Freeman's fingers still played imaginary music. "Exactly, Doctor," he
said quietly. "The newspapers have made the family fairly well known.
Fine old traditions--that sort of thing. Let this book of Anthony's
appear and my marriage to Miss Panner would be overboard."
"And with it the Panner fortune," the doctor observed dryly.
"That, too," Ran Freeman admitted without emotion.
The pipe had gone out. The blind man ran the bowl absently along one
sleeve. Dishes clattered in the kitchen.
"It seems," the doctor said, "you've given yourself sufficient motive for
murder, Freeman."
"We all have sufficient motive," Freeman said frankly. "How long could
Waring remain a cashier if his past were dug out? How long would King be
manager of a brokerage house? How long would Lawton have enough credit
left to stay on in his business?"
The room fell into silence, and Joe felt sweat on the palms of his hands.
These men discussed murder as other men might have talked of the loss of
a button from a coat. Dr. Stone put the pipe away and turned his
sightless eyes toward the spot from which Waring's voice had sounded.
"You say Anthony wrote you?"
"All of us. A devilish letter telling what was going into the book
concerning us. Do you get that? Paying off, after all these years, the
old score; ramming in the knife and turning it around. Giving us the
prospect of months of anticipation and worry waiting for the book to
appear. So we came up here----"
"And threatened him?" the doctor asked.
"Yes," Waring answered after a momentary hesitation. "He laughed at us.
He said the only way to stop that book was to kill him, and invited us to
do it. He said there was a blind man in the village with the very devil
of a dog and that the man who killed him would be tracked down." Waring's
voice rose. "But, for once, Anthony was wrong. He forgot----" The
passionate flow of words stopped with startling suddenness.
"What did he forget?" Dr. Stone asked.
Waring said nothing.
"Did he forget that there was such a thing as the manuscript being
stolen?"
Captain Tucker spoke. "What good would that do? The old man could write
it again."
"Could he?" Dr. Stone mused. "I'm not so sure. A man who has to lean on a
servant's arm is a sick man--perhaps a dying man. By the way, Tucker, did
you look for the manuscript?"
"Yes. He kept it in his bedroom."
"And?"
"It's gone."
"Waring," Dr. Stone said slowly, "you checked yourself too late. So
Anthony forgot--and the manuscript _is_ stolen. That unfinished sentence
could convict you."
"Of what?" Waring snapped.
"Of murder. The man who stole that manuscript killed Anthony Fitch."
Lady whimpered uneasily, and, in the hard silence, the sound was like the
wail of a ghost. Joe's temples throbbed, and he was conscious of Lawton
watching his uncle in a sort of bleak dread. Slowly he came to the
realization that the blind man, sitting there in a handicap of darkness
was the dominating figure in the room.
Softly, almost soundlessly, a man wearing an apron appeared from the
kitchen. This, the boy guessed, was Cagge.
"I've made coffee," the servant announced in a nasal monotone. "Anybody
want some?"
Freeman's hand came away from the piano. "What's the matter with the
bacon and eggs?"