Date: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00
Description: I couldn't find out much about Chapin, other than his dates (1879-1938) and that he published between 1910 and his death, originally leaning to adventure stories, later towards crime. This is an "isolated house in a snowstorm" murder story.

THE IMPERFECT TWINS

Carl Mattison Chapin

(1879-1938)

1934

Contents

Chapter 1 | Chapter 2

Chapter 3 | Chapter 4

Chapter 5 | Chapter 6

Chapter 7 | Chapter 8

Chapter 9 | Chapter 10

Chapter 11 | Chapter 12

Chapter 13 | Chapter 14

Chapter 15 | Chapter 16

Chapter 17 | Chapter 18

Chapter 19 | Chapter 20

Chapter 21 | Chapter 22

Chapter 23 | Chapter 24

Chapter 25 | Chapter 26

Chapter 27 | Chapter 28

Chapter 29 | Chapter 30

Chapter 31 | Chapter 32

______________

Chapter 1

IT struck me at the time, I recall, as a strange coincidence that Cobbden Claine should have been included in that tragic list of guests. Criminology was rather a hobby of his. He had won some distinction for his part in the solution of several murder cases. And so it was the most natural thing in the world that I should take the puzzling parcel straight to him. Besides, he also belonged to the Bakers clan; he might have received one, himself.

He had returned, that day, from an absence of several weeks. I had a vague idea that he had been South. Our intimacy rarely extended to matters, like that, in which we were not both involved. I laid the small, wooden box before him on his study desk.

“Did you get one of these?” I asked.

He looked up with the wry grin which expressed his normal frame of mind toward me and my affairs. “Hah!” he said. “So Cousin Daniel designs to take you, also, for a ride. Yes, I have one.”

He produced it from a drawer and laid it on the desk. The two boxes appeared to be identical. Claine drew back the sliding cover of mine. A folded letter and a bit of map lay on top. Beneath them, nested in cotton, was a small blue .32-calibre revolver. Claine broke the weapon. It was empty and he laid it aside. “So far, exactly the same,” he commented. “Let’s see what your letter says.”

It was typewritten on a sheet of plain bond paper and dated at Boston, two days earlier. It had come by first class mail. Claine read in a low voice, as though subconsciously:

“You are a great-great-great-grandson of Zera Bakers who built the Mountain Tavern on the stage route above Larrett, Vermont, about 1806. By the death, last October, of Benjamin X. Bakers, proprietorship of Mountain Tavern has lapsed. There are matters of vital interest to certain members of the family of whom you may be one.

A meeting of those presumptively interested will be held at the Tavern on Friday, January 13th, and succeeding days. You are invited to attend. Drive to Worthington, Vermont. From there, follow the route to the Tavern marked in red on the enclosed map. Absolute secrecy is essential to the success of the meeting.

You must be prepared for mud, ice, snow and extreme cold in the mountains. I enclose a revolver for your reassurance while driving through the forests.

This letter constitutes adequate notice of the meeting and releases the undersigned from responsibility for any results that may accrue through failure to attend.

Yours in the Clan,

DANIEL BAKERS.”

The signature was in red lead pencil. It was wavering and uncertain. “Presumably the left-handed signature of a right-handed man,” Claine said. “I think the letters are, word for word, the same— except for the routes.”

“Who is Daniel Bakers?”

Claine leaned back in his chair and laughed, in a sort of despairing manner. “Angels and ministers of grace, Dink! Am I supposed to keep track of all the Bakerses even unto the third and fourth generations? Apparently this Zera person is the common ancestor who gives you and me our infinitesimal but precious kinship. I should say Daniel might be just another cousin, considerably removed. This map of yours is not like mine.”

We both bent forward to examine it. It was a square cut from a standard road-map of the state. The route from Worthington to the Tavern was traced in the same red lead as the signature of the letter. At junction points of the remote mountain roads, conspicuous landmarks had been indicated. Claine took his map from the box and laid it beside mine.

“You see,” he went on, “our cousin sends me around through New Hampshire and across the mountains from the east. Your route goes straight up along the west side— but, look, the old stage road runs up the mountain from Larrett to the Tavern, direct. He is sending you on up the valley to Worthington and back along the summit— a fifty mile detour— and tough going on those mountain roads, I betcha.”

“The stage road may not be passable,” I suggested.

“Likely to be as passable as that route of yours, this time of year. Secrecy, my son. Splitting up the party and sending us by devious back routes. Taking extraordinary precautions to keep the natives from getting wind of the affair. A right thorough chap, this cousin Daniel. Pique the old curiosity, does it?”

“I don’t know,” I said, doubtfully. “What do you make of it?

“What do you make of it?” Claine retorted. “It may be a hoax— but why? He must have put considerable time and money into these guns, for instance. They are identical but they were not bought at the same store; probably not in the same city. The serial numbers are wide apart. If he is arming a party of any size he must have done considerable travelling to avoid leaving an impression of wholesale buying anywhere. That would be needless trouble if he were merely planning a practical joke.”

