The Keeper of the Bees/Chapter 17
The Interloper
IF THE little Scout had not been taking a double share of responsibility for the new baby Jamie, very likely the thing that happened during this period never would have happened to Jamie the elder, who did not come far from being considerable of a baby himself under the right circumstances. To begin with, Jamie had not as yet been able to reconcile himself to the fact that he owned an acre of California and a house beautifully furnished with the exception of one room. He had not been able to take it in that a world of flowers, an orchard of fruit trees, a garden of vegetables, and a long row of hives of bees yielding the most delicious of honey, a very large percentage of it having been gathered in the delicate blue garden of the bees and in adjoining gardens—he had not been able to realize that the most attractive small house he had ever seen and half of the Sierra Madre Apiary were his. He had not been able to bring himself to feel that it was either just or right that all these things should be his.
He was still looking upon his possessions in a state of bewilderment. It was true that he had been before the probate judge; he had fulfilled the requirements of the law. The property had been transferred to him and Jean Meredith according to the exactions of the law. Money had been drawn from the bank and the inheritance tax paid as the Bee Master had provided. And still Jamie did not feel that he really owned the acre that was standing in his name. He had the feeling that if he had stayed there for a long period, say ten years, and had studied the bees and had worked faithfully; if he had taken the place of a son to the Bee Master for that length of time and then the Bee Master had made his crossing and left his property to him, knowing him thoroughly and feeling that he could depend on him, that, to Jamie, would have been a right and reasonable transaction. He did not realize that any one who met him and who was a judge of human nature, in one good look from Jamie’s head to his heels, would have been able to say definitely what he thought concerning him with very nearly the same degree of truthful delineation as could have been rendered at the end of ten years’ acquaintance.
Jamie was the kind of a man that women and children and other men and dogs trusted without asking any questions. Jamie was the kind of a man who could forget the biggest problem preying on his mind to bind up the broken leg of a dog, to heal a hurt for a child. His present predicament was proof of what he would do for another man, glowing proof of what he would do for a woman. He had not been accustomed ever to think seriously of himself until the shrapnel wound tore his breast, and then for two years he had been forced to think. In the régime of hospitals and medical treatment he had faced for such a long period the thought that the end of him was not so far away that it had become an obsession. Gradually the garden had worked its magic until now Jamie was once more a man, a man who was thinking for the little Scout, for Margaret Cameron, for a girl who had risked her life and lost it and, dying, had left him a second inheritance, one that Jamie was more willing to accept than the first.
In the absence of Margaret Cameron he was cleaning house. His thrifty mother had trained him to be her assistant in childhood. He knew how to sweep and dust, how to arrange furniture, how to keep a house immaculate. He was using the broom on the entrance porch when a taxi stopped before the door. A very smartly dressed young woman stepped from it and verified the house number. She looked over the premises with approving eyes and a smile of reassurance on her lips that caused panic in Jamie’s heart. He had not felt that he had earned the property; he had not felt that he had first right to it; but he was quite certain that God Himself did not know how much he loved it, how much he wanted it, and when this attractive young lady with the smile of assurance that was almost too assured for the best degree of breeding, looked the premises over and inquired: “I am not mistaken in thinking that this is the residence of Mr. Michael Worthington, am I?” Jamie shook his head.
“I think,” said the young lady, confidentially, “that I could have selected Papa’s house from any on this street. It looks so exactly like him.”Jamie had thought that he was fortified for this very thing, but when it happened he learned that he had not been prepared in the least. He felt precisely as if someone had slugged him over the head with a very substantial piece of extremely hard wood. He had only brains enough left for an observation that he was too polite to make at hazard, so he said to himself: “Well, it may be that this house looks exactly like ‘Papa,’ but God knows that you don’t!” He went further: “And I’d always been taught that there was a strong probability that girls would resemble their fathers.”
What Jamie did outwardly was to get his heels together, square his shoulders, and manage a bow.
“Am I to understand,” he asked, “that you are a daughter of the Bee Master?”
The young lady looked at Jamie and smiled, probably the most attractive smile she could muster.
“I am not only a daughter,” she said, “but I am his whole family. Of course, when the news came of Papa’s having died so suddenly and unexpectedly, it was necessary for me to spend some time seeing that he was laid away as he would have desired to be and doing everything that I could to comfort Mamma.”
Jamie suddenly found himself putting up what he considered a fight.
“I had understood from the Bee Master,” he said, “that both his wife and daughter were dead.”
