Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, Vol. 11, No. 51, February 1948

The half-way house by Frederick Irving Anderson[9]

We are leafing through a copy of “The American Magazine” dated May 1922. The magazine is chock-full of advertisements — full pages, half pages, and assorted “wee” ones. And it is interesting to note the names of the commercial products advertised nearly twenty-six years ago. We are told the virtues of Life Savers, Westclox, Ivory Soap, Campbell’s Soup, Robt. Burns Cigar, Dodge automobile, Palmolive Shaving Cream, Goodyear Tires, Remington Portable Typewriter, Squibb, Elgin Watches, Grape-Nuts, Western Electric, Edgeworth Tobacco, Sheetrock, Venus Pencils, McNally Maps, Florsheim Shoes, Fuller Brushes, Westinghouse, Ivor Johnson Bicycles, Carter’s Ink, Colt’s Fire Arms, Fleischmann s Yeast, Odo-ro-no, Listerine, “Standard” Plumbing Fixtures, Swift’s Premium Hams and Bacon, Kodak, and many, many more including the perennial sets of Mark Twain, James Whitcomb Riley, and Conan Doyle.

After twenty-six years these products are more famous, more flourishing than ever. Indeed, from an advertising standpoint, this copy of “The American Magazine” might well have been published today. But what about the other contents of the magazine? The fiction, for example? Has that stood the test of time as ruggedly as the commercial trademarks? Well, here’s a story from “The American Magazine” of May 1922. Read it and judge for yourself. In our opinion Frederick Irving Anderson’s “The Half Way House” is as undated as it was a quarter of a century ago. It too might have been first published today.

Shortly after the old chimney clock struck nine, Grinder, the jaunty dog combing burrs out of his stump tail by the fire, suddenly lifted his head and looked keenly at his master, Belden, the bridge builder, and his good friend, Armiston. The pair were poring over chess.

The two men, in rough homespun and with neglected beards, were wholly unconscious of the sudden alert pose of the dog. Inside, only the muffled ticking of the old clock and the faint rustling of the fire on the hearth disturbed the silence.

Grinder quietly arose, on stiff pins. Something was on the wind. Something was coming up the hill. Grinder moved stiffly to his master’s side and halted, expectant, listening. Grinder nudged his master’s wrist with his shoe-box nose, and Belden absently stroked the great dog’s head. It was incomprehensible to Grinder that these two precious foolish humans should sit here dreaming.

Belden, who was to build a bridge in the Andes, had come up here to his abandoned ancestral hulk, to be alone to think. Oliver Armiston, extinct author, now living on the royalties of a past career in fiction crime, had invited himself, saying he would be cook and bottle-washer.

If this had been the old days, there would have been excitement enough in this house by now. The thorough-brace coach, tugging up the steep grade, would announce itself with a triumphant blast of the horn. The old tire-iron still hanging from its stout gallows in the front yard, under the battered sign of the Three Crows, would moan its rhythmic lament, summoning ’ostler and maidservant. The coach and four, bound up from Hartford for Albany, would pull up at the gate on haunches; and the ladies would flutter in and gentlemen would thump pewter mugs on the cherry bar and drink to news, from north and south, which met here. But that was long, long ago. The sign, with its three crows dilapidated, still creaked on its weathered hinges; but mine host was gone, and even the road had stopped coming up that hill — or was little more than a torrent-gashed gully now.

“Queen check,” said Belden.

Grinder moved to the door and putting his muzzle to the crack, he whined. Belden rose to let the dog out. It was a nasty night; the drizzle was beginning to freeze as it fell.

Belden peered out.

“Isn’t that a motor?” he said, puzzled. There was the sound as of huge wings beating the air. As he stared at a point in the dark, two ghostly headlights appeared. The car came on slowly, feeling its way. It reached his gate, passed it.

“Hello! Hello!” cried Belden, and the dog barked. But the car continued on. Belden ran to the tire-iron, and seizing the chained sledge, hanging there since the beginning of time, struck it a blow, and the moaning thing responded with eerie clamor. The car stopped, and slowly backed to the gate.

“Hello, the house!” cried a voice; and then, “Where does this road lead?”