“I don’t see why he should do it,” I said. I presume it sounded peevish. I dislike to be puzzled. I am an instructor in mathematics. I am accustomed to dealing with plain facts. Claine had been a Professor of Psychology when I came to the University, five years earlier. No doubt that explained his fondness for imaginative speculation. It did nothing to explain our friendship, if it could be called friendship. At times I thoroughly detested his hateful view of things. I said: “Why send revolvers by first-class mail? Anyone can get them. I should say somebody was having us on.”

“POSSIBLE, of course,” Claine conceded, “but who? So far as I know, our mutual calling-list contains no practical joker of the first magnitude. You have an overly literal mind, my son. When you find yourself unable to reduce a thing to a formula you are prone to go spunky and spill milk on the rug. Life, you know, is not logical like your friend, Euclid, and the justly venerated multiplication table. People do the most incomprehensible things. Were it otherwise, the race would long since have become extinct through the natural workings of boredom.

“Let’s be charitable to Cousin Daniel. Maybe he was just naturally feeling contrary and illogical at the moment. I’ve known even mathematics teachers to get that way. Maybe he felt himself out of tune with the textbooks. Or he may be suffering from a delusion that he knows his own business best. He may consider it advisable not to project his own personality too conspicuously into the proceedings, whatever they are to be. For some purpose as yet unrevealed to your acute omniscience, he may wish to have his guests uniformly equipped with indistinguishable weapons. Anyhow, he’s offering you a week-end away from the dull monotony of two-times-two. Don’t be an ingrate.”

“You mean you are taking this thing seriously?”

“Quite. I’m a good bit excited about it.”

“You are going?”

“But yes. I wouldn’t miss it for worlds. Something tells me it is going to be right in my line. You know my methods, Watson.”

It was true I had played Watson to his Holmes through three quite messy murder cases. I never could understand why I did it. Violence is obnoxious to me; particularly murder. I am not at all acute in such matters. I rarely understood anything Claine was doing until he explained in words of one syllable. It was excessively dull, I thought. Yet I followed him through all manner of wearisome and unpleasant episodes; even into actual danger. It had once seemed necessary for him to kill a man in my presence. He was entirely cold-blooded about it; practically elated. But I can assure you it made me extraordinarily ill.

Claine’s whole philosophy of conduct, as a matter of fact, was cynically unmoral. As to murder— the phrase, “justifiable homicide,” was, he would say, grossly tautological. Homicide of any kind was not merely justifiable but meritorious. It was his professed conviction that all human beings are, by instinct, criminals; that the law-abiding citizen is an abnormality, an artificial product of self-repression or compulsion or cowardice. Of course he could not propound such a doctrine as that to his classes. So he had retired, to devote himself to study of the pathological and criminal as the true keys to human conduct. He ridiculed my protests— he was always laughing at me. He would say:

“You are twenty-eight; I’m past fifty. I suppose there was a time when I had your simple faith in our fellowmen. If I ever did, I’m jolly well over it. I suspect you never will get over it. But, my son, if you really believe your natural impulses are not what the world calls “criminal,” it is simply because you haven’t the intelligence or the courage to stand off and analyze them objectively. I know mine are, and I sometimes wonder if it is worth the effort to keep them repressed.”

When he talked that way I was absolutely sure I disliked him. Yet I could never be quite certain he was not making game of me. It was incredible that anyone could be so horrid. He was sitting there with his massive shoulders hunched forward, his great hands clasped and stretched out before him on the desk. His face always had suggested to me the first rough modeling of a sculptor’s clay. It was twisted now in his characteristic grin— satirical, devilish, alluring. Suddenly I knew I was going with him. Apparently he had known it, right along. He said:

“All right, then; advise your boss on the consecrated campus that you’ve got to bury your grandmother. Then go buy you a couple of red-flannel union suits. It can be cold in those Green Mountains.”

I proffered a last gesture of resistance: “The thirteenth is only day-after-tomorrow. Isn’t that pretty short notice?”

“Too short to give the invited guests a chance to check up on Cousin Daniel. You will note that the boy is good. He knows his stuff. Nothing effusive about his agenda; no golden promises; just a fillip for the imagination; just enough mystery to stir the sporting blood of the Bakers Clan— you’d be surprised what a lot of sporting blood is circulating furtively in the arteries of the stolid citizenry. Only a fundamentally criminal mind like my own would read anything sinister in this thing. Only a stuffy academic mind like yours would disdain it. Pack your arctic togs and I’ll pick you up at nine, tomorrow morning. I’m sure Cousin Daniel won’t mind if we go together.”

I did not want to go. My whole soft, sedentary being revolted against the hardships of a long winter drive over mountain roads, the nights in a deserted backwoods tavern, the heaven-knew-what nameless things that might happen there.

“Oh, all right,” I said gloomily— and, in spite of everything, I look back upon those words as the most fortunate I ever uttered.

Chapter 2

THERE were broad patches of ice on the road, but Claine drove like Jehu. He always drove that way, though I had never before ridden with him on icy roads. When I cringed, his face wrinkled in that saturnine grin of his. But the cringing was purely instinctive, subconscious. I had, as always, perfect confidence in his ability to master any contingency.