“I don’t know much about his first marriage. Of course, his first wife was dead before he married Mamma, and I think they did have a child. I seem to have heard it mentioned, but, of course, that was long before I was born.”
“Oh, I see,” said Jamie.
“And I might as well tell you, if you are in charge here, that Mamma and Papa never could agree. They were always having difficulties, and at last she was forced to secure a divorce. She could not live with a man so irritable and exacting, a man who never wanted to do anything but drone over a book or occupy himself with some kind of highbrow stuff that nobody human ever could have been interested in. I didn’t blame her a bit. I was entirely on her side. After she got the divorce, Papa went somewhere. She never knew where he had gone. He did not communicate with us directly. His lawyer sent the money for my support, and I suppose it is to him that I shall have to appeal to secure the property which rightfully belongs to me as his only child, his only living heir.”
“Has nobody told you,” asked Jamie, “that the Bee Master left a will in which he bequeathed this property to a partner he has had for a period of several years, and to me?”
The young lady laughed pleasantly.
“There was a rumour. Somebody said something about there being no effects—possibly a letter from a nurse at the hospital where Papa died—but, of course, when people here know that I am Miss Worthington and Papa’s only child, there isn’t going to be any question as to whom the place rightfully belongs.”Jamie looked very hard at the young person before him. He could see no reason as to why he should not believe what she said, but she did not in any way, in any faint degree, resemble the Bee Master, not a mannerism, not a word of speech, not in the shaping of hands or feet, not in facial formation or expression. At the same time, if she carried with her credentials to prove who she was and that her claim was just, it was nothing more than he had expected, nothing more than he had been insisting would happen, so he said: “If you furnish proof that the Bee Master was your father by blood, if you furnish proof that you have a legal claim to this property, there is no contesting the fact that it is yours; but the Bee Master was very clear in his mind, according to the testimony of his doctors and nurses, until he made his crossing, which happened in his sleep, and he was very emphatic in his statements that he had no heir of his immediate blood. What you will have to do is to show your proof, establish your identity, and make your claims convincing to the Probate Court of this county. In case you can do this, there is no question but that the property is yours. In the meantime, it is standing on the records in my name and in the name of the Master’s partner, and I am in charge here and I am going to remain in charge until your identity is established and your claims substantiated.”
“And where,” cried the young lady, “am I going to remain? If I have to go into court and make a legal fight of this it may require weeks or months even, and I had barely enough funds to bring me here. The allowance Papa made me never was half what it should have been.”
“I know nothing about that,” said Jamie. “I have nothing to do with it. But I do know that there is a small fortune in the bees and the trees and the flowers of this property, and that its value depends upon the bees being watched, as many of them are swarming at the present time. There is honey that. must be removed to save the bees from starting robbing, and always in California the watering must be strictly attended to. In the event that what the Bee Master wished and intended can be substantiated before a court, I do not propose, for the sake of his partner, who is now mine, and for my own sake, to have value depreciate as it will if I step out and leave the place to the care of a stranger.”
Then the first really ugly streak showed in the disposition of the young woman. She laughed disagreeably.
“Well, there will be no question about your stepping out,” she said, “and about your stepping very speedily. There is not a court in the world that would cut off an only daughter and an only child and leave a man’s property to almost a perfect stranger. That would be a little bit too low. And since this house is Papa’s, I think I have every right to remain here.”
She turned toward the street and beckoned to the taxi man.
“Bring my trunk and bags,” she ordered.
The taxi driver shouldered a small steamer trunk, carried it into the house, and set it in the middle of the living room, placing upon it a suitcase and a dressing bag. He was paid for his services and he climbed in his taxi and drove away, and a strange young woman with a very determined countenance took off her hat and looked around.
Jamie was worsted in the first round. He should not have allowed her to come in the house. He should not have permitted the taxi driver to leave the trunk. But she had said that she had very insufficient funds; there was a possibility that a judge might substantiate her claims; whatever Jamie did or did not do, he had to be a gentleman. He thought swiftly and he thought correctly. He thought: “Margaret Cameron is away. If she were here in this emergency, she would give me a room. She would let me sleep in the bed that belonged to her nephew, and since I know positively that this is what she would do, why shouldn’t I climb in her back window and take possession? I will water her garden and see that her flowers are carefully kept until her return, and in her kitchen I can cook me something to eat.”
