THE IMPOSSIBLE
The inquest had come and gone. Its jury of Aura citizens and two summer
folk, duly instructed by Lawton as to the form of their verdict, gave
opinion that Willis Chase had met his death at the hands of a person
or persons unknown, wielding a sharp instrument (to wit, a punch blade
of an identified knife) and a blunt instrument (i.e., a similarly
identified metal water carafe).
That was all.
Willis Chase’s sister and his brother-in-law came over from Great
Barrington, where they had an all-year home, and they took charge of
the dead man and his effects.
By noon Vailholme had settled to a semblance of its former pleasant
calm. Doris and her aunt were the only remaining guests. Thanks to
Horoson’s genius, enough servants consented to remain at only slightly
increased subsidy to keep the household machinery in motion.
The actors and spectators of the preceding night’s drama had a strange
sense of unreality as of having been part of some impossible nightmare.
Later the numbness would pass and the shock’s keener effects would play
havoc with nerves and thoughts. But for the moment there was dull calm.
To add to the sense of gloom and of dazed discomfort, the day was the
hottest of the year. The thermometer had passed the ninety mark before
ten o’clock. By twelve it was hovering around ninety-seven, and not a
vestige of breeze mitigated the heat.
Even in the cool old house the occupants sweltered. Outside,
ether-waves pulsed above the suffering earth. The scratch of locusts
sounded unbearably dry and shrill. The leaves hung lifeless.
The whole landscape shimmered in the murderous heat. South Mountain,
standing benevolent guard beyond the Valley, was haze-ribbed and
ghostly. The misty green range, to westward, cut by Jacob’s ladder,
threw off an emerald-and-fire reflection that sickened the eye. The
whole lovely mountain region with its sweet valleys swooned depressedly
in the awful heat.
Directly after the early lunch at Vailholme, which nobody wanted, Miss
Gregg took anxious note of Doris’s drooping weariness and ordered her
upstairs for a nap. The past twenty hours’ events and a sleepless night
had taken toll of even the girl’s buoyant young strength. Willingly she
obeyed the command to rest.
“I’ll be along presently,” said Miss Gregg, as Doris started upstairs.
“First, I want to verify or disprove a boast of my dear old friend,
Osmun Vail. Soon after he built this house he told me there was one
veranda corner where there was always a breeze even in the stiflingest
weather. If I can discover that corner I shall believe in miracles. It
will be a real sensation to sit for five minutes in a breeze on a day
like this. Come along, Thax, and show me where it is.”
Irritated by her ill-timed flippancy, Vail, with some reluctance,
left the more comfortable hall to follow her to the porch. Macduff
had stretched his furry bulk flat on the hearthstone of the big hall
fireplace in the sorry hope of deriving some coolness therefrom. As
Vail went out after Miss Gregg the dog sighed loudly in renunciation of
comfort, arose, stretched himself fore and aft in true collie fashion,
and stalked out onto the torrid veranda with the two misguided humans.
For this is the way of a dog. Tired or hungry, he will follow into rain
or snow or heat the man he calls master--sacrificing rest and ease and
food for the high privilege of being with his god.
Thaxton Vail was not Macduff’s god. Vail had had the collie for only
a few months. Yet man and dog had become good friends. And, to his
breeder, Clive Creede, the collie nowadays gave little more than
civility, having apparently forgotten Creede and their early chumship
during the twin’s absence in France.
Clive had left him at Vailholme. There Vail had found him on his own
return from overseas. When Clive came back a little later Macduff
accorded him but a tepid welcome. He showed no inclination to return
home with his old master, but exhibited a very evident preference for
his new abode and his new lord. Wherefore Clive had let him stay where
he was.
The heat waves struck through the collie’s massive tawny coat now as
he followed Vail and Miss Gregg out onto the hot veranda. He panted
noisily and began to search for some nook cooler than the rest of the
tiled floor, where he might lay him down for the remainder of his
interrupted snooze. Failing to find it, he looked yearningly toward the
dim hallway.
“See there!” proclaimed Miss Gregg. “There’s no breezy corner out
here to-day. If there was, Macduff would have discovered it. Trust
him to pick out comfort wherever it’s to be found! No dog that wasn’t
a connoisseur of comfort, would have elected to stay on at Vailholme
instead of going back to Rackrent Farm with Clive. And yet one reads
of the faithful dogs that prefer to starve and freeze with their loved
masters rather than live at ease with any one else! It was a frightful
shock to my ideals three months ago when I witnessed the meeting
between the new-returned Clive and his canine chum. I had looked
forward to a tear-stirring reunion. Why, Mac hardly took the trouble to
wag his tail. Yet he and Clive used to be inseparable in the old days.
A single year’s absence made the brute forget.”
“Mac, old man,” said Vail, rumpling the collie’s ears, “she’s
denouncing you. And I’m afraid you deserve it. I’ve always read of the
loyalty of collies. And it jarred me as much as it did the rest of
them when you passed up Clive for me. Never mind. You’re--”
The clank and chug of an automobile interrupted him. Around the
driveway curve appeared a rusty and dusty car of ancient vintage. At
its wheel was a rusty and dusty man of even more ancient vintage--to
wit, Dr. Ezra Lawton.
“Hello!” hailed Thaxton, as the car wheezed to a halt under the
porte-cochère. “What brings _you_ back so soon? I figured you would be
sleeping all day. Anything new?”
