth's
irritating secrecy concerning the whole affair—his un-
willingness to interfere with Maggie Sullivan's ac-
tions, his reasons for thinking Ryder might not re-
turn, his confidence that the man who had robbed
Margaret would pay us another visit that very night
—above all for his guarded intimation that we were
soon to find David Mears' murderer.
The minutes flew by while I speculated on these
things. I heard the hall clock strike ten, then eleven.
The stillness of the silent house began to oppress
me, causing me to picture all sorts of gruesome end-
ings to our forthcoming adventure. I realised sud-





MIDNIGHT AT MEARS HOUSE 275
denly that the room was growing cold, and I rose
to replenish the fire.
As I was doing so, two shots rang out in the tower-
room. I dropped the stick of wood in my hand and
turned excitedly to Garth. He was already on his
feet, and I saw him hurry to the window and pull
up the shade.
“He’s had the nerve to do it after all,” he mut-
tered. Then he faced about.
“Got your revolver?” he asked me.
I nodded, and we crossed the hall and opened the
door of the tower-room.
Through a thin blue haze of pistol smoke I saw
Jonathan Mears smiling grimly at us from his big
arm-chair at the back of the room; but what arrested
my attention and made me cry out sharply was the
figure of the man in the grey felt hat lying motionless
at Jonathan Mears’ feet, a revolver in his out-
stretched hand. He had on the same clothes he
had worn the night I surprised him in the library,
and there was no mistaking that ugly drooping mouth,
or those pale red-lidded eyes.
“You recognise him, I see,” observed the para-
lytic man coolly. “I thought it must be the same
fellow that tackled you. He should have remem-
bered the old adage about the pitcher that goes too
often to the well.”
“Is he dead?” I said.
9


276 MIDNIGHT AT MEARS HOUSE
“Quite dead, I'm afraid. At any rate he hasn’t
moved since.”
“How did it happen?” Garth asked quietly.
“I got tired reading,” he said, “and turned down
the lamp and settled myself for a little nap until
Randall got back—he went to Rockford this after-
noon to see some friends. Just as I was dropping off
I heard a loose board on the tower-stairs creak a
little. ‘Ah!' I said to myself, ‘an unexpected vis-
itor!’ And I slipped farther down in my chair,
gripped my revolver, and waited.
“I waited a long time without anything happen-
ing, and I had about made up my mind that the
creaky board had scared my mysterious caller away,
when his head appeared at the top of the stairs. He
stood there for a minute or two watching me, trying
to make out if I was asleep or not, I suppose; then
he sneaked up the remaining steps as quietly as a
cat, and started toward me. I twisted sharply about,
and the instant I moved he pulled his gun on me.
We fired almost together. Fortunately for me he
was a poor shot,” he added grimly.
I stepped forward and bent over the dead man.
He had been shot through the left side of the body
close to, if not touching, the heart. The bullet had
come out considerably lower down near the small of
the back. An odd look came over Garth's face when
I told him that.


MIDNIGHT AT MEARS HOUSE 277
“Better see what he has in his pockets,” he said.
I did so, and in his inner coat pocket I came upon
the sealed envelope. It was empty; but in the same
pocket I found a letter addressed to David Mears
with two enclosures in it which I snatched eagerly
out, and going nearer the light, read aloud. One
of them was merely a short note, saying that the
writer would call on David Mears the night of Oc-
tober 15th “to discuss the business mentioned in
yours of recent date.” It was signed simply “S. G.”
The other read as follows:
“I hereby acknowledge the receipt of $5,000 paid
me this day by David Mears for having testified to
the death of his brother, Jonathan Mears.
“(Signed) SIMON GODDARD.”
“What's that?” cried the paralytic man sharply,
leaning forward in his chair—“testifying to my
death?’”
“That's what it says,” I replied: “you can see
for yourself.” And I handed him the paper. He
read it over slowly, and gave it back to me.
“I’d like to know what the devil it means,” he
said, scowling, “ some dirty piece of rascality, that's
certain.”
“Whatever may be the meaning of it,” I said, “I
guess we don’t need to look any further for your
brother's murderer.”


278 MIDNIGHT AT MEARS HOUSE
“You're right,” put in Garth tersely. “We don't
need to look any further for him—we've got him |
And with a quick bound he leaped savagely upon the
paralytic man, and pinned him against the back of
his chair.
“Keep him covered!” he cried to me, “and get
his gun away from him. Be quick about it!”
Altogether dazed as I was by Garth's action, I
mechanically obeyed him. Jonathan Mears seemed
too astounded to offer any resistance. When I had
secured his revolver, Garth let go of him, and caution-
ing me to keep a sharp watch on him, he began to
search his pockets. At this new indignity the para-
lytic man found his tongue. |
“If this is a joke, gentlemen,” he began angrily,
“I must say I fail to see the point of it.”
“It isn't a joke, Mr. Mears,” said Garth calmly.
“On the contrary—I guess this is what I’ve been
hunting for,” he broke off, handing me a crumpled
sheet of paper. “Read it aloud, will you, if you
can without taking your eye off him.”
A singular change came over Jonathan Mears' face
as I started to unfold the paper. All the malignity,
all the ferocity of the man's inmost self seemed to
rise to the surface and glare at us out of his hawk-like
little eyes.
“Give that back to me,” he cried hoarsely, “or
by G—d! —” -


MIDNIGHT AT MEARS HOUSE 279
“Sit still!” roared Garth, pointing his revolver
straight at him. Jonathan Mears sat still, but it was
the stillness of a tiger ready to spring, and I watched
him closely while I read the paper. It was dated
Mears House, July 17th of the current year.
“This is to certify that I, Jonathan Mears, in
return for $1 and other valuable considerations this
day received, do hereby give and make over to my
brother, David Mears, my entire share of the prop-
erty bequeathed me by my father, Ezra Mears; and
do hereby relinquish any and all claim to and rights
in said property in favour of said David Mears.
“(Signed) JONATHAN MEARS.
“(Witnessed) PAUL RANDALL.”
“A very interesting document,” Garth observed
drily, “but a dangerous thing to carry around loose
in one's pocket. If you'll keep your gun on him,”
he added, “I’ll call Stimpson.”
As he spoke we were startled by a sharp cry of
“Help! help!” The voice was Margaret's. I
turned and ran toward the door.
“Come back!” Garth called to me. “She isn't
there, you fool!”
But I paid no heed to him. I rushed out of the
room, calling her name, and in the pitch darkness
of the hall I ran full tilt into a man. I dealt him
a savage blow on the head with the butt of my re-


