Lights along the ledges

Chapter I

The tenth story office windows of Avery, Ames and Avery looked out on the harbor and river and across to the Jersey hills. Young Tom MacLeod, in the window of Mr. Malcolm Avery’s room on a June morning, saw the river at its bonniest. Blue water sparkling in the sunshine and crisped with lines of whitecaps by a clean breeze sweeping up across the Bay. Smoke from steamer funnels trailing in pennants of amber and pearl. Gay lit¬ tle waves slapping the fronts of barges, and tugs bouncing along with that suggestion of indefati¬ gable busy-ness whatever their struggle with wind and tide.

Weaving a gallant way through the harbor traffic, past lumbering craft of the ferries, puffing tugs, and majestic liners pushing out to sea, a little white yacht was moving up the river. A toy it seemed from the high window, its bunting 5 streaming, its brasses agleam in the morning sun. Young Tom MacLeod’s eyes followed it until it became a speck trailing a ribbon of snowy wake.

At a desk back in the room old Malcolm Avery, senior partner of Avery, Ames and Avery, and adviser of the MacLeods for a score of years, fidgeted with papers and snapped elastic bands over packages of documents. He could not see the yacht moving up the river but he could see young Tom, and the old lawyer’s eyes were full of concern and affection as he waited.

The lad was thinking it over, of course. Get¬ ting hold of himself before he said anything. A nasty blow had been dealt him that morning— and not a word out of him. Not a protest of in¬ dignation; not a whimper of personal panic. But young Tom had always been like that, the lawyer remembered, from the days he had worn knickers and little belted jackets; a self-contained, silent sort of lad who stood about, hands in pockets, quiet eyes contemplating things—considering, re¬ serving opinions. He stood now in the window, back to the room and to his father’s old friend, his long slenderness in loose summer tweeds, slim brown hands behind him holding his malacca stick, quiet gray eyes on the river traffic, mouth

LIGHTS ALONG THE LEDGES 7 U

set in such a straight, tight line that the lips were invisible. Cliff MacLeod’s boy—to old Malcolm Avery still Cliff’s youngster, in spite of young Tom’s six and twenty years, and his six feet of stature, and the bronzed face already hardening into settled contours. A young face showing lines cut by unimaginable experiences in France, by three years of engineering work in India, by the shock of recent bereavement and disaster.

“ If I could have saved anything, Tom-”

Old Malcolm Avery broke the long silence. “ You

know how this makes me-”

Young Tom MacLeod swung around in the window.

“ It’s the boat, Mr. Avery. That makes me feel worst of all. How my father could have brought himself to part with the Vagabond I can’t see. I’d gladly spare that couple of thou¬ sand you seem to have corralled out of the smash

if you could have kept the Vagabond for me-”

“ Tom, we couldn’t touch those bonds. Your father couldn’t touch ’em. They were registered in your name by your mother. She bought one on each of the birthdays you were away and tucked the bonds in her safe-deposit box along with that letter I’ve just given you.

“ The yacht,” pointed out the lawyer, “ had to go—on that note your father gave-”

“ But I can’t see,” interrupted young MacLeod, “ how he ever came to risk the Vagabond on any note. It tells me, plainer than any figures you could show, how deep he was in—the poor old Pater—before he brought himself to borrow money on the Vagabond. She was my mother’s gift to him.”

“I know, Tom. And I know how she loved that boat—how happy those two were on the yacht. Always like two kids on a holiday. Maybe after your mother went your father didn’t feel the same about the Vagabond . Maybe he-”

The first flash of emotional feeling that had be¬ trayed itself in the young man’s controlled face showed now. “I loved the boat too! And my mother would have wanted me to have it. He must have known that.” It was the only bitter word young MacLeod had uttered and for all his pluck under the knock-down blow he had received that morning something of the weariness and strain of his long journey showed now in his face. He had come straight from the overland train to the lawyer’s office. He had known his home-coming was to a home no longer in existence; that his father and his mother were gone—Avery, Ames and Avery had cabled that. But only this morn¬ ing had he learned that gone also was everything else—conditions he had always taken for granted, whose stability it would never have occurred to him to question. The very foundations of his existence seemed to have been swept from beneath his feet.

