I found Rebecca in the kitchen, weeping. It was easy to see that she
had spent half the night crying, and I hastened to reassure her so
far as I could as to her sweetheart's condition.
"And now about Mr. Crowfoot," I said. "What time did he leave here?"
"It must have been early," Rebecca answered. "I was down an' about
by five."
"He gave you the note?"
"He left it in his room. I went to put his coffee like I always do,
outside, an' the door was open. He left another envelope for mother
with his week's board in. His bed hadn't been slept in. He was
writin' in his room all last evenin', after he came in."
"And his things?"
"He didn't have more'n a suit-case, and he must have took that with
him."
I went back to Herrick in the parlour. Crowfoot's enclosure still
lay on the table, and as I took it up to put it in my pocket I felt
sorely tempted to break the seal there and then.
"So he's lit out, temporarily," said Herrick. "Well ... it doesn't
look particularly wise under the circumstances, but I suppose he
knows his own business."
"Should we open the letter?"
"No," Herrick said decidedly. "That point is quite clear. The
instructions are definite. He gives us a certain date, and if he
does not reclaim his letter personally by then we are free to act on
our discretion, but not before. Meantime we can only put two and two
together. Crowfoot was down here on some job in which he anticipated
personal danger, or he wouldn't have gone armed. The cartridge he
used was not fired on Freeman, and unless I am much mistaken the
affair of last night upset, or at all events abruptly altered, his
own schemes. He's learned something that we haven't, and I'd give a
good deal to know just what, but we can't force his hand. Unless I
under-estimate him, he'll turn up to claim that letter all right."
"Unless----" I recalled the provisional clause on the envelope.
Herrick smiled.
"He doesn't strike me as the sort of person to step off a plank
bridge in the dark! That's a pure bit of dramatic effect, in my
opinion."
When we had finished breakfast I drove down to the drug store and
telephoned for a trained nurse. She arrived by the midday train, and
Freeman's condition being satisfactory, I was able to leave him in
her charge and go home with Herrick.
We refused the farmer's buggy and walked over, following the short
cut that had so nearly proved fatal to one man at least the night
before. The water below the sluice-gate was at its normal level, but
looking over we could see the line of uptorn weeds and flattened
grasses that showed where the brief flood had swept. An alder bush
on the left side, overhanging the timbered edge of the pool, was
partly broken, indicating the point of Freeman's fall.
We examined the upper part of the sluice-gate carefully. On the wood
near the lever I found a few dried spots of blood. Herrick nodded
appreciatively when he saw them.
"Looks as if Crowfoot's cartridge wasn't wasted! Someone got hit,
though not badly; there's none tracked along the road. My respect
for our friend increases. Austin, why was he so careful we didn't
see his handwriting?"
"Give it up. He's a queer bird anyway."
I told him of what Mary Lessing had seen that morning, by Dutchman's
Hill. Hitherto it had presented itself to me merely as a whim on
Crowfoot's part. Now I began to think he might have had some object
in the performance. Herrick smiled when it came to the jumping, but
his face grew serious again immediately.
"Austin," he said, "I give you a problem. What is it about that
particular tree that attracts me and attracts Crowfoot? There's
something more than coincidence in it. Crowfoot wasn't amusing
himself. To my mind, he was testing a theory, and if we knew what
that theory was...." He broke off, thoughtfully, and I turned to him.
"Well?"
"Nothing much. Austin, whereabouts was Jake's body found, last
spring?"
"Face downwards in the water, just near the plank bridge. Why?"
"Taken with Crowfoot's action, does that suggest anything to you?"
"Nothing to do with suicide. Jake had a fit and fell in the water."
"Exactly." He walked a few paces in silence. "Has it ever occurred
to you what a really admirable country coroner you would make?"
"I don't see what that's got to do with it."
"Listen." He swung round. "Jake's death was not accident, though he
may have died actually in a fit. He was frightened by someone or
something that sprang out at him from that tree as he passed, and
Crowfoot, depend upon it, was merely trying to find out whether that
jump was within the limits of an ordinarily active man."
We were both tired that evening and we turned in early after supper.
I had left instructions to call me if there was any change in
Freeman's condition, but I anticipated none before the morning. The
nurse seemed a competent woman, and I felt easy in leaving him to her
care. I slept like a log, my rest untroubled by any dreams.
Towards morning, as it seemed to me, I woke up with that curious
sense of something happening which arouses one at times by appeal
through some subconscious perception. Five minutes before a
thunderstorm would have failed to rouse me; now instinct dragged me
up sitting in my bed, of a sudden keenly and alertly awake.
