A Fool and His Money / McCutcheon, George Barr, 1866-1928

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Title: A Fool and His Money

Author: George Barr McCutcheon

Release Date: August, 2004 [EBook #6325]
[Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule]
[This file was first posted on November 26, 2002]

Edition: 10

Language: English

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A FOOL AND HIS MONEY

BY

GEORGE BARR McCUTCHEON




CONTENTS

CHAPTER

I. I MAKE NO EFFORT TO DEFEND MYSELF

II. I DEFEND MY PROPERTY

III. I CONVERSE WITH A MYSTERY

IV. I BECOME AN ANCESTOR

V. I MEET THE FOE AND FALL

VI. I DISCUSS MATRIMONY

VII. I RECEIVE VISITORS

VIII. I RESORT TO DIPLOMACY

IX. I AM INVITED OUT TO DINNER

X. I AGREE TO MEET THE ENEMY

XI. I AM INVITED TO LEND MONEY

XII. I AM INFORMED THAT I AM IN LOVE

XIII. I VISIT AND AM VISITED

XIV. I AM FORCED INTO BEING A HERO

XV. I TRAVERSE THE NIGHT

XVI. I INDULGE IN PLAIN LANGUAGE

XVII. I SEE TO THE BOTTOM OF THINGS

XVIII. I SPEED THE PARTING GUEST

XIX. I BURN A FEW BRIDGES

XX. I CHANGE GARDEN SPOTS

XXI. SHE PROPOSES




ILLUSTRATIONS

In the aperture stood my amazing neighbour ...  Frontispiece

I found myself staring as if stupefied at the white figure of a woman
who stood in the topmost balcony.

I sat bolt upright and yelled: "Get out!"

We faced each other across the bowl of roses

Up to that moment I had wondered whether I could do it with my left hand




CHAPTER I

I MAKE NO EFFORT TO DEFEND MYSELF

I am quite sure it was my Uncle Rilas who said that I was a fool. If
memory serves me well he relieved himself of that conviction in the
presence of my mother--whose brother he was--at a time when I was
least competent to acknowledge _his_ wisdom and most arrogant in
asserting my own. I was a freshman in college: a fact--or condition,
perhaps,--which should serve as an excuse for both of us. I possessed
another uncle, incidentally, and while I am now convinced that he must
have felt as Uncle Rilas did about it, he was one of those who suffer
in silence. The nearest he ever got to openly resenting me as a freshman
was when he admitted, as if it were a crime, that he too had been in
college and knew less when he came out than when he entered. Which was
a mild way of putting it, I am sure, considering the fact that he
remained there for twenty-three years as a distinguished member of the
faculty.

I assume, therefore, that it was Uncle Rilas who orally convicted me,
an assumption justified to some extent by putting two and two together
after the poor old gentleman was laid away for his long sleep. He had
been very emphatic in his belief that a fool and his money are soon
parted. Up to the time of his death I had been in no way qualified to
dispute this ancient theory. In theory, no doubt, I was the kind of
fool he referred to, but in practice I was quite an untried novice.
It is very hard for even a fool to part with something he hasn't got.
True, I parted with the little I had at college with noteworthy
promptness about the middle of each term, but that could hardly have
been called a fair test for the adage. Not until Uncle Rilas died and
left me all of his money was I able to demonstrate that only dead men
and fools part with it. The distinction lies in the capacity for
enjoyment while the sensation lasts. Dead men part with it because
they have to, fools because they want to.

In any event, Uncle Rilas did not leave me his money until my freshman
days were far behind me, wherein lies the solace that he may have
outgrown an opinion while I was going through the same process. At
twenty-three I confessed that _all_ freshmen were insufferable,
and immediately afterward took my degree and went out into the world
to convince it that seniors are by no means adolescent. Having
successfully passed the age of reason, I too felt myself admirably
qualified to look with scorn upon all creatures employed in the business
of getting an education. There were times when I wondered how on earth
I could have stooped so low as to be a freshman. I still have the
disquieting fear that my uncle did not modify his opinion of me until
I was thoroughly over being a senior. You will note that I do not say
he changed his opinion. Modify is the word.

His original estimate of me, as a freshman, of course,--was uttered
when I, at the age of eighteen, picked out my walk in life, so to
speak. After considering everything, I decided to be a literary man.
A novelist or a playwright, I hadn't much of a choice between the two,
or perhaps a journalist. Being a journalist, of course, was preliminary;
a sort of makeshift. At any rate, I was going to be a writer. My Uncle
Rilas, a hard-headed customer who had read Scott as a boy and the Wall
Street news as a man,--without being misled by either,--was scornful.
He said that I would outgrow it, there was some consolation in that.
He even admitted that when he was seventeen he wanted to be an actor.
There you are, said he! I declared there was a great difference between
being an actor and being a writer. Only handsome men can be actors,
while I--well, by nature I was doomed to be nothing more engaging than
a novelist, who doesn't have to spoil an illusion by showing himself
in public.

Besides, I argued, novelists make a great deal of money, and playwrights
too, for that matter. He said in reply that an ordinarily vigorous
washerwoman could make more money than the average novelist, and she
always had a stocking without a hole to keep it in, which was more to
the point.

Now that I come to think of it, it _was_ Uncle Rilas who oracularly
prejudged me, and not Uncle John, who was by way of being a sort of
literary chap himself and therefore lamentably unqualified to guide
me in any course whatsoever, especially as he had all he could do to
keep his own wolf at bay without encouraging mine, and who, besides
teaching good English, loved it wisely and too well. I think Uncle
Rilas would have held Uncle John up to me as an example,--a scarecrow,
you might say,--if it hadn't been for the fact that he loved him in
spite of his English. He must have loved me in spite of mine.

My mother felt in her heart that I ought to be a doctor or a preacher,
but she wasn't mean: she was positive I could succeed as a writer if
I set my mind to it. She was also sure that I could be President of
the United States or perhaps even a Bishop. We were Episcopalian.

When I was twenty-seven my first short story appeared in a magazine
of considerable weight, due to its advertising pages, but my Uncle
Rilas didn't read it until I had convinced him that the honorarium
amounted to three hundred dollars. Even then I was obliged to promise
him a glimpse of the check when I got it. Somewhat belated, it came
in the course of three or four months with a rather tart letter in
which I was given to understand that it wasn't quite the thing to
pester a great publishing house with queries of the kind I had been
so persistent in propounding. But at last Uncle Rilas saw the check
and was properly impressed. He took back what he said about the
washerwoman, but gave me a little further advice concerning the
stocking.

In course of time my first novel appeared. It was a love story. Uncle
Rilas read the first five chapters and then skipped over to the last
page. Then he began it all over again and sat up nearly all night to
finish it. The next day he called it "trash" but invited me to have
luncheon with him at the Metropolitan Club, and rather noisily
introduced me to a few old cronies of his, who were not sufficiently
interested in me to enquire what my name was--a trifling detail he had
overlooked in presenting me as his nephew--but who _did_ ask me to have
a drink.

A month later, he died. He left me a fortune, which was all the more
staggering in view of the circumstance that had seen me named for my
Uncle John and not for him.

It was not long afterward that I made a perfect fool of myself by
falling in love. It turned out very badly. I can't imagine what got
into me to want to commit bigamy after I had already proclaimed myself
to be irrevocably wedded to my profession. Nevertheless, I deliberately
coveted the experience, and would have attained to it no doubt had it
not been for the young woman in the case. She would have none of me,
but with considerable independence of spirit and, I must say, noteworthy
acumen, elected to wed a splendid looking young fellow who clerked in
a jeweller's shop in Fifth Avenue. They had been engaged for several
years, it seems, and my swollen fortune failed to disturb her sense
of fidelity. Perhaps you will be interested enough in a girl who could
refuse to share a fortune of something like three hundred thousand
dollars--(not counting me, of course)--to let me tell you briefly who
and what she was. She was my typist. That is to say, she did piece-work
for me as I happened to provide substance for her active fingers to
work upon when she wasn't typing law briefs in the regular sort of
grind. Not only was she an able typist, but she was an exceedingly
wholesome, handsome and worthy young woman. I think I came to like her
with genuine resolution when I discovered that she could spell correctly
and had the additional knack of uniting my stray infinitives with
stubborn purposefulness, as well as the ability to administer my grammar
with tact and discretion.

Unfortunately she loved the jeweller's clerk. She tried to convince
me, with a sweetness I shall never forget, that she was infinitely
better suited to be a jeweller's wife than to be a weight upon the
neck of a genius. Moreover, when I foolishly mentioned my snug fortune
as an extra inducement, she put me smartly in my place by remarking
that fortunes like wine are made in a day while really excellent
jeweller's clerks are something like thirty years in the making. Which,
I take it, was as much as to say that there is always room for
improvement in a man. I confess I was somewhat disturbed by one of her
gentlest remarks. She seemed to be repeating my Uncle Rilas, although
I am quite sure she had never heard of him. She argued that the fortune
might take wings and fly away, and then what would be to pay! Of course,
it was perfectly clear to me, stupid as I must have been, that she
preferred the jeweller's clerk to a fortune.

I was loth to lose her as a typist. The exact point where I appear to
have made a fool of myself was when I first took it into my head that
I could make something else of her. I not only lost a competent typist,
but I lost a great deal of sleep, and had to go abroad for awhile, as
men do when they find out unpleasant things about themselves in just
that way.

I gave her as a wedding present a very costly and magnificent
dining-room set, fondly hoping that the jeweller's clerk would
experience a great deal of trouble in living up to it. At first I had
thought of a Marie Antoinette bedroom set, but gave it up when I
contemplated the cost.

If you will pardon me, I shall not go any further into this lamentable
love affair. I submit, in extenuation, that people do not care to be
regaled with the heartaches of past affairs; they are only interested
in those which appear to be in the process of active development or
retrogression. Suffice to say, I was terribly cut up over the way my
first serious affair of the heart turned out, and tried my best to
hate myself for letting it worry me. Somehow I was able to attribute
the fiasco to an inborn sense of shyness that has always made me
faint-hearted, dilatory and unaggressive. No doubt if I had gone about
it roughshod and fiery I could have played hob with the excellent
jeweller's peace of mind, to say the least, but alas! I succeeded only
in approaching at a time when there was nothing left for me to do but
to start him off in life with a mild handicap in the shape of a
dining-room set that would not go with anything else he had in the
apartment.

Still, some men, no matter how shy and procrastinating they may be--or
reluctant, for that matter--are doomed to have love affairs thrust
upon them, as you will perceive if you follow the course of this
narrative to the bitter end.

In order that you may know me when you see me struggling through these
pages, as one might struggle through a morass on a dark night, I shall
take the liberty of describing myself in the best light possible under
the circumstances.

I am a tallish sort of person, moderately homely, and not quite
thirty-five. I am strong but not athletic. Whatever physical development
I possess was acquired through the ancient and honourable game of golf
and in swimming. In both of these sports I am quite proficient. My
nose is rather long and inquisitive, and my chin is considered to be
singularly firm for one who has no ambition to become a hero. My thatch
is abundant and quite black. I understand that my eyes are green when
I affect a green tie, light blue when I put on one of that delicate
hue, and curiously yellow when I wear brown about my neck. Not that
I really need them, but I wear nose glasses when reading: to save my
eyes, of course. I sometimes wear them in public, with a very fetching
and imposing black band draping across my expanse of shirt front. I
find this to be most effective when sitting in a box at the theatre.
My tailor is a good one. I shave myself clean with an old-fashioned
razor and find it to be quite safe and tractable. My habits are
considered rather good, and I sang bass in the glee club. So there you
are. Not quite what yon would call a lady killer, or even a lady's
man, I fancy you'll say.

You will be surprised to learn, however, that secretly I am of a rather
romantic, imaginative turn of mind. Since earliest childhood I have
consorted with princesses and ladies of high degree,--mentally, of
course,--and my bosom companions have been knights of valour and
longevity. Nothing could have suited me better than to have been born
in a feudal castle a few centuries ago, from which I should have sallied
forth in full armour on the slightest provocation and returned in glory
when there was no one left in the neighbourhood to provoke me.

Even now, as I make this astounding statement, I can't help thinking
of that confounded jeweller's clerk. At thirty-five I am still
unattached and, so far as I can tell, unloved. What more could a
sensible, experienced bachelor expect than that? Unless, of course,
he aspired to be a monk or a hermit, in which case he reasonably could
be sure of himself if not of others.

Last winter in London my mother went to a good bit of trouble to set
my cap for a lady who seemed in every way qualified to look after an
only son as he should be looked after from a mother's point of view,
and I declare to you I had a wretchedly close call of it. My poor
mother, thinking it was quite settled, sailed for America, leaving me
entirely unprotected, whereupon I succeeded in making my escape. Heaven
knows I had no desperate longing to visit Palestine at that particular
time, but I journeyed thither without a qualm of regret, and thereby
avoided the surrender without love or honour.

For the past year I have done little or no work. My books are few and
far between, so few in fact that more than once I have felt the sting
of dilettantism inflicting my labours with more or less increasing
sharpness. It is not for me to say that I despise a fortune, but I am
constrained to remark that I believe poverty would have been a fairer
friend to me. At any rate I now pamper myself to an unreasonable extent.
For one thing, I feel that I cannot work,--much less think,--when
opposed by distracting conditions such as women, tea, disputes over
luggage, and things of that sort. They subdue all the romantic
tendencies I am so parsimonious about wasting. My best work is done
when the madding crowd is far from me. Hence I seek out remote, obscure
places when I feel the plot boiling, and grind away for dear life with
nothing to distract me save an unconquerable habit acquired very early
in life which urges me to eat three meals a day and to sleep nine hours
out of twenty-four.