28O MIDNIGHT AT MEARS HOUSE
volver, and he fell groaning at my feet. At the same
moment Margaret opened the door of her room, and
stood there with a lighted candle in her hand, peer-
ing out at me. Her face wore a bewildered look
as if she had just waked up.
“What is it?” she asked anxiously. “Why did
you call me? Is anything the matter?”
I stared at her, too dumfounded to speak. She
took a step or two toward me. Then she caught
sight of the man I had struck down, and a startled
cry broke from her. -
“What have you done!” she exclaimed, and the
horror in her voice roused my numbed wits. I
glanced down at the prostrate figure at my feet.
“Why, it's Arthur!” I said stupidly. “I thought
he'd gone.”
She ran to him and raised his head in her arms.
As she did so an agonised cry from Garth made me
rush back to the tower-room.
Bursting in, I saw two figures whom I recognised
as Randall and Stimpson struggling fiercely in the
centre of the room. A second later they crashed
heavily against the table, overturning the lamp, and
plunging the room in a pungent blackness reeking of
smoke and oil; but in that brief glimpse I had seen
something else—something which gave me the key
to the whole mystery of David Mears' death. It was
the paralytic man's empty chair!


CHAPTER XXV
IN THE TOWER-ROOM
I STRUCK. a match just in time to see Randall break
loose from Stimpson and make a dash for the tower-
stairs with the detective after him. A grim laugh
made me glance quickly toward the opposite corner
of the room, and there half-hidden in the gloom I
saw the paralytic man kneeling on Garth's chest, his
fingers about his throat.
He rose to his feet with a snarl as I sprang at him,
and laid my cheek open with a terrific right-handed
blow; but the next instant I had hurled myself on
him and sent him crashing to the floor. Had I been
in less of an insane fury, I might have clubbed him
with my revolver and so ended the duel between us
then and there; but I was bent on treating him as
he had treated Garth, and strangling him with my
bare hands if I could. But though rage doubled my
strength for the moment, I soon found that I was
no match for him in sheer brute strength. His great
arms encircled me in a grip that seemed to crush
my ribs, to break my back. I had got my hands on
his throat, however, and I set my teeth and held on
281


282 MIDNIGHT AT MEARS HOUSE
while he twisted and turned, flinging me this way and
that, and squeezing the breath slowly out of me.
How long I writhed in the clutch of those terrible
arms I cannot say—not over a few minutes, I sup-
pose, though it seemed hours. I was conscious only
of darting streaks of fire along my spine, of a fright-
ful pain in my side, a ringing in my ears, and of a
horrible sense of suffocation as though my lungs were
bursting. An occasional dreadful gurgle came from
the paralytic man's throat, but his iron grasp never
loosened; he never ceased his frantic efforts to shake
off my grip. My strength, however, was rapidly
leaving me. Very soon, I knew, it would fail me
altogether; and then—I made a last desperate effort
to concentrate what little I had left in my fingers, to
sink them deeper in his huge flabby throat. But I
could not do so. I felt them slowly relax; the drum-
ming in my ears swelled to an enormous volume of
sound; then ceased abruptly. .
“Give him some more brandy,” I heard someone
say—the voice sounded a great way off and very faint.
A thin stream of fire trickled down my throat. It set
a thousand other fires alight within me, fires that
seemed feeding on my very vitals.
“Why can't they leave me alone?” I thought in
a passion of self-pity and of regret for the Land of
Illusion wherein I had been walking again along the


MIDNIGHT AT MEARS HOUSE 283
Shore Road with Margaret in my arms. As before,
the wind had blown a loose strand of her hair against
my face, filling my nostrils with the sweet odour of
it, and thrilling me like an unexpected caress—and
they had waked me to a reality of excruciating pain,
of fiendish torment!
And then the dream returned; only this time it
was she who held me in her arms. I felt her breath
on my cheek; the perfume of her hair was again in
my nostrils, stronger, sweeter than before. I prayed
that this time they would leave me in peace; but
presently I heard the same voice—how I loathed the
sound of it!—“He’s coming round all right,” it said.
“A little more brandy ” I made an heroic effort
and closed my mouth; but I could feel something be-
ing forced gently between my teeth, and once more
a stream of liquid fire coursed through me, arousing
the other dormant fires to fierce activity.
Only this time, curiously enough, there was no van-
ishing of the dream. Instead it grew more real,
more vivid. Margaret was still bending over me,
but the look in her eyes had changed—she seemed
frightened, distressed; and there were other faces
which did not belong there. I did not know who
they were, and I wanted to tell them to go away and
leave us alone together; but when I tried to, some-
thing seemed to snap in my head, and I sank into a
black and soundless pit.


