Earl Biggers - Seven Keys to Baldpate

“A friend of mine — Mr. — er — Downs, Mr. Magee,” muttered Bland.

“Oh, come now,” smiled Magee. “Let’s tell our real names. I heard you greeting your friend a minute ago. How are you, Mr. Hayden?”

He held out his hand. Hayden looked him angrily in the eyes.

“Who the devil are you?” he asked.

“Do you mean,” said Magee, “that you didn’t catch the name. It’s Magee — William Hallowell Magee. I hold a record hereabouts, Mr. Hayden. I spent nearly an hour at Baldpate Inn — alone. You see, I was the first of our amiable little party to arrive. Let me make you welcome. Are you staying to dinner? You must.”

“I’m not,” growled Hayden.

“Don’t believe him, Mr. Magee,” sneered the mayor, “he doesn’t always say what he means. He’s going to stay, all right.”

“Yes, you’d better, Mr. Hayden,” advised Bland.

“Huh — delighted, I’m sure,” snapped Hayden. He strolled over to the wall, and in the light of the fire examined a picture nonchalantly.

“The pride of our inn,” Mr. Magee, following, explained pleasantly, “the admiral. It is within these very walls in summer that he plays his famous game of solitaire.”

Hayden wheeled quickly, and looked Magee in the eyes. A flush crossed his face, leaving it paler than before. He turned away without speaking.

“Peters,” said Magee, “you heard what Mr. Hayden said. An extra plate at dinner, please. I must leave you for a moment, gentlemen.” He saw that their eyes followed him eagerly — full of suspicion, menacing. “We shall all meet again, very shortly.”

Hayden slipped quickly between Magee and the stairs. The latter faced him smilingly, reflecting as he did so that he could love this man but little.

“Who are you?” said Hayden again. “What is your business here?”

Magee laughed outright, and turned to the other men.

“How unfortunate,” he said, “this gentleman does not know the manners and customs of Baldpate in winter. Those are questions, Mr. Hayden, that we are never impolite enough to ask of one another up here.” He moved on toward the stairs, and reluctantly Hayden got out of his path. “I am very happy,” he added, “that you are to be with us at dinner. It will not take you long to accustom yourself to our ways, I’m sure.”

He ran up the stairs and passed through number seven out upon the balcony. Trudging through the snow, he soon sighted the room of Professor Bolton. And as he did so, a little shiver that was not due to atmospheric conditions ran down his spine. For one of the professor’s windows stood wide open, bidding a welcome to the mountain storm. Peters had spoken the truth. Once more that tight little, right little package was within Mr. Magee’s ken.

He stepped through the open window, and closed it after him. By the table sat Professor Bolton, wrapped in coats and blankets, reading by the light of a solitary candle. The book was held almost touching his nose — a reminder of the spectacles that were gone. As Magee entered the old man looked up, and a very obvious expression of fright crossed his face.

“Good evening, Professor,” said Magee easily. “Don’t you find it rather cool with the window open?”

“Mr. Magee,” replied the much wrapped gentleman, “I am that rather disturbing progressive — a fresh air devotee. I feel that God’s good air was meant to be breathed, not barricaded from our bodies.”

“Perhaps,” suggested Magee, “I should have left the window open?”

The old man regarded him narrowly.

“I have no wish to be inhospitable,” he replied. “But — if you please—”

“Certainly,” answered Magee. He threw open the window. The professor held up his book.

“I was passing the time before dinner with my pleasant old companion, Montaigne. Mr. Magee, have you ever read his essay on liars?”

“Never,” said Magee. “But I do not blame you for brushing up on it at the present time, Professor. I have come to apologize. Yesterday morning I referred in a rather unpleasant way to a murder in the chemical laboratory at one of our universities. I said that the professor of chemistry was missing. This morning’s paper, which I secured from Mr. Peters, informs me that he has been apprehended.”

“You need not have troubled to tell me,” said the old man. He smiled his bleak smile.

“I did you an injustice,” went on Magee.

“Let us say no more of it,” pleaded Professor Bolton.

Mr. Magee walked about the room. Warily the professor turned so that the other was at no instant at his back. He looked so helpless, so little, so ineffectual, that Mr. Magee abandoned his first plan of leaping upon him there in the silence. By more subtle means than this must his purpose be attained.

“I suppose,” he said, “your love of fresh air accounts for the strolls on the balcony at all hours of the night?”

The old man merely blinked at him.

“I mustn’t stop,” Magee continued. “I just wanted to make my apology, that’s all. It was unjust of me. Murder — that is hardly in your line. By the way, were you by any chance in my room this morning, Professor Bolton?”

Silence.

“Pardon me,” remarked the professor at last, “if I do not answer. In this very essay on — on liars, Montaigne has expressed it so well. ‘And how much is a false speech less sociable than silence.’ I am a sociable man.”

“Of course,” smiled Magee. He stood looking down at the frail old scholar before him, and considered. Of what avail a scuffle there in that chill room? The package was no doubt safely hidden in a corner he could not quickly find. No he must wait, and watch.

“Good-by, until dinner,” he said, “and may you find much in your wise companion’s book to justify your conduct.”

He went out through the open window, and in another moment stood just outside Miss Norton’s room. She put a startled head out at his knock.

“Oh, it’s you,” she said. “I can’t invite you in. You might learn terrible secrets of the dressing-table — mamma is bedecking herself for dinner. Has anything happened?”

“Throw something over your head, Juliet,” smiled Magee, “the balcony is waiting for you.”

She was at his side in a moment, and they walked briskly along the shadowy white floor.

“I know who has the money,” said Magee softly. “Simply through a turn of luck, I know. I realize that my protestations of what I am going to do have bored you. But it looks very much to me as if that package would be in your hands very soon.”

She did not reply.

“And when I have got it, and have given it to you — if I do,” he continued, “what then?”

“Then,” she answered, “I must go away — very quickly. And no one must know, or they will try to stop me.”

“And after that?”

“The deluge,” she laughed without mirth.

Up above them the great trees of Baldpate Mountain waved their black arms constantly as though sparring with the storm. At the foot of the buried roadway they could see the lamps of Upper Asquewan Falls; under those lamps prosaic citizens were hurrying home with the supper groceries through the night. And not one of those citizens was within miles of guessing that up on the balcony of Baldpate Inn a young man had seized a young woman’s hand, and was saying wildly: “Beautiful girl — I love you.”

Yet that was exactly what Billy Magee was doing. The girl had turned her face away.

“You’ve known me just two days,” she said.

“If I can care this much in two days,” he said, “think — but that’s old, isn’t it? Sometime soon I’m going to say to you: ‘Whose girl are you?’ and you’re going to look up at me with a little heaven for two in your eyes and say: ‘I’m Billy Magee’s girl.’ So before we go any further I must confess everything — I must tell you who this Billy Magee is — this man you’re going to admit you belong to, my dear.”