So Jamie went into the bedroom and gathered up the clothing in which he had come, the things that he had bought since his occupancy, and the package containing the personal belongings of Alice Louise. He made them all into a bundle and went down the walk, through the side gate, burgled a back window, and established himself in the room that he felt certain, from the wall decorations and its location, had belonged to Margaret Cameron’s nephew. Then he went down to the corner grocery and purchased some food with which he filled the ice chest. He hung up the “Ice Wanted” sign and removed the milk and tomato and orange juice he had in the Bee Master’s ice chest, and inside an hour he was dispossessed; but he was still holding the job, still weeding, still watering, trimming, and keeping careful watch on more than the bees.
As he worked it appealed to him that the first thing he should do was to call Mr. Meredith and let him take what action he chose in his child’s interest. So he went to the telephone and, after hearing all the latest particulars which were enthusiastically delivered concerning little Jamie, he asked for Mr. Meredith. He was told that he was out of town and would be away for a week or ten days. Right there Jamie hesitated. He could take care of his little partner’s interests in the same manner as he would his own. He could see what legal action was taken and report it when the time came. There was no necessity for setting Mrs. Meredith and the little Scout to worrying when there was probably nothing they could do. So Jamie hung up the receiver without saying that at that minute the apiary was in the hands of an interloper.
As Jamie worked, this same interloper came down through the garden on a tour of observation. She had changed her dress for another, light and attractive. With the stains of travel removed, she seemed more like a world of girls such as Jamie saw everywhere every day. The difficulty was that she seemed so much like them that Jamie was not interested. It had to be an unusual girl, someone different, someone giving at least slight evidence of having a human heart, mental culture, and consideration of others, to make Jamie look twice. This young party evidently was thinking mostly of herself. Jamie watched her advancing toward him down the back walk and the first thought that came to him as she was sharply delineated in a patch of sunlight was: “She looks hard.”
Persistently he went on with his work. The girl was now within a few yards of him. She stopped and studied him intently.
“I’ve been thinking,” she said, “there’s nothing here that can suffer greatly in the few days that will be required to arrange the papers so that I can come into possession of my property. I prefer that you leave me in undisputed possession.”
Jamie looked at the girl and smiled, and it was a winsome smile, a bonny smile.
“Don’t you think,” he said, “that you are asking a good deal of human nature? I’ve been caring for this place for quite a while now; I’ve been thinking it was my own for some time past. You are confident to an unusual degree if you think I am going to walk out and turn over property that stands on the records in my name without having seen any proof you have to offer, without knowing whether you can establish the claims you make before acourt. Do you mean that if you came into possession of this property you would live here, you would make your home here?”
The young lady glanced around her. Jamie’s incredulity irritated her.“What kind of a back number are you?” she asked.
“As we came here I thought we were going about twenty miles from the station I came in at.”
“And so you were,” replied Jamie. “You are a good guesser.”
“And what would a girl, just when she has a right to have a good time, want to be marooned in a place like this for? If there is anything I am afraid of it’s a bee. If there’s anything I hate it’s a mountain. If there’s anything I hate worse than a mountain it’s the sea. If there is anything I can’t abide for a few hours at a stretch it is such stillness as this, such deadening, sickening silence. Does anything ever happen here?”
“Yes,” said Jamie, “you came, and the bees are beginning to swarm every few days. There’s fruit to be picked. There’s sprinkling to be done. There’s hoeing and cleaning and work a-plenty, more work than any one man can do as well as it should be done.”
“In other words,” said the young woman, “you are proposing to stay here and keep an eye on me.”
“You said that,” said Jamie. “What I said was that I was proposing to stay here and take care of the property, to do the sprinkling, to hive the bees.”
“I’m not such a fool that I don’t know why you will not go,” said the young person.
“Draw your own conclusions,” answered Jamie. “This side of the garden needs watering to-day. I am going to water it.” And he quietly went on with his work.
The young woman stood still a minute and then she said: “I want the keys to the chest Papa always kept his papers in. Undoubtedly there are things there that will help me to establish my interests.”
“Tell that to the probate judge,” said Jamie. “If he wants that chest unlocked and the papers that it contains turned over to you, he will send a clerk to go through them with you and to make a record of them and place them in evidence before they are tampered with.”
It happened that Jamie was keeping watch—oblique watch, but nevertheless a sharp watch—on the face of the girl when he made that statement. He saw the arrested breath; he saw the whitened face; he saw the tense pause and the deep thought, and the voice that sometimes talked to him inside himself said to him: “Now she doesn’t like that. She doesn’t want any one present when that chest is opened. She doesn’t want a record made of those papers. She doesn’t like the idea of asking the probate judge to send a man to go through them with her.”