284 MIDNIGHT AT MEARS HOUSE
It was not until two days later that I learned the
sequel of that terrible struggle in the tower-room.
The intervening hours I passed for the most part in
a heavy stupor, from which I was aroused at intervals
by sharp pains in my side and back. Two of my
ribs had cracked in the paralytic man's awful grip.
I should be lucky, the doctor said, if I got up in less
than a month.
My rescue was not at all the dramatic thing I had
imagined. I had pictured to myself the timely ap-
pearance of Dent, or Stimpson, or possibly even
Ryder; of a furious battle with Jonathan Mears be-
fore they could force him to release his hold; of
another hand-to-hand conflict fiercer, perhaps, than
any that had preceded it. My astonishment may be
imagined, then, when Garth told me that nothing of
the kind had happened, that my rescuer had been
Margaret herself!
Without knowing it, toward the close of my fight
with the paralytic man, I had cried repeatedly for
help. Margaret had left Arthur and run to my as-
sistance. When she came in I had just lost con-
sciousness, unaware of the fact that I had succeeded
at last in choking Jonathan Mears, too, into insensi-
bility. That she had found courage to enter the
tower-room at all was marvellous, I thought; for on
the very threshold she must have come upon the body
of the man in the grey felt hat. In one corner


MIDNIGHT AT MEARS HOUSE 285
Garth was lying—dead also, to all appearances; and
near him the paralytic man and I lay motionless, his
great arms still about me, my fingers still gripping his
throat.
But only for an instant did she hesitate. Then
she came straight to me, and putting down the candle,
she succeeded—Heaven knows how !—in freeing me
from Jonathan Mears' clutches and dragging me to
the open window near his bed. And there she sat
on the floor with my head propped against her shoul-
der, letting the cool night air blow over me.
It was thus Stimpson found her when he returned
half an hour later from an unsuccessful chase after
Randall. Garth was just coming-to as he appeared,
and they laid me on the bed and plied me with brandy
till I showed signs of life. Meanwhile Arthur had
recovered enough from the blow I had struck him to
rouse Mrs. Bartlett and have her look after Mar-
garet, who was about ready to collapse. Garth said
that Mrs. Bartlett seemed more shocked at finding
Margaret with her hair down and only a dressing-
gown on among a roomful of men than she did at
anything else. “And he promised me only this after-
noon that such a thing shouldn't happen again,” she
said, eyeing me resentfully, as though I had been to
blame for it all!
Not till Dr. Satterlee arrived were they able to
revive the paralytic man. The doctor thought he


288 MIDNIGHT AT MEARS HOUSE
*
was due to Maggie Sullivan's having told Goddard
of Ryder's call on us, and that Goddard had mistaken
him for a detective, and made up his mind to get him
out of the way so he could not interfere with his plans.
Arthur's unexpected appearance was the result of
a sudden whim which caused him to cut short his
journey and return at once to Mears House. He
left the train at the first opportunity and took the
next train back to Shelburne, reaching there at the
same hour I had arrived the week before. While
still some distance from the house he had heard the
shots in the tower-room, and hurried to find out what
had happened. As he came up the front stairs he,
too, had heard Margaret scream, as he thought, but
her voice seemed to him to come from the tower-
room. When I dashed out so suddenly he had been
too surprised to utter a word, and the light being at
my back, he had failed to realise till too late that
in the darkness of the hall I could not see who he
was. Fortunately he had not been badly hurt by the
blow I had given him. -
Margaret, I learned, did not seem to be any the
worse for her exciting experiences, though she still
showed the effects of them, Garth told me, in a ner-
vousness of speech and manner which he had not
noticed in her before. This, though, he thought,
might be largely due to her being deprived of the
regular outdoor exercise to which she had been ac-


290 MIDNIGHT AT MEARS HOUSE
be implicated in his uncle's death; but in none of these
stories was the paralytic man mentioned as a possible
author of the crime. It was, of course, extremely
unlikely that even the most imaginative reporter
should suspect that his paralysis had been merely
feigned; for Garth took good care that no one be-
sides Dr. Satterlee should get any inkling of the fact.
I did not blame him for being unwilling to let the
whole truth of the matter come out until he could,
if possible, establish his conviction of Jonathan Mears'
guilt by the man's own admission of it.
To what lengths some of the reporters went to
try to get information from us may readily be guessed
by anyone who has had experience with the more
versatile and persistent members of the profession.
We lived for days in a state of constant siege. If
one of us ventured out even after nightfall for a
breath of fresh air, he or she was sure to be pounced
upon by some sharp-eyed sentinel, and almost tear-
fully besought to answer “just a few questions.”
Repeated attempts were made to bribe poor Dent to
tell what he knew, and he carried on his duties for a
time surrounded by a cordon of human interrogation-
points. A few of the less scrupulous papers printed
faked interviews with all of us, including even Mrs.
Bartlett, whose indignation at seeing a picture of her-
self in a night-gown shielding Margaret from the
attack of a villain in a black mask with a pistol in


MIDNIGHT AT MEARS HOUSE 29I.
either hand, I leave to the imagination of the reader.
I must admit that I felt a good deal of sympathy
with these hungry news-gatherers; for it was some
time before I myself found out just how Garth had
fastened the murder upon the paralytic man, and
meanwhile I was impatient to learn the meaning of
several things connected with the affair which had
completely puzzled me. To many of my readers,
doubtless, whose wits are sharper than my own, much
that mystified me requires no explanation—they have
guessed its significance already; and of such I must
ask pardon if I try their patience by touching upon
matters which in their opinion need no elucidation.
But it seems to me not altogether unreasonable to
suppose that there may be others to whom some of
Garth's actions may have appeared quite as inex-
plicable as they did to me, and who may, therefore,
be interested in a long talk I had with him a few days
later in which he satisfied my curiosity on these points.


MIDNIGHT AT MEARS HOUSE 293
as possible. Will pay you five cents a word for ex-
clusive use of story. Wire answer.”
“That certainly sounds good to me,” I said, “but
I'll bet they kick at paying you at that rate for all
you've written. You must have nearly ten thousand
words there.”
“In that case,” he rejoined cheerfully, “I shall
have to accept one of these other offers; ” and he
produced three more telegrams very like the first.
“I guess I can strike a bargain with one of them
that'll make up for all the bother I’ve had lately
with that red-haired friend of yours, Cassidy, and the
rest. It seems rather mean to play any favourites,”
he went on, “but unfortunately one has to live—or
labours under the delusion that he must; and as I
can't very well charge Keaton or Miss Ellis anything
for my work—”
“Why shouldn't you?” I interrupted. “But for
you, Jonathan Mears would probably have got away
with all his brother had, and Margaret at any rate
would have been left without a cent.”
“Precisely,” he agreed. -
“But I don't see—” I began; and then I stopped,
ashamed of my stupidity in not grasping his meaning
sooner. The service he had done them in preventing
the paralytic man's getting the property was a small
thing, in Margaret's eyes at least, compared to an-


MIDNIGHT AT MEARS HOUSE 297
any working hypothesis to fit the facts except upon
the assumption that Jonathan Mears' paralysis was
merely feigned, and that in reality he was as well able
to walk as anybody.
“This supposition appeared so wild to me at first
that I was inclined to reject it altogether, especially
when I found that his story about having suffered a
paralytic stroke some months before on his rubber
plantation was apparently true; but the more I
thought of it the more certain I became that he was
shamming, and I did my best to verify this suspicion
by going to his room frequently in the hope that he
might betray himself by some slight movement which
he would think quite noiseless. And finally I did
hear just such a movement—a faint scraping noise
that I felt sure he made by moving one of his feet a
mere trifle. That convinced me that I was right
about his ability to walk.
“Their plan for murdering David Mears, as I
figured it out, had been for Randall to return from
his make-believe fishing trip sometime that evening,
and row close enough to shore to see Jonathan Mears
signal to him after he had killed his brother. The
paralytic man was then to go back at once to his
room—to lessen the risk he ran of his absence from
it being discovered—and Randall was to come ashore,
get the body, and throw it over the cliff; after which
he would row a couple of miles or so out to sea,


MIDNIGHT AT MEARS HOUSE 299
began pounding on the front door. The paralytic
man didn't dare wait any longer to warn Randall,
but hurried back to his room.
“Randall reached the dining-room window just as
you started upstairs; and knowing nothing, of course,
of your having seen the body, he carried it out and
threw it over the cliff. Then he got into his boat and
rowed out to sea. Unfortunately he was seen doing
so by the man who took Keaton and me off the ledge,
so his alibi won’t be worth much, I'm afraid. I sat-
isfied myself by comparing closely the probable
amount of time which each of these actions would
have taken with the facts I learned from you and
Parsons that there was no discrepancy between them
and the tragedy as I had reconstructed it.”
“Why didn't you have them arrested long ago,
then,” I asked, “if you were so sure they had done
it?”
“I told you once before,” he returned, “that
there's quite a difference between being sure of a thing
in your own mind, and being able to prove it to the
satisfaction of a judge and jury. I had to wait till
I could get the proof.”
“So that's why you let us all run the risk of being
killed by that fiend, Goddard, or poisoned by that
precious accomplice of his, Maggie Sullivan?”
“I had to take some rather dubious chances,” he
admitted.


3OO MIDNIGHT AT MEARS HOUSE
“But I haven't got it through my head yet,” I
persisted, “just what part she and Goddard played
in the whole business. That they were in with
Randall and the paralytic man I see plainly enough,
but it beats me to make out what they were all
up to.”
“It's very simple,” he replied. “They were after
that sealed envelope.”
“What was in it?” I asked.
“David Mears' will, for one thing, that paper
Jonathan Mears signed relinquishing the right to any
share of his father's property, and—”
“The receipt Goddard gave David Mears for hav-
ing testified falsely to the paralytic man's death,” I
put in.
“You’re wrong there,” he said. “That receipt
and the note you found in Goddard's pocket were
taken from David Mears' desk the night he was
killed.”
I stared at him uncomprehendingly.
“You’ll have to get a club, I guess,” I said at last,
“ and beat it into me. The events of the last ten
days seem to have destroyed what faint glimmerings
of intelligence I formerly possessed.”
“Let's try what less violent measures can do first,”
he rejoined. “Try to fix your mind on the problem,
and perhaps you'll be able to understand it if I use
words of only one syllable.”


MIDNIGHT AT MEARS HOUSE 3OI
“I doubt it,” I replied cheerfully, “but I'll do my
best.”
“In the first place, then, try to grasp the fact that
Goddard had no more idea than you did that either
Jonathan Mears or Randall had anything to do with
the murder, and that neither of them knew of Par-
sons having been in the house that night. Got
that ?”
I said I had, and Garth continued:
“As soon as Goddard heard of David Mears'
death, he was afraid he'd be taken for the murderer,
if that note and the receipt were found among David
Mears' papers. When he failed to find them in the
desk, he thought they must be in the sealed envelope
which Maggie Sullivan had seen in Miss Ellis' trunk.
Either he or Jonathan Mears knew all about Ryder,
and hit upon the idea of Goddard's impersonating
him and trying to secure the papers in that way.
The paralytic man was equally anxious to get back
the deed of gift his brother had made him sign before
he would take him in, and to lay hands on the will
he felt sure David Mears must have made, leaving
all he had to Miss Ellis or Keaton. They all worked
together, apparently, to get hold of these various
documents, though in reality Jonathan Mears was
making a cat's-paw of Goddard, whom he intended
all along to ‘double-cross' at the last moment.”


MIDNIGHT AT MEARS HOUSE 303
or not; and I suspected that if I were right, Jonathan
Mears wouldn't hesitate to kill Goddard in order to
make it appear that he had been guilty of the murder.
Goddard must have been furious at finding that the
envelope he had been working so hard to get didn't
contain the papers he was after; and very likely he
refused to hand over the will and the deed of gift
to the paralytic man unless he agreed to pay him a
good round sum for them. Jonathan Mears prob-
ably pretended he would do so, and promised to send
Randall to Rockport the next day to get the money.
As a matter of fact he had no intention of doing
anything of the sort. Randall never left the house
that day—”
“How do you know he didn't?” I broke in.
“Stimpson told me.”
“And where was Stimpson all the time?”
“Right here, keeping tabs on them for me,” he
answered.
“He never went back to New York at all, then?”
“No, that's what I meant when I told you that tele-
gram was only a blind. I'd arranged with him to send
it in case anything happened to keep me away from
the house for more than a few hours, so that he could
be ready to arrest the paralytic man and Randall, if
they tried to escape during my absence. The operator
at the village gave him the message. When Keaton
and I got back from Thornton's Ledge I had a talk


