CHAPTER XXIII
AN INQUIRY
The rain dripped from the porch roof and a curtain of drizzle fell between the house and the gate where the gray horses stood. The bewhiskered individual had a rubber blanket over his knees and the water dripped from the brim of his hat into his lap—just as it dripped from the roof over Hiram Strong's head.
On the back seat of the old-fashioned carryall sat a second man. But Hiram could not see him very well at first.
"Hey!" yelled the bewhiskered man, "you ain't all deaf in there, are you?"
"Not all of us," replied Hiram. "I still have my hearing unimpaired. But 'hay' is for horses. It doesn't mean much to me. What do you want?"
Suddenly the man in the rear seat of the vehicle thrust forward his head. He wore spectacles and was evidently no farmer. He demanded:
"Have you any information of, or do you know anything personally about, Theodore, or Teddy, Chester, or a man calling himself by such name?"
"Never heard of him," declared Hiram.
"He is supposed to have come this way."
"I might say that lots of people drive this way—especially in summer."
"He would probably have been walking," said the bespectacled man confidently.
"Not many strangers walk by here, I admit."
"And if he came this way—as seems probable—it was months ago. Early last spring, to be more exact."
"Why," laughed Hiram, "I would not be likely to remember anybody who passed here so long ago."
"Suppose he asked for work?" put in the bearded driver of the carryall. "He'd be likely to. Ted wasn't lazy."
"You may remember the men who asked you for work last season?" repeated the more professional looking man with emphasis.
Hiram began to think this man was a lawyer. An inquiry of importance was being made, and he grew interested. He put his head back into the house door and asked Jim Larry to get his umbrella. In a moment, when the boy had brought it, Hiram went out to the carriage to discuss the matter more at his ease.
"You do remember the fellow, hey?" asked the bearded man, his little blue eyes sparkling. "I bet you do!"
"I won't say 'yes' or 'no' so easily," laughed Hiram. "When was it the man was supposed to come this way?"
The man on the rear seat of the carryall gave a date. It was well back in the spring.
"It was after that date—soon after, we believe. We know almost positively that he came through Pringleton and was heading this way."
"Heading for Sunnyside?" asked Hiram in surprise.
"Is that the name of this place? I don't mean to say that he was coming to this particular farm. Only that he was walking in this direction."
"Really," said Hiram, who had been trying to think of the incidents of the previous spring, "I don't know that there were many tramping people who asked me for work at that time."
"Do you run this farm—a kid like you?" demanded the bewhiskered one in surprise.
"Yes," Hiram said with his customary smile, "I try to. I would know if anybody came along asking for work. And at that time I was having ditching done and hired almost every man I could get."
"I don't know about Ted doing ditching," said the driver of the carryall. "He was a notch above that."
"At that season of the year I presume a farm worker is not likely to have his pick of jobs," the other man suggested shrewdly.
"I feel almost sure I would have remembered anybody who came here and whom I did not hire if he really wanted work at that time," said the young farm manager thoughtfully. "But there was nobody by that name."
"He might not have given you that name," the legal looking man said quickly.
"No?"
"Mr. Post knew him by that name," continued the gentleman, indicating the driver.
Hiram was shocked to sudden and keen attention. But he controlled his features. He asked, after a moment, as though he had been thinking:
"What did this Theodore Chester look like?"
Here the bearded individual answered. The other man did not seem so familiar with the lost one's personality as was the driver of the carriage.
"Tell you, he wasn't much to look at. Kind of slimpsy lookin'. Lean like. But he could work. Had a sleight with him about most things."
"You are not giving the young man a very clear description of—er—Ted," interrupted the legal looking man. "What color are his eyes and his hair?"
"Oh, his eyes are sort o' blue, or blue-gray, and his hair is brownish. Leastways, I should say it was. And he had kind of crinkly wrinkles about his eyes when he laughed—"
"How old was the man?" interrupted Hiram quickly.
"He is twenty-three years old this very month," replied the man from the back seat of the carryall.
"He looks older," said the bewhiskered farmer.
"Of course, you have no photograph of him?" asked Hiram slowly.
"Wish I had!" exclaimed the other man. "I would plaster this whole country with reproductions of it if I had one."
"Yes? Well," said Hiram, "I do not know any such man. At least, I do not remember any such asking me for work or passing this farm."
"Well!" sighed the bewhiskered man, and took up his reins.
"If you should ever see such a person let me hear about it, will you?" asked the other quickly, and thrust his hand into the rain with a card in it.
"What did he do?" asked Hiram as the gray horses started.
"He ran away from me, young fellow," the bearded man said shortly and grimly, and the carryall rolled away.
Hiram looked at the card. It read: "Eben Craddock, Attorney at Law," with an address in a Cincinnati office building.
"Odd thing," muttered Hiram, slipping the card into his pocket. He went back to the house, leaving the umbrella on the porch to drip. He went in and found that Jim Larry seemed to have followed Orrin out through the rear door.
He sat down and picked up his book again; but he could not fix his mind on the story he had been reading. That bearded man's name was Post and the young man of twenty-three had run away from him.
The date the lawyer had mentioned as that on which the fugitive was supposed to have come through Pringleton was the very day—he remembered it now—on the evening of which he had found Orrin so ill and helpless in the calf pen here on Sunnyside Farm!
This was a good deal of a nut to crack—and it was a meaty nut when Hiram Strong had cracked it. However, both the man named Post and the lawyer had refused to give any details of why they were hunting the mysterious individual called "Theodore Chester." If he was a fugitive and a criminal why had they been so secretive?
"I have the lawyer's card. Somehow I don't trust that fellow with the whiskers at all," muttered Hiram. "And I've know Orrin more than eight months, and know nothing but good of him."
So he said nothing regarding the inquiry for Theodore Chester to either of his companions. As for Orrin, he did not appear again at the house until dark.
For some reason hard to explain Hiram was willing to take a chance on Orrin.