The Thing in the Woods 16 – Williams · Verses Across
Literature · Crime, Thrillers & Mystery
The Thing in the Woods 16I Catch a Burglar
18
Literature · Crime, Thrillers & Mystery
The Thing in the Woods 16
I Catch a Burglar
WilliamsEnglish
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."
"Listen." He swung round. "Jake's death was not accident, though he may have died actually in a fit. He was frightened by someone or something that sprang out at him from that tree as he passed, and Crowfoot, depend upon it, was merely trying to find out whether that jump was within the limits of an ordinarily active man."
We were both tired that evening and we turned in early after supper. I had left instructions to call me if there was any change in Freeman's condition, but I anticipated none before the morning. The nurse seemed a competent woman, and I felt easy in leaving him to her care. I slept like a log, my rest untroubled by any dreams.
Towards morning, as it seemed to me, I woke up with that curious sense of something happening which arouses one at times by appeal through some subconscious perception. Five minutes before a thunderstorm would have failed to rouse me; now instinct dragged me up sitting in my bed, of a sudden keenly and alertly awake.
I listened. Someone was moving in the surgery below. Mrs. Searle went to bed always at ten, and I had the impression of having slept already for several hours. I struck a match softly and looked at my watch. It was a quarter to twelve, earlier than I had thought. I felt on the bureau for my revolver, which I had taken to my room that evening, and opened the door noiselessly.
It was not Herrick, for I could hear his regular breathing through the keyhole opposite. At the foot of the little flight of stairs a faint light glimmered. The stairs opened directly from the surgery, and it was my custom to leave the door at the bottom open during the night. Now it was closed, and the light that I saw filtered through the crack. I crept quietly down and pushed it open, revolver in hand.
A pocket electric lamp lay on the desk, and by its light a man was searching through one of the desk drawers. It was a small drawer which had been always locked; I fancied that it contained some private papers and affairs of Lennox's which he had put together there before leaving. The man's back was towards me, but I recognized instantly the shabby tweed coat, the soft felt hat pulled low down over his head. It was Crowfoot.
I don't know what I had expected; certainly not him. I lowered the revolver and stepped forward.
"Were you looking for anything, Mr. Crowfoot?"
At the sound of my voice he turned; his hand shot out towards the electric lamp, and instantly the room was in darkness.
For a second we stood there, neither moving, and we could hear each other's breathing across the room.
"Light that lamp," I said quietly. "If you have any explanation I am ready to hear it. I have a revolver in my hand, and if you attempt to move I shall be compelled to treat you like any other common housebreaker."
"Listen here," he began, "and don't for heaven's sake play the fool!" His voice sounded excited, impatient, but with an assurance in it that was somehow vaguely familiar to me, and, as on the night before, there was no trace of his usual stammering. It was the voice of a man interrupted in important business rather than caught red-handed in an attempt at common theft. "Put that revolver down, Haverill. I tell you, you don't know what you're meddling with! I'm in a hurry. Let me go out of the house now, without any questions, and I swear to heaven I'll come back tomorrow and tell you everything you want to know. I'll tell you everything! But don't stop me now!"
"You will, eh?"
I laid the revolver down on a chair that stood behind me, but only to have both hands free. He made a movement, chancing the darkness, but the room was too small. I collided with him somewhere near the armchair--the solid mahogany caught my knee an ugly whack through my thin pajamas--and for a moment we grappled together fruitlessly.
"Haverill, you idiot--let me go!"
He gasped and struggled, but I held my grip.
"Not so easy. I want the lamp."
He swore, wrenching an arm free, and the little white bulb glowed out. He must have slipped it in his pocket when he turned. The light shone on our two blinking faces. Crowfoot's hat had fallen off in the struggle, and for the first time I saw him without his black glasses.
It was Lennox!
Stupefied, I let go my hold.
"Now will you let me go?" he snarled.
"I thought you were in Europe! What's it all about? Are you crazy?"
"Oh, you idiot!" There was a savage patience in his voice. "Get on your trousers, then, and come along. You were always an obstinate devil, Haverill! Bring that revolver with you and don't wake the house, and don't for God's sake stand wasting any more time! I'll wait for you."
I ran upstairs. A hundred wild ideas passed through my mind as I groped my way hurriedly into sweater and trousers, in the dark, not even staying to light a candle. I hardly knew, in my bewilderment, whether Lennox had been impersonating Crowfoot or Crowfoot Lennox; the whole thing seemed inextricably and extravagantly mixed. Curiously, Herrick had not even been roused by our scuffle. I carried my boots down to avoid waking him now, and pulled them on in the surgery.
"Take your revolver," said Lennox.
We passed out through the door; he had used his own latchkey to come in with.
"Will you tell me----?" I began, when we were clear of the house.
"All in good time."
A few paces up the road an automobile was standing. Two men were already seated in it, besides the chauffeur. One leaned out, watching, and he gave an exclamation as the two of us stepped into the light of the lamps.
"It's all right," said Lennox. He almost pushed me into the tonneau, where I tumbled into a big broad-shouldered Irishman, and swung up himself to the front seat. "This is Doctor Haverill; he's coming along. Haverill, this is Mr. Keary, the county sheriff, and Inspector McWade."
The chauffeur let in the clutch and the big car swung forward in the direction of Dutchman's Hill.
"And now, Haverill," Lennox said, turning to me, "you wanted to be in it, and you're in it. These gentlemen are accompanying me to the Bend with a warrant for the arrest of the man known as Aaron Menning."
"Ah!" I looked at the burly Irish inspector beside me, and the conviction of yesterday grew clear in my mind. "For assault on George Freeman!"
"No," said the sheriff, speaking for the first time. "For the manslaughter of his brother on the seventeenth of last March."