3O4 MIDNIGHT AT MEARS HOUSE
with Stimpson, and told him that I believed matters
were coming to a head. Then when I learned from
you later of the loss of the sealed envelope, I felt
sure Goddard would come to see Jonathan Mears
that night; and I sent Dent with a note to Stimpson,
telling him to remain on guard outside the house and
when I pulled up the shade to go to the bottom of
the tower-stairs and wait there till I called him.
“As you know, things happened pretty much as
I thought they would, though I didn't expect to be
lucky enough to secure such absolute proof that the
paralytic man had been shamming as I did the mo-
ment you told me how Goddard had been shot.”
I asked him what he meant.
“Jonathan Mears must have been standing up, of
course, when he fired at him,” he explained. “The
bullet came out lower down than it entered, you said.”
I felt chagrined at my failure to make so very
simple and obvious a deduction.
“Those papers he put in Goddard's pocket after
he'd shot him,” Garth went on, “and the one I found
in his own pocket made the case against him com-
plete. Only one of four persons, you see, could pos-
sibly have taken them from David Mears' desk. It
was either Goddard himself—a perfectly untenable
hypothesis, for he would have destroyed the note and
the receipt immediately—or Parsons, or Randall, or
Jonathan Mears. There would have been no object


MIDNIGHT AT MEARS HOUSE 305
in any of them doing so, unless with the intention
of using them as a means of forcing Goddard to help
secure the other papers; so it's quite clear that either
the paralytic man or Randall took them.”
“I’m beginning to get it through my head at last,”
I said, as he stopped to relight his pipe. “I see now
why you wouldn't interfere with Maggie Sullivan,
why you let the man in the grey felt hat get away,
why you were so sure that neither Parsons nor Ryder
was the murderer, and why you were so unwilling to
let me know what you were up to; but there are still
a few matters which aren't clear to me. I don't
understand, for one thing, just how Jonathan Mears
or Randall made those mysterious noises that scared
the servants away and even made Arthur think there
was something uncanny about them.”
“It came near costing both of us our lives to show
you how they were made,” he answered soberly.
“Ventriloquism !” I exclaimed.
He nodded.
“Randall is quite an artist at it. He was hiding
somewhere in the tower-room when we came in, and
he made you think Miss Ellis was calling for help so
as to get you out of the way and leave the field clear
for them. Luckily Stimpson heard me yell, and
tackled Randall, so I had only the paralytic man on
my hands—or rather only his hands on me. If you
hadn't—”


306 MIDNIGHT AT MEARS HOUSE
He was interrupted by a knock on the door, and
Dr. Satterlee stuck his head in.
“The old devil's come to his senses at last,” he
said to Garth. “If you want to talk to him, now's
your chance.”


MIDNIGHT AT MEARS HOUSE 309
but I was the worst. She didn't care a damn for me,
either—just laughed at me when I asked her to
marry me; so I cleared out, never went back, never
even wrote home. That was thirty years ago—time
enough to get a fool girl out of one's head, you'd
think. The devil knows I tried hard enough to,” he
added.
“About six months ago I got a letter from God-
dard—I’d run across him years before on the West
Coast of Africa when I was half dead with fever—
and he told me among other things what had become
of her. Brother David, it seems, had an eye for
calico, too, though no one would have guessed it—
he was always a sour-faced, go-to-meeting sort—and
had made her care for him, God knows how ! He
fooled her with a mock marriage, and then ran away
and deserted her when he found she was going to
have a child. After that she went from bad to
worse, till finally she died—it doesn't matter where.
“Goddard wrote, too, that David had got some-
one to swear I was dead, and so secured my share
of the property the old man left. He wanted to
know what I was going to do about it. It didn't
take me long to make up my mind to go back and
kill him; but I didn't tell Goddard that: I knew I
couldn’t trust him. So I wrote him that David was
quite welcome to what he'd got of mine; that I was
a very sick man with only a little while left to live;


312 MIDNIGHT AT MEARS HOUSE
take care of; and that in this way I could get him to
search the house and, I hoped, find the deed and
David's will for me. So I slipped them into my
pocket, picked up a big glass paper-weight on the
desk, and went back to where he was lying. He was
just coming-to, and I waited till he opened his eyes
and recognised me before I killed him.”—All the
savage malignity of his nature, all his ferocious hatred
of the dead man were reflected in his face as he added
grimly: “I only wish I'd taken longer about it, but
I was afraid he'd cry out and wake up Mrs. Bartlett.
“When I'd finished him, I went into the dining-
room to signal to Randall and tell him there was no
need of his doing anything. While I was standing
there at the window, I heard someone pound on the
front door. I didn't know whether it was locked
or not, and it took all the gimp out of me: I couldn’t
stir for a moment. Then I blew out the candle, put
it down on the table, and hurried back to my room,
leaving Randall to get out of it as best he could. I
thought, of course, he'd be discovered, and I only
hoped it would be in time—before he'd started to
carry the body out of the house.”
He went on to tell us of his astonishment at find-
ing that I had seen or heard nothing of Randall, and
of his rage at knowing that he must have gone blindly
ahead with their original plan, and so spoiled his
scheme of fastening the guilt upon Goddard and mak-


