THE RETURN
I woke with a start, in a strange room, staring about me in dull wonder.
Oh, well, it was scarcely daylight, and I was still tired out. I would
go back to sleep and save my questions until breakfast time. I turned
over, yawning, but a familiar voice dragged me back from slumber.
“Get up, unk!” It was Peter McGregor. “You’ll have to get going; train
leaves in an hour.”
Again I yawned. “What time is it?”
“Seven o’clock.” Then he laughed at my exclamation. “No, unk, seven at
night. You’ve only slept twelve hours. Hurry up, now, we’ve got to be
back in Pinelands by morning.”
Reluctantly enough I rose, every stiff old joint aching, and tumbled
into my clothes. Peter and Doctor Somers were dressed and throwing their
few belongings into traveling bags.
Presently we set out for the Asheville station and the eight-fifteen
train, which would take us to Raleigh, a silent, disconsolate trio, as
much at sea as on the morning of Doctor Gaskell’s mysterious murder. We
had followed trail after trail with such high hopes; our suspicions had
pointed here and there; and each suspect had cleared himself. I groaned
aloud as we three sat in the Pullman smoking room.
“All we really know, up to date,” said I, “is that Gaskell left his
house, and was killed an hour before Lewis came out there.”
Somers nodded. “Even that is going to be hard to prove,” he answered
gloomily. “One point rests on the unsupported word of a notorious
blockader, a fellow more than suspected of one murder, and now under
arrest for making moonshine whisky. Vanbrugh will tear his evidence into
tatters, even if he’ll testify. And the other point: that Gaskell had
been dead some time when Parker fired; it rests on your word alone. And
you’ll have to admit yourself that you were pretty well upset.”
“Maybe Rutledge killed him, after all,” I suggested weakly.
“I doubt it. And, even if he did, we can’t prove it. We can’t prove he
even saw Gaskell that morning, except by his own statement, which
wouldn’t go far in law.”
Peter leaned forward, scowling. “Look here,” he began. “Now don’t get
sore, unk; promise? Because, even if he did, I’m for him all the way,
and no doubt he had provocation we know nothing about. But have you
thought that maybe Lewis did kill him, after all? No”--as I would have
gone over the evidence once more--“no, I don’t mean then, when you heard
the shot. But he might have gone out there at four o’clock; it was quite
light, even at that time, and he might have met Gaskell and shot him.
Then he was scared, of course, and he went to the house and cleaned his
gun and reloaded it and came back at five, meaning, no doubt, to pretend
he’d just found the body. He’d have said he just got up, and, when he
went into that tangle after the quail, he found Gaskell’s body by the
path, dead and cold. His gun would be clean, both barrels loaded, and
nobody’d have suspected him. But, when he got out there, he tripped, and
the gun went off by accident; that’s the way it happened, you said
yourself, unk. And the constable just happened to be coming past and
heard it, and there he was!”
“Nonsense!” said I. “That’s absurd.” But was it? I had to admit to
myself that it was an adequate explanation, that it fitted most
diabolically into all we knew about the case. I closed my eyes; I could
see the whole thing. Lewis, gun in hand, prowling through the dawn after
quail; Gaskell meeting him on the path, carrying his medicine case; the
quarrel. There would have been hot words; my nephew had not forgotten
his anger of the day before. A sneering laugh, perhaps, as the older man
lost patience; Lewis’ unruly temper flaming forth; the shotgun in his
nervous hands, leveling itself; the explosion! And then my poor,
impulsive boy, shuddering at the sight of a bleeding body; creeping
stealthily through the bushes, cleaning and reloading the gun with hands
that shook; waiting for the body of his victim to stiffen; whipping
round the old house to advance boldly down that fateful path--with what
inward tremors and self-loathings! He comes on slowly, looking for the
body; it should be about here. And then a stumble; the shotgun,
forgotten in his unsteady hands, the finger tightening involuntarily
upon its trigger; the second shot! And upon its heels an outcry, the
pounding run of Constable Wakefield; the accusation!
No wonder Lewis had seemed dazed! He must have thought it retribution,
the accidental discharge of his gun bringing back upon him all the
public guilt he had sought so cunningly to conceal.
And then I shook my head stubbornly. Lewis Parker do that? No! He was my
nephew, almost my son; I knew him as I knew myself.
“Nonsense!” I repeated sturdily. “My boy never did such a thing as that.
He might have killed Gaskell in the heat of passion, but he never
sneaked and hid afterward, or plotted out such a scheme as that to
escape. I don’t--I won’t believe it!”
“I sure do hope you’re right, unk,” said Peter heavily. “But it does
seem beastly logical.”
It did. It was fiendishly, horribly logical. I could see that if such an
idea occurred to Vanbrugh, the solicitor, the poor defense we could
proffer would become a boomerang to destroy us. For, on the face of it,
we could make the killing appear an accident, perhaps; at the worst an
impulsive, unpremeditated act. But this other, this sneaking off to
reload and returning to discover the body--this cunning scheme
frustrated, as Vanbrugh would make it appear, by the accidental
discharge of the gun--why, it made my nephew a cold, deliberate
murderer! Shuddering I recalled my dream of the explosion of that cannon
in my bedroom. That must have been the first shot, the shot which had
killed Gaskell! Had Lewis pulled the trigger?
All this while Somers had sat silent, chin in his long, bony hands, a
cigarette drooping from his sour, discontented lips. I turned to him
impatiently.
“What do you think, Somers? You know my nephew; is he capable of such a
thing as that?”
The lanky physician raised his head and stared at me with deep-set,
inscrutable, gray-green eyes. “I told you this morning,” he replied.
“From all we’ve found out I’m beginning to believe it was the ghost
killed Gaskell.” And his chin dropped again. Well, there was little
enough satisfaction in that!