A month ago, in Vienna, I felt the plot breaking out on me, very much
as the measles do, at a most inopportune time for everybody concerned,
and my secretary, more wide-awake than you'd imagine by looking at
him, urged me to coddle the muse while she was willing and not to put
her off till an evil day, as frequently I am in the habit of doing.

It was especially annoying, coming as it did, just as I was about to
set off for a fortnight's motor-boat trip up the Danube with Elsie
Hazzard and her stupid husband, the doctor. I compromised with myself
by deciding to give them a week of my dreamy company, and then dash
off to England where I could work off the story in a sequestered village
I had had in mind for some time past.

The fourth day of our delectable excursion brought us to an ancient
town whose name you would recall in an instant if I were fool enough
to mention it, and where we were to put up for the night. On the crest
of a stupendous crag overhanging the river, almost opposite the town,
which isn't far from Krems, stood the venerable but unvenerated castle
of that highhanded old robber baron, the first of the Rothhoefens. He
has been in his sarcophagus these six centuries, I am advised, but you
wouldn't think so to look at the stronghold. At a glance you can almost
convince yourself that he is still there, with battle-axe and
broad-sword, and an inflamed eye at every window in the grim facade.

We picked up a little of its history while in the town, and the next
morning crossed over to visit the place. Its antiquity was considerably
enhanced by the presence of a caretaker who would never see eighty
again, and whose wife was even older. Their two sons lived with them
in the capacity of loafers and, as things go in these rapid times of
ours, appeared to be even older and more sere than their parents.

It is a winding and tortuous road that leads up to the portals of this
huge old pile, and I couldn't help thinking how stupid I have always
been in execrating the spirit of progress that conceives the funicular
and rack-and-pinion railroads which serve to commercialise grandeur
instead of protecting it. Half way up the hill, we paused to rest, and
I quite clearly remember growling that if the confounded thing belonged
to me I'd build a funicular or install an elevator without delay. Poor
Elsie was too fatigued to say what she ought to have said to me for
suggesting and even insisting on the visit.

The next day, instead of continuing our delightful trip down the river,
we three were scurrying to Saalsburg, urged by a sudden and stupendous
whim on my part, and filled with a new interest in life.

I had made up my mind to buy the castle!

The Hazzards sat up with me nearly the whole of the night, trying to
talk me out of the mad design, but all to no purpose. I was determined
to be the sort of fool that Uncle Rilas referred to when he so
frequently quoted the old adage. My only argument in reply to their
entreaties was that I had to have a quiet, inspirational place in which
to work and besides I was quite sure we could beat the impoverished
owner down considerably in the price, whatever it might turn out to
be. While the ancient caretaker admitted that it was for sale, he
couldn't give me the faintest notion what it was expected to bring,
except that it ought to bring more from an American than from any one
else, and that he would be proud and happy to remain in my service,
he and his wife and his prodigiously capable sons, either of whom if
put to the test could break all the bones in a bullock without half
trying, Moreover, for such strong men, they ate very little and seldom
slept, they were so eager to slave in the interests of the master. We
all agreed that they looked strong enough, but as they were sleeping
with some intensity all the time we were there, and making dreadful
noises in the courtyard, we could only infer that they were making up
for at least a week of insomnia.

I had no difficulty whatever in striking a bargain with the abandoned
wretch who owned the Schloss. He seemed very eager to submit to my
demand that he knock off a thousand pounds sterling, and we hunted up
a notary and all the other officials necessary to the transfer of
property. At the end of three days, I was the sole owner and proprietor
of a feudal stronghold on the Danube, and the joyous Austrian was a
little farther on his way to the dogs, a journey he had been negotiating
with great ardour ever since coming into possession of an estate once
valued at several millions. I am quite sure I have never seen a
spendthrift with more energy than this fellow seems to have displayed
in going through with his patrimony. He was on his uppers, so to speak,
when I came to his rescue, solely because he couldn't find a purchaser
or a tenant for the castle, try as he would. Afterwards I heard that
he had offered the place to a syndicate of Jews for one-third the price
I paid, but luckily for me the Hebraic instinct was not so keen as
mine. They let a very good bargain get away from them. I have not told
my most intimate friends what I paid for the castle, but they are all
generous enough to admit that I could afford it, no matter what it
cost me. Their generosity stops there, however. I have never had so
many unkind things said to me in all my life as have been said about
this purely personal matter.

Well, to make the story short, the Hazzards and I returned to Schloss
Rothhoefen in some haste, primarily for the purpose of inspecting it
from dungeon to battlement. I forgot to mention that, being very tired
after the climb up the steep, we got no further on our first visit
than the great baronial hall, the dining-room and certain other
impressive apartments customarily kept open for the inspection of
visitors. An interesting concession on the part of the late owner (the
gentleman hurrying to catch up with the dogs that had got a bit of a
start on him),--may here be mentioned. He included all of the contents
of the castle for the price paid, and the deed, or whatever you call
it, specifically set forth that I, John Bellamy Smart, was the sole
and undisputed owner of everything the castle held. This made the
bargain all the more desirable, for I have never seen a more beautiful
assortment of antique furniture and tapestry in Fourth Avenue than was
to be found in Schloss Rothhoefen.

Our second and more critical survey of the lower floors of the castle
revealed rather urgent necessity for extensive repairs and refurbishing,
but I was not dismayed. With a blithesome disregard for expenses, I
despatched Rudolph, the elder of the two sons to Linz with instructions
to procure artisans who could be depended upon to undo the ravages of
time to a certain extent and who might even suggest a remedy for leaks.

My friends, abhorring rheumatism and like complaints, refused to sleep
over night in the drafty, almost paneless structure. They came over
to see me on the ensuing day and begged me to return to Vienna with
them. But, full of the project in hand, I would not be moved. With the
house full of carpenters, blacksmiths, masons, locksmiths, tinsmiths,
plumbers, plasterers, glaziers, joiners, scrub-women and chimneysweeps,
I felt that I couldn't go away and leave it without a controlling
influence.

They promised to come and make me a nice short visit, however, after
I'd got the castle primped up a bit: the mould off the walls of the
bedrooms and the great fireplaces thoroughly cleared of obstructive
swallows' nests, the beds aired and the larder stocked. Just as they
were leaving, my secretary and my valet put in an appearance, having
been summoned from Vienna the day before. I confess I was glad to see
them. The thought of spending a second night in that limitless
bed-chamber, with all manner of night-birds trying to get in at the
windows, was rather disturbing, and I welcomed my retainers with open
arms.

My first night had been spent in a huge old bed, carefully prepared
for occupancy by Herr Schmick's frau; and the hours, which never were
so dark, in trying to fathom the infinite space that reached above me
to the vaulted ceiling. I knew there was a ceiling, for I had seen its
beams during the daylight hours, but to save my soul I couldn't imagine
anything so far away as it seemed to be after the candles had been
taken away by the caretaker's wife, who had tucked me away in the bed
with ample propriety and thoroughness combined.

Twice during that interminable night I thought I heard a baby crying.
So it is not unreasonable to suppose that I was _more_ than glad
to see Poopendyke clambering up the path with his typewriter in one
hand and his green baise bag in the other, followed close behind by
Britton and the Gargantuan brothers bearing trunks, bags, boxes and
my golf clubs.

"Whew!" said Poopendyke, dropping wearily upon my doorstep--which, by
the way, happens to be a rough hewn slab some ten feet square surmounted
by a portcullis that has every intention of falling down unexpectedly
one of these days and creating an earthquake. "Whew!" he repeated.

My secretary is a youngish man with thin, stooping shoulders and a
habit of perpetually rubbing his knees together when he walks. I shudder
to think of what would happen to them if he undertook to run. I could
not resist a glance at them now.

"It is something of a climb, isn't it?" said I beamingly.

"In the name of heaven, Mr. Smart, what could have induced you to--"
He got no farther than this, and to my certain knowledge this unfinished
reproof was the nearest he ever came to openly convicting me of
asininity.

"Make yourself at home, old fellow," said I in some haste. I felt sorry
for him. "We are going to be very cosy here."

"Cosy?" murmured he, blinking as he looked up, not at me but at the
frowning walls that seemed to penetrate the sky.

"I haven't explored those upper regions," I explained nervously,
divining his thoughts. "We shall do it together, in a day or two."

"It looks as though it might fall down if we jostled it carelessly,"
he remarked, having recovered his breath.

"I am expecting masons at any minute," said I, contemplating the
unstable stone crest of the northeast turret with some uneasiness. My
face brightened suddenly. "That particular section of the castle is
uninhabitable, I am told. It really doesn't matter if it collapses.
Ah, Britton! Here you are, I see. Good morning."

Britton, a very exacting servant, looked me over critically.

"Your coat and trousers need pressing, sir," said he. "And where am
I to get the hot water for shaving, sir?"

"Frau Schmick will supply anything you need, Britton," said I, happy
on being able to give the information.

"It is not I as needs it, sir," said he, feeling of his smoothly shaven
chin.

"Come in and have a look about the place," said I, with a magnificent
sweep of my arm to counteract the feeling of utter insignificance I
was experiencing at the moment. I could see that my faithful retinue
held me in secret but polite disdain.

A day or two later the castle was swarming with workmen; the banging
of hammers, the rasp of saws, the spattering of mortar, the crashing
of stone and the fumes of charcoal crucibles extended to the remotest
recesses; the tower of Babel was being reconstructed in the language
of six or eight nations, and everybody was happy. I had no idea there
were so many tinsmiths in the world. Every artisan in the town across
the river seems to have felt it his duty to come over and help the men
from Linz in the enterprise. There were so many of them that they were
constantly getting in each other's way and quarrelling over matters
of jurisdiction with even more spirit than we might expect to encounter
among the labour unions at home.

Poopendyke, in great distress of mind, notified me on the fourth day
of rehabilitation that the cost of labour as well as living had gone
up appreciably since our installation. In fact it had doubled. He paid
all of my bills, so I suppose he knew what he was talking about.

"You will be surprised to know, Mr. Smart," he said, consulting his
sheets, "that scrub-women are getting more here than they do in New
York City, and I am convinced that there are more scrub-women. Today
we had thirty new ones scrubbing the loggia on the gun-room floor, and
they all seem to have apprentices working under them. The carpenters
and plasterers were not so numerous to-day. I paid them off last night,
you see. It may interest you to hear that their wages for three days
amounted to nearly seven hundred dollars in our money, to say nothing
of materials--and breakage."

"Breakage?" I exclaimed in surprise.

"Yes, sir, breakage. They break nearly as much as they mend.
We'll--we'll go bankrupt, sir, if we're not careful."

I liked his pronoun. "Never mind," I said, "we'll soon be rid of them."

"They've got it in their heads, sir, that it will take at least a year
to finish the--"

"You tell the foremen that if this job isn't finished to our
satisfaction by the end of the month, I'll fire all of them," said I,
wrathfully.

"That's less than three weeks off, Mr. Smart. They don't seem to be
making much headway."

"Well, you _tell_ 'em, just the same." And that is how I dismissed it.
"Tell 'em _we've_ got to go to work ourselves."

"By the way, old man Schmick and his family haven't been paid for
nearly two years. They have put in a claim. The late owner assured
them they'd get their money from the next--"

"Discharge them at once," said I.

"We can't get on without them," protested he. "They know the ropes,
so to speak, and, what's more to the point, they know all the keys.
Yesterday I was nearly two hours in getting to the kitchen for a
conference with Mrs. Schmick about the market-men. In the first place,
I couldn't find the way, and in the second place all the doors are
locked."

"Please send Herr Schmick to me in the--in the--" I couldn't recall
the name of the administration chamber at the head of the grand
staircase, so I was compelled to say: "I'll see him here."

"If we lose them we also are lost," was his sententious declaration.
I believed him.

On the fifth day of our occupancy, Britton reported to me that he had
devised a plan by which we could utilise the tremendous horse-power
represented by the muscles of those lazy giants, Rudolph and Max. He
suggested that we rig up a huge windlass at the top of the incline,
with stout steel cables attached to a small car which could be hauled
up the cliff by a hitherto wasted human energy, and as readily lowered.
It sounded feasible and I instructed him to have the extraordinary
railway built, but to be sure that the safety device clutches in the
cog wheels were sound and trusty. It would prove to be an infinitely
more graceful mode of ascending the peak than riding up on the donkeys
I had been persuaded to buy, especially for Poopendyke and me, whose
legs were so long that when we sat in the saddles our knees either
touched our chins or were spread out so far that we resembled the
Prussian coat-of-arms.

[Illustration: I found myself staring as if stupefied at the white
figure of a woman who stood in the topmost balcony]

That evening, after the workmen had filed down the steep looking for
all the world like an evacuating army, I sought a few moments of peace
and quiet in the small balcony outside my bedroom windows. My room was
in the western wing of the castle, facing the river. The eastern wing
mounted even higher than the one in which we were living, and was
topped by the loftiest watch tower of them all. We had not attempted
to do any work over in that section as yet, for the simple reason that
Herr Schmick couldn't find the keys to the doors.

The sun was disappearing beyond the highlands and a cool, soft breeze
swept up through the valley. I leaned back in a comfortable chair that
Britton had selected for me, and puffed at my pipe, not quite sure
that my serenity was real or assumed. This was all costing me a pretty
penny. Was I, after all, parting with my money in the way prescribed
for fools? Was all this splendid antiquity worth the--

My reflections terminated sharply at that critical instant and I don't
believe I ever felt called upon after that to complete the inquiry.

I found myself staring as if stupefied at the white figure of a woman
who stood in the topmost balcony of the eastern wing, fully revealed
by the last glow of the sun and apparently as deep in dreams as I had
been the instant before.



CHAPTER II

I DEFEND MY PROPERTY

For ten minutes I stood there staring up at her, completely bewildered
and not a little shaken. My first thought had been of ghosts, but it
was almost instantly dispelled by a significant action on the part of
the suspected wraith. She turned to whistle over her shoulder, and to
snap her fingers peremptorily, and then she stooped and picked up a
rather lusty chow dog which promptly barked at me across the intervening
space, having discovered me almost at once although I was many rods
away and quite snugly ensconced among the shadows. The lady in white
muzzled him with her hand and I could almost imagine I heard her
reproving whispers. After a few minutes, she apparently forgot the dog
and lifted her hand to adjust something in her hair. He again barked
at me, quite ferociously for a chow. This time it was quite plain to
her that he was not barking at the now shadowy moon. She peered over
the stone balustrade and an instant later disappeared from view through
the high, narrow window.

Vastly exercised, I set out in quest of Herr Schmick, martialing
Poopendyke as I went along, realising that I would have to depend on
his German, which was less halting than mine and therefore, more likely
to dovetail with that of the Schmicks, neither of whom spoke German
because they loved it but because they had to,--being Austrians. We
found the four Schmicks in the vast kitchen, watching Britton while
he pressed my trousers on an oak table so large that the castle must
have been built around it.

Herr Schmick was weighted down with the keys of the castle, which never
left his possession day or night.

"Herr Schmick," said I, "will you be so good as to inform me who the
dickens that woman is over in the east wing of the castle?"

"Woman, mein herr?" He almost dropped his keys. His big sons said
something to each other that I couldn't quite catch, but it sounded
very much like "der duyvil."

"A woman in a white dress,--with a dog."

"A dog?" he cried. "But, mein herr, dogs are not permitted to be in
the castle."

"Who is she? How did she get there?"

"Heaven defend us, sir! It must have been the ghost of--"

"Ghost, your granny!" I cried, relapsing into English. "Please don't
beat about the bush, Mr. Schmick. She's over there in the unused wing,
which I haven't been allowed to penetrate in spite of the fact that
it belongs to me. You say you can't find the keys to that side of the
castle. Will you explain how it is that it is open to strange women
and--and dogs?"

"You must be mistaken, mein herr," he whined abjectly. "She cannot be
there. She--Ah, I have it! It may have been my wife. Gretel! Have you
been in the east--"

"Nonsense!" I cried sharply. "This won't do, Mr. Schmick. Give me that
bunch of keys. We'll investigate. I can't have strange women
gallivanting about the place as if they owned it. This is no trysting
place for Juliets, Herr Schmick. We'll get to the bottom of this at
once. Here, you Rudolph, fetch a couple of lanterns. Max, get a sledge
or two from the forge. There _is_ a forge. I saw it yesterday out there
back of the stables. So don't try to tell me there isn't one. If we
can't unlock the doors, we'll smash 'em in. They're mine, and I'll knock
'em to smithereens if I feel like it."

The four Schmicks wrung their hands and shook their heads and, then,
repairing to the scullery, growled and grumbled for fully ten minutes
before deciding to obey my commands. In the meantime, I related my
experience to Poopendyke and Britton.

"That reminds me, sir," said Britton, "that I found a rag-doll in the
courtyard yesterday, on that side of the building, sir--I should say
castle, sir."

"I am quite sure I heard a baby crying the second night we were here,
Mr. Smart," said my secretary nervously.

"And there was smoke coming from one of the back chimney pots this
morning," added Britton.

I was thoughtful for a moment. "What became of the rag-doll, Britton?"
I enquired shrewdly.

"I turned it over to old Schmick, sir," said he. He grinned. "I thought
as maybe it belonged to one of his boys."

On the aged caretaker's reappearance, I bluntly inquired what had
become of the doll-baby. He was terribly confused.

"I know nothing, I know nothing," he mumbled, and I could see that he
was miserably upset. His sons towered and glowered and his wife wrapped
and unwrapped her hands in her apron, all the time supplicating heaven
to be good to the true and the faithful.

From what I could gather, they all seemed to be more disturbed over
the fact that my hallucination included a dog than by the claim that
I had seen a woman.

"But, confound you, Schmick," I cried in some heat, "it barked at me."

"Gott in himmel!" they all cried, and, to my surprise, the old woman
burst into tears.

"It is bad to dream of a dog," she wailed. "It means evil to all of
us. Evil to--"

"Come!" said I, grabbing the keys from the old man's unresisting hand.
"And, Schmick, if that dog bites me, I'll hold you personally
responsible. Do you understand?"

Two abreast we filed through the long, vaulted halls, Rudolph carrying
a gigantic lantern and Max a sledge. We traversed extensive corridors,
mounted tortuous stairs and came at length to the sturdy oak door that
separated the east wing from the west: a huge, formidable thing
strengthened by many cross-pieces and studded with rusty bolt-heads.
Padlocks as large as horse-shoes, corroded by rust and rendered
absolutely impracticable by age, confronted us.

"I have not the keys," said old Conrad Schmick sourly. "This door has
not been opened in my time. It is no use."

"It is no use," repeated his grizzly sons, leaning against the mouldy
walls with weary tolerance.

"Then how did the woman and her dog get into that part of the castle?"
I demanded. "Tell me that!"

They shook their heads, almost compassionately, as much as to say, "It
is always best to humour a mad man."

"And the baby," added Poopendyke, turning up his coat collar to protect
his thin neck from the draft that smote us from the halls.

"Smash those padlocks, Max," I commanded resolutely.

Max looked stupidly at his father and the old man looked at his wife,
and then all four of them looked at me, almost imploringly.

"Why destroy a perfectly good padlock, mein herr?" began Max, twirling
the sledge in his hand as if it were a bamboo cane.

"Hi! Look out there!" gasped Britton, in some alarm. "Don't let that
thing slip!"

"Doesn't this castle belong to me?" I demanded, considerably impressed
by the ease with which he swung the sledge. A very dangerous person,
I began to perceive.

"It does, mein herr," shouted all of them gladly, and touched their
forelocks.

"Everything is yours," added old Conrad, with a comprehensive sweep
of his hand that might have put the whole universe in my name.

"Smash that padlock, Max," I said after a second's hesitation.

"I'll bet he can't do it," said Britton, ingeniously.

Very reluctantly Max bared his great arms, spit upon his hands, and,
with a pitiful look at his parents, prepared to deal the first blow
upon the ancient padlock. The old couple turned their heads away, and
put their fingers to their ears, cringing like things about to be
whipped.

"Now, one--two--three!" cried I, affecting an enthusiasm I didn't feel.

The sledge fell upon the padlock and rebounded with almost equal force.
The sound of the crash must have disturbed every bird and bat in the
towers of the grim old pile. But the padlock merely shed a few scabs
of rust and rattled back into its customary repose.

"See!" cried Max, triumphantly. "It cannot be broken." Rudolph, his
broad face beaming, held the lantern close to the padlock and showed
me that it hadn't been dented by the blow.

"It is a very fine lock," cried old Conrad, with a note of pride in
his voice.

I began to feel some pride in the thing myself. "It is, indeed," I
said. "Try once more, Max."

It seemed to me that he struck with a great deal more confidence than
before, and again they all uttered ejaculations of pleasure. I caught
Dame Schmick in the act of thanking God with her fingers.

"See here," I exclaimed, facing them angrily, "what does all this mean?
You are deceiving me, all of you. Now, let's have the truth--every
word of it--or out you go to-morrow, the whole lot of you. I insist
on knowing who that woman is, why she is here in my hou--my castle,
and--everything, do you understand?"

Apparently they didn't understand, for they looked at me with all the
stupidity they could command.

"You try, Mr. Poopendyke," I said, giving it up in despair. He sought
to improve on my German, but I think he made it worse. They positively
refused to be intelligent.

"Give me the hammer," I said at last in desperation. Max surrendered
the clumsy, old-fashioned instrument with a grin and I motioned for
them all to stand back. Three successive blows with all the might I
had in my body failed to shatter the lock, whereupon my choler rose
to heights hitherto unknown, I being a very mild-mannered, placid
person and averse to anything savouring of the tempestuous. I delivered
a savage and resounding thwack upon the broad oak panel of the door,
regardless of the destructiveness that might attend the effort. If any
one had told me that I couldn't splinter an oak board with a
sledge-hammer at a single blow I should have laughed in his face. But
as it turned out in this case I not only failed to split the panel but
broke off the sledge handle near the head, putting it wholly out of
commission for the time being as well as stinging my hands so severely
that I doubled up with pain and shouted words that Dame Schmick could
not put into her prayers.

The Schmicks fairly glowed with joy! Afterwards Max informed me that
the door was nearly six inches thick and often had withstood the
assaults of huge battering rams, back in the dim past when occasion
induced the primal baron to seek safety in the east wing, which, after
all, appears to have been the real, simon pure fortress. The west wing
was merely a setting for festal amenities and was by no means feudal
in its aspect or appeal. Here, as I came to know, the old barons
received their friends and feasted them and made merry with the flagon
and the horn of plenty; here the humble tithe payer came to settle his
dues with gold and silver instead of with blood; here the little barons
and baronesses romped and rioted with childish glee; and here the
barons grew fat and gross and soggy with laziness and prosperity, and
here they died in stupid quiescence. On the other side of that grim,
staunch old door they simply went to the other extreme in every
particular. There they killed their captives, butchered their enemies,
and sometimes died with the daggers of traitors in their shivering
backs.

As we trudged back to the lower halls, defeated but none the less
impressed by our failure to devastate our stronghold, I was struck by
the awful barrenness of the surroundings. There suddenly came over me
the shocking realisation: the "contents" of the castle, as set forth
rather vaguely in the bill of sale, were not what I had been led to
consider them. It had not occurred to me at the time of the transaction
to insist upon an inventory, and I had been too busy since the beginning
of my tenancy to take more than a passing account of my belongings.
In excusing myself for this rather careless oversight, I can only say
that during daylight hours the castle was so completely stuffed with
workmen and their queer utensils that I couldn't do much in the way
of elimination, and by night it was so horribly black and lonesome
about the place and the halls were so littered with tools and mops and
timber that it was extremely hazardous to go prowling about, so I
preferred to remain in my own quarters, which were quite comfortable
and cosy in spite of the distance between points of convenience.

Still I was vaguely certain that many articles I had seen about the
halls on my first and second visits were no longer in evidence. Two
or three antique rugs, for instance, were missing from the main hall,
and there was a lamentable suggestion of emptiness at the lower end
where we had stacked a quantity of rare old furniture in order to make
room for the workmen.

"Herr Schmick," said I, abruptly halting my party in the centre of the
hall, "what has become of the rugs that were here last week, and where
is that pile of furniture we had back yonder?"

Rudolph allowed the lantern to swing behind his huge legs, intentionally
I believe, and I was compelled to relieve him of it in order that we
might extract ourselves from his shadow. I have never seen such a
colossal shadow as the one he cast.

Old Conrad was not slow in answering.

"The gentlemen called day before yesterday, mein herr, and took much
away. They will return to-morrow for the remainder."

"Gentlemen?" I gasped. "Remainder?"

"The gentlemen to whom the Herr Count sold the rugs and chairs and
chests and--"

"What!" I roared. Even Poopendyke jumped at this sudden exhibition of
wrath. "Do you mean to tell me that these things have been sold and
carried away without my knowledge or consent? I'll have the law--"

Herr Poopendyke intervened. "They had bills of sale and orders for
removal of property dated several weeks prior to your purchase, Mr.
Smart. We had to let the articles go. You surely remember my speaking
to you about it."

"I don't remember anything," I snapped, which was the truth. "Why--why,
I bought everything that the castle contained. This is robbery! What
the dickens do you mean by--"

Old Conrad held up his hands as if expecting to pacify me. I sputtered
out the rest of the sentence, which really amounted to nothing.

"The Count has been selling off the lovely old pieces for the past six
months, sir. Ach, what a sin! They have come here day after day, these
furniture buyers, to take away the most priceless of our treasures,
to sell them to the poor rich at twenty prices. I could weep over the
sacrifices. I have wept, haven't I, Gretel? Eh, Rudolph? Buckets of
tears have I shed, mein herr. Oceans of them. Time after time have I
implored him to deny these rascally curio hunters, these
blood-sucking--"

"But listen to me," I broke in. "Do you mean to say that articles have
been taken away from the castle since I came into possession?"

"Many of them, sir. Always with proper credentials, believe me. Ach,
what a spendthrift he is! And his poor wife! Ach, Gott, how she must
suffer. Nearly all of the grand paintings, the tapestries that came
from France and Italy hundreds of years ago, the wonderful old bedsteads
and tables that were here when the castle was new--all gone! And for
mere songs, mein herr,--the cheapest of songs! I--I--"

"Please don't weep now, Herr Schmick," I made haste to exclaim, seeing
lachrymose symptoms in his blear old eyes. Then I became firm once
more. This knavery must cease, or I'd know the reason why. "The next
man who comes here to cart away so much as a single piece is to be
kicked out. Do you understand? These things belong to me. Kick him
into the river. Or, better still, notify me and I'll do it. Why, if
this goes on we'll soon be deprived of anything to sit on or sleep in
or eat from! Lock the doors, Conrad, and don't admit any one without
first consulting me. By Jove, I'd like to wring that rascal's neck.
A Count! Umph!"

