Mollie Peer Or The Underground Adventure of the Moosepath League Read online

  MOLLIE PEER

  ALSO BY VAN REID

  Cordelia Underwood

  or

  The Marvelous Beginnings of the Moosepath League

  Daniel Plainway

  or

  The Holiday Haunting of the Moosepath League

  Mrs. Roberto

  or

  The Widowy Worries of the Moosepath League

  Fiddler's Green

  or

  A Wedding, a Ball, and the Singular Adventures of Sundry Moss

  Moss Farm

  or

  The Mysterious Missives of the Moosepath League

  Peter Loon

  MOLLIE PEER

  or the Underground Adventure of the Moosepath League

  VAN REID

  Camden, Maine

  Published by Down East Books

  A wholly owned subsidiary of The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc.

  4501 Forbes Boulevard, Suite 200, Lanham, Maryland 20706

  www.rowman.com

  Unit A, Whitacre Mews, 26-34 Stannary Street, London SE11 4AB

  Distributed by NATIONAL BOOK NETWORK

  Copyright © 2016 by Van Reid

  New paperback published by Rowman & Littlefield, 2016

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote passages in a review.

  British Library Cataloguing in Publication Information Available

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Title: Mollie Peer : or The underground adventure of the Moosepath League /Van Reid.

  Other titles: Underground adventure of the Moosepath League

  Description: Camden, Maine : Down East Books, 2016.

  Identifiers: LCCN 2015043609 (print) | LCCN 2015046372 (ebook) | ISBN 9781608935208 (pbk.) | ISBN 9781608935215 (ebook) | ISBN 9781608935215 (e-book)

  Subjects: LCSH: Men—Societies and clubs—Fiction. | Moosepath League (Imaginary organization)—Fiction. | Portland (Me.)—Fiction. | GSAFD: Historical fiction. | Adventure fiction.

  Classification: LCC PS3568.E47697 M65 2016 (print) | LCC PS3568.E47697 (ebook) | DDC 813/.54—dc23

  LC record available at http://lccn.loc.gov/2015043609

  The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992.

  Printed in the United States of America

  To the memory of

  Marjorie Stevenson Hunter

  and

  Col. Robert Davis Hunter.

  CONTENTS

  from the Journal of Christopher Eagleton

  September 24, 1896

  Prologue: The Nightrunners

  September 28, 1896

  Book One

  October 8, 1896

  1. Out of the Fog

  2. At the Shipswood

  Book Two

  October 9, 1896

  3. What the Cigar Revealed

  4. Between Piling and Post

  5. Saving the Blue Hubbard

  6. Second Sight

  7. Pawn to Queen Four

  8. Old John Neptune

  9. Below the Wharf

  10. … And Above

  11. Beneath the Streets

  12. The Man with the Strange Difficulty

  13. Bird

  14. Second Thoughts

  15. Forge Light

  16. At the Sign of the Crooked Cat

  17. Echo Till Midnight

  Book Three

  October 10, 1896

  18. Right Chapter, Wrong Book

  19. Panic and Pancakes

  20. The Lilac Station

  21. More Pieces in Play

  22. The Best Revenge

  23. Quentin's Charm

  24. The Four Hinges of Happiness

  25. That Other Great Society

  26. Amos Buys In

  27. Off Widgery Wharf

  28. Merry Meeting

  29. Cliff Cottage

  from the Eastern Argus

  October 11, 1896

  Book Four

  October 11, 1896

  30. Fond Farewells

  31. Phileda

  32. Amos's Strange Sensation

  33. Several Figures in the Night

  34. Needle, Stone, Mirror

  35. Diversion and Duty

  Book Five

  October 12, 1896

  from the Eastern Argus

  October 12, 1896

  36. The Level of Private Thought

  37. Sun in the Afternoon

  38. Misspoke or Misled

  39. What You Don't Hold

  40. The Persistence of Melody

  41. Some Words with Wildfeather

  42. Shadows and Sleeping Furniture

  43. Flying with Bird

  Book Six

  October 13, 1896

  44. The Opposite Direction

  45. The News That Day Was the Accident on Commercial Street

  46. Playing Catch

  47. Intruder from Another's Tale

  48. The Bottom Line

  49. The Hallowell Following

  50. Matching Colors

  51. An Argument to the Inch

  52. The White Bullet

  53. News from the Moosepath

  54. Crosscurrents

  55. And Then There Was Thump

  Book Seven

  October 14, 1896

  56. Telegrams and Trains

  57. In a Single Place

  58. The Last of Amos

  59. Laying Wait

  60. The Members Were in the Dark

  61. The Hare at Bay

  62. What the River Would Give Up

  63. Foundering

  Book Eight

  October 16–30, 1896

  64. The Telling Portrait (October 16, 1896)

  65. Nom de Plume (October 19, 1896)

  66. O'Hearn Farm (October 28, 1896)

  67. The Unsigned Verse (October 30, 1896)

  Epilogue: Runners in the Night

  Halloween, 1896

  Author's Note

  from the Journal of Christopher Eagleton

  September 24, 1896

  … dinner at the Shipswood with the club. There was something in the day's fall-like weather that enkindled the recollection of past months. We delighted to hear Mister Walton and Sundry Moss tell again of their adventures last July. And how curious and diverse those adventures were!—from the search for the circus bear and Mr. Lofton's great anger when Mister Walton did not shoot the creature to the night watch with Sheriff Piper and Colonel Taverner for smugglers who escaped by river from the precincts of Fort Edgecomb.

