Читать книгу: «The Girls of Hillcrest Farm: or, The Secret of the Rocks», страница 13

CHAPTER XXVII
THEY LOSE A BOARDER

Harris had something beside a square and determined jaw. He had muscular arms and he looked just then as though he were ready to use them. Spink gave him no provocation.

He fumbled in his pocket and brought out a key.

“Is this the one, Miss ’Phemie?” asked the young fellow.

The girl stepped forward, and in the lamplight from the bedroom doorway identified the key of the green door–with its tag attached.

“All right, then. Go to your room, Professor,” said Harris. “Unless you want him for something further, Miss ’Phemie?”

“My goodness me! No!” cried ’Phemie. “I never want to see him again.”

The professor was already aiming for the stairs, and he quickly disappeared. Harris turned to the still shaking girl.

“What’s it all about, Miss ’Phemie?” he asked.

“That’s what I’d really like to know myself,” she replied, eagerly. “He is after something – ”

“So my father says,” interposed Harris. “Father says Spink has something hidden–or has made some discovery–up there in the rocks.”

“I don’t know whether he really has found what he has been looking for – ”

“And that is?” suggested Harris.

“I wish we knew!” cried ’Phemie. “But we don’t. At least, I don’t–nor does Lyddy. But he tried to buy the farm of Aunt Jane once–only he offered a very small price.

“He has been hanging around here for months trying to find something. He got into the old offices to-night, and tried to break into grandfather’s desk – ”

Harris nodded thoughtfully.

“We want to look into this,” he said. “I hope you and your sister will not refuse my aid. This Spink may be more of a knave than a fool. Now, go back to bed and–and assure Miss Lyddy that I will be only too glad to help ‘thwart the villain’–if he really has some plan to better himself at your expense.”

’Phemie picked up her quilt, locked the green door, and returned to her room. Throughout all the excitement Lyddy had slept; but ’Phemie’s coming to bed aroused her.

The younger girl was too shaken by what had transpired to hide her excitement, and Lyddy quickly was broad awake listening to ’Phemie’s story. The latter told all that had happened, including her experiences on the night they had come to Hillcrest. There was no sleep for the two girls just then–not, at least, until they had discussed Professor Spink and the secret of the rocks at the back of the farm, from every possible angle.

“I shall tell him that his absence will be better appreciated than his company–at once!” declared Lyddy, finally.

“But sending him away isn’t going to explain the mystery,” wailed ’Phemie.

In the morning, before many of the other boarders were astir, the two girls caught the oily professor just starting off with a handbag.

“You’d better get the remainder of your baggage ready to go too, sir,” said Lyddy, sharply, “for we don’t want you here.”

“It’s packed, young lady,” returned Professor Spink, with a sneer. “I shall send a man for it from the hotel in town.”

“Well, that’s all right,” quoth the girl, warmly. “You’ve paid your board in advance, and I cannot complain. But I would like to have you explain what your actions last night mean?”

“I don’t know what you are talking about. I heard people moving about the house and–naturally–I went to see – ”

“Oh, you story-teller!” gasped ’Phemie.

“Ha! I can see that you have both made up your minds not to believe me,” said the odd boarder, haughtily. “Good-morning!”

“I honestly believe we ought to get a warrant out and have him arrested,” observed the older girl, thoughtfully.

“What for? I don’t believe he took anything,” said ’Phemie.

“Well! he was trying to break into grandfather’s desk, just the same,” said Lyddy, and then Harris Colesworth joined them.

Now, Lyddy believed that this young man was altogether too prone to meddle with other people’s affairs; yet ever since the Widow Harrison’s vendue she had been more friendly with Harris.

And now when he began to talk about the professor and his strange actions over night, she could only thank the young chemist for his assistance.

“Of course, we have no idea that that man took anything,” she concluded.

“But you know that he is after something. There is a mystery about his actions–both here at the house and up there in the rocks,” said Harris.

“Well–ye-es.”

“I have been talking to father about it. Father has seen him wandering about there so much. His anxiety not to be seen has piqued father’s curiosity, too. To tell the truth, that is what has kept father so much interested in getting specimens up yonder,” and the young man laughed.

“He tells me that he is sure there can be no great mineral wealth on the farm; yet Spink has found, or is trying to find, some deposit of value here – ”

“Do tell him about the bottles, Lyd!” cried ’Phemie.

“Oh, well, that may be nothing – ”

“What bottles?” demanded Harris, quickly. “Come on, girls, why not take me fully into your confidence? I might be of some use, you know.”

“But they were nothing but bottles of water,” objected Lyddy.

“Bottles of water?” repeated the young chemist, slowly. “Who had them?”

“Spink,” replied ’Phemie.

“What was he doing with them?”

She told him how they had watched the professor with his inexplicable water bottles.

“Foolish; isn’t it?” asked Lyddy.