“Yes and no,” answered Lawton, scrambling up the steps to greet Miss
Gregg and his host. “I met Osmun Creede’s chauffeur as I was starting
out on a call. I asked him how Clive is. He said he didn’t know and
that Clive must be at Rackrent Farm, for he isn’t at Canobie. I got to
thinking. And I’m going to take a run over there. He’s sick. He isn’t
fit to be staying all alone or just with his two old negroes at that
gas-reeking house. If he won’t go to Canobie and if he won’t come back
here I’m going to kidnap him and make him come home with me till he’s
more on his feet again.”
“Good old Samaritan!” applauded Vail.
“But that isn’t why I stopped here on my way,” pursued Lawton. “I’ve
been thinking. You told me Clive brought that German army knife home
to you. I’m wondering if he happened to bring home several of them as
presents, or if that was the only one. If there are more than one it
may throw a light on this muddle to find out who has the other or the
others. If there are several and they’re all alike, it may not have
been yours that killed Chase.”
“I see,” answered Vail, adding: “No, he didn’t tell me whether that was
the only one or not.”
“Well, is there any mark on yours by which you can be sure one of the
other knives didn’t kill Chase--if there are any other knives like it?”
“No. I can’t help you out even that far. I’m sorry. By the way, if
you don’t mind, Doctor, I’ll go across to Rackrent Farm with you. All
morning I’ve been feeling remorseful about letting the poor chap leave
here. He’s so sensitive he’ll be brooding over the way he bungled in
trying to help me. I’ll go over and see if I can’t make him feel better
about it. Perhaps I can make him come back. It’s worth a try anyhow.”
“Come along!” approved the doctor. “Plenty of room. Hop in.”
“I think,” suddenly decided Miss Gregg, “I think I’ll do some hopping,
too. I went over the boy roughshod. I was cross and tired. I’ll tell
him I’m sorry. Besides, there may be a bit of breeze in driving.
There’s none here.”
As Vail helped her into the tonneau Macduff leaped lightly from the
veranda steps to the rear seat of the car beside her. The collie, like
many of his breed, was crazily fond of motoring and never voluntarily
missed a chance for a ride. Vail got into the front seat beside Lawton
and the car rattled on its way.
Rackrent Farm lay less than a mile from Vailholme’s farther gate. As
the car turned into the farmhouse’s great neglected front yard and
stopped there was no sign of life in or about the unkempt house as it
baked in the merciless sunshine. Neither of the old negro servants
appeared. Clive did not come to door or window in response to the
unwonted arrival of visitors at his hermitage. An almost ominous
stillness and vacancy seemed to brood over the whole place.
“I don’t like this,” commented Lawton worriedly as he drew up at the
end of the brick path which traversed the distance from carriage-drive
to front door. “And-- By the way,” he interrupted himself, “now I
remember it. Oz said something about the two negroes being made sick
by the gases and clearing out till the house could be aired. Aired! Why
every window and every door in sight is shut!”
“Clive must be here all alone if his servants decamped,” said Vail.
“Probably he hasn’t the energy to open up the house, sick as he is.
Come on!”
He got out with the doctor, turning to help Miss Gregg to alight.
Before she could step to the ground Macduff crowded past her in right
unmannerly fashion, leaping to earth and standing there.
The collie’s muscles were taut. His muzzle was pointed skyward. His
sensitive nostrils deflated and filled with lightning alternation as
he sniffed avidly at the lifeless air. He was in evident and keen
excitement, and he whimpered tremulously under his breath.
Paying no heed to the collie, the three humans were starting up the
ragged brick walk which wound an eccentric way through breast-high
patches of boxwood to the front door of the farmhouse.
The bricks radiated the scorching heat. The boxwood gave back hot
fragrance under the sun’s untempered rays. The locusts were shrilling
in the dusty tree-branches above. Over everything hung that breath of
tense silence.
Macduff, after one more series of experimental sniffs, flashed up the
winding walk past the three and toward the front door.
Within six feet of the door he shied like a frightened horse at
something which lay in his path. And he crouched back irresolutely on
his furry haunches.
At the same moment the trio rounded the curve of path between two high
boxwoods which had shut off their view of the bricked space in front of
the doorway.
There, sprawling face downward on the red-hot bricks at their feet, lay
the body of a man.
Miss Gregg flinched unconsciously and caught hold of Vail’s arm. The
doctor, his professional instincts aroused, ran forward and knelt at
the man’s side, turning him over so that the body lay face up beneath
the pitiless furnace-heat of the sky.
The dazzling white glare of sunlight poured down upon an upturned dead
visage.
“Clive!” panted Miss Gregg, dizzily. “Oh, it’s Clive _Creede_!”
“Not a mark on him,” mumbled Vail, who had bent beside the doctor
over the lifeless body. “Not a mark. Sunstroke, most likely. In his
weakened state, coming out of the house into this inferno of heat--
You’re sure he’s dead, Doctor?”
For an instant Lawton did not answer. Then he finished his deftly rapid
examination and rose dazedly to his feet.
“Yes,” he said, his face a foolish blank of bewilderment. “Yes. He is
dead. But he has been dead less than fifteen minutes. And--it wasn’t
sunstroke. He--”
The doctor paused. Then from between his amazement-twisted lips he
blurted:
“_He froze to death!_”
Miss Gregg cried out in unbelieving wonder. Thaxton Vail’s incredulity
took a wordier form.
“Froze to death?” he ejaculated, loud in his amaze. “And less than
fifteen minutes ago? Doctor, the weather’s turned your head. This is
the hottest day of the year. Out here in the sun the mercury must be
somewhere around a hundred and twenty. _Froze_ to death? Why, it’s im--”
“I tell you,” reiterated Dr. Lawton, mopping the streams of sweat from
his forehead, “I tell you HE FROZE TO DEATH!”