CHAPTER XXIII
The Mystery Cleared
Mrs. Walsh looked round her with mingled pleasure and pain. The pleasure was because the old house was so unchanged, and it made her feel almost young again to be shot back into the scenes of her girlhood, and to find that the environment had scarcely altered at all. But there was keen pain in the thought of what the old man’s lonely years must have been like, and the mystery of his disappearance was brought home to her so much more forcibly now that she stood in her old home once more.
The boys and Muriel had rushed off with Jack to see the barn and the pigs, and the calves which were the pride of Pam’s heart. They had two, one that belonged to their own cow, and another that Pam had bought from Mrs. Buckle when it was a week old, and had brought up by hand.
“There are quite a lot of things missing from the house,” said Mrs. Walsh with a troubled air, as she walked from room to room. “Of course in an ordinary way this would not have seemed wonderful, but knowing my father as I do, I cannot think he would have parted with Mother’s picture, which always hung in his own room. Then there was the safe that he kept his money in, a small iron affair, which used to stand by the side of his bed. Have you seen it anywhere?”
“There is no safe in the house that I know of, and we have turned out every hole and corner,” replied Pam. “A finer collection of rubbish was surely never found outside a second-hand shop, but we brushed and dusted it all and put it back for you to sort when you came.”
“I cannot think what he could have done with the safe, unless he has buried it somewhere,” said Mrs. Walsh in a musing tone. “He did not believe in banks, and he often used to keep a lot of money in the house. It was locked up in the safe and he thought it was all right, but I think it was a very risky thing to do.”
“Especially if people got to suspect it, for even this wilderness is not too remote for light-fingered folk.” Pam was thinking of Mose Paget as she spoke, and there was, as always, a pang of pity in her heart for the man whose life had been so wasted.
“To me it looks as if his going was a planned affair, and in view of your expected arrival it makes things seem very strange,” went on Mrs. Walsh; and then, the two of them being at this moment in the end bedroom downstairs, which had been prepared for her use, she went down on her knees and started peering curiously at the floor.
“What are you looking for?” demanded Pam with a ring of alarm in her voice, for her mother’s conduct was certainly strange.
“I am looking for the mark on the floor where the safe stood, and—yes, there it is! Do you see those screw-holes? It was screwed to the floor, and by the look of things it has not been removed from the place so very long. Pam, he must have moved that safe when he expected to have one of you children here with him. I expect he buried it, only the puzzle will be to find where. He must have had money in it, and was afraid that you would be curious about it. Oh, what a wearing mystery it all is!”
“But, Mother, Grandfather was poor, everyone says so!” gasped Pam, worried by the look on her mother’s face, and by all the unpleasant possibilities called up by Mrs. Walsh’s words.
“I dare say everyone thought so, and he would do what he could to keep them in their belief. But I do not think he was poor; he was always too fond of money not to have saved when he had the chance. He could live on next to nothing here, and if he only made a little money, that little he could save.”
“Mother, come and have supper, and leave off worrying about this,” said Pam hurriedly, for she could not bear to see how careworn her mother suddenly looked.
“I suppose that is about the only thing to be done, though it is very hard not to worry,” said Mrs. Walsh. She followed Pam across the big sitting-room, littered just now with the luggage of the travellers, and out to the kitchen, where a comfortable meal was spread.
It was the middle of the day, for Mrs. Walsh and her children had come up-river by the night boat. Pam and Jack declared that it gave them a most fearfully dissipated feeling to be sitting down to a meal in the middle of a day that was not Sunday. But weeding and hoeing were off for this one day, which was very much of a festival, and Pam had performed miracles of hard work since dawn in getting the house ready for the travellers. Nathan Gittins had driven his team to Hunt’s Crossing, taking Jack with him, to meet the arrivals, but he had too much tact to come in when they reached Ripple, and had driven off in a great hurry, pleading urgent business.
The boys were in raptures over the place, and Muriel was tearing round like a little wild thing. To them the new life would be like one long holiday, and Greg declared that he did not mind how hard he had to work provided he did not have to wait at table again.
“You may have to do worse than that. You may have to cook your own supper or go without,” laughed Pam.
