Part 4 (1/2)

Ham turned his head when I called to him in a low voice.

”Watch what they do and where they go, Ham,” I told him. ”I want to see you when you come back.”

”Aye, aye, sir!” he returned in his sailorlike way; for in Bolderhead if you ask your direction of a man on the street he'll lay a course for you as though you were at sea. Ham Mayberry, like most of the other male inhabitants of the old town, had been a deep-sea sailor.

I heard the quick, angry step of Mr. Downes descending the stairs then, and I slipped out of the way. I didn't want any more words with him, if I could help. They were leaving the house--and I meant it should be for good. That satisfied me.

I heard Paul follow him out upon the porch, and then James came with the baggage. The carriage rolled briskly away just as Dr. Eldridge's little electric wagon steamed up to the other door. The doctor--who was a plump, bald, pink-faced man--trotted up the steps and I let him into the house myself.

”Well, well, Clint Webb!” he demanded. ”What have you been doing to that little mother of yours now?”

But he said it in a friendly way. Dr. Eldridge knew well enough that I never intended to cause mother a moment's anxiety. And I believed that I could take him into my confidence--to an extent, at least. I did not tell him how Paul had tried to knife me in the Wavecrest; but I repeated what had really caused my mother's becoming so suddenly ill.

”Ha!” he jerked out, as he got himself out of his tight, light overcoat and picked up his case again from the hall settee. ”The least said about _that_ time before her the better. Tut, tut! the least said the better.”

And so saying he marched up stairs to her room, leaving me more eager than ever to learn the particulars regarding my father's death. Now, I had lived some sixteen years up to this very evening and had never heard anything but the simplest and plainest story of my father's unfortunate death. But even the doctor spurred my awakened curiosity now.

What did it mean? I had been told by my mother, by Ham, and by other people as I grew up, that Dr. Webb had rowed out in a dory to fish off White Rock, a particularly good local fis.h.i.+ng ground for blackfish. Some hours later a pa.s.sing fis.h.i.+ng party discovered the empty dory, bobbing up and down at the end of its kedge cable. The fis.h.i.+ng lines were out.

My father's hat was in the boat, and his watch lay upon a seat as though he had taken it out and put it beside him so as not to forget when to row back to attend to his patients. It was a fine timepiece, had belonged to his father, and I wear it myself now on ”state and date”

occasions.

But the fishermen saw no other sign of the doctor. It was plain he had fallen overboard. With the current as it is about White Rock it was no wonder that the body was never recovered.

The story seemed plain enough. There was nothing that could be added to it. That there was any mystery about my father's death I could not believe. And the suggestion that Paul Downes had made I utterly scoffed at!

Yet I wanted to see Ham Mayberry before I went to sleep that night.

Dr. Eldridge came down after a long time, and his pink, fat face was very serious. ”How is she?” I asked him, eagerly.

”She's all right--for the night,” he replied. But his gravity did not leave him--which was strange. The doctor was a most sanguine pract.i.tioner and usually brought a spirit of cheerfulness with him into any home where there was illness. ”Clint,” he said, ”you want to be careful of that little mother of yours.”

”My goodness, Doctor!” I exclaimed. ”You don't suppose that I had anything to do with this business tonight? That I brought it about?”

”If you have another row with your cousin--or words with his father--have it all outside the house. She is in a very nervous state.

She must not be worried. Friction in the household is bad for her.

And--well, I'll drop in again and see her tomorrow.”

What he said frightened me. When he had gone I went up and tapped on the door. But Marie would not let me in the room.

”She is resting now, Master Clin-tone,” said the French woman, and then shut the door in my face.

I couldn't have slept then had I gone to bed. Beside, I was determined to talk with Ham when he came back. I wandered down stairs again and James, the butler, beckoned me into the dining room. At one end of the table he had laid a cloth and he made me sit down and eat a very tasty supper that had been prepared for me in the kitchen. This was an attention I had not expected. It served to bolster up my belief that I had some influence in my mother's house, after all!

By and by I heard Ham drive in and I went out to the stables. We kept no footman, Ham doing all the stablework. I helped him unharness Bob and Betty, while he told me where he had taken the Downeses. There was a small hotel in the old part of the town, and my uncle and Paul had gone there for the night.

”They'll probably attack the fortifications on the morrow, Master Clint--or, them's my prognostications,” remarked Ham, in conclusion.