I think his power never impressed me so strongly as when I sat beside him and watched the easy, flexible mastery of his hands upon a steering wheel, the impassive strength of his craggy profile and the solid poise of his head upon his neck. It may have been my weakness paying tribute to his strength. Possibly it was hero-worship of a sort. His psychological mind, no doubt, could have supplied a technical term for it.

As usual, he drove an open car without curtains— a huge, long, gray thing, half engine, with a roomy driving-seat and a foreshortened tonneau, behind. It was characteristic of him never to parade his extraordinary virility as a virtue. He did not thump his chest and proclaim his superiority to the weaknesses of other men. He said closed cars were stuffy, and let it go at that.

IT was dark when we reached the hotel at Albany. In spite of heavy clothing and furs, I was chilled to the point where I could scarcely stand. Claine seemed to be suffering merely from normal driving rigor. He hunched his shoulders, flexed his knees and was as good as new.

At breakfast next morning he looked at me mischievously over his newspaper. He said:

“Blizzard in Chicago last night; beginning to snow in Buffalo; 18 below zero at Bismarck; 32 at Winnipeg. My private forecast for Vermont is, ‘Heavy snow followed by clearing and much colder; cold wave.’ What was it Cousin Daniel said— be prepared for snow and extreme cold in the mountains? He knows his stuff, that lad.”

“He also said, mud,’ I retorted, unhappily.

“A week earlier or a week later, he might have been right. This mountain weather is vagarious. The point is, he was sure to be right, whatever happened. A far-seeing chap. I have a hunch we won’t catch Cousin Daniel napping, very often.”

“I don’t like it,” I insisted.

“Tut, tut! Of course you’ll like it. You’re always disliking things in advance but you eat ’em alive when you come to them. Why not give yourself a break, once in a while?”

There was a haze of cloud and a feel of snow in the air as we drove away. Three hours later we were rolling through the hamlet of Larrett, on a paved main route. At our right, the mountain range loomed bulkily like a rampart. Claine waved a hand at it.

“The stage road probably follows that notch. Half an hour and we’d be at the Tavern. And here we go on a fifty-mile detour— and it’s beginning to snow. Not considerate of Cousin Daniel.”

“Oh, damn Cousin Daniel!” I said, devoutly. ‘“Let’s go the shortest way.”

“And have all Larrett, pop-eyed, pursuing the rakish gray murder car with New York license, right up the mountain to the secret rendezvous? There are moments, Dink, when I lose hope of making even an adequate Watson out of you.”

I shall never forget those thirty-five miles of mountain roads, after we left the pavement at Worthington. Snow blurred the view ahead. It masked the ruts and holes, the hummocks and rocks and thank-ye-ma’ams beneath the wheels. The experience would have been a disturbing one, at best. With Claine’s driving it was plain terrifying.

“How much more of this?” I asked, glumly, after an hour or so. Claine grinned.

“They don’t call this rough, in Vermont. Wait till we strike a real back road, in a minute— ah, here we are!”

He wrenched the car around a corner that had leaped at us out of the swirling snow. When I had swallowed my heart, I asked, “Do you know where we are?”

“I know where we are on the map, if it’s telling the truth.”

“But there were supposed to be landmarks at the corners.”

“But certainly,” he said. “Didn’t you see them?”

I hadn’t. I was completely lost, though I had studied the map with some care. He had scarcely glanced at it but he seemed to know the route perfectly. I said, mournfully, “I don’t see how you do it.”

“It’s a gift,” he explained. “Every seventh son of a seventh son has it.’

The car pitched over a hogback and went yawing down the declivity.

“Hell!’? Claine exploded. He jerked home the emergency brake. On locked wheels the car slewed twice its length. It turned completely around, rolled head-on into the ditch and came to rest with its nose in the bank. Claine calmly threw out the clutch and freed the gears. He leaned out over the door.

“Fool of a woman,” he roared, “is it essential that you make a Juggernaut out of my car?”

“Fool of a man’”— The first sound of that voice in the storm gave me the strangest sensation I have ever experienced. It seemed to ripple and tinkle and laugh. It made the flesh creep— or crinkle— along my backbone, the way it does when I look down from very high places.

“Fool of a man,’ it retorted, “is it essential that you do seventy on a one-way road in the fog?”

“Or, in other words, fifteen,” Claine said, severely. “Not an adequate excuse for scaring my car to death. And your fog, you know, is clouds; you’re on a mountain.”

BY this time I had swallowed my heart again and focussed my eyes, and I could see her, a slender figure standing squarely in the middle of the road, indistinct in the murk of the afternoon storm. She came forward.

“Your nerves are frightfully jumpy, aren’t they?” she remarked. “I was all set to hop out of the way, if I had to. I merely wanted to make sure you stopped.”

“You got your wish,” Claine said, grimly. “Would it be impertinent to ask why?”

“Not at all— we’re wrecked.”