“ The Vagabond” young Tom MacLeod lifted a paper-cutter from the glass top of the desk and set it down carefully two inches from its first position, the controlled action that had to be action of some sort, however carefully controlled, revealing as no outburst of speech could the strain he was under, “ the Vagabond seemed a part of them that I could still have. Something that was home. All the way back from India, Mr. Avery, I have been planning to go right aboard the yacht. I—I meant to sleep aboard to-night.”

He picked up his hat.

“ Stay and have lunch with me, Tom. I’d like to talk further with you.” The lawyer tried to keep the concern out of his voice and his eyes. “ I want to hear about your immediate plans. Of course you know ”—he put a hand on young

Tom’s shoulder—“ Tillie and I would be pleased to pieces if you’d spend a bit of time with us. Why not bring your luggage up to the house and make it your headquarters? Tillie and the girls are going down to Long Island next week. You could run down there with them and put in July at Woodways. The girls would be tickled to death-”

But young MacLeod firmly though courteously vetoed this kindly proposal. What he wanted, evidently, was to get away. That he had some definite plan in mind, and an immediate plan, his father’s old friend was sure. Young Tom did not look merely sad and disconcerted; there was de¬ termination in his gray eyes and in the set of his mouth, and in the straight way he carried his shoulders as he shook hands and went out that argued decisive action of some sort.

“Ah well, I shall hear from him,” reflected old Malcolm Avery, touching the buzzer for his stenographer. It was a busy morning and he had given most of it to the son of his client and friend. “ The lad’s sore now, and hurt to the quick. He wants to get by himself and think things out. Poor lad—a lonely home-coming for him. And a lonely sort of boy always I imagine.

Those two were wrapped up in each other—amaz¬ ing their devotion. But I wonder if the boy didn’t miss something that might have helped him now. . . . L Wish I could have saved him that boat! ”

Chapter II

Young Tom MacLeod had a very definite and immediate plan. It concerned an enterprise, however, of far too sentimental—not to say sur¬ reptitious—a nature to render advisable its dis¬ cussion with any lawyer.

The “ Owl ” train for Boston was running past Bridgeport. It wouldn’t stop until it pulled into Back Bay station at breakfast time, and all up and down the long succession of Pullmans people lay asleep. Only a porter here and there, sliding on noiseless boot-soles down a dim passageway be¬ tween straight falling curtains, seemed to be awake . . . and in lower 14, car 1131, young Tom MacLeod.

Sitting up in his Pullman berth Tom was mak¬ ing a list of his assets.

A magazine was propped on his knee and on the magazine was a scrap of old envelope upon which with his fountain pen he jotted down cer¬ tain items in neat, small letters and figures clear as printing; the figures and handwriting of the technically trained engineer.

LIGHTS ALONG THE LEDGES 13 JVhat he had jotted down amounted to this:

Item 2 Thousand-dollar railroad bonds worth at the moment, probably around eight-fifty.

Item $368.49 cash, representing re¬ mainder of saved up pay.

Item Plentiful and fairly presentable hot weather wardrobe including one pith helmet.

Item Good supply of Class A health (now the after-effects of that in¬ fernal rheumatic fever were nearly over).

Item A job waiting in September.

Young Mr. MacLeod searched in the deeps of & waistcoat pocket and possessed himself of a stubby red pencil with which he drew a roseate line undei the last item. After all, it was the asset most immediately valuable and heart-warming.

The electric light over Tom's bent head glim¬ mered on his slickly brushed fair hair, untousled yet by his pillow, and on the clean line of his jaw where it turned under to meet his slim un¬ collared throat. That good jaw and his long, wellknit frame he got from his mother's side—-New England folk from early settlement days. And also from them his steady gray eyes that looked straight at you, his head turning with them. No oblique glances from young MacLeod’s eyes. Frank eyes, with New England shrewdness and humor back of the frankness.