MIDNIGHT AT MEARS HOUSE 3I3
ing it appear that he had killed him instead of its
being an accident as they had intended it to seem.
As soon as Randall returned, he told him to find
Goddard, who he felt sure must be still in the
neighbourhood, and bring him to the tower-room.
Randall had seen a light in the deserted shack on
Thornton's Ledge, and guessed that Goddard must
be living there. When Goddard came, Jonathan
Mears told him that he was very anxious to get hold
of the will which he believed his brother had made,
and promised to pay him well if he would help them
find it. Goddard agreed to try, and admitted that
he himself wanted to secure some of David Mears'
papers, and that he had got Maggie Sullivan to take
a position as maid to help him steal them.
From that time all four of them—Goddard, Mag-
gie Sullivan, Randall, and Jonathan Mears—had
worked together to get the sealed envelope which
David Mears had entrusted to Margaret. The para-
lytic man had devised the scheme of Goddard's im-
personating Ryder on learning from him why it was
that David Mears had feared the man so much that
he had asked Goddard to be on the watch for him
and to kill him if he appeared. It was Randall who
entered Margaret's room while she was talking with
Goddard in the library, and Randall also who bound
and gagged Jonathan Mears—with his consent, of
course—in order to make it appear that burglars had


MIDNIGHT AT MEARS HOUSE 3 I5
“You’re quite welcome to think I murdered him,
too, if you want to,” he said sullenly; but after a
moment he changed his mind. “After all I may as
well tell you,” he muttered. “It's the same to me
whether you believe it or not.
“It was a little after eleven when he came. Ran-
dall was hiding in there ”—he nodded toward a big
old-fashioned wardrobe against the wall opposite to
him. “Goddard wanted to know right off if I'd
got the money. I told him I had. “Then hand it
over, he said. “I’m in a hurry.” “Not in too much
of a hurry to have a look at these, I guess,' I said,
taking the note and the receipt out of my pocket.
He recognised them at once, and an ugly look came
over his face. “Where did you get those?” he asked.
“What dirty game have you been playing with me?’
“Never mind about that, I said. “I’ve got 'em and
I intend to keep 'em unless you hand over those papers
in exchange.’ ‘You do, eh?” he growled—and there
was murder in his eye. “We'll see about that!' He
reached for his gun. I sprang up and fired the same
instant he did.”
“Why didn't you shoot him from your chair?”
Garth asked.
“Habit, I guess,” he replied. “I could have as
well as not—I had him covered all the time; but I
always shoot better on my feet. I knew, too, it
would rattle him and queer his aim. He thought I


CHAPTER XXVIII
I SEEK THE ANSWER TO A RIDDLE
THE injuries I had received in my struggle with the
paralytic man kept me confined to my room for nearly
three weeks after his death; and as I had never be-
fore been laid up for more than a few days at a time,
I found the tedium of it wellnigh unbearable. Had
it not occurred to me to occupy myself by writing an
account of all that had happened at Mears House
since the night of my arrival, time would have hung
even heavier on my hands. But in attempting to
practise the art of composition—in which, as the
reader need not be told, I was utterly unversed—I
gained a considerable amount of that enjoyment and
distraction one is apt to find in tackling any new task
which looks fascinatingly easy, however difficult it
may really be.
I had indeed little else to do except read and think;
for Garth had left the day after our last talk with
Jonathan Mears, and Arthur for some reason or
other did not come to see me with anything like the
frequency I had expected. When he did he seemed
distraught and ill at ease. The change in him which
had startled me so when he had come upon me in
317


318 MIDNIGHT AT MEARS HOUSE
the library the morning after my arrival, grew more
noticeable every day. He wore constantly the look
of a man who has something preying upon his mind.
His face had become drawn and haggard, his whole
manner more nervous and irritable.
I was inclined at first to ascribe this chiefly to his
infatuation for Margaret and her refusal of him;
but this explanation did not wholly satisfy me, and
it was not long before I decided that it must be due
to something else. In reaching this conclusion I was
influenced a great deal by what Garth had said about
the disappearance of David Mears' will. He had
refused to tell me whom he suspected of having taken
it from the tower-room; but upon my saying half-
jestingly that I felt sure he would tell me, if he really
knew, he had agreed to put it in writing and leave the
letter with me on the understanding that I was not
to read it until I had already learned the truth.
I guessed, of course, that either Margaret or
Arthur must have taken it—it could hardly have been
anyone else; but it puzzled me to decide which. If
David Mears had left all his property to Margaret,
it seemed absurd to suppose that either of them should
have kept quiet about finding the will; for I knew
Arthur too well to suspect him of doing anything
so dishonourable, and I could not believe that Mar-
garet would have any scruples about accepting such
a bequest, since she must have known all along that


322 MIDNIGHT AT MEARS HOUSE
if she were left penniless. She'd have had to live
here then at any rate, and I hoped that in time she
might come to care for me enough—I was a damned
fool!” he broke off bitterly, “a damned pig-headed
fool!”
“I'm afraid you were, Arthur,” I said quietly.
“Margaret, I guess, isn't that sort of a girl.”
“I can't help thinking just the same that every-
thing might have come out as I wanted it to, if ??
He paused.
“If what?” I asked.
“Never mind,” he said curtly. He was trying
hard, I could see, to get control of himself.
“Now that I’ve told you all about it,” he went on
in a tone of bitter self-contempt, “what do you think
of me?” -
“I think you lost your head and made an ass of
yourself, that's all,” I replied; “but you're making a
bigger mistake to feel so cut up about it. There isn’t
a particle of sense in blaming yourself for your uncle's
death—you'll realise that when you're able to take a
rational view of things, and it isn't too late to fix the
other matter up. You haven't destroyed the will?”
He shook his head.
“Then it'll be easy enough to pretend that it's been
kicking around under the wardrobe or somewhere else
in the tower-room all this time, and that you’ve just
found it. No one but ourselves need be any the


MIDNIGHT AT MEARS HOUSE 323
wiser. And as for Margaret—remember what I told
you the other day, and be patient.”
He gave me an odd look.
“That advice comes well from you,” he retorted,
“when you're in love with her yourself.”
“You’re the second person that's told me that,”
I said. “I don't see how people get such queer no-
tions.”
“Bosh!” he exclaimed. “Any fool would have
had sense enough to notice it. I’ve known it ever
since the night she had that adventure with you on
the Shore Road. Just to see you look at her is
enough—” -
“I won't pretend to deny,” I broke in rather hur-
riedly, “that I find her charming. If she were
nearer my own age, or I nearer hers, I might even
fancy myself in love with her; but considering the
difference in years between us—”
“Which doesn't amount to that,” he said, snapping
his fingers.
( &
which on the contrary amounts to a great
deal,” I continued gravely; “it would be the height
of absurdity for me even to think of such a thing.”
“I’ll bet you’ve thought of very little else for the
past three weeks,” he declared.
“I’ve done nothing of the sort,” I protested has-
tily. “I’ve had other things to think of. Besides,
I've been writing a book, as you know.”


