The thing in the woods
were served to him there. Beyond the necessary service they had very
little to do with him. He was not at all talkative on account of his
infirmity, but always pleasant in manner. To their knowledge, George
Freeman had never so much as spoken to him, though it was his
unfailing joke to tease Rebecca about the "handsome young city
gentleman."
So much for Mr. and Mrs. Sliefer's account. Rebecca differed.
Rebecca didn't hold with "queerness," nor with mucking one's room up
with rubbishy weeds, nor with going out at night to hunt toadstools.
"Toadstools?" I said.
"Fungy, he calls 'em. It's the same thing. He says there's some
that shines in the dark, like rotten wood. I've never seen 'em, nor
I wouldn't go touchin' 'em if I did. Anything would need to shine
good and hard for him to see it with those blue goggles on!"
"Rebecca's jest set against him because he wears glasses," said Mrs.
Sliefer.
"I like to see a folk's eyes," Rebecca insisted. "I hate to have 'em
lookin' at you when you think they ain't."
For some reason she seemed to distrust Crowfoot, but there was
certainly no suspicion, even in her mind, of any possible quarrel
between the two men. Rebecca herself admitted his courage in having
pulled Freeman out. No mention was made of the sluice, and I
concluded that neither Herrick nor Crowfoot had spoken of it at the
house.
Mrs. Sliefer volunteered to sit up with Freeman the first part of the
night, and having seen her settled in a capacious armchair near his
bed, I returned to Herrick in the parlor below. There was a couch in
the room, but we were neither inclined to make use of it. It was my
first chance of speaking privately to Herrick since his return to the
house, and having closed the staircase door leading upstairs, I told
him briefly all that I had learned that evening.
"Crowfoot couldn't have opened the sluice," he said when I had
finished. "How does the thing work? Do you suppose Freeman could
have caught at the lever as he fell and pulled it over on him? It
doesn't sound likely."
"Impossible. The lever works in the opposite direction."
Herrick pondered.
"He might have been fooling with the thing and opened it, and then
lost his balance trying to get it back."
I shook my head.
"He knows the dam well enough, and he doesn't strike me as the sort
of man to go fooling with a thing like that out of mischief.
Besides, he didn't fall from where the lever is. If he had, and the
sluice was already open, he'd have been soaked through and probably
drowned to boot. Remember the rush of that water! Crowfoot got him
out, and Crowfoot was only wet to the knees. He must have fallen
partially clear of the pool, across one of the timbers. The thing
looks much more to me as though someone had deliberately opened the
sluice on them while they were both down there. Either the machinery
stuck, or they were interrupted before they could do the worst. In
any case Crowfoot knows more than he has chosen to tell us. He may
be shielding someone; the whole business looks ugly."
"I'm going to handle Crowfoot in the morning," said Herrick grimly.
"It's a case where he'll find it best to tell all he knows. A man
who goes hunting toadstools at night with a revolver lays himself
open to misconstruction." He stared a moment at the purple crocheted
mat on which the Sleifers' parlor lamp sat enthroned. "Why on earth
was he so keen on your keeping that revolver, I wonder?"
"Possibly for the same reason that had caused him to fire one of the
cartridges himself, this evening," I said drily.
"He had?" Herrick looked up. "Why didn't we hear the shot?"
"It happens to be one of those special revolvers which are built to
make as slight a report as possible. I know the pattern. The sound
carries practically no distance. If Crowfoot carries that revolver
habitually it is because he has good reason to be afraid of someone,
and he wouldn't have used it without serious cause."
"Have you any idea," asked Herrick, "what Freeman wanted to see you
about tonight?"
"Yes," I said slowly, "I have. You know the night you came down
here, Jack? It was Freeman who was the most determined to sift that
ghost story to the bottom, if you remember. From all accounts, he is
not the young man to take half-way measures in a thing that concerns
his sweetheart. I think that he has been working on his own
initiative, that he found out something, and it was about that that
he wanted to see me. He made the appointment for after dark, at an
hour when he was not likely to be seen coming or going from my house,
and he even took the precaution of coming by way of the woods.
Someone had an interest in preventing him from keeping the
appointment. They watched him to the Sliefers' house, and laid up
for him by the sluice, which he would have to cross on his way to me."
"You mean Crowfoot himself?"
"Crowfoot wasn't here at the time of the ghost scare, and he didn't
know of Freeman's appointment tonight. Moreover, I don't think he
had even an idea who the man was till you flashed your lamp on him.
Remember it was pretty dark there. But two people might have known
of it. They were both in the store at the time. One was Mr.
Haskell, whom I think we may dismiss immediately. The other was
Aaron Menning."
"Aaron Menning...." There was that in Herrick's tone that confirmed
instantly my own conclusions. "Then if that's so, Aaron Menning is
at the bottom of the ghost business, and of the whole Dutchman's Hill
story. Aaron, the pious chapel member! But why in heaven's
name----?"
"There's a streak of insanity in the whole family," I said. "Don't
forget that Jakey was said to be half crazy. Aaron has the look of a
criminal degenerate. How on earth he has maintained his reputation
in the village so long I can't think. He is cunning and malicious,
if no worse."