"Ach, he is of the noblest family in all the land," sighed old Gretel.
"His grandfather was a fine man." I contrived to subdue my rage and
disappointment and somewhat loudly returned to the topic from which
we were drifting.

"As for those beastly padlocks, I shall have them filed off to-morrow.
I give you warning, Conrad, if the keys are not forthcoming before
noon to-morrow, I'll file 'em off, so help me."

"They are yours to destroy, mein herr, God knows," said he dismally.
"It is a pity to destroy fine old padlocks--"

"Well, you wait and see," said I, grimly.

His face beamed once more. "Ach, I forgot to say that there are padlocks
on the _other_ side of the door, just as on this side. It will be of no
use to destroy these. The door still could not be forced. Mein Gott! How
thankful I am to have remembered it in time."

"Confound you, Schmick, I believe you actually want to keep me out of
that part of the castle," I exploded.

The four of them protested manfully, even Gretel.

"I have a plan, sir," said Britton. "Why not place a tall ladder in
the courtyard and crawl in through one of the windows?"

"Splendid! That's what we'll do!" I cried enthusiastically. "And now
let's go to bed! We will breakfast at eight, Mrs. Schmick. The early
bird catches the worm, you know."

"Will you see the American ladies and gentlemen who are coming to-morrow
to pick out the--"

"Yes, I'll see them," said I, compressing my lips. "Don't let me
over-sleep, Britton."

"I shan't, sir," said he.

Sleep evaded me for hours. What with the possible proximity of an
undesirable feminine neighbour, mysterious and elusive though she may
prove to be, and the additional dread of dogs and babies, to say nothing
of the amazing delinquencies to be laid to the late owner of the place,
and the prospect of a visit from coarse and unfeeling bargain-hunters
on the morrow, it is really not surprising that I tossed about in my
baronial bed, counting sheep backwards and forwards over hedges and
fences until the vociferous cocks in the stable yard began to send up
their clarion howdy-dos to the sun. Strangely enough, with the first
peep of day through the decrepit window shutters I fell into a sound
sleep. Britton got nothing but grunts from me until half-past nine.
At that hour he came into my room and delivered news that aroused me
more effectually than all the alarm clocks or alarm cocks in the world
could have done.

"Get up, sir, if you please," he repeated the third time. "The party
of Americans is below, sir, rummaging about the place. They have ordered
the workmen to stop work, sir, complaining of the beastly noise they
make, and the dust and all that, sir. They have already selected half
a dozen pieces and they have brought enough porters and carriers over
in the boats to take the stuff away in--"

"Where is Poopendyke?" I cried, leaping out of bed. "I don't want to
be shaved, Britton, and don't bother about the tub." He had filled my
twentieth century portable tub, recently acquired, and was nervously
creating a lather in my shaving mug,

"You look very rough, sir."

"So much the better."

"Mr. Poopendyke is in despair, sir. He has tried to explain that nothing
is for sale, but the gentlemen say they are onto his game. They go
right on yanking things about and putting their own prices on them and
reserving them. They are perfectly delighted, sir, to have found so
many old things they really want for their new houses."

"I'll--I'll put a stop to all this," I grated, seeing red for an
instant.

"And the ladies, sir! There are three of them, all from New York City,
and they keep on saying they are completely ravished, sir,--with joy,
I take it. Your great sideboard in the dining-room is to go to Mrs.
Riley-Werkheimer, and the hall-seat that the first Baron used to throw
his armour on when he came in from--"

"Great snakes!" I roared. "They haven't moved it, have they? It will
fall to pieces!"

"No, sir. They are piling sconces and candelabra and andirons on it,
regardless of what Mr. Poopendyke says. You'd better hurry, sir. Here
is your collar and necktie--"

"I don't want 'em. Where the dickens are my trousers?"

His face fell. "Being pressed, sir, God forgive me!"

"Get out another pair, confound you, Britton. What are we coming to?"

He began rummaging in the huge clothespress, all the while regaling
me with news from the regions below.

"Mr. Poopendyke has gone up to his room, sir, with his typewriter. The
young lady insisted on having it. She squealed with joy at seeing an
antique typewriter and he--he had to run away with it, 'pon my soul
he did, sir."

I couldn't help laughing.

"And your golf clubs, Mr. Smart. The young gentleman of the party is
perfectly carried away with them. He says they're the real thing, the
genuine sixteenth century article. They _are_ a bit rusted, you'll
remember. I left him out in the courtyard trying your brassie and
mid-iron, sir, endeavouring to loft potatoes over the south wall. I
succeeded in hiding the balls, sir. Just as I started upstairs I heard
one of the new window panes in the banquet hall smash, sir, so I take
it he must have sliced his drive a bit."

"Who let these people in?" I demanded in smothered tones from the
depths of a sweater I was getting into in order to gain time by omitting
a collar.

"They came in with the plumbers, sir, at half-past eight. Old man
Schmick tried to keep them out, but they said they didn't understand
German and walked right by, leaving their donkeys in the roadway
outside."

"Couldn't Rudolph and Max stop them?" I cried, as my head emerged.

"They were still in bed, sir. I think they're at breakfast now."

"Good lord!" I groaned, looking at my watch. "Nine-thirty! What sort
of a rest cure am I conducting here?"

We hurried downstairs so fast that I lost one of my bedroom slippers.
It went clattering on ahead of us, making a shameful racket on the
bare stones, but Britton caught it up in time to save it from the
clutches of the curio-vandals. My workmen were lolling about the place,
smoking vile pipes and talking in guttural whispers. All operations
appeared to have ceased in my establishment at the command of the far
from idle rich. Two portly gentlemen in fedoras were standing in the
middle of the great hall, discussing the merits of a dingy old spinet
that had been carried out of the music room by two lusty porters from
the hotel. From somewhere in the direction of the room where the
porcelains and earthenware were stored came the shrill, excited voices
of women. The aged Schmicks were sitting side by side on a window
ledge, with the rigid reticence of wax figures.

As I came up, I heard one of the strangers say to the other:

"Well, if you don't want it, I'll take it. My wife says it can be made
into a writing desk with a little--"

"I beg your pardon, gentlemen," said I confronting them. "Will you be
good enough to explain this intrusion?"

They stared at me as if I were a servant asking for higher wages. The
speaker, a fat man with a bristly moustache and a red necktie, drew
himself up haughtily.

"Who the devil are you?" he demanded, fixing me with a glare.

I knew at once that he was the kind of an American I have come to hate
with a zest that knows no moderation; the kind that makes one ashamed
of the national melting pot. I glared back at him.

"I happen to be the owner of this place, and you'll oblige me by
clearing out."

"What's that? Here, here, none of that sort of talk, my friend. We're
here to look over your stuff, and we mean business, but you won't get
anywhere by talking like--"

"There is nothing for sale here," I said shortly. "And you've got a
lot of nerve to come bolting into a private house--"

"Say," said the second man, advancing with a most insulting scowl,
"we'll understand each other right off the reel, my friend. All you've
got to do is to answer us when we ask for prices. Now, bear that in
mind, and don't try any of your high-and-mighty tactics on us."

"Just remember that you're a junk-dealer and we'll get along
splendidly," said the other, in a tone meant to crush me. "What do you
ask for this thing?" tapping the dusty spinet with his walking-stick.

It suddenly occurred to me that the situation was humorous.

"You will have to produce your references, gentlemen, before I can
discuss anything with you," I said, after swallowing very hard. (It
must have been my pride.)

They stared. "Good Lord!" gasped the bristly one, blinking his eyes.
"Don't you know who this gentleman is? You--you appear to be an
American. You _must_ know Mr. Riley-Werkheimer of New York."

"I regret to say that I have never heard of Mr. Riley-Werkheimer. I
did not know that Mrs. Riley-Werkheimer's husband was living. And may
I ask who _you_ are?"

"Oh, I am also a nobody," said he, with a wink at his purple-jowled
companion. "I am only poor old Rocksworth, the president of the--"

"Oh, don't say anything more, Mr. Rocksworth," I cried. "I have heard
of _you_. This fine old spinet? Well, it has been reduced in price. Ten
thousand dollars, Mr. Rocksworth."

"Ten thousand nothing! I'll take it at seventy-five dollars. And now
let's talk about this here hall-seat. My wife thinks it's a fake. What
is its history, and what sort of guarantee can you--"

"A fake!" I cried in dismay. "My dear Mr. Rocksworth, that is the very
hall-seat that Pontius Pilate sat in when waiting for an audience with
the first of the great Teutonic barons. The treaty between the Romans
and the Teutons was signed on that table over there,--the one you have
so judiciously selected, I perceive. Of course, you know that _this_ was
the Saxon seat of government. Charlemagne lived here with all his
court."

They tried not to look impressed, but rather overdid it.

"That's the sort of a story you fellows always put up, you skinflints
from Boston. I'll bet my head you _are_ from Boston," said Mr.
Rocksworth shrewdly.

"I couldn't afford to have you lose your head, Mr. Rocksworth, so I
shan't take you on," said I merrily.

"Don't get fresh now," said he stiffly.

Mr. Riley-Werkheimer walked past me to take a closer look at the seat,
almost treading on my toes rather than to give an inch to me.

"How can you prove that it's the genuine article?" he demanded curtly.

"You have my word for it, sir," I said quietly.

"Pish tush!" said he.

Mr. Rocksworth turned in the direction of the banquet hall.

"Carrie!" he shouted. "Come here a minute, will you?"

"Don't shout like that, Orson," came back from the porcelain closet.
"You almost made me drop this thing."

"Well, drop it, and come on. This is important."

I wiped the moisture from my brow and respectfully put my clenched
fists into my pockets.

A minute later, three females appeared on the scene, all of them dusting
their hands and curling their noses in disgust.

"I never saw such a dirty place," said the foremost, a large lady who
couldn't, by any circumstance of fate, have been anybody's wife but
Rocksworth's. "It's filthy! What do you want?"

"I've bought this thing here for seventy-five. You said I couldn't get
it for a nickle under a thousand. And say, this man tells me the hall
seat here belonged to Pontius Pilate in--"

"Pardon me," I interrupted, "I merely said that he sat in it. I am not
trying to deceive you, sir."

"And the treaty was signed on this table," said Mr. Riley-Werkheimer.
He addressed himself to a plump young lady with a distorted bust and
a twenty-two inch waist. "Maude, what do you know about the
Roman-Teutonic treaty? We'll catch you now, my friend," he went on,
turning to me. "My daughter is up in ancient history. She's an
authority."

Miss Maude appeared to be racking her brain. I undertook to assist her.

"I mean the second treaty, after the fall of Nuremburg," I explained.

"Oh," she said, instantly relieved. "Was it _really_ signed here, right
here in this hall? Oh, Father! We _must_ have that table."

"You are sure there was a treaty, Maude?" demanded her parent
accusingly.

"Certainly," she cried. "The Teutons ceded Alsace-Lorraine to--"

"Pardon me once more," I cried, and this time I plead guilty to a
blush, "you are thinking of the other treaty--the one at Metz, Miss
Riley-Werkheimer. This, as you will recall, ante-dates that one by--oh,
several years."

"Thank you," she said, quite condescendingly. "I was confused for a
moment. Of course, Father, I can't say that it was signed here or on
this table as the young man says. I only know that there was a treaty.
I do wish you'd come and see the fire-screen I've found--"

"Let's get this out of our system first," said her father. "If you can
show me statistics and the proper proof that this is the genuine table,
young man, I'll--"

"Pray rest easy, sir," I said. "We can take it up later on. The facts
are--"

"And this Pontius Pilate seat," interrupted Rocksworth, biting off the
end of a fresh cigar. "What about it? Got a match?"

"Get the gentleman a match, Britton," I said, thereby giving my valet
an opportunity to do his exploding in the pantry. "I can only affirm,
sir, that it is common history that Pontius Pilate spent a portion of
his exile here in the sixth century. It is reasonable to assume that
he sat in this seat, being an old man unused to difficult stairways.
He--"

"Buy it, Orson," said his wife, with authority. "We'll take a chance
on it. If it isn't the right thing, we can sell it to the second-hand
dealers. What's the price?"

"A thousand dollars to you, madam," said I.

They were at once suspicious. While they were busily engaged in looking
the seat over as the porters shifted it about at all angles, I stepped
over and ordered my workmen to resume their operations. I was beginning
to get sour and angry again, having missed my coffee. From the culinary
regions there ascended a most horrific odour of fried onions. If there
is one thing I really resent it is a fried onion. I do not know why
I should have felt the way I did about it on this occasion, but I am
mean enough now to confess that I hailed the triumphal entry of that
pernicious odour with a meanness of spirit that leaves nothing to be
explained.

"Good gracious!" gasped the aristocratic Mrs. Riley-Werkheimer, holding
her nose. "Do you smell _that_"?

"Onions! My Gawd!" sniffed Maude. "How I hate 'em!"

Mr. Rocksworth forgot his dignity. "Hate 'em?" he cried, his eyes
rolling. "I just love 'em!"

"Orson!" said his wife, transfixing him with a glare. "_What_ will
people think of you?"

"I like 'em too," admitted Mr. Riley-Werkheimer, perceiving at once
whom she meant by "people." He puffed out his chest.

At that instant the carpenters, plumbers and stone masons resumed their
infernal racket, while scrubwomen, polishers and painters began to
move intimately among us.

"Here!" roared Mr. Rocksworth. "Stop this beastly noise! What the deuce
do you mean, sir, permitting these scoundrels to raise the dead like
this? Confound 'em, I stopped them once. Here! You! Let up on that,
will you?"

