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another

chance to prove yourself the man your grandfather

wished you to be. And now you come to me in a shocking

bad humor—I really think you would like to be

insulting, Mr. Glenarm, if you could.”

 

“But Pickering—you came back with him; he is

here and he’s going to stay! And now that the property

belongs to you, there is not the slightest reason why

we should make any pretense of anything but enmity.

When you and Arthur Pickering stand together I take

the other side of the barricade! I suppose chivalry

would require me to vacate, so that you may enjoy at

once the spoils of war.”

 

“I fancy it would not be very difficult to eliminate

you as a factor in the situation,” she remarked icily.

 

“And I suppose, after the unsuccessful efforts of Mr.

Pickering’s allies to assassinate me, as a mild form of

elimination, one would naturally expect me to sit calmly

down and wait to be shot in the back. But you may tell

Mr. Pickering that I throw myself upon your mercy.

I have no other home than this shell over the way, and

I beg to be allowed to remain until—at least—the bluebirds

come. I hope it will not embarrass you to deliver

the message.”

 

“I quite sympathize with your reluctance to deliver

it yourself,” she said. “Is this all you came to say?”

 

“I came to tell you that you could have the house,

and everything in its hideous walls,” I snapped; “to

tell you that my chivalry is enough for some situations

and that I don’t intend to fight a woman. I had accepted

your own renouncement of the legacy in good

part, but now, please believe me, it shall be yours to-morrow.

I’ll yield possession to you whenever you ask

it—but never to Arthur Pickering! As against him

and his treasure-hunters and assassins I will hold out

for a dozen years!”

 

“Nobly spoken, Mr. Glenarm! Yours is really an

admirable, though somewhat complex character.”

 

“My character is my own, whatever it is,” I blurted.

 

“I shouldn’t call that a debatable proposition,” she

replied, and I was angry to find how the mirth I had

loved in her could suddenly become so hateful. She

half-turned away so that I might not see her face. The

thought that she should countenance Pickering in any

way tore me with jealous rage.

 

“Mr. Glenarm, you are what I have heard called a

quitter, defined in common Americanese as one who

quits! Your blustering here this afternoon can hardly

conceal the fact of your failure—your inability to keep

a promise. I had hoped you would really be of some

help to Sister Theresa; you quite deceived her—she

told me as she left to-day that she thought well of you,

—she really felt that her fortunes were safe in your

hands. But, of course, that is all a matter of past history

now.”

 

Her tone, changing from cold indifference to the

most severe disdain, stung me into self-pity for my stupidity

in having sought her. My anger was not against

her, but against Pickering, who had, I persuaded myself,

always blocked my path. She went on.

 

“You really amuse me exceedingly. Mr. Pickering

is decidedly more than a match for you, Mr. Glenarm,

—even in humor.”

 

She left me so quickly, so softly, that I stood staring

like a fool at the spot where she had been, and then I

went gloomily back to Glenarm House, angry, ashamed

and crestfallen.

 

While we were waiting for dinner I made a clean

breast of my acquaintance with her to Larry, omitting

nothing—rejoicing even to paint my own conduct as

black as possible.

 

“You may remember her,” I concluded, “she was the

girl we saw at Sherry’s that night we dined there. She

was with Pickering, and you noticed her—spoke of her,

as she went out.”

 

“That little girl who seemed so bored, or tired? Bless

me! Why her eyes haunted me for days. Lord man,

do you mean to say—”

 

A look of utter scorn came into his face, and he eyed

me contemptuously.

 

“Of course I mean it!” I thundered at him.

 

He took the pipe from his mouth, pressed the tobacco

viciously into the bowl, and swore steadily in Gaelic

until I was ready to choke him.

 

“Stop!” I bawled. “Do you think that’s helping me?

And to have you curse in your blackguardly Irish dialect!

I wanted a little Anglo-Saxon sympathy, you

fool! I didn’t mean for you to invoke your infamous

gods against the girl!”

 

“Don’t be violent, lad. Violence is reprehensible,”

he admonished with maddening sweetness and patience.

“What I was trying to inculcate was rather the fact,

borne in upon me through years of acquaintance, that

you are—to he bold, my lad, to be bold—a good deal

of a damned fool.”

 

The trilling of his r’s was like the whirring rise of

a flock of quails.

 

“Dinner is served,” announced Bates, and Larry led

the way, mockingly chanting an Irish love-song.

CHAPTER XXIII

THE DOOR OF BEWILDERMENT

 

We had established the practice of barring all the

gates and doors at nightfall. There was no way of

guarding against an attack from the lake, whose frozen

surface increased the danger from without; but we

counted on our night patrol to prevent a surprise from

that quarter. I was well aware that I must prepare to

resist the militant arm of the law, which Pickering

would no doubt invoke to aid him, but I intended to

exhaust the possibilities in searching for the lost treasure

before I yielded. Pickering might, if he would,

transfer the estate of John Marshall Glenarm to Marian

Devereux and make the most he could of that service,

but he should not drive me forth until I had satisfied

myself of the exact character of my grandfather’s fortune.

