look up to your ears in work,” said he, his eyes upon the books.
Ashton-Kirk smiled.
“On the contrary, I’ve been resting,” he answered, his gaze also upon the books, and filled with the mist which comes of deep plunges into the past, or into the annals of lands that never were. “When I’m overtaxed or too tightly strung there’s nothing so relaxes me as the ancient romances; there’s nothing near so quieting as the sayings of the wise old monks, spoken in the cool of the cloisters.”
Mr. Scanlon nodded appreciatively.
“Personally, I’m very strong for all those old fellows,” said he. “They had speed, control and change of pace.”
“Their greatest charm is their simplicity,” said Ashton-Kirk, as he refilled his pipe. “They believed things as children believe them. Their days were rare with faith; their nights with wonders. But,” and there was regret in the speaker’s voice, “the world has turned many times since then. There are no more wonders; and surprise, as they knew it, has ceased to exist.”
Mr. Bat Scanlon, one time athlete, gambler and gun fighter, but now a handler of champions, brushed the first short plume of ash from his cigar. He shook his head.
“Wrong!” stated he, confidently. “Altogether wrong. You get behind the scenes too much; you see the insides of things too often. Wonder is as thick as ever it was; and surprise is still on the job. If there’s any falling off, it’s in ourselves. We’ve grown cross-eyed looking at fakes; we haven’t the vision to know a wonder when we see it.”
A volume of Burton lay upon the table at his hand. He picked it up.
“Here’s Bagdad,” said he, riffling the pages, sharply. “Bagdad, a city stuffed with strangeness. But,” and he looked at Ashton-Kirk, earnestly, “had it really anything on this town of ours? Were its nights deeper? its silences more mysterious? I think not. Let any man—with his eyes open—mind you—go out into one of our nights, and he’ll meet with as many astonishments as Haroun Al Raschid, the best prowler of them all.”
Ashton-Kirk smiled through the thickening smoke. It were as though he had convinced himself of something.
“Your defense of present day interest is so keen,” said he, “that I’m inclined to hope this case you have holds some exceptional features.”
Scanlon nodded.
“And yet,” with a gesture, “I’m not so sure. I can’t put my fingers on a single thing, or even give it a name.”
“It has something to do with this young fellow Campe, I think you said.”
“It has all to do with him,” stated Mr. Scanlon. “And that’s one of the things that makes it so queer. He’s the last one I’d expected to get mixed up with anything of the kind; and he’s a gone youngster if somebody with more stuff than I have don’t step in and take a swing at it”
There was a short silence; the smoke from the cigar mingled with that of the pipe; eddying in the draught from the window they wove in and out intricately, finally mingled and drifted out into the big world.
“Suppose you go carefully over the affair as you know it,” suggested Ashton-Kirk. “I got very little of it over the telephone.”
Scanlon drew at the cigar and gazed at the opposite wall where there hung that Maxfield Parrish print of the wonder-stricken brown sailors, peering into the unknown from the bow of their ship.
“If this was my own matter,” said he, “I could take every individual happening by the neck and shake the information right out of it But as it stands, I’ve only got a good straight look at one thing that’s at all plain to me.”
"What’s that?” asked Ashton-Kirk.
“Fear,” replied Scanlon, in a low-pitched voice, his mouth twisting wrily as he shaped the word. “Stark, white-faced fear; the kind that turns a man sick just at the sight of it.”
The big man frowned for a moment at the brown sailors peering out over their mystic sea. Then he resumed.
“As I said a few moments ago, I was surprised at a young fellow like Campe indulging in a recreation like being afraid; for in him we have a wide-awake chap, graduate of one of the big colleges, holder of a middle distance record and known for his pluck. And for such a one to lock himself up in a big country house and go to shaking at every sound he hears is not quite pleasant.”
“Fear, when properly planted, sinks deep and lasts long,” said Ashton-Kirk. “I’ve seen strong men quite like rabbits, in the grip of something they didn’t understand.”
“I got acquainted with young Campe a couple of years ago when he sprung a tendon and they thought a big race was lost for his college. They sent for me as old Doc Emergency and I tinkered him up enough to go the distance. After that he got friendly. When he graduated, every one expected he’d go back to Mexico. But he didn’t. He went into a German importing house here—a kind of partner, I think.
“I’d always measured him for a kind of a cutup; he never seemed to take things very seriously, and had a laugh that he kept constantly working. But about a year ago I noticed a change. He didn’t talk so much; if he laughed at all it didn’t have the old time color; and he got to sitting staring at the ground. When I’d talk, he’d listen for a while; then he’d sort of drift away. I could tell by his expression that he wasn’t getting a thing I was saying. Finally he took to walking the floor, biting his nails and whispering to himself.”
Ashton-Kirk shook his head.
“Pretty bad,” said he.
“That’s what I thought. And I mentioned the fact to him. But he tried to laugh—it was a complete failure—and said there was nothing wrong. He was a little nervous; and even that, so he said, would wear off after a while.
“The day I spoke to him in this way was the last I saw of him until about two weeks ago. Then I got a letter, asking me to pack a bag and run up to Marlowe Furnace for a visit. ‘The shooting’s right,’ says he, ‘ and I’ve got a brace of dogs that’ll make you show excitement.’
“‘ This,’ says I, to myself, ‘ is just about the right thing. Nothing’d suit me better now than to fuss with a dog and a gun.’
“So I wrote him I’d come at once. Marlowe Furnace, if you don’t know the place, is about twenty miles out, tucked away among the hills. It was quite a place in revolutionary times; they beat out sword blades and bayonets there, and cast cannon, and the round shot to stuff them with.
“There’s only a few houses, with an inn for summer visitors; and there’s a little covered bridge crosses the river, just like a picture on a plate. Campe was holding out at Schwartzberg, or Castle Schwartzberg, as the people of the town call it. The castle is a regular robber-baron kind of a place, with a wall around it, towers, battlements, little windows with heavy bars, and all the rest of the fixings.”
“I know it,” said Ashton-Kirk. “It was built by a German officer who came over with Baron Steuben during the Revolution. When peace came, he decided he liked the section well enough to stay. He was rich, and built Schwartzberg in the effort to get some of the color of the old land into the new.”
“It was something like that,” said Mr. Scanlon, nodding. “And the builder must have been related, in a way, to the Campes. Anyhow, they came into the castle some years ago. Well, to be invited to a place like that was not usual with me; and I felt a little swelled up about it.
“'You’ve been asked because of your qualities as a sportsman and boon companion,’ says I to myself; 'the discriminating always pick you for an ace.’
“But twenty-four hours later I had learned my true status,” said Scanlon, his brows corrugating, and his thick forefinger tapping the table. “I had been asked to Schwartzberg to act as a bodyguard, and for nothing else in the world.”
“I see,” said Ashton-Kirk.