"Professor Bolton," he said, "there couldn't possibly be any one anywhere more eager than I to learn all the details of this affair--to hear your real reason for coming to Baldpate Inn, and to have the peroxide-blond incident properly cla.s.sified and given its niche in history. But let me tell you again my action of to-night was no mere madness of the moment. I shall stick to it through thick and thin. Now, about the blondes."

"The blondes," repeated the professor dreamily. "Ah, yes, I must make a small confession of guilt there. I did not come here to escape the results of that indiscreet remark, but I really made it--about a year ago. Shall I ever forget? Hardly--the newspapers and my wife won't let me. I can never again win a new honor, however dignified, without being referred to in print as the peroxide-blond advocate. The thing has made me furious. However, I did not come to Baldpate Inn to avoid the results of a lying newspaper story, though many a time, a year ago, when I started to leave my house and saw the reporters camped on my door-step, I longed for the seclusion of some such spot as this. On the night when Mr. Kendrick and I climbed Baldpate Mountain, I remarked as much to him.

And so it occurred to me that if I found any need of explaining my presence here, the blond incident would do very well. It was only--a white lie."

"A blond one," corrected Mr. Magee. "I forgive you, Professor. And I'm mighty glad the incident really happened, despite the pain it caused you. For it in a way condones my own offense--and it makes you human, too."

"If to err is human, it does," agreed Professor Bolton. "To begin with, I am a member of the faculty of the University of Reuton, situated, as you no doubt know, in the city of the same name. For a long time I have taken a quiet interest in our munic.i.p.al politics. I have been up in arms--linguistic arms--against this odd character Cargan, who came from the slums to rule us with a rod of iron. Every one knows he is corrupt, that he is wealthy through the sale of privilege, that there is actually a fixed schedule of prices for favors in the way of city ordinances. I have often denounced him to my friends. Since I have met him--well, it is remarkable, is it not, the effect of personality on one's opinions? I expected to face a devil, with the usual appurtenances. Instead I have found a human, rather likable man. I can well understand now why it is that the mob follows him like sheep. However, that is neither here nor there. He is a crook, and must be punished--even though I do like him immensely."

Mr. Magee smiled over to where the great bulk of Cargan slouched in a chair.

"He's a bully old scout," he remarked.

"Even so," replied the professor, "his high-handed career of graft in Reuton must come to a speedy close. He is of a type fast vanishing through the awakening public conscience. And his career will end, I a.s.sure you, despite the fact that you, Mr. Magee, have seen fit to send our evidence scurrying through the night at the behest of a chit of a girl. I beg your pardon--I shall continue. Young Drayton, the new county prosecutor, was several years back a favorite pupil of mine. After he left law school he fell under the spell of the picturesque mayor of Reuton. Cargan liked him and he rose rapidly. Drayton had no thought of ever turning against his benefactor when he accepted the first favors, but later the open selling of men's souls began to disgust him. When Cargan offered him the place of prosecutor, a few months ago, Drayton a.s.sured him that he would keep his oath of office. The mayor laughed.

Drayton insisted. Cargan had not yet met the man he could not handle. He gave Drayton the place."

The old man leaned forward, and tapped Magee on the knee.

"It was in me, remember," he went on, "that Drayton confided his resolve to serve the public. I was delighted at the news. A few weeks ago he informed me his first opportunity was at hand. Through one of the men in his office he had learned that Hayden of the Suburban Electric was seeking to consolidate that road, which had fallen into partial disrepute under his management during the illness of Thornhill, the president, with the Civic. The consolidation would raise the value of the Suburban nearly two million dollars--at the public's expense. Hayden had seen Cargan. Cargan had drafted Ordinance Number 45, and informed Hayden that his price for pa.s.sing it through the council would be the sum you have juggled in your possession on Baldpate Mountain--two hundred thousand dollars."

"A mere trifle," remarked Magee sarcastically.

"So Cargan made Hayden see. Through long experience in these matters the mayor has become careless. He is the thing above the law, if not the law itself. He would have had no fear in accepting this money on Main Street at midday. He had no fear when he came here and found he was being spied on.

"But Hayden--there was the difficulty that began the drama of Baldpate Inn. Hayden had few scruples, but as events to-night have well proved, Mr. Magee, he was a coward at heart. I do not know just why he lies on your bed up-stairs at this moment, a suicide--that is a matter between Kendrick and him, and one which Kendrick himself has not yet fathomed.

