Seven Keys to Baldpate

"You must be nearly frozen," remarked Mr. Magee pityingly. "You and your maid come down to the office. I want you to meet the other guests."

"I'll come," she replied. "Mr. Magee, I've a confession to make. I invented the maid. It seemed so horribly unconventional and shocking – I couldn't admit that I was alone. That was why I wouldn't let you build a fire for me."

"Don't worry," smiled Magee. "You'll find we have all the conveniences up here. I'll present you to a chaperon shortly – a Mrs. Norton, who is here with her daughter. Allow me to introduce Mr. Cargan and Mr. Max."

The girl bowed with a rather startled air, and Mr. Cargan mumbled something that had "pleasure" in it. In the office they found Professor Bolton and Mr. Bland sitting gloomily before the fireplace.

"Got the news, Magee?" asked the haberdasher. "Peters has done a disappearing act."

It was evident to Magee that everybody looked upon Peters as his creature, and laid the hermit's sins at his door. He laughed.

"I'm going to head a search party shortly," he said. "Don't I detect the odor of coffee in the distance?"

"Mrs. Norton," remarked Professor Bolton dolefully, "has kindly consented to do what she can."

The girl of the station came through the dining-room door. It was evident she had no share in the general gloom that the hermit's absence cast over Baldpate. Her eyes were bright with the glories of morning on a mountain; in their depths there was no room for petty annoyances.

"Good morning," she said to Mr. Magee. "Isn't it bracing? Have you been outside? Oh, I – "

"Miss Norton – Miss Thornhill," explained Magee. "Miss Thornhill has the sixth key, you know. She came last night without any of us knowing."

With lukewarm smiles the two girls shook hands. Outwardly the glances they exchanged were nonchalant and casual, but somehow Mr. Magee felt that among the matters they established were social position, wit, cunning, guile, and taste in dress.

"May I help with the coffee?" asked Miss Thornhill.

"Only to drink it," replied the girl of the station. "It's all made now, you see."

As if in proof of this, Mrs. Norton appeared in the dining-room door with a tray, and simultaneously opened an endless monologue:

"I don't know what you men will say to this, I'm sure – nothing in the house but some coffee and a few crackers – not even any canned soup, and I thought from the way things went yesterday he had ten thousand cans of it at the very least – but men are all alike – what name did you say? – oh yes, Miss Thornhill, pleased to meet you, I'm sure – excuse my not shaking hands – as I was saying, men are all alike – Norton thought if he brought home a roast on Saturday night it ought to last the week out – "

She rattled on. Unheeding her flow of talk, the hermits of Baldpate Inn swallowed the coffee she offered. When the rather unsatisfactory substitute for breakfast was consumed, Mr. Magee rose briskly.

"Now," he said, "I'm going to run up to the hermit's shack and reason with him as best I can. I shall paint in touching colors our sad plight. If the man has an atom of decency – "

"A walk on the mountain in the morning," said Miss Thornhill quickly. "Splendid. I – "

"Wonderful," put in Miss Norton. "I, for one, can't resist. Even though I haven't been invited, I'm going along." She smiled sweetly. She had beaten the other girl by the breadth of a hair, and she knew it. New glories shone in her eyes.

"Good for you!" said Magee. The evil hour of explanations was at hand, surely. "Run up and get your things."

While Miss Norton was gone, Mr. Cargan and Lou Max engaged in earnest converse near a window. After which Mr. Max pulled on his overcoat.

"I ain't been invited either," he said, "but I reckon I'll go along. I always wanted to see what a hermit lived like when he's really buckled down to the hermit business. And then a walk in the morning has always been my first rule for health. You don't mind, do you?"

"Who am I," asked Magee, "that I should stand between you and health? Come along, by all means."

With the blue corduroy suit again complete, and the saucy hat perched on her blond head, Miss Norton ran down the stairs and received the news that Mr. Max also was enthralled by the possibilities of a walk up Baldpate. The three went out through the front door, and found under the snow a hint of the path that led to the shack of the post-card merchant.

