The mystery of the missing eyebrows
tree and watched the old woman journey slowly down Washington
street--still more slowly, and still more slowly, but always in the
same direction,--the one taken by everyone of the queer looking
individuals who journeyed out to the big old house, which everyone said
was haunted--everyone except Captain Pete who declared that claim all
tomfoolishness.
Renfro looked back to his own surroundings. He was directly across the
street from Judge Wier’s house. The blinds were drawn to the bottoms
of the windows. The afternoon papers had said that Mrs. Wier was very
despondent again. There had been no letter from Helen that day. She had
declared that she knew the child was dead and wished that she too would
die.
The man in the county jail had been questioned and sweated, and sweated
and questioned, but still stuck to his original statement that he knew
nothing about the kidnaping. Though the chief of police declared that
it was a foolish waste of time the detectives were off on the trail of
his confederates.
“And Helen’s not two miles from this very spot,” Renfro declared
vehemently to himself. “And perhaps she is suffering though she wrote
that she wasn’t. Well, I’m going out to the shack and the big house
tonight and I’m not going to come home until I know something much more
definite than anything I’ve seen up to this time.”
He half ran to finish the remaining few houses on his route, then
hurried down the road, crashed across the orchard and down to Captain
Pete’s little cabin. Once he heard a queer suspicious noise in the
undergrowth just beyond the orchard, but he felt sure it was Lang Tammy
come to jump on him and play a game of tug-of-war with his paper bag.
Near the cabin he stopped a minute to listen. He looked around the
corner. Everything was quiet. He stopped, listened intently and then
heard voices. Two men, talking in rather loud tones as if they were
having an argument. Something sounded like the thwack of a fist on a
table and then Renfro walked to the cabin door.
He knocked with a decisive, determined air. Captain Pete called out,
“Who is there?”
But Renfro answered with another knock, more determined than the first.
He heard the growl of a dog and then stopped as if some one had choked
the creature into silence. And then he did a veritable tattoo of knocks
on the big, heavy door.
And stamping angrily across the floor Captain Pete came to open it. The
heavy door jerked on its hinges with the force of an angry host and
Captain Pete’s grizzled face seemed to fill the door way but not quite--
For back in the shadow of the room sat a man, stooped over something--a
man who was heavy set and short and who looked exactly like the
stranger, whose shadow Renfro had seen so often on the curtain of the
window at the big house across the deserted orchard and lane of Captain
Pete’s domain, again on the coming out of the back of the restaurant
stand and several times on Washington Street.
“I told ye I didn’t want the paper,” Captain Pete growled.
Then Renfro did the thing which surprised Captain Pete too much for
him to realize in time to object to what he was doing. He stepped into
the room, around the table and up to the stooped, old man, “Would you
like to have a sample copy of The Globe?” he asked.
The question, the boy so near him and everything, seemed to frighten
the old man out of his self possession. He shifted his feet, shook his
head and then raised it enough so that Renfro could see his eyes, and--
ABOVE THEM THE OTHER HALF OF THE MISSING EYEBROWS.
CHAPTER XVIII.
THREE MEN IN THE PLOT.
One instant Renfro stood staring--the next he gave a quick jump. For,
with a threatening growl the heavy old man had sprung forward, his fist
raised menacingly. Past Captain Pete out thru the open door Renfro
jumped and ran together.
Behind him he heard the old man swearing, heard a loud growl, a series
of barks, imperative orders “Get him, Tam,” and ran behind the first
shelter which offered itself--a low old ash hopper, which had stood
near the cabin since pioneer days.
He was not afraid of the big airedale dog but he did have an idea that
the old man--might shoot if he happened to be able to get hold of any
of the arms Captain Pete kept hanging on the wall, all loaded as he had
told Renfro, ready for the first rabbit which would cross his track.
The big airedale shot around the ash hopper. Renfro dropped on his
knees to be out of sight. But against Renfro he only sniffed, rubbed
his head over his rough mackinaw and whined like a happy child over
the joy of finding a playmate once more.
From the open door came sounds of quarreling. Renfro listened, heard
Captain Pete tell the other man to call his dog back, that the boy was
a friend of his and was not to be harmed.
“But ye warned me agin’ him yourself,” the other growled.
“Call yer dog back!” Captain Pete was determined.
“I aint,” the other’s voice was dogged.
“Then I’ll--” there was a break in Captain Pete’s speech, and Renfro
raised on his knees so that he could see the inside of the cabin.
Captain Pete was reaching for one of his guns. The other man slouched
toward the door and called gruffly. “Lang Tammy, come here,--come here!”
But Captain Pete still held his gun. And Renfro, fearing violence on
Captain Pete’s part, softly commanded Lang Tammy to go back into the
house. With dragging feet and hanging tail the big dog obeyed his
command. Once inside the door, the dog gave a yelp of pain. Renfro rose
angrily to his feet but the big door was swung shut.
“Well, I’ll not bring any more papers here without observing the rule
of preparedness first,” he declared as he crouched close to the fence
and worked his way back to the lane again.
He talked to himself all the way. “And one sure thing, Lang Tammy’s my
friend. He even deserts his master for me. But no wonder the way he
yelped when he went back into the cabin. Poor doggie.”
At the fence he stopped. Yes, there across the deserted orchard in the
lower west window of the big house was a dim light, and moving back and
forth across the blind a dim shape. Some one was in the deserted house.
Two men in Captain Pete’s shack! That was the Captain and his brother,
Renfro had felt sure of that. But there was another in the big house.
“There was a woman,” he remembered the old woman who had carried the
supplies and worn the scarf.
Well, he would cross to the house, peep in the window and make sure
that it was she. It might--
He stopped--it might be Helen Wier shut in that little room, left
alone in the big house while her captor visited at the cabin.
But--he shook his head. That wasn’t probable. They would be afraid
she might escape. It must be the old woman whom he had passed back on
Washington Street. He would make sure.
Cautiously, he worked his way across the orchard, around the house,
close to the west window, and with his face as near the window as he
dared place it. But hardly had he gotten it there until the light went
out and the noise of footsteps told him that the person inside had gone
across into the other room.
With a joyous exclamation Renfro found the peep holes, which he had cut
out a few nights before with his knife. Carefully, he put his eyes to
the two holes, stared thru them, waited a long time, and then his watch
was rewarded.
For with great deliberation an old man, the exact counterpart of
Captain Pete carried a lamp to the little table, spent much effort in
adjusting it, brought to the table some sort of a little melting pot,
under which he lighted a fire and then moved away again.
Renfro remembered the stories he had heard about Captain Pete’s brother
being a counterfeiter. Here he was, evidently getting ready to ply
his counterfeiting trade again. The little melting pot, and array of
instruments he was collecting and bringing to the table. The lamp under
the melting pot burned dully. The old man tested the something in it,
shook his head, indicating that everything was all right and went away
again.
When he returned he carried a large tea kettle, which he proceeded to
settle on his knees. Then with the soldering he took from the pot on a
long soldering iron he began to mend a hole in its side near the spout.
It was a relieved but disappointed laugh Renfro gave. The old man was
doing the most ordinary thing in the world--the old man who looked so
much like Captain Pete that no one could doubt their relationship.
Slowly Renfro journeyed down the lane toward the road, Washington
Avenue and home again. The old lady had not been in evidence again. The
old man in the house was a simple old soul whose part in the crime if
he had any was of an unsuspecting accessory.
Again, no doubt Captain Pete knew much, though he might have been
innocent of any part of it. But the man with the missing eyebrows? Yes,
indeed he was the fellow, and Renfro knew that it was up to him to move
quickly and with well thought plans if he got him before he escaped.
He rode home on the car. He was so hungry that he felt that his ribs
were caving into his stomach. With home in sight his spirits began
to soar. Mary was sure to have him a good warm supper and a good
cold dessert to top it off--Mary would be ready to listen to all his
adventures and to pat him on the back and urge him to greater effort.
Mary was--
And then the light outside the garage door went on and Mary was out
there with Renfro’s father gesticulating, talking in loud tones,
protesting against his opening the door any wider and trying to command
and explain at the same time. Renfro grasped the situation in a minute.
He rushed to Mary’s aid.
“Don’t open it wide, Dad, or they’ll all come out,” he begged. “My
prize turkeys you know. They are all in the garage but the one I had
to give the colored boy for chasing the old woman who would have stolen
it anyway--”
“But I have to have my car,” Mr. Horn was impatient. “And besides the
garage is no place for these infernal birds anyway. Your mother had no
better judgement than to tell all those women I would take them home in
the car and I want it in a hurry before the lodge meeting is over.”
He motioned Mary to one side and Renfro to the other. “Can’t you two
keep them in the corner while I drive out,” he began.
His hand reached the switch. A button was pressed and the garage was
flooded with light. And there on the top of the big Marmon sat a sleepy
red and bronze and black mixture of feathers and skin--the largest
of Renfro’s prize turkeys. Another was on the hood, the third on the
gasoline tank, the fourth on a wheel. The fifth was not in evidence.
Not until he stepped in front of the car did Mr. Horn discover the
whereabout of the fifth turkey. Silently and with a gesture which not
only accused but did so vehemently, he pointed through the windshield.
There on the steering wheel, as if guarding the wheel of state, sat the
fifth of the big birds.
“Who ever heard of putting turkeys in the garage?” he began, “You don’t
seem to have any sense as to the proper way of doing things. Your
mother--”
“Mister Horn,” Mary was the sly strategist again, “Mrs. Horn’s a
waitin’ in there for this machine to be takin’ her company home. She’s
got the head ache and you know--”
With rapidity then, the work of getting the turkeys into the corner
huddled together and Mary’s guarding them, was finished. Mr. Horn
backed the machine out. Mary and Renfro followed him and the door was
closed.
Outside Mr. Horn’s good humor returned. Mrs. Willis, the wittiest woman
in the community, he often said, and the wife of his best friend was on
the porch. Before either Mary or Renfro realized what he was doing Mr.
Horn had her to the garage, had showed her the turkeys in the corner,