3
The route to romance led through Bendale to Coulters, but now there was a dead man in the way. It had taken youth and hope and several other things to set out as Cunningham had done in the first place. The quest of a pictured smile among a strange people in unfamiliar country is not a thing the average young man can bring himself to. He will be afraid of looking foolish. But to continue on the quest when one has just seen a dead man the girl’s own people have killed, more courage still is needed.
Cunningham was not quite so joyous now. He had gone with Gray to identify the foreigner. He had turned sick at the expression on the man’s face. He had promised to stay within call for the inquest. And then he and Gray had gone on to Coulters.
Cunningham was not happy. Here was adventure, but it was stark and depressing. And romance. The pictured face was no less appealing and no less ideal. But the picture had been taken four months before. In the interval what might not have happened? Many people were concerned in the killing of the foreigner. Did the girl of the photograph know of it? Was she in the secret of the death that had been dealt out? Did she know who had killed the man, or why?
“You’d a lot better have stayed behind, Cunningham,” said Gray, as their team jogged over the country road to the summer boarding-house where they were to stay. “I don’t think this is going to be pleasant from now on. No place for a romance-hunter.”
“You’re not staying back,” Cunningham observed. “And you’re just following a hobby.”
“Umph. That dialect business. Yes,” said Gray. His lips twitched grimly. “But a hobby can be as exacting as a profession. Still, I didn’t expect to come up here and run slap into a first-class murder.”
Gray puffed on his cigar and slapped the horses with the reins.
“The pleasantest part,” he added, “is that we shall probably be just about as unwelcome as that chap was last night.”
Cunningham did not answer, and they drove in silence for a long time.
Discomforting thoughts assailed Cunningham. He knew as clearly as anyone that it was absurd to grow romantic about a girl merely from a picture. But though it may be absurd, it is by no means uncommon. The obtaining of autographed photographs from Hollywood ranks with radio as a national occupation. Cunningham was not disturbed by the comparative idiocy of traveling several hundred miles and running into some danger just to see a girl whose picture haunted his dreams. But the thought of finding her involved in such an unpleasant mess as the killing of the foreigner; that was different.
A tidy-minded person would have abandoned the quest at once. He would have abandoned the clearly marked trail to romance and high adventure and gone home. A man who acted upon sober common sense would have done the same thing. But such persons do not ever find romance and very rarely even the mildest of adventures. It takes folly and belief to come at romance!—such folly as enabled Cunningham presently to see his duty clear before him.
Maria needed someone to protect her. She was a Stranger, and the native New Hampshireites hated the Strange People cordially. Cunningham had heard enough at the police station that morning to know that the investigation of the foreigner’s killing would be close to a persecution. But if Cunningham were there, near enough to protect the girl who had smiled so shyly yet so pleasantly at the camera, why——
Gray grunted suddenly.
“There’s our boarding-house,” he said, pointing with the whip. “I suppose the Strange People live up in the hills yonder.”
Cunningham stared up at green-clad giants that were tumbled here and there and everywhere in inextricable confusion and grandeur. Hill and valley, vale and mountain, reared up or dipped down until it seemed that as far as the eye could reach the earth had once been a playground of Titans.
A four-square, angular building of typical New England build lay beside the road at the foot of the hills.
“They came here,” grunted Gray, waving his whip. “They had gold, rough gold, to buy ground with. Where did they come from and why did they pick out this part of the world to settle in? The soil’s too thin to grow anything much but hay. The ground’s so rough you have to sow your fields with a shotgun. The biggest crops are stones and summer boarders.”
“I’m wondering,” said Cunningham, whose thoughts had wandered as his eyes roved the heights, “I’m wondering were they knew that chap that was killed.”
“Where they knew him?”
“The Stranger on the train recognized him at first glance. But that chap had a copy of the Geographic Magazine and he’d found where they were from that. He had learned about them just as we did.”
Gray frowned. Then he looked respectfully at Cunningham.
“You’re right. They knew him somewhere, a couple of years ago. But where?”
Cunningham shrugged.
“The article says nowhere.”
And the article did. According to the writer, the Strange People were an enigma, an anomaly, and a mystery. And they had just proved that they could be a threat as well.
The livery team drew up before Coulters’ solitary building. It was a crossroads post-office and summer hotel with a dreary general store tucked under one wing.
A man was sitting on the porch, smoking. He was watching them intently and as they alighted he rose to greet them.
One glance made Cunningham exclaim under his breath. This man was the counterpart of the foreigner on the train—the one who had been killed. The same olive skin, the same keen and venomous eyes, and even the same too-full lips with their incongruous suggestion of cruelty. He was dressed, too, in the same immaculate fashion from meticulously tailored clothes to handmade boots.
“How do you do?” he said politely. “I’ve been hoping to find you here. You reached Bendale on yesterday’s train?”
Gray’s face was quite impassive.
“Yes,” he admitted.
The foreigner exhibited half a dozen magazine pages. They were the ones containing the article on the Strange People which had brought both Gray and Cunningham to the spot.
“I believe you recognize this?”
Gray nodded, watching the man keenly.
“Before you arrange for rooms,” suggested the foreigner, smiling so that his teeth showed unpleasantly, “I would like to speak to you a moment. My brother saw you on the train. He telegraphed for me to meet you here. I may add that I had myself driven all night over very bad roads to get here, and I probably ruined a car in trying to meet you.”
“Well?” asked Gray shortly.
The foreigner reached into his pocket and pulled out a thick wallet. He opened it, and an incredible mass of yellow-backed bills was exposed to view.
“In the first place,” he said pleasantly, “I would like to offer each of you a present—let us say, five thousand dollars apiece—just to go home and forget that you ever saw that magazine article or ever heard of the Strange People in the hills up there.”