keep the property off the tax-delinquent list for a long enough time—some said twenty years—to guarantee that the house would be standing there if and when heirs of the surgeon appeared to lay claim to it, the doctor having written vaguely of a nephew in French Indo-China, on military service. All attempts to find the nephew had proved futile, and now the house was being permitted to stand until the period specified in the will of Dr. Charriere had expired.
"I think of leasing it," I told Gamwell.
Ill though he was, my fellow antiquarian raised himself up on one elbow in protest. "A passing whim, Atwood—let it pass. I have heard disquieting tilings of the house."
"What things?" I asked him bluntly.
But of these things he would not speak; he only shook his head feebly and closed his eyes.
"I hope to examine it tomorrow," I went on.
"It offers nothing you could not find in Quebec, believe me," said Gamwell.
But, as I have set forth, his curious opposition served only to augment my desire to examine the house at close range. I did not mean to spend a life time there, but only to lease it for a half year or so, and make it a base of operations, while I went about the country's ide around the city as well as the lanes and byways of Providence in search of the antiquities of that region. Gamwell did surrender at last the name of the firm of lawyers in whose hands the Charriere will had been placed, and when I made application to them, and overcame their own lack of enthusiasm, I became master of the old Charriere house for a period of not more than six months, and less, if I so chose.
I took possession of the house at once, though I was somewhat nonplussed to discover that, while running water had been put in, electricity had not. I found among the furnishings of the house—these had been left in each room, exactly as at tire death of Dr. Charriere—a half dozen lamps of various shapes and ages, some of them apparently dating back a century or more, with which to light my way. I had expected to find the house cobwebbed and dusty, but I was surprised to learn that this was not the case, though I had not understood that the lawyers—the firm of Baker & Greenbaugh—had undertaken to care for the house during the half century it was to stand, short of someone's appearing to lay claim to it as the sole survivor of Dr. Charriere and his line.