I moved forward apologetically. "I am afraid it is not onions you
smell, ladies and gentlemen." I had taken my cue with surprising
quickness. "They _are_ raising the dead. The place is fairly alive
with dead rats and--"

"Good Lord!" gasped Riley-Werkheimer. "We'll get the bubonic plague
here."

"Oh, I know _onions_," said Rocksworth calmly. "Can't fool me on onions.
They _are_ onions, ain't they, Carrie?"

"They _are_!" said she. "What a pity to have this wonderful old castle
actually devastated by workmen! It is an outrage--a crime. I should
think the owner would turn over in his grave."

"Unhappily, I am the owner, madam," said I, slyly working my foot back
into an elusive slipper.

"You ought to be ashamed of yourself," she said, eyeing me coldly with
a hitherto unexposed lorgnon.

"I am," said I. "You quite took me by surprise. I should have made
myself more presentable if I had known--"

"Well, let's move on upstairs," said Rocksworth. Addressing the porters
he said: "You fellows get this lot of stuff together and I'll take an
option on it. I'll be over to-morrow to close the deal, Mr.--Mr.--Now,
where is the old Florentine mirror the Count was telling us about?"

"The Count?" said I, frowning.

"Yes, the _real_ owner. You can't stuff me with your talk about being
the proprietor here, my friend. You see, we happen to _know_ the Count."

They all condescended to laugh at me. I don't know what I should have
said or done if Britton had not returned with a box of matches at that
instant--sulphur matches which added subtly to the growing illusion.

Almost simultaneously there appeared in the lower hall a lanky youth
of eighteen. He was a loud-voiced, imperious sort of chap with at least
three rolls to his trousers and a plum-coloured cap.

"Say, these clubs are the real stuff, all right, all right. They're
as brittle as glass. See what I did to 'em. We can hae 'em spliced and
rewound and I'll hang 'em on my wall. All I want is the heads anyhow."

He held up to view a headless mid-iron and brassie, and triumphantly
waved a splendid cleek. My favourite clubs! I could play better from
a hanging lie with that beautiful brassie than with any club I ever
owned and as for the iron, I was deadly with it.

He lit a cigarette and threw the match into a pile of shavings. Old
Conrad returned to life at that instant and stamped out the incipient
blaze.

"I shouldn't consider them very good clubs, Harold, if they break off
like that," said his mother.

"What do you know about clubs?" he snapped, and I at once knew what
class he was in at the preparatory school.

If I was ever like one of these, said I to myself, God rest the sage
soul of my Uncle Rilas!

The situation was no longer humorous. I could put up with anything but
the mishandling of my devoted golf clubs.

Striding up to him, I snatched the remnants from his hands.

"You infernal cub!" I roared. "Haven't you any more sense than to smash
a golf club like that? For two cents I'd break this putter over your
head."

"Father!" he yelled indignantly. "Who is this mucker?"

Mr. Rocksworth bounced toward me, his cane raised. I whirled upon him.

"How dare you!" he shouted. The ladies squealed.

If he expected me to cringe, he was mightily mistaken. My blood was
up. I advanced.

"Paste him, Dad!" roared Harold.

But Mr. Rocksworth suddenly altered his course and put the historic
treaty table between him and me. He didn't like the appearance of my
rather brawny fist.

"You big stiff!" shouted Harold. Afterwards it occurred to me that
this inelegant appellation may have been meant for his father, but at
the time I took it to be aimed at me.

Before Harold quite knew what was happening to him, he was prancing
down the long hall with my bony fingers grasping his collar. Coming
to the door opening into the outer vestibule, I drew back my foot for
a final aid to locomotion. Acutely recalling the fact that slippers
are not designed for kicking purposes, I raised my foot, removed the
slipper and laid it upon a taut section of his trousers with all of
the melancholy force that I usually exert in slicing my drive off the
tee. I shall never forget the exquisite spasm of pleasure his plaintive
"Ouch!" gave me.

Then Harold passed swiftly out of my life.

Mr. Rocksworth, reinforced by four reluctant mercenaries in the shape
of porters, was advancing upon me. Somehow I had a vague, but unerring
instinct that some one had fainted, but I didn't stop to inquire.
Without much ado, I wrested the cane from him and sent it scuttling
after Harold.

"Now, get out!" I roared.

"You shall pay for this!" he sputtered, quite black in the face. "Grab
him, you infernal cowards!"

But the four porters slunk away, and Mr. Rocksworth faced me alone.
Rudolph and Max, thoroughly fed and _most_ prodigious, were bearing
down upon us, accounting for the flight of the mercenaries.

"Get out!" I repeated. "I am the owner of this place, Mr. Rocksworth,
and I am mad through and through. Skip!"

"I'll have the law--"

"Law be hanged!"

"If it costs me a million, I'll get--"

"It _will_ cost you a million if you don't get!" I advised him, seeing
that he paused for want of breath.

I left him standing there, but had the presence of mind to wave my
huge henchmen away. Mr. Riley-Werkheimer approached, but very
pacifically. He was paler than he will ever be again in his life, I
fear.

"This is most distressing, most distressing, Mr.-- Mr.-- ahem! I've
never been so outraged in my life. I--but, wait!" He had caught the
snap in my atavistic eye. "I am not seeking trouble. We will go, sir.
I--I--I think my wife has quite recovered. Are--are you all right, my
dear?"

I stood aside and let them file past me. Mrs. Riley-Werkheimer moved
very nimbly for one who had just been revived by smelling-salts. As
her husband went by, he half halted in front of me. A curious glitter
leaped into his fishy eyes.

"I'd give a thousand dollars to be free to do what you did to that
insufferable puppy, Mr.--Mr.--ahem. A cool thousand, damn him!"

I had my coffee upstairs, far removed from the onions. A racking
headache set in. Never again will I go without my coffee so long. It
always gives me a headache.



CHAPTER III

I CONVERSE WITH A MYSTERY

Late in the afternoon, I opened my door, hoping that the banging of
hammers and the buzz of industry would have ceased, but alas! the noise
was even more deafening than before. I was still in a state of nerves
over the events of the morning. There had been a most distressing lack
of poise on my part, and I couldn't help feeling after it was all over
that my sense of humour had received a shock from which it was not
likely to recover in a long time. There was but little consolation in
the reflection that my irritating visitors deserved something in the
shape of a rebuff; I could not separate myself from the conviction
that my integrity as a gentleman had suffered in a mistaken conflict
with humour. My headache, I think, was due in a large measure to the
sickening fear that I had made a fool of myself, notwithstanding my
efforts to make fools of them. My day was spoilt. My plans were upset
and awry.

Espying Britton in the gloomy corridor, I shouted to him, and he came
at once.

"Britton," said I, as he closed the door, "do you think they will carry
out their threat to have the law on me? Mr. Rocksworth was very
angry--and put out. He is a power, as you know."

"I think you are quite safe, sir," said he. "I've been waiting outside
since two o'clock to tell you something, sir, but hated to disturb
you. I--"

"Thank you, Britton, my head was aching dreadfully."

"Yes, sir. Quite so. Shortly before two, sir, one of the porters from
the hotel came over to recover a gold purse Mrs. Riley-Werkheimer had
dropped in the excitement, and he informed Mr. Poopendyke that the
whole party was leaving at four for Dresden. I asked particular about
the young man, sir, and he said they had the doctor in to treat his
stomach, sir, immediately after they got back to the hotel."

"His stomach? But I distinctly struck him on the verso."

"I know, sir; but it seems that he swallowed his cigarette."

To my shame, I joined Britton in a roar of laughter. Afterwards I
recalled, with something of a shock, that it was the first time I had
ever heard my valet laugh aloud. He appeared to be in some distress
over it himself, for he tried to turn it off into a violent fit of
coughing. He is such a faithful, exemplary servant that I made haste
to pound him on the back, fearing the worst. I could not get on at all
without Britton. He promptly recovered.

"I beg pardon, sir," said he. "Will you have your shave and tub now,
sir?"

Later on, somewhat refreshed and relieved, I made my way to the little
balcony, first having issued numerous orders and directions to the
still stupefied Schmicks, chief among which was an inflexible command
to keep the gates locked against all comers. The sun was shining
brightly over the western hills, and the sky was clear and blue. The
hour was five I found on consulting my watch. Naturally my first impulse
was to glance up at the still loftier balcony in the east wing. It was
empty. There was nothing in the grim, formidable prospect to warrant
the impression that any one dwelt behind those dismantled windows, and
I experienced the vague feeling that perhaps it had been a dream after
all.

Far below at the foot of the shaggy cliff ran the historic Donau,
serene and muddy, all rhythmic testimonials to the contrary. With
something of a shudder I computed the distance from my eerie perch to
the rocks at the bottom of the cliff. Five hundred feet, at least; an
impregnable wall of nature surmounted by a now rank and obsolete
obstruction built by the hand of man: a fortress that defied the legions
of old but to-day would afford no more than brief and even desultory
target practice for a smart battery. To scale the cliff, however, would
be an impossibility for the most resourceful general in the world. All
about me were turrets and minarets, defeated by the ancient and
implacable foe--Time. Shattered crests of towers hung above me, grey
and forbidding, yet without menace save in their senile prerogative
to collapse without warning. Tiny windows marked the face of my still
sturdy walls, like so many pits left by the pox, and from these in the
good old feudal days a hundred marksmen had thrust their thunderous
blunderbusses to clear the river of vain-glorious foes. From the
scalloped bastions cross-bowmen of even darker ages had shot their
random bolts; while in the niches of lower walls futile pikemen waited
for the impossible to happen: the scaling of the cliff!

Friend and foe alike came to the back door of Schloss Rothhoefen, and
there found welcome or stubborn obstacles that laughed at time and
locksmiths: monstrous gates that still were strong enough to defy a
mighty force. There was my great stone-paved courtyard, flanked on all
sides by disintegrating buildings once occupied by serfs and fighting
men; the stables in which chargers and beasts of burden had slept side
by side until called by the night's work or the day's work, as war or
peace prescribed, ranged close by the gates that opened upon the steep,
winding roadway that now dismayed all modern steeds save the conquering
ass. Here too were the remains of a once noble garden, and here were
the granaries and the storehouses.

Far below me were the dungeons, with dead men's bones on their dripping
floors; and somewhere in the heart of the peak were secret, unknown
passages, long since closed by tumbling rocks and earth, as darkly
mysterious as the streets in the buried cities of Egypt.

Across the river and below me stood the walled-in town that paid tribute
to the good and bad Rothhoefens in those olden days: a red-tiled,
gloomy city that stood as a monument to long-dead ambitions. A peaceful,
quiet town that had survived its parlous centuries of lust and greed,
and would go on living to the end of time.

So here I sat me down, almost at the top of my fancy, to wonder if it
were not folly as well!

Above me soared huge white-bellied birds, cousins germain to my dreams,
but alas! infinitely more sensible in that they roamed for a more
sustaining nourishment than the so-called food for thought.

I looked backward to the tender years when my valiant young heart kept
pace with a fertile brain in its swiftest flights, and pinched myself
to make sure that this was not all imagination. Was I really living
in a feudal castle with romance shadowing me at every step? Was this
I, the dreamer of twenty years ago? Or was I the last of the Rothhoefens
and not John Bellamy Smart, of Madison Avenue, New York?

The sun shone full upon me as I sat there in my little balcony, but
I liked the dry, warm glare of it. To be perfectly frank, the castle
was a bit damp. I had had a pain in the back of my neck for two whole
days. The sooner I got at my novel and finished it up the better, I
reflected. Then I could go off to the baths somewhere. But would I
ever settle down to work? Would the plumbers ever get off the place?
(They were the ones I seemed to suspect the most.)

Suddenly, as I sat there ruminating, I became acutely aware of something
white on the ledge of the topmost window in the eastern tower. Even
as I fixed my gaze upon it, something else transpired. A cloud of soft,
wavy, luxurious brown hair eclipsed the narrow white strip and hung
with spreading splendour over the casement ledge, plainly, indubitably
to dry in the sun!

My neighbour had washed her hair!

And it was really a most wonderful head of hair. I can't remember ever
having seen anything like it, except in the advertisements.

For a long time I sat there trying to pierce the blackness of the room
beyond the window with my straining eyes, deeply sensitive to a
curiosity that had as its basic force the very natural anxiety to know
what disposition she had made of the rest of her person in order to
obtain this rather startling effect.

Of course, I concluded, she was lying on a couch of some description,
with her head in the window. That was quite clear, even to a dreamer.
And perhaps she was reading a novel while the sun shone. My fancy went
to the remotest ends of probability: she might even be reading one of
mine!

What a glorious, appealing, sensuous thing a crown of hair--but just
then Mr. Poopendyke came to my window.

"May I interrupt you for a moment, Mr. Smart?" he inquired, as he
squinted at me through his ugly bone-rimmed glasses.

"Come here, Poopendyke," I commanded in low, excited tones. He
hesitated. "You won't fall off," I said sharply.

Although the window is at least nine feet high, Poopendyke stooped as
he came through. He always does it, no matter how tall the door. It
is a life-long habit with him. Have I mentioned that my worthy secretary
is six feet four, and as thin as a reed? I remember speaking of his
knees. He is also a bachelor.

"It is a dreadful distance down there," he murmured, flattening himself
against the wall and closing his eyes.

A pair of slim white hands at that instant indolently readjusted the
thick mass of hair and quite as casually disappeared. I failed to hear
Mr. Poopendyke's remark.

"I think, sir," he proceeded, "it would be a very good idea to get
some of our correspondence off our hands. A great deal of it has
accumulated in the past few weeks. I wish to say that I am quite ready
to attend to it whenever--"

"Time enough for letters," said I, still staring.