“As if I should mind that!” snorted Greg. “I used to loathe waiting on the boarders, and seeing the disgusting greed with which they swallowed their food, and their eagerness to get their money’s worth. If you want to know what a person is really like, watch him feed, I say.”
“A good idea,” put in Jack hastily, for he had seen a cloud gather on his mother’s face, and he was not going to have her worried with the nonsense of the young ones if he could help it. “A very good idea indeed, Mr. Gregory Walsh, and by the elegant way in which you are at this moment eating flapjacks and molasses, I should be inclined to say that you are a bit of a bounder, and not very well acquainted with the usages of polite society.”
The others burst into peals of laughter at the expense of Greg, and the face of Mrs. Walsh smoothed as if by magic. It was only Jack and Pam who understood how any allusion to the hardships of the boarding-house life hurt her, and they spared her when they could.
“There were some friends of Mr. Gay’s on the boat we came in,” said Mrs. Walsh, as she lingered sitting at the table with Pam and Jack when the others had rushed away again. “They were in the first class, of course, and we were in the second, but they used to come to pay us visits nearly every day. They are going west to British Columbia for the summer, and young Mr. Gay—he is a nephew of the Mr. Gay who was so kind to Jack—asked if he could come here for shooting in the autumn. He and his friend want a moose if they can get one. They will bring a man with them, and they would rather not stay at Ripple, which they declare would be too civilized. I told them if nothing else offered we would build them a shack right out in the forest. They are going to pay me well for coming.”
“It is a shockingly busy time for shack-building,” said Pam. “They would want an extra special kind, too, because they are not used to roughing it, but we shall certainly have to do what we can, because old Mr. Gay was so good to Jack.”
“Why not rig up that old house in the tote road?” suggested Jack. “Nathan told me that is a wonderful place for moose, and as for other game, why, they might almost lie in bed and shoot the stuff that passes the house.”
“Oh, they could not go there, it is such a shocking ruin, and it is haunted too!” cried Pam with a shiver, whereupon Jack burst out laughing. But Mrs. Walsh wanted to know what place they were talking of.
“There is a little house, very dilapidated, standing on some ground which borders the old tote road. Grandfather bought the land some few years ago, so Luke Dobson told me,” explained Pam.
“I remember the place now,” said Mrs. Walsh. “The man who lived there was an Indian, or else he had an Indian wife, I don’t remember which. But, Pam, don’t you see that this bears out what I have said, that your grandfather was not poor, or he would not have been able to buy land?”
“It was only twenty acres, and he might have taken a mortgage for the bigger part of the price,” replied Pam.
Mrs. Walsh shook her head. She began to talk of other things soon after, but all the time she was puzzling out the matter of her father’s disappearance.
Pam and Jack had to work all the harder in the days that followed to make up for the holiday they had allowed themselves to welcome their mother and the younger children. But life was so much easier that the hard work scarcely counted in comparison. It was beautiful to throw down their hoes at noon, and come walking indoors to find a well-cooked meal spread ready for them to eat. It was even more delightful still to have no supper to cook at the end of a long and fagging day. Then Mrs. Walsh bought a horse and a wagon, for she said that it would never do for Muriel to have so many miles to walk to attend school. Oh, life was easier all round; only there was the one cloud that did not lift, and Pam could not be happy because of that still unexplained mystery of her grandfather’s disappearance.
Don Grierson came and went. He was so fortunate as to win the esteem of Mrs. Walsh, while the younger children adored him. But Pam was resolute in her determination to permit no engagement between him and herself while they still lived under the shadow of what might be a disgrace.
The weeks slipped by so quickly that August came and went, and September came in, with flaming autumn splendours, before anyone at Ripple seemed to realize that summer was on the wane. Then came a letter from Mr. Gay, asking if a shooting-lodge could be ready for him in a couple of weeks, as he wanted to have as much time as possible in New Brunswick before returning to England, where he was due in early November at the latest.
“Whatever shall we do?” cried Pam in dismay. “Jack, do you think we could have a logging bee, and get a framehouse run up and ready in two weeks? It will never do to disappoint these people. Besides, think how glad we shall be to have the money.”
