Produced by Tor Martin Kristiansen, Joseph Cooper, Mary
Meehan and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at
https://www.pgdp.net

                      SEVEN KEYS TO BALDPATE

                       BY EARL DERR BIGGERS

Buccaneer Books
NEW YORK

Copyright 1913 by The Bobbs-Merrill Company

Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 78-66864

CONTENTS

CHAPTER

       I "WEEP NO MORE, MY LADY"

      II ENTER A LOVELORN HABERDASHER

     III BLONDES AND SUFFRAGETTES

      IV A PROFESSIONAL HERMIT APPEARS

       V THE MAYOR CASTS A SHADOW BEFORE

      VI GHOSTS OF THE SUMMER CROWD

     VII THE MAYOR BEGINS A VIGIL

    VIII MR. MAX TELLS A TALE OF SUSPICION

      IX MELODRAMA IN THE SNOW

       X THE COLD GRAY DAWN

      XI A FALSEHOOD UNDER THE PALMS

     XII WOE IN NUMBER SEVEN

    XIII THE EXQUISITE MR. HAYDEN

     XIV THE SIGN OF THE OPEN WINDOW

      XV TABLE TALK

     XVI A MAN FROM THE DARK

    XVII THE PROFESSOR SUMS UP

   XVIII A RED CARD

     XIX EXEUNT OMNES, AS SHAKESPEARE HAS IT

      XX THE ADMIRAL'S GAME

     XXI THE MAYOR IS WELCOMED HOME

    XXII THE USUAL THING

SEVEN KEYS TO BALDPATE

CHAPTER I

"WEEP NO MORE, MY LADY"

A young woman was crying bitterly in the waiting-room of the railway
station at Upper Asquewan Falls, New York.

A beautiful young woman? That is exactly what Billy Magee wanted to know
as, closing the waiting-room door behind him, he stood staring just
inside. Were the features against which that frail bit of cambric was
agonizingly pressed of a pleasing contour? The girl's neatly tailored
corduroy suit and her flippant but charming millinery augured well.
Should he step gallantly forward and inquire in sympathetic tones as to
the cause of her woe? Should he carry chivalry even to the lengths of
Upper Asquewan Falls?

No, Mr. Magee decided he would not. The train that had just roared away
into the dusk had not brought him from the region of skyscrapers and
derby hats for deeds of knight errantry up state. Anyhow, the girl's
tears were none of his business. A railway station was a natural place
for grief--a field of many partings, upon whose floor fell often in
torrents the tears of those left behind. A friend, mayhap a lover, had
been whisked off into the night by the relentless five thirty-four
local. Why not a lover? Surely about such a dainty trim figure as this
courtiers hovered as moths about a flame. Upon a tender intimate sorrow
it was not the place of an unknown Magee to intrude. He put his hand
gently upon the latch of the door.

And yet--dim and heartless and cold was the interior of that
waiting-room. No place, surely, for a gentleman to leave a lady
sorrowful, particularly when the lady was so alluring. Oh, beyond
question, she was most alluring. Mr. Magee stepped softly to the ticket
window and made low-voiced inquiry of the man inside.

"What's she crying about?" he asked.

A thin sallow face, on the forehead of which a mop of ginger-colored
hair lay listlessly, was pressed against the bars.

"Thanks," said the ticket agent. "I get asked the same old questions so
often, one like yours sort of breaks the monotony. Sorry I can't help
you. She's a woman, and the Lord only knows why women cry. And sometimes
I reckon even He must be a little puzzled. Now, my wife--"

"I think I'll ask her," confided Mr. Magee in a hoarse whisper.

"Oh, I wouldn't," advised the man behind the bars. "It's best to let 'em
alone. They stop quicker if they ain't noticed."

"But she's in trouble," argued Billy Magee.

"And so'll you be, most likely," responded the cynic, "if you interfere.
No, siree! Take my advice. Shoot old Asquewan's rapids in a barrel if
you want to, but keep away from crying women."

The heedless Billy Magee, however, was already moving across the
unscrubbed floor with chivalrous intention.

The girl's trim shoulders no longer heaved so unhappily. Mr. Magee,
approaching, thought himself again in the college yard at dusk, with the
great elms sighing overhead, and the fresh young voices of the glee club
ringing out from the steps of a century-old building. What were the
words they sang so many times?

    "Weep no more, my lady,
    Oh! weep no more to-day."

He regretted that he could not make use of them. They had always seemed
to him so sad and beautiful. But troubadours, he knew, went out of
fashion long before railway stations came in. So his remark to the young
woman was not at all melodious:

"Can I do anything?"

A portion of the handkerchief was removed, and an eye which, Mr. Magee
noted, was of an admirable blue, peeped out at him. To the gaze of even
a solitary eye, Mr. Magee's aspect was decidedly pleasing. Young
Williams, who posed at the club as a wit, had once said that Billy Magee
came as near to being a magazine artist's idea of the proper hero of a
story as any man could, and at the same time retain the respect and
affection of his fellows. Mr. Magee thought he read approval in the lone
eye of blue. When the lady spoke, however, he hastily revised his
opinion.

"Yes," she said, "you can do something. You can go away--far, far away."

Mr. Magee stiffened. Thus chivalry fared in Upper Asquewan Falls in the
year 1911.

"I beg your pardon," he remarked. "You seemed to be in trouble, and I
thought I might possibly be of some assistance."

The girl removed the entire handkerchief. The other eye proved to be the
same admirable blue--a blue half-way between the shade of her corduroy
suit and that of the jacky's costume in the "See the World--Join the
Navy" poster that served as background to her woe.

"I don't mean to be rude," she explained more gently, "but--I'm crying,
you see, and a girl simply can't look attractive when she cries."

"If I had only been regularly introduced to you, and all that,"
responded Mr. Magee, "I could make a very flattering reply." And a true
one, he added to himself. For even in the faint flickering light of the
station he found ample reason for rejoicing that the bit of cambric was
no longer agonizingly pressed. As yet he had scarcely looked away from
her eyes, but he was dimly aware that up above wisps of golden hair
peeped impudently from beneath a saucy black hat. He would look at those
wisps shortly, he told himself. As soon as he could look away from the
eyes--which was not just yet.

"My grief," said the girl, "is utterly silly and--womanish. I think it
would be best to leave me alone with it. Thank you for your interest.
And--would you mind asking the gentleman who is pressing his face so
feverishly against the bars to kindly close his window?"

"Certainly," replied Mr. Magee. He turned away. As he did so he collided
with a rather excessive lady. She gave the impression of solidity and
bulk; her mouth was hard and knowing. Mr. Magee felt that she wanted to
vote, and that she would say as much from time to time. The lady had a
glittering eye; she put it to its time-honored use and fixed Mr. Magee
with it.

"I was crying, mamma," the girl explained, "and this gentleman inquired
if he could be of any service."

Mamma! Mr. Magee wanted to add his tears to those of the girl. This
frail and lovely damsel in distress owning as her maternal parent a
heavy unnecessary--person! The older woman also had yellow hair, but it
was the sort that suggests the white enamel pallor of a drug store, with
the soda-fountain fizzing and the bottles of perfume ranged in an
odorous row. Mamma! Thus rolled the world along.

"Well, they ain't no use gettin' all worked up for nothing," advised the
unpleasant parent. Mr. Magee was surprised that in her tone there was no
hostility to him--thus belying her looks. "Mebbe the gentleman can
direct us to a good hotel," she added, with a rather stagy smile.

"I'm a stranger here, too," Mr. Magee replied. "I'll interview the man
over there in the cage."

The gentleman referred to was not cheerful in his replies. There was, he
said, Baldpate Inn.

"Oh, yes, Baldpate Inn," repeated Billy Magee with interest.

"Yes, that's a pretty swell place," said the ticket agent. "But it ain't
open now. It's a summer resort. There ain't no place open now but the
Commercial House. And I wouldn't recommend no human being
there--especially no lady who was sad before she ever saw it."

Mr. Magee explained to the incongruous family pair waiting on the bench.

"There's only one hotel," he said, "and I'm told it's not exactly the
place for any one whose outlook on life is not rosy at the moment. I'm
sorry."

"It will do very well," answered the girl, "whatever it is." She smiled
at Billy Magee. "My outlook on life in Upper Asquewan Falls," she said,
"grows rosier every minute. We must find a cab."

She began to gather up her traveling-bags, and Mr. Magee hastened to
assist. The three went out on the station platform, upon which lay a
thin carpet of snowflakes. There the older woman, in a harsh rasping
voice, found fault with Upper Asquewan Falls,--its geography, its public
spirit, its brand of weather. A dejected cab at the end of the platform
stood mourning its lonely lot. In it Mr. Magee placed the large lady and
the bags. Then, while the driver climbed to his seat, he spoke into the
invisible ear of the girl.

"You haven't told me why you cried," he reminded her.

She waved her hand toward the wayside village, the lamps of which shone
sorrowfully through the snow.

"Upper Asquewan Falls," she said, "isn't it reason enough?"

Billy Magee looked; saw a row of gloomy buildings that seemed to list as
the wind blew, a blurred sign "Liquors and Cigars," a street that
staggered away into the dark like a man who had lingered too long at the
emporium back of the sign.

"Are you doomed to stay here long?" he asked.

"Come on, Mary," cried a deep voice from the cab. "Get in and shut the
door. I'm freezing."

"It all depends," said the girl. "Thank you for being so kind and--good
night."

The door closed with a muffled bang, the cab creaked wearily away, and
Mr. Magee turned back to the dim waiting-room.

"Well, what was she crying for?" inquired the ticket agent, when Mr.
Magee stood again at his cell window.

"She didn't think much of your town," responded Magee; "she intimated
that it made her heavy of heart."

"H'm--it ain't much of a place," admitted the man, "though it ain't the
general rule with visitors to burst into tears at sight of it. Yes,
Upper Asquewan is slow, and no mistake. It gets on my nerves sometimes.
Nothing to do but work, work, work, and then lay down and wait for
to-morrow. I used to think maybe some day they'd transfer me down to
Hooperstown--there's moving pictures and such goings-on down there. But
the railroad never notices you--unless you go wrong. Yes, sir, sometimes
I want to clear out of this town myself."

"A natural wanderlust," sympathized Mr. Magee. "You said something just
now about Baldpate Inn--"

"Yes, it's a little more lively in summer, when that's open," answered
the agent; "we get a lot of complaints about trunks not coming, from
pretty swell people, too. It sort of cheers things." His eye roamed with
interest over Mr. Magee's New York attire. "But Baldpate Inn is shut up
tight now. This is nothing but an annex to a graveyard in winter. You
wasn't thinking of stopping off here, was you?"

"Well--I want to see a man named Elijah Quimby," Mr. Magee replied. "Do
you know him?"

"Of course," said the yearner for pastures new, "he's caretaker of the
inn. His house is about a mile out, on the old Miller Road that leads up
Baldpate. Come outside and I'll tell you how to get there."

The two men went out into the whirling snow, and the agent waved a hand
indefinitely up at the night.

"If it was clear," he said, "you could see Baldpate Mountain, over
yonder, looking down on the Falls, sort of keeping an eye on us to make
sure we don't get reckless. And half-way up you'd see Baldpate Inn,
black and peaceful and winter-y. Just follow this street to the third
corner, and turn to your left. Elijah lives in a little house back among
the trees a mile out--there's a gate you'll sure hear creaking on a
night like this."

Billy Magee thanked him, and gathering up his two bags, walked up "Main
Street." A dreary forbidding building at the first corner bore the sign
"Commercial House". Under the white gaslight in the office window three
born pessimists slouched low in hotel chairs, gazing sourly out at the
storm.

    "Weep no more, my lady,
    Oh! weep no more to-day,"

hummed Mr. Magee cynically under his breath, and glanced up at the
solitary up-stairs window that gleamed yellow in the night.

At a corner on which stood a little shop that advertised "Groceries and
Provisions" he paused.

"Let me see," he pondered. "The lights will be turned off, of course.
Candles. And a little something for the inner man, in case it's the
closed season for cooks."

He went inside, where a weary old woman served him.

"What sort of candles?" she inquired, with the air of one who had an
infinite variety in stock. Mr. Magee remembered that Christmas was near.

"For a Christmas tree," he explained. He asked for two hundred.

"I've only got forty," the woman said. "What's this tree for--the
Orphans' Home?"

With the added burden of a package containing his purchases in the tiny
store, Mr. Magee emerged and continued his journey through the stinging
snow. Upper Asquewan Falls on its way home for supper flitted past him
in the silvery darkness. He saw in the lighted windows of many of the
houses the green wreath of Christmas cheer. Finally the houses became
infrequent, and he struck out on an uneven road that wound upward. Once
he heard a dog's faint bark. Then a carriage lurched by him, and a
strong voice cursed the roughness of the road. Mr. Magee half smiled to
himself as he strode on.

"Don Quixote, my boy," he muttered, "I know how you felt when you moved
on the windmills."

It was not the whir of windmills but the creak of a gate in the storm
that brought Mr. Magee at last to a stop. He walked gladly up the path
to Elijah Quimby's door.

In answer to Billy Magee's gay knock, a man of about sixty years
appeared. Evidently he had just finished supper; at the moment he was
engaged in lighting his pipe. He admitted Mr. Magee into the intimacy of
the kitchen, and took a number of calm judicious puffs on the pipe
before speaking to his visitor. In that interval the visitor cheerily
seized his hand, oblivious of the warm burnt match that was in it. The
match fell to the floor, whereupon the older man cast an anxious glance
at a gray-haired woman who stood beside the kitchen stove.

"My name's Magee," blithely explained that gentleman, dragging in his
bags. "And you're Elijah Quimby, of course. How are you? Glad to see
you." His air was that of one who had known this Quimby intimately, in
many odd corners of the world.

The older man did not reply, but regarded Mr. Magee wonderingly through
white puffs of smoke. His face was kindly, gentle, ineffectual; he
seemed to lack the final "punch" that send men over the line to success;
this was evident in the way his necktie hung, the way his thin hands
fluttered.

"Yes," he admitted at last. "Yes, I'm Quimby."

Mr. Magee threw back his coat, and sprayed with snow Mrs. Quimby's
immaculate floor.

"I'm Magee," he elucidated again, "William Hallowell Magee, the man Hal
Bentley wrote to you about. You got his letter, didn't you?"

Mr. Quimby removed his pipe and forgot to close the aperture as he
stared in amazement.

