Part 18 (1/2)
”Well, he's got his literary job at last, bein' engaged as sportin'
editor on one of Gabe's papers. His dad, old Sol Bea.r.s.e, seems to be pretty well satisfied, partic'lar as another engagement between the Bea.r.s.e family and the Sterzers has just been given out.”
Barzilla helped himself to another doughnut. His host leaned back in his chair and laughed uproariously.
”Well, by the great and mighty!” he exclaimed, ”that Willie chap certainly did fool you, didn't he. You can't always tell about these college critters. Sometimes they break out unexpected, like chickenpox in the 'Old Men's Home.' Ha! ha! Say, do you know Nate Scudder?”
”Know him? Course I know him! The meanest man on the Cape, and livin'
right in my own town, too! Well, if I didn't know him I might trust him, and that would be the beginnin' of the end--for me.”
”It sartin would. But what made me think of him was what he told me about his nephew, who was a college chap, consider'ble like your 'Willie,' I jedge. Nate and this nephew, Augustus Tolliver, was mixed up in that flyin'-machine business, you remember.”
”I know they was. Mixed up with that Professor Dixland the papers are makin' such a fuss over. Wellmouth's been crazy over it all, but it happened a year ago and n.o.body that I know of has got the straight inside facts about it yet. Nate won't talk at all. Whenever you ask him he busts out swearin' and walks off. His wife's got such a temper that n.o.body dared ask her, except the minister. He tried it, and ain't been the same man since.”
”Well,” the depot master smilingly scratched his chin, ”I cal'late I've got those inside facts.”
”You HAVE?”
”Yes. Nate gave 'em to me, under protest. You see, I know Nate pretty well. I know some things about him that . . . but never mind that part.
I asked him and, at last, he told me. I'll have to tell you in his words, 'cause half the fun was the way he told it and the way he looked at the whole business. So you can imagine I'm Nate, and--”
”'Twill be a big strain on my imagination to b'lieve you're Nate Scudder, Sol Berry.”
”Thanks. However, you'll have to do it for a spell. Well, Nate said that it really begun when the Professor and Olivia landed at the Wellmouth depot with the freight car full of junk. Of course, the actual beginnin' was further back than that, when that Harmon man come on from Philadelphy and hunted him up, makin' proclamation that a friend of his, a Mr. Van Brunt of New York, had said that Scudder had a nice quiet island to let and maybe he could hire it.
”Course Nate had an island--that little sun-dried sandbank a mile or so off sh.o.r.e, abreast his house, which we used to call 'Horsefoot Bar.'
That crazy Van Brunt and his chum, Hartley, who lived there along with Sol Pratt a year or so ago, re-christened it 'Ozone Island,' you remember. Nate was willin' to let it. He'd let Tophet, if he owned it, and a fool come along who wanted to hire it and could pay for the rent and heat.
”So Nate and this Harmon feller rowed over to the Bar--to Ozone Island, I mean--and the desolation and loneliness of it seemed to suit him to perfection. So did the old house and big barn and all the tumbledown buildin's stuck there in the beach-gra.s.s and sand. Afore they'd left they made a d.i.c.ker. He wa'n't the princ.i.p.al in it. He was the private secretary and fust mate of Mr. Professor Ansel Hobart Dixland, the scientist--perhaps Scudder'd heard of him?
”Perhaps he had, but if so, Nate forgot it, though he didn't tell him that. Harmon ordered a fifteen-foot-high board fence built all around the house and barn, and made Nate swear not to tell a soul who was comin' nor anything. Dixland might want the island two months, he said, or he might want it two years. Nate didn't care. He was in for good pickin's, and begun to pick by slicin' a liberal commission off that fencebuildin' job. There was a whole pa.s.sel of letters back and forth between Nate and Harmon, and finally Nate got word to meet the victims at the depot.
”There was the professor himself, an old dried-up relic with whiskers and a temper; and there was Miss Olivia Dixland, his niece and housekeeper, a slim, plain lookin' girl, who wore eyegla.s.ses and a straight up and down dress. And there was a freight car full of crates and boxes and land knows what all. But nary sign was there of a private secretary and a.s.sistant. The professor told Nate that Mr. Harmon's health had suddenly broke down and he'd had to be sent South.
”'It's a calamity,' says he; 'a real calamity! Harmon has been with me in my work from the beginnin'; and now, just as it is approachin'
completion, he is taken away. They say he may die. It is very annoyin'.'
”'Humph!' says Nate. 'Well, maybe it annoys HIM some, too; you can't tell. What you goin' to do for a secretary?'
”'I understand,' says the professor, 'that there is a person of consider'ble scientific attainment residin' with you, Mr. Scudder, at present. Harmon met him while he was here; they were in the same cla.s.s at college. Harmon recommended him highly. Olivia,' he says to the niece, 'what was the name of the young man whom Harmon recommended?'
”'Tolliver, Uncle Ansel,' answers the girl, lookin' kind of disdainful at Nate. Somehow he had the notion that she didn't take to him fust rate.
”'Hey?' sings out Nate. 'Tolliver? Why, that's Augustus! AUGUSTUS! well, I'll be switched!'
”Augustus Tolliver was Nate's nephew from up Boston way. Him and Nate was livin' together at that time. Huldy Ann, Mrs. Scudder, was out West, in Omaha, takin' care of a cousin of hers who was a chronic invalid and, what's more to the purpose, owned a lot of stock in copper mines.
”Augustus was a freckle-faced, spindle-shanked little critter, with spectacles and a soft, polite way of speakin' that made you want to build a fire under him to see if he could swear like a Christian. He had a big head with consider'ble hair on the top of it and nothin'
underneath but what he called 'science' and 'sociology.' His science wa'n't nothin' but tommy-rot to Nate, and the 'sociology' was some kind of drivel about everybody bein' equal to everybody else, or better.
'Seemed to think 'twas wrong to get a good price for a thing when you found a feller soft enough to pay it. Did you ever hear the beat of that in your life?' says Nate.
”However, Augustus had soaked so much science and sociology into that weak noddle of his that they kind of made him drunk, as you might say, and the doctor had sent him down to board with the Scudders and sleep it off. 'Nervous prostration' was the way he had his symptoms labeled, and the nerve part was all right, for if a hen flew at him he'd holler and run. Scart! you never see such a scart cat in your born days. Scart of a boat, scart of being seasick, scart of a gun, scart of everything! Most special he was scart of Uncle Nate. The said uncle kept him that way so's he wouldn't dast to kick at the grub him and Huldy Ann give him, I guess.