“I should have the bee to put that house in repair that we have already got,” said Jack. He turned to Don Grierson, who had brought the mail over from The Corner, and asked him if he did not think Pam was silly to object to the place being used.
Don was not disposed to think anything Pam might do was foolish, and he said so with a straightforward simplicity which brought the hot blushes to Pam’s cheeks, and set the others laughing.
“I propose that we go and see this place straight away,” said Mrs. Walsh. “I have been meaning to go over there every week since I came, but there is always so much to be done, and there never seems to be an opportunity for outside things.”
“I can drive you over at this minute if you like,” suggested Don; “it will save you having to hitch your own horse to your wagon, and time is everything these days.”
“That is what I say,” answered Jack. “We will all three go if you can take us; the kids can run the house until we get back. Put a hat on, Mother, and come along. The ride will do you good; it is so hot this morning, and you did not go out all yesterday.”
Mrs. Walsh had a few objections to make, but these were speedily overruled. She was anxious to please Mr. Gay, and, of course, if the building would do it would be silly to put up another, especially as labour was so hard to come by.
The nearest trail to the old tote road was too narrow for a wagon, and Don had to take them by a broader trail, which was more than three miles farther. But for him it was a holiday pure and simple, as Pam sat on the front seat beside him, Jack and Mrs. Walsh being on the seat behind. Pam was brighter, too; more as she used to be before the burden of the old man’s mysterious disappearance had become so hard to bear. All the time it was supposed that he had left his home through fear of being arrested for the wounding of Sam Buckle, it had been a bearable trouble because it was easy to understand; but since the confession of Mose Paget had cleared the character of Wrack Peveril from even the shadow of a stain, Pam had been tortured by the wonder as to whether in her ignorance and inefficiency she might have left undone something that might have cleared the mystery.
There had been a frost on the previous night, and already the maples were flaming in scarlet and gold. Pam thought of her first coming to Ripple, and how the gorgeousness of the forest had impressed her. That was nearly a year ago, and all that time she had lived on the edge of a tragedy, not knowing what a day might reveal—hoping, fearing, and wondering, yet never able to get any light on the mystery.
Mrs. Walsh was telling Jack of some of the adventures of her youth, when they had gone berrying in this part of the forest, and they were both laughing over the story, which gave Don a chance to talk to Pam in a low tone. He was telling her that now her mother had come to Ripple, there was surely no need for her to feel the burden of responsibility was hers alone, and so she might just as well let him announce the fact of their betrothal. But Pam was obdurate still. It was as if she had inherited the spirit of the old man, and having once made up her mind, nothing could turn her. How much she suffered in making Don suffer, no one but herself could realize. She was white and spent with the effort, and the joy of the morning had turned to weariness by the time the horse reached the old tote road, and quickened its pace because the going was smoother.
“What a place!” cried Mrs. Walsh, when Don drew rein in front of the deserted house. “But the roof looks sound, and with four walls and a roof the other part should be easy enough.”
“It looks as if we ought to have brought a hatchet to chop our way in,” said Jack, as he surveyed the tall weeds and trailing brambles which had grown across the entrance door.
“I think we’ll manage to get in somehow,” replied Don. He drew his horse into the shade of a tall maple, and, jumping from the wagon, tied the animal to the tree, so that it should not take the homeward trail until he was ready. Then he helped Pam and her mother to climb down from the wagon, and, when they were on the ground, helped Jack to stamp down the weeds and the brambles to make a path to the door.
“Hullo! The handle is tied up with a yellow rag; it looks as if it was in quarantine,” called out Jack, as he pulled away a mass of wild bryony which had spread all across the door.
“That rag is a bit of Mose Paget’s handkerchief,” explained Pam. “He tied the door with it on the day when we found the lynxes here. I saw it again on the day when I was round here searching for the cow, and I thought it must have been pretty good stuff to have stood so long.”
“It was like Mose to be obliged to tear his handkerchief; any other man would have had a bit of string in his pocket,” commented Don.
“Now, I thought it was a sign of civilization in him that he possessed a handkerchief at all,” put in Pam, who was always stirred to the defence of Mose because of the rescue of the dog on that day when the creature found the lynxes.