"Good lord!" he cried, "you don't mean--you've really come."

"What better proof could you ask," said Mr. Magee flippantly, "than my
presence here?"

"Why," stammered Mr. Quimby, "we--we thought it was all a joke."

"Hal Bentley has his humorous moments," agreed Mr. Magee, "but it isn't
his habit to fling his jests into Upper Asquewan Falls."

"And--and you're really going to--" Mr. Quimby could get no further.

"Yes," said Mr. Magee brightly, slipping into a rocking-chair. "Yes, I'm
going to spend the next few months at Baldpate Inn."

Mrs. Quimby, who seemed to have settled into a stout little mound of a
woman through standing too long in the warm presence of her stove, came
forward and inspected Mr. Magee.

"Of all things," she murmured.

"It's closed," expostulated Mr. Quimby; "the inn is closed, young
fellow."

"I know it's closed," smiled Magee. "That's the very reason I'm going to
honor it with my presence. I'm sorry to take you out on a night like
this, but I'll have to ask you to lead me up to Baldpate. I believe
those were Hal Bentley's instructions--in the letter."

Mr. Quimby towered above Mr. Magee, a shirt-sleeved statue of honest
American manhood. He scowled.

"Excuse a plain question, young man," he said, "but what are you hiding
from?"

Mrs. Quimby, in the neighborhood of the stove, paused to hear the reply.
Billy Magee laughed.

"I'm not hiding," he said. "Didn't Bentley explain? Well, I'll try to,
though I'm not sure you'll understand. Sit down, Mr. Quimby. You are
not, I take it, the sort of man to follow closely the light and
frivolous literature of the day."

"What's that?" inquired Mr. Quimby.

"You don't read," continued Mr. Magee, "the sort of novels that are sold
by the pound in the department stores. Now, if you had a daughter--a
fluffy daughter inseparable from a hammock in the summer--she could help
me explain. You see--I write those novels. Wild thrilling tales for the
tired business man's tired wife--shots in the night, chases after
fortunes, Cupid busy with his arrows all over the place! It's good fun,
and I like to do it. There's money in it."

"Is there?" asked Mr. Quimby with a show of interest.

"Considerable," replied Mr. Magee. "But now and then I get a longing to
do something that will make the critics sit up--the real thing, you
know. The other day I picked up a newspaper and found my latest
brain-child advertised as 'the best fall novel Magee ever wrote'. It got
on my nerves--I felt like a literary dressmaker, and I could see my
public laying down my fall novel and sighing for my early spring styles
in fiction. I remembered that once upon a time a critic advised me to go
away for ten years to some quiet spot, and think. I decided to do it.
Baldpate Inn is the quiet spot."

"You don't mean," gasped Mr. Quimby, "that you're going to stay there
ten years?"

"Bless you, no," said Mr. Magee. "Critics exaggerate. Two months will
do. They say I am a cheap melodramatic ranter. They say I don't go deep.
They say my thinking process is a scream. I'm afraid they're right. Now,
I'm going to go up to Baldpate Inn, and think. I'm going to get away
from melodrama. I'm going to do a novel so fine and literary that Henry
Cabot Lodge will come to me with tears in his eyes and ask me to join
his bunch of self-made Immortals. I'm going to do all this up there at
the inn--sitting on the mountain and looking down on this little old
world as Jove looked down from Olympus."

"I don't know who you mean," objected Mr. Quimby.

"He was a god--the god of the fruit-stand men," explained Magee.
"Picture me, if you can, depressed by the overwhelming success of my
latest brain-child. Picture me meeting Hal Bentley in a Forty-fourth
Street club and asking him for the location of the lonesomest spot on
earth. Hal thought a minute. 'I've got it', he said, 'the lonesomest
spot that's happened to date is a summer resort in mid-winter. It makes
Crusoe's island look like Coney on a warm Sunday afternoon in
comparison.' The talk flowed on, along with other things. Hal told me
his father owned Baldpate Inn, and that you were an old friend of his
who would be happy for the entire winter over the chance to serve him.
He happened to have a key to the place--the key to the big front door, I
guess, from the weight of it--and he gave it to me. He also wrote you to
look after me. So here I am."

Mr. Quimby ran his fingers through his white hair.

"Here I am," repeated Billy Magee, "fleeing from the great glitter known
as Broadway to do a little rational thinking in the solitudes. It's
getting late, and I suggest that we start for Baldpate Inn at once."

"This ain't exactly--regular," Mr. Quimby protested. "No, it ain't what
you might call a frequent occurrence. I'm glad to do anything I can for
young Mr. Bentley, but I can't help wondering what his father will say.
And there's a lot of things you haven't took into consideration."

"There certainly is, young man," remarked Mrs. Quimby, bustling forward.
"How are you going to keep warm in that big barn of a place?"

"The suites on the second floor," said Mr. Magee, "are, I hear, equipped
with fireplaces. Mr. Quimby will keep me supplied with fuel from the
forest primeval, for which service he will receive twenty dollars a
week."

"And light?" asked Mrs. Quimby.

"For the present, candles. I have forty in that package. Later, perhaps
you can find me an oil lamp. Oh, everything will be provided for."

"Well," remarked Mr. Quimby, looking in a dazed fashion at his wife, "I
reckon I'll have to talk it over with ma."

The two retired to the next room, and Mr. Magee fixed his eyes on a "God
Bless Our Home" motto while he awaited their return. Presently they
reappeared.

"Was you thinking of eating?" inquired Mrs. Quimby sarcastically, "while
you stayed up there?"

"I certainly was," smiled Mr. Magee. "For the most part I will prepare
my own meals from cans and--er--jars--and such pagan sources. But now
and then you, Mrs. Quimby, are going to send me something cooked as no
other woman in the county can cook it. I can see it in your eyes. In my
poor way I shall try to repay you."

He continued to smile into Mrs. Quimby's broad cheerful face. Mr. Magee
had the type of smile that moves men to part with ten until Saturday,
and women to close their eyes and dream of Sir Launcelot. Mrs. Quimby
could not long resist. She smiled back. Whereupon Billy Magee sprang to
his feet.

"It's all fixed," he cried. "We'll get on splendidly. And now--for
Baldpate Inn."

"Not just yet," said Mrs. Quimby. "I ain't one to let anybody go up to
Baldpate Inn unfed. I 'spose we're sort o' responsible for you, while
you're up here. You just set right down and I'll have your supper hot
and smoking on the table in no time."

Mr. Magee entered into no dispute on this point, and for half an hour he
was the pleased recipient of advice, philosophy, and food. When he had
assured Mrs. Quimby that he had eaten enough to last him the entire two
months he intended spending at the inn, Mr. Quimby came in, attired in a
huge "before the war" ulster, and carrying a lighted lantern.

"So you're going to sit up there and write things," he commented. "Well,
I reckon you'll be left to yourself, all right."

"I hope so," responded Mr. Magee. "I want to be so lonesome I'll sob
myself to sleep every night. It's the only road to immortality. Good-by,
Mrs. Quimby. In my fortress on the mountain I shall expect an occasional
culinary message from you." He took her plump hand; this motherly little
woman seemed the last link binding him to the world of reality.

"Good-by," smiled Mrs. Quimby. "Be careful of matches."

Mr. Quimby led the way with the lantern, and presently they stepped out
upon the road. The storm had ceased, but it was still very dark. Far
below, in the valley, twinkled the lights of Upper Asquewan Falls.

"By the way, Quimby," remarked Mr. Magee, "is there a girl in your town
who has blue eyes, light hair, and the general air of a queen out
shopping?"

"Light hair," repeated Quimby. "There's Sally Perry. She teaches in the
Methodist Sunday-school."

"No," said Mr. Magee. "My description was poor, I'm afraid. This one I
refer to, when she weeps, gives the general effect of mist on the sea at
dawn. The Methodists do not monopolize her."

"I read books, and I read newspapers," said Mr. Quimby, "but a lot of
your talk I don't understand."

"The critics," replied Billy Magee, "could explain. My stuff is only for
low-brows. Lead on, Mr. Quimby."

Mr. Quimby stood for a moment in dazed silence. Then he turned, and the
yellow of his lantern fell on the dazzling snow ahead. Together the two
climbed Baldpate Mountain.

CHAPTER II

ENTER A LOVELORN HABERDASHER

Baldpate Inn did not stand tiptoe on the misty mountain-top. Instead it
clung with grim determination to the side of Baldpate, about half-way
up, much as a city man clings to the running board of an open
street-car. This was the comparison Mr. Magee made, and even as he made
it he knew that atmospheric conditions rendered it questionable. For an
open street-car suggests summer and the ball park; Baldpate Inn, as it
shouldered darkly into Mr. Magee's ken, suggested winter at its most
wintry.

About the great black shape that was the inn, like arms, stretched broad
verandas. Mr. Magee remarked upon them to his companion.

"Those porches and balconies and things," he said, "will come in handy
in cooling the fevered brow of genius."

"There ain't much fever in this locality," the practical Quimby assured
him, "especially not in winter."

Silenced, Mr. Magee followed the lantern of Quimby over the snow to the
broad steps, and up to the great front door. There Magee produced from
beneath his coat an impressive key. Mr. Quimby made as though to assist,
but was waved aside.

"This is a ceremony," Mr. Magee told him, "some day Sunday newspaper
stories will be written about it. Baldpate Inn opening its doors to the
great American novel!"

He placed the key in the lock, turned it, and the door swung open. The
coldest blast of air Mr. Magee had even encountered swept out from the
dark interior. He shuddered, and wrapped his coat closer. He seemed to
see the white trail from Dawson City, the sled dogs straggling on with
the dwindling provisions, the fat Eskimo guide begging for gum-drops by
his side.

"Whew," he cried, "we've discovered another Pole!"

"It's stale air," remarked Quimby.

"You mean the Polar atmosphere," replied Magee. "Yes, it is pretty
stale. Jack London and Doctor Cook have worked it to death."

"I mean," said Quimby, "this air has been in here alone too long. It's
as stale as last week's newspaper. We couldn't heat it with a million
fires. We'll have to let in some warm air from outside first."

"Warm air--humph," remarked Mr. Magee. "Well, live and learn."

The two stood together in a great bare room. The rugs had been removed,
and such furniture as remained had huddled together, as if for warmth,
in the center of the floor. When they stepped forward, the sound of
their shoes on the hard wood seemed the boom that should wake the dead.

"This is the hotel office," explained Mr. Quimby.

At the left of the door was the clerk's desk; behind it loomed a great
safe, and a series of pigeon-holes for the mail of the guests. Opposite
the front door, a wide stairway led to a landing half-way up, where the
stairs were divorced and went to the right and left in search of the
floor above. Mr. Magee surveyed the stairway critically.

"A great place," he remarked, "to show off the talents of your
dressmaker, eh, Quimby? Can't you just see the stunning gowns coming
down that stair in state, and the young men below here agitated in their
bosoms?"

"No, I can't," said Mr. Quimby frankly.

"I can't either, to tell the truth," laughed Billy Magee. He turned up
his collar. "It's like picturing a summer girl sitting on an iceberg and
swinging her open-work hosiery over the edge. I don't suppose it's
necessary to register. I'll go right up and select my apartments."

It was upon a suite of rooms that bore the number seven on their door
that Mr. Magee's choice fell. A large parlor with a fireplace that a few
blazing logs would cheer, a bedroom whose bed was destitute of all save
mattress and springs, and a bathroom, comprised his kingdom. Here, too,
all the furniture was piled in the center of the rooms. After Quimby had
opened the windows, he began straightening the furniture about.

Mr. Magee inspected his apartment. The windows were all of the low
French variety, and opened out upon a broad snow-covered balcony which
was in reality the roof of the first floor veranda. On this balcony
Magee stood a moment, watching the trees on Baldpate wave their black
arms in the wind, and the lights of Upper Asquewan Falls wink knowingly
up at him. Then he came inside, and his investigations brought him,
presently to the tub in the bathroom.

"Fine," he cried, "a cold plunge in the morning before the daily
struggle for immortality begins."

He turned the spigot. Nothing happened.

"I reckon," drawled Mr. Quimby from the bedroom, "you'll carry your cold
plunge up from the well back of the inn before you plunge into it. The
water's turned off. We can't take chances with busted pipes."

"Of course," replied Magee less blithely. His ardor was somewhat
dampened--a paradox--by the failure of the spigot to gush forth a
response. "There's nothing I'd enjoy more than carrying eight pails of
water up-stairs every morning to get up an appetite for--what? Oh, well,
the Lord will provide. If we propose to heat up the great American
outdoors, Quimby, I think it's time we had a fire."

Mr. Quimby went out without comment, and left Magee to light his first
candle in the dark. For a time he occupied himself with lighting a few
of the forty, and distributing them about the room. Soon Quimby came
back with kindling and logs, and subsequently a noisy fire roared in the
grate. Again Quimby retired, and returned with a generous armful of
bedding, which he threw upon the brass bed in the inner room. Then he
slowly closed and locked the windows, after which he came and looked
down with good-natured contempt at Mr. Magee, who sat in a chair before
the fire.

"I wouldn't wander round none," he advised. "You might fall down
something--or something. I been living in these parts, off and on, for
sixty years and more, and nothing like this ever came under my
observation before. Howsomever, I guess it's all right if Mr. Bentley
says so. I'll come up in the morning and see you down to the train."

"What train?" inquired Mr. Magee.

"Your train back to New York City," replied Mr. Quimby. "Don't try to
start back in the night. There ain't no train till morning."

"Ah, Quimby," laughed Mr. Magee, "you taunt me. You think I won't stick
it out. But I'll show you. I tell you, I'm hungry for solitude."

"That's all right," Mr. Quimby responded, "you can't make three square
meals a day off solitude."

"I'm desperate," said Magee. "Henry Cabot Lodge must come to me, I say,
with tears in his eyes. Ever see the senator that way? No? It isn't
going to be an easy job. I must put it over. I must go deep into the
hearts of men, up here, and write what I find. No more shots in the
night. Just the adventure of soul and soul. Do you see? By the way,
here's twenty dollars, your first week's pay as caretaker of a New York
Quixote."

"What's that?" asked Quimby.

"Quixote," explained Mr. Magee, "was a Spanish lad who was a little
confused in his mind, and went about the country putting up at summer
resorts in mid-winter."