“Oh, I’m sorry,” Claine exclaimed. He switched off the spark and swung out of the car. I descended on my side and we advanced to meet her.

On the instant that I saw her clearly I thought she was the most wonderful thing that had ever come into my life. After all, that may not be saying much. What with my work and a certain unconquerable shyness, my life had been singularly free from contact with women. I doubt if I had ever spoken familiarly with half a dozen of them. The eruption of this one into my existence quite dazed me. I was aware only that her eyes laughed and that her cheeks were pink from the cold. It made my flesh creep in that peculiar way, just to look at her.

“Anyone hurt?” Claine asked.

“Marmaduke is rather mashed up— he’s our Ford, you know; or he was our Ford. But my sister and I are quite all right and there isn’t anybody else. She’s sitting on a rock, back there, being glum about things. You see, I happened to be driving when we cracked up. It’s a perfect godsend to her.”

By now I was becoming aware that her nose tilted upward a little. Her mouth was very small and her lips very red. She had on a tight helmet of heavy cloth, buckled under her chin, and a heavy sheepskin jacket. She wore riding breeches and moccasin hunting boots with red-topped lumberman’s socks. Her right hand was bare. She held it pressed against her side. The long driving-mitten projected oddly from it. I was wondering about that mitten when it suddenly fell to the ground. It had been concealing the barrel of a revolver which pointed straight at Claine’s midriff.

“One has to be careful,’ she explained. Claine studied oe weapon with interest. He extended his hand. He said:

“Let me see that gun, please.”

“As you were!” she retorted. “I am quite capable of managing this gun without help.”

“The good old Bakers spunk,” Claine commented. “But I assure you my intentions were of the most honorable. You see, we have guns like that and quaint letters from Cousin Daniel. Does that make sense to you?”

“It confirms my suspicions. Only folks crazy enough to fall for that letter would be crazy enough to be up here in this weather.”

“Are we to infer that you question Cousin Daniel’s good faith?”

“Well, I’m not quite ready to say that— I don’t want to judge him hastily. It’s merely that I’m not handing the family jewels over to him, just yet.”

“But you’re here— why?” Claine demanded.

“My sense of family responsibility, if it is of interest to you. The kid sister was bound to come— the Lord knows why. I figured I might as well come with her as stay home and worry myself to death. She’s tolerably helpless.”

“It apparently doesn’t run in the family,” Claine said.

“If you mean me, I’m rated fairly rough in the neck. But Frieda just curls up and dies on the slightest provocation. She wouldn’t touch this gun to save her life. So I came along to tote it for her. And I can assure you that I am a conscientious worker.”

“Fate has heaped the blessing of your presence upon our undeserving heads,” Claine said. “I trust we shall not prove unappreciative. Now, if you will so kindly transfer that premonition of sudden death from my gastric area to your coat pocket— I thank you. I’ll see if the car has sufficiently recovered from its fright to emerge from iding.’

He persuaded the car to emerge, with considerable fuss and scuffling of tires, for the ditch was difficult and the snow, by now, several inches deep. We drove slowly along until the ruins of the lamented Marmaduke hove in sight, very forlorn in the ditch with a crushed wheel and other ailments. Skis and snowshoes projected from the rumble.

“Anticipating winter sports, I note,” Claine said.

“If nothing worse,” the girl answered, shortly. Then on called: “Yoohoo, Sister Ann; come on for a buggy ride.’

The figure seated on a rock surveyed us in silence. Presently it arose, shook off its mantle of snow and advanced. I was startled. In features and in garb it was an exact duplicate of the girl in the car, except that it wore a scarlet toque.

“Ah, twins,” Claine observed.

“So I hear— every few minutes,” the girl rejoined, tartly. I was beginning to suspect that she was seriously put out about something. I was quite sure that her eyes wanted to twinkle and her lips wanted to laugh, but she would not let them. Now I noted, also, that the lips of the other girl were a thin, hard line and that her eyes were dull with a look of pain. She did not make my flesh creep. It struck me, suddenly, that her face had in it something of the cynical bitterness and disillusionment that I so lamented in Claine. They were staring at each other. Some clashing message seemed to be passing between them, as between hostile souls that have a common ground of understanding. Plainly it irritated the girl in the car.

“Suppose we get acquainted,” she said shortly. “This is Frieda and I am Syd-For-Short.”

“Eh?” Claine said, a bit blankly. “Oh yes, Frieda and Syd-For-Short. Is the rest of it, by any chance Bakers?”

“It is not,” she retorted. “We have to be a bit careful about telling our right name— so many people recognize it.”

“Quite so. Incog, and that sort of thing. We shall respect your reticence. I am none other than Cobbden Claine, in person.”

He spoke with an air of mock impressiveness. I knew he was merely being nutty, the way he often does. But the girl seemed really puzzled. She said:

“Am I supposed to register amazement and fall on my knees? Are you somebody terribly important that I ought to know? Or are you guying me?”

Claine grinned at her. He said, “You’d be surprised. The meek and blameless personality in the tonneau,” he went on, “is Dink, better known to the police and the telephone book as Professor Artemas Laurence Randall.”