"I'd like to know just what hold that type of man could have over
Crowfoot," Herrick said. "Crowfoot comes in somewhere. If it was
Aaron pushed Freeman over, what reason could Crowfoot have for
shielding him deliberately? There's more behind it yet than we can
lay hand on."
There was, but our plans for finding out were destined to receive a
rude shock in the morning.
About two o'clock I left Herrick on the couch and went to take Mrs.
Sliefer's place upstairs. Against my will I half dozed in the
chintz-covered arm-chair, and through my brain there chased puzzling
dreams in which Herrick and I were trying feverishly to conceal
George Freeman's body in the mill-dam, while Crowfoot, continually
changing and rechanging into the likeness of Aaron, leapt up and down
from the dizzy heights of a butternut tree and chattered at us
angrily as he sprang.
Herrick was already drinking coffee when I came downstairs. Rebecca
had brought it in, and with it a note addressed to me.
I broke it open. There was a second bulkier envelope inside with the
note. Both note and address were printed in small neat capitals,
such as a child might use.
"MY DEAR HAVERILL,
"I REGRET THAT I HAVE BEEN OBLIGED TO LEAVE FOR THE CITY BY AN EARLY
TRAIN, AND SO MUST POSTPONE THE PLEASURE OF MEETING YOU AND YOUR
FRIEND AGAIN TILL A LATER DATE.
"ALEXANDER CROWFOOT."
On the second envelope was printed:
"TO BE OPENED ONLY IF NOT RECLAIMED WITHIN THREE DAYS."
"Stung!" said Herrick.
XVI
I CATCH A BURGLAR
I found Rebecca in the kitchen, weeping. It was easy to see that she
had spent half the night crying, and I hastened to reassure her so
far as I could as to her sweetheart's condition.
"And now about Mr. Crowfoot," I said. "What time did he leave here?"
"It must have been early," Rebecca answered. "I was down an' about
by five."
"He gave you the note?"
"He left it in his room. I went to put his coffee like I always do,
outside, an' the door was open. He left another envelope for mother
with his week's board in. His bed hadn't been slept in. He was
writin' in his room all last evenin', after he came in."
"And his things?"
"He didn't have more'n a suit-case, and he must have took that with
him."
I went back to Herrick in the parlour. Crowfoot's enclosure still
lay on the table, and as I took it up to put it in my pocket I felt
sorely tempted to break the seal there and then.
"So he's lit out, temporarily," said Herrick. "Well ... it doesn't
look particularly wise under the circumstances, but I suppose he
knows his own business."
"Should we open the letter?"
"No," Herrick said decidedly. "That point is quite clear. The
instructions are definite. He gives us a certain date, and if he
does not reclaim his letter personally by then we are free to act on
our discretion, but not before. Meantime we can only put two and two
together. Crowfoot was down here on some job in which he anticipated
personal danger, or he wouldn't have gone armed. The cartridge he
used was not fired on Freeman, and unless I am much mistaken the
affair of last night upset, or at all events abruptly altered, his
own schemes. He's learned something that we haven't, and I'd give a
good deal to know just what, but we can't force his hand. Unless I
under-estimate him, he'll turn up to claim that letter all right."
"Unless----" I recalled the provisional clause on the envelope.
Herrick smiled.
"He doesn't strike me as the sort of person to step off a plank
bridge in the dark! That's a pure bit of dramatic effect, in my
opinion."
When we had finished breakfast I drove down to the drug store and
telephoned for a trained nurse. She arrived by the midday train, and
Freeman's condition being satisfactory, I was able to leave him in
her charge and go home with Herrick.
We refused the farmer's buggy and walked over, following the short
cut that had so nearly proved fatal to one man at least the night
before. The water below the sluice-gate was at its normal level, but
looking over we could see the line of uptorn weeds and flattened
grasses that showed where the brief flood had swept. An alder bush
on the left side, overhanging the timbered edge of the pool, was
partly broken, indicating the point of Freeman's fall.
We examined the upper part of the sluice-gate carefully. On the wood
near the lever I found a few dried spots of blood. Herrick nodded
appreciatively when he saw them.
"Looks as if Crowfoot's cartridge wasn't wasted! Someone got hit,
though not badly; there's none tracked along the road. My respect
for our friend increases. Austin, why was he so careful we didn't
see his handwriting?"
"Give it up. He's a queer bird anyway."
I told him of what Mary Lessing had seen that morning, by Dutchman's
Hill. Hitherto it had presented itself to me merely as a whim on
Crowfoot's part. Now I began to think he might have had some object
in the performance. Herrick smiled when it came to the jumping, but
his face grew serious again immediately.
"Austin," he said, "I give you a problem. What is it about that
particular tree that attracts me and attracts Crowfoot? There's
something more than coincidence in it. Crowfoot wasn't amusing
himself. To my mind, he was testing a theory, and if we knew what
that theory was...." He broke off, thoughtfully, and I turned to him.
"Well?"
"Nothing much. Austin, whereabouts was Jake's body found, last
spring?"
"Face downwards in the water, just near the plank bridge. Why?"
"Taken with Crowfoot's action, does that suggest anything to you?"
"Nothing to do with suicide. Jake had a fit and fell in the water."
"Exactly." He walked a few paces in silence. "Has it ever occurred
to you what a really admirable country coroner you would make?"
"I don't see what that's got to do with it."