Evening Republican, Volume 18, Number 104, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 2 May 1914 — WHERE THERE'S A WILL [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

WHERE THERE'S A WILL

by MARY ROBERTS RINEHART

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CHAPTER I. >

When It was all over Mr. Sam came out to the spring-house to say good-by to me before he and Mrs. Sam left. I hated to see him go. afteij allwe had been through together, and I suppose he- saw it in my face, for he came over close and stood looking down at me, and smiling. • “You saved u«, Minnie,** he said, "and 1 needn’t tell you we’re grateful; but do you know what I think?’’ he asked, pointing his long forefinger at me. “I think you’ve enjoyed it even when you were suffering most Red-haired women are born to intrigue, as the sparks fly upward.” "Enjoyed it!” I snapped. "I’m an old woman before my time, Mr. Sam. What with trailing back and forward through the snow to the shelter-house, and not getting to bed at all some nights,' and my heart going by fits and starts, as you may say, and half the time my spinal marrow fairly chilled, not to mention putting on my overshoes every morning from force of habit and having to take them off again, I’m about all In.” "It’s been the making of you, Minnie," he said, eyeing me, with , his hands.in his pockets. "Look at your cheeks! Look at your disposition! I don’t believe you’d stab anybody in the back now!” (Which was a joke, of course; I never stabbed anybody in the back.) He opened the door and a blast of February wind rattled the windowframes. Mr. Sam threw out his chest under his sweater and waved me an- ' other good-by. “Well, I’m off, Minnie," he said. “Take care of yourself and don’t sit too tight on the job; learn to rise a bit in the saddle.” "" •"Good-by, Mr. Sam!” I called, putting down Miss Patty’s doily and following him to the door; “good-by; bet- ' ter have something before you start to keep you warm.” ’ He turned at the corner of the path and grinned back at me. “All right,’; he called. "I’ll go down to the bar and get a lettuce sandwich!” ’ Then he was gone, and happy as I was, I knew I would miss him terribly. • •••••• It began when the old doctor died. I suppose you have heard of Hope Sanatorium and the 'mineral spring that made it famous. 7 I have been spring-house . gtrf at Hope Sanatorium for fourteen years. For the first year or so F nearly went crazy. Then I found things were coming my way. I've got the kind of mind that never forgets a name or face and can combine them properly, which isn’t common. And when folks came back I could call them at once. The old doctor used to say my memory was an asset to the sanatorium. He was in the habit of coming to the spring-house every day to get his morning glass of water and read the papers. For a good many years it had been his custom to sit there, in the winter by the wood fire and in summer just inside the open door, and’to read off the headings aloud while I cleaned around the spring and' polished glasses. «

All that winter, with the papers fall of rumors that Miss Patty Jennings was going to marry a prince, we’d followed it by the spring-house fire, the old doctor and I, getting angry at the Austrian emperor for opposing it when we knew how much too * good Miss Patty was for any foreigner, and then getting nervous and fussed when we read that the prince’s mother was in-favor of the match and it might go through. Miss Patty and her father came every winter to Hope Springrand I couldn't have been more .anxious about it if she had been my own sister. Well, as I say. It all began the very day the old doetor died. He stamped out to the spring-house with the morning paper about nine o’clock, and the wedding seemed to be air off. The paper said the emperor had definitely . refused his consent and had sent the prince, who was cousin, for a Japanese cruise, while the Jennings family Was B<>i>»S to Mexico in their private car, The old doctor was indignant, and I remember how ho tramped up and down the spring-house, muttering that the girl had had a lucky escape, and what did the emperor expect if beauty and youth and wealth weren’t enough. But he calmed down, and soon ho was reading that the papers were predicting an early spring, and ho said we’d better begin to increase our sulphur percentage in the water. “By the way." ho remarked, "Mr. Richard will bo along in a day or so, Minnie. You’d better break tt to Mm. Wiggins.’’ . f p-t Since the summer before we’d had to break Mr. Dick'S coming to Mrs. Wiggins, the housekeeper, owing to his finding her false front where it had blown out of the window, having boon hung up to dry, and his wearing It to luncheon as whiskers. Mr. Dick was the old doctor’s grandson. o "Humph!" I said, and ho tuned around and looked sguarw-at me. "He’aa good boy at heart, Minnie," bo said. "We’ve had our troubles with

him, you and I, but everything has been quiet lately.” "I’m not objecting to Mr. Diet coming here, am I? Only don’t expect me to burst into song about it. Shut the door behind you when you go out” But he didn’t go at once. He stood watching me polish glasses and get the card-tables ready, and I knew he still had something on his mind. - “What has Mr. Dick been up to now?” I asked, growing suspicious. “Nothing. But I’m an old man, Minnie, a very old man.”