Jamie immediately attached another length of hose and drew his work up the slope until he was opposite the window that gave the best view from the living room.
In this manner time went on. He had occupied Margaret’s house and kept his eye on the young person for two days and one night, and he was fairly well tired out when the young lady passed Margaret Cameron’s and Jamie watched her take the trolley for the city. He went over to the house. He did not see how it could wear the same expression on its face that it had always worn. It would have comforted him if it had looked very much disgusted and displeased, but it did not. It smiled on the roadway and the mountain-side on which it looked with exactly the same serene, placid smile of invitation that it always wore for him. He tried its doors, but they were all locked. He looked in the window, but he could see nothing except that the trunk was standing in the middle of the living room and the wardrobe of the young lady seemed to be mostly draped over the Bee Master’s chair. He decided that this would be a good time to work Margaret Cameron’s garden, so he went over and turned on the hose. He was busy there when he heard the light padding of beach shoes behind him and turned to face the little Scout.
“Oh, hello! How’s everything?”
“How’s everything at your end of the line?” parried Jamie.
“Fine!” said the little Scout. “I’m doin’ all those things that I told you I’d do for our partnership baby. He’s going to be an awful nice baby. Mother’s crazy over him. She cuddles him up and takes care of him edzactly like she did Jimmy, but she ain’t much stuck on this bottle business. She says it’s an awful nuisance to fix the bottle, and she says it’s an awful pity that any baby should have to lose its mother because she says that a baby, when it’s a little thing like that, gets more from its mother than just milk. She says it gets a steady stream of love. She says that a baby that lies on its mother’s breast and looks in her eyes and lays one little hand on her neck, gets with its food something that it knows about all its life. She says it tain’t natural and it tain’t right for a baby to be laid all alone on a pillow and any old bottle propped into its mouth. It ain’t propped with Jamie, ’cause I hold it, and it’s a good thing this happened while there’s no school, ’cause I’m tellin’ you that you wouldn’t believe all the things I do when there ain’t anybody looking. I can hold the bottle, and I put my arm around Jamie so’s maybe I can kind of fool him into thinking he’s got the same stream of love along with his milk that our Jimmy got. I tell you, our Jamie is just keen. My goodness! there I’ve gone and used Nannette’s word! That’s the only adjective Nannette knows. Her shoes are keen, and her dress is keen, and her hair-cut is keen, and the party is keen, and the picture is keen, and I’ve heard it so much I hope to goodness I ain’t goin’ to go and get keen, too!”
Jamie laughed.
“You don’t have to ‘get keen,’ Mr. Scout Master,” he said. “You’ve been perfectly keen ever since you’ve been born!”
The little Scout was evidently pleased. There was a slight increase in height; there was a funny toss of the head.
“Well, who’s going to shake dice with the right kind of a swing, and manage a bunch of Scouts, and do a whole lot of other things that I been up against all my life, and not be pretty keen? I’m keen on this place, I can tell you that! I’m about dead for it. I was telling Mother this morning that the very minute I get through ‘readin’ and writin’ and ‘rithmetic,’ I’m going to come here and get on my job. She says I’m going to college, but there are a whole lot of things about me that she doesn’t know as well as she might, and college is one of them.”
Then the Scout Master amply proved to Jamie the claim that had been made. He felt himself being subjected to a long look. He felt the length of a small figure pressing against him. He felt a hand unusually clean slipping up over his left side. He heard a voice so soft and sweet that it reminded him of a certain telephone voice that he knew.
The voice wailed: “Oh, Jamie! Your side didn’t tear, did it? You ain’t got it all to do over again, have you?”
Jamie put his arm around the little Scout.
“Why, no,” he said, “my side’s fine! It’s getting better every day. I have it in the back of my head that in two or three months more I will not even have to wear the lightest kind of a pad or a bandage.”
The Scout Master looked up.
“Then what's the matter?”
Jamie hesitated.
“Your face looks pasty and your eyes are dead tired. You look all beat out. You look just like I do when the Scouts go to rough-housing and I’ve had to lick the bunch. Sometimes I look at my face when I brush my teeth and I can see just how big my job is. Right around my eyes I can see it. And I can see things around your eyes now. What’s the matier?”
