The Copper House A detective story
"Well, if it's to the Copper House you are going, I doubt if you'll
find yourself very welcome."
"You think not?" said the man, in a low, nervous voice; "may I venture
to ask why?"
"We never hear of there being any entertaining out there nowadays: a
nice sort of life they must lead. If it was a monastery they couldn't
shut themselves up more," added the pointsman mysteriously, as he
watched the train disappear round a curve.
"A pack of foreigners, too; I suppose it's this here wretched war which
brings them over. Sweden's full of these heathen now, and they have to
have bread-tickets.... Well, if you must go to the Copper House, it
will take you the best part of half an hour to walk it...."
Leo walked on out of earshot, and did not feel inclined to pass them
again, as he wished to avoid recognition. He crossed the railway, and
walked slowly past some newly-built villas, and the old deaf florist's
green-house ("wonder if the old boy is still alive?"). As he reached
the outskirts of the wood, he turned round and saw the man with the
case walking about a hundred yards behind him, like a gray shadow on
the white road. The fellow, like himself, was really on the way to
the Copper House, then? He looked down at the dark, solitary figure,
approaching in the sunshine, and wondered what he had better do: leave
things as they were, or force a closer acquaintance. But he was not
called upon to make a decision after all, for the other left the road
suddenly, leapt over a ditch, and vanished into the woods.
* * * * *
A quarter of an hour later, Leo stood outside the so-called Karka
gates. And here we must insert a bit of topography which will help our
readers to a clearer understanding of the events which followed.
The port and watering-place of Nynäs is, so to speak, Stockholm's most
southerly outpost on the Baltic Sea, as Saltsjöbaden and Sandhamn are
its most easterly ones. The Nynäs railway runs throughout the length
of Söderström which lies between those two points, and the nearer it
gets to Nynäs, the narrower grows the hilly country between the railway
and the sea. As Karkby is one of the last stations before Nynäs, one
can easily reach the shore by walking for about half an hour in an
easterly direction. But, as the railway is a fairly recent innovation,
anyone who starts to walk, soon strikes the old main-road to Stockholm
(nowadays practically disused), and, by following it, he will come
suddenly upon the entrance to Karka, rising, as if by magic, out of
the deserted landscape. It is a ruinous archway, with rusty iron
gates, and a porter's lodge, behind which a carriage-road winds up
through an avenue of ancient trees. No house is visible, but this is
the boundary of the Graths' ancestral property, Karka, which occupies
a considerable portion of land between the sea and the road. It is
strangely impressive to see, in the midst of the wooded country, this
once stately entrance left desolate and crumbling, like a monument to
the wealth and prosperity of former times.
What was the state of affairs at the Copper House, as the whole
property was generally called, from the appearance of the house itself,
we shall tell in due time.
Leonard Grath, its present owner (and that only in name), stood outside
the gates, and looked through the bars. Outside the porter's lodge sat
a man cleaning a double-barreled gun; he did not look up.
"Hullo, there!" cried the young man cheerily, "just let me in, there's
a good chap."
The fellow looked into the road with evident surprise; he had a
swarthy, sunburnt face.
"Who are you and what do you want?" he demanded roughly, and without
getting up.
"I am Leonard Grath, the owner of the Copper House, and I want to come
in."
The man stared at Leo with an insolent grin, and said: "Indeed, you
want to come in, do you? Why not say at once that you are the Emperor
of China?"
"Don't you hear me say that this place belongs to me? Open the gate
at once, man!" exclaimed Leo angrily, and shaking the locked gate
violently. The porter slipped a cartridge into his gun, and laid the
weapon across his knees.
"Don't you go trying that on," said he. "If you are the owner, you are
in California, and I guess you won't mind if I send a charge of shot in
your direction...."
He cocked his gun and raised it.
"Be off, now," he added, "we are tired of sending strangers off the
place."
Leo returned his look, and retired unwillingly, but he could not help
laughing: the situation struck him as supremely ridiculous.
"You may see my papers," said he.
"Don't talk to me of your papers!" replied the man, following up his
words with a most unexpected action. Raising the gun, and without
getting up, he fired. The range was too short for the shot to spread,
but Leo saw chips of mortar fly from the gateway.
"You--you scoundrel!" he burst out in amazement. "What do you mean by
that?"
The man loaded again, without a word. They looked at one another; Leo
opened his mouth, closed it again, and returned to the road: he was not
inclined to laugh any longer. He walked cautiously alongside the iron
palings, for he knew that they came to an end about a hundred yards
further on, where a rustic fence took their place. When he was out of
sight from the gate, he clambered over the fence, and found himself
at length on his own property, with every inch of which he had been
familiar since childhood. He made his way up a slope, and came to a
small pine wood, which, after a little consideration, he entered by a
well-worn path. Suddenly he stopped, and drew a deep breath. "Home!" he
said aloud. The thought filled him with ecstasy; he had not expected
that the sight of this old-world, sun-steeped spot would move him so
deeply, and he sat down on a stone to recover himself. To think that he
was really home again, and that, in another ten minutes, he would be
inside the Copper House! Forgetting everything else, he sprang up, and
set off with swift, eager steps in the direction of a field which could
be seen through the trees.