“Stuff and nonsense,” I exclaimed, alarmed-. “You’re only seventy.” "And if,” he went on, “anything happens to me, Minnie, I’m counting on you to do what you can foj the old place. You’ve been here 4 good many years, Minnie." "Fourteen years I have been ladling out water at this spring,” I said, trying to keep my lips from trembling. ”1 wouldn’t be 1 at home any place else, unless it would be in an aquarium. But don’t ask me to stay here and help Mr. Dick sell the old place for a summer hotel. For that’s what he’ll do.”

“He won’t sell It," declared the old doctor grimly. "All I want is for you to promlee to stay.”

"Oh, I’ll stay,” I said. “I won’t promise to be agreeable, but I’ll stay. Somebody’ll have to look after, the spring; I reckon Mr. Dick thinks It comes out of the earth'just as we sell it, with the whole pharmacopoeia in it"

Well, it made the old doctor happier, and I’m not sorry I promised, but I've got a joint on my right foot that throbs when it is going to rain or I am going to have bad luck, and it gave a jump then. I might have knbwn there was trouble ahead. It was pretty quiet in, the springhouse that day after the old doctor left. I drew a chair in front of the fire and wondered what I would do if the old doctor died, and what a fool I’d been not to be a school-teacher, which is what I studied for. I was thinking to myself bitterly that all that my experience In the spring fitted me for was to be a mermaid, when I heard something running down the path, and It turned out to be Tillie, the diet cook.

She slammed.the door behind her and threw the Finleyville evening paper at me.

“There!" she said, "I’ve won a cake of toilet soap from Bath-house Mike. The emperor’s consented." “Nonsense!” I snapped, and snatched the paper. Tillie was right; the emperor had! I sat down and read it through, and there was Miss Patty's picture in an oval and the prince’s in another, with a turned-up mustache and his hand on the handle of hie sword, and between them both was the Austrian emperor. Well, I sat there and thought it over, Miss Patty, or Miss Patricia, being, so to speak, a friend of mine. They’d come to the Springs every winter for years.

In my wash-stand drawer I’d kept all the clippings about her coming out and the winter she spent in Washington and was supposed to be engaged to the president’s son, and

the magazine article that told how Mr. Jennings had got his money by robbing widows and orphans, and showed the little frame house where Miss Patty was born—as if she's had anything to do with it And SO now I was cutting out the picture of her and the prince and the article underneath which told how many castles she’d bare, and I don't mind saying I was sniffling a little bit, for I couldn't get used to the idea.. And suddenly, the door closed softly and there was a rustle behind me. When I turned it was Miss Patty herself. She saw the clipping immediately, and stopped foot inside the door. “You. too,” she said. “And we’ve come all this distance to got away from lift tliMt.*’ “Well. I shan't talk about it," I replied, not holding out my hand, tor with her, so -to apeak, nest ddor to being * prtnoeeo—but eh# ’ Waned right

over and kissed me. I could hardly believe it. "Why won’t you talk about it?” she Insisted, catching me by the shoulders and holding me off. “Minnie, your eyes are as red as your hair!” “I don’t approve of-It,” I said. "You might as well know it now as later, Miss Patty. I don’t believe in mixed marriages. I had a cousin that married a Jew, and what.wlth him making the children promise to be good on the Talmud and her trying to raise them with the Bible, the poor things is that mixed up that it’s pitiful." She got a little red at that, but she sat down and took up the clipping. “He’s much better looking than that, Minnie,” she said soberly, “and he’s a good Catholic. But if that’s the way you feel, we’ll not talk about it I’ve had enough trouble at home as it is.” With that I began to blubber, and she came into my arms like a baby. "You’re all I’ve got,” I declared, over and over, “and you’re going to live in a country where they harness women with dogs, and you’ll never hear an English word from morning to night” “Stuff!” She gave me a little shake. "He speaks as good English as I do. And now we’re going to stop talking about him —you’re worse than the newspapers.”

And at that minute the door was flung open, and Bath-house Mike staggered in.

“The old doctor!” he gasped. "He’s dead, Miss Minnie —died just now in the hot room in the bath-house! One minute he was givin’ me the dlvil for something or other, and the next — I thought he was asleep.” Something that had been heavy in my breast all afternoon suddenly seemed to burst and made me feel faint all over. But I didn’t lose my head.

“Does anybody know yet?" I asked quickly. He shook his head. "Then he didn’t die in the bathhouse, Mike,” I said firmly. "He died in his bed, and you know it If it gets out that he died in the hot room I’ll have the coroner on you.”

Miss Patty was standing by the railing of the spring. I got my shawl and started out after Mike, and she followed. "If the guests ever get hold of this they'll stampede. Start any excitement in a Sanatorium,” I said, "and one and all they’ll dip their thermometers in hot water and swear they’ve got fever!" And we hurried to the house together.

CHAPTER 11. Well, we got the poor old doctor ihoved back to his room, and had one of the chambermaids find him there, and I wired to Mrs. Van Alstyne, who was Mr. Dicky Carter’s sister, and who was on her honeymoon in South Carolina. The Van Alstynes came back at once, in very bad tempers, and we had the funeral from the preacher's house in Finleyville so as not to harrow up the sanatorium people any more than necessary. After it was all over the relatives gathered in the sun parloFof the sanatorium to hear the will—Mr. Van Alstyne and his wife and about twenty more who had come up from tho city for the funeral and stayed over—on the house.

Well, the old doctor left me the buttons for his full dress waistcoat and his favorite copy of “Gray’s Anatomy.” I couldn’t exactly set up housekeeping with my share of the estate. They thought that was funny, but a few minutes later they weren't so cheerful. You see the sanatorium was a mighty fine piece of property with a deer-* park and golf links. We’d had plenty of offers to sell it for a summer hotel, but we’d both been dead against IL That was one of the reasons for the will. The whole estate was left to Dicky Carter, who hadn’t been able to come, owing to hfs being laid /ip with an attack of mumps. The family sat up and nodded at one another, or held up its hands, but when they heard there was a condition they breathed easier.

Beginning with one,, week after the reading of the will —and not a day later—Mr. Dick whs to take charge of the sanatorium and there for two months without a day off. If at the end <?f that time the place was being successfully conducted And could show that it hadn't loot money, the entire property became his for keeps. If he failed it was to bo sold and the money given to charity. Well, the family went back to town in a busa of indignation, and I carried my waistcoat buttons and my "Anatomy” out to the spring-house and had a good cry. Thera was a man named Thoburn who was crazy tor the property as a summer hofol, and every time I shut my eyes I could see "Thoburn House” over the veranda and children sailing paper boats in the mineral spring. Sure enough. the next afternoon Mr. Thoburn drove out from Finleyville With a cult case, and before he’d taken off his overcoat ho came out to the spring-house.

“Hello, Minnie,” he exclaimed. "Does the old man’s ghost come back to dope the spring, or do you do it?" “I don’t know what you are talking about Mr. Thoburn," I retorted sharply. “If you don’t know that this spring has its origin in—" "In Schmidt’s drug store down in Finleyville!" he finished for me. “Oh, I know all about that spring, Minnie! Don’t forget that my father’s cows used to drink that water and liked it I leave it to you,” he said, sniffing, “if a self-respecting cow wouldn’t die of thirst before she drank that stuff as it is now."

I'd been filling him a glass—it being a matter of habit with me —and he took it to the window and held it to the light

"You’re getting careless, Minnie,” he said, squinting at it “Some of those drugs ought to be dissolved first in hot water. There’s a lump of llthla there that has Schmidt’s pharmacy label on it”

"Where?" I demanded, and started for it. He laughed at that, and putting the glass down, be came over and stood smiling at me. • "As ingenubus as a child,” he said in his mocking way, "a nice,, little redhaired child! Minnie, how old is this young Carter?" "Twenty-three.”

"An—er—earnest-youth? Willing to buckle down to work and make the old place go? Ready to pat the old ladles on the shoulder and squeeze the young ones* hands?”

“He’s young," I said, "but if you’recounting on his being a fool—•” “Not at all,” he • broke in hastily. "If he hasn’t too much character he’ll probably succeed. I hope he isn’t a fool. Where is he how?"

“He’s been sick,” I said. "Mumps!” "Mumps! Oh, my aunt!” he exclaimed, and fell to laughing. He was etill laughing when he got to the door. "Mumps!” he repeated, with his hand-, on the knob. Minnie, the old place will be under the hammer in three weeks, and if you know what’s good for you, you’ll sign in under the new management while there’s a vacancy.”

