After dinner there was a little bridge, but the youngsters were going to a dance, and Mrs. Dallas seemed to want to go home early, so Ames carried her off, and our own quartet was left alone.
I was glad of it, for I like a chat with a few better than the rattle of the crowd. And it was not very long before Lora and Mrs. Merrill left us, and Keeley and I had the porch to ourselves.
“Pleasant people,” I said, by way of being decently gracious.
“Good enough,” he agreed. “To-morrow, Gray, we’ll fish. It’s open season for everything now and the limits are generous. Except muskellonge. You may bag only one per day of those. But trout, all kinds, bass, all kinds, pickerel, rock sturgeon – oh, we’ll have the biggest time!”
“Sounds good to me,” I returned, heartily. “I’m happy to be here, old scout, and we’ll fish and all that, but don’t put yourself about to entertain me.”
“I sha’n’t; but you must fall in with Lora’s plans, won’t you? I mean, seem pleased to attend her kettledrums and whatnot, even if it bores you.”
“Of course I will. Your lady’s word is law. She’s a brick, isn’t she?”
“Yes,” and Moore smiled happily at my somewhat crude compliment. “She’s just that. And such a help in my work.”
“Your detective work?”
“What else? She’s more than a Watson, she’s a real helpmate. Her insight and intuition are marvellous, and she sees through a bit of evidence and gets the very gist of it quicker than I can.”
“Then you surely got the right one.”
“I certainly did. But I hope to Heaven there’ll be no cases this summer. I want a real vacation, that’s why I came ’way off here, to get away from all crime calls.”
“Don’t crow before you’re out of the woods. Crimes can happen even in Wisconsin. And to me, this whole country round looks like a perfect setting for a first-class criminal to work in.”
“Hush! I’m not superstitious, but your suggestion of such a thing might bring it about. And I don’t want it!”
“You think you don’t,” I smiled a little, “but deep in your heart you do. You can’t fish all the time, and you’re even now restively hankering to be back in harness.”
“Shut up!” he growled. “Talk of something pleasanter. How do you like the Dallas queen?”
“Stunning, seductive, and serpentine,” I summed up the lady in question.
Moore laughed outright. “I must tell Lora that,” he said. “You see, she agrees with you. Now, I think the right words are stately, gracious, and charming.”
“All right,” I said, “you know her better than I do, She is very beautiful, I concede.”
“What do you mean, concede? Are you against her?”
“How you do snap a fellow up! No, not exactly. But I wouldn’t trust her as far as I could see her, – and I’m near-sighted.”
“Sometimes I think I’m no detective after all,” Moore said, slowly. “Now she gives me no effect of hypocrisy or insincerity.”
“But she does hint those things to Lora?”
“Y – yes, in a way.”
“Then Lora’s more of a detective than you are. But after I see more of the siren, I may change my mind. I didn’t talk with her alone at all. What about the grumpy Mr. Ames? Is he in love with the Dallas?”
“Not at all. In the first place, he wouldn’t dare be, for she is engaged to Sampson Tracy, and Tracy is not one to take kindly to any poaching on his domain. Besides that, Ames is a woman hater, also a man hater, and I think, an animal hater.”
“Pleasant man!”
“Yes. He’s always in a fierce mood. I don’t know, but I imagine he had an affair once…”
“Oh, crossed in love and it made him queer.”
“Rather say, queered in love and it made him cross.”
“Yes, he looks cross. Does he always?”
“Always. He and Samp Tracy are old friends, and Samp can manage him, but nobody else can.”
“Pleasant guest for Mr. Tracy to have about.”
“He doesn’t mind. Pleasure Dome is usually full of guests and if any want to sulk they are at liberty to do so.”
“Pleasure Dome?”
“Yes, that’s the Tracy place. It’s next to this, but it’s some distance off. You see, Deep Lake has a most irregular boundary line. It has all sorts of coves and inlets, and there’s one that juts in behind the Tracy house. It’s so deep and black and so surrounded by trees that it’s called the Sunless Sea.”
“Why, that’s from Coleridge’s ‘Kubla Khan,’ too.”
“Yes, these are the lines:
“In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately Pleasure Dome decree;
Where Alph, the sacred river ran
Through caverns measureless to man
Down to a sunless sea.
“You know it, of course, but that will refresh your memory. Well, old Tracy – ”
“Is he old?”
“Oh, no, he’s forty-five, but he seems older, somehow. Well, anyway, he’s romantic and poetic and imaginative. And he has a fad for Coleridge. Collects editions of him and all that. So he built his enormous and gorgeous house and called it Pleasure Dome. And the deep arm of the lake, which is right beneath his own window, he calls the Sunless Sea. And it is. It’s on the north side of the house, and so hemmed in with great firs and cypresses that the sun never gets a look-in.”
“Must make a delightful sleeping room!”
“Oh, there’s plenty of sunlight from the east and west. His rooms are in a wing, a long L, and you bet they have sunlight and all other modern improvements. The house is a palace.”
“That all sounds nice for Mrs. Dallas.”
“It is. And Samp is so drivellingly, so besottedly in love with her, that she will have everything her own way when she takes up the sceptre.”
“Nobody else in the family? The Tracy family, I mean.”
“No. Not now. There was. You see, Tracy’s sister, Mrs. Remsen, and her daughter used to live with him. Then Mrs. Remsen died, about a year ago, or a little more, and then Mrs. Dallas came into the picture, and some think it was at her request Tracy put his niece out – ”
“The brute!”
“Oh, come now, you don’t know anything about it. Alma is a lovely girl, but she’s a high-handed sort – all the Tracys are – and her uncle gave her a beautiful home on a near-by island – ”
“On an island? A girl, alone!”
“She has with her an old family nurse, who took care of her as a baby, and old nurse’s husband is her gardener and houseman, and old nurse’s daughter is her waitress, and oh, Lord, Alma Remsen is fixed all right.”
“But on an island!”
“But she likes being on an island. It was her own choice. She didn’t want to stay with the new wife any more than the new wife wanted to have her. You always fly off half-cocked!”
“All right, all right,” I soothed him. “Tell me more.”
“Well, that’s all about Alma. She’s a general favourite, has lots of friends, and all that, but of course, when the new mistress of Pleasure Dome comes in at the door, Alma’s prospects will fly out of the window.”
“Cut