I listened. Someone was moving in the surgery below. Mrs. Searle
went to bed always at ten, and I had the impression of having slept
already for several hours. I struck a match softly and looked at my
watch. It was a quarter to twelve, earlier than I had thought. I
felt on the bureau for my revolver, which I had taken to my room that
evening, and opened the door noiselessly.
It was not Herrick, for I could hear his regular breathing through
the keyhole opposite. At the foot of the little flight of stairs a
faint light glimmered. The stairs opened directly from the surgery,
and it was my custom to leave the door at the bottom open during the
night. Now it was closed, and the light that I saw filtered through
the crack. I crept quietly down and pushed it open, revolver in hand.
A pocket electric lamp lay on the desk, and by its light a man was
searching through one of the desk drawers. It was a small drawer
which had been always locked; I fancied that it contained some
private papers and affairs of Lennox's which he had put together
there before leaving. The man's back was towards me, but I
recognized instantly the shabby tweed coat, the soft felt hat pulled
low down over his head. It was Crowfoot.
I don't know what I had expected; certainly not him. I lowered the
revolver and stepped forward.
"Were you looking for anything, Mr. Crowfoot?"
At the sound of my voice he turned; his hand shot out towards the
electric lamp, and instantly the room was in darkness.
For a second we stood there, neither moving, and we could hear each
other's breathing across the room.
"Light that lamp," I said quietly. "If you have any explanation I am
ready to hear it. I have a revolver in my hand, and if you attempt
to move I shall be compelled to treat you like any other common
housebreaker."
"Listen here," he began, "and don't for heaven's sake play the fool!"
His voice sounded excited, impatient, but with an assurance in it
that was somehow vaguely familiar to me, and, as on the night before,
there was no trace of his usual stammering. It was the voice of a
man interrupted in important business rather than caught red-handed
in an attempt at common theft. "Put that revolver down, Haverill. I
tell you, you don't know what you're meddling with! I'm in a hurry.
Let me go out of the house now, without any questions, and I swear to
heaven I'll come back tomorrow and tell you everything you want to
know. I'll tell you everything! But don't stop me now!"
"You will, eh?"
I laid the revolver down on a chair that stood behind me, but only to
have both hands free. He made a movement, chancing the darkness, but
the room was too small. I collided with him somewhere near the
armchair--the solid mahogany caught my knee an ugly whack through my
thin pajamas--and for a moment we grappled together fruitlessly.
"Haverill, you idiot--let me go!"
He gasped and struggled, but I held my grip.
"Not so easy. I want the lamp."
He swore, wrenching an arm free, and the little white bulb glowed
out. He must have slipped it in his pocket when he turned. The
light shone on our two blinking faces. Crowfoot's hat had fallen off
in the struggle, and for the first time I saw him without his black
glasses.
It was Lennox!
Stupefied, I let go my hold.
"Now will you let me go?" he snarled.
"I thought you were in Europe! What's it all about? Are you crazy?"
"Oh, you idiot!" There was a savage patience in his voice. "Get on
your trousers, then, and come along. You were always an obstinate
devil, Haverill! Bring that revolver with you and don't wake the
house, and don't for God's sake stand wasting any more time! I'll
wait for you."
I ran upstairs. A hundred wild ideas passed through my mind as I
groped my way hurriedly into sweater and trousers, in the dark, not
even staying to light a candle. I hardly knew, in my bewilderment,
whether Lennox had been impersonating Crowfoot or Crowfoot Lennox;
the whole thing seemed inextricably and extravagantly mixed.
Curiously, Herrick had not even been roused by our scuffle. I
carried my boots down to avoid waking him now, and pulled them on in
the surgery.
"Take your revolver," said Lennox.
We passed out through the door; he had used his own latchkey to come
in with.
"Will you tell me----?" I began, when we were clear of the house.
"All in good time."
A few paces up the road an automobile was standing. Two men were
already seated in it, besides the chauffeur. One leaned out,
watching, and he gave an exclamation as the two of us stepped into
the light of the lamps.
"It's all right," said Lennox. He almost pushed me into the tonneau,
where I tumbled into a big broad-shouldered Irishman, and swung up
himself to the front seat. "This is Doctor Haverill; he's coming
along. Haverill, this is Mr. Keary, the county sheriff, and
Inspector McWade."
The chauffeur let in the clutch and the big car swung forward in the
direction of Dutchman's Hill.
"And now, Haverill," Lennox said, turning to me, "you wanted to be in
it, and you're in it. These gentlemen are accompanying me to the
Bend with a warrant for the arrest of the man known as Aaron Menning."
"Ah!" I looked at the burly Irish inspector beside me, and the
conviction of yesterday grew clear in my mind. "For assault on
George Freeman!"
"No," said the sheriff, speaking for the first time. "For the
manslaughter of his brother on the seventeenth of last March."