  Mr. Moss, in particular, was affected by this retelling. He maintains that the little boy, named Bird, who was with the smugglers, could not have been more than four years old. Indeed, it was the next day—at Boothbay Harbor—that Mr. Moss rescued the child from bullies, and he greatly wishes that he might have rescued the little fellow from his present guardians.

  Mister Walton expressed his own concern in this regard and hoped, in a prayerful way, that there might be others looking out for the little boy named Bird….

  PROLOGUE: THE NIGHTRUNNERS

  SEPTEMBER 28, 1896

  The blockhouse at Fort Edgecomb, on Davis Island, had presided over another summer of picnickers and squealing children. Young boys fired at the ghosts of British invaders
(who had never actually ventured so far upriver). Rusticators paced the embankments, and lovers occasionally found an unescorted moment in which to steal a kiss in the cool shade of the wooden fort. Names were carved on the blockhouse walls and upon the benches that lined its upper story. Sometimes an old salt, living nearby, would climb to the lookout and watch an afternoon pass over the Sheepscott River.

  But the warm, often humid days of summer proceeded into fall. Crickets filled the air with their chirr, and sometimes a screech owl could be heard at twilight from the few wooded acres on the southern end of the island. The nights cooled quickly, and the stars shined more brightly.

  Two nights before the end of September, however, clouds quilted the sky, obscuring all but the most indirect light of the moon, and a north wind brought little squalls of rain that watered the meadows and rippled the river.

  “Woke early this morning well before sunrise and worried over Caleb,” wrote Sallie Davis in her journal on the twenty-ninth of September, 1896. “Raining. Heard oars on the water, rubbing in the locks. I went to the window and caught the briefest glimpse of a lantern. Nightrunners, I suspect….”

  By night, the river was a fair highway for smugglers, and small crafts passed quietly in the dark, signaling the transportation of goods not bearing the Custom House stamp. But only recently had a boat disturbed the shore of the island once the sun was down. A vessel had come several times in the past few months—an odd little novelty, hardly twenty-five feet from stem to stern but supporting the fuming stack of a steam engine—and as on this night, a dinghy would venture forth, and the creak of its oars would round the southern tip of the island as the boat entered the small backwater known as the Eddy.

  “What are you at?” rasped one of the dinghy's occupants on this particular night. “Get me closer to the fort, you imbecile!” They were several yards from shore, the oars, like the stiff legs of a water bug, radiating dark ripples that touched the near bank and disappeared in the current of the river. Then the boat chuckled against the strand as a broad-shouldered man shipped the oars and clambered to his feet.

  “You are an idiot!” hissed the still-seated man. “Is this as close as you can get us? Well, you're lugging him, not me. Haul us up further! I'm not catching my death because you can't master a pair of oars!”

  The other man, who proved tall as well as broad when he straightened to his full height, splashed up to his calves in the cold water, grasped the gunwale of the boat, and leaned into the shore. The boat came easily, scraping lightly on the pebbly beach.

  A third figure—a child of no more than four or five years—was lifted onto dry land, and the seated man, small and narrow in his voluminous coat, looked up at the banks rising to either side of the little cove. “Well, tie it off!” he insisted. “We haven't got all night! Now get his head. I'll help you get him out of the boat, but you're lugging him the rest of the way.”

  The larger man waded back to the floating end of the boat and raised from it the head and shoulders of a stiff form. The other lifted the feet into view, and with the child looking on, they carried the still shape to land. A sound came from the nearby woods, a long, vowelly yowl that was not completely distinguishable from a human wail. Residents hereabouts would recognize the voice of a bobcat—one lived on the island—but it seemed that nobody in the small group had ever heard such a sound, for all talk and movement came to a halt.

  “Quick, quick!” demanded the smaller man in a strangled whisper, and in a moment they were climbing over the bank, in the direction of the fort, the largest member of this strange band laboring beneath the weight of the unmoving figure. They crossed the parade ground, glancing up at the old blockhouse and over their shoulders in this exposed place. They might have imagined that the octagonal walls, looming in the dark, opened a shuttered eye to watch them pass. Crossing a corner of the island, they came to a steep bank where brick and stone embankments rose above granite ledge. The larger man laid down his burden, and the smaller man leaned over the banquette to look for a shelf of rock. He let the larger man dangle him down over the side till he had his footing there.

  Then the man at the top of the bank (a great bull of a man, really) took up the stiff figure and climbed over, leaving the child to crouch in the intermittent rain and cool air of the predawn. The wind rippled and tugged along the edge of the parade ground.