“Sure–until we get the clue to it. Foolish to us, but mighty important to Professor Spink. Therefore we ought to look into it. Father doesn’t know anything about this bottle business.”

“Well, it’s Sunday,” sighed ’Phemie. “We can’t do anything about the mystery to-day.”

But her sister was fully roused, and when Lyddy determined on a thing, something usually came of it.

After breakfast, and after she had seen Lucas and his mother and Sairy drive past on their way to chapel, she put on her sunbonnet and started boldly for the neighboring farm, determined to have an interview with Cyrus Pritchett.

CHAPTER XXVIII
THE SECRET REVEALED

Lyddy did not have to go all the way to the Pritchett farm to speak with its proprietor. The farmer was wandering up Hillcrest way, looking at the growing corn, and she met him at the corner where the two farms came together.

“Mr. Pritchett,” she said, abruptly, “I want to ask you a serious question.”

He looked at her in his surly way–from under his heavy brows–and said nothing.

“You knew Mr. Spink when you were both boys; didn’t you?”

The old man’s look sharpened, but he only nodded. Cyrus was very chary of words.

“Mr. Spink left Hillcrest this morning. Last night my sister caught him in the east wing, trying to break open grandfather’s desk with a burglar’s jimmy. I am not at all sure that I shan’t have him arrested, anyway,” said Lyddy, with rising wrath, as she thought of the false professor’s actions.

“Ha!” grunted Mr. Pritchett.

“Now, sir, you know why Spink came to Hillcrest, why he has been searching up there among the rocks, and why he wanted to get at grandfather’s papers.”

“No, I don’t,” returned the farmer, flatly.

“You and Spink were up at Hillcrest the first night we girls slept there. And you frightened my sister half to death.”

The old man blinked at her, but never said a word.

“And you were there with Spink the evening Lucas took ’Phemie and me down to the Temperance Club–the first time,” said Lyddy, with surety. “You slipped out of sight when we drove into the yard. But it was you.”

“Oh, it was; eh?” growled Mr. Pritchett.

“Yes, sir. And I want to know what it means. What is Spink’s intention? What does he want up here?”

“I couldn’t tell ye,” responded Pritchett.

“You mean you won’t tell me?”

“No. I say what I mean,” growled Pritchett. “Jud Spink never told me what he wanted. I was up to the house with him–yep. I let him go into the cellar that night you say your sister was scart. But I didn’t leave him alone there.”

“But why?” gasped Lyddy.

“I can easy tell you my side of it,” said the farmer. “Jud and me was something like chums when we was boys. When he come back here a spell ago he heard I was storing something in the cellar under the east wing of the house. He told me he wanted to get into that cellar for something.

“So I met him up there that night. I opened the cellar door and we went down. I kept a lantern there. Then I found out he wanted to go farther. There’s a hatch there in the floor of the old doctor’s workshop – ”

“A trap door?”

“Yes.”

“And you let him up there?”

“Naw, I didn’t. He wouldn’t tell me what he wanted in the old doctor’s offices. I stayed there a while with him–us argyfyin’ all the time. Then we come away.”

“And the other time?”

“On Saturday night? I caught him trying to break in at the cellar door. I warned him not to try no more tricks, and I told him if he did I’d make it public. We ain’t been right good friends since,” declared Mr. Pritchett, chewing reflectively on a stalk of grass.

“And you don’t know what it’s all about?” demanded Lyddy, disappointedly.

“No more’n you do,” declared Mr. Pritchett; “or as much.”

“Oh, dear me!” cried Lyddy. “Then I’m just where I was when I started!”

“You wanter watch Jud Spink,” grumbled Mr. Pritchett, rising from the fence-rail on which he had been squatting. “Does he want to buy the farm?”

“Why–I guess not. He only made Aunt Jane a small offer for it.”

“He’ll make a bigger,” said Pritchett, clamping his jaws down tight on that word, and turned on his heel.

She knew there was no use in trying to get more out of him then. Cyrus Pritchett had “said his say.”

When Lyddy got back to the house again she found that Grandma Castle’s folks had come to see her in their big automobile, and she and ’Phemie had to hustle about with Mother Harrison to re-set the enlarged dining table and make other extra preparations for the unexpected visitors.

So busy were they that the girls did not miss Harris Colesworth and his father. They appeared just before the late dinner, rather warm and hungry-looking for the Sabbath, Harris bearing something in his arms carefully wrapped about in newspapers.

“Oh, what have you got?” ’Phemie gasped, having just a minute to speak to the young man.

“Samples of the water Spink has bottled up there,” returned Harris.

“What is it?”

“I don’t know. But we’ll find out. Father has an idea, and if it’s so– ”

“Oh, what?” cried ’Phemie.

“You just wait!” returned Harris, hurrying away.

