The sinister mark
The spirit behind the eyes must have undergone a complete metamorphosis
to have made the apparent change.
"It's Mary Blake, all right, all right. I'll bet my life on that,"
muttered Peter to himself. "Mary Blake----"
Quickly he turned the little photograph over. There was no writing on
the back, as he had hoped, instead, in elaborate, filigreed lettering
was printed the words--
WALTER LORD, Photographer
Hobart Falls, New York.
"By gad," exclaimed Peter under his breath, bringing his closed fist
softly but with emphasis down upon the table. "The first look-in
we've had. The very first! Hobart Falls, New York. That's where she
must have come from--or somewhere near there, at least.... And Walter
Lord.... Who can tell what Walter Lord may know ... if he's still
there--and alive."
With a rapid motion he slipped the two portraits into an inner pocket
and buttoned his coat over them.
"I'll find out something about her, at last! My hunch about coming here
wasn't all to the bad. In this way I'll bet I find out something about
the secret past of Mary Blake--and Anne----"
With eyes alight with the first hope he had known for many a day, Peter
put back the shade upon the table lamp, readjusted various things about
the room so that they should be, as near as possible, in the order--or
disorder--in which he had found them, switched off the lights, and
crept softly to the door.
Gently, gently, with one hand on the latch and the other on the lock,
he turned the two knobs and drew open the door. As he did so a clock
somewhere outside in the darkness boomed "One, Two."
"Two o'clock," thought Peter, as he sped noiselessly down the stairs.
"Not much sleep for me to-night. I must find out where Hobart Falls is
and beat it for the first train in the morning. I've got a feeling in
my bones that I've struck something at last. A little light thrown on
the past may reflect on the future. Who knows? Anyhow, it's up to me
not to leave a stone unturned.... And I'm curious ... damn curious....
I'd like to know...."
A street door closed, with a faint, soft creak, and the lean figure of
the young detective slipped away into the hot darkness.
CHAPTER XVI
ROSAMOND CURWOOD
A clear, bright day followed the heavy thunder shower which had
occurred late in the night. Peter, as he boarded the train for Hobart
Falls, hoped that it was an omen.
He had just had time for a few minutes' talk with O'Malley, in which
he gave his partner instructions about reaching him if anything of
importance should transpire during the day.
"Better wire me at Hobart Falls," he said. "Have it left in the
telegraph office to be called for. I can't tell where I'll be stopping
and I can't think of any other way I'd be sure of getting it. I don't
believe there'll be anything."
After that, he had hastily called Donald Morris on the telephone and
explained briefly that he was rushing out of town on a new scent.
"Another false clue?" asked Morris, wearily, and Peter saw, in his
mind's eye, the pale, tired face of his client.
"May be," said Peter, in a friendly, hopeful tone. "But you never can
tell. We mustn't miss a trick and I've found something I'm bound to
follow up. It may lead to nothing, of course, but there's always a
chance. I'm in a deuce of a rush just now and I'll have to wait till
I get back to tell you about it. Don't get discouraged. While there's
life, there's hope. While there's life----" he repeated to himself as
he hung up the receiver--"I wish to God I could be sure that Mary Blake
is still alive. Well, anyway----"
He made the nine-thirty train for Hobart Falls with four minutes to
spare. "Which is enough for anybody," thought Peter, as he watched the
ugly houses and factories slip by.
The railroad ran northward on the west side of the Hudson, for Peter
had ascertained Hobart Falls to be situated in the Catskill Mountains.
After a time the train slipped from behind a range of hills into a
tunnel and out again, and Peter, startled from his deep absorption, saw
below him the great river, shining blue and silver, in the morning sun.
No one who has ever seen it thus suddenly could fail to be impressed
by its beauty and grandeur. Peter, city-bred as he was, was strongly
affected by the sight of the blue-green wooded hills, lapping and
over-lapping, and the great, serene river winding in between.
His thoughts ran--"I wonder if I'll be lucky enough to find Walter
Lord, and what he'll know.... Gee, those rocks are corking, and those
big, soft pines.... It was a long while ago--maybe twenty years since
they wore that kind of clothes.... That's a house, way up on that
mountain! Must have a ripping view.... And he may be dead by now....
But he mustn't dare to be--I need him too much...." And so his mind ran
on, alternating between hope and discouragement, through the hours that
followed.
He had to change cars twice, each time to a road of narrower gauge.
"The next'll be roller skates, I should think," he said to himself as
he jerked and bumped along in the little mountain train.
It was about four o'clock in the afternoon when they ran in to the
tiny, ugly, red-painted station of Hobart Falls. They had passed
through a number of stations, vociferous with red-faced hackmen and
seething with fat, jewelled, and overdressed Hebrews of the middle
class. This little place was quite different. There were no big hotels
or boarding houses in the immediate vicinity, and so few people that
only two trains a day stopped at Hobart Falls. The loungers about the
station were obviously country-bred and American.
Peter quickly approached one of them and asked where the telegraph
office could be found. He wished to ascertain at once if there was
anything from O'Malley.
The man jerked his thumb in the direction of the waiting room. "In
there," he said, briefly, "ticket office," and, with stupid, bovine
eyes, watched the stranger as he disappeared inside the station.
