The Camp Fire Girls Solve a Mystery Or The Christmas Adventure at Carver House Part 4

The captain and Justice sprang up simultaneously in answer to her request and raced for the stable. In a few minutes they were back, bringing old Hercules with them. Hercules had a somewhat forlorn air about him like that of a dog without a master. Nyoda said he was grieving for Uncle Jasper; Sherry said it was the goat he was mourning for. At any rate, he was a pathetic figure as he hobbled painfully up the stairs one step at a time on his shaky, stiff old limbs. His eyes brightened a bit as he saw the door into Uncle Jasper's study standing open, and he looked around the room with an affectionate gaze as the boys piloted him in. Nyoda saw his eyes rest on the window from which the shutter had been removed, and it seemed to her that he gave a start and gazed through the window apprehensively.

"Hercules," said Nyoda briskly, "we've just taken this ugly old shutter off that stained gla.s.s window, and we're curious to know why it was put up. It seems such a pity to have put those great screws into that mahogany cas.e.m.e.nt. Why did Uncle Jasper put it up?"

Hercules scratched his head and s.h.i.+fted his corn cob pipe to the other side of his mouth. "Dat shutter's bin up a good many years, Mis'

'Lizbeth," he quavered.

"I see it has, from the way the screws were rusted in," replied Nyoda.

"But why was it put up?"

"Dat shutter's bin dere twenty-five years," reiterated the old man solemnly, still looking at it in a half-fascinated, half-apprehensive way.

"Yes, yes," said Nyoda, trying to control her impatience. "But _why_ has it been there all this time? Why did Uncle Jasper put it up?"

Hercules scratched his head again, and replaced his pipe in its original position. "I disremember, Mis' 'Lizbeth," he said deprecatingly. "It's bin so long since. My memry's bin powerful bad lately, Mis' 'Lizbeth.

Seems like I caint remember hardly anything. It's de mizry, Mis'

'Lizbeth; it's settled in my memry." He carefully avoided her eyes.

"Please try to remember!" said Nyoda, trying hard to hold on to her patience, but morally certain that Hercules was trying to sidestep her questions. "Think, now. Twenty-five years ago Uncle Jasper put up an iron shutter to cover the most beautiful window in Carver House. Why did he do it?"

Nyoda turned so that she looked right into his face, and her compelling black eyes held his s.h.i.+fty gaze steady. There was something strangely magnetic about Nyoda's eyes. People could avoid answering her questions as long as they did not look into her eyes, but once let her catch your gaze, and things she wanted to know had a habit of coming out of their own accord. Hercules seemed to be on the point of speaking; he cleared his throat nervously and s.h.i.+fted the pipe once more. Nyoda cast a triumphant glance at Sherry. In that instant Hercules s.h.i.+fted his gaze from her face and met another pair of eyes, eyes that seemed to look at him accusingly, and sent a chill running down his spine. These were none other than the eyes of Uncle Jasper, who, hanging in his frame on the study wall, seemed to be looking straight at him, in the way that eyes in pictures have. When Nyoda glanced back at Hercules he was staring uneasily at Uncle Jasper's picture and there was a guilty look about him as if he had been caught in a misdemeanor.

"I 'clare, I cain't remember nothin' 'bout why dat shutter was put up, Mis' 'Lizbeth," he said earnestly. "Come to think on it now, Ma.r.s.e Jasper ain't never _told_ me why he want it put up," he continued triumphantly.

"He just say, 'Herc'les, put up dat shutter,' and he ain't ever say why.

I axed him, 'Ma.r.s.e Jasper, what for you puttin' up dat shutter over dat window?' and he say, 'Herc'les, you put up dat shutter and mind your business. I ain't tellin' _why_ I wants it put up; I jest wants it put up, dat's all.' No'm, Mis' 'Lizbeth, I's often wondered myself about dat shutter, but I never found out nothin'."

He glanced up at Uncle Jasper's picture as though expecting some token of approval from the stern, grim face.

Nyoda saw it was no use trying to get anything out of Hercules. Either he really did not know anything, or he would not tell.

"You may go, Hercules," she said. "That's all we wanted of you."

Hercules looked unaccountably relieved and started for the door. Half way across the room he turned and looked long through the clear panel of gla.s.s underneath the archway of the gate in the stained gla.s.s window. He stood still, seemingly lost in reverie, and quite oblivious to the group about him. Finally his lips began to move, and he began to mutter to himself, and Sahwah's sharp ears caught the sound of the words.

"Dey's tings," muttered the old man, "dat folks don't _want_ ter look at, and dey's tings dey _da.s.sent_ look at!"

Still lost in reverie he shuffled out of the room and hobbled painfully downstairs.

CHAPTER V THE FIRST LINK

"What did old Hercules mean?" asked Sahwah in astonishment. "He said, 'Dey's some tings folks don't want ter look at, and dey's tings dey da.s.sent look at!'"