“Nowhere,” shouted Belden. “This is the end of it. You should have followed the river. How did you climb that hill?”

“Heaven knows!” responded the voice from the car. A searchlight picked up, in its luminous spray, Belden and the dog standing under the old gallows; then, as if endowed with a curiosity of its own, the luminous spray investigated the old gallows tree, climbed it, and came to rest on the battered sign of the Three Crows.

“Oh, a road-house!” the unseen driver exclaimed. “That’s better!”

“This isn’t a road-house. There are no accommodations here,” put in Belden.

“It isn’t? You’re displaying a sign, aren’t you?” The voice in the dark became suddenly aggressive.

“That sign has been there for a hundred and fifty years,” said Belden.

“Read Blackstone,” retorted the voice. “He settled the matter of signs — just about the time you hung that one. I believe his dictum still stands as good law. In any event, I am not going down that hill till daylight.”

“I will not go another step!” announced a woman behind the curtains. Belden fairly cringed. He must make the best of it. Oliver came up with the lantern.

“They take this for a road-house,” chuckled Belden in his ear. “Let them dream on.”

Going on ahead with the lantern, he piloted the car down the overgrown drive to the barn. Two vague figures in furs got down.

“You’ll find two bags in the rumble,” said the man.

“I’ll take one. You take the other,” said Belden, smiling to himself.

He set down the bag in the kitchen and went out to get fresh wood. When he returned the man was drawing off his gloves in front of the fire. The woman was caressing the jaunty Grinder, cheek to cheek. Laughing, she stood up and let her furs slip from her shoulders, revealing a modish outline. Her hair, prematurely white, sparkled with tiny facets of rain; her face, as round and smooth as a child’s, showed high color that suited admirably her vivacity. She held off the playful dog long enough to take stock of the room.

“Lovely!” she cried; and she clapped her little hands ecstatically. In the flickering light from the fire and the candles, with their delicate scent of bayberries, the room and its antiquated furnishings showed mellow and inviting. In her tour she came to the cherry bar.

“Is this the register?” she asked gayly, discovering an old book chained to the bar. “Are we to sign our names?”

“So the law prescribes, madam,” said Belden, opening the book at the last blank page. He took a quill pen from a drawer. She laughed, delighted, as he passed it to her.

“Who was the last one to register?” She read: “ ‘Jonathan Croyden, Gent., his lady; and two servants, one free. Thursday, fifth month, seventeenth day, eighteen fifty-four.’ ” She drew a long breath. “Eighteen fifty-four!” she repeated. “And I come next!” Then, with sparkling eyes, she wrote, in a prim hand, trying to match the chirography of the remote Jonathan Croyden, Gent.

“Business has been quiet of late years,” said Belden drolly. This to the man, who was examining the page on which the lady had written. She seized him by the lapels and turned him around.

“Isn’t it romantic! Our coming here — out of a night like this!” To Belden: “I wonder — how did Jonathan Croyden, Gent., come, with his lady, and his two servants, one free?”

“In the good coach, Lightning Express, madam.”

“Yes! In their coach and four!” she said. “And we — in our coach, and — what is it, Angus, — forty?”

“Eighty, I believe,” said the man. She burst out, dramatically:

“ ’Twas a wild night. Only knaves were abroad, on the high road!” Smiles played about her lips. “The landlord was a sur-rly fellow. He would turn us away! But... we said—” and her dancing eyes were turned upon the man beside her — “ ‘Sirr-ah, why dost thou display a sign? Dost thou not know that Blackstone — Blackstone — hath said that whosoe’er displays a sign obligates himself to provide food and lodging, for whomsoe’er may apply?’ ”

“I’m afraid I did labor under a slight misapprehension,” said the man mildly.

“My fathers kept open house here for a hundred years,” said Belden. “I could do no less, on such a night. Have you eaten?”

“Oh, yes,” replied the man comfortably. Then, for the first time, he noticed the set game of chess, and he moved over to it and sat down.

“Ah, Philidor, eh?” he said musingly. “Rather archaic, isn’t it?”

“We’re trying it out.”

“Proceed,” said the man. “I’m interested, really.”

“And might I look about?” asked the lady.

