The Automobile Girls Along the Hudson: or, Fighting Fire in Sleepy Hollow

There was a curious grating noise, a creaking of rafters, and before their amazed eyes the wall slid along and disclosed another attic as large as the first.

Jimmie was so bewildered he forgot to pull himself up from the dusty floor, and lay with his head propped against an old trunk looking across the enormous space.

Then everybody began talking at once.

“This looks to me like smugglers,” cried Alfred. “I was in an old house in England, where there was the same sort of wall, only not so large.”

“And look,” called Bab, “there are footsteps in the dust. Who could have been here lately, to have left those marks. Do you see? They come from over there in the right hand corner.”

“Yes, is it not curious,” replied José, “that they are going away from the wall and not approaching it? He must have walked out of the wall. Perhaps there is a secret door there, too.”

They rushed across pell mell, and began thumping the walls, but nothing happened.

“I say, Stephen,” said Martin, “do you suppose we had smugglers in our family?”

“I don’t know,” answered Stephen. “They managed to keep it secret if they had.”

“I’d like to be a smuggler,” cried Martin. “There would be some excitement in life then. But how did you manage to do it, Jimmie? You are always having things happen to you.”

“I don’t know,” replied Jimmie. “I must have kicked the panel that worked the spring. Let’s see if we can move it back again. Here’s the place in the floor,” and bending over he pressed on a sliding board in the floor. Instantly the wall began slipping back in place. The others leaped back into the first attic, and in a moment the partition had fitted itself as snugly as if it never had been moved.

“All is as if it never had been,” exclaimed Jimmie. “Now let’s find the place I kicked.”

But try as they would, no one could locate the spot again.

“Well, of all that’s curious and mysterious!” said Stephen. “Jimmie, go and turn a few more wheels and see if it happens again.”

Jimmie did as he was bade, and kicked the wall vociferously from one end to the other but it never budged an inch.

In the meantime, Martin and the girls were diving into some old trunks and carved chests which were filled with clothes of another date, old-fashioned silks and dimities that had been worn by the major’s grandmother and aunts.

“There is a trunkful of men’s things, too,” called Stephen, leaving the sliding partition, to join in the rummage.

“I say, girls,” cried Jimmie, “wouldn’t it be fun to give a fancy dress party some day, and surprise the major and Miss Stuart?”

“How delightful!” exclaimed the girls in one voice.

“Oh, pshaw!” said Martin, disgusted.

“Oh, I say now, Jimmie, what a beastly idea!” exclaimed Alfred, equally disgusted.

“Come on, fellows; don’t throw cold water on the scheme if the girls like it,” put in Stephen.

And so the party was arranged.

All this time José had never left the partition, but had kept up a continuous thumping to find the sliding panel.

“Everybody take a hand, and we will carry down everything we can find, and then we won’t have to make another trip,” called Stephen. “Come, José, we’re going to dress up. You’ll have to be a pirate. Here’s a red sash and a three cornered hat that will just suit your style.”

So saying, the cavalcade departed from the dark old attic, laden with spoils.

“If this is to be a surprise on uncle and Miss Stuart, we had better hide the things, hadn’t we?” observed Martin, who was very cautious and always thought ahead, once he had decided to do a thing.

“Very well. We’ll let Mary take charge of them and divide them later,” replied Stephen. “You had better go take your naps now, girls,” he added in a whisper, “or we’ll have the old lady and gentleman on our necks.”

The young people separated, the boys taking a corridor leading to the left wing, the girls following the main hall. Bab left the others and started downstairs.

“I’ll be right back,” she called. “I left my handkerchief in the library.”

She confessed to herself, as she descended the stairs, that she was rather tired. The excitement of the two past days, her uncomfortable bed made of a steamer rug spread on the ground, the night before, and finally the close, dusty air of the attic had combined to give her a headache and a feeling of extreme weariness.

When she reached the cool, darkened library, she sat down for a moment in one of the big chairs and closed her eyes. It was very restful in there. The sun had left that side of the house in the shade and the room with its heavy hangings, its dark leather furniture and rich rugs was full of shadows.

