"What would it mean to you if I told you Donovan was a tall man?"
The doctor's sightless eyes were fixed straight ahead as though he saw
something that was denied to other men. "Does Donovan know he's
suspected?"
"He isn't quite a fool."
A man passed quickly through the hall. Donovan! Joe instinctively stepped
closer to the dog. And suddenly, under his feet, the floor boards creaked
with a loud, harsh, dry protest.
"Loose boards all over the room," Harley Kent explained. "I never
bothered to have them nailed down. With the safe in this room I looked
upon them as a burglar alarm. And yet, in the uproar of last night's
storm, a cannon ball might have been rolled across the floor and nobody
upstairs would have heard it." His hands made a resigned gesture of
defeat. "No matter how sound you think your plans are, you can never be
sure."
"No," Dr. Stone said slowly, "there's always a slip."
The telephone truck was gone, and now another car came up the driveway
and stopped with a squeal of brakes.
"Captain Tucker has evidently finished his breakfast at last," Harley
Kent said with bitter sarcasm. "He'll want to question Donovan. If you
don't mind, Doctor----"
"Of course." The doctor took an uncertain step and paused. "I seem to
have lost my bearings, Kent. Would you give me your arm to the door?"
Joe followed blankly. It was the first time he had ever known his uncle
to lose a sense of direction once established. Behind those blind eyes
the room, in all its essentials, had been mapped. And even if its
outlines had not been printed on a clear mind, the man had only to say,
"Lady, out!" and the dog would have taken him to the door. Why take
Harley Kent's arm?
Captain Tucker, on the porch, spoke a greeting and passed inside. The
door closed. Down at the end of the gravel where the driveway met the
road, Joe instinctively turned toward home. But Dr. Stone said, "Lady,
right!" and was off toward the village at that amazingly rapid pace.
"I'm after pipe tobacco, Joe."
The boy's shorter legs beat a rapid tattoo on the dirt road. "I bought
you some yesterday, Uncle David."
"An extra tin won't go to waste," the man said casually.
Hedge and brush were full of fascinating odors that invited sniffing
examination. But the shepherd dog, as though aware that the man who
gripped the handle was in her keeping, went ahead with single-minded
purpose. The dirt road became a paved street and they were in the town.
Lady guided her charge toward the sidewalk, came to a cautious halt at
the curb and waited for her command.