FIGURING IT OUT
Of course Ike M'Graw could see for himself very easily that Tom Jonah
had a nose. It was pointed just then at the fox pelt in the old
woodsman's hands, and was wrinkled as the dog sniffed at the skin.
So Neale O'Neil knew that the man meant something a little different
from what he said. He, in fact, wanted to know if Tom Jonah was keen
on the scent, and Neale answered him to that end.
"We think he's got a pretty good nose, Mr. M'Graw, for a Newfoundland.
Of course, Tom Jonah is not a hunting dog. If he runs a rabbit he runs
him by sight, not by scent. But give him something that one of the
children wears, and he'll hunt that child out, as sure as sure! They
play hide and seek with him just as though he were one of
themselves--only Tom Jonah is always 'it.'"
"Uh-huh?" grunted the old man. Then he said: "Don't seem as though any
stranger could have come down from the attic and got through that hall
yonder without this dog making some sort of racket."
"I never thought of Tom Jonah," admitted Neale.
"He was in here all night, they tell me," went on Ike.
"Yes. But didn't the kitchen man, John, let him out when he first came
downstairs this morning?"
"No. I asked him. He said the dog didn't seem to want to go out. He
opened that door yonder into this back kitchen and called the dog.
This here dog come to the door, but he did not want to go out and
turned away. So John shut the door again."
"Crackey!" exclaimed Neale. "Then there was somebody in here, and
don't you forget it, Mr. M'Graw!"
"Uh-huh? But why didn't the dog give tongue? Was it somebody the dog
knowed? You see, son, there's been food stole from that pantry yonder
durin' the night. Could it be the feller that shot the fox from the
attic winder was right in here when John called the dog, loadin' up
his knapsack with grub?"
"Why--why--"
"This dog must ha' knowed him--eh?"
"I--I suppose so. But who could it be?" demanded Neale with wondering
emphasis. "Surely it was none of our servants. And Luke Shepard and
Sammy and I were in bed in one room. The girls--Mr. Howbridge--Mrs.
MacCall--"
"I guess," said the old man, grinning, "that the lady and that lawyer
man can be counted out of it. None of you brought a twenty-two rifle
with you, anyway."
"No."
"That's what the fox was shot with. Here's the pellet," and Ike
brought the little flattened lead bullet out of his vest pocket. "If
it hadn't been a good shot--spang through the brain--'twould never
have killed the fox. He had his head on one side, yappin', and that
bullet took him right.
"Now, better keep still about this. No use frightening the ladies.
Girls an' women is easy frightened, I expect. I'll speak again to Mr.
Howbridge about it. But this here dog--"
He shook his head over Tom Jonah's shortcomings, while Neale ran away
to wash his hands and face before appearing at the lunch table.
The children around the table were in something of an uproar. Mrs.
MacCall and Ruth were obliged to be firm in order to quiet Sammy, and
Tess, and Dot.
For Agnes, unable to keep anything to herself, had blurted out all
about the lovely sled-ride the older ones had enjoyed. Immediately the
three younger children decided that they had been cheated.
"We wanted to go tobogganing, too," Tess declared.
"I just _love_ sliding downhill," wailed Dot.
"Huh!" sniffed Sammy Pinkney. "A feller can't have no fun where
there's big fellers and big girls. They always put you down, and leave
you out of the best things."
"You shall go sliding tomorrow if the snow holds off," Ruth promised.
"Why not this afternoon, Ruthie?" begged Tess.
"Sister's got something else to do this afternoon. Wait until
tomorrow," the oldest Kenway replied.
"It's snowing already," muttered Sammy disconsolately.
There were a few flakes in the air. But it did not look as though any
heavy fall had begun.
"I don't see why we need to have you go with us to slide," Tess said,
pouting. "We go sliding without you in Milton."
"This is different, Tess," Ruth said firmly. "Now, let us hear no more
about it! You will annoy Mr. Howbridge."
Sammy winked slyly at the two little girls. "Just you wait!" he
mouthed so that only Tess and Dot heard him.
"Oh, Sammy!" murmured Dot. "What'll you do?"
"Just you wait!" repeated the boy, and that mysterious statement
comforted Dot a good deal, if it did not Tess Kenway. Dot believed
that Sammy was fertile in expedient. She had run away with him once
"to be pirates."
Before the meal was over, Hedden came in and bent beside Mr. Howbridge
to whisper into his ear.
"Oh! Has he come back again? I wondered where he went so suddenly,"
said the lawyer. "Yes. Tell him I'll come out to see him as soon as I
am through."