The unconquerable wave in his sternly groomed hair and his sensitive, thin-lipped mouth were heritage of his artist father. Sensitive lips Tom had learned to control—in France, back of that in college years, and away back of that in lonely boy years that had taught him self-repression. But the gray eyes were still young enough to betray him. In them sometimes was a wistfulness. Not everybody saw it for young Tom MacLeod was a pleasant chap to pal with: a good scout his men acquaintances averred, a good deal of a dear allowed the more exacting sex.

“ You take a good loaf this summer, MacLeod,” his chief had advised when Tom reported at his New York office. u You’ve done good work and now that you are back home you’ll be wanting to breeze round a bit and see the folks; and get into tip-top condition — that was a nasty touch of fever you had in India. You come here Septem¬ ber fifteenth and I’ll have a bridge building job for you out in Wyoming. Won’t need you before then. In fact don’t want you round. You clear out and play a whiled

The chief had seen that something back of the steadiness in young MacLeod’s eyes. Tough, that both of the lad’s parents should have gone like that while he was in India! But of course the boy had other relatives and hosts of friends. And half a dozen girls, probably, eager to wel¬ come him home after a three-year absence. He wasn’t in shape for hard work. No use tying him to an estimating desk in New York through the hot weather. He’d be a lot better outdoors, play¬ ing round and forgetting his troubles.

“ Play a while,” Mr. MacLeod was reflecting as the train slipped through New Haven and into the open sea-indented country beyond. Where the dickens was he to play? And with whom? Four years of prep school and two years of Tech; and then a year in training camp and at the front; and then another year of intensified work at Tech; and then three years in India . . . not much

chance to collect play-inclined contemporaries in any one place. And Cliff and Celia—thus had his parents preferred to be addressed by the big lad who made them feel increasingly older—Cliff and Celia had established no home in any community where a boy could gather playmates. All summer aboard their Vagabond, and in winter at Cliff’s studio apartment in town. There had always been a shake-down for Tom at the apartment— and of course a rousing welcome—when he came to them for brief vacations. But not much chance in that for the acquiring of youthful play¬ mates.

He had grieved for Cliff and Celia terribly— when the news reached him in India. He had loved them so much and craved so what they could spare to him out of their happiness. The one ray of comfort, these lonely months, had been the remembrance that the Vagabond still re¬ mained to him. It would be sort of a home in which those two would always seem near him. . . .

And now even the Vagabond was gone.

Somebody's traveling clock in the depths of a suitcase sounded three muffled strokes. In a few hours he would be in Boston. Well, he knew what he was going to do in Boston.

He had made up his mind before leaving Mr. Avery's office. The yacht was still at South Bos¬ ton where Cliff and Celia had left her at the end of a cruise and had been put in the water, Mr. Avery had ascertained, ready for the coming of her new owner who was at present in Europe on business.

LIGHTS ALONG THE LEDGES H

If Tom MacLeod spent one more night on the old boat—the night on board that he had been plan¬ ning for and looking forward to and that was so specially hard to give up—the new owner of the Vagabond need never know about it. And very likely wouldn’t have any extreme objection if he did. He’d understand, that chap, if he loved boats himself.

And now Celia’s letter, handed to Tom by Mr. Avery, made a visit to the yacht imperative.

Tom spread out the letter on his knee and read it again. Then he folded it and put it, with the list of his assets, in his pocketbook, switched off the electric light, took a look at the landscape flitting by and stretched himself out for slum¬ ber.

The heavy, smooth rumble of the train over the rails was soothing Tom into drowsiness when something startled him wide awake again. A small, agile body landed squarely on his face. Sharp-nailed little paws dug into his neck. And then something small and warm and furry bur¬ rowed down under the sheet, squirming against Tom’s leg.

“What the deuce?” ejaculated young Mr. MacLeod, springing up in some natural consternation and groping for the switch of the electric

bulb.

