The Haunted Bell | Page 2

shook. The sight brought a faint expression of amused surprise to his lips; then he snapped his fingers impatiently and settled back in his chair. It was a struggle to bring his mind around to material things; it insisted on wandering, and wove fantastic, grotesque conjectures in the drifting tobacco smoke. But at last common-sense triumphed under the sedative influence of an excellent cigar, and the incident of the bell floated off into nothingness. Business affairs--urgent, real, tangible business affairs--focused his attention.
Then, suddenly, clamorously, with the insistent acclaim of a fire-alarm, the bell sounded--once! twice! thrice! Mr. Phillips leaped to his feet. The tones chilled him and stirred his phlegmatic heart to quicker action. He took a long, deep breath, and, with one glance around the little room, strode out into the hall. He paused there a moment, glanced at his watch--it was four minutes to nine--then went on to his wife's apartments.
Mrs. Phillips was reclining in a chair and listening with an amused smile to her son's recital of some commonplace college happening which chanced to be of interest to him. She was forty or forty-two, perhaps, and charming. Women never learn to be charming until they're forty; until then they are only pretty and amiable--sometimes. The son, Harvey Phillips, arose as his father entered. He was a stalwart young man of twenty, a prototype, as it were, of that hard-headed, masterful financier--Franklin Phillips.
"Why, Frank, I thought you were so absorbed in business that--" Mrs. Phillips began.
Mr. Phillips paused and looked blankly, unseeingly, as one suddenly aroused from sleep, at his wife and son--the two dearest of all earthly things to him. The son noted nothing unusual in his manner; the wife, with intuitive eyes, read some vague uneasiness.
"What is it?" she asked solicitously. "Has something gone wrong?"
Mr. Phillips laughed nervously and sat down near her.
"Nothing, nothing," he assured her. "I feel unaccountably nervous somehow, and I thought I should like to talk to you rather than--than--"
"Keep on going over and over those stupid figures?" she interrupted. "Thank you."
She leaned forward with a gesture of infinite grace and took his hand. He clenched it spasmodically to stop its absurd trembling and, with an effort all the greater because it was repressed so sternly, regained control of his panic-stricken nerves. Harvey Phillips excused himself and left the room.
"Harvey has just been explaining the mysteries of baseball to me," said Mrs. Phillips. "He's going to play on the Harvard team." Her husband stared at her without the slightest heed or comprehension of what she was saying.
"Can you tell me," he asked suddenly, "where you got that Japanese gong in my room?"
"Oh, that? I saw it in the window of a queer old curio shop I pass sometimes on my charity rounds. I looked at it two or three months ago and bought it. The place is in Cranston Street. It's kept by an old German--Wagner, I think his name is. Why?"
"It looks as if it might be very old, a hundred years perhaps," remarked Mr. Phillips.
"That's what I thought," responded his wife, "and the coloring is exquisite. I had never seen one exactly like it, so--"
"It doesn't happen to have any history, I suppose?" he interrupted.
"Not that I know of."
"Or any peculiar quality, or--or attribute out of the ordinary?'"
Mrs. Phillips shook her head.
"I'm sure I don't know what you mean," she replied. "The only peculiar quality I noticed was the singular purity of the bells and the coloring."
Mr. Phillips coughed over his cigar.
"Yes, I noticed the bells myself," he explained lamely. "It just struck me that the thing was--was out of the ordinary, and I was a little curious about it." He was silent a moment. "It looks as if it might have been valuable once."
"I hardly think so," Mrs. Phillips responded. "I believe thirty dollars is what I paid for it--all that was asked."
That was all that was said about the matter at the time. But on the following morning an early visitor at Wagner's shop was Franklin Phillips. It was a typical place of its kind, half curio and half junk-store, with a coat of dust over all. There had been a crude attempt to enhance the appearance of the place by an artistic arrangement of several musty antique pieces, but, otherwise, it was a chaos of all things. An aged German met Mr. Phillips as he entered.
"Is this Mr. Wagner?" inquired the financier.
Extreme caution, amounting almost to suspicion, seemed to be a part of the old German's business régime, for he looked at his visitor from head to foot with keen eyes, then evaded the question.
"What do you want?" he asked.
"I want to know if this is Mr. Wagner," said Mr. Phillips tersely. "Is it, or is it not?"
The old man met his frank stare for a moment;