"We ought to clean them all up before we begin on the romance, sir.
That's my suggestion. We shan't feel like stopping for a lot of silly
letters--By the way, sir, when do you expect to start on the romance?"
He usually spoke of them as romances. They were not novels to
Poopendyke.

I came to my feet, the light of adventure in my eye.

"This very instant, Poopendyke," I exclaimed.

His face brightened. He loves work.

"Splendid! I will have your writing tablets ready in--"

"First of all, we _must_ have a ladder. Have you seen to that?"

"A ladder?" he faltered, putting one foot back through the window in
a most suggestive way.

"Oh," said I, remembering, "I haven't told you, have I? Look! Up there
in that window. Do you see _that_?"

"What is it, sir? A rug?"

"Rug! Great Scott, man, don't you know a woman's hair when you see it?"

"I've never--er--never seen it--you might say--just like that. Is it
_hair_?"

"It is. You _do_ see it, don't you?"

"How did it get there?"

"Good! Now I know I'm not dreaming. Come! There's no time to be lost.
We may be able to get up there before she hears us!"

I was through the window and half way across the room before his
well-meant protest checked me.

"For heaven's sake, Mr. Smart, don't be too hasty. We can't rush in
upon a woman unexpectedly like this. Who knows? She may be entirely--"
He caught himself up sharply, blinked, and then rounded out his sentence
in safety with the word "deshabille."

I was not to be turned aside by drivel of that sort; so, with a scornful
laugh, I hurried on and was soon in the courtyard, surrounded by at
least a score of persons who madly inquired where the fire was, and
wanted to help me to put it out. At last we managed to get them back
at their work, and I instructed old Conrad to have the tallest ladder
brought to me at once.

"There is no such thing about the castle," he announced blandly, puffing
away at his enormous pipe. His wife shook her head in perfect serenity.
Somewhat dashed, I looked about me in quest of proof that they were
lying to me. There was no sign of anything that even resembled a ladder.

"Where are your sons?" I demanded.

The old couple held up their hands in great distress.

"Herr Britton has them working their souls out, turning a windlass
outside the gates--ach, that terrible invention of his!" groaned old
Conrad. "My poor sons are faint with fatigue, mein herr. You should
see them perspire,--and hear them pant for breath."

"It is like the blowing of the forge bellows," cried his wife. "My
poor little boys!"

"Fetch them at once Conrad," said I, cudgelling my brain for a means
to surmount a present difficulty, and but very slightly interested in
Britton's noble contraption.

The brothers soon appeared and, as if to give the lie to their fond
parents, puffed complacently at their pipes and yawned as if but
recently aroused from a nap. Their sleeves were rolled up and I
marvelled at the size of their arms.

"Is Britton dead?" I cried, suddenly cold with the fear that they had
mutinied against this brusque English overlord.

They smiled. "He is waiting to be pulled up again, sir," said Max. "We
left him at the bottom when you sent for us. It is for us to obey."

Of course, everything had to wait while my obedient vassals went forth
and reeled the discomforted Britton to the top of the steep. He
sputtered considerably until he saw me laughing at him. Instantly he
was a valet once more, no longer a crabbed genius.

I had thought of a plan, only to discard it on measuring with my eye
the distance from the ground to the lowest window in the east wing,
second floor back. Even by standing on the shoulders of Rudolph, who
was six feet five, I would still find myself at least ten feet short
of the window ledge. Happily a new idea struck me almost at once.

In a jiffy, half a dozen carpenters were at work constructing a
substantial ladder out of scantlings, while I stood over them in serene
command of the situation.

The Schmicks segregated themselves and looked on, regarding the window
with sly, furtive glances in which there was a distinct note of
uneasiness.

At last the ladder was complete. Resolutely I mounted to the top and
peered through the sashless window. It was quite black and repelling
beyond. Instructing Britton and the two brothers to follow me in turn,
I clambered over the wide stone sill and lowered myself gingerly to
the floor.

I will not take up the time or the space to relate my experiences on
this first fruitless visit to the east wing of my abiding place. Suffice
to say, we got as far as the top of the stairs in the vast middle
corridor after stumbling through a series of dim, damp rooms, and then
found our way effectually blocked by a stout door which was not only
locked and bolted, but bore a most startling admonition to would-be
trespassers.

Pinned to one of the panels there was a dainty bit of white note-paper,
with these satiric words written across its surface in a bold, feminine
hand:

"_Please keep out. This is private property._"

Most property owners no doubt would have been incensed by this calm
defiance on the part of a squatter, either male or female, but not I.
The very impudence of the usurper appealed to me. What could be more
delicious than her serene courage in dispossessing me, with the stroke
of a pen, of at least two-thirds of my domicile, and what more exciting
than the thought of waging war against her in the effort to regain
possession of it? Really it was quite glorious! Here was a happy,
enchanting bit of feudalism that stirred my romantic soul to its very
depths. I was being defied by a woman--an amazon! Even my grasping
imagination could not have asked for more substantial returns than
this. To put her to rout! To storm the castle! To make her captive and
chuck her into my dungeon! Splendid!

We returned to the courtyard and held a counsel of war. I put all of
the Schmicks on the grill, but they stubbornly disclaimed all interest
in or knowledge of the extraordinary occupant of the east wing.

"We can smoke her out, sir," said Britton.

I could scarcely believe my ears.

"Britton," said I severely, "you are a brute. I am surprised. You
forget there is an innocent babe--maybe a collection of them--over
there. And a dog. We shan't do anything heathenish, Britton. Please
bear that in mind. There is but one way: we must storm the place. I
will not be defied to my very nose."

I felt it to see if it was not a little out of joint. "It is a good
nose."

"It is, sir," said Britton, and Poopendyke, in a perfect ecstasy of
loyalty, shouted: "Long live your nose, sir!"

My German vassals waved their hats, perceiving that a demonstration
was required without in the least knowing what it was about.

"To-night we'll plan our campaign," said I, and then returned in some
haste to my balcony. The mists of the waning day were rising from the
valley below. The smell of rain was in the air. I looked in vain for
the lady's tresses. They were gone. The sun was also gone. His work
for the day was done. I wondered whether she was putting up her hair
with her own fair hands or was there a lady's maid in her menage.

Poopendyke and I dined in solemn grandeur in the great banquet hall,
attended by the clumsy Max.

"Mr. Poopendyke," said I, after Max had passed me the fish for the
second time on my right side--and both times across my shoulder,--"we
must engage a butler and a footman to-morrow. Likewise a chef. This
is too much."

"Might I suggest that we also engage a chambermaid? The beds are very
poorly--"

I held up my hand, smiling confidently.

"We may capture a very competent chambermaid before the beds are made
up again," I said, with meaning.

"She doesn't write like a chambermaid," he reminded me. Whereupon we
fell to studying the very aristocratic chirography employed by my
neighbour in barring me from my own possessions.

After the very worst meal that Frau Schmick had ever cooked, and the
last one that Max under any circumstance would be permitted to serve,
I took myself off once more to the enchanted balcony. I was full of
the fever of romance. A perfect avalanche of situations had been
tumbling through my brain for hours, and, being a provident sort of
chap in my own way, I decided to jot them down on a pad of paper before
they quite escaped me or were submerged by others.

The night was very black and tragic, swift storm clouds having raced
up to cover the moon and stars. With a radiant lanthorn in the window
behind me, I sat down with my pad and my pipe and my pencil. The storm
was not far away. I saw that it would soon be booming about my
stronghold, and realised that my fancy would have to work faster than
it had ever worked before if half that I had in mind was to be
accomplished. Why I should have courted a broken evening on the exposed
balcony, instead of beginning my labours in my study, remains an
unrevealed mystery unless we charge it to the account of a much-abused
eccentricity attributed to genius and which usually turns out to be
arrant stupidity.

I have no patience with the so-called eccentricity of genius. It is
merely an excuse for unkempt hair, dirty finger-nails, unpolished
boots, open placquets, bad manners and a tendency to forget pecuniary
obligations, to say nothing of such trifles as besottednesss, vulgarity
and the superior knack of knowing how to avoid making suitable provision
for one's wife and children. All the shabby short-comings in the
character of an author, artist or actor are blithely charged to genius,
and we are content to let it go at that for fear that other people may
think we don't know any better. As for myself, I may be foolish and
inconsequential, but heaven will bear witness that I am not mean enough
to call myself a genius.

So we will call it stupidity that put me where I might be rained upon
at any moment, or permanently interrupted by a bolt of lightning.
(There were low mutterings of thunder behind the hills, and faint
flashes as if a monstrous giant had paused to light his pipe on the
evil, wind-swept peaks of the Caucasus mountains.)

I was scribbling away in serene contempt for the physical world, when
there came to my ears a sound that gave me a greater shock than any
streak of lightning could have produced and yet left sufficient life
in me to appreciate the sensation of being electrified.

A woman's voice, speaking to me out of the darkness and from some point
quite near at hand! Indeed, I could have sworn it was almost at my
elbow; she might have been peering over my shoulder to read my thoughts.

"I beg your pardon, but would you mind doing me a slight favour?"

Those were the words, uttered in a clear, sweet, perfectly confident
voice, as of one who never asked for favours, but exacted them.

I looked about me, blinking, utterly bewildered. No one was to be seen.
She laughed. Without really meaning to do so, I also laughed,--nervously,
of course.

"Can't you see me?" she asked. I looked intently at the spot from which
the sound seemed to come: a perfectly solid stone block less than three
feet from my right shoulder. It must have been very amusing. She laughed
again. I flushed resentfully.

"Where are you?" I cried out rather tartly.

"I can see you quite plainly, and you are very ugly when you scowl,
sir. Are you scowling at me?"

"I don't know," I replied truthfully, still searching for her. "Does
it seem so to you?"

"Yes."

"Then I must be looking in the right direction," I cried impolitely.
"You must be--Ah!"

My straining eyes had located a small, oblong blotch in the curve of
the tower not more than twenty feet from where I stood, and on a direct
line with my balcony. True, I could not at first see a face, but as
my eyes grew a little more accustomed to the darkness, I fancied I
could distinguish a shadow that might pass for one.

"I didn't know that little window was there," I cried, puzzled.

"It isn't," she said. "It is a secret loop-hole, and it isn't here
except in times of great duress. See! I can close it." The oblong
blotch abruptly disappeared, only to reappear an instant later. I was
beginning to understand. Of course it was in the beleaguered east wing!
"I hope I didn't startle you a moment ago."

I resolved to be very stiff and formal about it. "May I enquire, madam,
what you are doing in my hou--my castle?"

"You may."

"Well," said I, seeing the point, "what are you doing here?"

"I am living here," she answered distinctly.

"So I perceive," said I, rather too distinctly.

"And I have come down to ask a simple, tiny little favour of you, Mr.
Smart," she resumed.

"You know my name?" I cried, surprised.

"I am reading your last book--Are you going?"

"Just a moment, please," I called out, struck by a splendid idea.
Reaching inside the window I grasped the lanthorn and brought its rays
to bear upon the--perfectly blank wall! I stared open-mouthed and
unbelieving. "Good heaven! Have I been dreaming all this?" I cried
aloud.

My gaze fell upon two tiny holes in the wall, exposed to view by the
bright light of my lamp. They appeared to be precisely in the centre
of the spot so recently marked by the elusive oblong. Even as I stared
at the holes, a slim object that I at once recognised as a finger
protruded from one of them and wiggled at me in a merry but exceedingly
irritating manner.

Sensibly I restored the lanthorn to its place inside the window and
waited for the mysterious voice to resume.

"Are you so homely as all that?" I demanded when the shadowy face
looked out once more. Very clever of me, I thought.

"I am considered rather good-looking," she replied, serenely. "Please
don't do that again. It was very rude of you, Mr. Smart." "Oh, I've
seen something of you before this," I said. "You have long, beautiful
brown hair--and a dog."

She was silent.

"I am sure you will pardon me if I very politely ask who you are?" I
went on.

"That question takes me back to the favour. Will you be so very, very
kind as to cease bothering me, Mr. Smart? It is dreadfully upsetting,
don't you feeling that at any moment you may rush in and--"

"I like that. In my own castle, too!"

"There is ample room for both of us," she said sharply. "I shan't be
here for more than a month or six weeks, and I am sure we can get along
very amiably under the same roof for that length of time if you'll
only forget that I am here."

"I can't very well do that, madam. You see, we are making extensive
repairs about the place and you are proving to be a serious obstacle.
I cannot grant your request. It will grieve me enormously if I am
compelled to smoke you out but I fear--"

"Smoke me out!"

"Perhaps with sulphur," I went on resolutely. "It is said to be very
effective."

"Surely you will not do anything so horrid."

"Only as a last resort. First, we shall storm the east wing. Failing
in that we shall rely on smoke. You will admit that you have no right
to poach on my preserves."

"None whatever," she said, rather plaintively.

I can't remember having heard a sweeter voice than hers. Of course,
by this time, I was thoroughly convinced that she was a lady,--a
cultured, high-bred lady,--and an American. I was too densely enveloped
by the fogginess of my own senses at this time, however, to take in
this extraordinary feature of the case. Later on, in the seclusion of
my study, the full force of it struck me and I marvelled.

That plaintive note in her voice served its purpose. My firmness seemed
to dissolve, even as I sought to reinforce it by an injection of
harshness into my own manner of speech.

"Then you should be willing to vacate my premises er--or--"here is
where I began to show irresoluteness--"or explain yourself."

"Won't you be generous?"

I cleared my throat nervously. How well they know the cracks in a man's
armour!

