The Carter Girls' Mysterious Neighbors

Diplomatic relations were broken with Germany and the declaration of war imminent! Excitement and unrest were on every hand. Sometimes Nan and Lucy would come home laden with extras with headlines of terror and bloodshed. Mr. Carter occasionally went to town with them.

“I feel as though I must find out what people are saying and thinking,” he would declare.

The truth of the matter was that Mr. Carter was well, – as well as ever, and the mere chopping of wood and stopping of cracks was not enough to occupy him. It had seemed to him as he went on that mad ride to the rescue of his beloved Helen that he was absolutely himself again. No longer could he let people plan his life for him. He was a man and meant to take the reins into his own hands. Not that his girls had not driven the family coach excellently well. They were wonderful, but he was able to do it for himself now and he intended to start.

He consulted Dr. Wright:

“I tell you, Wright, I am as fit as a fiddle and can get to work now.”

“Of course you are! Didn’t I give you a year? You have not taken quite a year but the time is almost up. The shock that night of the ball helped you on to a complete recovery a little ahead of time. Sometimes a nervous patient gets a shock that does more than rest. The trouble is, one can’t tell whether it will kill or cure.”

“Well, this one cured all right. Why, man, I could build a cathedral tomorrow!”

“Good!”

“I never can thank you enough for your kindness to me and my family. If there is ever anything I can do for you – ”

“No doubt there will be,” was the doctor’s cryptic remark.

Herz kept up his walks with Douglas, although the girl did nothing to encourage him. She did everything to discourage him, in fact, except actually ask him to let her alone. She would find him waiting on the road after school. Sometimes he would even come to the school door for her if for any reason she was detained. These walks were usually taken when the count was off on one of his many business trips.

In Virginia, March means spring, although sometimes a very blustering spring. If one wanders in the woods it is quite usual to find hepatica and arbutus making their way up through the leaves. The tender green begins to make its appearance on hedge and tree, and in the old gardens jonquils and daffodils and crocuses pop up their saucy heads, defying possible late snows and frosts.

The roads were still muddy but not quite so bad as in the winter, and now, more than ever, Douglas with her faithful protector, Bobby, could enjoy the walks to and from school. The stilts did not have to be used nearly so often, although Nan and Lucy had become such adepts on their flamingo legs that they often mounted them merely for the pleasure and not because of the mud.

Valhalla was growing lovelier day by day. The gaunt trees had taken on a veil of green. The nations were at war. The United States was being forced into the game in spite of her attempts at neutrality; but Mother Nature’s slogan was: “Business as usual!” and she was attending to it exactly as she had from the beginning and as she will until the end of time.

Spring had come in good earnest, and with her the myriads of little creatures who must work so hard for a mere existence. Strange scratchings had begun in the chimneys at Valhalla. The swallows were back and gave the Carters to understand that they had been tenants in that old overseer’s house long before those city folks ever thought of such a thing as spending the winter in such a place. The robins were hopping about the lawn, trying to decide where they would build, while the mocking-birds were already busy in the honeysuckle hedge.

One Saturday, the Saturday before war was actually declared, the Count de Lestis came to call, bringing with him in a lovely wicker cage a carrier pigeon for Douglas.

“You promised that sometimes you would send me a message, remember,” he said with the sentimental glance that Douglas refused to respond to.

“Certainly I will. I’ll send a note asking you to come to dinner. Would that do?”

“Anything you send will do,” he sighed.

The pigeon was a beautiful little creature with glossy plumage and dainty red legs.

“He will come back straight to Weston because he has young in the nest. He is not like some men who are up and away at the smallest excuse.”

“But how cruel to take him away from his young!”

“Ah, but the hausfrau is there! She will see that no harm befalls the babies. And, too, she will remain faithful until her lord returns. As faithful as a pigeon means true unto death.”

The pigeon house had continued to be a thorn in the flesh to Mr. Carter. It was painted white, as that is what the pigeons like, and it was so large and so out of tone with the fine lines of the roof that Mr. Carter declared he could not bear to go to Weston any more.

No trace of the lost negroes was found, although Mr. Sutton had detectives from Richmond to work on the case. They had evidently got away and well away. The farmer who had been so nearly asleep when Helen and Dr. Wright arrived at the ball, the farmer whose wife wore the stiff, green silk, declared he had passed that road on the way home that night and he had seen no sign of a red car turned turtle down a ditch. Of course the neighbors all said he had been driving in his sleep.

Mr. Sutton made a trip into Richmond and had a conference with the governor. He told him that the bloodhounds employed to trace the darkies had never left the scene of the accident, although they had had many things belonging to the escaped men as a clue to tracing them. The governor told Mr. Sutton something that made him open his honest eyes very wide. At the same time he was cautioned to keep his honest mouth shut very tight. He came back to Preston with an air of mystery about him that disconcerted his good wife greatly.