“Just where are we?” demanded the man abruptly.

“Don’t tell us,” she interjected, placing a hand over his lips. “We don’t want to know.”

The three men lapsed into the silence of chess. The woman’s little French heels beat a tattoo on the hard maple floor, as she moved from one object of adoration to another. The quiet became so profound that the three men started nervously when she asked:

“Might I look up-stairs?”

“But, my dear!” the man protested.

“Let me give you a candle,” said Belden.

When she came down again, the game was finished; the three men chatted idly in front of the fire with the easy fellowship and anonymity of a club car or a smoking-room.

“Is there a ghost?” the woman asked, dropping down beside Grinder.

“I believe there is — a horse.”

The pair exclaimed in unison:

“A horse?”

“Yes — a horse.”

“But how, a horse? Ghosts are the residue of souls. A horse has no soul.”

“I don’t know anything about that,” said Belden. “It comes to the front lawn, to graze, nights. It stamps. It has a dead man tied to its heels.”

A loose shutter banged violently, and they started, then laughed.

“It’s a bit of history of our family we don’t usually relate,” explained Belden. “This house, and these lands — so the story runs — were won in a game of cards, with the aid of a mirror, from some poor drunken devil, by one of my distinguished progenitors — two of them, in fact; it was the wife, I believe, who held the mirror.”

“Didn’t the victim revenge himself?” she said in an awed tone.

“Yes. He stole a horse from the stables — one of his own horses he had lost at play — Oh, he had lost everything! He tied himself fast to its heels, and blew out his brains — and the horse galloped home... They heard it stamping, all night. In the morning, they found him.”

“I see.” She was smoothing Grinder’s head. “Angus,” she said, softly.

“Yes, my dear.”

“This is the place.”

“Oh, my dear — Please!”

“It is!” she persisted, holding up Grinder’s head and gazing into the dog’s eyes. “I knew it, the instant I came into the room.”

“My dear, I beg of you. We have thrown ourselves on the mercy of these two gentlemen; and I am sure they have put a very good face on it.” He turned to Belden as one asking indulgence for a wayward child. “Madam,” he said, with somewhat ironical emphasis, “is a trifle inclined to abruptness. If she sees a thing that pleases her, there is no intermediate step between liking and possession. Evidently, she has taken a fancy to your ancestral hall, sir. I warn you.”

“I have never seen another room like it,” she murmured. “It has been in your family all this time?”

“Since 1789 — since the lady manipulated the mirror.” Belden was watching her narrowly.

“And these things?”

“They came gradually. Nothing in the last seventy years. You see, the road went away, and left our front door hanging over space.”

“I’ll buy it — just as it is.” Her eyes were aflame.

“I must protest!” ejaculated the man, rising, and showing his irritation.

“I want nothing disturbed,” she went on, “not even the ashes on the hearth.”

“And the ghost?” Belden threw in.

“Oh, I insist on the ghost!”

“Did you look in the pink room? The one over in that corner?” asked Belden, pointing at the ceiling.

“The one with the great rope bed?”

“Yes. That’s something else we don’t usually talk about in the family. It may chill your enthusiasm. People don’t sleep there. Several have tried. They woke up dead in the morning.”

“Angus! Angus!” she cried ecstatically. She jumped up and threw her arms about his neck, though in his pettish mood he tried to hold her off. “Think of it! It’s all here! A ghost horse — that stamps! And a lethal chamber! And this room! It is all mine! I knew it, the moment I entered.” She turned to Belden. “What is your price? I want it now — instantly!”

The man’s face twisted into a scowl.

“This promises to be an unpleasant sequel to a rare evening,” he said shortly. “I don’t know your name, sir; nor yours, sir,” turning to Oliver. “You haven’t asked mine. I don’t know where I am. Strange as it sounds, I could not tell at this moment if this is New York, Massachusetts, or Connecticut. All I know is that, after being unnecessarily rude, I am the guest of a most gracious host.” He turned to the woman. “And now you propose to take the roof from over his head,” he said, with ill-concealed chagrin.

She laughed lightly.

“You don’t know where you are? What better could you wish?” she said.

There was a moment of tension. Oliver glanced curiously at Belden.