Jamie thought swiftly. He did not want to tell the little Scout what was the matter, in Mr. Meredith’s absence. He did not want Mrs, Meredith worried with a legal complication when she had undue care of the baby for whose care he had assumed responsibility. He thought fast and hard and let the moment slip.
“You are all night, little Scout,” he said. “You are rather keen. I was worried last night and I didn’t sleep well. I was kind of keeping watch over our place and Margaret’s.”
“Isn’t Margaret back yet? Things look all shut up,” observed the Scout Master.
“I imagine she’s gone into the city to have a vacation visit with the Molly you’re always talking about,” said Jamie. “I’m taking care of things for her while she is gone.”
“I guess I’ll go over and take a look at my property,” said the Scout Master, grinning broadly at Jamie.
“All right,” said Jamie.
Neither of them had noticed that the interloper had passed Margaret Cameron’s while they were watering her garden and had unlocked the front door and entered the house of invitation. The Scout Master flew over the fence, trotted down the gravel walk, waved a salutation to the jacqueranda, and took the curve passing the front of the house for the very natural reason that the one acre which stood on the county records in the name of Jean Meredith lay on the right-hand side of the house as one approached it from the entrance. As the child crossed the walk, there was a noticeable movement in the living room and the whiff of an odour that acted on the little Scout as a stiff breeze of formic acid acts on the wild. With a large fund of assurance, the Scout Master crossed the porch in a bound, swung open the front door, and faced the open trunk, the dresses draped over the Bee Master’s chair; faced, also, a young woman with an unduly bleached head and over-painted face, a young woman who, to the eyes of the Scout Master, was a fine combination of everything in the world that a nice young woman should not be. The youngster stared in amazement.
“How come?” was the greeting shot at the interloper. The suggestive hands were thrown out, one in the direction of the trunk, one of the chair.
“Hello, Kiddo,” said the young person. “You’re sure my luck! Take this dime and run to the nearest grocery and get me a bottle of milk, and when you bring it back, I’ll give you a nickel for going.”
The Scout Master stood still and looked hard at the young woman, looked long and intently and remembered something and could not tell exactly what.
“You’re not, you’re not Jamie’s mother, are you? But, of course, you couldn’t be Jamie’s mother ’cause Jamie’s coming made her too sick and she had to go across whether she wanted to or not. Who are you, and what are you doing here?”
“That’s nothing to you,” said the young lady. “Run along and get my milk, and then I’ve got about fifty other errands I want you to do. You can pick up quite a bit of my small change in the next hour or two if you move so that you stir the dust at all.”The Scout Master stood still. With hard, almost feverish eyes the face of the woman was scanned. The eyes especially were studied deeply. The trunk and the clothing, the abominable odours of cheap soaps and vile perfumes, all registered adversely on the child’s mind. This woman in the house and Jamie at Margaret Cameron’s, and doing nothing about it! That was exactly like Jamie. It had been the private opinion of the little Scout for some time that as a fighter Jamie might hold his own among the Germans, but he did not show much inclination to hold his own when somebody tried to give him a wonderful piece of property. Vaguely the thought that had begun stirring in the back of the Scout Master’s head stirred deeper and cleared up and took form, The small hand was thrust out.
“Give me your dime! Sure I’ll do your errands for you!” said the little Scout.
With the dime tightly gripped in one hand, the Scout Master sailed over the fence and landed almost at the feet of Jamie, and there the child stared at him belligerently.
“Who’s the Jane in the crooked make-up and the dirty skirt?”
The demand was brief and to the point.
“Is there any one in the house?” asked Jamie.
He was so taken aback he reverted to his father’s childhood and said “hoose.”
“I’m tellin’ you there’s someone in the ‘hoose!’” cried the little Scout. “There’s a comedy queen in the ‘hoose’! A Jane like that draped all over the Bee Master’s chair and her trunk open in the middle of the floor! What did you let her in for?”
“She walked in,” said Jamie.
“And wasn’t you big enough to keep her out?” demanded the little Scout, tilting up a head to look to the full extent of Jamie’s six feet plus.
“Yes, I was,” said Jamie, “if I had used force, but I’m not given to using force on the ladies.”
“So you cleared out and came over here and you turned over our property to that piece of Limburger cheese!”
“I’m afraid I did,” said Jamie.
“Well, you put the biggest crimp in my style that anybody ever did,” said the Scout Master. “I bet you just walked out like a milk-fed turkey an’ never put up one war-like gobble!”
