The Big Mogul

This was the library of the Townsend mansion in Harniss. Mrs. Townsend had so christened it when the mansion was built; or, to be more explicit, the Boston architect who drew the plans had lettered the word “Library” inside the rectangle indicating the big room, just as he had lettered “Drawing-Room” in the adjoining, and still larger, rectangle, and Mrs. Townsend had approved both plans and lettering. In the former, and much smaller, home of the Townsends there had been neither library nor drawing-room, the apartments corresponding to them were known respectively as the “sitting-room” and the “parlor.” When the little house was partially demolished and the mansion took its place the rechristened sitting-room acquired two black walnut bookcases and a dozen “sets,” the latter resplendent in morocco and gilt. Now the gilt letters gleamed dimly behind the glass in the light from the student lamp upon the marble-topped center table beside which Foster Townsend was sitting, reading a Boston morning newspaper. It was six o’clock in the afternoon of a dark day in the fall of a year late in the seventies.

The student lamp was a large one and the light from beneath its green shade fell upon his head and shoulders as he sat there in the huge leather easy-chair. Most of the furniture in the library was stiff and expensive and uncomfortable. The easy-chair was expensive also, but it was comfortable. Foster Townsend had chosen it himself when the mansion was furnished and it was the one item upon which his choice remained fixed and irrevocable.

“But it is so big and--and homely, dear,” remonstrated his wife. “It doesn’t look--well, genteel enough for a room in a house like ours. Now, truly, do you think it does?”

Her husband, his hat on the back of his head and his hands in his trousers’ pockets, smiled.

“Maybe not, Bella,” he replied. “It is big, I’ll grant you that, and I shouldn’t wonder if it was homely. But so far as that goes I’m big and homely myself. It fits me and I like it. You can have all the fun you want with the rest of the house; buy all the doodads and pictures and images and story-books and trash that you’ve a mind to, but I want that chair and I’m going to have it. A sitting-room is a place to sit in and I mean to sit in comfort.”

“But it isn’t a sitting-room, Father,” urged Arabella. “It is a library. I do wish you wouldn’t forget that.”

“All right. I don’t care what you call it, so long as you let me sit in it the way I want to. That chair’s sold, young man,” he added, addressing the attentive representative of the furniture house. “Now, Mother, what’s the next item on the bill of lading?”

The leather chair came to the library of the Townsend mansion and its purchaser had occupied it many, many afternoons and evenings since. He was occupying it now, his bulky figure filling it to repletion and his feet, of a size commensurate to the rest of him, resting upon an upholstered foot-stool--a “cricket” he would have called it. A pair of gold-rimmed spectacles were perched upon the big nose before his gray eyes and the stump of a cigar was held tightly in the corner of his wide, thin lipped, grimly humorous mouth. He was dressed in a dark blue suit, wore a stiff-bosomed white shirt, a low “turn down” collar and a black, ready-made bow tie. Below the tie, a diamond stud glittered in the shirt bosom. His boots--he had them made for him by the village shoe-maker--were of the, even then, old-fashioned, long-legged variety, but their leather was of the softest and best obtainable. Upon the third finger of his left hand--stubby, thick hands they were--another diamond, set in a heavy gold ring, flashed as he turned the pages of the paper. His hair was a dark brown and it and his shaggy brows and clipped chin beard were sprinkled with gray.

There was another chair at the other side of the table, a rocking-chair, upholstered in fashionable black haircloth and with a lace “tidy” upon its back. That chair was empty. It had been empty for nearly a month, since the day when Arabella Townsend was taken ill. It was pathetically, hauntingly empty now, for she who had been accustomed to occupy it was dead. A little more than a week had elapsed since her funeral, an event concerning which Eben Wixon, the undertaker, has been vaingloriously eloquent ever since.

“Yes, sir-ee!” Mr. Wixon was wont to proclaim with the pride of an artist. “That was about the most luxurious funeral ever held in this county, if I do say it. I can’t think of anything to make it more perfect, unless, maybe, to have four horses instead of two haulin’ the hearse. That would have put in what you might call the finishin’ touch. Yes, sir, ’twould! Still, I ain’t findin’ fault. I’m satisfied. The music--and the flowers! And the high-toned set of folks sittin’ around all over the lower floor of that big house! Some of ’em was out in the dinin’ room, they was. If I had half the cash represented at that Townsend funeral I’d never need to bury anybody else in this world. I bet you I wouldn’t, I’d have enough.”

Foster Townsend read his paper, became interested in a news item, smiled, raised his head and, turning toward the vacant rocker, opened his lips to speak. Then he remembered and sank back again into his own chair. The paper lay unheeded upon his knees and he stared absently at a figure in the Brussels carpet on the floor of the library.