As I say, Hayden was afraid of being caught. Andy Rutter, manager of Baldpate Inn for the last few summers, is in some way mixed up in the Suburban. It was he who suggested to Hayden that an absolutely secluded spot for pa.s.sing this large sum of money would be the inn. The idea appealed to Hayden. Cargan tried to laugh him out of it. The mayor did not relish the thought of a visit to Baldpate Mountain in the dead of winter, particularly as he considered such precautions unnecessary. But Hayden was firm; this spot, he pointed out, was ideal, and the mayor at last laughingly gave in. The sum involved was well worth taking a little trouble to gain."

Professor Bolton paused, and blinked his dim old eyes.

"So the matter was arranged," he continued. "Mr. Bland, a clerk in Hayden's employ, was sent up here with the money, which he placed in the safe on the very night of our arrival. The safe had been left open by Rutter; Bland did not have the combination. He put the package inside, swung shut the door, and awaited the arrival of the mayor."

"I was present," smiled Magee, "at the ceremony you mention."

"Yes? All these plans, as I have said, were known to Drayton. A few nights ago he came to me. He wanted to send an emissary to Baldpate--a man whom Cargan had never met--one who could perhaps keep up the pretense of being here for some other reason than a connection with the bribe. He asked me to undertake the mission, to see all I could, and if possible to secure the package of money. This last seemed hardly likely.

At any rate, I was to gather all the evidence I could. I hesitated. My library fire never looked so alluring as on that night. Also, I was engaged in some very entertaining researches."

"I beg your pardon?" said Billy Magee.

"Some very entertaining research work."

"Yes," reflected Magee slowly, "I suppose such things do exist. Go on, please."

"I had loudly proclaimed my championship of civic virtue, however, and here was a chance to serve Reuton. I acquiesced. The day I was to start up here, poor Kendrick came back. He, too, had been a student of mine; a friend of both Drayton and Hayden. Seven years ago he and Hayden were running the Suburban together, under Thornhill's direction. The two young men became mixed up in a rather shady business deal, which was more of Hayden's weaving than Kendrick's. Hayden came to Kendrick with the story that they were about to be found out, and suggested that one a.s.sume the blame and go away. I am telling you all this in confidence as a friend of my friends, the Bentleys, and a young man whom I like and trust despite your momentary madness in the matter of yellow locks--we are all susceptible.

"Kendrick went. For seven years he stayed away, in an impossible tropic town, believing himself sought by the law, for so Hayden wrote him. Not long ago he discovered that the matter in which he and Hayden had offended had never been disclosed after all. He hurried back to the states. You can imagine his bitterness. He had been engaged to Myra Thornhill, and the fact that Hayden was also in love with her may have had something to do with his treachery to his friend."

Magee's eyes strayed to where the two victims of the dead man's falsehood whispered together in the shadows, and he wondered at the calmness with which Kendrick had greeted Hayden in the room above.

"When Kendrick arrived," Professor Bolton went on, "first of all he consulted his old friend Drayton. Drayton informed him that he had nothing to fear should his misstep be made public, for in reality there was, at this late day, no crime committed in the eyes of the law. He also told Kendrick how matters stood, and of the net he was spreading for Hayden. He had some fears, he said, about sending a man of my years alone to Baldpate Inn. Kendrick begged for the chance to come, too. So, without making his return known in Reuton, three nights ago he accompanied me here. Three nights--it seems years. I had secured keys for us both from John Bentley. As we climbed the mountain, I noticed your light, and we agreed it would be best if only one of us revealed ourselves to the intruders in the inn. So Kendrick let himself in by a side door while I engaged you and Bland in the office. He spent the night on the third floor. In the morning I told the whole affair to Quimby, knowing his interest in both Hayden and Kendrick, and secured for Kendrick the key to the annex. Almost as soon as I arrived--"

"The curtain went up on the melodrama," suggested Mr. Magee.

"You state it vividly and with truth," Professor Bolton replied. "Night before last the ordinance numbered 45 was due to pa.s.s the council. It was arranged that when it did, Hayden, through his man Rutter, or personally, would telephone the combination of the safe to the mayor of Reuton. Cargan and Bland sat in the office watching for the flash of light at the telephone switchboard, while you and I were Max's prisoners above. Something went wrong. Hayden heard that the courts would issue an injunction making Ordinance Number 45 worthless. So, although the council obeyed Cargan's instructions and pa.s.sed the bill, Hayden refused to give the mayor the combination."

The old man paused and shook his head wonderingly.