“I told her,” said Jamie, “to tell it to the probate judge.”
“Aw!” said the Scout Master in the hoarsest, roughest tone Jamie ever had heard issue from the small throat. “Aw, what’s the use of the probate judge? You knew the Dee Master, and you know he wouldn't do anything that wasn’t fair and right. If you want to lop over like a California Christmas candle, you can just do it! You can give her your share if you want to, but believe you me,” the hands were in action, “believe you me, Mr. James Lewis MacFarlane, you wili not give away my half of that bee garden, ’cause thax was the only chance I’ve ever stood of getting a horse. The reason I didn’t get a horse wasn’t ’cause there wasn’t enough money in the family to buy a horse; it was ’cause I couldn’t keep a horse in a city. Out here I don’t see why I couldn’t. There’s no neighbours on my side to object. I’ll see that flax-wig in there doing me out of my horse!”
The little Scout thrust forth a hand and disclosed a dime.
“I’m going to the grocery to get milk for her, and then there’s ‘fifty other errands,’” suddenly the little Scout changed to the woman in the house and in an exact imitation of the tone and manner that Jamie recognized he heard, “‘Kiddo, there’s about fifty other errands you can do for me.’” There was another change. “You can stake your roll ‘Kiddo’ is going to stay right here on the job! ‘Kiddo’ is goin’ to do the errands. ‘Kiddo’ is goin’ to find out some way to get that Jane out of there and get her out pretty quick. ‘Kiddo’ happens to know a whole lot of things that you don’t, and ‘Kiddo’ is just beginnin’ to get wise to who that party is!”
Both hands flew out, one of them widespread, the other gripping the dime. “Let me tell you, ‘Kiddo’ is savin’ a last arrow for that party right in there! ‘Kiddo’ owes it to the Bee Master to puncsher her until you can see daylight clear through her! Maybe you think I ain’t got her number now. Maybe you think I don’t know who pushed little Mary and broke her spine and made her die! You watch me! If you ain’t going to fight, I am. How did you get in this house?”
“Walked in,” said Jamie.“All right,” said the little Scout, “I’m going to telephone Mother and I’m goin’ to get my Scouts on the job, and you put your ear to the ground and listen for a rumble. ‘Kiddo’ is letting loose the dogs of war, believe you me!”
The Scout Master brought both feet down with an emphatic slap and presently Jamie heard the ringing of the telephone and he heard, too, the voice of the little Scout.
“Say, Mom! Margaret Cameron’s away and my partner out here needs me. I’ll prodibly have to cook his dinner for him. I may not get in till late. If it’s too late, he’ll bring me. Don’t worry about me. I’m all right, but this big baby out here needs taking care of worse than baby Jamie. I’ll tell that to the assembled multitude!”
The receiver hit the hook hard enough to break both and the Scout Master went through the front door and started on a skimming run in the direction of the corner grocery below. Jamie sat down and began to think. Then he went to the telephone and called John Carey. He asked if in the event any of the bees threatened to swarm the next day, he could depend on him for help. The reply was that he could. Carey would come over in the morning and they would look the hives over and get some fresh ones ready for swarms to occupy.
Presently Jamie saw the Scout Master enter their front gate and go up the walk with the bottle of milk. After that he saw a bunch of papers and odds and ends carried to the incinerator. Then he watched the gathering of tomatoes and vegetables, the picking of fruit that was carried to the kitchen, and when he went over to get a better idea of what was going on, he saw in passing a window that the Scout Master was standing in the middle of the living room fitting dresses over the Bee Master’s coat hangers and hanging them up in his closet. Presently the little Scout came out to him.
Jamie was surprised at the expression on the small face. It had become absolutely inscrutable. It did not remind Jamie of anything he ever had seen. It was a trifle white, a trifle set, immobile to the last degree. It was only by looking closely that Jamie saw that the entire figure was tuned up like a fiddle string, stretched and taut and ready to respond to the note it would be called on to deliver. Suddenly, in Jamie’s heart there leapt up a feeling of confidence. The Bee Master had said that the little Scout knew. Thereupon it appealed to Jamie that it would be a wise thing on his part to stand guard while the little Scout went into action on the basis of whatever knowledge would furnish the grounds for action.
Said the Scout Master, “She is trying every key in the house on my chest and pretty soon she will find one that fits, and that chest is just wadded full of things that ain’t any of her business. That’s got Highland Mary’s things in it and little Mary’s things. It’s got marriage certificates and deeds. It’s got business papers. It’s got the signed up settlement that settles that little flapper in there for life. I know who she is. I know what she thinks she will do. And believe you me, she can do it if she gets that chest open, and that chest belongs to me. What are you going to do about it?”