“You are really willing to let her have it?” asked the man. “Forgive me... it seems like sacrilege.”

“On the contrary, I’d be glad to be rid of it. It’s too full of unholy memories. Its actual value is small. There are four hundred acres of land — abandoned. Here is the house, as you see it — abandoned, too. There is no way to get here. You came up the hill tonight, sir, with fool’s luck. On a second try, you would surely break your neck. You see the appraisal is largely fantastic. These... things—” Belden said, indicating the relics of antiquity crowding about as if straining their ears to catch what was afoot. “For another, they might have sentimental attachment. Not for me! I never liked the place... There is something, upstairs — in that pink room. I don’t know what. But it’s there! I warn you.”

The woman drew a deep breath.

“Ten thousand, cash?”

“Too much — it will cost you that to build a road.”

“That is satisfactory to me,” said the man shortly.

“Ha!” she cried, as she fell on her knees on the hearth rug and hugged the compliant Grinder. Belden rose and went to the escritoire. He wrote, reading aloud as his pen moved:

“ ‘For one dollar paid, I grant option of sale of the land known as the Belden Half-Way House and Farm, situated in the town of—’ ”

“Please! No!” interrupted the woman imperiously, in high-pitched tones. “We don’t wish to know where it is situated.”

“ ‘In the town, county and state, of blank,’ ” rumbled on Belden, “ ‘— to—’ ” He turned. “To whom? I can’t sell a place at Nowhere to Nobody.”

The woman questioned the man with her eyes. There was a slight pause. Belden abruptly stepped to the register and read aloud what she had written:

“ ‘Agnes Witcherly, lady; and her Gent. Both free.’ ”

“Grant it to Agnes,” she said; and Belden returned to the desk.

“ ‘To Agnes Witcherly, of the city and state of—’ Another blank?” She nodded quickly. “ ‘Blank, together with the contents of the dwelling, barns, outbuildings, including the ashes on the hearth. And it is agreed, in further consideration, that the said Agnes Witcherly, pay to the Newsboys’ Home of New York City the sum of Ten Thousand Dollars — as from an anonymous donor — within thirty days from date. Signed, Webster Belden.’ ”

“ ‘Webster Belden’?” said the man, turning slightly in his chair.

“ ‘Webster Belden,’ ” repeated Bel-den. “Witness, Oliver, like a good fellow. You sign, too, madam. Thank you. Would you like to see it, sir?”

The man folded the paper, put it on the mantelshelf, produced a dollar bill, and handed it to Belden. There was a moment of embarrassed silence. It was astonishing how the atmosphere had changed. The man shivered; he threw some more wood on the fire. With an effort at levity he said, “I suppose I may, now. It’s mine. Or, at least, hers.”

The woman, singing, mounted the stairs, holding a candle high above her head. They could hear her rummaging around up there. She came down presently carrying two bags, which she let fall to the floor. She went to the hall and returned with a fur coat.

“Is this your coat, sir?” she asked sweetly of Belden.

“Yes, madam.”

“And might I help you on with it?”

“My dear! My dear! This is carrying things with too high a hand!” broke in the man.

“You understand, don’t you?” She turned to Belden.

“Perfectly,” he replied, taking the coat from her. She went again to the rack, and this time brought back Oliver’s coat.

“I don’t know where your caps are. I packed your bags — just the things in your rooms. That was all, wasn’t it?”

“But — you can’t turn them out, like this!”

“It’s my house! I own it!” she replied.

She opened the door. “The moon has come out again. It’s freezing. I think you will find the walking good, sir. Thank you.” An icy blast swept in, tossing the ashes into fantastic eddies. Grinder stood waiting, eager. The two men stepped across the threshold.

“A boy from the village will be up early in the morning to clean out the furnace and build a fire,” said Belden.

As the door closed on them softly, Belden, turning up his collar, remarked to Oliver: “What an astonishingly coldblooded woman!”

It was four days later.

“Hello! I thought you were off for Antofogasta,” exclaimed Armiston, as the bridge builder entered his study. “No; I’m not busy,” said Oliver, quickly, as Belden looked inquiringly at Armiston’s visitor. The visitor shifted uneasily. It was Parr, deputy of police. Belden drew up a chair. “What’s the trouble?” asked Oliver.

