it was a curious meal, that dinner. burton often thought afterwards that in all the varied experiences of his life, and he had had a good many, first and last, he had never met at one time, and under circumstances of such sudden and peculiar intimacy, four people so unusual. dr. underwood had been helped to a couch in the dining-room, and had his dinner from an invalid's table. his eager face, with its keen blue eyes and flexible mouth, was so vividly alert that no one could forget him for a moment, whether he spoke or was silent. when he laughed, which was often, he wrinkled his face into a mask. for a simple device, it was the most effective means imaginable for concealing an emotion.
mrs. underwood presided at her own table with the detached air of a casual guest. "mistress of herself, though china fall," burton murmured to himself as he looked at her; and he had an intuition that china would quite frequently be exasperated into falling by her calm. henry sat mostly silent, with downcast eyes, though occasionally he would look up, under half-lifted lids, with an expression of scorn or secret derision. if he had shown more animation or kindliness, he would have been a handsome man; but the heavy melancholy of his look had drawn bitter lines about his mouth, and his very silence seemed half reproachful, half sullen.
as for leslie, the only discomposing thing about her was her beauty. every time that burton looked at her, it struck him anew as incongruous and distracting that she should hand him the bread or have an eye to his needs. she should have been kept in a case or a frame. she belonged in a palace, where she would have due attendance and ceremony. well,--philip had not been such a fool, after all.
"now i am going to begin my story," said leslie, "because i want mr. burton to understand what lies back of this present persecution. the story goes back six years."
henry gave his sister one of his slow, curious looks, but dropped his eyes again without putting his silent comment into words.
"six years ago we were kept in hot water all one summer by some malicious person who played mischievous pranks on us, and wrote anonymous letters to us and about us. for instance, there were letters warning people to be on their guard against papa, saying he had learned from the indian medicine men how to put spells on people and make them wither away and die."
"if i could have done half the wonders they credited with me with," laughed dr. underwood, "i would have out-hermanned hermann and out-kellered keller. indian fakirs and black magicians wouldn't have been in it with roger underwood, m. d. it was like accusing a man who is shoveling dirt for one-twenty-five a day of having money to pay the national debt concealed in his hatband."
"then there were a lot of letters about henry," leslie went on. "they would say, for instance: 'henry underwood is a liar.' 'henry underwood is a thief.' 'henry underwood ought to be in the penitentiary.' all one summer that kept up."
henry had dropped his knife and fork and sat silent, without looking at his sister. his face was the face of one who is nerving himself to endure torture.
"were there any accusations of the other members of the family?"
"no. only henry and father.
"who received the letters? friends of yours? or enemies?"
"they were sent to the tradesmen and the more prominent people in town. we heard of them here and there, but probably we didn't know about all that were received. i remember more clearly than anything else how angry i was at some of the tricks."
"there was something more than these anonymous letters, then?"
the doctor frowned but leslie answered readily.
"yes. the letters continued at odd times all summer, but there were other things happening at the same time. for instance, one day an advertisement appeared in the paper saying that dr. underwood offered fifty cents apiece for all the cats and dogs that would be brought him for the purpose of vivisection. now, papa does not practise vivisection--"
"he does not now," mrs. underwood interrupted, with impressive deliberation, "but i am not at all sure that he never did. and as i have said before, if he was ever guilty of that abominable wickedness, at any time or under any circumstances, he richly deserved all the annoyance that advertisement brought upon him."
dr. underwood wrinkled up his face in a grimace, but made no answer.
"well, he doesn't now, and he didn't six years ago," leslie resumed pacifically, "but it was hard to convince people of that. you should have seen the place the next day! farmers, street boys, tramps, all sorts of rough people kept coming here with cats and dogs of all kinds,--oh, the forlorn creatures! and when papa refused to buy them, the people were angry and threatened to have him arrested for not carrying out his agreement. and all the ministers and the women's societies called on him to remonstrate with him for such wickedness, and when he said that he had not had anything to do with the advertisement, they showed plainly that they thought he was trying to crawl out of it because he had been caught. oh, it was awful."
"did you make any attempt to find out how the advertisement came to the paper, doctor?"
dr. underwood shrugged his shoulders.
"yes, they showed me the order. it had come by mail, with stamps enclosed to pay for the insertion. the dunderheaded fools hadn't had sense enough to guess that when a physician wants 'material' he doesn't advertise for it in the morning paper."
"under the circumstances, roger," said mrs. underwood gravely, "your flippancy is not becoming."