324 MIDNIGHT AT MEARS HOUSE
“Oh, well, we won't fight about it,” he said.
“God knows it doesn't surprise me any: I only won-
der you didn't fall in love with her sooner, particularly
since ” He checked himself abruptly.
“I came in to bid you good-bye,” he continued.
“I’m really going this time, too, and not coming back
—at least not for a long while. I’ve about decided
to spend two or three years abroad.”
“I’m mighty sorry to hear that,” I told him. “I
hoped we might have a little shooting after all—I
shall be able to get out in a few days now. The
marshes will be pretty bare, of course, but we ought
to find plenty of partridges still.”
“It'll be a long while, I'm afraid, before we go
gunning together again,” he said. “What sport
we’ve had here ! It's a pity to think it's all over and
done with.”
“Over and done with—nothing!” I declared.
“You talk as if you were going to be away a lifetime.
When you come back we'll have just as good fun as
we used to.”
“You’ll probably be married long before that,”
he said, “and then—”
“Rot!” I exclaimed. “There isn't one chance in
a thousand of my marrying, and you know it.”
He looked at me rather sceptically for an instant:
then he smiled.
“Good-bye,” he said, “and good luck to you.


MIDNIGHT AT MEARS HOUSE 325
Write once in a while when you feel like it—I'll let
you know my address later. You'll attend to settling
up the estate for her?” he added.
I told him that I would gladly.
He took something out of his pocket and gave it to
me. I laid it down without even glancing at it—I
knew it was the will—and gripped his hand, but the
words I wanted to say were stuck somewhere in my
throat.
At the door he turned with something like the old
amused look in his eyes.
“Do you know, Phil,” he said, “you're one of the
biggest fools God ever made?”
“Any particular reason for reminding me of the
fact?” I enquired, smiling.
“Yes,” he said, “but it wouldn't be fair for me
to tell you what it is. Possibly Margaret may be
willing to. I should ask her at any rate if I were
you.” And he went out without giving me time to
reply. -
“Now what could he have meant by that?” I
asked myself. “What on earth has Margaret to do
with it?” But as I had told her that night on the
Shore Road when we were discussing Garth's tele-
gram to Stimpson, I was never any good at guessing
riddles, and I soon gave up trying to make any sense
out of this one. Instead, after a hasty look at the
will, I opened Garth's letter—to find that he had


326 MIDNIGHT AT MEARS HOUSE
been quite right, not only regarding the disappearance
of the will, but also as to Arthur's reasons for having
taken it. I was not in the least astonished. It
seemed incredible that I shouldn't have guessed it
myself. I did not wonder that Garth had been so
often exasperated by my dulness, or that Arthur
should have exclaimed at it. Throughout the whole
affair I had shown about as much insight and penetra-
tion as a cigar-store Indian.
For a long while I sat there, reflecting upon my
amazing inability to discover the meaning of the
simplest and most obvious facts in the case—things
which it seemed to me now the veriest idiot should
have found no difficulty in interpreting.
“If I weren't such a confounded fool,” I thought,
“I should know, too, what Arthur meant by saying
that Margaret might be able to tell me. I’ve a good
mind to follow his advice and ask her. I'll do it,”
I said to myself after a moment's consideration,
“right now.” -
And unmindful of Dr. Satterlee's orders that I
was on no account to leave my room for another week
at least, I went in search of her.


CHAPTER XXIX
WHY MARGARET WOULDN'T BID ME GOOD-NIGHT
I FOUND Margaret before the open fire in the music-
room. She looked unusually grave. No doubt she
felt very badly about Arthur's going, and perhaps
blamed herself unduly for it. I knew it must have
been hard for her to bid him good-bye. What a
fool he had been, I thought, not to follow my counsel
and trust to time to increase her regard for him. In
his place, I told myself rather bitterly, I would cheer-
fully have waited years.
She seemed surprised at seeing me.
“I didn't know you were well enough to leave your
room,” she said. “Dr. Satterlee told me it would be
another week at least before you could.”
“I’ve only one fault to find with Dr. Satterlee,” I
said—“he's too firm a believer in the rest cure. I
should have become bed-ridden, if I’d done as he
wanted me to; but as I wouldn't, I think I shall be
all right again in a few days now. And I have you
to thank for it,” I went on earnestly. “If it hadn't
been for you ??
“I'm afraid I wasn't of very much use,” she broke
in, “I got there too late to do anything.”
327


MIDNIGHT AT MEARS HOUSE 329
“I wanted to speak to you about that,” she said.
“It isn't right that I should have everything and he
nothing. Can't it be arranged so that half the estate
will go to him?”
“Not unless he's willing to take it as a gift from
you, I'm afraid.”
“He won't agree to that. I tried to make him,
but he said it was all nonsense, that he had plenty of
money, and that—” She stopped in some confu-
sion.
“Then unless you want to try your hand at forg-
ing a new will, nothing can be done about it.”
“I always thought lawyers could do anything,”
she remarked disappointedly.
“We haven't quite got to that point yet,” I re-
turned, “though of course we hope to some day; but
at present there are lots of things we can't do—make
a woman tell how old she is, for example, or why she
wouldn’t bid you good-night.”
She was looking at the fire as I spoke, and her face
seemed to catch a sudden rosy heat from the flames.
“When Arthur said good-bye to me just now,” I
continued after a moment—during which I made the
surprising discovery that none of the girls I knew had
such a fascinating little tilt of her nose, or such won-
derfully thick dark eye-lashes—“he was polite enough
to tell me that I was one of the biggest fools God ever
made. I can’t say truthfully that it was altogether


