The Classic Mystery Novel MEGAPACK®. Hay James
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breakfast, despite Jack’s protests, Silas and I went out to search the woods. We didn’t locate the poker. As I remember, I didn’t say in words to Silas that we were hunting for the poker. He knew. He was as certain as was I that our own poker was the blunt, heavy, metal weapon which had struck Jack unconscious to the ground.
With the sun glinting down, at eight in the morning, last night’s woods were anything but sinister or mysterious. The trees, mostly elms and oaks, grew in a sparse narrow band between two wide fields, our own, and the field which belonged to the Olmstead place. I had not previously felt the lack of neighbors. Now the brown farmhouse, shuttered, unoccupied, depressed me by its very emptiness. As we patiently wound in and out the winter trees, examining the soggy ground, I said to Silas:
“When are the Olmsteads opening their place?”
“Some time in May. Mrs. Olmstead asked me to start her gardens in April. She’s a nice lady, talks too much, but you will like her.”
Empty-handed at the end of an hour’s search we plodded back toward the cottage. A car shot past on the road and pulled into our drive.
John Standish was alighting when we arrived in the yard. He had not heard the news of the attack, and was wholly absorbed with the murder. He greeted me with tempered cordiality.
“Good morning, Mrs. Storm. Is your husband up? I’d like to ask him some additional questions.”
“You’ve had an answer to your cable?”
“Not yet.”
“Then why are you here?”
“The second bag turned up this morning. A farmer driving along the road outside Durham found a packed bag tossed behind a signboard. We believe it to be the missing bag.”
I looked at him blankly. “Durham! But that’s miles beyond New Haven. We weren’t there.”
“That is what I want to establish—if I can.”
Standish waited for my reply. I realize now that he was deliberately watching my reactions, seeking, in my first instant of surprise, to trap me into some admission that the detailed story we had told him was untrue.
I disappointed him. “We were nowhere near Durham. Not within miles of it. If you have found the bag on a road outside Durham, someone put it there—not Jack, not I. Someone else.”
“I hope that’s true.”
“What was in the bag?”
“A man’s pajamas, bathrobe and slippers, toilet articles, a magazine and a couple of fresh shirts.”
“No letters? Nothing to identify Lewis?”
Standish shook his head. “I’m afraid the identification is going to be tough. Lewis himself made it tough. A funny thing. The man’s own extraordinary behavior is hampering the investigation of his murder.”
I had forgotten Silas. A choking sound recalled him to my attention. He was gazing pop-eyed at Standish and me, as though simultaneously we had taken leave of our senses.
“What are you talking about? What murder? No one told me anything about a murder.”
I said shortly, “Last night a man was murdered in the rumble scat of our car. Shot through the heart. I can’t tell you any more.”
Silas sank to the running board of Standish’s machine. He turned a mottled gray. His first thoughts, his first words dwelt upon himself. “If I’d known about it I never in the world would have spent a night on your sofa.”
“Then it’s as well you didn’t know!”
While he sat huddled on the running board, I gave Standish an account of the man who had hidden in the clothes closet. The police chief listened intently, stepped over the fence and examined blurred, valueless footprints, and decided, before speaking to Jack, to go to the cellar. Silas obstinately refused to accompany him. The news of the murder had destroyed his interest in clues.
“Let the chief look for himself. I got my work to do. I ain’t going to mix myself in murder.”
He rose, ambled across the yard and started up the hill toward the Coatesnash mansion. In a way, I suppose Jack and I had served him a mean trick; it was natural he should resent it. Nevertheless, I was exasperated by the solid self-interest of the type he represented. Country people, suspicious of the law fearful of newcomers, anxious above all else to keep their own skirts clear of trouble—how I hated them! Jack and I had been good to Silas, yet he could see us hang without too great perturbation.
Standish and I went to the cellar. After glancing around its gloomy confines, speculating upon the whereabouts of the missing poker and studying the broken window, the police chief suddenly climbed the steps that led to the lawn. I followed him around the house. He stared at the broken glass scattered outside the cellar window. He looked inside at the coal. Then, grunting, he stooped, picked up a fragment of glass, and dropped it in his pocket. I was curious.
“What’s that for?”
“One never knows,” was the evasive reply, “what might be useful.”
How a bit of rain-washed glass could be useful was beyond my ability to conjecture. Puzzled, I escorted him into the house. He nodded to Jack, expressed jocular sympathy, crossed the bedroom and peered at the closet door knob. His face assumed a peculiar expression.
“No fingerprints. This evidently is to be a case without them. There was none on the car, except yours and your wife’s.” Returning to the bed, he glanced at Jack’s bandaged head. “Have you had a doctor?”
“We called Dr. Rand last night.”
“You did!” Standish at once stepped out to telephone the physician.
I strongly suspected that he had doubted the attack, despite the circumstantial evidence provided by Jack’s bandages, the coal dust on the knob, the broken cellar window. A few minutes later my suspicion was verified. Having spoken to the physician, Standish was now entirely convinced and—I thought—obscurely relieved. He was also friendlier.
“The doctor is willing to swear you were murderously attacked. No question of accident. Now-it’s up to us to decide why.”
Jack gingerly fingered his bandages. “That sounds like a large order.”
“On the contrary, it seems to me the simplest point in the whole business. A man with a soot-blackened face hides in your closet, runs outside, with you hot on his heels. You rush into the woods; you stop to listen; perhaps you make a move as if to turn. Immediately he smacks you from behind. Why? Because he is afraid to have you turn.”
“You mean,” said Jack slowly, “he was afraid I might recognize him?”
“Exactly. Even with his soot-blackened face, he was afraid. Mr. Storm, you know the man who struck you down last night.”
The solution seemed infinitely horrible to me. “If that is so, why did he run across the open field? I saw him clearly in the moonlight. So did Jack. Why didn’t he run to the road? It’s much darker there.”
Standish frowned. “He was in a hurry to escape.”
“The distance to the road is the same. It’s easier to run on a road than on a stubble field.”
“Perhaps he didn’t think.”
Jack sided with me. “It’s a queer thing to say, but I believe he did think. That man ran like a person with an objective—straight ahead. He led, you understand. I followed.”
“He may live in one of the houses farther down the line. Who owns the next house? The Olmsteads? They winter in New Haven, don’t they?” Standish spent an interval in reflection. “Just on chance I’ll have a look at that place this afternoon.” Jack stirred restively. “The whole affair seems senseless. Meaningless. Why should anyone break into our cottage and hide in the closet?”