DOCTOR ST. CLAIR’S CLUE.
It was the oil excitement that took Doctor St. Clair up into Harrison
County. He hoped to buy or lease some land in the famous oil belt.
The ferryman at whose shanty Doctor Ludington had stayed, after his
lucky escape from death, owned fifteen sterile acres quite near to
Fernside and Stony Ledge, but he refused Doctor St. Clair’s offer of
two thousand dollars down pointblank.
“I ain’t as green as I look, stranger,” he said brusquely. “Why, a man
that stayed with me a while last fall, and knowed the right vally of
all that land, told me whatever I done, never to sell for less than ten
thousand dollars!”
“Who was the man?” demanded the doctor, with an inward anathema against
the intermeddler.
“Friend o’ mine,” briefly.
The doctor sneered.
“Well, I should like to talk to him and convince him of his mistake.
He must be crazy, I think, setting such an undue value on these rocky
acres!”
“He’s not in the neighborhood now. I don’t know where he went to when
he left here,” returned the ferryman, going out abruptly to answer a
call for a boat.
“Some ignorant tramp likely, that did not know what he was talking
about,” the doctor sneered to the ferryman’s wife, venting his spite on
the absent offender for spoiling a good trade.
“No, I don’t think he were a tramp. He were dressed in fine new
clothes, though soakin’ wet with the snow the night we found him lyin’
like a dead man out in the back yard, the time o’ the turble storm,”
she replied coldly.
“Drunk, maybe,” sniffed the resentful doctor.
“No, nor drunk, neither, I don’t believe. He were sick and wounded,
with a shot through his breast. A long time he laid here sick, and
me and my ole man nussed him like our own son, and said nothing to
nobuddy, acause the young feller ast us not. He didn’t want folks to
know as he had been in that scrimmage! My, what am I blabbing about
now?” cried the woman, suddenly cutting herself short.
“No harm talking to me, a stranger without any interest in it,” Doctor
St. Clair said reassuringly, with a bland smile. “I hope the young
fellow compensated you well for your trouble?”
“Oh, yes, sir; yes. Since he went away he paid up liberal. Sent my ole
man fifty dollars and me a gold watch. Think o’ that, now!”
“Very clever!” exclaimed the doctor. “What did you say his name was,
madam?”
“A Mr. John Rupert, from way off somewhere,” she replied incautiously,
having an uncontrollable propensity for gossip.
“From Ohio?” cried the doctor, his thoughts reverting to his bête
noire, Doctor Rupert.
“I dunno,” she answered curtly, suddenly becoming tongue-tied.
But the doctor’s languid interest, suddenly stimulated to malignant
activity by that name, prompted him to further inquiry.
Could there be any coincidence? he wondered. Had he stumbled on a clue
to a disgraceful mystery in the life of the man he hated?
He determined to board with the couple a day or two, and ferret out
every particular about “John Rupert, from way off somewhere,” as the
woman said.
His evil genius favored him, for, when the ferryman returned he was
somewhat excited, and exclaimed to his wife:
“You’d never think who ’twas I put across the river!”
She made some futile guesses, and then he said jestingly:
“I knowed you was too stupid to ever guess, so I’ll tell. ’Twere that
runaway, Dan Ellis!”
Her surprise made the doctor ask some leading questions, and the
replies elicited soon showed him that he was on the track of a subject
most interesting to him--the Hallowe’en tragedy that had resulted in
the sending of Eva Somerville to the insane asylum.
The doctor had heard something of it before, but not so fully as now,
when related by people of the neighborhood familiar with the simplest
details of the story.
He plied the unsuspecting, easy-going pair with questions, and as they
never wearied of the thrilling tragedy, they gave it to him in full,
with all the embellishments, down to the great funeral of Terry Groves,
that all the people for miles about had attended, and the strange fate
of Doctor Ludington’s corpse, that had burst from its casket en route
to burial, and rolled into the river.
Then they dwelt at length on the fearful storm of that night, and the
woman exclaimed:
“’Twere the same night, you know, Jake, that we found the wounded
stranger in our back yard!”
The doctor started violently, and Jake frowned darkly at his loquacious
better half.
“You wa’n’t called on to refer to that, Mandy, far’s I kin see!” he
observed rebukingly.
“Well, you needn’t kick my shin so hard! ’Tain’t a hangin’ secret, as I
knows on!” she retorted.
The doctor played him skillfully as a wary trout.
“If you can keep me until to-morrow, perhaps I can make arrangement
with you, but just now I’m taken all aback by the stiff price you ask.
I’d like to sleep on it and clear my head.”
“We kin keep you overnight, if you kin put up with a straw bed and corn
pone and bacon,” the host returned with homely hospitality, which the
doctor complimented by declaring he desired nothing better.
