CHAPTER VIII

_The Murder of Major Atwood_

"We are late," Tina whispered. It was that night in 1777 when she,

Larry and Harl stepped from their Time-traveling cage; and again I am

picturing the events as Larry afterward described them to me. "Migul,

in the other cage, was here," Tina added. "But it's gone now. Exactly

where was it, I wonder?"

"Mary Atwood said it appeared in the garden."

They crept down the length of the field, just inside the picket fence.

In a moment the trees and an intervening hillock of ground hid the

dimly shining outline of their own cage from their sight. The dirt

road leading to Major Atwood's home was on the other side of the

fence.

"Wait," murmured Tina. "There is a light in the house. Someone is

awake."

"When was Migul here, do you think?" Larry whispered.

"Last night, perhaps. Or to-night. It may be only an hour--or a few

minutes ago."

The faint thud of horses' hoofs on the roadway made Tina and Larry

drop to the ground. They crouched in the shadows of a tree. Galloping

horses were approaching along the road. The moon went under a cloud.

From around a bend in the road a group of horsemen came. They were

galloping; then they slowed to a trot; a walk. They reined up in the

road not more than twenty feet from Larry and Tina. In the starlight

they showed clearly--men in the red and white uniform of the army of

the King. Some of them wore short, dark cloaks. They dismounted with a

clanking of swords and spurs.

* * * * *

Their voices were audible. "Leave the steeds with Jake. Egad, we've

made enough noise already."

"Here, Jake, you scoundrel. Stay safely here with the mounts."

"Come on, Tony. You and I will circle. We have him, this time. By the

King's garter, what a fool he is to come into New York at such a

time!"

"He wants to see his daughter, I venture."

"Right, Tony. And have you seen her? As saucy a little minx as there

it in the Colonies. I was quartered here last month. I do not blame

the major for wanting to come."

"Here, take my bridle, Jake. Tie them to the fence."

There was a swift confusion of voices; laughter. "If you should hear a

pistol shot, Jake, ride quickly back and tell My Lord there was a

fracas and you did not dare remain."

"I only hope he is garbed in the rebel white and blue--eh, Tony? Then

he will yield like an officer and a gentleman; which he is, rebel or

no."

They were moving away to surround the house. Two were left.

"Come on, Tony. We will pound the front knocker in the name of the

King. A feather in our cap when we ride him down to the Bowling Green

and present him to My Lord...."

The voices faded.

Larry gripped the girl beside him. "They are British soldiers going to

capture Major Atwood! What can we--"

* * * * *

He never finished. A scream echoed over the somnolent night--a voice

from the rear of the house. A man's voice.

The red-coated soldiers ran forward. In the field, close against the

fence, Tina and Larry were running.

From the garden of the house a man was screaming. Then there were

other voices; servants were awakening in the upper rooms. The

screaming, shouting man rushed through the house. He appeared at the

front door, standing between the high white colonial pillars which

supported the overhead porch. A yellow light fell upon him through the

opened doorway. An old, white-headed negro appeared. Larry and Tina,

in the nearby field, stood stricken by the scene.

"The marster--the marster--" He shouted this wildly.

The British officers ran at him.

"You, Thomas, tell us where the major is. We've come for him; we know

he's here! Don't lie!"

"But the marster--" He choked over it.

"A trick, Tony! Egad, if he is trying to trick us--"

They leaped to the porch and seized the old negro.

"Speak, you devil!" They shook him. "The house is surrounded. He

cannot escape!"

"But the marster is--is dead! My girl Tollie saw it and then she

swooned." He steadied himself. "He--the major's in the garden, Marster

Tony. Lying there dead! Murdered! By a ghost, Tollie says. A great,

white, shining ghost that came to the garden and murdered him!"

* * * * *

If you were to delve very closely into certain old records of

Revolutionary New York City during the year 1777, you doubtless would

find mention of the strange murder of Major Atwood, who, coming from

New Jersey, is thought to have crossed the river well to the north of

the city, mounted his horse--which, by pre-arrangement, one of his

retainers had left for him somewhere to the south of Dykeman's

farm--and ridden to his home. He came, not as a spy, but in full

uniform. And no sooner had he reached his home when he was strangely

murdered. There was only a negro tale of an apparition which had

appeared in the garden and murdered the master.

Larry and I have found cursory mention of that. But I doubt if the

group of My Lord Howe's gay young blades who were sent north to

capture Major Atwood ever reported exactly what happened to them. The

old Dutch ferryman divulged that he had been hired to ferry the

homecoming major; this, too, is recorded. But Tony Green and his

fellow officers, sent to apprehend the colonial major, found him

inexplicably murdered; and by dawn they were back at the Bowling

Green, white-faced and shaken.

They told some of what had happened to them, but not all. They could

not expect to be believed, for instance, if they said that though they

were unafraid of a negro's tale of a ghost, they had themselves

encountered two ghosts, and had fled the premises!

Those two ghosts were only Larry and Tina!

