The Vagrant Duke. George Gibbs
he spoke all the breath of his body seemed concentrated in a hoarse whisper.
"You won't know that. You understand, I give the orders. You obey them. I am not a man who answers questions. Don't ask them."
"Oh, I beg your pardon. So long as this thing you fear is human——"
"Human! A ghost! Who said I was afraid? Sheldon? Let him think it. This is my business. There are many things of value in this house," and he glanced towards the safe. "I'm using the right of any man to protect what belongs to him."
"I see," said Peter.
The man's tension relaxed as he realized Peter's coolness.
"Call it a fancy if you like, Mr. Nichols——" he said with a shrug. "A man of my age may have fancies when he can afford to gratify 'em."
"That's your affair," said Peter easily. "I take it then that the systematic policing of the grounds is the first thing I am to consider."
"Exactly. The systematic policing of the grounds—the dividing of your men into shifts for day and night work—more at night than in the day. Three more men come to-morrow. They will all look to you for orders."
"And who is in charge now?"
"A man named Wells—a native—the foreman from one of the sawmills—but he—er—well, Mr. Nichols—I'm not satisfied. That's why I wanted a man from outside."
"I understand. And will you give the necessary orders to him?"
"Wells was up here to-day, I told him."
"How many men are on guard here at the house?"
"Ten and with the three coming—that makes thirteen——" McGuire halted—"thirteen—but you make the fourteenth," he added.
Peter nodded. "And you wish me to take charge at once?"
"At once. To-night. To-morrow you can look over the ground more carefully. You'll sleep in the old playhouse—the log cabin—down by the creek. They'll show you. It's connected with this house by 'phone. I'll talk to you again to-morrow; you'd better go down and get something to eat."
McGuire went to the door and called out "Tillie!"
And as a faint reply was heard, "Get Mr. Nichols some supper."
Peter rose and offered his hand.
"I'll try to justify your faith in me, sir. Much obliged."
"Good-night."
Peter went down the stairs with mingled feelings. If the words of Beth Cameron had created in his mind a notion that the mystery surrounding Black Rock was supernatural in character, the interview with Jonathan K. McGuire had dispelled it. That McGuire was a very much frightened man was certain, but it seemed equally certain to Peter that what he feared was no ghost or banshee but the imminence of some human attack upon his person or possessions. Here was a practical man, who bore in every feature of his strongly-marked face the tokens of a successful struggle in a hard career, the beginnings of which could not have been any too fortunate. A westerner whose broad hands and twisted fingers spoke eloquently of manual labor, a man who still possessed to all appearances considerable physical strength—a prey to the fear of some night danger which was too ominous even to be talked about.
It was the quality of his terror that was disturbing. Peter was well acquainted with the physical aspects of fear—that is the fear of violence and death. That kind of fear made men restless and nervous, or silent and preoccupied; or like liquor it accentuated their weaknesses of fiber in sullenness or bravado. But it did not make them furtive. He could not believe that it was the mere danger of death or physical violence that obsessed his employer. That sort of danger perhaps there might be, but the fear that he had seen in McGuire's fanatical gray eyes was born of something more than these. Whatever it was that McGuire feared, it reached further within—a threat which would destroy not his body alone, but something more vital even than that—the very spirit that lived within him.
Of his career, Peter knew nothing more than Sheldon, Senior, had told him—a successful man who told nothing of his business except to the Treasury Department, a silent man, with a passion for making money. What could he fear? Whom? What specter out of the past could conjure up the visions he had seen dancing between McGuire's eyes and his own?
These questions it seemed were not to be answered and Peter, as he sat down at the supper table, put them resolutely from his mind and addressed himself to the excellent meal provided by the housekeeper. For the present, at least, fortune smiled upon him. The terrors of his employer could not long prevail against the healthy appetite of six-and-twenty.
But it was not long before Peter discovered that the atmosphere of the room upstairs pervaded the dining room, library and halls. There were a cook and housemaid he discovered, neither of them visible. The housekeeper, if attentive, was silent, and the man who had opened the front door, who seemed to be a kind of general factotum, as well as personal bodyguard to Mr. McGuire, crept furtively about the house in an unquiet manner which would have been disturbing to the digestion of one less timorous than Peter.
Before the meal was finished this man came into the room and laid a police whistle, a large new revolver and a box of cartridges beside Peter's dish of strawberries.
"These are for you, sir," he whispered sepulchrally. "Mr. McGuire asked me to give them to you—for to-night."
"Thanks," said Peter, "and you——"
"I'm Stryker, sir, Mr. McGuire's valet."
"Oh!"
Peter's accent of surprise came from his inability to reconcile Stryker with the soiled shirt and the three days' growth of beard on the man upstairs, which more than ever testified to the disorder of his mental condition.
And as Stryker went out and his footsteps were heard no more, the housekeeper emerged cautiously from the pantry.
"Is everything all right, Mr. Nichols?" she asked in a stage whisper.
"Right as rain. Delicious! I'm very much obliged to you."
"I mean—er—there ain't anythin' else ye'd like?"
"Nothing, thanks," said Peter, taking up the revolver and breaking it. He had cut the cover of the cartridge box and had slipped a cartridge into the weapon when he heard the voice of the woman at his ear.
"D'ye think there's any danger, sir?" she whispered, while she nervously eyed the weapon.
"I'm sure I don't know. Not to you, I'd say," he muttered, still putting the cartridges in the pistol. As an ex-military man, he was taking great delight in the perfect mechanism of his new weapon.
"What is it——? I mean, d'ye think——," she stammered, "did Mr. McGuire say—just what it is he's afraid of?"
"No," said Peter, "he didn't." And then with a grin, "Do you know?"
"No, sir. I wish t'God I did. Then there'd be somethin' to go by."
"I'm afraid I can't help you, Mrs.——"
"Tillie Bergen. I've been housekeeper here since the new wing was put on——"
"Oh, yes," said Peter, pausing over the last cartridge as the thought came to him. "Then you must be Beth Cameron's aunt?"
"Beth?" The woman's sober face wreathed in a lovely smile. "D'ye know Beth?"
"Since this afternoon. She showed me the way."
"Oh. Poor Beth."
"Poor!"
"Oh, we're all poor, Mr. Nichols. But Beth she's—different from the rest of us somehow."
"Yes, she is different," admitted Peter frankly.
Mrs. Bergen sighed deeply. "Ye don't know how different. And now that—all this trouble has come, I can't get home nights to her. And she can't come to see me without