He had just remembered Oliver October’s promise to pay him five thousand dollars in cash if he produced his father, dead or alive! He was actually smirking as he pressed the electric light button. The wind blew the candle out as he threw the door open.
“Come right in, Oliver,” he cried, quite heartily but still with a trace of apprehension. He had not recovered from his scare and half-expected Mr. Baxter to float past him into the hall.
A bent, disreputable-looking figure shuffled in, thumping his cane on the floor.
“Well, well!” exclaimed Mr. Gooch, holding the doorknob in one hand and the candle-stick in the other—making it obviously impossible for him to shake hands with what might after all turn out to be a cadaver. “You—you certainly gave me quite a scare.”
He peered narrowly, intently at the weather-beaten face of his wife’s brother. Old Oliver was looking around the hall as if inspecting a most unfamiliar place. Mr. Gooch, closing the door, risked a timid slap on the other’s shoulder, and was greatly relieved to find that it was solid. Mr. Baxter did not take kindly to this demonstration. He winced.
“Say, don’t do that,” he said. “I’ve got rheumatism in that shoulder. Comes from sleeping out in the open air a good bit of the time this fall.”
Mr. Gooch stepped back, the better to survey his brother-in-law’s person. There was every indication that Mr. Baxter had taken the precaution to sleep in his clothes pretty steadily all fall. They were wrinkled and dusty and hung limply, crookedly on his graceless frame. The coat collar was turned up and held tight to his throat by a thick red muffler. He wore a sad-looking green Homberg hat with a perky red feather sticking up from the band.
“Take off your muffler,” said Horace, desiring indisputable evidence.
“Oh, it’s there all right,” divined Mr. Baxter. “You can feel it if you don’t believe me. It’s just as well you didn’t offer to shake hands with me, Horace. I swore I’d never shake hands with you.”
“Come out to the kitchen,” said Gooch, scowling. “It’s warm there, and besides you might like a cup of hot coffee.”