“Margaret, could you accommodate a guest just now?”

“Why, certainly, if it is necessary, but who is the guest?”

“A gentleman I have never met, maybe there will be two of them, – but we must pretend they are our very good friends.”

“Why, William, are you crazy?”

“No, ma’am!” and then he whispered something to her, although they were alone, and she, too, opened her eyes very wide but promised to keep her mouth shut.

The visitors came, two quiet gentlemen with good manners and simple habits. Mr. and Mrs. Sutton decided they should be some long lost cousins from the west who were in the country for their health. Thus they explained their visitors to Billy and Mag and their neighbors. They brought a small Ford runabout which they used a great deal.

Mr. Sutton had a long conference with Mr. Carter. There was some more opening of eyes and shutting of mouths.

“What a fool I have been!” cried that gentleman. “I can see it all now. Lewis Somerville tried to make me see but I was quite hard on the boy. Well! Well! What is to be done?”

“Nothing! Just bide our time.”

“See here, Sutton, I believe there was method in that man’s madness when he got two electric light systems. He told me to order one and then said his secretary had ordered one, too. Pretended he had not told me to, and then was tremendously kind and magnanimous about it. I began to think maybe I had not understood, – you see my head hadn’t been very clear for business for many months and I mistrusted myself. I’ll wager anything that that extra battery is running a wireless station at Weston.”

“Geewhilikins!” exclaimed the elder Sutton in very much the same tone his son might have used. “This business is growing very exciting.”

Sometimes the two quiet gentlemen visitors at Preston would go out for an airing in their little car, and finding a secluded spot in a pine woods, one of them would cleverly convert himself into an Armenian pedlar with a pack filled with cheap lace and jewelry. Then he would make the rounds of the cabins. He could speak almost no English when doing this part and seemed not to understand any at all. He visited every house in Paradise and from there made his way to Weston. His heavy, blue-black beard and long straggling hair so completely disguised him that the count never dreamed the man he saw at his kitchen door haggling with his colored cook over some coarse pillow shams was the same smooth-faced gentleman he had met that morning driving with his neighbor Sutton.

As a book agent, the clever detective gained access to the count’s library and actually sold him a set of Ruskin. As telephone inspector, he got much information desired, and as a government agricultural expert, he was favored with a long, intimate talk with the owner of Weston.

Old Blitz, the German farmer near Preston, came in for his share of visits, too, from pedlars and book agents, etc. The mills of the government were grinding slowly but they were grinding exceeding small.

The neighborhood was in absolute ignorance of the fact that their delightful count was being watched. His comings and goings were known. He had few secrets. It was learned by the detectives that he was not a Hungarian at all but his father was Austrian, his mother Prussian. He had been sent to this country by his government to make trouble among the negroes and to buy up tracts of land for future emigration. When the world was to be Prussianized, fair Virginia was not to be neglected.

The raid on Grantly was traced absolutely to his lectures and the teachings of Herz, the so-called secretary. The only thing that had gone wrong was that the negroes had acted sooner than their masters had planned. Their object had been to have a general uprising and they wanted it to be timed about when war was declared. Their schemes had not been directed against poor old Grantly especially, but against all the whites, with a view of keeping the darkies out of the army.

Herz turned out to be a full-blooded Prussian, who had lived in Cincinnati for about five years. He was a trusted spy of his government and had done wonderful work for them in Mexico. He was really the brains of the partnership and de Lestis the mixer. When de Lestis went off on his long business trips to Chicago and New York it developed he had been across the water several times, bearing with him maps and information that must be personally conducted.

A wireless station was suspected but it was difficult to locate.

“Look in the pigeon house,” suggested Mr. Carter, still bearing a grudge against the atrocity that had ruined his beloved roof line.

There it was, as neatly installed an instrument as one could find with the extra batteries doing the work perfectly. The telephone inspector found it quite easily. The pigeon house was a hollow sham. There was a reason for making it so large since the wireless was to have an inner chamber.

The net was drawing more closely around the two men but they, scornful of the intelligence of the stupid Americans, went unconcernedly on, laying their plans and hatching their deviltries. Many a laugh they had over the automobile accident.

“Those darkies before a clever lawyer would have been our undoing,” they admitted to one another.

The night school was discontinued for the time being and the poor colored people got back into their one time rut. Tempy resumed her labors at Grantly, a sadder and wiser girl. She no longer slept amidst the unwashed dishes but seemed anxious to become as good a servant as her sister Chloe. Sam, the factotum, returned in time to put in the garden.

CHAPTER XXIV