“Where’s the key?” asked Jamie.
“My dad’s got it,” said the little Scout. “It’s among the things the Bee Master had at the hospital with him and the day things were settled the probate judge gave ’em to Dad to keep till I’m of age. It’s in his desk at home. I could get it by making a run in, but I ain’t going to do it. That reminds me that she ain’t going to unlock that chest with any key she’ll find around the house, nor any key she will get made, ’cause that chest’s got a private kind of a lock on it and there’s a leaf in the carving where you've got to press a spring before the lock will work. Days when I had done everything else and I was getting ready to go home and the Bee Master was so lonesome for something alive and something to talk to him he would let me work that combination and show me the things and let me look at the pictures and let me see the things that were in there that belonged to big Mary and little Mary. And that’s what’s been working in my head. There’s a picture in that chest of that Jane when she was little, and she looked just about as measly as she does now, It’s got a name and a date on it, too, that will kind of fix her if she don’t look out what she tells the probate judge. She can’t get in that chest unless she splits it with an ax, and if she ever does that—zowie!”The face lifted to Jamie was the face of a small pagan dealing justice. There was not a hint of mercy; there was not a hint of tolerance. It was as inexorable, as immobile as the face of the figure of Justice holding the scales above the judge’s chair in the office of the Probate Court. A cold shiver crept down Jamie’s back. For the first time he addressed his small partner by name.
“Jean,” he said, “Jean, be mighty careful what you do. I am not claiming that I haven’t got an awful wrench in the prospect of being driven from the garden, of giving up what the Bee Master meant me to have, but however much your share of it means to you it cannot mean what it would if you did some terrible thing and got yourself put in prison or blackened your whole life. There is only one way to manage these things, and that is to let justice take its course.”
“Edzackly what I think!” agreed the little Scout. “I’m not believing that there isn’t justice in this village, and I’m not believing it ain’t goin’ to take its course if I spring from ambush like Chief Running Horse at the right time. I told you before, I tell you now, you keep out of this and you watch my dust!”
The little Scout wheeled and went back to the house. Facing the interloper, in tones of suave politness, this message was delivered: “ Mistaw MacFarlane says to tell you that the keys of Mistaw Worthington’s chest are in the care of Mistaw Meredith and that Mistaw Meredith will be out of town for several days and they cawn’t be delivered until his return.”“Well, I have no time to wait,” said Miss Worthington. “I’ve got to go through the papers that belong in that chest. I’ve got to open it if I smash it.”
The little Scout smiled.
“Mr. Worthington said that chest came from across the ocean with his grandfather’s housekeeping things and it was hand carved and it once belonged to a Queen. If you tried to break it open and damaged it, and if what you found didn’t satisfy the probate judge as to who you are and what you are doin’ here, you’d get yourself into pretty serious trouble, ’cause here in California we begin to train the babies along with their bottles—which are ag’in Nature and I don’t recommend ’em, but I thought they’d sound more polite than mentionin’ the other way—anyhow, we begin to train ‘em that early to pull off their hoods and wave ’em when anybody says ‘Antique.’ We swat ’em on the dome impressive if they don’t. We adore antique chests and tables and chairs and rugs and things, and you better look sharp, ’cause California wouldn’t like it if you abuse anything antique.”
“Say, look here!” said Miss Worthington. “Who are you?”
“Oh, I’m a kid round this neighbourhood. What’s your next?”
“Drag that trunk into the bedroom.”
The Scout Master advanced and stooped to one end of the trunk, looked around and about and said politely: “Kindly take the other end. These rugs are also antique and furniture can’t be dragged over them, and besides that, your trunk is about twice my size, even if it is a steamer.”
Miss Worthington hesitated a minute and then took one end of the trunk and helped to carry it into the Bee Master’s sleeping room. The little Scout looked at the open closet from which Jamie’s clothing had been removed, at the open drawers from which he had taken his belongings, and a wave of anger surged up that very nearly upset the brand of self-possession that the Scout Master was trying to maintain. The thought that was at that minute in the small head was whether fists that were sufficiently hard, muscle that was sufficiently tough, were not equal to the task of pitching this interloper through the window down a particularly steep piece of mountain-side leading toward the sea. But the mentality of the little person spoke up.