She was almost asleep, a slender little figure in a great armchair of carved black oak. Her head dropped to one side and her eyes closed, when she was awakened with a start by a draught of cold air. One of the curtains next the book shelves bulged out for a moment and Barbara’s eyes were fastened on a long, white hand that drew them aside. Then a face she had seen in the wood looked from around the curtain. The eyes met hers, and again that strange, childlike look of sorrow and amazement filled them.

A dizziness came over Barbara. She closed her eyes for a moment, and, when she opened them again, the face, or phantom, or whatever it was, had gone.

Holding her breath to keep from crying out, Barbara ran from the room as fast as her trembling knees could carry her. In the hall she met José. He looked at her curiously.

“Mademoiselle, have you seen a ghost?” he asked as he stood aside to let her pass.

She was afraid to answer, for fear of bursting into tears.

“I am sorry,” he continued. “Has anything really happened?”

But still she refused to speak, and ran up the stairs.

He turned and went into the library, closing the door after him.

There was a queer little smile on his face. Perhaps he, too, had seen the old man and understood her look of terror.

By the time she reached her room, Bab had regained her self-composure, and had again determined to say nothing about the adventure. It would only frighten the girls and take away from the pleasure of the visit.

CHAPTER XI – JOSÉ HAS AN ENEMY

“I like them all, the pretty girls,    I  like  them  all  whether  dark  or  fair,    But  above  the  rest,  I  like  the  best    The  girl  with  the  golden  hair!”

rang out the charming tenor voice of José, while he thrummed a delightful accompaniment on the piano.

Dinner was over, and the major, and his guests were sitting in the moonlight on the broad piazza. Windows and doors were stretched as wide as possible; the curtains in the red drawing room were drawn back and José was entertaining the company.

“I sing it translated,” he called, as he finished the song, “that it may be understood.”

Whereupon Jimmie winked at Stephen, and looked at Mollie; the major smiled indulgently, and the others were all more or less conscious that Spaniards always liked blond girls because they were so rare in Spain.

Mollie herself, however, was unconscious that she was being sung about. She was looking out across the moonlit stretches of lawn and meadows, her little hands folded placidly in her lap.

“Do you dance as well as sing, Mr. Martinez?” she asked in her high, sweet voice.

“I can dance, yes,” replied José, “but I like best dancing with another. I do not like to dance alone.”

“But there is no one else here who dances Spanish fancy dances, is there?” demanded Miss Sallie.

There was a silence.

“Don’t all speak at once,” cried Jimmie. “I will play for you, José, if you will try dancing alone,” he added. “I am afraid we can’t help you in any of your Spanish dances.”

“Very well,” replied José. “I will, then, try a dance of the Basque country, if Madamoiselle Mollie will be so kind as to lend me her scarf. I must have a hat also.”

He disappeared through the window and returned in a moment with a broad-brimmed felt hat he had found in the hall. Mollie handed him her pink scarf with a border of wild roses, and walking composedly up to the end of the long piazza he stood perfectly still, waiting for the music to begin. Jimmie struck up a Spanish dance with the sound of castanets in the bass.

“How’s that for a tune?” he called out.

“Very good, very good,” answered José. Then he started the strange dance while the others watched spellbound.

The boys, who had been rather scornful of a man’s dancing fancy dances, confessed afterwards that there was nothing effeminate in José’s dancing, no pirouetting and twisting on one toe like Jimmie Butler’s one accomplishment in ballet-dancing. They gathered that it was a sort of bullbaiting dance. It began with a series of advances and retreats, with a springy step always in time to the throb of the music.

The young Spaniard was very graceful and lithe. He seemed to have forgotten that he was on the piazza of foreigners in a strange country. The dance grew quicker and quicker. Suddenly he drew a long curved dagger from his belt and made a lunge at some imaginary obstacle, probably the bull he was baiting.

Bab, who was nearest the dancer, rose to her feet quickly, and then sat down rather limply.

“The knife, the knife!” she said to herself. “It is the highwayman’s knife!”

And now the handsome dancer was kneeling at Mollie’s feet offering her the scarf.

He had risen and was bowing to the company, when whir-r-r! something had whizzed past his head, just scratched his forehead and then planted itself in the wooden frame of the window behind him.

Was Barbara dreaming; or had she lost her senses?

The knife in the wall was the same, or exactly like the knife José had been using in the dance.

