“From all I hear,” I rejoined, “YOU ought to know who'll get it.” (It was said in town that Dowden would “come pretty near having the nomination in his pocket.”)
“I expect you thought I shifted the subject pretty briskly the other day?” He glanced at me quizzically from under the brim of his black felt hat. “I meant to tell you about that, but the opportunity didn't occur. You see—”
“I understand,” I interrupted. “I've heard the story. You thought it might be embarrassing to Miss Apperthwaite.”
“I expect I was pretty clumsy about it,” said Dowden, cheerfully. “Well, well—” he flicked his cigar with a smothered ejaculation that was half a sigh and half a laugh; “it's a mighty strange case. Here they keep on living next door to each other, year after year, each going on alone when they might just as well—” He left the sentence unfinished, save for a vocal click of compassion. “They bow when they happen to meet, but they haven't exchanged a word since the night she sent him away, long ago.” He shook his head, then his countenance cleared and he chuckled. “Well, sir, Dave's got something at home to keep him busy enough, these days, I expect!”
“Do you mind telling me?” I inquired. “Is its name 'Simpledoria'?”
Mr. Dowden threw back his head and laughed loudly. “Lord, no! What on earth made you think that?”
I told him. It was my second success with this narrative; however, there was a difference: my former auditor listened with flushed and breathless excitement, whereas the present one laughed consumedly throughout. Especially he laughed with a great laughter at the picture of Beasley's coming down at four in the morning to open the door for nothing on sea or land or in the waters under the earth. I gave account, also, of the miraculous jumping contest (though I did not mention Miss Apperthwaite's having been with me), and of the elfin voice I had just now overheard demanding “Bill Hammersley.”
“So I expect you must have decided,” he chuckled, when I concluded, “that David Beasley has gone just plain, plum insane.”
“Not a bit of it. Nobody could look at him and not know better than that.”
“You're right THERE!” said Dowden, heartily. “And now I'll tell you all there is TO it. You see, Dave grew up with a cousin of his named Hamilton Swift; they were boys together; went to the same school, and then to college. I don't believe there was ever a high word spoken between them. Nobody in this life ever got a quarrel out of Dave Beasley, and Hamilton Swift was a mighty good sort of a fellow, too. He went East to live, after they got out of college, yet they always managed to get together once a year, generally about Christmas-time; you couldn't pass them on the street without hearing their laughter ringing out louder than the sleigh-bells, maybe over some old joke between them, or some fool thing they did, perhaps, when they were boys. But finally Hamilton Swift's business took him over to the other side of the water to live; and he married an English girl, an orphan without any kin. That was about seven years ago. Well, sir, this last summer he and his wife were taking a trip down in Switzerland, and they were both drowned—tipped over out of a rowboat in Lake Lucerne—and word came that Hamilton Swift's will appointed Dave guardian of the one child they had, a little boy—Hamilton Swift, Junior's his name. He was sent across the ocean in charge of a doctor, and Dave went on to New York to meet him. He brought him home here the very day before you passed the house and saw poor Dave getting up at four in the morning to let that ghost in. And a mighty funny ghost Simpledoria is!”