"If I were you,” I said, looking him straight in the eye, "I wouldn’t pick out any new carpets yet, Mr. Thoburn. I promised the old doctor rd help Mr. Dick, and I will”

“So you’re actually going to fight it out," he said, grinning. "Well, the odds are in your favor. You are two to my one."

"I think it’s pretty even,” I retorted. "We will be hindered, so to speak, by having certain principles of honor and honesty. You have no handicap.” He tried to think of'a retort, and not finding one he slammed out of the spring-house in a rage. Mr. Van Alstyne and his wife came in that same day, just before dinner, and we played three-handed bridge for half an hour. As I’ve said, they’d been on their honeymoon, and they were both sulky, at having to stay at the Springs.

After the first rubber Mrs. Van Alstyne threw her cards on the floor and said another day like this would finish her. She turned her back to her husband, but he pretended to tuck the hair at the back of her neck up under her comb, and she let him do it. As I stooped to gather up the cards he kissed the tip of her ear. "Listen,” he said, "there’s a scream of a play down at Finleyville to-night called “Sweet Peas.” Senator Biggs and the bishop went down last night, and they say it’s the worst in twenty years. Put on a black veil and let's elip away and see it”

I think she agreed to do it, but that night after dinner, Amanda King, who has charge of the news stand, told me the sheriff had closed the opera-house and that the leading woman was sick at the hotel. "They say she looked funny last night," Amanda finished, “and I guess qhe*s got the mumps.” Mumps! My joint gave a throb at that minute.

Mr. Sam wasn't taking any chances, for the next day bo went to the city himself to bring Mr. Dick up. He hadn't scome back by the morning of the sixth day. but he wired his wife the day before that Mr. Dick was on the way. But we mot every train with a sleigh, and he didn't come. I was uneasy, knowing Mr. Dick, and Mrs. Sam was worried, too. It had been.snowing hard for a day or so, and at eleven o'clock that day I saw Miss Cobb and Mrs. Biggs ooming down the path to the spring-house. “Mr. Van Alstyne is bhck." said Miss Cobb, “but he came alone.” "Alone! “ I repeated, staring at bar in a sort of dase. "Alois," she said solemnly, “and I heard him tor Mr. Carter. It seems Me started for here yesterday." But Td had time to got myself in hand, and if I had a chill up my spine she never kncwjt As she started away I saw Mr. Sam hurrying down the path toward the and I know my joint hadal throbbed tor nothing.

Mr. Sam came in and slsanmed the door behind him. “What’s this about Mr. Dick not being here?” he shouted. - "Well, he isn’t That’s all there is to it, Mr. Van Alstyne,” 4 said calmly. "But he must be here," he said. "I put him on the train myself yesterday, and waited until it started to be sure he was off." “Exactly what was he doing when you last laid eyes on him?" I asked. “He was on the train—” “Sitting?” "No, standing. What the deuce, Minnie—" “Waving out the window to you?"

“Of course not!" exclaimed Mr. Van Alstyne testily. "He was raising the window for a girl in the next eeat.” “Precisely!" I said. . "Would you know the girl well enough to trace her?”

“That’s ridiculous, you know,” he said, trying to be polite. “Out of a thousand and one things that may have detained him—"

“Only one thing ever detains Mr. Dick, and that always detains him,” I said solemnly. “That’s a girl. You're a newcomer in the family, Mr. Van Alstyne; you don’t remember the time he went down here to the station to see his’ykunt Agnes off to’the city, and we found him three weeks_later in Oklahoma trying to marry a widow with five children.”

“I’ll have to tell my wife,” he sajd. "Who's running the place, anyhow? You?"

“Not—exactly,” I explained, "but, of course, when anything comes up they consult me. The housekeeper is a fool, and now that the house doctor’s gone—"

“Gone! Who’s looking after the patients?”

"Well, most of them have been here before,” I explained, “and I know their treatment —the kind of baths and all that"

“Oh, you know the treatment!” he said, eyeing me. “And why did the house doctor go?”

“He ordered Mr. Moody to take his spring water hot Mr. Moody's spring water has been ordered cold for eleven years, and I refused to change. It was between the doctor and me, Mr. Van Alstyne.”

"Oh, of course,” he said, "if it was a matter of principle—" He picked up his hat and looked at his watch. "Eleven thirty,” he said, “and no sign of that puppy yet I guess it’s up to-the police.”

