The Classic Mystery Novel MEGAPACK®. Hay James
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would have known about it if she had. I wish I had a ladder. I would like a closer look at the upper windows.”
Fortunately—or so I felt—our equipment did not include a ladder. Unsatisfied, Jack inched along the lawn searching vainly for possible marks of a ladder used by someone else. Then, when I was reaching a pitch of nerves and impatience, he proposed to give the front grounds and entrances a similar examination.
By this time the whole expedition had begun to seem both impertinent and pointless. I protested. I wanted to go home. I said so. We went around to the front of the house. Thick boards covered the two front doors; shutters cloaked the first floor windows. Nothing suggested illegal tampering. Leaves choked the walks and porches, maple seed wings littered the steps. Relieved by non-success, I concluded that the mysterious light had a natural, innocent—if elusive—answer.
Past an elaborate rock garden an untidy graveled path twisted to the main road which bent around the hill to join our own road. In our vocabulary this route was termed “the long way home.” I started toward the gates. Disappointed, Jack turned to follow. His flashlight made a great arc as it traversed the steep slope of the garden.
I gasped and stopped on the path. Beside me Jack stood rigid. In the daytime we would have missed what we now saw clearly—an oblong patch of earth in the garden, black and freshly dug. A patch vivid in the flashlight’s glare, standing forth from the intense surrounding darkness, a patch of queer shape and size—about four feet in width and six feet in length. Although the earth had been skillfully roughened, it resembled unmistakably a level grave.
An owl shrieked near by. Reuben bristled and I felt my hair rise on end. Jack dropped his flashlight. He sheepishly picked it up, scrambled over the rocks, knelt and thrust out his hand. His whisper was piercing.
“The ground is soft. Something is buried here.” He swiftly returned to me. “You stay here with Reuben. I’ll need a spade.”
I clutched at him hysterically. “What are you going to do?”
“I mean to find out what’s buried there.”
An argument ensued, incoherent, bitter, touched with the horror of the place and situation. Convinced that the light, the cunningly hidden grave, the Coatesnash house impinged upon the murder of Hiram Darnley, Jack was fanatically determined to complete his evening’s work. He should, of course, have delegated further investigation to the police; he flatly declined. He believed they would disregard any evidence which tended to incriminate Mrs. Coatesnash, unless the evidence were final and conclusive. In the end, his vehemence conquered me—though there was one thing I refused to do. I would not remain alone in the rock garden.
For a curious reason, Reuben stayed. As we turned to go, his head went up, he sniffed the air, barked and bolted into the leafless laurel bushes. I felt a thrill of icy fear.
“What’s there?”
Jack was impatient. “A woodchuck probably. Come on.”
“Reuben,” I called. “Reuben.”
“Let him catch his woodchuck. Come, Lola, let’s get this done.”
With an odd reluctance, which I laid to the happenings of the evening, I obeyed.
I do not like to think about the return trip to the cottage—the stumbling along the road, the protracted hunt for a spade after our arrival, the darkness and the quiet. Once or twice I fancied I heard the distant barking of a dog. Five minutes later when we hurriedly retraced our steps through the pasture, I was sure of it.
“It’s Reuben, Jack.”
“He’s got the woodchuck.”
“It doesn’t sound like that.”
As I spoke the barking rose to frenzy, became a yelp of anguish, subsided to a moan—to nothingness. Jack broke into a run. Half a minute carried him past the Lodge. He shot through the grape arbor, circled Hilltop House to the right, disappeared.
Reuben lay in the rock garden. Kicked into unconsciousness, bloody and pathetic, the dog sprawled beside a wide, shallow, gaping hole. The excavation revealed every sign of haste. Clods and mounds of dirt were scattered in four directions; swift, deep shovel bites were visible. Also visible were smeared footprints.
Kneeling beside the dog, Jack looked up dully. “Rotten luck beat us, Lola. I ran around the house the wrong way.”
In explanation he turned his flashlight upon the gaping hole in the garden. From the excavation, leading across the grass, blurred marks showed where something long and heavy had been dragged away. These marks led directly to the left and toward the house, vanishing in the gloom of the trees. If, when Jack dashed around the house, he had happened to run to the left, he would have solved our mystery then and there. But he made the wrong choice. He ran to the right, and thus missed a dark figure scurrying along the opposite side of the mansion, hauling a heavy burden.
With Reuben wrapped in my coat, we started again for home. The marks on the brittle grass stopped abruptly at the cellar door. The door was closed. Jack tried the knob. His fingers touched a key in the lock.
Immediately, unhesitatingly he turned the key and entered the cellar of the Coatesnash house. He collided with an ashcan, pushed past, strode to the furnace, pried it open, peered inside. A film of ancient ashes rose chokingly. His instant hunch had failed. There was nothing there.
Leaving the injured dog near the door, I joined him. He put his mouth to my ear.
“Let’s go upstairs.”
A desperate situation requires desperate remedies, and the situation, I felt, was desperate. It appeared certain that whatever had been buried in the garden was hidden within the house, if we were to search, it must be tonight. Tomorrow would be too late.
Such logic sustained me very little as we began our surreptitious tour. My tongue clove to the roof of my mouth, and if ever a person felt criminal, I did. We gained the first floor, paused at the entrance of the cavernous drawing-room, where long ago we had sat at tea. Luella Coatesnash’s personality lingered like a vapor there. I seemed to hear the tapping of her cane, to smell again her cloying lavender scent, to see the diamonds on her hands and the splitting taffeta of her gown.
A drapery rustled; something pattered across the floor. A mouse or a rat probably, but I gasped and grabbed at Jack. The darkness filled itself with shapes and forms. Behind every shrouded piece of furniture, beyond every unseen corner, lurked a crouching, waiting figure. I felt certain we were not alone in the house. The key in the basement lock—might it have been left to lure us in? Had we walked into a trap?
Jack pulled me on. He paused at the flight of stairs which climbed to the upper floors. His quick, excited breath stirred my hair.
“We may find what we’re hunting in the third-floor room.”
Setting my teeth, I started up the stairs. The journey was less difficult than I anticipated. The curving banister was reassuringly solid, the carpets were thick. In absolute silence we moved upward. We easily located the room with the unshuttered window. At the corridor end, a door stood ajar.
We crossed the threshold. Jack snapped on his flash and I looked around a cheerless storeroom. Dusty trunks, bags, boxes, broken furniture jammed the place. Blinking, I surveyed the decidedly unmysterious surroundings and turned to speak. With a report that resounded throughout the house, the door behind banged shut and something bounced on the floor. Severely shocked, I didn’t realize what had happened.
“Lola!”
“It’s all right. I bumped the door.”
“The knob’s come off.”
“It’s here on the floor.”
I picked up the china knob and handed it to Jack. He stepped to the door. A moment passed. I said nervously, “Well, why don’t you put it back?”
“I’m afraid I can’t.” Jack’s voice was queer. “The outside knob and the shank fell through