In a moment everything was in wild confusion.

“Go into the house, ladies!” commanded the major.

The four boys leaped from the piazza, to run down the assassin, so they thought, but the figure vaguely outlined for an instant in the shadows of the trees, was as completely hidden as if the earth had opened and swallowed it up.

José, in a big chair in the drawing room, was being ministered to by Miss Sallie and the girls, while the major, with a glass of water, was standing over him on one side and the housekeeper, on the other, was binding his head with a linen handkerchief.

“Major,” Miss Sallie was saying, “this country is full of assassins and robbers. I believe we shall all be murdered in our beds. I am really terribly frightened. We have had nothing but attacks since we left New York. And, now, this poor young man is in danger. Who could it have been, do you suppose, and what good did it do to hurl a knife into the midst of a perfectly harmless company like that!”

“The country is a little wild, Sallie,” replied the major apologetically, “but I have never heard of anything like this happening before. Of course, there are highwaymen everywhere. There are those Gypsies in the forest. Perhaps it was one of them.”

Just then the boys returned, and the attention of the others was distracted from José, who still sat quietly, his lips pressed together.

Barbara, who had been standing a little way off, turned to him quickly.

“The knife?” she asked, but stopped without finishing, for José had fixed her glance with a look of such appeal that she could say no more.

“By the way,” observed Jimmie Butler, “where is the knife?”

“Sticking in the wall of course,” replied Stephen.

The two boys ran out on the piazza, but returned empty-handed.

“Mystery of mysteries!” cried Jimmie, “the knife is gone!”

“It is impossible,” exclaimed the major. “We have not left this room. We could see anyone who came upon the piazza.”

“Well, it’s gone,” said Jimmie. “While you were nursing José, somebody must have crept up and got it.”

“Good heavens!” exclaimed Miss Sallie. “Do you mean to say that the murderer has been that close to us again? Do close those windows and draw the curtains.”

“Yes, do so,” said the major. “Mary,” he continued to the housekeeper, who was entering at that moment with a basin of water, “I wish you would have all the men on the place sent to me. Some of them may be asleep, but wake them up. We shall scour every part of the estate to-night. If there’s anybody hiding around here we shall rout him out.”

Mary hurried off to deliver her orders, while the boys ran to their rooms to get on tennis shoes and collect various weapons.

“I am sorry José was scratched,” Martin confided to Alfred, “but – well, this is pretty good sport, old man. Don’t you think so?”

“By Jove, it is,” replied Alfred with enthusiasm. “If that assassin should leap at us in the dark I should like to give him a nip with this shillalah. What a beastly coward he was to attack a man when his back was turned!”

And with that, he waved a big knotted club, one of Stephen’s possessions, around his head, and glared ferociously.

“Come on, boys,” called Stephen. “We haven’t a moment to lose. The man will be well away if we don’t hurry. We are going to ride in twos and divide the place in sections.”

In another ten minutes a company of horsemen rode off in the moonlight, two by two, while the frightened maid-servants locked and barred the house doors and windows.

José had begged to be allowed to go along, but the major had silenced him by saying that Miss Sallie and the girls needed a protector, and that under the circumstances it was better for him to stay at home and look after them. Even the old major was rather enjoying the zest of a man-hunt, and his eyes flashed with a new fire under his grizzled eyebrows.

But nothing happened and the assassin remained at large. The hunters scoured the country, searched the forest on the outskirts of the Ten Eyck estate, and woke the sleeping Gypsies to demand what they knew. The Gypsies knew nothing, and at midnight the horsemen returned.

The house was silent. Everyone had gone to bed except José, who sat in the library listening for every sound that creaked through the old place. He met Major Ten Eyck and the boys at the front door, holding a candle high and peering anxiously into the dark to see what quarry they had brought home.

And, when he saw they had no prisoner bound to the horse with the ropes that the major had ordered his man to take along, a look of strange relief came into the Spaniard’s face. He breathed a deep sigh, smiled as he thanked them, said good-night and went up the broad stairway with the same smile still clinging to his lips.

In the meantime Bab was stretched out beside the sleeping Ruth, wide awake, going over the events of that tumultuous day.