"If there was only something to do," I said,, with a lump in my throat, "but to have to sit and do nothing while the old place dies; it's—it's awful, Mr. Van Alstyne." "We’re not dead yet” he replied from the door, “and maybe we'll need you before the day's over. If anybody can sail the old bark to shore, you can do it, Minnie. You've been steering it for years. The old doctor was no navigator, and you and I know it” The storm stopped a little at three and most of the guests waded down through the snow for bridge and spring water. By that time the afternoon train was in, and no Mr. Dick. Mr. Sam was keeping the lawyer, Mr.

Stitt, in the billiard room, and by four o'clock they'd had everything that.was in the bar and were inventing now combinations of their own. And Mrs. Sam had gone to bed with a nervous headache. Senator Biggs brought the mall down to the spring-house at four, but there was nothing for mo except a note from Mr. Sam, rather shaky, which said ho’d no word yet and that Mr. Stitt had mixed all the cordials in the bar in a beer glass and had had to go to bed. I nearly went crazy that afternoon. I put salt in Mini Cobb's glass when sho always drank the water plain. Once I put the broom In the Are and started to swoop the porch with a fire log. Luckily they were, busy with their letters and It went unnoticed, the smell of burning straw not rising, so to speak, above the sulphur of the spring. Senator Biggs went frees cue table

to another telling how well he felt since he stopped eating, and trying to coax the tother men to starve with him. It’s funny how a man with a theory about his stomach isn't happy until he has made some other fellow swallow it Then they all began at once. If you have ever heard twenty people airing their theories on diet you know all about It It always ends the same way: the man with the loudest voice wins, and the defeated ones limp over to the spring and tell their theorled to me. They know I’m being paid to listen. But when things had got quiet—except Mr. Moody dropping nickels Into the slot-machine—l happened to look over at Miss Patty, and I. saw there was something wrong. She had a letter open in her lap—not one of the blue ones with the black and gold seal that every one tn the house knew came from the prince—but a white one, and she was staring at it as If she’d seen a ghost. CHAPTER 111. I have never reproached Miss Patty, but If she had only given me the letter to read or had told'me the whole truth Instead of a part Of it, I would have understood, and things would all have been different It Is all very well for her to say that I looked worried enough already, and that anyhow it was a family affair. I should havo been told. All she did was to come up to me as I stood in the spring, with her face perfectly white, and ask mo If my Dicky Carter was the Richard Carter who stayed at the Grosvenor in town. “He doesn’t stay anywhere,” I said, with my feet getting cold, "but that’s where he has apartments. What has Me been doing now T* "You’re expecting him on the evening train, aren’t you?" she asked. “Don't stare like that: my father's watching.” "He ought to be on the evening train,” I said. I wasn't going to say I expected him. I didn’t "The wretch!” sho cried, "the hateful creature—as If things weren't bad . enoqghl I suppose he’ll havo to comet Minnie, but I must see him before he sees any one else.” Just then the bishop brought his glass over to the spring. "Hot this time, Minnie,” ho said. "Do you know, l*m getting the mineralwater habit Patty! I'm afraid plain water will have no attraction for me after this.” He put his hand over hers on the rail They were old friends, the bishop and the Jenningses. "Bishop,'* she said suddenly, "win you do something for me?” "I always have, Patty.” Ho was very fond of Miss Patty, was the bishop. "Then—to-night not later than eight o’clock, get father to play cribbage. will you? And keep him in the cardroom until nine." "Another escapade!” ho said, protending to be very serious. "Patty, Patty, you'll be the death of mo yet Is thy servant a dog, that ho should do this thing?" ' H "Certainly not" said Miss Fatty "Just a dear, slightly bald, but otfll very distinguished slave!” "There will bo plenty of slaves to kiss your little hand, where you are going, my child,” he said. “Sometimes I wish that some nice red-blooded boy here at home—but I dare say it will turn out surprisingly well as it is.” "Bishop, Bishop!” Mrs. Moody called. "How naughty of you, and with your bridge hand waittag to bo held!” Well, I knew Mr. Dick had been up to some mischief; I had suspected it all along. But Miss Patty went to bed, and old Mrs. Hutchins, who's a sort of lady’s-maid-companion of hers, said she mustn’t bo disturbed. I was prob ty nearly sick myself. And when Mr. Sam came out at five o’clock and said he'd been in the long-distance telephone booth for an hour and had called everybody who hid ever known Mr. Dick, and that ho had dropped right, off tho earth, F just about' gave up. Luckily Mr. Stitt was in bodwith a mustard loaf over his stomach and ieo on b'-i head, and didn't know whether It was night or morning. (TO BX CONTOCtHRD.)

"What’s Mr. Dick Been Up to Now'

"You're Getting Careless, Minnie,” He said, Squinting at It.