"Will you go ahead?" asked Magee of Max.

"Sorry," grinned Max, "but I guess I'll bring up the rear."

"Suspicion," said Mr. Magee, shaking his head, "has caused a lot of trouble in the world. Remember the cruelty practised on Pueblo Sam."

"I do," replied Mr. Max, "and it nearly breaks my heart. But there's a little matter I forgot to mention last night. Suspicion is all right in its place."

"Where's that?" asked Mr. Magee.

Mr. Max tapped his narrow chest. "Here," he said. So the three began the climb, Mr. Magee and the girl ahead, Mr. Max leering at their heels.

The snow still fell, and the picture of the world was painted in grays and whites. At some points along the way to the hermit's abode it had drifted deep; at others the foot-path was swept almost bare by the wind. For a time Mr. Max kept so close that the conversation of the two in the lead was necessarily of the commonplaces of the wind and sky and mountain.

Covertly Mr. Magee glanced at the girl striding along by his side. The red flamed in her cheeks; her long lashes were flecked with the white of the snow; her face was such a one as middle-aged men dream of while their fat wives read the evening paper's beauty hints at their side. Far beyond the ordinary woman was she desirable and pleasing. Mr. Magee told himself he had been a fool. For he who had fought so valiantly for her heart's desire at the foot of the steps had faltered when the time came to hand her the prize. Why? What place had caution in the wild scheme of the night before? None, surely. And yet he, dolt, idiot, coward, had in the moment of triumph turned cautious. Full confession, he decided, was the only way out.

Mr. Max was panting along quite ten feet behind. Over her shoulder the girl noted this; she turned her questioning eyes on Magee; he felt that his moment had come.

"I don't know how to begin," muttered the novelist whose puppets' speeches had always been so apt. "Last night you sent me on a sort of – quest for the golden fleece. I didn't know who had been fleeced, or what the idea was. But I fared forth, as they say. I got it for you – "

The eyes of the girl glowed happily. She was beaming.

"I'm so glad," she said. "But why – why didn't you give it to me last night? It would have meant so much if you had."

"That," replied Mr. Magee, "is what I'm coming to – very reluctantly. Did you note any spirit of caution in the fellow who set forth on your quest, and dropped over the balcony rail? You did not. I waited on the porch and saw Max tap the safe. I saw him and Cargan come out. I waited for them. Just as I was about to jump on them, somebody – the man with the seventh key, I guess – did it for me. There was a scuffle. I joined it. I emerged with the package everybody seems so interested in."

"Yes," said the girl breathlessly. "And then – "

"I started to bring it to you," went on Magee, glancing over his shoulder at Max. "I was all aglow with romance, and battle, and all that sort of thing. I pictured the thrill of handing you the thing you had asked. I ran up-stairs. At the head of the stairs – I saw her."

The light died in her eyes. Reproach entered there.

"Yes," continued Magee, "your knight errant lost his nerve. He ceased to run on schedule. She, too, asked me for that package of money."

"And you gave it to her," said the girl scornfully.

"Oh, no," answered Magee quickly. "Not so bad as that. I simply sat down on the steps and thought. I got cautious. I decided to wait until to-day. I – I did wait."

He paused. The girl strode on, looking straight ahead. Mr. Magee thought of adding that he had felt it might be dangerous to place a package so voraciously desired in her frail hands. He decided he'd better not, on second thought.

"I know," he said, "what you think. I'm a fine specimen of a man to send on a hunt like that. A weak-kneed mollycoddle who passes into a state of coma at the crucial moment. But – I'm going to give you that package yet."

The girl turned her head. Mr. Magee saw that her eyes were misty with tears.

"You're playing with me," she said brokenly. "I might have known. And I trusted you. You're in the game with the others – and I thought you weren't. I staked my whole chance of success on you – now you're making sport of me. You never intended to give me that money – you don't intend to now."

"On my word," cried Magee, "I do intend to give it to you. The minute we get back to the inn. I have it safe in my room."

"Give it to her," said the girl bitterly. "Why don't you give it to her?"