At that minute he heard a light footstep on the path ahead of him, and
a girl in a black riding-habit came running towards him, looking behind
her at every few steps. Two men with guns slung at their backs could be
seen some way off on the left, hastening with long strides, as though
to intercept her. The girl uttered a cry, as the two men leapt down on
the path just in front of her, and seized her by the arms. She easily
shook them off, and her riding-whip left a red wheal on the face of the
nearest. They said something in a rough voice, and the girl cried out
angrily: "I shall go where I like, you have no right...."
"You be quiet, now, Miss, and go home to your Papa," said one of the
men, not uncivilly; and he lifted her up, and began to carry her back
along the same path by which they had come. She broke loose, and
struck him again across the face. The pain made him furious, and with
a shout, he pushed her violently away. By this time Leo had come up.
"We don't treat women like that, in this part of the world," said he,
pushing the fellow aside with a shove of his broad shoulder. The second
man reached for his gun, but Leo twisted the weapon out of his hands,
and motioned him back. "Keep still!" he ordered.
The girl had recovered herself, and looked at him in silence. She
appeared to be about seventeen or eighteen, and the young man
immediately recognized the dark beauty of the photograph. He raised his
hat.
"Miss Bernin, I believe? My name is Leonard Grath."
As the girl stood looking uneasily at him, with a curious blank
expression in her big brown eyes, he added hastily: "Are you hurt?"
She came up to him, laid both hands on his arm, and said in a low tone:
"Go! Go back the way you came!"
Leo glanced at the two men, who stood a little way off between him and
the path, watching him attentively.
"What are those two fellows doing?" he asked.
"They are two of the forest-guards," answered the girl, "but do, do go
away!"
"Why should I?" said Leo, with a pang of annoyance and disappointment.
"I have a right to come here, haven't I?"
He offered her his arm, rather ironically, and added: "Although I seem
to be so unwelcome, allow me to escort you to the Copper House; I am
just on my way there."
The girl colored, bit her lip, and, turning round, she walked away.
One of the men laughed, and Leo said sharply, glad of the opportunity
to give vent to the wrath that was boiling within: "Be quiet, if you
don't want me to thrash you off the premises! I have evidently arrived
unexpectedly, but I haven't begun yet. Just wait a bit, and you'll see!"
The two men gave no sign that they had heard what he had said. Leo
threw down the gun, turned his back, and followed the girl. When he
caught her up, she hung her head, and he saw that she was very pale. He
fell into step at her left side, but she walked on as though she was
alone.
"There seem to be great changes here," he remarked, without taking any
notice of her attitude. "The Copper House was always famous for its
hospitality, but now it seems that it won't even admit its own master."
He paused, but there was no reply.
"As for forest-guards," he continued, "such luxuries have been
superfluous in these woods for many years past. I suppose you keep them
to look after the squirrels? At any rate, one of them evidently took me
for a squirrel...."
He described, with a sort of bitter enjoyment, the episode at the gate.
Quite unexpectedly the girl burst into tears and he looked at her with
sudden remorse.
"I am a brute," he muttered. "Miss Bernin, for Heaven's sake, look at
me, you can see and hear that I'm only an awful idiot. Please do laugh
at me instead!"
There was a sort of tearful laugh, then a sob, and finally the laugh
won the day. The girl looked up at him, and dried her eyes with a
little silk handkerchief.
"It is silly to cry," she remarked seriously. "Were you very surprised?"
"Not so very," he assured her. "Young ladies are allowed to shed a few
tears now and then, aren't they? It is perfectly natural...."
"I have forgotten to thank you," she said, with a little bow. "It
wasn't as dangerous as it looked, but you came up at the right moment.
You see, my father and my aunt are very strict, and occasionally I
rebel, and the authorities send out the squirrel-police to quell the
disturbance. You arrived on the final scene of a domestic crisis...."
The little lady was chattering away in the liveliest fashion with
quick, bird-like movements of her uncovered, dark head, which made the
jet earrings that she wore dance and quiver. She stepped out like a
boy, with a quick, firm tread, swinging her riding-whip.
"You say now that I came at the right minute," said Leo reproachfully,
"but just before that you told me to go away!"
"Don't you mean to?" she asked, with a rapid glance from a pair of eyes
that just then struck him as being as dark as night.
"Not unless you ask me to again," he replied boldly.
The girl stopped and turned round. "Things haven't altered, you know,"
she said, and walked on. Leo looked round also. The two forest-guards
were still standing amongst the trees, looking down at them, but a
third had joined them, and each of the three men held his gun in his
hands.
The young man felt a little shiver pass through him. Ahead of him,
though still some way off, he could see the greater part of the old
avenue, which stretched for more than a mile from Karka gates to the
house itself, which was still hidden behind some rising ground to the
left. He thought he caught sight of two or three figures patrolling
the avenue under the shade of the trees, but they vanished before he