“Money,” growled Belden. With a childlike smile he added, “Could you let me have a couple of millions?”

“As bad as that?”

“Worse. Did you notice the market this morning?”

“My dear fellow!” said Oliver in gentle reproof. “I invest. I don’t gamble. I only notice the market afternoons.”

“It sagged again,” said Belden glumly. “Hit a whale, or something. Nobody seems to know just what. Probably somebody’s got a toothache. I’m building a bridge, a railroad, a power plant. I need money. ‘They’ said, ‘Wait — market’s soft.’ I can’t wait. I told them so. They,’ ” muttered the engineer, referring to some remote hierarchy of money, “ ‘They’ said, ‘Go down and see Winchester.’ ” Armiston and Parr pricked up their ears. They exchanged a glance.

“Winchester is ‘Light-and-Power,’ ” explained Belden. “You may not know it, but every time you turn on a light, you do it by royal warrant from a man named Winchester.”

“Did you see him?” demanded Parr.

“I went there, like a fool,” said Belden. “Nobody home.”

“What did they tell you?”

“Oh, he’s having a conference in Kalamazoo — or Kamchatka. You know what satisfaction you can get out of a frozen-faced clerk The Chileans have got a time-limit on me. I’ve got to have money! I’ve got to find Winchester.”

“So have I,” remarked the deputy of police blandly.

“Eh?” ejaculated the bridge builder. Armiston chuckled.

“I don’t believe in using coincidence in my stories,” said Oliver. “But occasionally in real life it is necessary. Eh, Parr?” He fixed a quizzical look on the old man-hunter. “It seems that several gentlemen, whom we may designate generically as ‘They’ ” — he shot a look at Belden — “waited on Mr. Parr last night. They had a ‘hush’ job for him. They explained that a certain mogul of the Street, at a critical moment, had casually tossed everything he owned over his left shoulder, including a wife and family at Coronado, and stepped off the earth — with a left-handed lady.”

“Winchester?” exploded Belden. Oliver nodded.

“ ‘They’ want him back. That’s Parr’s job. Not to save his mortal soul. ‘They’ don’t give two whoops for that. But to save themselves.”

Belden cursed softly under his breath. That his enterprise, involving thousands of labor, and millions of dollars, must wait on the mad hour of one weak human being seemed too ironical for credence.

“Would you know him if you saw him?” asked Parr. Belden shook his head and Parr produced a photograph from his pocket.

“Good God!” roared Belden and Oliver, in unison, both jumping up.

“You do know him?” cried Parr.

“Know him!” bellowed the engineer, galvanized into action. “Know him? Didn’t he let his woman kick me out of my own house four nights ago?” He seized his hat and stick. “He’ll know me, before I get through with him.”

There was a dog howling. They had just crested the hill.

“Isn’t that Grinder?” This from Armiston, in sharp-drawn exclamation.

Belden and Armiston started forward at a sharp run. Parr caught up at the turn of the road.

“It is Grinder. Under that window,” said Oliver, and they hurried on.

On the kitchen porch, half covered with drifted snow, was a pile of things, supplies left by the boy from the store. The boy had stuck a note in the crack of the kitchen door. It read:

“Made their get-away, eh?” remarked the sardonic Parr.

Belden threw open the barn door. The car had not been moved. He looked up at the chimneys; they were cold.

He and Oliver put their shoulders to the stout old door. Parr added his weight to the task, and the door fell with a crash.

The room was as they had left it. Her mink coat and toque and a purple veil lay on an ottoman; the chess book, leaves open, rested on its stool before the fireplace. The fire was dead, its ashes stone cold. With a curious constriction of the throat Belden started for the stairs, his companions shuffling at his heels. The pink room they left to the last.

“Damn that woman!” Belden was muttering under his breath, obsessed now with horror. He thrust the door open. A faint musty odor met his nostrils. The wintry light struggling in through half-drawn curtains discovered to them what they sought: First their eyes picked up her little intimate luxuries of dress — a pair of tiny mules lying before a chair, a peignoir dropped carelessly across the foot of the bed; there, as if in serene sleep, lay the woman, one long white hand resting on the coverlet. As they stepped into the room they saw the body of Winchester, where he had dropped before the window.