“Mean thing!” ’Phemie called after him. “You oughtn’t to have any dinner.”

But there was little chance for Harris to talk with the girls that day. Before the dinner dishes were cleared away, a thunder cloud suddenly topped the ridge, and soon a furious shower fell, with the thunder reverberating from hill to hill, and the lightning flashing dazzlingly.

Behind this shower came a wind-storm that threatened, for a couple of hours, to do much damage. Everybody was kept indoors, and as the night fell dark and threatening the Castles had to be put up until morning.

The wind quieted down at last; so did the nervous members of the party inside Hillcrest. When Lyddy and ’Phemie thought almost everybody else was abed but themselves, and they were about to lock up the house and retire, a candle appeared in the long corridor, and behind the candle was Harris Colesworth, fully dressed.

“Sunday is about over, girls,” he said, “and I can’t possibly sleep. I must do something. Didn’t you tell me, Miss ’Phemie, there were retorts and test-tubes, and the like, in your grandfather’s rooms?”

“In the east wing?” cried Lyddy.

“Yes.”

“Why, the back room was his laboratory. All the things are there,” said the younger girl.

“Let me go in there, then,” said Harris, eagerly. “I want to test these samples of water father and I brought down from the rocks to-day.”

“My mercy me!” gasped ’Phemie. “You don’t suppose there’s gold–or silver–held in solution in that water – ”

Lyddy laughed. “How ridiculous!” she said.

“Perhaps not exactly ridiculous,” returned Harris, shaking his head, and smiling.

“Why, Harris Colesworth! who ever heard of such a thing?” cried Lyddy. “I’m no chemist, but I know that would be impossible.”

“Will you let me have the key of the green door?” he demanded.

“Yes!” cried ’Phemie, who had continued to carry it tied around her neck. “But we’ll go with you and see you perform your nefarious rites, Mr. Magician!”

Lyddy went for a lamp and brought it, lighted. “A candle won’t do you much good in there,” she said to Harris.

“Verily, it is so!” admitted the young man, with an humble bow.

“Now, let me go first!” cried ’Phemie. “You’d both be scared stiff by my friend, Mr. Boneypart.”

“Your friend who?” cried Lyddy.

Harris began to laugh. “So you claim Napoleon as your friend; do you, Miss ’Phemie? What do you suppose old Spink thinks about him?”

’Phemie giggled as she ran ahead with the young man’s candle and closed the door of the skeleton case in the inner office.

“For the simple tests I have to make,” said Harris, as Lyddy’s lamp threw a mellow light into the room, “I see no reason why those old tubes won’t do. Yes! there’s about what I want on that bench.”

“But, oh! the dust!” sighed Lyddy, trying to find a clean place on which to set the lamp.

“Your grandfather must have been something of a chemist as well as a medical sharp,” observed Harris, gazing about. “I’m curious to look this place over.”

“We ought to ask Aunt Jane,” said Lyddy, doubtfully. “We really haven’t any business in here.”

“She’s never told us we shouldn’t come,” ’Phemie returned, quickly.

“Now you young ladies sit down and keep still,” commanded Harris, authoritatively, removing his coat and tying an apron around his waist–the apron being produced from his own pocket.

“Now if you had your straw cuffs you’d look just as you used to – ”

“At the shop, eh?” finished Harris, when Lyddy caught herself up quick in the middle of this audible comment.

“Ye-es.”

“So you did notice me a bit when you were working around the little kitchen of that flat?” chuckled the young man.

“Well!” gasped Lyddy. “I couldn’t very well help remembering how you looked the night of the fire when you came sliding across to our window on that plank. That was so ridiculous!”

“Just so,” responded Harris, calmly. “Now, please be still, young ladies and–watch the professor!”

And for an hour the girls did actually manage to keep as still as mice. Their friend certainly was absorbed in the work before him. He tested one sample of water after another, and finally went back and did the work all over upon one particular bottle that he had brought down from Spink’s hiding place among the rocks.

“Just as I thought,” he declared, with a satisfied smile. “And just as father suspected. Prepared to be surprised–pleasantly. Your Aunt Jane must be warned not to sell Hillcrest at any price–just yet.”

“Oh, why not?” cried ’Phemie.

“Because I believe there is a valuable mineral spring on it. This is a sample of it here. Mineral waters with such medicinal properties as this contains can be put on the market at an enormous profit for the owner of the spring.

“I won’t go into the scientific jargon of it now,” he concluded. “But the spring is here–up there among the rocks. Spink knows where it is. That is his secret. We must learn where the water flows from, and likewise, see to it that your Aunt Jane makes no sale of the place until the matter is well thrashed out and the value of the water privilege discovered.”

CHAPTER XXIX
AN AUTOMOBILE RACE

Lyddy was to write to Aunt Jane the next day. That was the decision when Harris started for town after breakfast, too. No time was to be lost in acquainting Aunt Jane with the fact that the old doctor spoke truly when he had said that “there were curative waters on Hillcrest.”