A series of terrible though smallish growls pro¬ ceeded from the burrowing furry thing down by his bare toes. It seemed to be turning round and round in a sort of incomprehensible frenzy but as yet had not offered to bite him. By the time he got the light on and the coverlets down the com¬ motion had subsided. The turned back sheet re¬ vealed a pair of bright eyes peeking out saucily at Tom MacLeod. In the nice warm place where Tom’s hastily withdrawn feet had been was cud¬ dled a small Pekingese dog evidently disposed now for a lengthy snooze.

As Tom and the Peke looked each other in the eye a tiny mouth opened to display an incredibly pink tongue in the contortions of a deep and sat¬ isfied yawn. Tom loved dogs, big or little, but when he put out his hand to fondle the mite’s head there ensued one of the terrible if tiny growls.

Tom chuckled. "Well, Mr. Sing Low, or Growlo, or whatever your name is, I approve your taste in picking friends but can’t say I admire your disposish. Say it with a smile, old man, when you’re asking a favor. Now in about two

LIGHTS ALONG THE LEDGES 19 minutes you and I are going to hear from some¬ body. 5 '

He reached up and turned off the light and then thrusting thumb and forefinger between the berth-curtains, he peered through the aperture into the darkened aisle.

No porter, he surmised, would be pressed into service to discover an animal smuggled into a Pullman. Some distracted and disheveled female would presently materialize and young Mr. Mac¬ Leod was anticipatively joyous over her un¬ doubted state of mind. She wouldn't dare call aloud to her pet in a car full of sleeping passen¬ gers. And as to which of the quiet berth-curtains he lurked behind the poor soul would have no notion whatever.

Right-o, there she was, coming down the aisle from the forward end.

And she was the very prettiest thing young Tom MacLeod had ever seen in his life. She had on a gorgeous mandarin jacket, coral hued and with indigo and gold embroideries. Down the front of it two ropes of red-brown hair fell to her waist. Below a lacy petticoat or something her little bare feet, hastily thrust into high-heeled pumps, crept along the aisle. Her small hands were clutched at her breast and her eyes darted this way and that, seeking a betraying movement in some berth-curtain. Very softly and agitatedly she was making, as she approached Tom’s peep¬ hole, little murmurous whistling sounds.

To cut the torture short Mr. MacLeod thrust forth a hand with a beckoning finger. She stopped short when she glimpsed the hand. (It must have looked ghostly enough protruding through the curtains with its moving forefinger.) Then she advanced and stood just outside the drapery.

Tom did not dare impose his resonant barytone upon the sleeping stillness of the Pullman. He grasped the Peke firmly by its middle and despite its horrific growls shoved it through the curtains and deposited it in the arms of its mistress.

She caught the little dog to the coral and gold embroideries on her breast and stifled its growls by the simple expedient of winding one of her long braids round and round its head.

“Oh, thank you,” came her grateful whisper. And she tiptoed hastily back to her end of the Pullman,

Chapter III

Now Mr. MacLeod, being six-and-twenty, could scarce be expected to accept as completely satis¬ fying that warming consciousness of a kind deed performed—and to let it go at that. He had to see what beauty-by-day was like.

Maybe, after all, she was thirty-five or forty. The light is dim in Pullmans at night and women's looks are so deceptive anyhow.

He was out of his berth long before any passenger at the forward end of the car was astir. When he returned from the dressing-room, tweeds meticulously brushed, tie perfectly adjusted (he had even managed to shave) the porter was fuss¬ ing over unmade berths at the center of the car and the front end was quite shut off from Tom's view. They were drawing into South Station now and Mr. MacLeod, deciding that the front end was the end of ends to alight from, strolled with his grip up that way.

Yes, she was there, making ready herself to leave the train. And she was even prettier by day in a demure little hat and tailored frock than

she had been in the coral and gold mandarin 21 jacket. Her profile against the window: small head heavily crowned with chestnut hair, straight little back and pretty shoulders from which a traveling wrap was slipping, made Tom think of a charming French print that had hung in his mother's bedroom,—a girl-picture called a Puz¬ zled" by an artist named Nicolet. There was something in the serious face with slightly lifted, questioning gaze and in the expression of the brown eyes that was very like “ Puzzled" who had always charmed his young imagination.

