“Nice, cheerful little place!” observed Donnelly, looking about him.
Ross said nothing. He had not even dared hope for such a stroke of luck
as that Eddy and the little girl should be gone, yet the silence in this
dim, damp, little house troubled him. Where and why had they gone?
“We’ll just take a look around,” said Donnelly.
He opened a door beside him, revealing a dark and empty room. He flashed
an electric torch across it; nothing there but the bare floor and the
four walls. He closed the door and went along the passage, and opened
the door of the next room. The shutter was broken here, and one of the
window panes, and the rain was blowing in, making a pool on the floor
that gleamed darkly when the flash light touched it.
That door, too, he closed, with a sort of polite caution, as if he
didn’t want to disturb any one. Then he looked into the room at the end
of the passage. This was evidently the kitchen, for there was a sink
there, and a built-in dresser. He turned on the taps; no water.
“Now we’ll just take a look upstairs,” he said, in a subdued tone.
He mounted the stairs with remarkable lightness for so heavy a man; but
Ross took no such precaution. Indeed, he wanted to make a noise. He did
not like the silence in this house.
Donnelly opened the door facing the stairs. One shutter had been thrown
back, and the room was filled with the gray light of the rainy
afternoon. And, lying on the floor, Ross saw a white flannel rabbit.
It lay there, quite alone, its one pink glass eye staring up at the
ceiling, and round its middle was a bedraggled bit of blue ribbon which
Ross remembered very well.
“Now, what’s this?” said Donnelly.
He picked up the rabbit, frowning a little; he turned it this way and
that, he fingered its sash. And, to Ross, there was something grotesque
and almost horrible in the sight of the burly fellow with a cigar in one
corner of his mouth, and an intent frown on his red face, holding that
rabbit.
“It’s a clew, isn’t it?” he inquired, with mock respect.
Donnelly glanced at him quickly. Then he put the rabbit into the pocket
of his overcoat, from which its long ears protruded ludicrously.
“Come on!” he said.
The next door was locked, and here Donnelly displayed his professional
talents. Before Ross could quite see what he was at, he had taken
something from his pocket; he bent forward, and almost at once the lock
clicked, and he opened the door.
It seemed to Ross that nothing could have been more eloquent of crime,
of shameful secrecy and misery, than that room. There was a wretched
little makeshift bed against one wall, made up of burlap bags and a
ragged portière; there was a box on which stood a lantern, an empty
corned beef tin, and a crushed and sodden packet of cigarettes. There
was nothing else.
With a leaden heart, he looked at Donnelly, and saw him very grave.
“Come on!” he said, again.
And they went on, into every corner of that house that was so empty and
yet so filled with questions. They found nothing more. Some one had been
here, and some one had gone; that was all.
Donnelly led the way back to the room where that some one had been.
“Now we’ll see if we can find some more clews here,” he said. “Like the
fellows in the story books.”
He took up the packet of cigarettes and went over to the window with it.
But, instead of examining the object in his hand, his glance was
arrested by something outside, and he stood staring straight before him
so long that Ross came up beside him, to see for himself.
From this upper window there was an unexpectedly wide vista of empty
fields, still white with snow, and houses tiny in the distance, and a
belt of woodland, dark against the gray sky; all deserted and desolate
in the steady fall of sleet. What else?
Directly before the house was the road, where the taxi waited, the
driver inside. Across the road the land ran downhill in a steep slope,
washed bare of any trace of snow, and at its foot was a pond, a somber
little sheet of water, shivering under the downpour. But there was
nobody in sight, nothing stirred. What else? What was Donnelly looking
at?
“I think--” said Donnelly. “I guess I’ll just go out and mooch around a
little before it gets dark. Just to get the lay of the land. You don’t
want to come--in this weather. You just wait here. I won’t keep you
long.”
Ross did want to go with him, everywhere, and to see everything that he
saw, but he judged it unwise to say so. He stood where he was, listening
to the other’s footsteps quietly descending; he heard the front door
close softly, and a moment later he saw Donnelly come out into the road
and cross it, with a wave of his hand toward the taxi driver, and begin
to descend the steep slope toward the pond.
“What’s he going there for?” thought Ross. “What does he think--”
Before he had finished the question, the answer sprang up in his mind.
Donnelly had not found Ives in the cottage, so he was going to look for
him down there. Suppose he found him?
“No!” thought Ross. “It’s--impossible. I--I’m losing my nerve.”
To tell the truth, he was badly shaken. He was ready to credit Donnelly
with superhuman powers, to believe that he could see things invisible to
other persons, that he could, simply by looking out of the window, trace
the whole course of a crime.
“I’ve got to do something,” he thought. “Now is my chance. I can give
him the slip now.”
But he was a good seven or eight miles from “Day’s End.” Well, why
couldn’t he hurry down, jump into the taxi, and order the driver to set
off at once? Long before Donnelly could find any way of escape from this
desolate region, he could get back to the house and warn Amy. And, in
doing so, he would certainly antagonize Donnelly, and confirm any
suspicions he might already have.
“No,” he thought. “He’s not sure about Amy now. And I don’t believe he’s
got anything against me. I can’t afford to run away. He hasn’t found
anything yet that definitely connects Amy with the--the case.”
But when he did?
Donnelly had reached the bottom of the slope now, and was sauntering
along the edge of the pond, hands in his pockets. He had in nowise the
air of a sleuth hot upon a scent, but to Ross his leisurely progress
suggested an alarming confidence. He knew--what didn’t he know? And
Ross, the guilty one, knew nothing at all. In angry desperation, he
turned away from the window.
“All right!” he said, aloud. “I’ll have a look for clews myself!”
And, without the slightest difficulty, he found all the clews he wanted.
The makeshift bed was the only place in the room where anything could be
hidden; he lifted up the portière that lay over the bags, and there he
found a shabby pocket-book in which were the papers of the missing
Martin Ives.
Everything was there--everything one could want. There was a savings
bank book, there were two or three letters, and there was a little
snapshot of Amy, on the back of which was written: “To Marty--so that he
won’t forget.”
Ross looked at that photograph for a long time. He was not expert enough
to recognize that the costume was somewhat outmoded, but he did know
that this picture had been taken some time ago, because Amy was so
different. It showed her standing on a beach, with the wind blowing her
hair and her skirts, her head a little thrown back, and on her face the
jolliest smile--a regular schoolgirl grin.
It hurt him, the sight of that laughing, dimpled, little ghost from the
past. He remembered her as he had seen her to-day, still smiling, still
lovely, but so changed. She was reckless now, haunted now, even in her
most careless moments.
He opened the top letter; it bore the date of last Monday, but no
address. It read: