Seven Keys to Baldpate

"That all depends," replied the mayor. "I've enjoyed knowing you, one and all. Good night."

The women, the professor and Mr. Magee moved up the broad stairway. On the landing Mr. Magee heard the voice of Mrs. Norton, somewhere in the darkness ahead.

"I'm worried, dearie – real worried."

"Hush," came the girl's voice. "Mr. Magee-we'll meet again – soon."

Mr. Magee seized the professor's arm, and together they stood in the shadows.

"I don't like the looks of things," came Bland's hoarse complaint from below. "What time is it?"

"Seven-thirty." Cargan answered. "A good half-hour yet."

"There was somebody on the second floor when I went up," Bland continued. "I saw him run into one of the rooms and lock the door."

"I've got charge now," the mayor reassured him, "don't you worry."

"There's something doing." This seemed to be Max's voice.

"There sure is," laughed Cargan. "But what do I care? I own young Drayton. I put him where he is. I ain't afraid. Let them gumshoe round as much as they want to. They can't touch me."

"Maybe not," said Bland. "But Baldpate Inn ain't the grand idea it looked at first, is it?"

"It's a hell of an idea," answered Cargan. "There wasn't any need of all this folderol. I told Hayden so. Does that phone ring?"

"No – it'll just flash a light, when they want us," Bland told him.

Mr. Magee and Professor Bolton continued softly up the stairs, and in answer to the former's invitation, the old man entered number seven and took a chair by the fire.

"It is an amazing tangle," he remarked, "in which we are involved. I have no idea what your place is in the scheme of things up here. But I assume you grasp what is going on, if I do not. I am not so keen of wit as I once was."

"If you think," answered Mr. Magee, proffering a cigar, "that I am in on this little game of 'Who's Who', then you are vastly mistaken. As a matter of fact, I am as much in the dark as you are."

The professor smiled.

"Indeed," he said in a tone that showed his unbelief. "Indeed."

He was deep in a discussion of the meters of the poet Chaucer when there came a knock at the door, and Mr. Lou Max's unpleasant head was thrust inside.

"I been assigned," he said, "to sit up here in the hall and keep an eye out for the ghost Bland heard tramping about. And being of a sociable nature, I'd like to sit in your doorway, if you don't mind."

"By all means," replied Magee. "Here's a chair. Do you smoke?"

"Thanks." Mr. Max placed the chair sidewise in the doorway of number seven, and sat down. From his place he commanded a view of Mr. Magee's apartments and of the head of the stairs. With his yellow teeth he viciously bit the end from the cigar. "Don't let me interrupt the conversation, gentlemen," he pleaded.

"We were speaking," said the professor calmly, "of the versification of Chaucer. Mr. Magee – "

He continued his discussion in an even voice, Mr. Magee leaned back in his chair and smiled in a pleased way at the settings of the stage: Mr. Max in a cloud of smoke on guard at his door; the mayor and Mr. Bland keeping vigil by a telephone switchboard in the office below, watching for the flash of light that should tell them some one in the outside world wanted to speak to Baldpate Inn; a mysterious figure who flitted about in the dark; a beautiful girl who was going to ask Mr. Magee to do her a service, blindly trusting her.

The professor droned on monotonously. Once Mr. Magee interrupted to engage Lou Max in spirited conversation. For, through the squares of light outside the windows, he had seen the girl of the station pass hurriedly down the balcony, the snowflakes falling white on her yellow hair.

CHAPTER VIII

MR. MAX TELLS A TALE OF SUSPICION

An hour passed. Mr. Max admitted when pressed that a good cigar soothed the soul, and accepted another from Magee's stock. The professor continued to talk. Obviously it was his favorite diversion. He seemed to be quoting from addresses; Mr. Magee pictured him on a Chautauqua platform, the white water pitcher by his side.

As he talked, Mr. Magee studied that portion of his delicate scholarly face that the beard left exposed to the world. What part had Thaddeus Bolton, holder of the Crandall Chair of Comparative Literature, in this network of odd alarms? Why was he at Baldpate? And why was he so little moved by the rapid changes in the make-up of the inn colony – changes that left Mr. Magee gasping? He took them as calmly as he would take his grapefruit at the breakfast-table. Only that morning Mr. Magee, by way of experiment, had fastened upon him the suspicion of murder, and the old man had not flickered an eyelash. Not the least strange of all the strange figures that floated about Baldpate, Mr. Magee reflected, was this man who fiddled now with Chaucer while, metaphorically, Rome burned. He could not make it out.

Mr. Max inserted a loud yawn into the professor's discourse.

"Once I played chess with a German," he said, "and another time I went to a lecture on purifying politics, but I never struck anything so monotonous as this job I got now."

"So sorry," replied Magee, "that our company bores you."

"No offense," remarked the yellow-faced one. "I was just thinking as I set here how it all comes of people being suspicious of one another. Now I've always held that the world would be a better place if there wasn't no suspicion in it. Nine times out of ten the suspicion ain't got a leg to stand on – if suspicion can be said to have a leg."

Evidently Mr. Max desired the floor; graciously Professor Bolton conceded it to him.

"Speaking of suspicion," continued the drab little man on the threshold, turning his cigar thoughtfully between his thin lips, "reminds me of a case told me by Pueblo Sam, a few years ago. In some ways it's real funny, and in others it's sad as hell. Pueblo Sam was called in them terms because he'd never been west of Sixth Avenue. He was a swell refined gentleman who lived by his wits, and he had considerable."

"A confidence man," suggested Magee.

"Something along that order," admitted Mr. Max, "but a good sport among his friends, you understand. Well, this case of suspicion Sam tells me about happened something like this. One scorching hot day in summer Sam gets aboard the Coney boat, his idea being to put all business cares away for an hour or two, and just float calm and peaceful down the bay, and cool off. So he grabs out a camp chair and hustles through the crowd up to the top deck, beside the pilot's hangout, and sits down to get acquainted with the breeze, if such there was.

"Well, he'd been sitting there about ten minutes, Sam tells me, when along came about the easiest picking that ever got loose from the old homestead – "

"I beg your pardon," protested Professor Bolton.

"The ready money, the loosened kale, the posies in the garden waiting to be plucked," elucidated Mr. Max. "This guy, Sam says, was such a perfect rube he just naturally looked past him to see if there was a trail of wisps of hay on the floor. For a while Sam sits there with a grouch as he thought how hard it was to put business aside and get a little rest now and then, and debating whether, being on a vacation, as it was, he'd exert himself enough to stretch forth his hand and take whatever money the guy had. While he was arguing the matter with himself, the jay settled the question by coming over and sitting down near him.

"He's in the city, he tells Sam, to enjoy the moving pictures of the streets, and otherwise forget the trees back home that grow the cherries in the bottom of the cocktail glasses. 'And believe me,' he says to Sam, 'there ain't none of those confidence men going to get me. I'm too wise,' he says.

"'I'll bet money you are,' Sam tells him laughing all over at the fish that was fighting to get into the net.

"'Yes, siree,' says the last of the Mohicans, 'they can't fool me. I can tell them as fur away as I can see 'em, and my eyesight's perfect. One of 'em comes up to me in City Hall park and tries to sell me some mining stock. I guess he ain't recovered yet from what I said to him. I tell you, they can't fool Mark Dennen,' says the guy.

"Sam told me that at them words he just leaned back in his seat and stared at the jay and whistled under his breath. Years ago, it seemed, Sam had lived in the town of Readsboro, Vermont, and run up and down the streets with one suspender and a stone bruise, and the kid that had run with him was Mark Dennen. And Sam says he looked at this guy from the woods that was running round crying to high heaven he needed a guardian, and he sees that sure enough it was the tow-head Mark Dennen and – Sam told me – something seemed to bust inside him, and he wanted to stretch out his arms and hug this guy.

"'Mark Dennen,' shouts Sam, 'as I live. Of Readsboro, Vermont. The kid I used to play with under the arc lights – don't you remember me?'

"But Sam says the guy just looked him straight in the eye and shut his jaw, and says: 'I suppose you'll be asking after my brother George next?'

"'You ain't got any brother George, you idiot,' laughs Sam. He told me he was thinking how he'd treat his old friend Mark to a dinner that would go down in history in Readsboro. 'Mark, you old rascal,' he says, 'don't you remember me – don't you remember little Sam Burns that used to play andy-over with you, and that stole your girl in 1892? Don't you remember the old days in Readsboro?' He was all het up by this time, Sam tells me, and all the old memories came creeping back, and he kept thinking he never was so glad to run across anybody in his life. 'You remember little Sam Burns, don't you?' he asks once more.

"But this guy just looks back into Sam's eye with his own cold as steel, and he says, says he: 'You're pretty clever, mister, but you don't fool me. No, you don't come any games on Mark Dennen.'

"'But, Mark,' says Sam, 'I swear to you by all that's holy that I'm that kid – I'm Sam Burns. What proof do you want? Do you remember old Ed Haywood that used to keep the drug store right across from the post-office? The guy that never washed his windows? I do. And Miss Hunter that taught the sixth grade school when we went there – a little woman with washed-out gray eyes and a broken front tooth? And that pretty little girl, Sarah somebody – wait a minute, I'll get it or bust – Sarah – Sarah – Sarah Scott, you used to be so sweet on? Did you marry her, Mark? And old Lafe Perkins, who used to be on hand whenever there was any repairs being made anywhere – rheumatism and a cane and a high squeaky voice that he used to exercise giving orders about things that wasn't any of his business. Why, Mark, I remember 'em all. Good lord, man,' says Sam, 'do you want any more proof?'