It had been the finest residence in the old town in its day, but was now regarded as a sort of historic oddity. On the whole, it afforded a formidable appearance, crouching behind its great elms, looming huge and weather-beaten, with its board-shuttered and frowning windows. But just the sort of place the eccentric Dr. Calgroni could work in, unmolested.
I saw the peculiar doctor one morning as I was leaving the small post office. It was just after train time, and many of the villagers were loitering about the place, among them a young man named Jason Murdock.
Murdock was of that type one always hears of in a small community—the village “devil.” He came of a good family, and had plenty of money and all that: but had succeeded, despite rich heritage-blood, in igniting more fire and brimstone than all five of the village preachers had in their imagination conceived. He was coarsely good-looking, and big and husky.
Aristocratic hoodlum though he was, all rather secretly admired the fellow, probably because he injected “pep” into the lazy old town.
I beheld Jason Murdock pointing to a shriveled-up figure of a little man, stooped of shoulder.
“There he goes—that Dr. Can-groanee, who’s movin’ into the Thornsdale place. I wonder if there’s any good liquor in his cellar? That old Thornsdale dump has a good wine cellar.”
Dr. Calgroni paid not the slightest attention to Jason’s insolent babble, but walked hurriedly along, his clean-shaven, dried-up countenance turning neither to the right nor left.
“Who is that man?” I asked the postmaster, who had now come to the door for air.
“I dunno, excepting his mail is addressed Dr.—I’ll have to spell it—C-A-L-G-R-O-N-I—and it is mostly foreign, out of Vienna, forwarded here from New York.”
“Sort of a man of mystery, eh?” I hazarded.