“What do you want, anyhow?” came an angry, suspicious voice.
“For heaven’s sake, man, give me a lift, will you?” I answered. “My car broke down back there in the wilds hours ago, and I’ve been tramping this road ever since trying to find my bearings and get back to town. Can you set me down somewhere near a railway station?”
The driver pressed down his pedal a little and the car drew closer. “Is this some kind of a hold-up?” he demanded in an angry voice. “Because if it is, you’ve come to the wrong shop. If you can get any money out of me I’d like to know where you find it.”
“It’s not a hold-up,” I laughed. “It’s a yell for help. I don’t want to spend the entire night on your delightful countryside.” I set the catch on my ring as I spoke.
My new acquaintance grunted. “Get in, and get a move on,” he said ungraciously. “One of my patients thinks she’s sick and I’ve got to go and tell her she ain’t. And I want to get back and get some sleep myself.”
With a sigh of relief I climbed into that wheezing little Ford. The mystery of my ungracious reception was explained. For if any man has a right to be bad-tempered it’s a small-town doctor.
As long as I live I shall bless that doctor and his car. He took me miles on my way and, I suspect, some little distance out his own, although he would not admit it and was grumpy and disagreeable to the last. But he went to the trouble of setting me down at a railroad station, which was all that I wanted. And I bade his grumpy back good-night with my heart in my voice.
For on my way I had talked to him about the place from which I had come and had learned exactly what I wanted to know.
I told him that I had broken down a long way back and had wandered about in the woods. I pretended that I had run against the wall about the house of orgies, and asked him about that. I described the beach and the bluff I had seen and asked him about that, and between the two he was able to tell me where I must have been.
“You must have struck the old Rutherford place. There’s a kind of recluse lives up there now. Bought the place when old man Rutherford died. They say he’s a foreigner, but nobody knows anything about him. Lives by himself and sends a Chink lad down to the village to get a little food now and then. But he doesn’t keep a car, they tell me. No one ever sees him about these parts, and they say that he never goes out of his grounds. The Rutherford place is——” and he told me the exact location in relation to the main road and the small towns about.