"I can't imagine," said Nyoda, thoroughly mystified. "But there's one thing sure, and that is, Uncle Jasper had some very potent reason for putting that shutter over that window, and I more than half believe Hercules knows what it was. Hercules' explanations always become very fluent when he is not telling the truth. If he really hadn't known anything about it he probably would have said so simply, in about three words, and without any hesitation. The elaborate details he went into to convince me that he knew nothing about it sounds suspicious to me.

"But I don't believe the exclamation he made when he went out was intended to deceive me. I think it was the involuntary utterance of what was in his thoughts. He seemed to be thinking aloud, and was quite unconscious of our presence.

"But what a queer thing to say-'Dey's tings people _da.s.sent_ look at!' I wonder what it was that Uncle Jasper dared not look at? Was it something he saw through this window? What is there to be seen out of this window, anyway?" She moved over in front of the window with the others crowding after her to see, too.

Uncle Jasper's study was at the back of the house and the windows looked out upon the wide open meadow which stretched behind Carver Hill, between the town and the woods. The front of Carver House looked out over the town. Nearly half a mile to the east of Carver Hill another hill rose sharply from the town's edge. Upon its top stood another old-fas.h.i.+oned dwelling. This hill, crowned with its red brick mansion, was framed in the arch of the gateway in the window like an artist's picture, with nothing between to obstruct the view. A beautiful picture it was, certainly, and one which could not possibly have any connection with Hercules' muttered words.

"Who lives in that house?" asked Sahwah.

"I don't know," said Nyoda. "It's way up on the Main Street Hill. I'm not acquainted with the people in that end of town."

Sherry got out his binoculars and took a look through the window.

"Nothing but an old house on a hill," he reported, and handed the binoculars to Sylvia, that she might take a look through them.

"Why," said Sylvia after peering intently through the gla.s.ses for a minute, "it's the house Aunt Aggie and I live in! What did that old house have to do with your Uncle Jasper?" she asked wondering. "It's been empty for many, many years."

"Oh, wouldn't it be wonderful if there was a romance in your Uncle Jasper's life?" exclaimed Hinpoha eagerly. "A blighted romance. He never married, did he?"

"No, he never married," replied Nyoda.

"Then I'm sure it's a blighted romance!" said Hinpoha enthusiastically.

"I just know that some deep tragedy darkened the sun of his life and left him shrouded in gloom forever after!"

Even Nyoda smiled at Hinpoha's sentimental language, and the rest could not help laughing out loud.

"You sound like Lady Imogen, in 'The Lost Heiress,'" said Katherine derisively.

"Well, I don't care, you'll have to admit that there are some very romantic possibilities, anyway," said Hinpoha stoutly.

"Yes, and some very prosaic ones, too," retorted Katherine. "Uncle Jasper probably never married because he was a born bachelor, and preferred to live alone."

"O Katherine, why are you always taking the joy out of life?" wailed Hinpoha. "It's lots more fun to think romantic things about people than dull, stupid, everyday things."

"I think so too," said Sahwah, unexpectedly coming to the defense of Hinpoha. "I've been thinking a lot about old Mr. Carver, living alone here all those years, and I've wondered if there wasn't some reason for it. Certainly something happened that made him put that shutter up, that's clear."

"Well, whatever motive the old man may have had for putting it up, we'll probably never find it out," said Sherry, gathering up the screws and screwdriver, "inasmuch as he's dead and it's no use asking Hercules anything; so we might as well stop puzzling over it. I'll hunt up something to fill in those screw holes with, Elizabeth, and polish them over." Sherry, in his matter-of-fact way, had already dismissed the matter from his mind as not worth bothering over.

Not so Nyoda and the Winnebagos. The merest hint of a possible mystery connected with the shutter set them on fire with curiosity and desire to penetrate into its depths.

"I wonder," said Nyoda musingly, eyeing the ma.s.sive desk before her with a speculative glance, "if Uncle Jasper left any record of the repairs and improvements which he made to the house while he was the owner. The item of the shutter might be mentioned, with the reason for putting it up."

"It might," agreed the Winnebagos.

Nyoda looked around at the litter of odd pieces of furniture crowding the room. "Sherry," she said briskly, "make up your mind this minute whether you want any of that old stuff, because I'm going to clear it out of here and sell it."

"A lot of good it would do me to make up my mind to want any of it, if you've made up your mind to sell it," said Sherry in a comically plaintive tone.

"All right," responded Nyoda tranquilly, "I knew you didn't want any of it. Boys, will you help Sherry carry out those two tables and that high desk and the chiffonier-all the oak furniture. I'm not keeping anything but the mahogany. Set it out in the hall; I'll have the furniture man come and get it to-morrow.

"There, now the room looks as it did when Uncle Jasper inhabited it," she remarked when the extra pieces had been cleared out.

"It certainly was a pleasant room; I don't see how Uncle Jasper could have maintained such a gloomy disposition as he did, working all day in a room like this. The very sight of that open field out there makes me want to run and shout-and that window! Oh, who could look at it all day long and be crusty and sour?"