"I'd expect it of a Spaniard," Quimby said. "Be careful of that fire.
I'll be up in the morning." He stowed away the bill Mr. Magee had given
him. "I guess nothing will interfere with your lonesomeness. Leastways,
I hope it won't. Good night."

Mr. Magee bade the man good night, and listened to the thump of his
boots, and the closing of the great front door. From his windows he
watched the caretaker move down the road without looking back, to
disappear at last in the white night.

Throwing off his great coat, Mr. Magee noisily attacked the fire. The
blaze flared red on his strong humorous mouth, in his smiling eyes.
Next, in the flickering half-light of suite seven, he distributed the
contents of his traveling-bags about. On the table he placed a number of
new magazines and a few books.

Then Mr. Magee sat down in the big leather chair before the fire, and
caught his breath. Here he was at last. The wild plan he and Hal Bentley
had cooked up in that Forty-fourth Street club had actually come to be.
"Seclusion," Magee had cried. "Bermuda," Bentley had suggested. "A
mixture of sea, hotel clerks, and honeymooners!" the seeker for solitude
had sneered. "Some winter place down South,"--from Bentley. "And a
flirtation lurking in every corner!"--from Magee. "A country town where
you don't know any one." "The easiest place in the world to get
acquainted. I must be alone, man! Alone!" "Baldpate Inn," Bentley had
cried in his idiom. "Why, Billy--Baldpate Inn at Christmas--it must be
old John H. Seclusion himself."

Yes, here he was. And here was the solitude he had come to find. Mr.
Magee looked nervously about, and the smile died out of his gray eyes.
For the first time misgivings smote him. Might one not have too much of
a good thing? A silence like that of the tomb had descended. He recalled
stories of men who went mad from loneliness. What place lonelier than
this? The wind howled along the balcony. It rattled the windows. Outside
his door lay a great black cave--in summer gay with men and maids--now
like Crusoe's island before the old man landed.

"Alone, alone, all, all alone," quoted Mr. Magee. "If I can't think here
it will be because I'm not equipped with the apparatus. I will. I'll
show the gloomy old critics! I wonder what's doing in New York?"

New York! Mr. Magee looked at his watch. Eight o'clock. The great street
was ablaze. The crowds were parading from the restaurants to the
theaters. The electric signs were pasting lurid legends on a long
suffering sky; the taxis were spraying throats with gasoline; the
traffic cop at Broadway and Forty-second Street was madly earning his
pay. Mr. Magee got up and walked the floor. New York!

Probably the telephone in his rooms was jangling, vainly calling forth
to sport with Amaryllis in the shade of the rubber trees Billy
Magee--Billy Magee who sat alone in the silence on Baldpate Mountain.
Few knew of his departure. This was the night of that stupid attempt at
theatricals at the Plaza; stupid in itself but gay, almost giddy, since
Helen Faulkner was to be there. This was the night of the dinner to
Carey at the club. This was the night--of many diverting things.

Mr. Magee picked up a magazine. He wondered how they read, in the old
days, by candlelight. He wondered if they would have found his own
stories worth the strain on the eyes. And he also wondered if absolute
solitude was quite the thing necessary to the composition of the novel
that should forever silence those who sneered at his ability.

Absolute solitude! Only the crackle of the fire, the roar of the wind,
and the ticking of his watch bore him company. He strode to the window
and looked down at the few dim lights that proclaimed the existence of
Upper Asquewan Falls. Somewhere, down there, was the Commercial House.
Somewhere the girl who had wept so bitterly in that gloomy little
waiting-room. She was only three miles away, and the thought cheered Mr.
Magee. After all, he was not on a desert island.

And yet--he was alone, intensely, almost painfully, alone. Alone in a
vast moaning house that must be his only home until he could go back to
the gay city with his masterpiece. What a masterpiece! As though with a
surgeon's knife it would lay bare the hearts of men. No tricks of plot,
no--

Mr. Magee paused. For sharply in the silence the bell of his room
telephone rang out.

He stood for a moment gazing in wonder, his heart beating swiftly, his
eyes upon the instrument on the wall. It was a house phone; he knew that
it could only be rung from the switchboard in the hall below. "I'm going
mad already," he remarked, and took down the receiver.

A blur of talk, an electric muttering, a click, and all was still.

Mr. Magee opened the door and stepped out into the shadows. He heard a
voice below. Noiselessly he crept to the landing, and gazed down into
the office. A young man sat at the telephone switchboard; Mr. Magee
could see in the dim light of a solitary candle that he was a person of
rather hilarious raiment. The candle stood on the top of the safe, and
the door of the latter swung open. Sinking down on the steps in the
dark, Mr. Magee waited.

"Hello," the young man was saying, "how do you work this thing, anyhow?
I've tried every peg but the right one. Hello--hello! I want long
distance--Reuton. 2876 West--Mr. Andy Rutter. Will you get him for me,
sister?"

Another wait--a long one--ensued. The candle sputtered. The young man
fidgeted in his chair. At last he spoke again:

"Hello! Andy? Is that you, Andy? What's the good word? As quiet as the
tomb of Napoleon. Shall I close up shop? Sure. What next? Oh, see here,
Andy, I'd die up here. Did you ever hit a place like this in winter? I
can't--I--oh, well, if he says so. Yes. I could do that. But no longer.
I couldn't stand it long. Tell him that. Tell him everything's O. K.
Yes. All right. Well, good night, Andy."

He turned away from the switchboard, and as he did so Mr. Magee walked
calmly down the stairs toward him. With a cry the young man ran to the
safe, threw a package inside, and swung shut the door. He turned the
knob of the safe several times; then he faced Mr. Magee. The latter saw
something glitter in his hand.

"Good evening," remarked Mr. Magee pleasantly.

"What are you doing here?" cried the youth wildly.

"I live here," Mr. Magee assured him. "Won't you come up to my
room--it's right at the head of the stairs. I have a fire, you know."

Back into the young man's lean hawk-like face crept the assurance that
belonged with the gay attire he wore. He dropped the revolver into his
pocket, and smiled a sneering smile.

"You gave me a turn," he said. "Of course you live here. Are any of the
other guests about? And who won the tennis match to-day?"

"You are facetious." Mr. Magee smiled too. "So much the better. A lively
companion is the very sort I should have ordered to-night. Come
up-stairs."

The young man looked suspiciously about, his thin nose seemingly
scenting plots. He nodded, and picked up the candle. "All right," he
said. "But I'll have to ask you to go first. You know the way." His
right hand sought the pocket into which the revolver had fallen.

"You honor my poor and drafty house," said Mr. Magee. "This way."

He mounted the stairs. After him followed the youth of flashy
habiliments, looking fearfully about him as he went. He seemed surprised
that they came to Magee's room without incident. Inside, Mr. Magee drew
up an easy chair before the fire, and offered his guest a cigar.

"You must be cold," he said. "Sit here. 'A bad night, stranger' as they
remark in stories."

"You've said it," replied the young man, accepting the cigar. "Thanks."
He walked to the door leading into the hall and opened it about a foot.
"I'm afraid," he explained jocosely, "we'll get to talking, and miss the
breakfast bell." He dropped into the chair, and lighted his cigar at a
candle end. "Say, you never can tell, can you? Climbing up old Baldpate
I thought to myself, that hotel certainly makes the Sahara Desert look
like a cozy corner. And here you are, as snug and comfortable and at
home as if you were in a Harlem flat. You never can tell. And what now?
The story of my life?"

"You might relate," Mr. Magee told him, "that portion of it that has led
you trespassing on a gentleman seeking seclusion at Baldpate Inn."

The stranger looked at Mr. Magee. He had an eye that not only looked,
but weighed, estimated, and classified. Mr. Magee met it smilingly.

"Trespassing, eh?" said the young man. "Far be it from me to quarrel
with a man who smokes as good cigars as you do--but there's something I
haven't quite doped out. That is--who's trespassing, me or you?"

"My right here," said Mr. Magee, "is indisputable."

"It's a big word," replied the other, "but you can tack it to my right
here, and tell no lie. We can't dispute, so let's drop the matter. With
that settled, I'm encouraged to pour out the story of why you see me
here to-night, far from the madding crowd. Have you a stray tear? You'll
need it. It's a sad touching story, concerned with haberdashery and a
trusting heart, and a fair woman--fair, but, oh, how false!"

"Proceed," laughed Mr. Magee. "I'm an admirer of the vivid imagination.
Don't curb yours, I beg of you."

"It's all straight," said the other in a hurt tone. "Every word true. My
name is Joseph Bland. My profession, until love entered my life, was
that of haberdasher and outfitter. In the city of Reuton, fifty miles
from here, I taught the Beau Brummels of the thoroughfares what was
doing in London in the necktie line. I sold them coats with padded
shoulders, and collars high and awe inspiring. I was happy, twisting a
piece of silk over my hand to show them how it would look on their
heaving bosoms. And then--she came."

Mr. Bland puffed on his cigar.

"Yes," he said, "Arabella sparkled on the horizon of my life. When I
have been here in the quiet for about two centuries, maybe I can do
justice to her beauty. I won't attempt to describe her now. I loved
her--madly. She said I made a hit with her. I spent on her the profits
of my haberdashery. I whispered--marriage. She didn't scream. I had my
wedding necktie picked out from the samples of a drummer from Troy." He
paused and looked at Mr. Magee. "Have you ever stood, poised, on that
brink?" he asked.

"Never," replied Magee. "But go on. Your story attracts me, strangely."

"From here on--the tear I spoke of, please. There flashed on the scene a
man she had known and loved in Jersey City. I said flashed. He did--just
that. A swell dresser--say, he had John Drew beat by two mauve neckties
and a purple frock coat. I had a haberdashery back of me. No use. He
out-dressed me. I saw that Arabella's love for me was waning. With his
chamois-gloved hands that new guy fanned the ancient flame."

He paused. Emotion--or the smoke of the cigar--choked him.

"Let's make the short story shorter," he said. "She threw me down. In my
haberdashery I thought it over. I was blue, bitter. I resolved on a
dreadful step. In the night I wrote her a letter, and carried it down to
the box and posted it. Life without Arabella, said the letter, was
Shakespeare with Hamlet left out. It hinted at the river, carbolic acid,
revolvers. Yes, I posted it. And then--"

"And then," urged Mr. Magee.

Mr. Bland felt tenderly of the horseshoe pin in his purple tie.

"This is just between us," he said. "At that point the trouble began. It
came from my being naturally a very brave man. I could have died--easy.
The brave thing was to live. To go on, day after day, devoid of
Arabella--say, that took courage. I wanted to try it. I'm a courageous
man, as I say."

"You seem so," Mr. Magee agreed.

"Lion-hearted," assented Mr. Bland. "I determined to show my nerve, and
live. But there was my letter to Arabella. I feared she wouldn't
appreciate my bravery--women are dull sometimes. It came to me maybe she
would be hurt if I didn't keep my word, and die. So I had to--disappear.
I had a friend mixed up in affairs at Baldpate. No, I can't give his
name. I told him my story. He was impressed by my spirit, as you have
been. He gave me a key he had--the key of the door opening from the east
veranda into the dining-room. So I came up here. I came here to be
alone, to forgive and forget, to be forgot. And maybe to plan a new
haberdashery in distant parts."

"Was it your wedding necktie," asked Mr. Magee, "that you threw into the
safe when you saw me coming?"

"No," replied Mr. Bland, sighing deeply. "A package of letters, written
to me by Arabella at various times. I want to forget 'em. If I kept them
on hand, I might look at them from time to time. My great courage might
give way--you might find my body on the stairs. That's why I hid them."

Mr. Magee laughed, and stretched forth his hand.

"Believe me," he said, "your touching confidence in me will not be
betrayed. I congratulate you on your narrative power. You want my story.
Why am I here? I am not sure that it is worthy to follow yours. But it
has its good points--as I have thought it out."

He went over to the table, and picked up a popular novel upon which his
gaze had rested while the haberdasher spun his fabric of love and gloom.
On the cover was a picture of a very dashing maiden.

"Do you see that girl?" he asked. "She is beautiful, is she not? Even
Arabella, in her most splendid moments, could get a few points from her,
I fancy. Perhaps you are not familiar with the important part such a
picture plays in the success of a novel to-day. The truth is, however,
that the noble art of fiction writing has come to lean more and more
heavily on its illustrators. The mere words that go with the pictures
grow less important every day. There are dozens of distinguished
novelists in the country at this moment who might be haberdashers if it
weren't for the long, lean, haughty ladies who are scattered tastefully
through their works."

Mr. Bland stirred uneasily.

"I can see you are at a loss to know what my search for seclusion and
privacy has to do with all this," continued Mr. Magee. "I am an artist.
For years I have drawn these lovely ladies who make fiction salable to
the masses. Many a novelist owes his motor-car and his country house to
my brush. Two months ago, I determined to give up illustration forever,
and devote my time to painting. I turned my back on the novelists. Can
you imagine what happened?"

"My imagination's a little tired," apologized Mr. Bland.

"Never mind. I'll tell you. The leading authors whose work I had so long
illustrated saw ruin staring them in the face. They came to me, on their
knees, figuratively. They begged. They pleaded. They hid in the
vestibule of my flat. I should say, my studio. They even came up in my
dumb-waiter, having bribed the janitor. They wouldn't take no for an
answer. In order to escape them and their really pitiful pleadings, I
had to flee. I happened to have a friend involved in the management of
Baldpate Inn. I am not at liberty to give his name. He gave me a key. So
here I am. I rely on you to keep my secret. If you perceive a novelist
in the distance, lose no time in warning me."

Mr. Magee paused, chuckling inwardly. He stood looking down at the
lovelorn haberdasher. The latter got to his feet, and solemnly took
Magee's hand.

"I--I--oh, well, you've got me beat a mile, old man," he said.

"You don't mean to say--" began the hurt Magee.

"Oh, that's all right," Mr. Bland assured him. "I believe every word of
it. It's all as real as the haberdashery to me. I'll keep my eye peeled
for novelists. What gets me is, when you boil our two fly-by-night
stories down, I've come here to be alone. You want to be alone. We can't
be alone here together. One of us must clear out."

"Nonsense," answered Billy Magee. "I'll be glad to have you here. Stay
as long as you like."

The haberdasher looked Mr. Magee fully in the eye, and the latter was
startled by the hostility he saw in the other's face.