He would willingly have rested on a plank rather than forego the
opportunity of remaining till to-morrow, and still further probing the
mystery of the wounded stranger, whom these stupid, kindly people had
nursed without a suspicion of his connection with the funeral train
that had been wrecked on the hill above.
The doctor’s keen, clever, analytical mind was rapidly putting two and
two together. As he turned uneasily on his straw cot that night he was
scarcely conscious of the discomfort, he was so busily, eagerly, saying
to himself:
“If the corpse went into the river it would have come to the surface
ere now. What if it rolled down instead into the stupid ferryman’s back
yard?”
If he could only prove his suspicions true his revenge was ready to his
hand.
If Doctor Ludington and Doctor Rupert were the same man, Eva would turn
with bitter scorn and abhorrence from her cousin’s slayer.
There would be no joyful wedding, no happy bride and bridegroom. Doctor
Ludington would go to prison instead.
In his malignity he was not content with having banished Eva in
disgrace and thrown her penniless on the world. He was eager to wreck
her life to satiate his jealous pain.
He thanked his lucky stars that fate had led him to this spot in the
nick of time. He would never leave it till he got some clue to work
upon.
Racking his brain with futile plans, he scarcely slept at all, and
rose early the next morning, prying about the garret in which he was
lodged, in idle curiosity.
A box of faded photographs and yellowing kodak pictures amused him for
a while with their rustic delineations; but he was about to throw them
aside at last, when one attracted his attention at a second glance, and
a stifled cry burst from his lips:
“Heavens, it is Doctor Rupert himself!”
The picture was of a man’s face and shoulders framed in the window of
the very room where he was now--evidently a snapshot taken while he was
not aware. It was cleverly done, and no one could mistake it, though
Doctor Rupert’s flowing locks were much longer now.
Doctor St. Clair carried it downstairs with him, and, finding the
hostess alone preparing breakfast, held it out to her, exclaiming:
“How did you get Doctor Ludington’s picture?”
“Tain’t him! I wouldn’t have the grand vilyun’s picter in my house!”
she replied, with a sniff of scorn.
He was well aware from their talk last night that they sympathized with
the Groves family, and detested the Ludingtons. Every family in the
county was a partisan on one side or the other.
“It’s the image of Doctor Ludington,” he repeated, just as the ferryman
stumped heavily in, demanding:
“What is it you’re saying of?”
“I said this is the image of Doctor Ludington. Did you ever see him?”
“Oncet or twicet, maybe, and I cain’t say but that it does look like
the feller, and, come to think on’t, Mr. Rupert did look like the
doctor more’n this before he shaved off his mustache!” returned Jake,
giving himself away thoughtlessly, as the doctor hoped he would.
“So this is John Rupert, the wounded stranger?” he exclaimed.
“Well, now, mister, I’ve let the cat out o’ the bag, ain’t I?” the
ferryman exclaimed, in dismay. “Well, well, as wife said last night,
’tain’t a hangin’ secret, and I never could see why the young feller
objected to my havin’ his picture, so that I had to get a snapshot at
him on the sly one day when he was lookin’ out o’ the garret winder.
He was mighty close-mouthed, and I don’t talk about him much, ’cause I
know as he wouldn’t wish it, and he was kind and liberal to us, sending
us money and presents after he went away, you see!”
Doctor St. Clair began to feel so sure of his ground that his eyes
gleamed, and a sinister, exulting smile played around his bearded lips.
“What air you a-grinnin’ at, stranger?” demanded Mandy resentfully,
fearing his derision was directed at her shabby gingham gown.
“I was laughing at your credulity, my good friends,” he replied.
“As how?” queried Jake, wrinkling his bushy gray brows in an angry
frown. Mountaineers are very dignified, and resent ridicule of
themselves.
Doctor St. Clair repressed his smile and answered coolly:
“My good friends, you have been duped. You have nursed a viper in your
breast.”
“As how?” the ferryman demanded stupidly.
The stubbly gray hair seemed almost to stand erect on his head with
horror as his guest replied:
“Doctor Ludington’s corpse did not roll into the river, as you
supposed, but into your back yard, and the shock of the fall restored
him to life from the trance in which he must have been lying. So you
and your kind-hearted wife nursed the villain back to health, and then
it was no wonder he was afraid for any one to find him out!”
The homely pair were incredulous at first, but little by little he
brought them to believe in his theory, and then they were enraged to
think how they had been imposed upon by a Ludington.
In this mood he found it easy to persuade the man to lodge his
information with the authorities, adding himself the facts of Doctor
Ludington’s residence at Weston as Doctor Rupert.
But he took care to impress on them that he did not care to be
mentioned in the case at all. He had no personal interest in it. He had
only been interested in the story, and struck by the coincidence, so
that he had worked out the truth for himself. He would not even divulge
his name, but he made sure before he left that the officers were en
route to Weston to arrest the suspected Doctor Rupert.