In Dr. Polly Phelps’s day a mineral spring would have been of small value compared to what it would be worth now. Jud Spink, of course, had known something about the old doctor’s using in his practise the water from somewhere among the rocks. On the lookout for every chance to make money in these days, the owner of “Stonehedge Bitters” and “Diamond Grits–the Breakfast of the Million” had determined to get hold of Hillcrest and put the mineral water on the market–if so be the spring was to be discovered.

Too penurious to take any risk, however, Spink had wished to be sure that the mineral spring was there, and of its value, before he risked his good money in the purchase of the property.

The question now was: Had he satisfied himself as to these facts? Had he found the mineral spring quite by chance, and was he not still in doubt as to the wisdom of buying Hillcrest?

It would seem, by his trying to get at the old doctor’s papers, that Spink wished to assure himself further before he went ahead with his scheme.

“We’ll put a spoke in his wheel–that’s sure,” said Harris, as he bade the two girls good-bye that Monday morning, while Lucas and the restive ponies waited for him.

In two hours he was back at the farmhouse. The ponies stopped at the door all of a lather, and both Harris and Lucas looked desperately excited. Tom Castle, as well as the Bray girls, ran out to see what was the matter.

“He’s off!” shouted Lucas Pritchett. “He’s goin’ to beat ye to it!”

“What are you talking about, Lucas?” demanded ’Phemie.

“Where does your aunt live, Miss Lyddy?” asked the young chemist. “Not at Easthampton?”

“No. At Hambleton. She is at home now – ”

“And that Spink just bought a ticket for Hambleton, and has taken the train for that particular burg,” declared Harris, with emphasis. “If I’d only been sure of your Aunt Jane’s address I would have gone with him.”

“Do you really think he’s gone to try to buy the farm of her?” questioned Lyddy.

“I most certainly do. He couldn’t have made connections easily had he started yesterday after you drove him away from Hillcrest. But he’s after the farm.”

“And she’ll sell it! she’ll sell it!” wailed ’Phemie.

“Perhaps not,” ventured Lyddy, but her lips were white.

“He can get an option. That’s enough,” urged Harris. “We’ve got to head him off.”

“How?” cried the older girl, clasping her hands.

“Jumping horse chestnuts!” ejaculated Tom Castle. “It’s a cinch! It’s easy. You can beat that fellow to Hambleton by way of Adams – ”

“But there’s no other train that connects at the junction till afternoon,” objected Lucas.

“Aw, poof!” exclaimed Tom. “Haven’t we got the old buzz-wagon right here? I’ll run and see father. He’ll let me take it. We’ll go over the hill and down to Adams, and take the east road to Hambleton. Why, say! that Spink man won’t beat us much.”

“It’s a great scheme, Tommy!” shouted Harris Colesworth “Go ahead. Tell your father I can run the car, if you can’t.”

In twenty minutes the big car was rolled out of the barn, and Mr. Castle came out to see the quartette off,–the two girls in the tonneau and Harris and Tom Castle on the front seat.

“You see that he doesn’t play hob with that machine, Mr. Colesworth,” called Mr. Castle, as they started. “It cost me seven thousand dollars.”

“What’s seven thousand dollars,” demanded Master Tom, recklessly, “to putting the Indian sign on that Professor Spink?”

They were not at all sure, however, that they were going to be able to do this. Professor Spink might easily beat them to Aunt Jane’s residence in Hambleton.

But at the speed Tom took the descent of the ridge on the other side, one might have thought that the professor was due to board a flying machine if he wished to travel faster. ’Phemie declared she lost her breath at the top of the hill and that it didn’t overtake her again until they stopped at the public garage in Adams to get a supply of gasoline.

The boys behind the wind-break, and the girls crouching in the tonneau, saw little of the landscape through which the car rushed.

They rolled into Hambleton without mishap, and before noon. A word from Lyddy put Master Tom on the right track of Aunt Jane’s house, for he had been in the town before.

“We’re here quicker than we could have had a telegram delivered,” declared Harris, as he helped the girls out of the car. “I’m going in with you, Miss Lyddy–if you don’t mind?”

“Why, of course you shall come!” returned Lyddy, really allowing her gratitude to “spill over” for the moment.

“Me–oh, my!” whispered ’Phemie, walking demurely behind them. “The end of the world has now came. Lyd is showing that poor young man some favor.”

But ’Phemie, as well as the other two, grew serious when the girl who opened the door told them Mrs. Hammond had company in the parlor.

“Two gentlemen, Miss–on business,” said the maid.

Just then they heard Professor Spink’s booming voice.

“Oh, oh! he’s here ahead of us!” cried ’Phemie, and she flung open the door and ran into the room.