"Then melodrama began in dead earnest," he continued. "I have always been a man of peace, and the wild scuffle that claimed me for one of its leading actors from that moment will remain in my memory as long as I live. Cargan dynamited the safe. Kendrick held him up; you held up Kendrick. I peeked through your window and saw you place the package of money under a brick in your fireplace--"

"You--the curtains were down," interrupted Magee.

"I found a half-inch of open s.p.a.ce," explained the old man. "Yes, I actually lay on my stomach in the snow and watched you. In the morning, for the first time in my life, I committed robbery. My punishment was swift and sure. Bland swooped down upon me. Again this afternoon, I came upon the precious package, after a long search, in the hands of the Hermit of Baldpate. I thought we were safe at last when I handed the package to Kendrick in my room to-night--but I had not counted on the wild things a youth like you will do for love of a designing maid."

Twelve o'clock! The civic center of Upper Asquewan Falls proclaimed it.

Mr. Magee had never been in Reuton. He was sorry he hadn't. He had to construct from imagination alone the great Reuton station through which the girl and the money must now be hurrying--where? The question would not down. Was she--as the professor believed--designing?

"No," said Mr. Magee, answering aloud his own question. "You are wrong, sir. I do not know just what the motives of Miss Norton were in desiring this money, but I will stake my reputation as an honest hold-up man that they were perfectly all right."

"Perhaps," replied the other, quite unconvinced. "But--what honest motive could she have? I am able to a.s.sign her no role in this little drama. I have tried. I am able to see no connection between her and the other characters. What--"

"Pardon me," broke in Magee. "But would you mind telling me why Miss Thornhill came up to Baldpate to join in the chase for the package?"

"Her motive," replied the professor, "does her great credit. For several years her father, Henry Thornhill, has been forced through illness to leave the management of the railway's affairs to his vice-president, Hayden. Late yesterday the old man heard of this proposed bribe--on his sick bed. He was very nearly insane at the thought of the disgrace it would bring upon him. He tried to rise himself and prevent the pa.s.sing of the package. His daughter--a brave loyal girl--herself undertook the task."

"Then," said Mr. Magee, "Miss Thornhill is not distressed at the loss of the most important evidence in the case."

"I have explained the matter to her," returned Professor Bolton. "There is no chance whatever that her father's name will be implicated. Both Drayton and myself have the highest regard for his integrity. The whole affair was arranged when he was too ill to dream of it. His good name will be smirched in no way. The only man involved on the giver's side is dead in the room above. The man we are after now is Cargan. Miss Thornhill has agreed that it is best to prosecute. That eliminates her."

"Did Miss Thornhill and Kendrick meet for the first time, after his exile, up-stairs--in number seven?" Mr. Magee wanted to know.

"Yes," answered Professor Bolton. "In one of his letters long ago Hayden told Kendrick he was engaged to the girl. It was the last letter Kendrick received from him."

There was a pause.

"The important point now," the old man went on, "is the ident.i.ty of this girl to whom you have made your princely gift, out of the goodness of your young heart. I propose to speak to the woman she has introduced as her mother, and elicit what information I can."

He crossed the floor, followed by Mr. Magee, and stood by the woman's chair. She looked up, her eyes heavy with sleep, her appearance more tawdry than ever in that faint light.

"Madam," remarked the professor, with the air of a judge trying a case, "your daughter has to-night made her escape from this place with a large sum of money earnestly desired by the prosecuting attorney of Reuton county. In the name of the law, I command you to tell me her destination, and what she proposes to do with that package of greenbacks."

The woman blinked stupidly in the dusk.

"She ain't my daughter," she replied, and Mr. Magee's heart leaped up.

"I can tell you that much. I keep a boarding-house in Reuton and Miss--the girl you speak about--has been my boarder for three years. She brought me up here as a sort of chaperon, though I don't see as I'm old enough for that yet. You don't get nothing else out of me--except that she is a perfectly lovely young woman, and your money couldn't be safer with the president of the United States."

The puzzled professor of Comparative Literature caressed his bald head thoughtfully. "I--er--" he remarked. Mr. Magee could have embraced this faded woman for her news. He looked at his watch. It was twelve-twenty.

"The siege is over," he cried. "I shall not attempt to direct your actions any longer. Mr. Peters, will you please go down to the village and bring back Mr. Quimby and--the coroner?"

"The coroner!" The mayor of Reuton jumped to his feet. "I don't want to be in on any inquest scene. Come on, Max, let's get out of here."