33O MIDNIGHT AT MEARS HOUSE
news to me, for I’ve had a suspicion of it for some
time; but I was interested to know why he'd thought
fit to mention the fact just then. He admitted he had
a reason for doing so, but he said it wouldn't be fair
for him to tell me what it was, and added that you
might be able to.”
“I?” she exclaimed with a startled look at me.
“What could he have meant?”
“That's precisely what I’ve been asking myself,”
I replied. “I hoped you might know. It's very
disappointing to find that you don't; but possibly
Mrs. Bartlett or Dent can inform me.”
“I should certainly ask them if I were you,” she
said gravely. -
“I intend to,” I returned, “ and if I’m not much
mistaken, Mrs. Bartlett at least will have something
pertinent to say on the subject.”
Margaret laughed outright.
“I'm afraid she doesn't altogether approve of me,”
I said sadly. “She thinks it was all my fault that
you went with me that night, and that I'm entirely
to blame for what happened to us. I suppose if she
knew that I really did want you to go, she'd be even
more furious with me.”
She turned and faced me accusingly.
“But you didn’t want me to go with you; you know
you didn't. You tried your best to get me to go
back.”


MIDNIGHT AT MEARS HOUSE 331
“That was only my outrageous sense of duty as-
serting itself,” I declared. “I was hoping all the
time you’d come.”
“I don’t believe it.”
“It's true all the same,” I said, “but I don't
wonder you find it hard to believe. I found it so
myself. In fact it's taken me nearly a month to be
convinced of it. I’m extraordinarily slow at times in
getting a thing through my head,” I added humbly.
“Perhaps you've noticed it?”
“You mean your not guessing what that telegram
meant?”
“No,” I replied earnestly, “I mean my not realis-
ing sooner that I was in love with you. Of all the
stupidities I’ve been guilty of since I arrived here,”
I went on rapidly—“ and Heaven knows I’ve behaved
like a perfect fool from first to last!—that is certainly
the most astounding. Until a week ago I actually
didn’t know I loved you ! I thought my feeling for
you was something very different—a sort of brotherly,
almost fatherly affection. But since that night in the
tower-room I began to understand what it really was.
“I hadn't meant to tell you this,” I went on a
trifle unsteadily, “but somehow I couldn't help it.”
“Why should you?” she said—and her voice was
so low I could scarcely hear it.
“Why?” I repeated, stifling a sudden preposter-
ous hope, “because I know, of course, it can only


332 MIDNIGHT AT MEARS HOUSE
pain you to learn of it, because I'm not such a pre-
sumptuous fool as to think that—that you care at all
for me.”
For what seemed a long, long while she sat quite
still, her face turned away from me. Then she drew
a long breath and looked bravely into my eyes, a shy
smile on her lips.
“That would be the stupidest mistake of all,” she
said softly.
I shall say nothing of what were to Margaret and
me the chief events of the succeeding fortnight; for
I realise that they would make but dull reading—the
doings and sayings of engaged people, I am well
aware, are of interest only to themselves.
After many discussions we decided not to sell
Mears House, as Margaret had wished to do at first
—thinking she could not bear ever to live in it again;
but to spend our summers there. We were a good
deal influenced in making this decision by Mrs. Bart-
lett, who was too old, she said, to “stand transplant-
ing ”; and so it was arranged that she should go on
living there as caretaker the year round, and that
Dent should remain also and see what he could do
to reclaim the waste pasture land and make a real
farm of the place. I must say that I hadn't much
faith in the result of his efforts, though I didn't like
to chill his enthusiasm by saying so, and I was glad


MIDNIGHT AT MEARS HOUSE 333
later that I hadn’t; for he succeeded far beyond my
expectations.
It took a great deal of urging on my part to get
Margaret to consent to an early marriage, though I
spoke as feelingly as I could of my advancing years.
She declared it was absurd of me to talk as though
I had one foot in the grave when I was not yet forty.
“I’m precious near it, though,” I said gravely,
“ and you've probably heard of Dr. Osler's famous
prescription? Besides, you don’t want everyone to
think you're my daughter, do you? I don’t, at any
rate.”
She yielded finally, much to my delight; for I could
not bear the thought of her staying on without me
all winter at Mears House, where she would be con-
stantly reminded of the dreadful events which pre-
ceded and followed David Mears' death. Despite
our happiness, there were moments when the recollec-
tion of them would cut short her laughter and bring
a look of sadness to her face. I did my best to help
her forget them by speaking of them as little as I
could; but it was impossible to avoid doing so alto-
gether—there were too many provocations.
The excitement in the neighbourhood over the
affair was slow to die down. On our walks we fre-
quently met people who did not hesitate to ask us all
sorts of distressing questions about it; and the arrest
and confession of Randall—which occurred during


336 MIDNIGHT AT MEARS HOUSE
“Put me down this instant, Phil,” she commanded.
“Why wouldn't you bid me good-night?” I re-
peated.
She remained obstinately silent.
“You know the penalty,” I reminded her, “for
refusing to answer the questions of the examining
lawyer.”
As she made no reply, I imposed it.
“Be careful,” she begged. “Someone might see
you.”
“I don't care if they do,” I said, and I kissed her
again.
“Put me down,” she said at last rather breath-
lessly, “and I'll tell you.”
I put her down and waited.
“I think it's perfectly horrid of you to insist on
knowing,” she declared. “You won't love me half
so much.”
“You should have thought of that before you
promised,” I said sternly. “It's too late now. You
must tell me the whole shameful truth, if it kills my
love for you entirely.”
“It was all your fault anyway,” she began.
“I knew you'd say that,” I replied, chuckling.
“Well, it was ! You—you told Dent you only did
it to—to amuse yourself.”
“You heard what I said to him !” I exclaimed.
She nodded.