"it certainly was a neat scheme, if the object was to embarrass you, doctor. what else, miss underwood?"
"one day every grocer in town appeared at the door with a big load of household supplies,--enough to provision a regiment for a winter. they had all received the same order,--a very large order, including expensive and unusual things that they had had to send away for. and of course they were angry when we wouldn't take any of the things. they said that after that they would accept no orders unless we paid for them in advance, and that was sometimes embarrassing, also!"
"were the orders received by mail, as in the other cases?"
"i believe they were."
"did you get any of the original papers? and have you preserved them?"
"no, i didn't preserve them," said dr. underwood. "you see, the disturbance was only a sporadic one. it stopped, and i dismissed the matter from my mind. i didn't realize that leslie had stored so many of the details in her memory. i think she attaches too much importance to them."
"i am not at all sure that she does," said burton promptly. "they certainly constitute a curious series of incidents. was there anything more, miss underwood?"
"oh, yes, indeed. one morning we could not get out of the house. during the night, every door and every window had been barred across from the outside. strips of board had been fastened across all of them with screws so there had been no noise that would waken us. on the front door was a piece of paper, and written on it in big letters was 'this is a prison.' henry found it when he came home,--he had been spending the night with a friend,--and tore it down, and unscrewed the bars on the front door and let us out of our prison."
"you could have got down all right from the second story by the big oak on the east side," said henry. it was the first time he had contributed anything to the recital, and he spoke now in an impatient tone, as though the whole conversation bored him.
"has it occurred to you," asked burton thoughtfully, "that all these incidents bear the same marks of freakishness and mischief rather than of venomous malice? they are like the tricks a schoolboy might play to get even with some one he had a grudge against. they are not like the revenge a man would take for a real injury or a deep-felt grievance."
he glanced up at dr. underwood as he spoke, and caught the tail end of a scrutinizing look which that careless gentleman was just withdrawing from henry's unconscious face. the furtive watchfulness of that look was wholly at variance with the offhand tone in which he answered burton.
"i have not the slightest doubt you are right about that. it was mere foolishness on the part of some ignorant person, who wanted to do something irritating, and probably enjoyed the feeling that he was keeping us all agog over his tomfoolery."
"oh, but it was more than nonsense," cried leslie. "you forget about the fires. one night, mr. burton, mrs. bussey left the week's washing hanging on the lines in the back yard, and in the morning we found that it had all been gathered into a heap and burned. that was carrying a joke pretty far. and soon afterwards there was an attempt to burn the house down."
"come, leslie, let me tell that incident," interposed her father. "we found, one morning, a heap of half-charred sticks of wood on the front doorstep. it looked sinister at first sight, of course, but when i examined it, i was sure that there had been no fire in the sticks when they were piled on the step, or afterwards. it was a menace, if you like, but as mr. burton points out about those other matters, it was rather a silly attempt at a scare than a serious attempt at arson. don't paint that poor devil any blacker than he is, my girl. he has probably realized long ago that it was all a silly performance, and we don't want to go about harboring malice."
"of course not. only,--those things did actually happen to us, mr. burton."
"don't say happen, leslie," said mrs. underwood, with the curious effect she always had of suddenly coming back to consciousness at any word that struck her ethical mind. "things don't happen to people unless they have deserved them. what seems to be accident may be really punishment for sin."
"well, these things befell us after that fashion," said leslie patiently, picking her words to avoid pitfalls of metaphysics. "then they stopped. everything went on quietly until a few weeks ago. then things began again."
"let me warn you, burton," interposed dr. underwood again, "that this is where leslie becomes fantastic. she has too much imagination for her own good. she ought to be writing fairy tales, or society paragraphs for the sunday papers. now go ahead, my dear. do your worst."
"papa persists in making fun of me because i see a connection between what happened six years ago, and the things that have been coming up lately, but i leave you to judge. there have been no tricks on us, no disturbances about the house, but there have been stories circulated, perfectly outrageous stories,--"
"the highwayman story?"
"that is one of them."
"but surely the best way to treat that is with silent contempt!"
but leslie shook her head.
"that isn't papa's way. he answers back. and it certainly is annoying to have your neighbors repeating such tales, and humiliating to find that they are ready to go more than halfway in believing them."