“I’m only an instructor, really,” I explained.

“It doesn’t matter,” she said, in a quite kindly way. “It’s a ripping name; I like it. That other one is perfectly terrible. It sounds like Hollywood. Can’t anything be done about it?”

It was the first time she had spoken to me, or looked at me, really. It made me glow, sort of. Claine retorted, “It gets my mail to me.” His grin had grown broader. He actually enjoyed that sort of thing. Of course I knew it was merely one of his ways of getting information without seeming to. But I was afraid it might be prejudicing the girl against him.

“Well,” he said, in a different tone, “let’s trans-ship cargo and proceed.”

Chapter 3

I SAT with Frieda in the tonneau. She had not yet spoken. I found her rather terrifying, but it seemed as though courtesy demanded something of me. I said:

“Do you know anything about this— er— party?”

She turned a cold, impassive stare upon me. “No,” she said, “do you?”

Her voice had the same timbre as Syd’s but there was an unpleasant difference. It was clear she did not expect an answer. She turned away and resumed her fixed stare at Claine’s shoulders. I was quite content. I needed nothing more than Syd’s round little head in the front seat. I was becoming quite convinced that, under the tight helmet, there would be golden hair with a glint of copper in the sun.

We had not much farther to go which was as well, for the snow was falling faster and the road becoming more difficult. We emerged from a forest of spruces into a broad clearing of meadow lawn, on a knoll. There stood the Tavern. There was nothing sylvan in its appearance. It had the look of a broad, forthright village inn. Across the front was a double gallery. The upper deck sagged drunkenly as though it might plunge headlong at a touch. There was a deep L at the rear. The windows were small-paned and some of them were stuffed with rags. Here and there a blind was missing; others swung by a single hinge. In the shelter of the galleries traces of white paint remained but the exposed walls were weathered black. Mountain Tavern was not yet a ghost but it bore the even more ghastly aspect of a ruined strength upon which death has set its mark. From the three chimneys white columns of wood smoke rose in the still air.

“Someone has beaten us to it,” Claine said. He sounded disappointed. Syd shivered elaborately.

“Oooh, grisly!” she groaned in a whimsical tone. “I wish I hadn’t come.”

CLAIN’S he manner had changed. He was more serious than he was accustomed to be, even in serious times. There were three cars on the lawn, at some distance from the Tavern. Claine drove off the road and parked near them. The Tavern leered at us obscenely, through staring windows. At one of them I caught a glimpse of a face but it drew back before I could see it clearly.

“Wait here,” Claine said to the girls.

“We’ll go with you,” Frieda retorted, in her sullen voice. Claine turned to stare at her. Again their eyes seemed to clash in a sort of hostile understanding, as they had back there beside the road. He shrugged his shoulders and started toward the side door in the L, close to the gable-end of the main structure. He glanced back at the girls and whispered to me:

“Where’s your gun?”

“In my coat pocket,” I said, “but— but I’ve never fired one.

His mouth twisted a little. “You probably won’t have to fire it, but keep a hand on it. Anyhow, don’t start shooting until you’re sure I can’t swing it alone.”

That alarmed me. Claine had never before deemed it essential for me to have a gun. I felt inadequate to be of any assistance, whatever. He swung the door open rather violently, I thought, and stood tense, staring in. Then he laughed, shortly, and stepped forward to the threshold. We were looking into a deep, narrow entry. It was gloomy but still not dark. Over our heads was a stairway to the second floor; at our right, under the stairs, a closed door leading to the L— to the kitchen, I presently discovered. A latch clicked softly and the door moved open a crack.

With his right hand in his pocket, Claine stepped forward and thrust the door sharply inward with his foot. Something blocked it. There was a guttural grunt of pain. Claine kicked the door again and it swung wide, revealing a squat figure of a man in a dingy white apron. He was clutching one hand over an eye. I suspected, at once, that he had been spying on us through the crack in the door. Claine snatched the hand away.

“Who are you,” he snapped, “the cook?”

The man’s face wore an ugly look. He was a powerful man with enormous shoulders and a swarthy skin. His black hair was long and unkempt. He looked like a foreigner and spoke in a sort of broken English. His eyes glared at us hostilely but his manner was deliberately subservient.

“Yes, sair,” he said.

“Are there other servants?”

“No, sair.”

“Is your master here?”

The man lifted his shoulders in an eloquent shrug. “I do not know. There are three gentlemen there.” He pointed across the entry to another room. It led to the front corner room— the one from which I had seen the face peering. Claine did not turn. He kept his eyes on the man.

“What do you mean— you don’t know your master? Who hired you?”

“I do not know. It was in ze lettaire— sev’n-eight days. It say, get food, come here yesterday, cook for maybe eight-ten-twelve. That is what I know.”

“Who wrote the letter?”

“Daneel Bakaire— I do not know heem.”

“Cousin Daniel, to be sure,” Claine remarked. “He sent you money? A check?”