"The point is," said Mr. Bland, "I don't want you here. Why? Maybe
because you recall beautiful dames--on book covers--and in that way,
Arabella. Maybe--but what's the use? I put it simply. I got to be
alone--alone on Baldpate Mountain. I won't put you out to-night--"

"See here, my friend," cried Mr. Magee, "your grief has turned your
head. You won't put me out to-night, or to-morrow. I'm here to stay.
You're welcome to do the same, if you like. But you stay--with me. I
know you are a man of courage--but it would take at least ten men of
courage to put me out of Baldpate Inn."

They stood eying each other for a moment. Bland's thin lips twisted into
a sneer. "We'll see," he said. "We'll settle all that in the morning."
His tone took on a more friendly aspect "I'm going to pick out a downy
couch in one of these rooms," he said, "and lay me down to sleep. Say, I
could greet a blanket like a long-lost friend."

Mr. Magee proffered some of the covers that Quimby had given him, and
accompanied Mr. Bland to suite ten, across the hall. He explained the
matter of "stale air", and assisted in the opening of windows. The
conversation was mostly facetious, and Mr. Bland's last remark concerned
the fickleness of woman. With a brisk good night, Mr. Magee returned to
number seven.

But he made no move toward the chilly brass bed in the inner room.
Instead he sat a long time by the fire. He reflected on the events of
his first few hours in that supposedly uninhabited solitude where he was
to be alone with his thoughts. He pondered the way and manner of the
flippant young man who posed as a lovelorn haberdasher, and under whose
flippancy there was certainly an air of hostility. Who was Andy Rutter,
down in Reuton? What did the young man mean when he asked if he should
"close up shop"? Who was the "he" from whom came the orders? and most
important of all, what was in the package now resting in the great safe?

Mr. Magee smiled. Was this the stuff of which solitude was made? He
recalled the ludicrous literary tale he had invented to balance the
moving fiction of Arabella, and his smile grew broader. His imagination,
at least, was in a healthy state. He looked at his watch. A quarter of
twelve. Probably they were having supper at the Plaza now, and Helen
Faulkner was listening to the banalities of young Williams. He settled
in his seat to think of Miss Faulkner. He thought of her for ten
seconds; then stepped to the window.

The moon had risen, and the snowy roofs of Upper Asquewan Falls sparkled
in the lime-light of the heavens. Under one of those roofs was the girl
of the station--weeping no more, he hoped. Certainly she had eyes that
held even the least susceptible--to which class Mr. Magee prided himself
he belonged. He wished he might see her again; might talk to her without
interruption from that impossible "mamma."

Mr. Magee turned back into the room. His fire was but red glowing ashes.
He threw off his dressing-gown, and began to unlace his shoes.

"There _has_ been too much crude melodrama in my novels," he reflected.
"It's so easy to write. But I'm going to get away from all that up here.
I'm going--"

Mr. Magee paused, with one shoe poised in his hand. For from below came
the sharp crack of a pistol, followed by the crash of breaking glass.

BLONDES AND SUFFRAGETTES

Mr. Magee slipped into his dressing gown, seized a candle, and like the
boy in the nursery rhyme with one shoe off and one shoe on, ran into the
hall. All was silent and dark below. He descended to the landing, and
stood there, holding the candle high above his head. It threw a dim
light as far as the bottom of the stairs, but quickly lost the battle
with the shadows that lay beyond.

"Hello," the voice of Bland, the haberdasher, came out of the blackness.
"The Goddess of Liberty, as I live! What's your next imitation?"

"There seems to be something doing," said Mr. Magee.

Mr. Bland came into the light, partially disrobed, his revolver in his
hand.

"Somebody trying to get in by the front door," he explained. "I shot at
him to scare him away. Probably one of your novelists."

"Or Arabella," remarked Mr. Magee, coming down.

"No," answered Bland. "I distinctly saw a derby hat."

With Mr. Magee descended the yellow candlelight, and brushing aside the
shadows of the hotel office, it revealed a mattress lying on the floor
close to the clerk's desk, behind which stood the safe. On the mattress
was the bedding Magee had presented to the haberdasher, hastily thrown
back by the lovelorn one on rising.

"You prefer to sleep down here," Mr. Magee commented.

"Near the letters of Arabella--yes," replied Bland. His keen eyes met
Magee's. There was a challenge in them.

Mr. Magee turned, and the yellow light of the candle flickered wanly
over the great front door Even as he looked at it, the door was pushed
open, and a queer figure of a man stood framed against a background of
glittering snow. Mr. Bland's arm flew up.

"Don't shoot," cried Magee.

"No, please don't," urged the man in the doorway. A beard, a pair of
round owlish spectacles, and two ridiculous ear-muffs, left only a
suggestion of face here and there. He closed the door and stepped into
the room. "I have every right here, I assure you, even though my arrival
is somewhat unconventional. See--I have the key." He held up a large
brass key that was the counterpart of the one Hal Bentley had bestowed
upon Mr. Magee in that club on far-off Forty-fourth Street.

"Keys to burn," muttered Mr. Bland sourly.

"I bear no ill will with regard to the shooting," went on the newcomer.
He took off his derby hat and ruefully regarded a hole through the
crown. His bald head seemed singularly frank and naked above a face of
so many disguises. "It is only natural that men alone on a mountain
should defend themselves from invaders at two in the morning. My escape
was narrow, but there is no ill will."

He blinked about him, his breath a white cloud in the cold room.

"Life, young gentlemen," he remarked, setting down his bag and leaning a
green umbrella against it, "has its surprises even at sixty-two. Last
night I was ensconced by my own library fire, preparing a paper on the
Pagan Renaissance. To-night I am on Baldpate Mountain, with a
perforation in my hat."

Mr. Bland shivered. "I'm going back to bed," he said in disgust.

"First," went on the gentleman with the perforated derby, "permit me to
introduce myself. I am Professor Thaddeus Bolton, and I hold the Chair
of Comparative Literature in a big eastern university."

Mr. Magee took the mittened hand of the professor.

"Glad to see you, I'm sure," he said. "My name is Magee. This is Mr.
Bland--he is impetuous but estimable. I trust you will forgive his first
salute. What's a bullet among gentlemen? It seems to me that as
explanations may be lengthy and this room is very cold, we would do well
to go up to my room, where there is a fire."

"Delighted," cried the old man. "A fire. I long to see one. Let us go to
your room, by all means."

Mr. Bland sulkily stalked to his mattress and secured a gaily colored
bed quilt, which he wound about his thin form.

"This is positively the last experience meeting I attend to-night," he
growled.

They ascended to number seven. Mr. Magee piled fresh logs on the fire;
Mr. Bland saw to it that the door was not tightly closed. The professor
removed, along with other impedimenta, his ear tabs, which were
connected by a rubber cord. He waved them like frisky detached ears
before him.

"An old man's weakness," he remarked. "Foolish, they may seem to you.
But I assure you I found them useful companions in climbing Baldpate
Mountain at this hour."

He sat down in the largest chair suite seven owned, and from its depths
smiled benignly at the two young men.

"But I am not here to apologize for my apparel, am I? Hardly. You are
saying to yourselves 'Why is he here?' Yes, that is the question that
disturbs you. What has brought this domesticated college professor
scampering from the Pagan Renaissance to Baldpate Inn? For answer, I
must ask you to go back with me a week's time, and gaze at a picture
from the rather dreary academic kaleidoscope that is my life.

"I am seated back of a desk on a platform in a bare yellow room. In
front of me, tier on tier, sit a hundred young men in various attitudes
of inattention. I am trying to tell them something of the ideal poetry
that marked the rebirth of the Saxon genius. They are bored. I--well,
gentlemen, in confidence, even the mind of a college professor has been
known to wander at times from the subject in hand. And then--I begin to
read a poem--a poem descriptive of a woman dead six hundred years and
more. Ah, gentlemen--"

He sat erect on the edge of his great chair. Back of the thick lenses of
his spectacles he had eyes that still could flash.

"This is not an era of romance," he said. "Our people grub in the dirt
for the dollar. Their visions perish. Their souls grow stale. Yet, now
and then, at most inopportune times, comes the flash that reveals to us
the glories that might be. A gentleman of my acquaintance caught a
glimpse of perfect happiness while he was in the midst of an effort to
corner the pickle market. Another evolved the scheme of a perfect ode to
the essential purity of woman in--a Broadway restaurant. So, like
lightning across the blackest sky, our poetic moments come."

Mr. Bland wrapped his gay quilt more securely about him. Mr. Magee
smiled encouragement on the newest raconteur.

"I shall be brief," continued Professor Bolton. "Heaven knows that
pedagogic room was no place for visions, nor were those athletic young
men fit companions for a soul gone giddy. Yet--I lost my head. As I read
on there returned to my heart a glow I had not known in forty years. The
bard spoke of her hair:

    "'Her yellow lockes, crisped like golden wyre,
     About her shoulders weren loosely shed'

and I saw, as in a dream--ahem, I can trust you, gentlemen--a girl I
supposed I had forever forgot in the mold and dust of my later years. I
will not go further into the matter. My wife's hair is black.

"And reading on, but losing the thread of the poet's eulogy in the
golden fabric of my resurrected dream, it came to me to compare that
maid I knew in the long ago with the women I know to-day. Ah, gentlemen!
Lips, made but for smiling, fling weighty arguments on the unoffending
atmosphere. Eyes, made to light with that light that never was by land
or sea, blaze instead with what they call the injustice of woman's
servitude. White hands, made to find their way to the hands of some
young man in the moonlight, carry banners in the dusty streets. It
seemed I saw the blue eyes of that girl of long ago turned, sad,
rebuking, on her sisters of to-day. As I finished reading, my heart was
awhirl. I said to the young men before me:

"'There _was_ a woman, gentlemen--a woman worth a million suffragettes.'

"They applauded. The fire in me died down. Soon I was my old meek,
academic self. The vision had left no trace. I dismissed my class and
went home. I found that my wife--she of the black hair--had left my
slippers by the library fire. I put them on, and plunged into a pamphlet
lately published by a distinguished member of a German university
faculty. I thought the incident closed forever."

He gazed sorrowfully at the two young men.

"But, gentlemen, I had not counted on that viper that we nourish in our
bosom--the American newspaper. At present I will not take time to
denounce the press. I am preparing an article on the subject for a
respectable weekly of select circulation. Suffice it to record what
happened. The next day an evening paper appeared with a huge picture of
me on its front page, and the hideous statement that this was the
Professor Bolton who had said that 'One Peroxide Blonde Is Worth a
Million Suffragettes'.

"Yes, that was the dreadful version of my remark that was spread
broadcast. Up to the time that story appeared, I had no idea as to what
sort of creature the peroxide blonde might be. I protested, of course. I
might as well have tried to dam a tidal wave with a table fork. The
wrath of the world swept down upon me. I was deluged with telegrams,
editorials, letters, denouncing me. Firm-faced females lay in wait for
me and waved umbrellas in my eyes. Even my wife turned from me, saying
that while she did not ask me to hold her views on the question of
suffrage, she thought I might at least refrain from publicly commending
a type of woman found chiefly in musical comedy choruses. I received a
note from the president of the university, asking me to be more
circumspect in my remarks. Me--Thadeus Bolton--the most conservative man
on earth by instinct!

"And still the denunciations of me poured in; still women's clubs held
meetings resolving against me; still a steady stream of reporters flowed
through my life, urging me to state my views further, to name the ten
greatest blondes in history, to--heaven knows what. Yesterday I resolved
I Could stand it no longer. I determined to go away until the whole
thing was forgotten. 'But', they said to me, 'there is no place, on land
or sea, where the reporters will not find you'. I talked the matter over
with my old friend, John Bentley, owner of Baldpate Inn, and he in his
kindness gave me the key to this hostelry."

The old man paused and passed a silk handkerchief over his bald head.

"That, sirs," he said, "is my story. That is why you see me on Baldpate
Mountain this chill December morning. That is why loneliness can have no
terrors, exile no sorrows, for me. That is why I bravely faced your
revolver-shots. Again let me repeat, I bear no malice on that score. You
have ruined a new derby hat, and the honorarium of professor even at a
leading university is not such as to permit of many purchases in that
line. But I forgive you freely. Even at the cannon's mouth I would have
fled from reputation, to paraphrase the poet."

Wisely Professor Bolton blinked about him. Mr. Bland was half asleep in
his chair, but Mr. Magee was quick with sympathy.

"Professor," he said, "you are a much suffering man. I feel for you.
Here, I am sure, you are safe from reporters, and the yellow journals
will soon forget you in their discovery of the next distorted wonder.
Briefly, Mr. Bland and myself will outline the tangle of events that
brought us to the inn--"

"Briefly is right," broke in Bland. "And then it's me for that
mountainous mattress of mine. I can rattle my story off in short order,
and give you the fine points to-morrow. Up to a short time ago--"

But Billy Magee interrupted. An idea, magnificent delicious, mirthful,
had come to him. Why not? He chuckled inwardly, but his face was most
serious.

"I should like to tell my story first, if you please," he said.

The haberdasher grunted. The professor nodded. Mr. Magee looked Bland
squarely in the eye, strangled the laugh inside him, and began:

"Up to a short time ago I was a haberdasher in the city of Reuton. My
name, let me state, is Magee--William Magee. I fitted the gay
shoulder-blades of Reuton with clothing from the back pages of the
magazines, and as for neckties--"

Mr. Bland's sly eyes had opened wide. He rose to a majestic
height--majestic considering the bed quilt.

"See here--" he began.

"Please don't interrupt," requested Mr. Magee sweetly. "I was, as I have
said, a happy carefree haberdasher. And then--she entered my life.
Arabella was her name. Ah, Professor, you lady of the yellow locks,
crisped liken golden wire--even she must never in my presence be
compared with Arabella. She--she had--a--face--Noah Webster couldn't
have found words to describe it. And her heart was true to yours
truly--at least I thought that it was."

Mr. Magee rattled on. The haberdasher, his calling and his tragedy
snatched from him by the humorous Magee, retired with sullen face into
his bed quilt. Carefully Mr. Magee led up to the coming of the man from
Jersey City; in detail he laid bare the duel of haberdashery fought in
the name of the fair Arabella. As he proceeded, his enthusiasm grew. He
added fine bits that had escaped Mr. Bland. He painted with free hand
the picture of tragedy's dark hour; the note hinting at suicide he gave
in full. Then he told of how his courage grew again, of how he put the
cowardice of death behind him, resolved to dare all--and live. He
finished at last, his voice husky with emotion. Out of the corner of his
eye he glanced triumphantly at Bland. That gentleman was gazing
thoughtfully at the blazing logs.