“He was trying to open that window,” said Parr, in his businesslike tone.

It was dark when the old village doctor came, summoned by Parr, who had gone down to the station to wire discreetly to the hierarchical “They,” so they could make ready props for the crash. The old man, his long beard and furs tinseled with snow, came in shaking himself like a big dog.

His eyes rested on the woman’s garments on the ottoman. Thoughtfully he followed them up-stairs; at the door of the pink room he stopped, sniffing. “Humph!” He took the candle from Belden’s hand. “Here, eh? I thought old Jeduthalum had finished sharpening that ax!”

“ ‘Ax,’ ” said Oliver.

“Ah, there’s the other.” The doctor swung the candle, and the great shadows of the room revolved with it. He bent down over Winchester. “Cyanosed — do you see that?” Armiston nodded, curious. “Didn’t they know about this room?” asked the doctor.

“I told them. But — that woman! She had to find out for herself,” said Belden.

“Well, she knows now.” The old physician added after a pause, “I don’t believe in spirits — but I like fresh air.” He threw up the windows, then joined them outside, drawing the door tight behind him. As they desended. Parr was coming in.

“What was it, Doctor?” said Parr. The old man shook his head, thumbing his beard. “Something that has yet to be solved,” he said in his quiet voice. “They have been dead for days.”

Belden was thinking of the blind blows the dead can strike.

“We must obliterate that woman,” he said.

“And that room,” said the old man. Belden took from the mantelshelf the paper by which only four nights gone by he in a moment of absurd whimsy had granted the option of this house and these lands to that woman, in consideration of one dollar. He put the paper in his pocket.

The afternoon papers of the next day carried the news of the sudden death of Winchester from an old heart affection, while sojourning for a few days’ rest in the hills of Litchfield County, where he had planned to accumulate lands for a preserve. There was a distinct shock evidenced in the Street, but “They” had placed their props well, thanks to Parr. An obscure notice in another column recited the death of one Agnes Witcherly, a name that attracted no claimants.

“I’ll run to town for a day to gather up loose ends,” said Belden. “You and Grinder can hold the fort.”

“I intend to,” said Armiston. “May I prowl? Are there any family records?”

Belden produced the old family Bible and a batch of ancient records. Armiston rescued the eggs and milk from the potato bin. It was while he was thus engaged that Grinder made the noisy discovery of a cage full of trapped rats.

There was something almost providential in this discovery, at least to the eager mind of the extinct author, seeking for leads. He carried the cage with its cowering creatures up-stairs to the pink room, and put a supply of cheese and water handy for them. Then he shut the windows and withdrew.

It was three days before Belden reappeared.

“What do you make of it?” he demanded as they smoked by the fire. “Nothing, I suspect. No one ever has.”

“No one has ever tried, so far as I can find out,” retorted Oliver. “I want to ask some questions.” Belden nodded. “Two of your granduncles died on the same day — December 5th, 1844. Ebenezer and Jeduthalum. Jeduthalum was the man with the ax. Your grandfather, the surviving brother, wrote against his death, here in the family Bible: ‘The Lord is a god of recompenses; He will surely requite.’ What about that ax? Was Jed suspected of murder?”

“My grandfather always said he caused Ebenezer’s death,” said Belden. “Ebenezer was the first to die in that room. The morning they found him dead, they went down to the water-mill to tell Jeduthalum. He had gone down to grind his ax. They found him dead on the snow — brained. A belt had broken — snapped like a whip — crushed his skull. But there was nothing to show he had any connection with his brother’s death.”

“Then that same winter, Constance Hagar, maiden aunt, died in that room,” said Oliver.

“Yes.”

“And then what?”

“My grandfather attached no significance to her death,” said Belden. “Mortals do die in bed, you know — one bed or another, it’s all the same. Still, they did shut up that room. No one used it after that.” He paused. “Wait,” he said “There was another, ten years later. No connection — he’s not in the Bible. One winter night, in 1854, I think, a no-account toper, Cyrus Whitman, crawled in there when no one knew — dead in the morning.”