The man had rubbed the sting out of his bruised face. There was no softening of his hostile expression but his tongue was loosening up.

“No check— t’ree bills— t’ree hunder’ doliar. He say, buy food; keep change for wages. I buy meat— vegetables— aigs— plenty food for long time.” He gestured vaguely toward the regions behind the kitchen. “I t’ink mebbe he brudder Old Zave Bakaire— mebbe son.”

“Zave?” Claine said, doubtfully. “Oh, that would be Benjamin X.-for-Xavier— that’s a funny name to go with Benjamin and Bakers. You knew old Zave?”

“Yes, sair. I know Old Zave since I was boy. I leev down road— eight-twelve mile. Cook for Old Zave, here, t’ree-four year. He die las’ fall— vair’ old. Second cook, now, for beeg summaire hotel in valley. I come yesterday— build fires, sweep, make beds— fill lamps

“Plenty of beds?” Claire queried.

“Plentee bed— plentee clean sheet— plentee blanket.” For the first time his face lightened into something resembling a smile. ‘“Steenk,” he said, “damn steenk. Mot’ balls. Vair’ good beds but floor, she vair’ dirtee. Plastair all over— spider web. Vair’ dirtee. I sweep ’em vair’ clean, sair.

It occurred to me, suddenly, that all this might be anything but reassuring to the young ladies. I looked over my shoulder. Frieda stood outside with her back turned, tracing figures in the snow with her boot. She appeared entirely uninterested. But Syd was close behind us with her head thrust forward, not to miss a word. Her eyes were bright but they revealed no anxiety.

“Where do you sleep?” Claine asked the man.

“Here.” He jerked his head, sidewise. “I bring down camp bed for sleep by kitchen stove. Upstair’ she too col’— no stove upstair. Bimeby come beeg col’— after bleezard come beeg col’, I sleep by stove.”

For some time it had struck me as strange that no one came from the front regions of the house to investigate our arrival. Nor had I been able to detect a sound from behind the closed door. I was becoming nervous about it. I plucked at Claine’s sleeve and whispered to him.

“Don’t you think we ought to go in and see who these others are?”

“In a minute,” he replied, under his breath. “I like to mop up as I go along. Not always safe to leave a loose end lurking in your rear.” He turned back to his questioning.

“You say you don’t know any of these men in there?”

“No sair— nevair.”

“What are they like?”

“One vair’ beeg man; black beard; vair’ dirtee; vair’ drunk. He say is doctor. One leetle roun’ man wit’ glasses — not w’ite, like dees’— he thrust a stubby finger close to my eyes— “brown. Vair’ nice man— vair’ pleasant. One beeg, tall boy; vair’ onhappee; nevair speak; sit all time in chair an’ look at floor; all time smoke cigarette.”

“Sounds like a congenial gathering,’ Claine commented. “And what do folks call you?” His voice was the quintessence of casual friendliness.

“Little Zave—”

The man broke off, sharply, with a whistling intake of his breath. He struck Claine viciously in the stomach with his fist.

“Dammmitt!” he screamed, shrilly. “Damn your soul!”

He leaped backward through the door; slammed it in our faces. I heard a bolt shoot home with a metallic clash.

Chapter 4

IN that turbulent sixty seconds two things amazed me. The first was the cook’s unprovoked attack on Cobbden Claine. The second was Claine bent double over his folded arms, gasping for breath. I had never before seen him when he was not master of himself. I cannot describe my feelings. One might feel the same way if he saw his favorite cinema actress with her false teeth out. It was shocking, indecent.

But he regained his poise quickly. He straightened up and drew several deep, labored breaths. Then he smiled, in his crooked way.

“A man is no stronger than his solar plexus,’ he said.

“What was the matter?” I asked. I felt bewildered.

“Something annoyed him. At a guess, I should say he hadn’t planned to tell his name. He’s handy with his fists— he hit me exactly where it would do the most good.”

It was then that I first had the feeling of something really sinister surrounding us. This venomous cook was a tangible thing, a mysterious thing to be feared. The revelation of Claine’s vulnerability left me with a feeling of helplessness. I had always depended on him so utterly.

I expected him to force his way into the kitchen and settle that matter at once. Instead he suddenly turned and thrust open the door that led to the living quarters of the Tavern. Once more, the opening door encountered an obstacle and a grunt of surprise and pain. I saw a small, rotund, elderly man wearing dark glasses. He was rubbing his shoulder. He made an effort to smile.

“You opened it so suddenly,” he said. His voice was apologetic, ingratiating, with a note of unctuous insincerity. Claine’s tone was elaborately suave. He said:

“So sorry. I seem to be extraordinarily clumsy about doors. Hope I didn’t hurt you much.”

The little man’s smile became more unctuous. He rubbed his hands, as though washing them.

“Not at all,” he said. “I should have been more careful. I thought I heard someone cry out— and there was quite a draft, you know.”

HE looked meaningly at the outer door which had remained open, with the snow drifting in. Claine herded us into the room and closed both doors behind us.

This, apparently, had been the office, or bar, of the Tavern, The building faced south toward the road and the living rooms stretched along that side.