"You did quite right," commented Professor Bolton, "in making up your
mind to live. I congratulate you on your common sense. And perhaps, as
the years go by, you will realize that had you married your Arabella,
you would not have found life all honey and roses. She was fickle,
unworthy of you. Soon you will forget. Youth--ah, youth throws off its
sorrow like a cloak. A figure not original with me. And now--the
gentleman in the--er--the bed quilt. Has he, too, a story?"

"Yes," laughed Mr. Magee, "let's hear now from the gentleman in the bed
quilt. Has he, too, a story? And if so, what is it?"

He smiled delightedly into the eyes of Bland. What would the
ex-haberdasher do, shorn of his fictional explanation? Would he rise in
his wrath and denounce the man who had stolen his Arabella? Mr. Bland
smiled back. He stood up. And a contingency that had not entered Mr.
Magee's mind came to be.

Mr. Bland walked calmly to the table, and picked up a popular novel that
lay thereon. On its cover was the picture of a very beautiful maiden.

"See that dame?" he inquired of the professor. "Sort of makes a man sit
up and take notice, doesn't she? Even the frost-bitten haberdasher here
has got to admit that in some ways she has this Arabella person looking
like a faded chromo in your grandmother's parlor on a rainy afternoon.
Ever get any notion, Professor, the way a picture like that boosts a
novel in the busy marts of trade? No? Well--"

Mr. Bland continued. Mr. Magee leaned back, overjoyed, in his chair.
Here was a man not to be annoyed by the mere filching of his story. Here
was a man with a sense of humor--an opponent worthy his foe's best
efforts. In his rôle of a haberdasher overcome with woe, Mr. Magee
listened.

"I used to paint dames like that," Bland was saying to the dazed
professor. He explained how his pictures had enabled many a novelist to
"eat up the highway in a buzz-wagon." As he approached the time when the
novelists besieged him, he gave full play to his imagination. One, he
said, sought out his apartments in an aeroplane.

"Say, Professor," he finished, "we're in the same boat. Both hiding from
writers. A fellow that's spent his life selling neckties--well, he can't
exactly appreciate our situation. There's what you might call a bond
between you and me. D'ye know, I felt drawn to you, just after I fired
that first shot. That's why I didn't blaze away again. We're going to be
great friends--I can read it in the stars."

He took the older man's hand feelingly, shook it, and walked away,
casting a covert glance of triumph at Mr. Magee.

The face of the holder of the Crandall Chair of Comparative Literature
was a study. He looked first at one young man, then at the other. Again
he applied the handkerchief to his shining head.

"All this is very odd," he said thoughtfully. "A man of
sixty-two--particularly one who has long lived in the uninspired circle
surrounding a university--has not the quick wit of youth. I'm afraid I
don't--but no matter. It's very odd, though."

He permitted Mr. Magee to escort him into the hall, and to direct his
search for a bed that should serve him through the scant remainder of
the night. Overcoats and rugs were pressed into service as cover. Mr.
Bland blithely assisted.

"If I see any newspaper reporters," he assured the professor on parting,
"I'll damage more than their derbies."

"Thank you," replied the old man heartily. "You are very kind. To-morrow
we shall become better acquainted. Good night."

The two young men came out and stood in the hallway. Mr. Magee spoke in
a low tone.

"Forgive me," he said, "for stealing your Arabella."

"Take her and welcome," said Bland. "She was beginning to bore me,
anyhow. And I'm not in your class as an actor." He came close to Magee.
In the dim light that streamed out from number seven the latter saw the
look on his face, and knew that, underneath all, this was a very much
worried young man.

"For God's sake," cried Bland, "tell me who you are and what you're
doing here. In three words--tell me."

"If I did," Mr. Magee replied, "you wouldn't believe me. Let such minor
matters as the truth wait over till to-morrow."

"Well, anyhow," Bland said, his foot on the top step, "we are sure of
one thing--we don't trust each other. I've got one parting word for you.
Don't try to come down-stairs to-night. I've got a gun, and I ain't
afraid to shoot."

He paused. A look of fright passed over his face. For on the floor above
they both heard soft footsteps--then a faint click, as though a door had
been gently closed.

"This inn," whispered Bland, "has more keys than a literary club in a
prohibition town. And every one's in use, I guess. Remember. Don't try
to come down-stairs. I've warned you. Or Arabella's cast-off Romeo may
be found with a bullet in him yet."

"I shan't forget, what you say," answered Mr. Magee. "Shall we look
about up-stairs?"

Bland shook his head.

"No," he said. "Go in and go to bed. It's the down-stairs that--that
concerns me. Good night."

He went swiftly down the steps, leaving Mr. Magee staring wonderingly
after him. Like a wraith he merged with the shadows below. Magee turned
slowly, and entered number seven. A fantastic film of frost was on the
windows; the inner room was drear and chill. Partially undressing, he
lay down on the brass bed and pulled the covers over him.

The events of the night danced in giddy array before him as he closed
his eyes. With every groan Baldpate Inn uttered in the wind he started
up, keen for a new adventure. At length his mind seemed to stand still,
and there remained of all that amazing evening's pictures but one--that
of a girl in a blue corduroy suit who wept--wept only that her smile
might be the more dazzling when it flashed behind the tears. "With
yellow locks, crisped like golden wire," murmured Mr. Magee. And so he
fell asleep.

CHAPTER IV

A PROFESSIONAL HERMIT APPEARS

Every morning at eight, when slumber's chains had bound Mr. Magee in his
New York apartments, he was awakened by a pompous valet named Geoffrey
whom he shared with the other young men in the building. It was
Geoffrey's custom to enter, raise the curtains, and speak of the weather
in a voice vibrant with feeling, as of something he had prepared himself
and was anxious to have Mr. Magee try. So, when a rattling noise came to
his ear on his first morning at Baldpate Inn, Mr. Magee breathed
sleepily from the covers: "Good morning, Geoffrey."

But no cheery voice replied in terms of sun, wind, or rain. Surprised,
Mr. Magee sat up in bed. About him, the maple-wood furniture of suite
seven stood shivering in the chill of a December morning. Through the
door at his left he caught sight of a white tub into which, he recalled
sadly, not even a Geoffrey could coax a glittering drop. Yes--he was at
Baldpate Inn. He remembered--the climb with the dazed Quimby up the
snowy road, the plaint of the lovelorn haberdasher, the vagaries of the
professor with a penchant for blondes, the mysterious click of the
door-latch on the floor above. And last of all--strange that it should
have been last--a girl in blue corduroy somewhat darker than her eyes,
who wept amid the station's gloom.

"I wonder," reflected Mr. Magee, staring at the very brassy bars at the
foot of his bed, "what new variations on seclusion the day will bring
forth?"

Again came the rattling noise that had awakened him. He looked toward
the nearest window, and through an unfrosted corner of the pane he saw
the eyes of the newest variation staring at him in wonder. They were
dark eyes, and kindly; they spoke a desire to enter.

Rising from his warm retreat, Mr. Magee took his shivering way across
the uncarpeted floor and unfastened the window's catch. From the
blustering balcony a plump little man stepped inside. He had a market
basket on his arm. His face was a stranger to razors; his hair to
shears. He reminded Mr. Magee of the celebrated doctor who came every
year to the small town of his boyhood, there to sell a wonderful healing
herb to the crowds on the street corner.

Magee dived hastily back under the covers. "Well?" he questioned.

"So you're the fellow," remarked the little man in awe. He placed the
basket on the floor; it appeared to be filled with bromidic groceries,
such as the most subdued householder carries home.

"Which fellow?" asked Mr. Magee.

"The fellow Elijah Quimby told me about," explained he of the long brown
locks. "The fellow that's come up to Baldpate Inn to be alone with his
thoughts."

"You're one of the villagers, I take it," guessed Mr. Magee.

"You're dead wrong. I'm no villager. My instincts are all in the other
direction--away from the crowd. I live up near the top of Baldpate, in a
little shack I built myself. My name's Peters--Jake Peters--in the
winter. But in the summer, when the inn's open, and the red and white
awnings are out, and the band plays in the casino every night--then I'm
the Hermit of Baldpate Mountain. I come down here and sell picture
post-cards of myself to the ladies."

Mr. Magee appeared overcome with mirth.

"A professional hermit, by the gods!" he cried. "Say, I didn't know
Baldpate Mountain was fitted up with all the modern improvements. This
is great luck. I'm an amateur at the hermit business, you'll have to
teach me the fine points. Sit down."

"Just between ourselves, I'm not a regular hermit," said the plump
bewhiskered one, sitting gingerly on the edge of a frail chair. "Not one
of these 'all for love of a woman' hermits you read about in books. Of
course, I have to pretend I am, in summer, in order to sell the cards
and do my whole duty by the inn management. A lot of the women ask me in
soft tones about the great disappointment that drove me to old Baldpate,
and I give 'em various answers, according to how I feel. Speaking to you
as a friend, and considering the fact that it's the dead of winter, I
may say there was little or no romance in my life. I married early, and
stayed married a long time. I came up here for peace and quiet, and
because I felt a man ought to read something besides time-tables and
tradesmen's bills, and have something over his head besides a first and
second mortgage."

"Back to nature, in other words," remarked Mr. Magee.

"Yes, sir--back with a rush. I was down to the village this morning for
a few groceries, and I stopped off at Quimby's, as I often do. He told
me about you. I help him a lot around the inn, and we arranged I was to
stop in and start your fire, and do any other little errands you might
want done. I thought we ought to get acquainted, you and me, being as
we're both literary men, after a manner of speaking."

"No?" cried Mr. Magee.

"Yes," said the Hermit of Baldpate. "I dip into that work a little now
and then. Some of my verses on the joys of solitude have appeared in
print--on the post-cards I sell to the guests in the summer. But my
life-work, as you might call it, is a book I've had under way for some
time. It's called simply _Woman_. Just that one word--but, oh, the
meaning in it! That book is going to prove that all the trouble in the
world, from the beginning of time, was caused by females. Not just say
so, mind you. Prove it!"

"A difficult task, I'm afraid," smiled Magee.

"Not difficult--long," corrected the hermit. "When I started out, four
years ago, I thought it would just be a case of a chapter on Eve, and
honorable mention for Cleopatra and Helen of Troy, and a few more like
that, and the thing would be done. But as I got into the subject, I was
fairly buried under new evidence. Then Mr. Carnegie came along and gave
Upper Asquewan Falls a library. It's wonderful to think the great works
that man will be responsible for. I've dedicated _Woman_ to him. Since
the new library, I've dug up information about a thousand disasters I
never dreamed of before, and I contend that if you go back a ways in any
one of 'em, you'll find the fluffy little lady that started the whole
rumpus. So I hunt the woman. I reckon the French would call me the
greatest _cherchez la femme_ in history."

"A fascinating pursuit," laughed Mr. Magee. "I'm glad you've told me
about it, and I shall watch the progress of the work with interest.
Although I can't say that I entirely agree with you. Here and there is a
woman who more than makes amends for whatever trouble her sisters have
caused. One, for instance, with golden hair, and eyes that when they
weep--"

"You're young," interrupted the little man, rising. "There ain't no use
to debate it with you. I might as well try to argue with a storm at sea.
Some men keep the illusion to the end of their days, and I hope you're
one. I reckon I'll start your fire."

He went into the outer room, and Mr. Magee lay for a few moments
listening to his preparations about the fireplace. This was comfort, he
thought. And yet, something was wrong. Was it the growing feeling of
emptiness inside? Undoubtedly. He sat up in bed and leaning over, gazed
into the hermit's basket. The packages he saw there made his feeling of
emptiness the more acute.

"I say, Mr. Peters," he cried, leaping from bed and running into the
other room, where the hermit was persuading a faint blaze, "I've an
idea. You can cook, can't you?"

"Cook?" repeated the hermit. "Well, yes, I've had to learn a few things
about it, living far from the rathskellars the way I do."

"The very man," rejoiced Mr. Magee. "You must stay here and cook for
me--for us."

"Us?" asked the hermit, staring.

"Yes. I forgot to tell you. After Mr. Quimby left me last night, two
other amateur hermits hove in view. One is a haberdasher with a broken
heart--"

"Woman," cried the triumphant Peters.

"Name, Arabella," laughed Magee. "The other's a college professor who
made an indiscreet remark about blondes. You won't mind them, I'm sure,
and they may be able to help you a lot with your great work."

"I don't know what Quimby will say," studied the hermit. "I reckon he'll
run 'em out. He's against this thing--afraid of fire."

"Quimby will come later," Mr. Magee assured him, drawing on a
dressing-gown. "Just now the idea is a little water in yonder tub, and a
nice cheerful breakfast after. It's going to pay you a lot better than
selling post-cards to romantic ladies, I promise you. I won't take you
away from a work for which the world is panting without more than making
it up to you financially. Where do you stand as a coffee maker?"

"Wait till you taste it," said Peters reassuringly. "I'll bring you up
some water."

He started for the door, but Mr. Magee preceded him.

"The haberdasher," he explained, "sleeps below, and he's a nervous man.
He might commit the awful error of shooting the only cook on Baldpate
Mountain."

Mr. Magee went out into the hall and called from the depths the figure
of Bland, fully attired in his flashy garments, and looking tawdry and
tired in the morning light.

"I've been up hours," he remarked. "Heard somebody knocking round the
kitchen, but I ain't seen any breakfast brought in on a silver tray. My
inside feels like the Mammoth Cave."

Mr. Magee introduced the Hermit of Baldpate.

"Pleased to meet you," said Bland. "I guess it was you I heard in the
kitchen. So you're going to cater to this select few, are you? Believe
me, you can't get on the job any too soon to suit me."

Out of a near-by door stepped the black-garbed figure of Professor
Thaddeus Bolton, and him Mr. Magee included in the presentation
ceremonies. After the hermit had disappeared below, burdened with his
market basket and the supplies Mr. Magee had brought the night before,
the three amateurs at the hermit game gathered by the fire in number
seven, and Mr. Bland spoke feelingly:

"I don't know where you plucked that cook, but believe me, you get a
vote of thanks from yours truly. What is he--an advertisement for a hair
restorer?"