The negro babbled of a shining cage appearing in the garden. That, of

course, was undoubtedly set down as nonsense. Tony Green and his

friends went to the garden and examined the body of Major Atwood. What

had killed him no one could say. No bullet had struck him. There were

no wounds, no knife thrust, no sword slash. Tony held the lantern with

its swaying yellow glow close to the murdered man's body. The August

night was warm; the garden, banked by trees and shrubbery, was

breathless and oppressively hot; yet the body of Atwood seemed frozen!

He had been dead but a short while, and already the body was stiff.

More than that, it was ice cold. The face, the brows were wet as

though frost had been there and now was melted!

Tony Green's hand shook as he held the lantern. He tried to tell his

comrades that Atwood had died from failure of the heart. Undoubtedly

it was that. He had seen what he supposed was an apparition;

something had frightened him; and a weak heart had brought his death.

* * * * *

Then, in another part of the garden, one of the searching officers

found a sheet of parchment scroll with writing on it. Yet it was not

parchment, either. Some strange, white, smooth fabric which crumpled

and tore very easily, the like of which this young British officer of

Howe's staff had never seen before. It was found lying in a flower bed

forty or fifty feet from Atwood's body. They gathered in a group to

examine it by the light of the lantern. Writing! The delicate script

of Mary Atwood! A missive addressed to her father. It was strangely

written, evidently not with a quill.

Tony read it with an awed, frightened voice:

"Father, beware of Tugh! Beware of Tugh! And, my dear

Father, good-by. I am departing, I think, to the year of our

Lord, 2930. Cannot explain--a captive--good-by--nothing you

can do--

Mary."

Strange! I can imagine how strange they thought it was. Tugh--why he

was the cripple who had lived down by the Bowling Green, and had

lately vanished!

They were reading this singularly unexplainable missive, when as

though to climax their own fears of the supernatural they saw

themselves a ghost! And not only one ghost, but two!

Plain as a pikestaff, peering from a nearby tree, in a shaft of

moonlight, a ghost was standing. It was the figure of a young girl,

with jacket and breeches of black and gleaming white. An apparition

fantastic! And a young man was with her, in a long dark jacket and

dark tubular pipes, for legs.

* * * * *

The two ghosts with dead white faces stood peering. Then the man moved

forward. His dead, strange voice called:

"Drop that paper!"

My Lord Howe's red-coated officers dropped the parchment and fled.

And later, when Atwood's body was taken away to be given burial as

befitted an enemy officer and a gentleman, that missive from Mary

Atwood had disappeared. It was never found.

Tony Green and his fellows said nothing of this latter incident. One

cannot with grace explain being routed by a ghost. Not an officer of

His Majesty's army!

Unrecorded history! A supernatural incident of the year 1777!

Undoubtedly in the past ages there have been many such affairs: some

never recorded, others interwoven in written history and called

supernatural.

Yet why must they be that? There was nothing supernatural in the

events of that night in Major Atwood's garden.

Is this perchance an explanation of why the pages of history are so

thronged with tales of ghosts? There must, indeed, be many future ages

down the corridors of Time where the genius of man will invent devices

to fling him back into his past. And the impressions upon the past

which he makes are called supernatural.

Whether this be so or not, it was so in the case of these two

Time-traveling vehicles from 2930. Larry and I think that the world of

1935 is just now shaking off the shackles of superstition, and coming

to realize that what is called the supernatural is only the Unknown.

Who can say, up to 1935, how many Time-traveling humans have come

briefly back? Is this, perchance, what we call the phenomena of the

supernatural?

* * * * *

Larry and Tina--anything but ghosts, very much alive and very much

perturbed--were standing back of that tree. They saw the British

officers reading the scrap of paper. They could hear only the words,

"Mary," and "from Mistress Atwood."

"A message!" Larry whispered. "She and George must have found a chance

to write it, and dropped it here while the Robot murdered Major

Atwood!"

Larry and Tina vehemently wanted to read the note. Tina whispered:

"If we show ourselves, they will be frightened and run. It is nearly

always so where Harl and I have become visible in earlier Times."

"Yes. I'll try it."

Larry stepped from the tree, and shouted, "Drop that paper!"

And a moment later, with Mary's torn little note scribbled on a scrap

of paper thrust in his pocket, Larry ran with Tina from the Atwood

garden. Unseen they scurried back through the field. Under a distant

tree they stopped and read the note.

"2930!" Larry exclaimed. "The Robot is taking them back to your world,

Tina!"

"Then we will go there. Let us get back to Harl, now."

But when they reached the place where they had left the cage, it was

not there! The corner of the field behind the clump of shadowing trees

was empty.

"Harl! Harl!" Larry called impulsively. And then he laughed grimly.

What nonsense to try and call into the past or the future to their

vanished vehicle!

"Why--why, Tina--" he said in final realization.

They stared at each other, pale as ghosts in the moonlight.

"Tina, he's gone. And we are left here!"

They were marooned in the year 1777!