The bar was at the southeast corner. It had a chimney and fireplace set out from the wall, with an old-fashioned, built-in bar behind them in an alcove. Across the alcove stood a wooden sink with tin wash-basins, a pail of water and towels on a roller above it.

“Do we have to wash there?” Frieda asked, sullenly.

“Yes, ma’am,” the little man said, washing his hands in pantomime. “There is no plumbing in Mountain Tavern. Wash bowls and pitchers in the bedrooms— and an axe to break the ice.” He cackled in enjoyment of his wit. “We shall have to bring water from a spring in the back yard. Splendid water— splendid.”

His voice trailed off as though the mechanism had run down. Claine and I were warming ourselves at the great, wood-chunk stove which stood before the empty fireplace. I sensed the sudden tautening of faculties which always signalled the awakening of his interest. But he gave no sign. He turned slowly and introduced us.

“The young ladies are not quite ready to reveal their identities. But I suppose we are cousins of a sort and may call each other by our first names.”

The little man cackled enormously. “Cousins!” he panted. “Cousins! That is good— splendid— splendid.” His voice ran down, again, but he reanimated it. “Oh, of course— I am Cousin Charles— Charles Bakers. Welcome, cousins, to the family castle. It is a trifle run down but perhaps we shall find a way to refurbish it— a way to refurbish it.”

His laughter forced him to pause. I should have said the place was more than a trifle run down. The paper had peeled from the walls. In places even the plaster was gone. Mr. Bakers was mastering his emotions.

“The— uh— parlor, if I may say so, is more comfortable,” he said, washing his hands energetically. “Cousin Dick and— uh— the Doctor are in there. Shall we join them?”

We followed him into the adjoining room. It was somewhat larger than the bar and heated, likewise, by a chunk stove.

“The dining room,” said Mr. Bakers, waving an arm in the prideful manner of a cicerone displaying the ruins of a glorious past. “There was famous food here, in its day— famous food.”

Again I felt that tensing of Claine’s interest but he said nothing. The room contained an extension dining table of black walnut and a heterogeneous collection of wooden chairs in various stages of dilapidation. At the rear was a broad service window, closed by a sliding panel. It led to a service pantry in the L, off the kitchen. The room was less forbidding than the bar, but bleak enough.

Mr. Bakers opened another door, leading into a small, white-painted entry. The front outer door was at our left; steep stairs at our right. I became aware that a wind had arisen. Curiously enough it came from the South. The snow was falling more thickly and whirling in clouds and eddies. An icy breeze circled about our ankles from beneath the weathered door.

“The— uh— ‘Ladies’ Entrance,’” Mr. Bakers explained, with a smirk and a cackle. “The parlor is more comfortable— much more comfortable I am sure.”

We crossed the entry and passed into the final room of the series, at the southwest corner. Here, at last, were signs of human occupancy. The room was carpeted. Small oval rugs were scattered here and there. The wall paper appeared to have been put on within the memory of living men. The windows had winter casements, outside. There was a large kerosene lamp, with a reading shade, on an old, round mahogany table. The stove was of the base-burner coal variety though it now was burning wood. In a corner was a white iron cot, without mattress. The chairs, though worn, were comfortable. Compared to the rest of the place the room had a warm, homelike atmosphere.

A young man sat by a front window, smoking a cigarette gloomily and staring out into the storm. I knew that he was the one I had seen at the window of the bar, as we approached. He gave no sign that he was conscious of our entrance but I saw Frieda stiffen at sight of him. Syd looked at her curiously; but that was all.

Slouched in a rocking chair, with his feet on the stove, was the only other occupant of the room. He seemed as tall as Claine, and bulkier, but he was fat where Claire was lean and hard. He was, as the cook had described him, “Vair’ dirtee,” but it was an air of general unkemptness rather than anything specific. His black hair was long and disordered. His face was bearded to the eyes. Yet, behind the mask of slovenliness, one could discern that intangible something that marks the physician. He made a gesture of drowsy welcome with the glass of colorless liquid which he held slackly in his hand. It did not need the half-empty bottle on the floor to tell us what he was drinking. The close air was redolent of bath-tub gin. Mr. Bakers presented the pair, in his diffuse, cackling way:

“This stalwart young man is Cousin Dick— Cousin Richard Delchester— pronounced ‘Delster’— am I correct, Cousin Dick?

The boy— he might have been twenty— turned toward us without interest. He stared dully at Frieda. She returned his look. In a moment he resumed his moody staring from the window. He was a lean, fit-looking youngster, with a clean-cut face and yellow hair that waved a little.

“And this,” our guide resumed, “is Doctor Bakers— uh — Doctor, I don’t believe you have told me your first name — we’’re going to call each other by our first names, you know.”

The Doctor’s scalp moved, perceptibly, as though he were knitting his brows beneath their thatch. He appeared to be giving the matter his serious attention. He considered his glass with solemn concentration. He took a sip from it, hiccoughed gently and shook his head in a discouraged way. “Doc,” he asserted solemnly, admonishing the stove with his glass of gin-and-water. “Doc— Doc— just Doc.”

