The Mystery Megapack

half a dozen people have my mail address. That’s our mail box, by the way; that galvanized tin out on the gate post, with the little red tin flag sticking up in it. I’m going to loaf and grow fat, and make love to you!”
    “You may grow thin, on my cooking! It is years since I touched a frying pan; and then I had an electric range, a cookbook, and all sorts of devices to save labor. You’re going to suffer indigestion for a few days, old boy!”
    “Well, I’ll work it off splitting kindling, and digging clams, and tramping through the woods!”
    That evening they ate their first meal alone, with no servant to stand at their elbows, no cook to cater to their whims. And for the first time in long years, both were ravenously hungry. There was a cement-floored, stone-walled little cellar, with only narrow slits for ventilation, and a single door leading from the kitchen; a solid plank of oak, fastened by a hand-wrought iron staple. In the cellar were bins of clean white sand, containing vegetables. There was a keg of cider, and a swing shelf loaded with bottles and jars of jellies, pickles, preserves, relishes, fruits. A big ham swung from an iron hook; underneath stood a keg of salt pork, and a pail of salt mackerel. In the kitchen was flour, sugar, a bread and cake tin, a wood stove and a small oil one. Jed Hooper had caught and cleaned a mess of flounders for them, boiled two fat lobsters, and set a pail of clams by the sink.
    Red, with a new burn on one white arm, but radiantly happy withal, Annie flitted back and forth from kitchen stove to table. They had decided to eat in the kitchen; it was large, extending the entire width of the house, and it had a fireplace, as had nearly every room in the house. They ate until they were more than satisfied, but no indigestion resulted, even though the fried potatoes were scorched, and the coffee was too strong.
    With the setting of the sun, a chill descended; and they were glad to close the door and sit near the fireplace in the living room.
    Romeo the cat, groggy from the amount of grasshoppers he had devoured, dozed at their feet. The wood crackled pleasantly; outside all was still save for the distant hooting of an owl, and once or twice a dry, sharp bark which they supposed to be uttered by a dog, but which was really a young fox out hunting in the moonlight. Then, suddenly and startling, a whip-poor-will began its weird song very near them; stealing to the window, they could just make out its body perched on the old wooden pump.
    The cat, whose experience had been only with birds in cages, pricked up his ears and licked his chops. The song of the night warbler drowned the steady ticking of the wooden clock with its picture of a square-rigger on a very wooden sea.
    “Sounds sort of lonesome, don’t you think?” whispered Annie.
    Frank Weston laughed happily.
    “Sounds good! Haven’t heard one since I was a ten-year-old. Don’t believe I’ve ever thought of one for twenty years. They used to say it is a good sign when one of them comes so near a house. They mostly cling to the deep woods. Guess this one is serenading us, welcoming us home!”
    Tired from their long journey, and the excitement of arrival, they went early to bed. Upstairs, in a half-finished attic, were three small chambers, each with its big bed and old-fashioned bureau and washstand with bowl and pitcher. Fine linen towels, hemstitched by Jed Hooper’s wife, hung on the racks; new cakes of cheap soap were in their china dishes. Annie chose the rear room, which looked out over distant Frenchman’s Bay, now shimmering in moonlight, and separated from them by a heavy growth of cedars. Her husband took the front one which connected with it, the door having been removed from its hinges. The lamps were blown out. Romeo settled himself at the foot of Frank’s bed, and began a faint bedtime song. The whip-poor-will had ceased its welcome; it was intensely still now, outside. Listening closely, Annie could hear from the sea the deep respiration of the making tide as it flung itself against the rocky shore. Her thoughts drifted out on the tides of sleep.
    Suddenly, appallingly loud in the quiet night, there came to her ears the heavy drumming of hard knuckles on wood. Downstairs, the front door vibrated to the sound of a knocking that would not be denied!
    CHAPTER II
    THE WARNING
    There was something ominous in that urgent summons, heard in the night. Already the moon was sinking behind the cedar