Read Ebook: Our Next-Door Neighbors by Maniates Belle Kanaris Sarg Tony Illustrator

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Ebook has 883 lines and 25008 words, and 18 pages

"Did Tolly pin a paper to Di's dress?"

"'m--h'--m."

"Bravo, Lucien!" applauded Rob. "They say you can induce a witness to admit anything."

"What did Di do with the paper?" I continued.

The word he wanted evidently being beyond his vocabulary and speech, he made a rotary motion with his fist. The gesture conveyed nothing to our minds, but was instantly recognized and interpreted by the landlady's little girl, who said he meant a windmill such as she had sometimes made for him.

"What did Di do with the windmill?" I asked.

He pointed to the sandpile, which I investigated and found a stick planted therein. I pulled it up and saw a pin sticking in the end of it. Further excavation revealed a crumpled piece of paper on which was written in Ptolemy's round hand:

"Want to see kids. Am going home. Tell Beth I bet she dasent go to the haunted house alone at night. Ptolemy."

"Poor Huldah!" sighed Silvia.

"I thought he was having the time of his life here," said Rob.

"He was sore," declared Beth, "because you and Lucien wouldn't take him with you on the fishing trip. He was moping by himself all the morning."

"Trying to think up some new deviltry," I theorized, "to make us feel bad."

"No," asserted Silvia, "I think he really misses the boys. The Polydores, for all their scrappings, are very clannish. But how do you suppose he got down to Windy Creek?"

"He could catch plenty of rides along the way, but what is puzzling me is how he got the money to pay his fare."

"He seemed very well provided with cash," informed Rob. "I tried to pay for his ticket down here, but he insisted on buying it himself."

Silvia worried so much about what might happen to him en route that after dinner I motored to Windy Creek with some tourists who had stopped at the hotel in passing.

I called up long distance and after some delay got in communication with our house. Ptolemy himself answered and assured me he had arrived all "hunky doory", that Huldah, who was out on an errand, was "hunky doory", and that the kids were all "hunky doory." In fact, his cheerful tone indicated that the whole universe was in the beatific state described by his expressive adjective.

I was really ripping mad at his taking French leave and so giving Silvia cause for her anxiety, but I forbore to reprimand him by word or tone, lest he get even by "coming back" literally. I did tell him how the loss of the note for twenty-four hours had caused a general excitement, but he felt no remorse for his share in the situation, blaming Diogenes entirely and bidding me "punch the kid's face" for unpinning the note.

"I'd jest naturally like to see what there is to it," he said. "Not that I am afeerd at all, only it's sort of spooky to go to a lonesome place like that all alone. If I could git some one to go with me, I'd tackle the job, but I vum if every time I perpose it to anyone they don't make some excuse."

"I'm on," I declared. "I don't dread ghosts near as much as I do some living folks I know."

"Right you air," chuckled the old man. "If you say so we'll go right off now jest as sure as shootin'. We may be ghosts ourselves tomorrow."

I assured him I was quite ready to encounter the ghost, so he jubilantly turned the machine from the road into a grass-grown lane. We zigzagged for some distance and then got out and went on foot through a grove. The moon and the stars were half veiled by some light, misty clouds, so that the little house didn't show up very clearly, but as we came to the top of the hill, we saw something that shook even my well-behaved nerves.

From a window in the roof-room extended a white arm and hand, with index finger pointing threateningly and directly toward us.

My farmer friend turned quickly and fled toward the grove. I followed fleetly. "What's your rush?" I asked, when I had overtaken him.

"I just happened to remember," he explained gaspingly, "that there's a pesky autoo thief in these 'ere parts. Bukins had his stole jest last night."

The lights on his machine must have reassured him as to its safety when we emerged from the woods into the open, but he didn't lessen his speed. We got in the "autoo" and soon said good-by to the lane. At one time I believed it was good-by to everything, but at last we gained the highway, right side up.

"Well!" I said, when we were running normally again on terra firma, "that was some little old ghost,--beckoned to us to come right in, too!"

"You seen it then!" he exclaimed excitedly. "I'm mighty glad I had an eyewitness. Folks wouldn't believe me."

"They probably won't believe me, either," I assured him. "I am a lawyer."

"You don't tell me! Well, it did jest give me a start for a minute. I'd like to hev gone in and seen it nigh to, if I hadn't happened to think of this 'ere autoo. You see I ain't got it all paid for yet. I'm jest clean beat. You don't mind my takin' a leetle pull at a stone fence, do you?"

"I guess not," I assented somewhat dubiously, however. "That was a rail fence we took a pull at back in the lane, wasn't it? Of course, if we shouldn't happen to clear the stone fence as well as we did the rail fence, it might be more disastrous."

"Oh, land!" he said with a cackling laugh, "I ain't meanin' that kind of a fence. I mean the kind you--Say! You ain't one of them teetotalers, be you?"

"Only in theory," I replied, "but this stone fence drink is a new one on me. What's it like?"

He stopped the "autoo" and pulled a bottle from an inner pocket.

"You kin taste it better than I kin tell it," he declared. "Take a pull--a condumned good one."

I rarely imbibed, confining my indulgences to the demands of necessity, but I thought that the flight of Ptolemy, the ghostly encounter, and my Mazeppa--wild ride all combined to constitute an occasion adequate to call for a bracer in the shape of a stone fence, or anything he might produce.

I took what I considered a "condumned good one" from the bottle and it nearly strangled me, but I followed the aged stranger's advice to take another to "cure the chokes" caused by the first one. On general principles I took a third and then reluctantly returned him the bottle.

"Here's over the moon," he jovially exclaimed as he proceeded to make my attempt at a "condumned good one" appear most niggardly.

"May I ask," I inquired when my feeling of nerve-tense strain had vanished, and I felt as if I were treading thin air, "just what is in a stone fence?"

"Well, what do you think?" he asked slyly.

"I think the very devil is in it," I replied.

"Well, mebby," he admitted. "It's two-thirds hard cider and one-third whisky. It's a healthy, hearting drink and yet it has a leetle come back to it--a sort o' kick, you know. But this is where I live," pointing to a farmhouse well back from the road, "but I am goin' to run you on to your tavern though."

The hotel was dark, save for a light in my room. I invited him in, but he was anxious to "git hum and tell the folks", so I gave him some cigars and went in to "tell my folks."

I found them in the room waiting for me. That is, Beth was in the room, sitting by the table and pretending to read. Silvia and Rob were out in the little balcony. They came inside as soon as they heard my voice.

"Oh, was he there?" asked Silvia anxiously.

"Yes," I replied. "He answered the telephone himself."

I was feeling quite exhilarated by this time. My wife looked a perfect vision to me. Beth, I thought, was some sister, and Rob the best fellow in the world. Even the Polydores at long range, and under the ameliorating influence of stone fences, seemed like fine little fellows--rather active and strenuous, to be sure, but only as all wholesome children should be.

Silvia was relieved at the announcement of Ptolemy's safety, but very much disappointed that I did not succeed in interviewing Huldah and finding out something about domestic affairs.

I assured her that everything was "hunky doory" at home, praised the telephone service, my expedition to town, and painted my return ride with "the honest farmer" in glowing terms. I was suddenly halted in my eulogy by becoming aware of an amazed expression on my wife's countenance, a most suspicious glance in Beth's wide-open eyes, and a very knowing wink from Rob.

"Lucien," said Silvia severely, "I believe you've been drinking. I certainly smell spirits."

"Maybe you do," I replied jocosely. "I certainly saw spirits. I went to the haunted house on my way back."

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