"it is not only humiliating; it is expensive," murmured dr. underwood, letting his head fall back against the cushions of the couch, and closing his eyes a little wearily. "you can't expect people to call in a doctor who is suspected of robbing the public and occasionally poisoning a patient. i have practically nothing left but charity patients now, and pretty soon they will consider that it is a charity to let me prescribe for them."
burton's eyes were drawn to leslie's face. she was looking at her father with a passion of pity and sympathy that was more eloquently expressed through her silence than by any words. mrs. underwood broke the silence with her judicial speech.
"i do not think," she said, "that there has ever been anything in your treatment of your patients that would at all justify the idea that you poisoned mr. means. therefore, you can rest assured that the story will do you no harm. we really can suffer only from our own acts."
underwood opened his eyes and looked at burton with portentous gravity.
"we'll consider that matter settled, then. sometime i should like to lay the details of that affair before you, mr. burton, because you would understand the wild absurdity of it all. as a matter of fact, strychnine in fatal quantities was found in the bottle of medicine which i made up myself, and i have not the slightest idea who could have tampered with it. some one had. that is one of the mysteries which leslie wants to fit in with the others of the series. but we haven't time for that now, for my committee is almost due, and i am going to ask you to help me back to the surgery. i will meet them there."
"one moment," said burton. "you surely must have laid these matters before the police. did they make no discoveries, have no theories?"
underwood glanced at his daughter,--plainly and obviously a glance of warning. but he spoke in his habitually easy way.
"oh, selby has put it before the police," he said. "as i understand it, he has been neglecting his business to labor with the police by day and by night, trying to induce them to arrest me. it strike me that he is becoming something of a monomaniac on the subject, but i may be prejudiced."
"i didn't mean the recent hold-up, but those earlier affairs," explained burton. "didn't the police investigate them?"
"our police force has fallible moments, and this proved to be one of them. they chased all over the place, like unbroken dogs crazy over a scent, ran many theories to earth, and proved nothing," said the doctor in an airy tone, as one dismissing a subject of no moment.
but mrs. underwood looked down the table toward burton and spoke with her disconcerting and inopportune candor.
"they tried to make out that it was henry," she said calmly. "i think i may say, without being accused of partiality, that i do not consider their charges as proven, for though henry has much to answer for--"
"so you see we are very well-known people in the town and have been much in the public eye," interrupted the doctor smoothly.
"not so well-known as you might be," said burton, catching wildly at the first conversational straw he could think of, in his eagerness to second the doctor's obvious effort to put a stop to his wife's disconcerting admissions. "i asked a man who was talking to mrs. bussey at your back gate if this was your house, and he didn't even know your name."
"that is as gratifying as it is surprising," the doctor responded, also marking time. "i wonder who the ignorant individual could be."
at that moment mrs. bussey entered the room, with her tray, and to keep the ball going he turned to question her. "who was it you were talking to at the back gate this afternoon, mrs. bussey?"
"wasn't nobody," said mrs. bussey, with startled promptness.
"a man. didn't know my name. was he a stranger?"
"didn't talk to nobody," she repeated doggedly, without looking up. "who says i was talking to a strange man?"
"it doesn't matter," said the doctor, with a surprised glance. "he was evidently unknown as well as unknowing, mr. burton,--or at any rate we keep peace in the family by assuming that he was non-existent. there are things into which it is not wise to inquire too closely. now i believe that i'll have to ask for help in getting back into the surgery."
burton waited just long enough to assure himself that henry was not going to his father's assistance, then offered his own arm. at the same moment he caught a slight but imperative sign from mrs. underwood to her son. in silent response to it, henry came forward to support his father upon the other side. as soon as they got dr. underwood again into the surgery, henry withdrew without a word. burton felt that there was something wistful in the look which the doctor turned toward his son's retreating form. but he was saved from the embarrassment of recognizing the situation, for immediately mrs. bussey flung open the door without the formality of tapping and burst into the room.
"there's men a-coming," she exclaimed breathlessly.
"what's that? what d'ye mean?" demanded dr. underwood, startled and impatient.
"there's three men a-coming in at the gate. shall i let loose the dog?"
"go and let them in, you idiot. you will make mr. burton think that we have no visitors. don't keep them waiting outside. they didn't come to study the architecture of the fa?ade. bring them here,--here to this room, do you understand?"
mrs. bussey departed, muttering something under her breath that evidently expressed her bewildered disapproval of this break in the familiar routine of life, and dr. underwood looked up at burton with his peculiar grin, which might mean: amusement or embarrassment or any other emotion that he wanted to conceal.
"my investigating committee," he said.