This girl did not look so much puzzled, how¬ ever, as anxious. She pretended to be very busy adjusting her bags and her gloves but she kept sending furtive glances through the window at the platform outside, as though she dreaded rather than hoped to see somebody, come to meet her train.

Sing Low, or Growlo, was not in evidence though a doggish looking basket of leather-trimmed wicker seemed to hint at his nearness. There was another bag, a big black leather suit¬ case, and on a leather-framed tag attached to its handle Mr. MacLeod, by stooping nonchalantly to flick a speck of dust from his trouser-leg, read the name Hageboom.

Not much of a name for so lovely a being—but of course feminine names can be changed. . . .

Tom was standing at the end of a line of people waiting to leave the car and his position was, through strategic manoeuvring, beside the young lady’s section. He wondered if it would do to make concerned inquiry about last night’s run¬ away but decided against the impulse. There was something of reserve about Growlo’s young mis¬ tress that rendered too dangerous any informal pleasantry of that sort. After all, she hadn’t had a glimpse of him, Tom remembered. Except for a pajama-cuffed hand emerging from a curtain. And she didn’t seem to have the least curiosity about him, or his hand, or about any possible masculine befriender of Growlo among the several gentlemen waiting in the line. She was far too busy scanning faces on the platform outside.

The porter came and got her suitcase (the doggish basket she carefully retained in her own possession); and Tom, just ahead of her as she stepped out of the car, heard her low-spoken direc¬ tion to a red-cap.

“ Please put me in a taxi that will take me to the Touraine Hotel.”

Tom had cherished an idea of stopping at the

Copley Plaza but after all, he decided, the Touraine was a good place; he had always liked the grill there and that homelike lounge with the big fireplace. So he left the subway at Boylston Street station and stepped across to the Touraine.

But though he lingered in the homelike lounge for an hour neither Growlo nor Miss Puzzled put in an appearance. Tom was sure they could not have arrived ahead of him for no Hageboom had registered at the desk. Just above his own name was scrawled E. B. Jameson , Coxsackie, N . F.— the first arrival of the morning and presumably a traveling salesman.

However, Tom took a chance. He drew the room clerk’s attention to the name.

“ Tall, red-headed chap? ” asked Mr. MacLeod genially. “ I knew an Ed Jameson from Cox¬ sackie—went to prep school with him.”

The clerk favored Tom with a stony stare. “ Not the type at all. Guess it isn’t your friend.”

All that day the room clerk watched Tom rather sharply as he went in and out, but the dainty Miss Hageboom never appeared.

Tom’s special business in Boston could not be transacted until evening and time hung a bit heavy on his hands. He read the papers in the lounge all morning—keeping one eye on the eleva¬ tor doors, and lunched twice, in the main restau¬ rant and also down in the grill. Tom MacLeod, you understand, was not the type of young man who hangs about hotel lobbies seeking flirtatious adventure, but he was a young fellow at a loose end and desperately lonely. His encounter with the brown-eyed owner of Growlo was the pleasant¬ est thing that had happened to him since his re¬ turn to American shores. He thought he should like little Miss Puzzled if he knew her, and though he hadn’t much hope of knowing her there would be certain comfort to his loneliness in see¬ ing her again.

But after lunch he gave it up and went to his room to look over his mother’s letter. He had read it several times since leaving Mr. Avery’s office. Now he got it out again and was able to go through it without that choking tightness in his throat and blur of tears before his eyes.

It had been written almost two years ago and it was the kind of letter a mother would write, know¬ ing that she would never see her boy again and wanting to give him something to carry on with through the years. She ought to have been more to him, she said. She and Cliff had been too absorbed in each other. They had never meant to let Tom feel neglected, but now she was afraid, perhaps, sometimes he had. She had realized, those months while he was in France, how much more she and Cliff might have been to him. And now he was in India and she was going to leave Cliff and him—and she saw too late how close the three of them ought to have been.

She asked Tom to forgive her—he, her boy who was so close to her heart in these last days. She wanted him to know how she loved him. And how she believed in him—how safe she felt about his future.

