Blacksheep! Blacksheep! | Page 7

have substituted the camp address and he fretted over this for an hour. She left him without excuse for a reply, and he gravely reflected that the Marquis of Montrose was the only person to whom he could protest, but as she had copied from the quotation book the figures "1621-1640" and added them to the name for his illumination, it was clearly impossible to ask the author for an interpretation of his stanza.
Archie was lulled to sleep by the encouraging thought that what she had done was to give him a commission to redeem himself by strange and moving adventures, and he dreamed that he had climbed to the remote fastnesses of the Rockies, and captured a mountain sheep alive and walked into his sister's house with the animal under his arm and presented it to Miss Perry at the tea table.
He changed trains at Boston and again at Portsmouth, where he checked his bag. At two o'clock he reached Bailey Harbor, where he verified his memorandum as to the return trip and found the telegram he expected from the New York brokerage office in which he was a silent partner, saying that his booking for Banff had been changed as requested. He never took the chance of being stuffed into an upper berth, or riding in a day coach, and he congratulated himself upon his forethought and the ease with which he was proceeding upon his sister's errand.
He stepped into the only taxi in sight and drove to the village druggist's for the key to the Congdon house.
"Just go in and take your time to it," said the man. "Lights and water haven't been turned off and if you take the house your folks can step right in. Mrs. Congdon left only yesterday. Suppose you'll be going on the five eleven; it's your only chance of getting back to Boston tonight. If you don't find it convenient to stop here again, just leave the key under the door mat."
"I guess you'll find the place all shipshape," said the driver, as they set off. "Folks came up early but didn't stay long. Left in a hurry; kind o' funny, skippin' the way they did."
"There hadn't been sickness in the family?" asked Archie, apprehensively thinking that he might be stumbling into infection.
"Lord no! Family troubles, I reckon! They been comin' here a long time and usually came earlier and stayed later than anybody else. I don't know nothin', mind ye, but there's talk she had trouble with her husband."
"You mean Mr. and Mrs. Congdon have separated?"
"I'm sayin' nothin'! But the Congdons are all queer. His pap used to have a house here and he was the worst ole crank on the shore. Young Putney's a pretty decent fellow. Mighty fine woman, his wife. Ever'body likes her."
The confidences of the weatherbeaten chauffeur only mildly interested Archie, who was bent upon inspecting the house as quickly as possible with a view to footing it back to the station, and thus crediting two miles to the day's exercise account. It was unseasonably warm and the air was lifeless and humid.
"Think it will rain?" asked Archie.
"Yep," replied the driver with a glance at the sea. "There's goin' to be a lively kick-up before mornin'."
Archie eyed his top-coat and umbrella with the pardonable satisfaction of a man who travels prepared for all weathers. To follow the shore path in the teeth of a storm would do much toward establishing his self-confidence and prove that he was not a mollycoddle. Isabel Perry and her note were firmly imbedded in his subconsciousness and were causing curious slips and shifts of his mental machinery. Certain of her utterances at his sister's table rankled, and his thousandth conjecture about the note was that it mocked his weaknesses and defied him to prove that he was far from being the worthless social parasite she believed him to be.
III
He discharged the driver and in a moment was standing in a big living-room that exhaled an atmosphere of comfort and good taste. On every hand were the evidences of a hasty abandonment of the house by its recent occupants. A waste-paper basket by a writing table in one corner overflowed with scraps of discarded letters; the family had evidently snatched a hasty luncheon before leaving and the dining table had not been cleared. A doll lay sprawled on the landing as he made his way upstairs, and in the bed chambers empty chiffonier drawers gaped as though from surprise at their hasty evacuation. He made a survey of the whole premises and then went through again from cellar to garret checking off his sister's queries. There was something disconcerting in the intense silence of the place broken only by the periodic thump of the sea at the base of the cliff.
The house