"He's a hermit," explained Magee, "and lives in a shack near the
mountain-top. Hermits and barbers aren't supposed to mix. He's also an
author, and is writing a book in which he lays all the trouble of the
ages at the feet of woman. Please treat him with the respect all these
dignified activities demand."

"A writer, you say," commented Professor Bolton. "Let us hope it will
not interfere with his cooking abilities. For even I, who am not much
given to thought about material things, must admit the presence of a
gnawing hunger within."

They talked little, being men unfed, while Jake Peters started
proceedings in the kitchen, and tramped up-stairs with many pails of
water. Mr. Magee requested warm water for shaving; whereupon he was
regarded with mingled emotions by his companions.

"You ain't going to see any skirts up here," Mr. Bland promised him. And
Mr. Peters, bringing the water from below, took occasion to point out
that shaving was one of man's troubles directly attributable to woman's
presence in the world.

At length the hermit summoned them to breakfast, and as they descended
the broad stair the heavenly odor of coffee sent a glow to their hearts.
Peters had built a rousing fire in the big fireplace opposite the
clerk's desk in the office, and in front of this he had placed a table
which held promise of a satisfactory breakfast. As the three sat down,
Mr. Bland spoke:

"I don't know about you, gentlemen, but I could fall on Mr. Peters' neck
and call him blessed."

The gentleman thus referred to served them genially. He brought to Mr.
Magee, between whom and himself he recognized the tie of authorship, a
copy of a New York paper that he claimed to get each morning from the
station agent, and which helped him greatly, he said, in his eternal
search for the woman. As the meal passed, Mr. Magee glanced it through.
Twice he looked up from it to study keenly his queer companions at
Baldpate Inn. Finally he handed it across the table to the haberdasher.
The dull yellow sun of a winter morning drifted in from the white
outdoors; the fire sputtered gaily in the grate. Also, Mr. Peters'
failing for literature interfered in no way with his talents as cook.
The three finished the repast in great good humor, and Mr. Magee handed
round cigars.

"Gentlemen," he remarked, pushing back his chair, "we find ourselves in
a peculiar position. Three lone men, knowing nothing of one another, we
have sought the solitude of Baldpate Inn at almost the same moment. Why?
Last night, before you came, Professor Bolton, Mr. Bland gave me as his
reason for being here the story of Arabella, which I afterward
appropriated as a joke and gave as my own reason. I related to Mr. Bland
the fiction about the artist and the besieging novelists. We swapped
stories when you came--it was our merry little method of doubting each
other's word. Perhaps it was bad taste. At any rate, looking at it in
the morning light, I am inclined to return Mr. Bland's Arabella, and no
questions asked. He is again the lovelorn haberdasher. I am inclined to
believe, implicitly, your story. That is my proposition. No doubts of
one another. We are here for whatever reasons we say we are."

The professor nodded gravely.

"Last night," went on Mr. Magee, "there was some talk between Mr. Bland
and myself about one of us leaving the inn. Mr. Bland demanded it. I
trust he sees the matter differently this morning. I for one should be
sorry to see him go."

"I've changed my mind," said Mr. Bland. The look on his thin face was
not a pleasant one. "Very good," went on Mr. Magee. "I see no reason why
we should not proceed on friendly terms. Mr. Peters has agreed to cook
for us. He can no doubt be persuaded to attend to our other wants. For
his services we shall pay him generously, in view of the circumstances.
As for Quimby--I leave you to make your peace with him."

"I have a letter to Mr. Quimby from my old friend, John Bentley," said
the professor, "which I am sure will win me the caretaker's warm
regard."

Mr. Magee looked at Bland.

"I'll get Andy Rutter on the wire," said that gentleman. "Quimby will
listen to him, I guess."

"Maybe," remarked Magee carelessly. "Who is Rutter?"

"He's manager of the inn when it's open," answered Bland. He looked
suspiciously at Magee. "I only know him slightly," he added.

"Those matters you will arrange for yourselves," Mr. Magee went on. "I
shall be very glad of your company if you can fix it to stay. Believe it
or not--I forgot, we agreed to believe, didn't we?--I am here to do some
writing. I'm going up to my room now to do a little work. All I ask of
you gentlemen is that, as a favor to me, you refrain from shooting at
each other while I am gone. You see, I am trying to keep crude melodrama
out of my stuff."

"I am sure," remarked Professor Bolton, "that the use of firearms as a
means of social diversion between Mr. Bland and myself is unthought of."

"I hope so," responded Magee. "There, then, the matter rests. We are
here--that is all." He hesitated, as though in doubt. Then, with a
decisive motion, he drew toward him the New York paper. With his eyes on
the head-lines of the first page, he continued: "I shall demand no
further explanations. And except for this once, I shall make no
reference to this story in the newspaper, to the effect that early
yesterday morning, in a laboratory at one of our leading universities, a
young assistant instructor was found dead under peculiar circumstances."
He glanced keenly at the bald-headed little man across from him. "Nor
shall I make conversation of the fact," he added, "that the professor of
chemistry at the university, a man past middle age, respected highly in
the university circle, is missing."

An oppressive silence followed this remark. Mr. Bland's sly eyes sought
quickly the professor's face. The older man sat staring at his plate;
then he raised his head and the round spectacles were turned full on
Magee.

"You are very kind," said Professor Bolton evenly.

"There is another story in this paper," went on Mr. Magee, glancing at
the haberdasher, "that, it seems to me, I ought to taboo as table talk
at Baldpate Inn. It relates that a few days ago the youthful cashier of
a bank in a small Pennsylvania town disappeared with thirty thousand
dollars of the bank's funds. No," he concluded, "we are simply here,
gentlemen, and I am very glad to let it go at that."

Mr. Bland sneered knowingly.

"I should think you would be," he said. "If you'll turn that paper over
you'll read on the back page that day before yesterday a lot of
expensive paintings in a New York millionaire's house were cut from
their frames, and that the young artist who was doing retouching in the
house at the time has been just careless enough not to send his address
to the police. It's a small matter, of course, and the professor and I
will never mention it again."

Mr. Magee threw back his head and laughed heartily.

"We understand one another, it seems," he said. "I look forward to
pleasant companionship where I had expected solitude. You will excuse me
now--there is the work to which I referred. Ah, here's Peters," he added
as the hermit entered through the dining-room door at the side of the
stairs.

"All finished, gentlemen?" he asked, coming forward. "Now, this is solid
comfort, ain't it? I reckon when you get a few days of this, you'll all
become hermits, and build yourselves shacks on the mountain. Solid
comfort. No woman to make you put on overshoes when you go out, or
lecture you about the effects of alcohol on the stomach. Heaven, I call
it."

"Peters," said Mr. Magee, "we have been wondering if you will stay on
here and cook for us. We need you. How about it?"

"Well--I'll be glad to help you out," the hermit replied. "I guess I can
manage to give satisfaction, seeing there ain't no women around. If
there was, I wouldn't think of it. Yes, I'll stay and do what I can to
boost the hermit life in your estimation. I--"

He stopped. His eyes were on the dining-room door, toward which Mr.
Magee's back was turned. The jaw of Peters fell, and his mouth stood
wide open. Behind the underbrush of beard a very surprised face was
discernible.

Mr. Magee turned quickly. A few feet inside the door stood the girl of
the station, weeping no more, but radiant with smiles. Back of her was
the determined impossible companion of yesterday.

"Oh, mamma," laughed the girl, "we're too late for breakfast! Isn't it a
shame?"

Mr. Bland's lean hands went quickly to adjust his purple tie. Professor
Bolton looked every inch the owl as he blinked in dazed fashion at the
blue corduroy vision. Gingerly Mr. Peters set down the plates he had
taken from the table, still neglecting his open mouth.

Mr. Magee rose from the table, and went forward with outstretched hand.

CHAPTER V

THE MAYOR CASTS A SHADOW BEFORE

"From tears to smiles," said Mr. Magee, taking the girl's hand. "What
worked the transformation? Not the Commercial House, I know, for I
passed it last evening."

"No, hardly the Commercial House," laughed the girl. "Rather the
sunshine of a winter morning, the brisk walk up the mountain, and the
sight of the Hermit of Baldpate with eyes like saucers staring at a
little girl who once bought his postal cards."

"Then you know Mr. Peters?" inquired Magee.

"Is that his name? You see, I never met him in private life--he was just
the hermit when I knew him. I used to come to Baldpate in the summers,
and send his cards back to the folks at home, and dream dreams of his
love-story when from my window I saw the light of his shack at night.
I'm so glad to meet Mr. Peters informally."

She held out her hand, but Peters, by long practise wary of women, had
burdened himself with breakfast plates which prevented his clasping it.
He muttered "How d'ye do?" and fled toward the door, narrowly averting
what would have proved a serious collision with the large woman on the
way.

"Mr. Peters meets so few of your sex in winter," Magee apologized, "you
must pardon his clumsiness. This gentleman"--he indicated the professor,
who arose--"is Thaddeus Bolton, a distinguished member of a certain
university faculty, who has fled to Baldpate to escape the press of
America. And this is Mr. Bland, who hides here from the world the scars
of a broken heart. But let us not go into details."

The girl smiled brightly. "And you--" she asked.

"William Hallowell Magee," he returned, bowing low. "I have a neat
little collection of stories accounting for my presence here, from which
I shall allow you to choose later. Not to mention the real one, which is
simple almost to a fault."

"I am so happy to meet you all," said the girl. "We shall no doubt
become very good friends. For mamma and I have also come to Baldpate
Inn--to stay."

Mr. Bland opened wide his usually narrow eyes, and ran his hand
thoughtfully over his one day's beard. Professor Bolton blinked his
astonishment. Mr. Magee smiled.

"I, for one, am delighted to hear it," he said.

"My name," went on the girl, "is Mary Norton. May I present my mother,
Mrs. Norton?"

The older woman adopted what was obviously her society manner. Once
again Mr. Magee felt a pang of regret that this should be the parent of
a girl so charming.

"I certainly am pleased to meet you all," she said in her heavy voice.
"Ain't it a lovely morning after the storm? The sun's almost blinding."

"Some explanation," put in Miss Norton quickly, "is due you if I am to
thrust myself thus upon you. I am perfectly willing to tell why I am
here--but the matter mustn't leak out. I can trust you, I'm sure."

Mr. Magee drew up chairs, and the two women were seated before the fire.

"The bandits of Baldpate," he remarked flippantly, glancing at the two
men, "have their own code of honor, and the first rule is never to
betray a pal."

"Splendid!" laughed the girl. "You said, I believe, that Professor
Bolton was fleeing from the newspapers. I am fleeing for the
newspapers--to attract their attention--to lure them into giving me that
thing so necessary to a woman in my profession, publicity. You see, I am
an actress. The name I gave you is not my stage name. That, perhaps, you
would know. I employ a gentleman to keep me before the public as much as
possible. It's horrid, I know, but it means bread and butter to me. That
gentleman, my press-agent, evolved the present scheme--a mysterious
disappearance."

She paused and looked at the others. Mr. Magee surveyed her narrowly.
The youthful bloom of her cheek carried to him no story of grease paint;
her unaffected manner was far from suggesting anything remotely
connected with the stage. He wondered.

"I am to disappear completely for a time," she went on. "'As though the
earth had swallowed me' will be the good old phrase of the reporters. I
am to linger here at Baldpate Inn, a key to which my press-agent has
secured for me. Meanwhile, the papers will speak tearfully of me in
their head-lines--at least, I hope they will. Can't you just see
them--those head-lines? 'Beautiful Actress Drops from Sight'." She
stopped, blushing. "Every woman who gets into print, you know, is
beautiful."

"But it'd be no lie in your case, dearie," put in Mrs. Norton, feeling
carefully of her atrociously blond store hair.

"Your mother takes the words from my mouth," smiled Mr. Magee. "Guard as
they will against it, the newspapers let the truth crop out
occasionally. And this will be such an occasion."

"From what part of Ireland do you come?" laughed the girl. She seemed
somewhat embarrassed by her mother's open admiration. "Well, setting all
blarney aside, such will be the head-lines. And when the last clue is
exhausted, and my press-agent is the same, I come back to appear in a
new play, a well-known actress. Of such flippant things is a Broadway
reputation built."

"We all wish you success, I'm sure." Mr. Magee searched his memory in
vain for this "actress's" name and fame. Could it be possible, he
wondered, at this late day, that any one would try for publicity by such
an obvious worn-out road? Hardly. The answer was simple. Another fable
was being spun from whole cloth beneath the roof of Baldpate Inn. "We
have a New York paper here," he went on, "but as yet there seems to be
no news of your sad disappearance."

"Wouldn't it be the limit if they didn't fall for it?" queried the older
woman.

"Fall for it," repeated Professor Bolton, not questioningly, but with
the air of a scientist about to add a new and rare specimen to his
alcohol jar.

"She means, if they didn't accept my disappearance as legitimate news,"
explained the girl "That would be very disappointing. But surely there
was no harm in making the experiment."

"They're a clever lot, those newspaper guys," sneered Mr. Bland, "in
their own opinion. But when you come right down to it, every one of 'em
has a nice little collection of gold bricks in his closet. I guess
you've got them going. I hope so."

"Thank you," smiled the girl. "You are very kind. You are here, I
understand, because of an unfortunate--er--affair of the heart?"

Mr. Bland smoothed back his black oily hair from his forehead, and
smirked. "Oh, now--" he protested.

"Arabella," put in Mr. Magee, "was her name. The beauties of history and
mythology hobbled into oblivion at sight of her."

"I'm quick to forget," insisted Mr. Bland.

"That does you no credit, I'm sure," replied the girl severely. "And
now, mamma, I think we had better select our rooms--"

She paused. For Elijah Quimby had come in through the dining-room door,
and stood gazing at the group before the fire, his face reflecting what
Mr. Magee, the novelist, would not have hesitated a moment in terming
"mingled emotions".

"Well," drawled Mr. Quimby. He strode into the room. "Mr. Magee," he
said, "that letter from Mr. Bentley asked me to let you stay at Baldpate
Inn. There wasn't anything in it about your bringing parties of friends
along."

"These are not friends I've brought along," explained Magee. "They're
simply some more amateur hermits who have strolled in from time to time.
All have their individual latch-keys to the hermitage. And all, I
believe, have credentials for you to examine."

Mr. Quimby stared in angry wonder.

"Is the world crazy?" he demanded. "Any one 'd think it was July, the
way people act. The inn's closed, I tell you. It ain't running."