"I am willing to be--amenable to reason. That's all you ought to
expect." A fresh idea took root. "Can't we effect a compromise? A
truce, or something of the sort? All I ask is that you explain your
presence here. I will promise to be as generous as possible under the
circumstances."

"Will you give me three days in which to think it over?" she asked,
after a long pause.

"No."

"Well, two days?"

"I'll give you until to-morrow afternoon at five, when I shall expect
you to receive me in person."

"That is quite impossible."

"But I demand the right to go wherever I please in my own castle.
You--"

"If you knew just how circumspect I am obliged to be at present you
wouldn't impose such terms, Mr. Smart."

"Oho! Circumspect! That puts a new light on the case. What have you
been up to, madam?" I spoke very severely.

She very properly ignored the banality. "If I should write you a nice,
agreeable letter, explaining as much as I can, won't you be satisfied?"

"I prefer to have it by word of mouth."

She seemed to be considering. "I will come to this window to-morrow
night at this time and--and let you know," she said reluctantly.

"Very well," said I. "We'll let it rest till then."

"And, by the way, I have something more to ask of you. Is it quite
necessary to have all this pounding and hammering going on in the
castle? The noise is dreadful. I don't ask it on my own account, but
for the baby. You see, she's quite ill with a fever, Mr. Smart. Perhaps
you've heard her crying."

"The baby?" I muttered.

"It is nothing serious, of course. The doctor was here to-day and he
reassured me--"

"A--a doctor here to-day?" I gasped.

She laughed once more. Verily, it was a gentle, high-bred laugh.

"Will you please put a stop to the noise for a day or two?" she asked,
very prettily.

"Certainly," said I too surprised to say anything else. "Is--is there
anything else?"

"Nothing, thank you," she replied. Then: "Good night, Mr. Smart. You
are very good."

"Don't forget to-morrow--"

But the oblong aperture disappeared with a sharp click, and I found
myself staring at the blank, sphynx-like wall.

Taking up my pad, my pipe and my pencil, and leaving all of my cherished
ideas out there in the cruel darkness, never to be recovered,--at least
not in their original form,--I scrambled through the window, painfully
scraping my knee in passing,--just in time to escape the deluge.

I am sure I should have enjoyed a terrific drenching if she had chosen
to subject me to it.



CHAPTER IV

I BECOME AN ANCESTOR

True to the promise she had extracted from me, I laid off my workmen
the next morning. They trooped in bright and early, considerably
augmented by fresh recruits who came to share the benefits of my
innocuous prodigality, and if I live to be a thousand I shall never
again experience such a noisome half hour as the one I spent in
listening to their indignant protests against my tyrannical oppression
of the poor and needy. In the end, I agreed to pay them, one and all,
for a full day's work, and they went away mollified, calling me a true
gentleman to my face and heaven knows what to my back.

I spoke gently to them of the sick baby. With one voice they all
shouted:

"But _our_ babies are sick!"

One octogenarian--a carpenter's apprentice--heatedly informed me,
through Schmick, that he had a child two weeks old that would die
before morning if deprived of proper food and nourishment. Somewhat
impressed by this pitiful lament, I enquired how his wife was getting
along. The ancient, being in a placid state of senility, courteously
thanked me for my interest, and answered that she had been dead for
forty-nine years, come September. I overlooked the slight discrepancy.

During the remainder of the day, I insisted on the utmost quiet in our
wing of the castle. Poopendyke was obliged to take his typewriter out
to the stables, where I dictated scores of letters to him. I caught
Britton whistling in the kitchen about noon-time, and severely
reprimanded him. We went quite to the extreme, however, when we tiptoed
about our lofty halls. All of the afternoon we kept a sharp lookout
for the doctor, but if he came we were none the wiser. Britton went
into the town at three with the letters and a telegram to my friends
in Vienna, imploring them to look up a corps of efficient servants for
me and to send them on post-haste. I would have included a request for
a competent nurse-maid if it hadn't been for a report from Poopendyke,
who announced that he had caught a glimpse of a very nursy looking
person at one of the upper windows earlier in the day.

I couldn't, however, for the life of me understand why my neighbour
enjoined such rigid silence in our part of the castle and yet permitted
that confounded dog of hers to yowl and bark all day. How was I to
know that the beast had treed a lizard in the lower hall and couldn't
dislodge it?

Britton returned with news. The ferrymen, with great joy in the telling,
informed him that the season for tourists parties was just beginning
and that we might expect, with them, to do a thriving and prosperous
business during the next month or two. Indeed, word already had been
received by the tourists company's agent in the town that a party of
one hundred and sixty-nine would arrive the next day but one from
Munchen, bent on visiting my ruin. In great trepidation, I had all of
the gates and doors locked and reinforced by sundry beams and slabs,
for I knew the overpowering nature of the collective tourist.

I may be pardoned if I digress at this time to state that the party
of one hundred and sixty-nine, both stern and opposite, besieged my
castle on the next day but one, with the punctuality of locusts, and
despite all of my precautions, all of my devices, all of my objections,
effected an entrance and over-ran the place like a swarm of ants. The
feat that could not have been accomplished by an armed force was
successfully managed by a group of pedagogues from Ohio, to whom "Keep
off the Grass" and "No Trespass" are signs of utter impotence on the
part of him who puts them up, and ever shall be, world without end.
They came, they saw, they conquered, and they tried to buy picture
postcards of me.

I mention this in passing, lest you should be disappointed. More anon.

Punctually at nine o'clock, I was in the balcony, thanking my lucky
stars that it was a bright, moonlit night. There was every reason to
rejoice in the prospect of seeing her face clearly when she appeared
at her secret little window. Naturally, I am too much of a gentleman
to have projected unfair means of illuminating her face, such as the
use of a pocket electric lamp or anything of that sort. I am nothing
if not gallant,--when it comes to a pinch. Besides, I was reasonably
certain that she would wear a thick black veil. In this I was wrong.
She wore a white, filmy one, but it served the purpose. I naturally
concluded that she was homely.

"Good evening," she said, on opening the window.

"Good evening," said I, contriving to conceal my disappointment. "How
is the baby?"

"Very much better, thank you. It was so good of you to stop the
workmen."

[Illustration: I sat bolt upright and yelled; "Get out!"]

"Won't you take off your veil and stay awhile?" I asked, politely
facetious. "It isn't quite fair to me, you know."

Her next remark brought a blush of confusion to my cheek. A silly
notion had induced me to don my full evening regalia, spike-tail coat
and all. Nothing could have been more ludicrously incongruous than my
appearance, I am sure, and I never felt more uncomfortable in my life.

"How very nice you look in your new suit," she said, and I was aware
of a muffled quality in her ordinarily clear, musical voice. She was
laughing at me. "Are you giving a dinner party?"

"I usually dress for dinner," I lied with some haughtiness. "And so
does Poopendyke," I added as an afterthought. My blush deepened as I
recalled the attenuated blazer in which my secretary breakfasted,
lunched and dined without discrimination.

"For Gretel's benefit, I presume."

"Aha! You _do_ know Gretel, then?"

"Oh, I've known her for years. Isn't she a quaint old dear?"

"I shall discharge her in the morning," said I severely. "She is a
liar and her husband is a poltroon. They positively deny your existence
in any shape or form."

"They won't pay any attention to you," said she, with a laugh. "They
are fixtures, quite as much so as the walls themselves. You'll not be
able to discharge them. My grandfather tried it fifty years ago and
failed. After that he made it a point to dismiss Conrad every day in
the year and Gretel every other day. As well try to remove the mountain,
Mr. Smart. They know you can't get on without them."

"I have discharged her as a cook," I said, triumphantly. "A new one
will be here by the end of the week."

"Oh," she sighed plaintively, "how glad I am. She is an atrocious cook.
I don't like to complain, Mr. Smart, but really it is getting so that
I can't eat _anything_ she sends up. It is jolly of you to get in a new
one. Now we shall be very happy."

"By Jove!" said I, completely staggered by these revelations. Unable
to find suitable words to express my sustained astonishment, I repeated:
"By Jove!" but in a subdued tone.

"I have thought it over, Mr. Smart," she went on in a business-like
manner, "and I believe we will get along much better together if we
stay apart."

Ambiguous remarks ordinarily reach my intelligence, but I was so stunned
by preceding admissions that I could only gasp:

"Do you mean to say you've been subsisting all this time on _my_ food?"

"Oh, dear me, no! How can you think that of me? Gretel merely cooks
the food I buy. She keeps a distinct and separate account of everything,
poor thing. I am sure you will not find anything wrong with your bills,
Mr. Smart. But did you hear what I said a moment ago?"

"I'm not quite sure that I did."

"I prefer to let matters stand just as they are. Why should we
discommode each other? We are perfectly satisfied as we--"

"I will not have my new cook giving notice, madam. You surely can't
expect her--or him--to prepare meals for two separate--"

"I hadn't thought of that," she interrupted ruefully. "Perhaps if I
were to pay her--or him--extra wages it would be all right," she
added, quickly. "We do not require much, you know."

I laughed rather shortly,--meanly, I fear.

"This is most extraordinary, madam!"

"I--I quite agree with you. I'm awfully sorry it had to turn out as
it has. Who would have dreamed of your buying the place and coming
here to upset everything?"

I resolved to be firm with her. She seemed to be taking too much for
granted. "Much as I regret it, madam, I am compelled to ask you to
evacuate--to get out, in fact. This sort of thing can't go on."

She was silent for so long that I experienced a slow growth of
compunction. Just as I was on the point of slightly receding from my
position, she gave me another shock.

"Don't you think it would be awfully convenient if you had a telephone
put in, Mr. Smart?" she said. "It is such a nuisance to send Max or
Rudolph over to town every whip-stitch on errands when a telephone
--in your name, of course--would be so much more satisfactory."

"A telephone!" I gasped.

"Circumstances make it quite unwise for me to have a telephone in my
own name, but you could have one in yours without creating the least
suspicion. You are--"

"Madam," I cried, and got no farther.

"--perfectly free to have a telephone if you want one," she continued.
"The doctor came this evening and it really wasn't necessary. Don't
you see you could have telephoned for me and saved him the trip?"

It was due to the most stupendous exertion of self-restraint on my
part that I said: "Well, I'll be--jiggered," instead of something a
little less unique. Her audacity staggered me. (I was not prepared at
that time to speak of it as superciliousness.)

"Madam," I exploded, "will you be good enough to listen to me? I am
not to be trifled with. To-morrow sometime I shall enter the east wing
of this building if I have to knock down all the doors on the place.
Do you understand, madam?"

"I do hope, Mr. Smart, you can arrange to break in about five o'clock.
It will afford me a great deal of pleasure to give you some tea. May
I expect you at five--or thereabouts?"

Her calmness exasperated me. I struck the stone balustrade an emphatic
blow with my fist, sorely peeling the knuckles, and ground out:

"For two cents I'd do it to-night!"

"Oh, dear,--oh, dear!" she cried mockingly.

"You must be a dreadful woman," I cried out. "First, you make yourself
at home in my house; then you succeed in stopping my workmen, steal
my cook and men-servants, keep us all awake with a barking dog, defying
me to my very face--"

"How awfully stern you are!"

"I don't believe a word you say about a sick baby,--or a doctor! It's
all poppy-cock. To-morrow you will find yourself, bag and baggage,
sitting at the bottom of this hill, waiting for--"

"Wait!" she cried. "Are you really, truly in earnest?"

"Most emphatically!"

"Then I--I shall surrender," she said, very slowly,--and seriously,
I was glad to observe.

"That's more like it," I cried, enthusiastically.

"On one condition," she said. "You must agree in advance to let me
stay on here for a month or two. It--it is most imperative, Mr. Smart."

"I shall be the sole judge of that, madam," I retorted, with some
dignity. "By the way," I went on, knitting my brows, "how am I to get
into your side of the castle? Schmick says he's lost the keys."

A good deal depended on her answer.

"They shall be delivered to you to-morrow morning, Mr. Smart," she
said, soberly. "Good night."

The little window closed with a snap and I was left alone in the smiling
moonlight. I was vastly excited, even thrilled by the prospect of a
sleepless night. Something told me I wouldn't sleep a wink, and yet
I, who bitterly resent having my sleep curtailed in the slightest
degree, held no brief against circumstances. In fact, I rather revelled
in the promise of nocturnal distraction. Fearing, however, that I might
drop off to sleep at three or four o'clock and thereby run the risk
of over sleeping, I dashed off to the head of the stairs and shouted
for Britton.

"Britton," I said. "I want to be called at seven o'clock sharp in the
morning." Noting his polite struggle to conceal his astonishment, I
told him of my second encounter with the lady across the way.

"She won't be expecting you at seven, sir," he remarked. "And, as for
that, she may be expecting to call on you, instead of the other way
round."

"Right!" said I, considerably dashed.

"Besides, sir, would it not be safer to wait till the tourist party
has come and gone?"

"No tourists enter this place to-morrow or any other day," I declared,
firmly.

"Well, I'd suggest waiting just the same, sir," said he, evidently
inspired.

"Confound them," I growled, somehow absorbing his presentiment.

He hesitated for a moment near the door.

"Will you put in the telephone, sir?" he asked, respectfully.

Very curiously, I was thinking of it at that instant.

"It really wouldn't be a bad idea, Britton," I said, startled into
committing myself. "Save us a great deal of legging it over town and
all that sort of thing, eh?"

"Yes, sir. What I was about to suggest, sir, is that while we're about
it we might as well have a system of electric bells put in. That is
to say, sir, in both wings of the castle. Very convenient, sir, you
see, for all parties concerned."