“Go on and pitch her! Chances are big soft Jamie would be standing outside and catch her in a blanket and bring her in and put her to bed and stand up all night himself watching to see whether she was going to open that chest or not, and he prodibly wouldn’t stop her if she did. What’s the use if I did pitch her? It wouldn’t get me anywhere. I better just stick around and stay on the job and see what she’s going to do.”
So the Scout Master ran innumerable errands and watched with blood literally at the point of boiling while the house was searched from top to bottom. Drawers were emptied, books shifted on shelves. At last the little Scout lost patience.
“Say, what’s eatin’ you?”Miss Worthington fairly jumped.
“Think you’re going to find the Kohinoor or the Drums of Jeopardy?”
“Whadda you mean?” demanded Miss Worthington.
“Sounds too funny,” said the Scout Master, “to hear you say you are Miss Worthington and then say ‘whadda.’ I should think the Bee Master would have taught you when you was about two years old to say ‘What do you,’ and I didn’t suppose you would know what I was referring to, but it’s strange he didn’t teach his own child. He’s the one who taught me that the Kohinoor is the biggest sparkler in the world, and the Drums of Jeopardy are the biggest emeralds. I got that out of a picture show. It was a hair-raiser, too. And it had the prettiest girl in it, a girl with dark hair and eyes and a reasonable amount of lip stick and her make-up on straight, and she could act, too! She was just a humdinger, I’ll tell che world!”
“If you are so carefully educated,” said Miss Worthington, “why do you use the slang that you do?”
The little Scout laughed.
“Oh, I’ve got to sling that brand of guff to keep in favour with the Scouts. If I talked among them the way Dad makes me talk at home, I wouldn’t be Scout Master with my bunch very long. When we play we’re Indians and bandits and pirates and things like that, we talk that way ‘cause it makes it realler, and anyway, nobody expects a ten-year-old kid to talk the way a woman of thirty would.”
“I am not thirty!” snapped Miss Worthington.“Excuse me,” said the Scout Master, “I knew you were close to forty. I only said thirty for politeness.”
“I’m done with you now,” said Miss Worthington. “You may go home, but you’d better come around again in the morning and see if there’s anything you can do for me.”
“All right,” said the Scout Master. “I’ll be right here, and I’ll start home whenever you pay me for what I’ve done to-day. I’ve been flying pretty lively all afternoon and I’m getting hungry enough to eat up every hot dog on the corner stand!”
“I’ll pay you in the morning,” said Miss Worthington.
“I’ll take my pay now,” said the little Scout. “I happen to be out of change and I’m tellin’ you I’m hungry.”
Miss Worthington produced her pocketbook and, taking some small change from it, dropped it into the outstretched hand. The little Scout counted it twice.
“Say, you ain’t throwing your change to the birds, are you?”
But the inquiry was good-humoured. The Scout Master had decided to be on the job in the morning.
“What time do you want me?”
“Better make it about nine.”
“All right,” said the Scout Master, “maybe I can get here an hour sooner and wipe up the dust on the furniture or straighten things out for you, or clean your shoes. I often clean my mother’s shoes. I know how.”
“That’s fine,” said Miss Worthington, “come as soon as you want to.”
“I’ll be right here,” said the little Scout, “and for your own sake, ’cause I’m so fond of you, I’m just telling you before I start that you better remember how California feels about antique furniture.”
The little Scout closed the door and went down the path and scaled the fence and said to Jamie: “I can’t chase up a reason for staying there any longer, and I’m about sick hungry. If you can hang out the night and do something to scare her off about getting into that chest until morning, I’ll go on the job again pretty soon after seven, and I'll stick at it until I see if I can’t make something happen.”
Then the line of march was taken up to the nearest hot-dog stand. A few rods away the little Scout turned.
“Let me wise you up to this: if she gets desperate in the night like the hardened criminals do, she may try breaking my chest. Be a good idea for you to take the ax or anything she could pry with out of the tool house and fasten the windows on the inside where they latch and lock it on the outside. If she can’t find anything that just suits her to attack with, maybe she will let it be until morning,”
And that was what Miss Worthington did. She was tired herself. Being too lazy te cook, she ate bread and milk, took a bath, and went to bed early, and she was still asleep when the Scout Master arrived in the morning. Depending on the assurance that he would be called if needed, Jamie, reeling for lack of sleep, stretched himself on his bed and went over the edge. The situation for that day was up to the little Scout.