She felt that these events had no connection with each other, and yet deep down in her inner consciousness she was searching for the link that bound all the strange happenings together. She was not quite sure now whether she had seen the face in the library or not. She had been so tired and hot. It might, after all, have been a dream. But the footsteps in the dust on the attic floor, coming from the wall, what of them?

And last, though most strange and mysterious of all, the two daggers? José had been saved just in time from the stigma of suspicion by the appearance of the other dagger, for, in the moment she had seen the two, Bab had realized they were absolutely alike.

She could not believe José was a highwayman, and yet there were certain things that looked very black. It was true he had not known where they were going, but she imagined he could have found it out.

Was it his figure she had seen behind the curtain that morning, listening? Whoever it was heard the exact route of their trip, with explicit directions from the major. Undoubtedly, Bab believed, the eavesdropper was the highwayman.

Furthermore, what did they know about José? It is true he had come bearing credentials, but such things were easily fixed up by experts, and the major was a simple old fellow who never doubted anybody until he had to.

On the other hand, José had every appearance of being a gentleman. He had proved himself to be brave by knocking down the tramp twice his size at Sleepy Hollow. There was an air of sincerity about him which she could not fail to recognize. He was graceful and charming. Everybody liked him, even those who had been inclined to feel prejudiced at first.

Would the Spaniard have dared to use the same dagger in the dance that he had used to slash their tires with? It was assuredly amazingly reckless, and yet he might have trusted to the darkness and risked it.

But the look he gave her when she started to speak of the twin daggers! What could that have meant? Was he trying to shield his own enemy?

Should she speak to the major or should she say nothing?

On the whole, Barbara thought it would be better to keep quiet for a day or two. It might be that Miss Sallie would insist on taking them away after this last attack; but she believed Ruth’s and the major’s prayers would prevail, and that they would all stay through the visit.

They had planned so many delightful parties it seemed a shame to break up on the very first day of their visit. And, after all, Miss Sallie had a great tenderness for the major, a tenderness lasting through thirty years.

Then Barbara dropped off to sleep, and in the old house only one other soul was still awake as the clock in the hall chimed the hour of two.

In his room, by the light of a flickering candle, José sat examining the dagger that had so baffled Bab’s curiosity. On his face was an expression of sorrow and bitterness that would certainly have aroused her pity had she seen him that moment. At last he shook his head hopelessly, muttered something in Spanish, and blew out the candle.

But before getting into bed he picked up the dagger again.

“Even in America,” he said in English, “even in this far country it is the same. But I will not endure it,” he muttered. “It is too much!”

Putting his dagger under the pillow, he crept to bed.

CHAPTER XII – NOSEGAYS AND TENNIS

The household was late in pulling itself together next morning. At half-past nine, Mary and her husband, John, had carried trays of coffee and rolls to the rooms of the guests, informing them, at the same time, that luncheon would be served at half-past twelve.

Mollie and Grace, in dressing gowns and slippers, had carried their trays into the room shared by Ruth and Barbara. Miss Sallie had followed, looking so charming in her lavender silk wrapper, elaborately trimmed with lace and ribbons that all the girls had exclaimed with admiration; which put the lady in a very good humor at the outset. Who does not like to be complimented, especially in the early morning when one is not apt to feel at one’s best?

To add to the gayety of the company there was a knock on the door, which, when opened, disclosed John bearing a large tray of flowers, a small nosegay for each of the girls and a large bunch of dewy sweet peas for Miss Sallie, all with the major’s compliments.

“What a man he is!” she cried. “He disarms me with his bunches of flowers just as I was about to tell him something very disagreeable. I really don’t see how I can do it.”

“Oh, please don’t, auntie, dear!” exclaimed Ruth. “I know what it is. We all do. But if we broke up the party, and went trailing off home, now that the worst is over, it wouldn’t do anybody much good, and think of what a beautiful time we would be missing. To tell you the truth, auntie, we are just dying to stay. In spite of everything we are. Aren’t we, girls?”

“Yes, indeed,” came in a chorus from the other three girls, a little faintly from Bab perhaps, but very eagerly from Mollie and Grace.

“Well, we’ll see,” replied Miss Sallie. “But it does seem to me that this trip has started off very badly. Three attacks in as many days.”