If it had vanished, if Pickering had stolen it

and outwitted me in making off with it, that was another

matter.

 

The phrase, “The Door of Bewilderment,” had never

ceased to reiterate itself in my mind. We discussed a

thousand explanations of it as we pondered over the

scrap of paper I had found in the library, and every

book in the house was examined in the search for further

clues.

 

The passage between the house and the chapel seemed

to fascinate Larry. He held that it must have some

particular use and he devoted his time to exploring it.

 

He came up at noon—it was the twenty-ninth of

December—with grimy face and hands and a grin on his

face. I had spent my morning in the towers, where it

was beastly cold, to no purpose and was not in a mood

for the ready acceptance of new theories.

 

“I’ve found something,” he said, filling his pipe.

 

“Not soap, evidently!”

 

“No, but I’m going to say the last word on the tunnel,

and within an hour. Give me a glass of beer and a

piece of bread, and we’ll go back and see whether we’re

sold again or not.”

 

“Let us explore the idea and be done with it. Wait

till I tell Stoddard where we’re going.”

 

The chaplain was trying the second-floor walls, and

I asked him to eat some luncheon and stand guard while

Larry and I went to the tunnel.

 

We took with us an iron bar, an ax and a couple of

hammers. Larry went ahead with a lantern.

 

“You see,” he explained, as we dropped through the

trap into the passage, “I’ve tried a compass on this

tunnel and find that we’ve been working on the wrong

theory. The passage itself runs a straight line from

the house under the gate to the crypt; the ravine is a

rough crescent-shape and for a short distance the tunnel

touches it. How deep does that ravine average—about

thirty feet?”

 

“Yes; it’s shallowest where the house stands. it

drops sharply from there on to the lake.”

 

“Very good; but the ravine is all on the Glenarm side

of the wall, isn’t it? Now when we get under the wall

I’ll show you something.”

 

“Here we are,” said Larry, as the cold air blew in

through the hollow posts. “Now we’re pretty near that

sharp curve of the ravine that dips away from the wall.

Take the lantern while I get out the compass. What

do you think that C on the piece of paper means? Why,

chapel, of course. I have measured the distance from

the house, the point of departure, we may assume, to

the chapel, and three-fourths of it brings us under those

beautiful posts. The directions are as plain as daylight.

The passage itself is your N. W., as the compass

proves, and the ravine cuts close in here; therefore, our

business is to explore the wall on the ravine side.”

 

“Good! but this is just wall here—earth with a layer

of brick and a thin coat of cement. A nice job it must

have been to do the work—and it cost the price of a

tiger hunt,” I grumbled.

 

“Take heart, lad, and listen,”—and Larry began

pounding the wall with a hammer, exactly under the

north gate-post. We had sounded everything in and

about the house until the process bored me.

 

“Hurry up and get through with it,” I jerked impatiently,

holding the lantern at the level of his head. It

was sharply cold under the posts and I was anxious to

prove the worthlessness of his idea and be done.

 

Thump! thump!

 

“There’s a place here that sounds a trifle off the key.

You try it.”

 

I snatched the hammer and repeated his soundings.

 

Thump! thump!

 

There was a space about four feet square in the wall

that certainly gave forth a hollow sound.

 

“Stand back!” exclaimed Larry eagerly. “Here goes

with the ax.”

 

He struck into the wall sharply and the cement

chipped off in rough pieces, disclosing the brick beneath.

Larry paused when he had uncovered a foot of

the inner layer, and examined the surface.

 

“They’re loose—these bricks are loose, and there’s

something besides earth behind them!”

 

I snatched the hammer and drove hard at the wall.

The bricks were set up without mortar, and I plucked

them out and rapped with my knuckles on a wooden

surface.

 

Even Larry grew excited as we flung out the bricks.

 

“Ah, lad,” he said, “the old gentleman had a way

with him—he had a way with him!” A brick dropped

on his foot and he howled in pain.

 

“Bless the old gentleman’s heart! He made it as

easy for us as he could. Now, for the Glenarm millions,

—red money all piled up for the ease of counting it—

a thousand pounds in every pile.”

 

“Don’t be a fool, Larry,” I coughed at him, for the

brick dust and the smoke of Larry’s pipe made breathing

difficult.

 

“That’s all the loose brick—bring the lantern closer,”

—and we peered through the aperture upon a wooden

door, in which strips of iron were deep-set. It was fastened

with a padlock and Larry reached down for the ax.

 

“Wait!” I called, drawing closer with the lantern.

“What’s this?”

 

The wood of the door was fresh and white, but burned

deep on the surface, in this order, were the words:

 

THE DOOR

OF

BEWILDERMENT

 

“There are dead men inside, I dare say! Here, my

lad, it’s not for me to turn loose the family skeletons,”

—and Larry stood aside while I swung the ax and

brought it down with a crash on the padlock. It was

of no flimsy stuff and the remaining bricks cramped me,

but

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