  In her journal, Sallie Davis wrote, “Lay awake till dawn. October coming.” Perhaps she was superstitious, for she added in the margin of the page, “Soon I suspect other things will be wandering the night.”

  BOOK ONE

  OCTOBER 8, 1896

  1

  Out of the Fog

  It was difficult to say no to Mollie Peer, especially knowing she had spent an entire day at her typewriter, working on her columns for the Eastern Argus. It had been a lovely afternoon, despite prognostications, and Hilda hated to deny her friend and fellow boarder a few minutes’ walk before the sun went down. Besides, Mollie was never so ready to listen as when she had just finished her society column, and Hilda, as always, had much to say.

  Stepping onto the porch of Makepeace's Boarding House, they were taken by how dark it had grown so early in the day. Signs of last night's storm spotted the lawn—leaves and twigs and smaller limbs strewn beneath the maples on either side of the walk.

  The newspapers had warned against a hurricane, reporting telegraph messages of death and damage up the eastern seaboard (a ship was missing off the coast of Virginia), though later editions predicted merely a gale. From Portsmouth to the Maritimes, the coaster fleet sought shelter, and many of them had come into Portland the day before, so that the harbor was a thicket of masts and spars, and there was concern that the ships and schooners—so densely anchored in a high wind—might do damage to one another. But the storm that arrived on the seventh of October, though strong enough to warrant caution, had mostly blown itself out by the time it reached the Portland waterfront, and the eighth had come off cool and clear.

  Mollie was glad that the trees had held on to their foliage; the maples and oaks along the street were red and yellow—looking purple and brown now in the gloaming. The air was colder than she had expected, and she considered going back for her wool cloak; but fearing to discourage Hilda, who had not been so keen for a stroll, she pulled her shawl closer about the shoulders of her jacket and led the way down the walk.

  Hilda chatted, as she always did, discussing the private lives of her fellow workers at the rope factory and her flirtation with a packer who worked near her station. Mollie made the perfect companion for such talk; Hilda thought her friend overly secretive about her own affairs, but she knew from experience that Mollie would hear every word she said. Arm in arm, kicking at the fallen twigs, they let the path of least resistance draw them downhill in the direction of the harbor.

  It was well past five o'clock and the streets were strangely quiet, as if the autumnal stillness had arrested the movements of homecoming shopkeepers and businessmen. Mr. Duncan, Plum Street's lamplighter, was mounting the hill, raising his long staff and fiery wick to the gas lamps as he approached them. He recognized Mollie and Hilda and tipped his hat when they passed, then turned and looked after them.

  Hilda, with her light brown hair and plump figure, was an attractive enough girl, but the lamplighter's eyes lingered on Mollie before he turned back to his evening's chore.

  Mollie was tall and moved with an assurance that one might suspect was developed through physical (even athletic) activity. She had strong shoulders and was considered large-boned for a woman. Though only twenty-two years old, she seemed, at first glance, more matronly than youthful. A second glance, however, often merited a third one—and the third, a fourth. Some men's heads would rise and fall as their attention grew increasingly distracted by what they saw, like a person who slowly begins to realize that he has misread an entire page of text.

  As for her features, they were somehow more than the sum of their parts: Her nose had an Irish li
lt (like her father's) and may have been a shade too small, and surrounding it her mouth and eyes (taken after her Italian mother's) seemed exaggerated and overprominent; and yet together with the intelligence in those eyes and the wry set of that wide mouth, those strangely matched features conspired to make her beautiful the more one considered them.

  Hilda chatted. They breathed in the crisp air, spiced with the scent of dry earth and leaves and wood smoke. Mollie kept her friend to a brisk pace, arms swinging with pleasure—not the picture of demure femininity but of glowing suffrage.

  Then Mollie saw the boy walking uncertainly in their direction; a waif, a ragamuffin, four or five years old, his clothes barely holding together. He must be cold, she thought. When he was within a few yards of them, he looked as if he might cross the street, and so she said hello to him.

  He stopped, looking more uncertain still. Hilda ceased her gossip for a moment to consider the child, considered him of little interest, and recommenced her story.

  “What's your name?” asked Mollie.

  Hilda came to a second halt and looked put out. “What is it?”

  “It's a little boy,” said Mollie, approaching him.

  “I can see that, but why are you talking to him?”

  “Because he interests me.” Mollie leaned down with her hands on her knees. “What's your name?” she asked again.

  “Everything interests you,” said Hilda with some irritation.

  “It's my business.”

  “I dare say he won't make the society pages.”

  “I don't know. There have been millionaires who started with only a penny.” She addressed this to the boy with an encouraging smile. “My name is Mollie.” She held out her hand.

  He put his hand in hers, as if he were giving her something rather than shaking it. He said something in a small voice.

  “Bert?” said Mollie.

  Only slightly louder, he said, “Bird.”

  “Bird!” she said, as if the word gave her great pleasure. “What a fine and unusual name! Where do you live?”

  This was more problematic. Confusion and possibly even guilt swept past his face. “With Mr. Pembleton.”