“That’s true,” said Ruth. “Yet by the magic Rule of Three we should have no more. We have finished now and the curse is lifted.”

“When Mollie’s old Gypsy comes over we must ask her to tell a few things,” observed Grace. “I believe she really can predict the future. That night when you and Bab had gone with the Gypsies to get the automobile I asked her if she told fortunes, and all she said was: ‘I can tell when there is blood on the moon.’”

“What a horrible idea!” exclaimed Miss Sallie. “Weren’t you frightened?”

“No, I wasn’t frightened, because she seemed to have forgotten me entirely. I really thought, at the time, she must be talking about her own affairs. She looked so black and fierce.”

“Perhaps she meant José’s blood,” remarked Mollie from behind her nosegay of honeysuckle and mignonette.

“Well, there wasn’t much of it,” replied Bab, “because José received only a scratch, and lost scarcely any blood. It was a close shave, though. Just half an inch nearer and it would have gone straight through his head.”

“He seems to be a very remarkable young man,” said Miss Sallie. “Did you notice he never said one word? Just sat there as quietly as if nothing had happened.”

“He was thinking,” answered Barbara. “But of course most people would have been too frightened to think. Did you notice the knife?” she ventured.

But nobody had, evidently. They had all been too excited and horror-struck at the time to have noticed anything.

“I saw it was a knife, and that was all,” said Ruth.

“I never saw a man dance before,” observed Mollie, as if following aloud a train of thoughts she had been pursuing while the others talked. “I was almost sorry he said he would, but when I saw what kind of dancing it was I was glad. It was really and truly a man’s dance. I think it must have been a toreador’s dance, don’t you?”

“Something like this,” said Ruth, using a towel for a scarf and a comb for a dagger. “And, by the way,” she continued, pausing as she pranced around the room, “how did he happen to have a dagger so handy!”

“That’s because he is a Spaniard, my dear,” remarked Miss Sallie. “These foreigners carry anything from dynamite bombs to carving knives. They are always murdering and slashing one another.”

“Perhaps,” cried Mollie, excitedly, “it was the Black Hand that tried to kill him.”

The others all laughed.

“Really, Mollie,” cried Miss Sallie, “don’t add any more horrors to the situation. We are already surrounded by Gypsies, and tramps and assassins.”

“But protected, Aunt Sallie, dear,” protested Ruth, “protected by five ‘gintlemin frinds,’ as Irish Nora used to say.”

“Well, dress yourselves now,” said Miss Stuart, making for the door with her silken draperies trailing after her. “And remember, Ruth, dear, if your father scolds us for staying I shall lay all the blame on you.”

“Oh, I will manage Dad,” replied Ruth.

When the two girls were left alone they did not speak for a little while. Barbara, who was sitting on the floor near the window with her head propped against a pillow, closed her eyes, and for a moment Ruth thought she was asleep. A breeze laden with the perfume of the honeysuckle vines stirred the curtain. Barbara took in a deep breath, opened her eyes and sat up.

“Ruth,” she said, “do you know, the smell of the honeysuckles gives me the queerest sensation? I feel as if I had been here before, once long ago, ever so long. I can’t remember when, and of course I haven’t been, but isn’t it curious? These old rooms are as familiar to me as if I had lived in them. I believe I could find my way blindfolded around the house.”

“I should like to see you try it,” replied Ruth, “especially when you struck one of those back passages that lead off into nowhere in particular. But you are tired, Bab, dear,” continued her friend, leaning over and patting her on the cheek. “Come along, now, and get dressed. I told Stephen and Alfred we would play them a game of tennis some time this morning.”

The girls found the two boys waiting in the hall to keep their appointment. Alfred was fast losing his shyness in the presence of these two wholesome and unaffected girls who could play tennis almost as well as he could, ride horseback, run a motor car, repel a highwayman with a pistol and not lose their heads when they needed to keep them most. But, what was more to the purpose, they were not in the least shy or afraid to speak out. They were full of high spirits and knew how to have a good time without appealing constantly to some everlasting governess who was always tagging after them, or asking mamma’s permission. In fact, Alfred had suffered a change of heart. When he had heard the house party was to be increased by a number of girls he had bitterly repented ever having left England. By this time, however, he could not imagine a house party without girls, especially American girls.