And then it was Cliff she spoke of. Cliff com¬ mitted to the son’s most tender care. Tom must try to be to Cliff what she could not be any more: a strength and companion and playmate. Cliff must not be allowed to go under. . . .

Tom MacLeod let the sheets fall from his hands. Cliff had gone under. Poor Cliff, happy-go-lucky artist, trying to play at big business with the for¬ tune left in his care; seeking distraction from loneliness and making a disastrous muddle of things. Tom could not bring himself to blame Cliff MacLeod too bitterly. The very irresponsibility of that blithe spirit had called and held all the rich tenderness of Celia’s love.

At the end of her letter to Tom this postscript:

I leave a message for yon on the Vagabond. Look for it the moment yon return home. I cannot leave papers concerning this matter in my safe-deposit box, for it would hurt Cliff too much to think I had busi¬ ness, or any part of my life, not shared with him.

You will find the message behind a panel on the port side of the aft cabin. Cliff hated my cutting a swastika in that panel, but I did it to show you the place.

I cannot imagine either you or Cliff selling the Vagabond. But if such a thing should happen, do not let the yacht go, Tom, until you have secured what I have put behind that panel. This is vitally important. Your mother, C. E. MacLeod.

Thus it will be seen what imperative business young Tom MacLeod had in Boston. The Vaga¬ bond had been sold. Before the new owner took possession Tom must obtain that message of his mother’s.

Very probably whoever owned the boat would make no more objection to the search for a mother’s message than he would to a sentimental last night on board. But if even Cliff MacLeod could not have knowledge of Celia’s secret much less must any stranger be told of it. No, the search must be made without permission of any¬ body. Tom had his own keys for the cabin doors

28 LIGHTS ALONG THE LEDGES and if the yacht was unoccupied he could slip aboard after dark and be off at dawn.

It is not to be denied that this undertaking offered an element of attractive adventure. Tom was only twenty-six and he had dreamed all the way across an ocean and a continent of coming home to the old boat. Quite apart from the mat¬ ter of Celia’s message was an obstinate determi¬ nation to have one more night aboard. If fate had robbed him of everything else it wasn’t going to rob him of that home-coming to the Vagabond.

There was not a plank in the Vagabond's hull that Tom did not know; nor a nut in her engine. By the time he reached seventeen he had been able to handle the yacht as well as his skipper father. Probably because he spent so many hours with old Saunders. Up forward “ talking boat ” with old Saunders while those two were together in the cockpit; helping old Saunders clean the engine while the two were adventuring ashore; making toast on the galley stove for old Saunders who let Tom carry breakfast trays to the aft cabin where Cliff and Celia had coffee luxuriously in their bunks. To the lonely boy the Vagabond had meant more than Cliff or Celia ever guessed. He had always dreamed that when he grew up and they could accept him on their own level—when he could understand those whimsical things Cliff said to her with lifted eyebrow, and those gay side-glances of hers which seemed to say so much to Cliff that Tom couldn’t comprehend—that he would be one of them, on board, and not a sort of visitor. Now they were gone. Happy together again somewhere, and without him. . . .

But if only Cliff had spared him the Vagabond!

At any rate he was going to have his one night aboard and nobody was ever going to know about it.

After an early dinner, armed with an electric torch, a screw-driver and a chisel (in case tools on the yacht should not be available) he took the subway for South Boston.

There were many cruisers and yawls in the basin but this was not a yachting harbor and few of the boats were in commission. Tom’s searching eye located the Vagabond lying just off the shipyard and for a moment he felt bitter disappointment for he thought the cabin was lighted up. Then he realized it was only a reflection of the setting sun on closed ports. But that effect of lighted win¬ dows gave him an eerie sensation of being again a schoolboy, on his way to join Cliff and Celia for a brief vacation on board the yacht. He would find them lounging in the cockpit, his mother gay and pretty and tanned in her white boat frock and his father in flannels, pipe in mouth and with yachting cap jauntily aslant. So joyous he al¬ ways found them, so contented to be on the Vagabond together, anchoring where they listed— Gypsies reveling in their roaming.