“I don’t admire his taste in handkerchiefs. There is a thought too much yellow in it for my fancy,” said Jack, who had unfastened the rag, and now held it up for their inspection.
They all laughed, but the merriment died to a sudden silence when they opened the door and stood on the threshold. With a quick, involuntary movement Jack’s hand went to his hat, then dropped again, and he cast a furtive glance round, hoping the others had not noticed what he had been doing. A broken window had ventilated the room, which had a musty smell in spite of that. There were the remains of a wooden bed-frame in the far corner, a broken stove was in another corner, and in the centre a table of such solid manufacture that it had been left there because it was too unwieldy to move.
“Is there only one room? What a nuisance!” cried Mrs. Walsh, who had wrinkled her nose in distaste, for the odour of the lynxes still clung to the place.
“One room and a cellar,” said Don, who had been kicking at the rubbish on the floor, and had thus disclosed a trap-door on the farther side of the room, where the big table cast a shadow.
“A cellar under this place?” exclaimed Pam in amazement. “I should not have thought the house big enough to have a cellar.”
“The place being so small would make it all the more necessary to have a store where the frost could not reach,” said Don. “You see, the folks who lived here must have had some room to store their potatoes and other roots, and it is the cheapest way of doing things to have it under the place where you live.”
“Cheap and nasty, I should say, if they all smell like this! You are surely not going down?” cried Pam, as Don struggled to lift the trap-door.
“Yes, I am, for one must know the condition of the cellar, and find out whether the beams of the floor above are sound, before determining if the house is in good enough repair to be lived in,” said Don, as he wrestled fiercely with the trap-door.
“Is it screwed down?” asked Pam in surprise, for Don was putting out all his strength, and yet failing to raise the trap-door.
“There are no screw-holes that I can see,” he answered. “It feels more as if it were fastened from below, only, of course, that is out of the question. But it is coming up somehow, for I am not going to be beaten over a thing like this. Will you hand me that iron bar—the one leaning by the stove? Thanks; now stand clear. Ah!”
Don gave such a mighty heave that with a ripping, tearing sound the trap-door came in halves, and he crashed backwards on the floor. Though he looked ridiculous enough, no one laughed, and Jack, peering down into the dark cavity, cried out in the blankest surprise:
“I don’t wonder you could not get the door up. It is bolted down. Now, how could that bolt have been shot?”
How, indeed? Don gathered himself up, and stooping low over the broken trap-door proceeded to examine it carefully. There was an iron bolt on the under side, and this was shot fully home, the handle of the bolt being turned to prevent it being shaken back.
“It is certainly queer,” muttered Don, and Pam felt a cold shiver steal all over her.
“I am going down with you,” said Jack, as Don unbolted the bit of the trap-door that had not broken away, and prepared to trust his weight on the ladder that showed dimly from below.
“Better let me get landed at the bottom first. We don’t know the strength of the ladder, you see; and it is not worth while to invite disaster,” said Don. He set foot on the ladder with extreme caution, and clinging with both hands to the framework of the trap-door, stamped and banged at the ladder to test its firmness. “It feels sound enough, and is more solid than usual, so here goes!”
The silence above was so tense that the noise of the horse munching grass on the other side of the tote road came to the others plainly enough as they stood watching Don disappear in the darkness of the cellar.
“I am down!” he announced a minute later; and Jack had stepped on to the ladder, disappearing also, before Don had time to fumble in his pockets for a match-box to get a light.
Pam was stooping over the opening. She saw the flash of the match, then heard a frightened cry from Jack, and a startled word from Don.
“What is it?” she cried. She was shaking all over as if she had an ague, cold chills were creeping up her back, and yet she could feel the perspiration trickling slowly down her face.
“What have you found?” demanded Mrs. Walsh, thrusting Pam aside in her excitement, and coming to kneel by the yawning hole in the floor.
There was a long moment of silence, then Don’s voice spoke from below.
“A dead man is here, sitting in a chair beside a safe. Mrs. Walsh, I think it must be your father. Will you come down?”
“Grandfather down there?” cried Pam, and her voice was shrill with sheer astonishment.