Professor Bolton rose from his chair.

"So you are Quimby," he said in a soothing tone. "I'm glad to meet you
at last. My old friend John Bentley has spoken of you so often. I have a
letter from him." He drew the caretaker to one side, and took an
envelope from his pocket. The two conversed in low tones.

Quickly the girl in the corduroy suit leaned toward Mr. Magee. She
whispered, and her tone was troubled:

"Stand by me. I'm afraid I'll need your help."

"What's the matter?" inquired Magee.

"I haven't much of any right here, I guess. But I had to come."

"But your key?"

"I fear my--my press-agent--stole it."

A scornful remark as to the antiquated methods of that mythical
publicity promoter rose to Mr. Magee's lips, but before he spoke he
looked into her eyes. And the remark was never made. For in their
wonderful depths he saw worry and fear and unhappiness, as he had seen
them there amid tears in the station.

"Never mind," he said very gently, "I'll see you through."

Quimby was standing over Mr. Bland. "How about you?" he asked.

"Call up Andy Rutter and ask about me," replied Bland, in the tone of
one who prefers war to peace.

"I work for Mr. Bentley," said Quimby. "Rutter hasn't any authority
here. He isn't to be manager next season, I understand. However the
professor wants me to let you stay. He says he'll be responsible." Mr.
Bland looked in open-mouthed astonishment at the unexpected sponsor he
had found. "And you?" went on Quimby to the women.

"Why--" began Miss Norton.

"Absolutely all right," said Mr. Magee. "They come from Hal Bentley,
like myself. He's put them in my care. I'll answer for them." He saw the
girl's eyes; they spoke her thanks.

Mr. Quimby shook his head as one in a dream.

"All this is beyond me--way beyond," he ruminated. "Nothing like it ever
happened before that I've heard of. I'm going to write all about it to
Mr. Bentley, and I suppose I got to let you stay till I hear from him. I
think he ought to come up here, if he can."

"The more the merrier," said Mr. Magee, reflecting cheerfully that the
Bentleys were in Florida at last accounts.

"Come, mamma," said Miss Norton, rising, "let's go up and pick out a
suite. There's one I used to have a few years ago--you can see the
hermit's shack from the windows. By the way, Mr. Magee, will you send
Mr. Peters up to us? He may be able to help us get settled."

"Ahem," muttered Mr. Magee, "I--I'll have a talk with Peters. To be
quite frank, I anticipate trouble. You see, the Hermit of Baldpate
doesn't approve of women--"

"Don't approve of women," cried Mrs. Norton, her green eyes flashing.
"Why not, I'd like to know?"

"My dear madam," responded Mr. Magee, "only echo answers, and it but
vacuously repeats, 'Why not?'. That, however, is the situation. Mr.
Peters loathes the sex. I imagine that, until to-day, he was not
particularly happy in the examples of it he encountered. Why, he has
even gone so far as to undertake a book attributing all the trouble of
the world to woman."

"The idiot!" cried Mrs. Norton.

"Delicious!" laughed the girl.

"I shall ask Peters to serve you," said Magee. "I shall appeal to his
gallant side. But I must proceed gently. This is his first day as our
cook, and you know how necessary a good first impression is with a new
cook. I'll appeal to his better nature."

"Don't do it," cried the girl. "Don't emphasize us to him in any way, or
he may exercise his right as cook and leave. Just ignore us. We'll play
at being our own bell-boys."

"Ignore you," cried Mr. Magee. "What Herculean tasks you set. I'm not
equal to that one." He picked up their traveling-bags and led the way
up-stairs. "I'm something of a bell-boy myself, when roused," he said.

The girl selected suite seventeen, at the farther end of the corridor
from Magee's apartments. "It's the very one I used to have, years and
years ago--at least two or three years ago," she said. "Isn't it stupid?
All the furniture in a heap."

"And cold," said Mrs. Norton. "My land, I wish I was back by my own
fire."

"I'll make you regret your words, Mrs. Norton," cried Magee. He threw up
the windows, pulled off his coat, and set to work on the furniture. The
girl bustled about, lightening his work by her smile. Mrs. Norton
managed to get consistently in the way. When he had the furniture
distributed, he procured logs and tried his hand at a fire. Then he
stood, his black hair disheveled, his hands soiled, but his heart very
gay, before the girl of the station.

"I hope you don't expect a tip," she said, laughing.

"I do," he said, coming closer, and speaking in a voice that was not for
the ear of the chaperon. "I want a tip on this--do you really act?"

She looked at him steadily.

"Once," she said, "when I was sixteen, I appeared in an amateur play at
school. It was my first and last appearance on the stage."

"Thanks, lady," remarked Mr. Magee in imitation of the bell-boy he was
supposed to be. He sought number seven. There he made himself again
presentable, after which he descended to the office.

Mr. Bland sat reading the New York paper before the fire. From the
little card-room and the parlor, the two rooms to the right and left of
the hotel's front door, Quimby had brought forth extra chairs. He stood
now by the large chair that held Professor Bolton, engaged in
conversation with that gentleman.

"Yes," he was saying, "I lived three years in Reuton and five years in
New York. It took me eight years--eight years to realize the truth."

"I heard about it from John Bentley," the professor said gently.

"He's been pretty kind to me, Mr. Bentley has," replied Quimby. "When
the money was all gone, he offered me this job. Once the Quimbys owned
most of the land around Baldpate Mountain. It all went in those eight
years. To think that it took all those years for me to find it out."

"If I'm not impertinent, Quimby," put in Magee, "to find what out?"

"That what I wanted, the railroad men didn't want," replied Quimby
bitterly, "and that was--the safety of the public. You see, I invented a
new rail joint, one that was a great improvement on the old kind. I had
sort of an idea, when I was doing it--an idea of service to the
world--you know. God, what a joke! I sold all the Quimby lands, and went
to Reuton, and then to New York, to place it. Not one of the railroad
men but admitted that it was an improvement, and a big one--and not one
but fought like mad to keep me from getting it down where the public
would see it. They didn't want the expense of a change."

Mr. Quimby looked out at the sunlit stretch of snow.

"Eight years," he repeated, "I fought and pleaded. No, I begged--that
was the word--I begged. You'd be surprised to know the names of some of
the men who kept me waiting in their private offices, and sneered at me
over their polished desks. They turned me down--every one. Some of them
played me--as though I'd been a fish. They referred me to other ends of
the same big game, laughing in their sleeves, I guess, at the knowledge
of how hopeless it was. Oh, they made a fine fool of me."

"You might have put down some of your joints at your own expense,"
suggested the professor.

"Didn't I try?" cried Quimby. "Do you think they'd let me? No, the
public might see them and demand them everywhere. Once, I thought I had
convinced somebody. It was down in Reuton--the Suburban Railway." There
was a rustle as Mr. Bland let his paper fall to the floor. "Old Henry
Thornhill was president of the road--he is yet, I guess--but young
Hayden and a fellow named David Kendrick were running it. Kendrick was
on my side--he almost had Hayden. They were going to let me lay a
stretch of track with my joints. Then--something happened. Maybe you
remember. Kendrick disappeared in the night--he's never been seen
since."

"I do remember," said the professor softly.

"Hayden turned me down," went on Quimby. "The money was all gone. So I
came back to Upper Asquewan--caretaker of an inn that overlooks the
property my father owned--the property I squandered for a chance to save
human lives. It's all like a dream now--those eight years. And it nearly
drives me mad, sometimes, to think that it took me eight years--eight
years to find it out. I'll just straighten things around a bit."

He moved away, and the men sat in silence for a time. Then the professor
spoke very gently:

"Poor devil--to have had his dream of service--and then grow old on
Baldpate."

The two joined Mr. Bland by the fire. Mr. Magee had put from his mind
all intention of work. The maze of events through which he wandered held
him bewildered and enthralled. He looked at the haberdasher and the
university scholar and asked himself if they were real, or if he was
still asleep in a room on a side street in New York, waiting for the
cheery coming of Geoffrey. He asked himself still more perplexedly if
the creature that came toward him now through the dining-room door was
real--the hairy Hermit of Baldpate, like a figure out of some old print,
his market basket on his arm again, his coat buttoned to the chin.

"Well, everything's shipshape in the kitchen," announced the hermit
cheerfully. "I couldn't go without seeing to that. I wish you the best
of luck, gentlemen--and good-by."

"Good-by?" cried the professor.

"By the gods, he's leaving us," almost wept Mr. Bland.

"It can't be," said Mr. Magee.

"It has to be," said the Hermit of Baldpate, solemnly shaking his head.
"I'd like to stay with you, and I would of, if they hadn't come. But
here they are--and when women come in the door, I fly out of the window,
as the saying is."

"But, Peters," pleaded Magee, "you're not going to leave us in the hole
like this?"

"Sorry," replied Peters, "I can please men, but I can't please women. I
tried to please one once--but let the dead past bury its dead. I live on
Baldpate in a shack to escape the sex, and it wouldn't be consistent for
me to stay here now. I got to go. I hate to, like a dog, but I got to."

"Peters," said Mr. Magee, "I'm surprised. After giving your word to
stay! And who knows--you may be able to gather valuable data for your
book. Stick around. These women won't bother you. I'll make them promise
never to ask about the love-affair you didn't have--never even to come
near you. And we'll pay you beyond the dreams of avarice of a Broadway
chef. Won't we, gentlemen?"

The others nodded. Mr. Peters visibly weakened.

"Well--" he began. "I--" His eyes were on the stair. Mr. Magee also
looked in that direction and saw the girl of the station smiling down.
She no longer wore coat and hat, and the absence of the latter revealed
a glory of golden hair that became instantly a rival to the sunshine in
that drear bare room.

"No, Peters," she said, "you mustn't go. We couldn't permit it. Mamma
and I will go."

She continued to smile at the obviously dazzled Peters. Suddenly he
spoke in a determined tone:

"No--don't do that. I'll stay." Then he turned to Magee, and continued
for that gentleman's ear alone: "Dog-gone it, we're all alike. We
resolve and resolve, and then one of them looks at us, and it's all
forgot. I had a friend who advertised for a wife, leastways, he was a
friend until he advertised. He got ninety-two replies, seventy of 'em
from married men advising against the step. 'I'm cured,' he says to me.
'Not for me.' Did he keep his word? No. A week after he married a widow
just to see if what the seventy said was true. I'm mortal. I hang around
the buzz-saw. If you give me a little money, I'll go down to the village
and buy the provisions for lunch."

Gleefully Mr. Magee started the hermit on his way, and then went over to
where the girl stood at the foot of the stairs.

"I promised him," he told her, "you'd ask no questions regarding his
broken heart. It seems he hasn't any."

"That's horrid of him, isn't it?" she smiled. "Every good hermit is
equipped with a broken heart. I certainly shan't bother him. I came down
to get some water."

They went together to the kitchen, found a pail, and filled it with icy
water from the pump at the rear of the inn. Inside once more, Mr. Magee
remarked thoughtfully:

"Who would have guessed a week ago that to-day I would be climbing the
broad staircase of a summer hotel carrying a pail of water for a lady
fair?"

They paused on the landing.

"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio," smiled the girl,
"than are dreamed of, even by novelists." Mr. Magee started. Had she
recognized him as the Magee of light fiction? It seemed hardly likely;
they read his books, but they rarely remembered his name. Her face went
suddenly grave. She came closer. "I can't help wondering," she said,
"which side you are on?"

"Which side of what?" asked Magee.

"Why, of this," she answered, waving her hand toward the office below.

"I don't understand," objected Mr. Magee.

"Let's not be silly," she replied. "You know what brought me here. I
know what brought you. There are three sides, and only one is honest. I
hope, so very much, that you are on that side."

"Upon my word--" began Magee.

"Will it interest you to know," she continued, "I saw the big mayor of
Reuton in the village this morning? With him was his shadow, Lou Max.
Let's see--you had the first key, Mr. Bland the second, the professor
the third, and I had the fourth. The mayor has the fifth key, of course.
He'll be here soon."

"The mayor," gasped Mr. Magee. "Really, I haven't the slightest idea
what you mean. I'm here to work--"

"Very well," said the girl coldly, "if you wish it that way." They came
to the door of seventeen, and she took the pail from Mr. Magee's hand.
"Thanks."

"'Where are you going, my pretty maid?'" asked Magee, indicating the
pail.

"'"I'll see you at luncheon, sir," she said,'" responded Miss Norton,
and the door of seventeen slammed shut.

Mr. Magee returned to number seven, and thoughtfully stirred the fire.
The tangle of events bade fair to swamp him.

"The mayor of Reuton," he mused, "has the fifth key. What in the name of
common sense is going on? It's too much even for melodramatic me." He
leaned back in his chair. "Anyhow, I like her eyes," he said. "And I
shouldn't want to be quoted as disapproving of her hair, either. I'm on
her side, whichever it may be."

CHAPTER VI

GHOSTS OF THE SUMMER CROWD

"I wonder," Miss Norton smiled up into Mr. Magee's face, "if you ever
watched the people at a summer hotel get set on their mark for the
sprint through the dining-room door?"

"No," answered Magee, "but I have visited the Zoo at meal-time. They
tell me it is much the same."

"A brutal comparison," said the girl. "But just the same I'm sure that
the head waiter who opens the door here at Baldpate must feel much the
same at the moment as the keeper who proffers the raw meat on the end of
the pitchfork. He faces such a wild determined mob. The front rank is
made up of hard-faced women worn out by veranda gossip. Usually some
stiff old dowager crosses the tape first. I was thinking that perhaps we
resembled that crowd in the eyes of Mr. Peters now."

It was past one o'clock, and Mr. Magee with his four mysterious
companions stood before the fire in the office, each with an eager eye
out for the progress of the hermit, who was preparing the table beside
them. Through the kindness of Quimby, the board was resplendent with
snowy linen.

"We may seem over-eager," commented Professor Bolton. "I have no doubt
we do. It is only natural. With nothing to look forward to but the next
meal, the human animal attaches a preposterous importance to his
feeding. We are in the same case as the summer guests--"

"Are we?" interrupted Mr. Magee. "Have we nothing but the next meal to
look forward to? I think not. I haven't. I've come to value too highly
the capacity for excitement of Baldpate Inn in December. I look forward
to startling things. I expect, before the day is out, at least two
gold-laced kings, an exiled poet, and a lord mayor, all armed with keys
to Baldpate Inn and stories strange and unconvincing."

