In the blaze of a midsummer noonday the old Manton house was hardly true
to its traditions. It was of the earth, earthy. The sunshine caressed it
warmly and affectionately, with evident disregard of its bad reputation.
The grass greening all the expanse in its front seemed to grow, not
rankly, but with a natural and joyous exuberance, and the weeds
blossomed quite like plants. Full of charming lights and shadows and
populous with pleasant-voiced birds, the neglected shade trees no longer
struggled to run away, but bent reverently beneath their burdens of sun
and song. Even in the glassless upper windows was an expression of peace
and contentment, due to the light within. Over the stony fields the
visible heat danced with a lively tremor incompatible with the gravity
which is an attribute of the supernatural.
Such was the aspect under which the place presented itself to Sheriff
Adams and two other men who had come out from Marshall to look at it.
One of these men was Mr. King, the sheriff's deputy; the other, whose
name was Brewer, was a brother of the late Mrs. Manton. Under a
beneficent law of the State relating to property which has been for a
certain period abandoned by an owner whose residence cannot be
ascertained, the sheriff was legal custodian of the Manton farm and
appurtenances thereunto belonging. His present visit was in mere
perfunctory compliance with some order of a court in which Mr. Brewer
had an action to get possession of the property as heir to his deceased
sister. By a mere coincidence, the visit was made on the day after the
night that Deputy King had unlocked the house for another and very
different purpose. His presence now was not of his own choosing: he had
been ordered to accompany his superior, and at the moment could think of
nothing more prudent than simulated alacrity in obedience to the
command.
Carelessly opening the front door, which to his surprise was not locked,
the sheriff was amazed to see, lying on the floor of the passage into
which it opened, a confused heap of men's apparel. Examination showed it
to consist of two hats, and the same number of coats, waistcoats, and
scarves all in a remarkably good state of preservation, albeit somewhat
defiled by the dust in which they lay. Mr. Brewer was equally
astonished, but Mr. King's emotion is not of record. With a new and
lively interest in his own actions the sheriff now unlatched and pushed
open a door on the right, and the three entered. The room was apparently
vacant--no; as their eyes became accustomed to the dimmer light
something was visible in the farthest angle of the wall. It was a human
figure--that of a man crouching close in the corner. Something in the
attitude made the intruders halt when they had barely passed the
threshold. The figure more and more clearly defined itself. The man was
upon one knee, his back in the angle of the wall, his shoulders elevated
to the level of his ears, his hands before his face, palms outward, the
fingers spread and crooked like claws; the white face turned upward on
the retracted neck had an expression of unutterable fright, the mouth
half open, the eyes incredibly expanded. He was stone dead. Yet with the
exception of a bowie-knife, which had evidently fallen from his own
hand, not another object was in the room.
In thick dust that covered the floor were some confused footprints near
the door and along the wall through which it opened. Along one of the
adjoining walls, too, past the boarded-up windows was the trail made by
the man himself in reaching his corner. Instinctively in approaching the
body the three men followed that trail. The sheriff grasped one of the
outthrown arms; it was as rigid as iron, and the application of a gentle
force rocked the entire body without altering the relation of its parts.
Brewer, pale with excitement, gazed intently into the distorted face.
"God of mercy!" he suddenly cried, "it is Manton!"
"You are right," said King, with an evident attempt at calmness: "I knew
Manton. He then wore a full beard and his hair long, but this is he."
He might have added: "I recognized him when he challenged Rosser. I told
Rosser and Sancher who he was before we played him this horrible trick.
When Rosser left this dark room at our heels, forgetting his outer
clothing in the excitement, and driving away with us in his shirt
sleeves--all through the discreditable proceedings we knew with whom we
were dealing, murderer and coward that he was!"
But nothing of this did Mr. King say. With his better light he was
trying to penetrate the mystery of the man's death. That he had not once
moved from the corner where he had been stationed; that his posture was
that of neither attack nor defense; that he had dropped his weapon; that
he had obviously perished of sheer horror of something that he
_saw_--these were circumstances which Mr. King's disturbed intelligence
could not rightly comprehend.
Groping in intellectual darkness for a clew to his maze of doubt, his
gaze, directed mechanically downward in the way of one who ponders
momentous matters, fell upon something which, there, in the light of day
and in the presence of living companions, affected him with terror. In
the dust of years that lay thick upon the floor--leading from the door
by which they had entered, straight across the room to within a yard of
Manton's crouching corpse--were three parallel lines of
footprints--light but definite impressions of bare feet, the outer ones
those of small children, the inner a woman's. From the point at which
they ended they did not return; they pointed all one way. Brewer, who
had observed them at the same moment, was leaning forward in an attitude
of rapt attention, horribly pale.
"Look at that!" he cried, pointing with both hands at the nearest print
of the woman's right foot, where she had apparently stopped and stood.
"The middle toe is missing--it was Gertrude!"
Gertrude was the late Mrs. Manton, sister to Mr. Brewer.