A door in the adjoining room--the dining room--opened and Nabby Gifford, the Townsend housekeeper, entered from the kitchen. She lit the hanging lamp above the dining room table and came forward to draw the portières between that room and the library. Standing with the edge of a curtain in each hand, she addressed her employer.

“Kind of a hard old evenin’, ain’t it, Cap’n Townsend,” she observed. “It’s rainin’ now but I declare if it don’t feel as if it might snow afore it gets through.”

Foster Townsend did not answer, nor did he look up. Mrs. Gifford tried again.

“Anything ’special in the paper?” she inquired. “Ain’t found out who murdered that woman up to Watertown yet, I presume likely?”

He heard her this time.

“Eh?” he grunted, raising his eyes. “No, I guess not. I don’t know. I didn’t notice. What are you doing in the dining room, Nabby? Where’s Ellen?”

“She’s out. It’s her night off. She was all dressed up in her best bib and tucker and so I judged she was goin’ somewheres. I asked her where, but she never said nothin’, made believe she didn’t hear me. Don’t make much odds; I can ’most generally guess a riddle when I’ve got the answer aforehand. There’s an Odd Fellers’ ball over to Bayport to-night and that Georgie D.’s home from fishin’, so I cal’late--”

Townsend interrupted. “All right, all right,” he put in, gruffly. “I don’t care where she’s gone. Pull those curtains, will you, Nabby.”

“I was just a-goin’ to.... Say, Cap’n Townsend, don’t you think it’s kind of funny the way that woman’s husband is actin’--that Watertown woman’s, I mean? He says he wan’t to home the night she was murdered but he don’t say where he was. Now, ’cordin’ to what I read in yesterday’s _Advertiser_--”

“All right, all right! Pull those curtains.... Here! Wait a minute. Where’s Varunas?”

“He’s out to the barn, same as he usually is, I guess likely. He spends more time with them horses than he does with me, I know that. I say to him sometimes, I say: ‘Anybody’d think a horse could talk the way you keep company with ’em. Seems as if you liked to be with critters that can’t talk.’”

“Perhaps he does--for a change. Well, if he comes in tell him I want to see him. You can call me when supper’s ready. Now, if you’ll pull those curtains--”

The curtains were snatched together with a jerk and a rattle of rings on the pole. From behind them sounded the click of dishes and the jingle of silver. Foster Townsend sank back into the leather chair. His cigar had gone out, but he did not relight it. He sat there, gazing at nothing in particular, a gloomy frown upon his face.

The door leading from the rear of the front hall opened just a crack. Through the crack came a whisper in a hoarse masculine voice.

“Cap’n Foster!” whispered the voice. “Cap’n Foster!... Ssst! Look here!”

Townsend turned, looked and saw a hand with a beckoning forefinger thrust from behind the door. He recognized the hand and lifting his big body from the chair, walked slowly across the room.

“Well, Varunas,” he asked, “what’s the matter now? What are you sneaking in through the skipper’s companion for?”

A head followed the hand around the edge of the door, the head of Varunas Gifford. Varunas was Nabby Gifford’s husband. He was stableman on the Townsend estate, took care of the Townsend horses, and drove his employer’s trotters and pacers in the races at the county fairs and elsewhere. He was a little, wizened man, with stooped shoulders and legs bowed like barrel hoops. His thin, puckered face puckered still more as he whispered a cautious reply.

“Cap’n Foster,” he whispered, “can you just step out in the hall here a minute? I’ve got somethin’ to tell ye and if I come in there Nabby’s liable to hear us talkin’ and want to know what it’s all about. Come out just a minute, can ye?”

Townsend motioned him back, followed him into the dimly lighted hall and closed the door behind them.

“Well, here I am,” he said. “What’s the matter?”

Varunas rubbed his unshaven chin. His fingers among the bristles sounded like the rasp of sandpaper.

“You know Claribel?” he began anxiously.

Claribel was the fastest mare in the Townsend stable. The question, therefore, was rather superfluous. Claribel’s owner seemed to consider it so.

“Don’t waste your breath,” he ordered. “What’s the matter with her?”

Varunas shook his head violently. “Ain’t nothin’ the matter with her,” he declared. “She’s fine. Only--well, you see--”

“Come, come! Throw it overboard!”

“Well, I was cal’latin’ to take her down to the Circle to-morrow mornin’ early--about six or so; afore anybody was up, you know--and try her out. Them was your orders, Cap’n, you remember.”

“Of course I remember. I was going to remind you of it. You’re going to do it, aren’t you?”