“And then?”

“That was the last straw. Things had been going from bad to worse — road leaving them, and all that. My grandfather closed up the place, abandoned it. When my father came into the property he never occupied it permanently... It’s queer,” said Belden slowly. “I myself have slept in that room several times.”

“You have?” Armiston leaned forward.

“Sheer bravado. When I was in college, my father and I used to come up here summers, fishing. Does it surprise you?”

“No,” said Armiston unexpectedly. “I’ve got a cageful of rats up there. I feed them every morning. They seem to like it. Tell me more about this Jeduthalum. The chain seems to start with him.”

Belden combed his memory. His disjointed recollections came out in scrappy sentences: Jeduthalum was wild — had been a sailor, a gold digger, a traveling tinker. He had spent his patrimony, and would return new and again, to cajole and threaten his brothers. His visits weren’t all bad, however. Occasionally he would come back in funds, and bring some ingenious implement from the outer world, or some idea for improving the place. He had induced them to put water in the kitchen. He put up the furnace, an old wood-burning affair — an innovation.

Oliver walked about while Belden talked. When Belden ceased he continued his prowl, from one room to another. When he returned, Belden was in the cellar. He had started a fire in the furnace and was bedding it down for the night.

Just before breakfast the next morning Armiston walked in with his cage of rats — all dead! He set it down outside, and regarded it queerly.

“Last night?” gasped Belden. Oliver nodded. The thing had struck again, while they slept.

“Now I go to the bottom of it!” cried Belden savagely. “This house must stand till it gives up its secret.”

“Does anything occur to you?”

Belden shook his head.

“I can make a long guess,” said Armiston. He turned at the sound of the dog barking. “In fact, here comes the man now who sent Winchester and that woman to their reward.”

The grocer’s boy came stamping up the creaking steps.

“Son,” said Oliver, “what time was it when you built the fire the other morning — last week Tuesday, I mean.”

“ ’Bout six o’clock in the mornin’,” said the boy, “Why? Did it go out? I couldn’t raise nobody. But I left a note.”

“No; it was all right — I just wondered. Tell the doctor we’d like to see him later in the day. Will you, like a good fellow?”

As the boy went off, the mystified Belden turned to Armiston.

“What are you driving at?”

“It was in winter, when Ebenezer, Constance, and the no-account man died in that room. Wasn’t it?” asked Armiston.

“Yes. What of it?”

“That boy, on your instructions, built a fire in the furnace at daybreak while Winchester and that woman were still asleep,” said Oliver.

“Good God! What do you mean?” cried Belden.

“You built a fire last night in the furnace. This morning my rats are dead. Do you follow me?”

“Yes — yes—”

“Jeduthalum built that furnace,” went on Armiston. “Well, there you are. There is something in that room — what it is I cannot pretend to say. I don’t know. But I know it gives off deadly fumes when the heat strikes it. If Jeduthalum put something there to finish Ebenezer, he probably intended to take it away as soon as it had done its work. But the hand of God had struck him, while he was grinding his ax. The stuff has been there ever since. Whenever the heat has been turned on in the pink room, someone has died. Other times it is harmless. Let us find out the answer. First, we will draw the fire.”

They waited until they thought it would be safe for them to investigate the room up-stairs, then they went to work. They had ripped up the floor around the register when the old doctor came up the stairs, sniffing.

“What have you got there?” asked the doctor. Oliver passed him, on a dustpan, the fragments of an old box. The doctor pushed aside the pieces with a pencil.

“Jed really did it, eh? I always thought so. I’ve been wondering,” he said vaguely, “about that smell... It has haunted me ever since... I was coming up here myself to find out.”

“But what is it?” demanded Belden.

The doctor uncovered a dusty lump of some substance the size of an egg.

“Cyanide,” he said, peering. “Heat it — to ninety, or a hundred degrees — it gives off a deadly gas — cyanogen.”

The Half-Way House still stands. It was restored, and a road built to it, and a modern heating plant installed. The shutters have been so well repaired that no longer on stormy nights can one hear the ghost horse “stamping.”

The pink room is now a sun parlor.