“I make out that Archie is only part of their game,” replied the soldier. “Now see, Birdsall, you are not going to get a couple of rich young college fellows to do just plain kidnapping and scaring women out of their money—”
“Lord, General,” interrupted Birdsall, “those college guys don’t turn a hair at kidnapping; they regularly steal the president of the freshman class, and the things they do at their hazing bees and initiations would make an Apache Indian sit up and take notice. I tell you, General, they’re the limit for deviltry.”
“Some kinds. Not that kind; it’s too dirty. Arnold was one of the cleanest foot-ball players at Harvard. And I don’t know anything about human nature if that other youngster isn’t decent. But Mercer—es un loco; you can look out for anything from him. Now, see the combination. Arnold was at Harvard! I have traced the motor-car they used to him; and then, if you add that his father is away safe in Europe and he has an empty house, off to one side, with a quantity of space around it and the reputation of being haunted, why—”
“It looks good to me. And I understand my men have got around it on the quiet all right. How’s your man Haley got on, hiring out to the Jap in charge?”
“Well enough; the Jap took him on to mow, but either Mr. Caretaker doesn’t know anything or he won’t tell. He’s bubbling over with conversation about the flowers and the country and the Philippines, where he used to be; but he only knows that the honorable family are all away and he is to shun the house. Aren’t we almost there?”
“Just around the corner. I guess when you see it you’ll think it’s just the patio a spook of taste would freeze to.”
“Why is it haunted?”
“Now you have me. I ain’t on to such dream stuff. Gimme five cards. Mrs. Arnold died off in Europe, so ’tain’t her; and the house has only been built two years; but the neighbors have seen lights and heard groans and a pick chopping at the stones. Some folks say the land belonged to an old miner and he died before he could tell where he’d buried his mazuma; so he is taking a little buscar after it. There’s the house, General.”
The street climbed a gentle hill, and on its crest a large house, in mission style, looked over a pleasant land. Its position on a corner and the unusual size of the grounds about it gave the mansion an effect of space. Of almost rawly recent erection though it was, the kindly climate had so fostered the growth of the pines, acacias and live-oaks, the eucalypti and the orange-trees, which made a rich blur of color on the hillside, had so lavishly tended the creeping ivies and Bougainvilleas which masked the rounded lantern arches of the stern gray façade, and so sumptuously blazoned the flower-beds in the garden on the one hand, yet, on the other, had so cunningly dulled the greenish gray of the cobblestones from California arroyos in chimney and foundation, and had so softly streaked the marble of the garden statues and the plaster of walls and mansion with tiny filaments of lichens or faint green moss, that the beholder might fancy the house to be the ancient home of some Spanish hidalgo, handed down with an hereditary curse, through generations, to the last of his race. One was tempted to such a flutter of fancy because of the impression given by the mansion. A sullen reticence hung about the place. The windows, for the most part, were heavily shuttered. Not a pane of glass flashed back at the sunlight; even those casements not shuttered turned blank dark green shades, like bandaged eyes, on the court and the beautiful terraces and the lovely sweep of hillsides where the wonderful shadows swayed and melted.
The bent figure of a man raking, distorted by the perspective, was visible just beyond the high pillars of the gateway. He paid no attention to the motions of the motor-car, nor did he answer a hail until it was repeated. Then he approached the car. Birdsall was in the roadway trying to unlock the gate. The man, whose Japanese features were quite distinguishable, bowed; he explained that the honorable owners were not at home; his insignificant self was the only keeper of the grounds. He spoke sufficiently good English with the accompaniment of a deprecatory, amiable smile. Birdsall, in turn, told him that his own companion was a very great gentleman from the East who belonged to a society of vast power which was investigating spectral appearances, and that he had come thousands of miles to see the ghost.