"Your adventures of the last twenty-four hours," remarked the professor,
smiling wanly, "have led you to expect too much. I have made inquiries
of Quimby. There are, aside from his own, but seven keys in all to the
various doors of Baldpate Inn. Four are here represented. It is hardly
likely that the other three will send delegates, and if they should, you
have but a slim chance for kings and poets. Even Baldpate's capacity for
excitement, you see, is limited by the number of little steel keys which
open its portals to exiles from the outside world. I am reminded of the
words of the philosopher--"

"Well, Peters, old top," broke in Mr. Bland in robust tones, "isn't she
nearly off the fire?"

"Now see here," said the hermit, setting down the armful of dishes with
which he had entered the office, "I can't be hurried. I'm all upset, as
it is. I can't cook to please women--I don't pretend to. I have to take
all sorts of precautions with this lunch. Without meaning to be
impolite, but just because of a passion for cold facts, I may say that
women are faultfinding."

"I'm sure," said Miss Norton sweetly, "that I shall consider your
luncheon perfect."

"They get more faultfinding as they get older," replied Mr. Peters
ungallantly, glancing at the other woman.

Mrs. Norton glared.

"Meaning me, I suppose," she rasped. "Well, don't worry. I ain't going
to find anything wrong."

"I ain't asking the impossible," responded Mr. Peters. "I ain't asking
you not to find anything wrong. I'm just asking you not to mention it
when you do." He retired to the kitchen.

Mrs. Norton caressed her puffs lovingly.

"What that man needs," she said, "is a woman's guiding hand. He's lived
alone too long. I'd like to have charge of him for a while. Not that I
wouldn't be kind--but I'd be firm. If poor Norton was alive to-day he'd
testify that I was always kindness itself. But I insisted on his living
up to his promises. When I was a girl I was mighty popular. I had a lot
of admirers."

"No one could possibly doubt that," Mr. Magee assured her.

"Then Norton came along," she went on, rewarding Magee with a smile,
"and said he wanted to make me happy. So I thought I'd let him try. He
was a splendid man, but there's no denying that in the years we were
married he sometimes forgot what he started out to do. I always brought
him up sharp. 'Your great desire,' I told him, 'is to make me happy. I'd
keep on the job if I was you!' And he did, to the day of his death. A
perfectly lovely man, though careless in money matters. If he hadn't had
that failing I wouldn't be--"

Miss Norton, her cheeks flushed, broke in hurriedly.

"Mamma, these gentlemen can't be at all interested." Deftly she turned
the conversation to generalities.

Mr. Peters at last seated the winter guests of Baldpate Inn, and opened
his luncheon with a soup which he claimed to have wrested from a can.
This news drew from Professor Bolton a learned discourse on the tinned
aids to the hermit of to-day. He pictured the seeker for solitude
setting out for a desert isle, with canned foods for his body and canned
music for his soul. "Robinson Crusoe," he said, "should be rewritten
with a can-opener in the leading rôle." Mrs. Norton gave the talk a more
practical turn by bringing up the topic of ptomaine poisoning.

While the conversation drifted on, Mr. Magee pondered in silence the
weird mesh in which he had become involved. What did it all mean? What
brought these people to Baldpate Christmas week? His eyes sought the
great safe back of the desk, and stayed there a long time. In that safe,
he was sure, lay the answer to this preposterous riddle. When his
thoughts came back to the table he found Mr. Bland eying him narrowly.
There was a troubled look on the haberdasher's lean face that could
never be ascribed to the cruelty of Arabella.

The luncheon over, Miss Norton and her mother prepared to ascend to
their rooms. Mr. Magee maneuvered so as to meet the girl at the foot of
the stairs.

"Won't you come back," he whispered softly, "and explain things to a
poor hermit who is completely at sea?"

"What things?" she asked.

"What it all means," he whispered. "Why you wept in the station, why you
invented the story of the actress, why you came here to brighten my drab
exile--what this whole comedy of Baldpate Inn amounts to, anyhow? I
assure you I am as innocent of understanding it as is the czar of Russia
on his golden throne."

She only looked at him with unbelieving eyes.

"You can hardly expect me to credit that," she said. "I must go up now
and read mamma into the pleasant land of thin girlish figures that is
her afternoon siesta. I may come back and talk to you after a while, but
I don't promise to explain."

"Come back," pleaded Mr. Magee. "That is all I ask."

"A tiny boon," she smiled. "I grant it."

She followed the generous figure of the other woman up the stair and,
casting back a dazzling smile from the landing, disappeared. Mr. Magee
turned to find Professor Bolton discoursing to Mr. Bland on some aspects
of the Pagan Renaissance. Mr. Bland's face was pained.

"That's great stuff, Professor," he said, "and usually I'd like it. But
just now--I don't seem in the mood, somehow. Would you mind saving it
for me till later?"

"Certainly," sighed the professor. Mr. Bland slouched into the depths of
his chair. Professor Bolton turned his disappointed face ceilingward.
Laughing, Mr. Magee sought the solitude of number seven.

"After all, I'm here to work," he told himself. "Alarms and excursions
and blue eyes must not turn me from my task. Let's see--what was my
task? A deep heart-searching novel, a novel devoid of rabid melodrama.
It becomes more difficult every minute here at Baldpate Inn. But that
should only add more zest to the struggle. I devote the next two hours
to thought."

He pulled his chair up before the blazing hearth, and gazed into the red
depths. But his thoughts refused to turn to the masterpiece that was to
be born on Baldpate. They roamed to far-off Broadway; they strolled with
Helen Faulkner--the girl he meant to marry if he ever got round to
it--along dignified Fifth Avenue. Then joyously they trooped to a far
more alluring, more human girl, who pressed a bit of cambric to her face
in a railway station, while a ginger-haired agent peeped through the
bars. How ridiculously small that bit of cambric had been to hide so
much beauty. Soon Mr. Magee's thoughts were climbing Baldpate Mountain,
there to wander in a mystic maze of ghostly figures which appeared from
the shadows, holding aloft in triumph gigantic keys. Mr. Magee had slept
but little the night before. The quick December dusk filled number seven
when he awoke with a start.

He remembered that he had asked the girl to come back to the office, and
berated himself to think that probably she had done so only to find that
he was not there. Hastily straightening his tie, and dashing the traces
of sleep from his eyes with the aid of cold water, he ran down-stairs.

The great bare room was in darkness save for the faint red of the fire.
Before the fireplace sat the girl of the station, her hair gleaming with
a new splendor in that light. She looked in mock reproval at Mr. Magee.

"For shame," she said, "to be late at the trysting-place."

"A thousand pardons," Mr. Magee replied. "I fell asleep and dreamed of a
girl who wept in a railway station--and she was so altogether charming I
could not tear myself away."

"I fear," she laughed, "you are old in the ways of the world. A passion
for sleep seems to have seized the hermits. The professor has gone to
his room for that purpose. And Mr. Bland, his broken heart forgot,
slumbers over there." She pointed to the haberdasher inert in a big
chair drawn up near the clerk's desk. "Only you and I in all the world
awake."

"Pretty lonesome, isn't it?" Mr. Magee glanced over his shoulder at the
shadows that crept in on them.

"I was finding it very busy when you came," she answered. "You see, I
have known the inn when it was gay with summer people, and as I sat here
by the fire I pretended I saw the ghosts of a lot of the people I knew
flitting about in the dusk. The rocking-chair fleet sailed by--"

"The what?"

"Black flag flying, decks cleared for action--I saw the rocking-chair
fleet go by." She smiled faintly. "We always called them that. Bitter,
unkind old women who sat hour after hour on the veranda, and rocked and
gossiped, and gossiped and rocked. All the old women in the world seem
to gather at summer hotels. And, oh, the cruel mouths the fleet
had--just thin lines of mouths--I used to look at them and wonder if any
one had ever kissed them."

The girl's eyes were very large and tender in the firelight.

"And I saw some poor little ghosts weeping in a corner," she went on; "a
few that the fleet had run down and sunk in the sea of gossip. A little
ghost whose mother had not been all she should have been, and the fleet
found it out, and rocked, and whispered, and she went away. And a few
who were poor--the most terrible of sins--to them the fleet showed no
mercy. And a fine proud girl, Myra Thornhill, who was engaged to a man
named Kendrick, and who never dared come here again after Kendrick
suddenly disappeared, because of the whispered dishonors the fleet
heaped upon his head."

"What wicked women!" said Magee.

"The wickedest women in the world," answered the girl. "But every summer
resort must have its fleet. I doubt if any other ever had its admiral,
though--and that makes Baldpate supreme."

"Its admiral?"

"Yes. He isn't really that, I imagine--sort of a vice, or an assistant,
or whatever it is, long ago retired from the navy. Every summer he comes
here, and the place revolves about him. It's all so funny. I wonder if
any other crowd attains such heights of snobbishness as that at a summer
resort? It's the admiral this, and the admiral that, from the moment he
enters the door. Nearly every day the manager of Baldpate has a new
picture of the admiral taken, and hangs it here in the hotel. I'll show
them to you when it's light. There's one over there by the desk, of the
admiral and the manager together, and the manager has thrown his arm
carelessly over the admiral's shoulder with 'See how well I know him'
written all over his stupid face. Oh, what snobs they are!"

"And the fleet?" asked Mr. Magee.

"Worships him. They fish all day for a smile from him. They keep track
of his goings and comings, and when he is in the card-room playing his
silly old game of solitaire, they run down their victims in subdued
tones so as not to disturb him."

"What an interesting place," said Mr. Magee. "I must visit Baldpate next
summer. Shall--shall you be here?"

"It's so amusing," she smiled, ignoring the question. "You'll enjoy it.
And it isn't all fleet and admiral. There's happiness, and romance, and
whispering on the stairs. At night, when the lights are all blazing, and
the band is playing waltzes in the casino, and somebody is giving a
dinner in the grill-room, and the girls flit about in the shadows
looking too sweet for words--well, Baldpate Inn is a rather entrancing
spot. I remember those nights very often now."

Mr. Magee leaned closer. The flicker of the firelight on her delicate
face, he decided, was an excellent effect.

"I can well believe you do remember them," he said. "And it's no effort
at all to me to picture you as one of those who flitted through the
shadows--too sweet for words. I can see you the heroine of whispering
scenes on the stair. I can see you walking with a dazzled happy man on
the mountain in the moonlight. Many men have loved you."

"Are you reading my palm?" she asked, laughing.

"No--your face," answered Mr. Magee. "Many men have loved you, for very
few men are blind. I am sorry I was not the man on the stair, or on the
mountain in the moonlight. Who knows--I might have been the favored one
for my single summer of joy."

"The autumn always came," smiled the girl.

"It would never have come for me," he answered. "Won't you believe me
when I say that I have no part in this strange drama that is going on at
Baldpate? Won't you credit it when I say that I have no idea why you and
the professor and Mr. Bland are here--nor why the Mayor of Reuton has
the fifth key? Won't you tell me what it all means?"

"I mustn't," she replied, shaking her head. "I can trust no one--not
even you. I mustn't believe that you don't know--it's preposterous. I
must say over and over--even he is simply--will you pardon me--flirting,
trying to learn what he can learn. I must."

"You can't even tell me why you wept in the station?"

"For a simple silly reason. I was afraid. I had taken up a task too big
for me by far--taken it up bravely when I was out in the sunlight of
Reuton. But when I saw Upper Asquewan Falls, and the dark came, and that
dingy station swallowed me up, something gave way inside me and I felt I
was going to fail. So--I cried. A woman's way."

"If I were only permitted to help--" Mr. Magee pleaded.

"No--I must go forward alone. I can trust no one, now. Perhaps things
will change. I hope they will."

"Listen," said Mr. Magee. "I am telling you the truth. Perhaps you read
a novel called _The Lost Limousine_." He was resolved to claim its
authorship, tell her of his real purpose in coming to Baldpate, and urge
her to confide in him regarding the odd happenings at the inn.

"Yes," said the girl before he could continue. "I did read it. And it
hurt me. It was so terribly insincere. The man had talent who wrote it,
but he seemed to say: 'It's all a great big joke. I don't believe in
these people myself. I've just created them to make them dance for you.
Don't be fooled--it's only a novel.' I don't like that sort of thing. I
want a writer really to mean all he says from the bottom of his heart."

Mr. Magee bit his lip. His determination to claim the authorship of _The
Lost Limousine_ was quite gone.

"I want him to make me feel with his people," the girl went on
seriously. "Perhaps I can explain by telling you of something that
happened to me once. It was while I was at college. There was a blind
girl in my class and one night I went to call on her. I met her in the
corridor of her dormitory. Somebody had just brought her back from an
evening lecture, and left her there. She unlocked her door, and we went
in. It was pitch dark in the room--the first thing I thought of was a
light. But she--she just sat down and began to talk. She had forgot to
light the gas."

The girl paused, her eyes very wide, and it seemed to Mr. Magee that she
shivered slightly.

"Can you imagine it?" she asked. "She chatted on--quite cheerfully as I
remember it. And I--I stumbled round and fell into a chair, cold and
trembly and sick with the awful horror of blindness, for the first time
in my life. I thought I had imagined before what it was to be
blind--just by shutting my eyes for a second. But as I sat there in the
blackness, and listened to that girl chatter, and realized that it had
never occurred to her to light a lamp--then for the first time--I
knew--I knew."

Again she stopped, and Mr. Magee, looking at her, felt what he had never
experienced before--a thrill at a woman's near presence.

"That's what I ask of a writer," she said, "that he make me feel for his
people as I felt for that girl that night. Am I asking too much? It need
not be for one who is enmeshed in tragedy--it may be for one whose heart
is as glad as a May morning. But he must make me feel. And he can't do
that if he doesn't feel himself, can he?"

William Hallowell Magee actually hung his head.

"He can't," he confessed softly. "You're quite right. I like you
immensely--more than I can say. And even if you feel you can't trust me,
I want you to know that I'm on your side in whatever happens at Baldpate
Inn. You have only to ask, and I am your ally."

"Thank you," she answered. "I may be very glad to ask. I shall
remember." She rose and moved toward the stairs. "We had better disperse
now. The rocking-chair fleet will get us if we don't watch out." Her
small slipper was on the first step of the stair, when they heard a door
slammed shut, and the sound of steps on the bare floor of the
dining-room. Then a husky voice called "Bland".