"Nothing ain't come fer nobody to-day," said the agent, in reply to
Peter's inquiry.
Peter stepped swiftly out again upon the platform, and looked about
him. Blue hills and valleys surrounded the little station on every
side. In the middle distance could be seen one or two small farmhouses,
and in the immediate foreground, drawn up close to the platform, was a
decrepit, dingy Ford. A long, lank man, sitting at the wheel, glanced
up at Peter expectantly.
"Is this for hire?" asked Peter, indicating the ancient car with a
motion of his head. "And can you take me to the village?"
The driver grinned at a man who was leaning against the edge of the
doorway, and spat, generously, over the wheel.
"Git in," he said, laconically.
Peter threaded himself into the back seat, and the weary flivver, with
a heavy groan, started down the empty road.
"Any p'tickeler place?" asked the man at the wheel, turning his
weather-beaten face, and looking Peter over from head to foot.
"I think I'll want to spend the night here," answered Peter, a trifle
dubiously. "Is there a hotel?"
The man laughed. "This ain't no metrolopus," he vouchsafed, "but I
guess the Widder Lord'll put you up for the night, if you'd like to go
there."
The "Widder Lord." Peter's heart sank, but he only said, "That'll do
all right, I guess. Take me there, will you?"
At that moment they turned a sharp corner, and Peter saw why the driver
had grinned at the lounger on the station platform. The village, what
there was of it, was not four minutes' walk from the station, but quite
out of sight, hidden by the small, wooded shoulder of a hill.
It was a sleepy, quiet little place, shut in by rolling upland. There
was one long street, or, rather, a wide place in the road, on each
side of which were small, old village houses, mostly painted white,
with green shutters. There were two stores, one of which was also the
post office, and a blacksmith's shop. In front of the latter stood an
old-fashioned buggy with empty shafts. From within came the ringing
clink of metal upon metal. Save for an old dog wandering down the
street, and a few loose hens dusting themselves in the road, there was
no sign or sound of life.
"Rip Van Winkle might have taken his twenty-year nap right here in the
middle of the street, instead of going to all the trouble of climbing
up one of those mountains," thought Peter. "No wonder there aren't any
Jews here. This place sure would cramp their style, and then some....
Wild-goose chase I've come on, anyway, I feel it in my bones. Walter
Lord is probably as dead as the rest of the village." The silence got
on his nerves and he spoke to the driver. "Think the Widow Lord will be
awake when we get there?" he asked.
The man turned a sardonic, screwed-up eye upon him. "'S next house,"
he said, pointing, "and we'll be there in one shake of a lamb's tail.
What'd she be asleep this time of day fer?"
Peter looked without much interest at the house indicated. It was
old and gray and weather-beaten but had evidently once been the
considerable house of Hobart Falls. Low and rambling, it faced the
street, standing a few feet back, among some ragged, flowering shrubs.
Suddenly Peter's eye lightened and he reached over and caught the
driver's shoulder.
"Stop here," he said, sharply. "This is the place where I want to stop."
"Sure it's the place ye want to stop," repeated the driver,
disgustedly. "Ain't I been tellin' ye? This is the Widder Lord's."
"Oh, yes. I forgot for the moment." The light faded from Peter's eyes.
"The '_Widder_ Lord's'," he muttered, inwardly. "The man's dead, of
course. However----"
He glanced again at the object which had raised a sudden hope within
him. At the far end of the house, standing out at right angles from it,
and partly hidden by vines, was an old battered sign:
WALTER LORD
PHOTOGRAPHER
"I've got the right house, anyway, and without any lost motion,"
thought Peter. "And that's the luck of the Irish--as far as it goes."
He paid the driver the "two bits" suggested as the amount of the fare.
The sum was paid so unconcernedly that the driver lingered while Peter
stepped quickly up to the front door and rang the old jangling bell. A
man as free as that with money didn't come to Hobart Falls so often.
Peter had made up his mind that he would spend the night there, in any
case, if the "Widder Lord" would take him in. He knew he would have
to take a taxi (he thought in city terms) to Kortenkill, two stations
below, to catch the midnight train, which did not stop at Hobart Falls,
if he were to go back to town that night, and the thought of bumping
over the bad roads in a pre-historic flivver, after being up most of
the previous night, made no appeal to him.
"I'll make her take me in," thought Peter, and rang the bell again.
"Anybody want me?"
The voice came from just over Peter's head, but he could see no one,
for the roof of the little old Dutch porch hid the speaker.
"Who wants me, Josh?" the voice repeated.
"Nobuddy wants you, Walt," the driver in the road bawled out. "'S a
stranger wants to spend the night. 'S yer sister-in-law to home?"
Peter's heart leaped harder, if not so far, as his long legs. One jump,
and he was on the narrow brick walk, looking up at an open window from
which protruded the quaintest old head he thought he had ever seen.
The face was that of a man of seventy or more, but the hair and long
sweeping moustache were brilliantly black. The hair was thin and
carefully brushed forward above the ears, in a bygone style. Two little
twinkling eyes looked down from either side of a long, thin, pointed