The Lake Mystery. Marvin Dana

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СКАЧАТЬ David not at all, since his heart was not in the task.

      Ensued a week of feverish activity on the part of Saxe and his friends, in which Billy Walker was as busy as any, although his toil was exclusively mental, while his body remained in its customary lethargic condition. By day and by night, he devoted himself to examination of the problem that confronted his friend, and by day and by night the other three carried out his every suggestion. Unfortunately, however, for Saxe’s hopes of inheritance, their first hurried search of the cottage resulted in naught save weariness and dismay. Of anything in the nature of a clue, they found no least trace.

      Billy Walker delivered the final decree in a council held by the four, after dinner on the seventh day. It had so chanced that the friends were alone together in the chief room of the cottage, which was the music-room.

      “I’ve addled my wits in vain,” Billy Walker confessed, dolefully. “Until there shall have been an accumulation of new intellectual energy on my part, I shall be able to offer you no theory as to the actual hiding-place so ingeniously selected by the late lamented Mr. Abernethey—to whose ashes, peace! While I am thus recuperating, however, you, my children, shall not be idle—oh, by no manner of means. On the contrary, you shall be very busy, indeed, after the method prescribed by inexorable logic.”

      “I’m beginning to think that a little luck just now would help more than a lot of logic,” Saxe declared, gloomily.

      “Listen to the oracle, anyhow,” David Thwing urged, in his always kindly voice. “You see,” he went on whimsically, “Billy is a specialist in thinking: he doesn’t do anything except think. So, we must respect his thinking. Otherwise, we could not respect our friend at all.” David’s big, protruding eyes, magnified by the heavy lenses of his eyeglasses, beamed benignantly on his three companions.

      The one thus dubiously lauded grunted disdainfully.

      “Panegyrics apart,” he resumed, in his roughly rumbling tones, “there appears at this time but one course of procedure. To wit: Tomorrow morning, you must start on an exhaustive search of the whole house. Hitherto, you have made only a superficial examination. This has failed miserably. Now, the scrutiny must be made microscopic.”

      There could be no gainsaying the utterance. As the speaker had declared, it was the command of the inevitable logic presented by the situation. The hearers gave grumbling assent to the wisdom of the suggestion—with the exception of Roy Morton, who, curled lazily in the depths of the morris chair, was staring vacantly at the elaborate carving of the wainscoting, and smoking an especially fat Egyptian cigarette. Now, he suddenly sat upright, and his gaze was turned on his companions, who had looked up at his abrupt movement. Roy’s eyes were hard; his chin was thrust forward, in the fashion characteristic of him when the spirit of combat flared high, which, to tell the truth, was rather often. He spoke with apparent seriousness, but Thwing, who had been through some adventures of a violent sort in his company, noted that a significant excess of amiability in his tones, which was always to be heard on critical occasions, was now wanting.

      “There’s only one simple and sure way to success,” Roy declared authoritatively. “We must burgle.”

      There were ejaculations of astonishment from his curious hearers.

      “It’s this way,” he explained blandly, fixing his steel-blue eyes grimly on the wondering Billy Walker. “We must rifle the lawyer’s safe. Of course, the lawyer whom Abernethey employed has exact instructions as to how to come on the treasure. All we have to do, then, is to break into his office, carrying an oxy-acetylene blow-pipe, cut open the safe, find the secret instructions, copy them off, and afterward duly retrieve the gold at our leisure; besides,” he concluded, with great complacency, “I know a first-class safe-blower, to help us on the job. I did him a favor once. He’ll be glad to do me a kindness, in turn.”

      A chorus of protests came from Saxe and Billy, to which, at last, with much apparent reluctance, Roy yielded, and definitely, though sulkily, withdrew his ingenious predatory plan. But David, the while, chuckled contentedly, for he was apt at a jest—and, too, he had known Roy more closely than had the other two.

      Since the working schedule had been thus happily determined on the side of law and order, the friends gave themselves over to an interval of social relaxation for the remainder of the evening, during which period, at the suggestion of David, the subject of the treasure was taboo. Roy, who was fond of music, and had himself once possessed no mean measure of skill on the violoncello, now besought Saxe to try the piano, for hitherto their whole attention had been given to the business in hand, to the exclusion of all else. David, also, who doted on music, though without any technical training, added his entreaties. Billy Walker, who esteemed music about as highly as a cat does water, was complacent enough not to protest, which was the utmost that might be expected of him under the circumstances. Saxe went to the piano very willingly, for he was in a mood of nervous tension that craved the emotional relaxation of harmony.

      Saxe played with a good degree of excellence in his technique, although he was far from being such a master of the instrument as had been the dead owner. But the essential charm of the younger man’s interpretation lay in the delicate truth of his sympathy. His intelligent sensitiveness seemed, indeed, catholic in its scope. Whether he toyed daintily with a graceful appoggiatura from Chopin, or crashed an astonishing dissonance from Strauss, he equally felt and revealed the emotion that had been in the composer’s soul. Hardly had he begun, when Mrs. West entered from the porch, and after her came Margaret. Presently, May made her appearance, with Masters at her side. Only Jake and his wife, in the kitchen, remained unattracted. They had already heard from their late master sufficient music to last them a lifetime. The audience was sympathetic enough to encourage the player, and Saxe remained at the piano for a long time, to the satisfaction of all his hearers—even that of Billy Walker, who was shamelessly dozing.

      Finally, the musician’s attention, during a pause, was attracted to a stack of music, which was lying on top of a cabinet, at the right of the piano. He rose, and, going to it, began glancing over the sheets. His eyes lighted with admiration as he noted the various compositions in the collection. In this examination of the music, he realized, as he had not done hitherto, the virtuosity of that dead miser who had made him the possible heir to wealth. For here was naught save the most worthy in the world of musical art. There was not a single number of the many assembled that was not a masterpiece of its kind. In its entirety, the series presented the very highest forms of musical expression, the supreme achievement, both intellectual and emotional, in the art. For the first time, Saxe felt a gust of tenderness toward the lonely old man, for the sake of their brotherhood in a great love. And, then, at the very bottom of the heap, Saxe came on a single sheet, which drew his particular attention.

      The page showed a few measures written in manuscript. This fact alone was sufficient to make the sheet distinctive in the collection, inasmuch as it was solitary of its sort. Every other composition was from editions by the best publishers. With his newly-aroused interest in Abernethey, it befell that Saxe was pleased thus to come on a composition which, he made sure, must have been from the pen of Abernethey himself. Yet, as he scanned the few bars, the young man experienced a feeling of vivid disappointment, for the work was by no possibility of a kind to compel particular admiration; so, at least, it seemed to him just then. With a sense of disillusionment concerning the quality of the dead miser’s genius, Saxe carried the sheet of music to the piano, where he placed it on the rack, then began to play. As the first chord sounded, May Thurston, seated in a chair near the door, made a movement of surprise. Afterward, as she rested quietly in her place, there lay on her face a look of melancholy that was very near dejection.

      The music that Saxe played was this:

      [Listen]

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