"I see," said I, impressed. And then repeated it, a little more
impressed after reflection. "I see. You are a very resourceful fellow,
Britton. I am inclined to bounce all of the Schmicks. They have known
about this from the start and have lied like thieves. By Jove, she
must have an extraordinary power over them,--or claim,--or something
equally potent. Now I think of it, she mentioned a grandfather. That
would go to prove she's related in some way to some one, wouldn't it?"

"I should consider it to be more than likely, sir," said Britton, with
a perfectly straight face. He must have been sorely tried in the face
of my inane maunderings. "Pardon me, sir, but wouldn't it be a tip-top
idea to have it out with the Schmicks to-night? Being, sir, as you
anticipate a rather wakeful night, I only make so bold as to suggest
it in the hopes you may 'ave some light on the subject before you close
your eyes. In other words, sir, so as you won't be altogether in the
dark when morning comes. See wot I mean?"

"Excellent idea, Britton. We'll have them up in my study."

He went off to summon my double-faced servitors, while I wended my way
to the study. There I found. Mr. Poopendyke, sound asleep in a great
arm-chair, both his mouth and his nose open and my first novel also
open in his lap.

Conrad and Gretel appeared with Britton after an unconscionable lapse
of time, partially dressed and grumbling.

"Where are your sons?" I demanded, at once suspicious.

Conrad shook his sparsely covered head and mumbled something about
each being his brother's keeper, all of which was Greek to me until
Britton explained that they were not to be found in their customary
quarters,--that is to say, in bed. Of course it was quite clear to
me that my excellent giants were off somewhere, serving the interests
of the bothersome lady in the east wing.

"Conrad," said I, fixing the ancient with a stern, compelling gaze,
"this has gone quite far enough."

"Yes, mein herr?"

"Do you serve me, or do you serve the lady in the east wing?"

"I do," said he, with a great deal more wit than I thought he possessed.
For a moment I was speechless, but not for the reason you may suspect.
I was trying to fix my question and his response quite clearly in my
memory so that I might employ them later in the course of a conversation
between characters in my forthcoming novel.

"I have been talking with the lady this evening," said I.

"Yes, mein herr; I know," said he.

"Oh, you do, eh? Well, will you be good enough to tell me what the
devil is the meaning of all this two-faced, underhanded conduct on
your part?"

He lowered his head, closed his thin lips and fumbled with the hem of
his smock in a significantly sullen manner. It was evident that he
meant to defy me. His sharp little eyes sent a warning look at Gretel,
who instantly ceased her mutterings and gave over asking God to bear
witness to something or other. She was always dragging in the Deity.

"Now, see here, Conrad, I want the truth from you. Who is this woman,
and why are you so infernally set upon shielding her? What crime has
she committed? Tell me at once, or, by the Lord Harry, out you go
to-morrow,--all of you."

"I am a very old man," he whined, twisting his gnarled fingers, a
suggestion of tears in his voice. "My wife is old, mein herr. You would
not be cruel. We have been here for sixty years. The old baron--"

"Enough!" I cried resolutely. "Out with it, man. I mean all that I
say."

He was still for a long time, looking first at the floor and then at
me; furtive, appealing, uncertain little glances from which he hoped
to derive comfort by catching me with a twinkle in my eye. I have a
stupid, weak way of letting a twinkle appear there even when I am
trying to be harsh and domineering. Britton has noticed it frequently,
I am sure, and I think he rather depends upon it. But now I realised,
if never before, that to betray the slightest sign of gentleness would
be to forever forfeit my standing as master in my own house. Conrad
saw no twinkle. He began to weaken.

"To-morrow, mein herr, to-morrow," he mumbled, in a final plea. I shook
my head. "She will explain everything to-morrow," he went on eagerly.
"I am sworn to reveal nothing, mein herr. My wife, too, and my sons.
We may not speak until she gives the word. Alas! we shall be turned
out to die in our--"

"We have been faithful servants to the Rothhoefens for sixty years,"
sobbed his wife.

"And still are, I suspect," I cried angrily.

"Ach, mein herr, mein herr!" protested Conrad, greatly perturbed.

"Where are the keys, you old rascal?" I demanded so sternly that even
Poopendyke was startled.

Conrad almost resorted to the expediency of grovelling. "Forgive!
forgive!" he groaned. "I have done only what was best."

"Produce the keys, sir!"

"But not to-night, not to-night," he pleaded. "She will be very angry.
She will not like it, mein herr. Ach, Gott! She will drive us out, she
will shame us all! Ach, and she who is so gentle and so unhappy and
so--so kind, to all of us! I--I cannot--I cannot! No!"

Mr. Poopendyke's common sense came in very handily at this critical
juncture. He counselled me to let the matter rest until the next
morning, when, it was reasonable to expect, the lady herself would
explain everything. Further appeal to Schmick was like butting one's
head against a stone wall, he said. Moreover, Conrad's loyalty to the
lady was most commendable.

Conrad and Gretel beamed on Poopendyke. They thanked him so profoundly,
that I couldn't help feeling a bit sorry for myself, a tyrant without
a backbone.

"Jah, jah!" Conrad cried gladly. "To-morrow she will explain. Time
enough, Herr Poopendyke. Time enough, eh?"

"Well," said I, somewhat feebly, "where do I come in?"

They caught the note of surrender in my voice and pounced upon their
opportunity. Before they had finished with me, it was quite thoroughly
established that I was not to come in at all until my neighbour was
ready to admit me. They convinced me that I was a meek, futile suppliant
and not the master of a feudal stronghold. Somehow I was made to feel
that if I didn't behave myself I stood in considerable danger of being
turned off the place. However, we forced something out of Schmick
before his stalwart sons came tramping up the stairs to rescue him.
The old man gave us a touch of inside history concerning Schloss
Rothhoefen and its erstwhile powerful barons, not to minimise in the
least sense the peculiar prowess of the present Amazon who held forth
to-night in the east wing and who, I had some reason to suspect, was
one of the family despite the unmistakable flavour of Fifth Avenue and
Newport.

About the middle of the nineteenth century the last of the real
barons,--the powerful, land-owning, despotic barons, I mean,--came to
the end of his fourscore years and ten, and was laid away with great
pomp and glee by the people of the town across the river. He was the
last of the Rothhoefens, for he left no male heir. His two daughters
had married Austrian noblemen, and neither of them produced a male
descendant. The estate, already in a state of financial as well as
physical disintegration, fell into the hands of women, and went from
bad to worse so rapidly that long before the last quarter of the century
was fairly begun the castle and the reduced holdings slipped away from
the Rothhoefens altogether and into the control of the father of the
Count from whom I purchased the property. The Count's father, it
appears, was a distiller of great wealth in his day, and a man of
action. Unfortunately he died before he had the chance to carry out
his projects in connection with the rehabilitation of Schloss
Rothhoefen, even then a deserted, ramshackle resort for paying tourists
and a Mecca for antique and picture dealers.

The new Count--my immediate predecessor--was not long in dissipating
the great fortune left by his father, the worthy distiller. He had run
through with the bulk of his patrimony by the time he was twenty-five
and was pretty much run down at the heel when he married in the hope
of recouping his lost fortune.

The Schmicks did not like him. They did not approve of him as lord and
master, nor was it possible for them to resign themselves to the fate
that had put this young scapegrace into the shoes, so to speak, of the
grim old barons Rothhoefen, who whatever else they may have been in
a high-handed sort of way were men to the core. This pretender, this
creature without brains or blood, this sponging reprobate, was not to
their liking, if I am to quote Conrad, who became quite forceful in
his harangue against the recent order of things.

He, his wife and his sons, he assured me, were full of rejoicing when
they learned that the castle had passed from Count Hohendahl's hands
into mine. I, at least, would pay them their wages and I might, in a
pinch, be depended upon to pension them when they got too old to be
of any use about the castle.

At any rate, it seems, I was a distinct improvement over the Count,
who had been their master for a dozen very lean and unprofitable years.
Things might be expected to look up a bit, with me at the head of the
house. Was it not possible for a new and mighty race to rise and take
the place of the glorious Rothhoefens? A long line of Baron Schmarts?
With me as the prospective root of a thriving family tree! At least,
that is what Conrad said, and I may be pardoned for quoting him.

I am truly sorry the old rascal put it into my head.

But the gist of the whole matter was this: There are no more
Rothhoefens, and soon, God willing, there would be no more Hohendahls.
Long live the Schmarts! Conrad invariably pronounced my name with the
extra consonants and an umlaut.

All attempts on my part to connect the lady in the east wing with the
history of the extinct Rothhoefens were futile. He would not commit
himself.

"Well," said I, yawning in helpless collusion with the sleepy Gretel,
"we'll let it go over till morning. Call me at seven, Britton."

Conrad made haste to assure me that the lady would not receive me
before eleven o'clock. He begged me to sleep till nine, and to have
pleasant dreams.

I went to bed but not to sleep. It was very clear to me that my
neighbour was a disturber in every sense of the word. She wouldn't let
me sleep. For two hours I tried to get rid of her, but she filtered
into my brain and prodded my thoughts into the most violent activity.
She wouldn't stay put.

My principal thoughts had to do with her identity. Somehow I got it
into my head that she was one of the female Rothhoefens, pitiable
nonentities if Conrad's estimate is to be accepted. A descendant of
one of those girl-bearing daughters of the last baron! It sounded very
agreeable to my fancy's ear, and I cuddled the hope that my surmise
was not altogether preposterous.

My original contention that she was a poor relation of old Schmick and
somewhat dependent upon him for charity--to say the least--had been
set aside for more reliable convictions. Instead of being dependent
upon the Schmicks, she seemed to be in an exalted position that gave
her a great deal more power over them than even I possessed: they
served her, not me. From time to time there occurred to me the thought
that my own position in the household was rather an ignoble one, and
that I was a very weak and incompetent successor to baronial privileges,
to say nothing of rights. A real baron would have had her out of there
before you could mention half of Jack Robinson, and there wouldn't
have been any sleep lost over distracting puzzles. I deplored my lack
of bad manners.

It was quite reasonable to assume that she was young, but the odds
were rather against her being beautiful. Pretty women usually adjure
such precautions as veils. Still, this was speculation, and my reasoning
is not always sound, for which I sometimes thank heaven. She had a
baby. At least, I suppose it was hers. If not, whose? This set me off
on a new and apparently endless round of speculation, obviously silly
and sentimental.

Now I have humbly tried to like babies. My adolescent friends and
acquaintances have done their best to educate me along this particular
line, with the result that I suppose I despise more babies than any
man in the world. My friends, it would appear, are invariably married
to each other and they all have babies for me to go into false ecstasies
over. No doubt babies are very nice when they don't squawk or pull
your nose or jab you in the eye, but through some strange and prevailing
misfortune I have never encountered one when it was asleep. If they
are asleep, the parents compel me to walk on tip-toe and speak in
whispers at long range; the instant they awake and begin to yawp, I
am ushered into the presence, or vice versa, and the whole world grows
very small and congested and is carried about in swaddling clothes.

There is but one way for a bachelor to overcome his horror of babies,
and he shouldn't wait too long.

I went to sleep about four o'clock, still oppressed by the dread of
meeting a new baby.

My contact with the one hundred and sixty-nine sight-seers was brief
but exceedingly convincing. They invaded the castle before I was out
of bed, having--as I afterwards heard--the breweries, an art gallery
and the Zoological gardens to visit before noon and therefore were
required to make an early start. The cathedral, which is always open
to visitors and never has any one sleeping in it, was reserved for the
afternoon.

I was aroused from my belated sleep by the sound of mighty cataracts
and the tread of countless elephants. Too late I realised that the
tourists were upon me! Too late I remembered that the door to my room
had been left unlocked! The hundred and sixty-nine were huddled outside
my door, drinking in the monotonous drivel of the guide who had a
shrill, penetrating voice and not the faintest notion of a conscience.

I listened in dismay for a moment, and then, actuated by something
more than mere fury, leaped out of bed and prepared for a dash across
the room to lock the door. On the third stride I whirled and made a
flying leap into the bed, scuttling beneath the covers with the speed
and accuracy of a crawfish. Just in time, too, for the heavy door swung
slowly open a second later, and the shrill, explanatory voice was
projected loudly into my lofty bed chamber.

"Come a little closer, please," said the morose man with the cap. "This
room was occupied for centuries by the masters of Schloss Rothhoefen.
It is a bed chamber. See the great baronial bed. It has not been slept
in for more than two hundred years. The later barons refused to sleep
in it because one of their ancestors had been assassinated between its
sheets at the tender age of six. He was stabbed by a step-uncle who
played him false. This room is haunted. Observe the curtains of the
bed. They are of the rarest silk and have been there for three hundred
years, coming from Damascus in the year 1695. Now we will pass on to
the room occupied by all of the great baronesses up to the nineteenth--"

A resolute beholder spoke up: "Can't we step inside?"

"If you choose, madam. But we must waste no time."

"I do so want to see where the old barons slept."

"Please do not handle the bedspreads and curtains. They will fall to
pieces--"

I heard no more, for the vanguard had pushed him aside and was swooping
down upon me. A sharp-nosed lady led the way. She was within three
feet of the bed and was stretching out her hand to touch the proscribed
fabrics when I sat bolt upright and yelled:

"Get out!"

Afterwards I was told that the guide was the first to reach the bottom
of the stairs and that he narrowly escaped death in the avalanche of
horrified humanity that piled after him, pursued by the puissant ghost
of a six-year-old ancestor.



CHAPTER V

I MEET THE FOE AND FALL