Neale knew that he referred to M'Graw. Bright-eyed and interested, he
bent forward to say to Mr. Howbridge:
"I just told Mr. M'Graw something that I guess you'd wish to know,
too, Mr. Howbridge. May I go with you when you speak to him?"
"Certainly, my boy. There's nothing secret about it--not really. We
are only puzzled about a suspicion that we have--"
"That there was somebody in the house that ought not to be here,"
whispered the boy.
"That's it. How did you know?"
"I'll tell you later," returned Neale O'Neil.
Agnes was glaring at him in a most indignant fashion. It always
angered the second Corner House girl if Neale seemed to have any
secret that she did not share.
"What's the matter with you?" she hissed, when Neale turned away from
their host. "Don't you know it isn't polite to whisper at table, Neale
O'Neil?"
"What are you doing it for, then?" he asked her, grinning, and would
vouchsafe no further explanation of the secret between Mr. Howbridge
and himself.
As soon as the lawyer arose from the table to go out to the kitchen to
interview Ike, Neale jumped up to go with him. Agnes saw him depart
with sparkling eyes and a very red face. She was really angry with
Neale O'Neil.
The boy was too much interested in the mystery of the shooter of the
fox and how he had got in and out of Red Deer Lodge to be much
bothered by Agnes' vexation. He and the lawyer found the old woodsman
sitting in the servants' dining-room where he had been eating.
"Well, sir," he began, when Mr. Howbridge and the boy entered, "'twixt
us all, I reckon we're gettin' to the bottom of this here mystery. Did
I tell you I couldn't find no place where the feller stood out there
in the snow last evening to shoot that fox from?"
"No."
"But it's a fac'. Now you tell him, sonny, what you told me about what
you found in the attic. I've been up and made sure 'twas so."
Neale told the surprised Mr. Howbridge of the proved fact that the fox
was shot from one of the attic windows.
"And 'twas a play-toy rifle that done it--a twenty-two," said the
woodsman, as though to clinch some fact that had risen in his own
mind, if not in the minds of the others.
"Now, let's figger it out. We got enough fac's now to point purty
conclusive to who done it. Yes, sir."
"Why, Ike, I don't see that," observed Mr. Howbridge.
"But you will, Mister, in a minute or so," declared the old man,
nodding with confidence. "Now, look you: Whoever was in this here
house and made that fire in Miz' Birdsall's sittin'-room, was here
when your people came day before yesterday."
"No!" ejaculated Mr. Howbridge.
"Yes!" repeated M'Graw with decision.
"But you found that key in your cabin, did you not?"
"Yes. But I tell you I've figgered that out. Whoever 'twas come here,
got the key, come in here, opened the back door, and then locked the
front door on the outside same as always."
"Wait! No buts about it," interrupted the woodsman. "I got it figgered
to a fare-you-well, I tell you. Now! The feller locked the front door,
went back to my shanty and hung up the key, and then came back in by
the rear door. See? He--ahem!--was in here when that man, Hedden, of
yours, and the others, come."
"But there were no footprints of human beings about the house in the
snow."
"That's all right. The feller that built the fire upstairs had done
all his walking around before the snow fell the day after I went to
Ebettsville. Don't you see? He didn't leave here because his
footprints would be seen, and he couldn't lock the house up behind him
if he did leave and make it look as though it had never been opened."
"You are guessing at a lot of this!" exclaimed the lawyer, not at all
convinced.
"No. I'm jest figgerin'. Now, this Neale boy here heard that shot
fired upstairs that killed the fox. He went up this mornin' and saw
where the shot was fired from. I seen it, too. So the feller that
opened the Lodge and that lit the fire was up there at ten or half
past last evening, for sure."
"Well?" murmured the lawyer.
"He didn't go out during the night, or his footprints would have been
seen by John this morning in the new-fallen snow."
"That sounds right."
"It is right!" said the old man vigorously. "Now we come to this here
dog you brought."
"Oh, yes!" cried Mr. Howbridge. "How about Tom Jonah? Surely if there
had been a stranger about--one who stole food from the pantry--he
would have interfered."
"Mebbe he would. And mebbe again he wouldn't. He's a mighty friendly
dog."
"But he is a splendid watchdog," interposed Neale O'Neil.
"That may be, too," Ike said, quite unshaken in his opinion. "If
anybody had come in from outside and undertaken to disturb anything,
that old dog would probably have been right on the job."
"I see your point," Mr. Howbridge admitted. "But this person who came
down from the garret must have been a stranger."
"Now we're gittin' to it. Let's figger some more," said M'Graw, with a
chuckle. "If you think hard, an' figger close enough, I guess 'most
any puzzle can be solved."