He took another sip and relaxed.

“Doc,’’ Claine assured him, “is an honored name. Many men have borne it.— And, now, if we might have a glimpse into that room, yonder?”

“Yes, yes, to be sure,” Mr. Bakers chirped. He tripped across and opened a door in the rear wall. We crowded forward. Of all the forlorn things we had seen, this was the most forlorn. It was a long, quite narrow room, dark and full of an odorous, mouldering chill which defies description. Fallen plaster powdered the floor, in a litter of rubbish and disintegrated furniture. Incongruous amid the wreckage, stood one, undamaged wooden chair. Some of the windows were broken. One was closed completely by a sheet of wall-board.

“This used to be the dining-room annex,” Mr. Peters was explaining. “It connects at the end, there— those folding doors. It hasn’t been used for years.”

I was peering over Syd’s shoulder, lightly touching it. Suddenly a quiver ran through her and she drew back against me.

“For heaven’s sake, come out and shut the door,” she wailed, in that whimsical way of hers; but, this time it was not wholly whimsical. “Oh-o-oh, what an unutterably gorgeous place for a murder!”

Chapter 5

YOU could have heard a pin drop. It was rather ghastly. Mr. Bakers’ mouth had dropped open. I felt sure there was fear behind those dark glasses.

Syd seemed a little bewildered by the effect of her words. Frieda and Claine were regarding her intently, with expressionless faces.

By chance, I looked at the Doctor. He was peering at us and I had a fair view of his eyes. They were keen, alert; sharply at variance with the half-tipsy somnolence of his manner. As they met mine he dropped the lids over them, again, and sipped from his glass. Frieda spoke. In the circumstances her drawling words were really quite sinister:

“Well, Cousin Claine, what is your opinion of the chances of a first-class murder? And who is going to murder whom? It would be helpful to know.”

The look in Claine’s eyes puzzled me. Frieda could not meet it. As she turned away he laughed, shortly. He said:

“Your guess is as good as mine. Dink and I will fetch your togs from the ear.”

OUTSIDE, the wind was blowing guns, in howling gusts. Along the foundation of the Tavern it had swept the ground clean. Claine seemed interested in this. The path extended across the front and around to the rear, beneath the windows of that eerie, ruined annex-room. “Curious,” Claine said. We returned to the side door and resumed our journey to the cars. The snow was drifted, knee-deep, but it was light as feathers in the dry cold of the mountain air. Claine shouted:

“A blizzard, right enough. ‘After bleezzard come beeg col’? The family conclave bids fair to last some days.”

He opened the door of a car and pushed me in. “Let’s size up the relatives. Has it struck you that most of them seem to have something on their minds? A bit confusing, isn’t it? Little Zave, now, and his quaint adventure in dialect.” He chuckled, grimly. “It improved as he went along but he ought to have rehearsed in advance.”

“He looks like a foreigner,” I objected.

“Not foreign enough to talk that way. A strain of French Canuck— maybe a bit of Indian; the cheek-bones might indicate that. Still, I’ve got high cheek-bones myself. His name might indicate a connection with Old Zave. Is he one of us? If so, why has Cousin Daniel stuck him into the kitchen? At any rate, we can be fairly certain he isn’t Cousin Daniel.”

“You said Cousin Daniel wouldn’t be here.”

“I merely said he probably wouldn’t make himself conspicuous. But you may be sure he’ll be here— if he isn’t, already. It might be the Doctor. But he’s such a clumsy actor. He isn’t putting a bit of imagination into it. I feel sure Cousin Daniel would get more out of that role. At any rate he would have wit enough to discipline those eyes, or keep them covered, as Mr. Bakers does.”

“Mr. Bakers might be Cousin Daniel,” I ventured.

“If any of the three is Cousin Daniel, he’s the one,” Claine conceded. “He seems to have assumed the role of host. He appears to know something about the Tavern. Did it strike you that he was a bit frank about that? Logically Cousin Daniel would conceal such things, wouldn’t he? Unless it were a deliberate part of his game.

“The young folks must have been brought here for some purpose. It’s difficult to connect them with the others. They may have speaking parts. They may be merely atmosphere or plot complications. Dick and the Frieda girl seem to be nourishing grouches or soul-tragedies of some sort. Their reasons for lugging them way up here remain to be revealed.

“Syd— she has me guessing. She says she came to guard her sister. But she’s canny and she’s subtle— she’s cynical — she may be sinister.”

“But, Cobb,” I protested, “it’s Frieda that’s cynical. Syd is just-— well, she’s just simple and straightforward—”

Claine patted me on the shoulder in a soothing manner. His eyes twinkled. He said:

“Yeah, I sort of like her, myself. Just the same, she is the strong one. Frieda is delicious but she’s undisciplined — she’s all flesh and emotions. She’s the simple one. Syd is complex. Actually I rate her a very sweet and hardboiled and desirable young person. But she has the brains and the subtlety and the nerve to play this Cousin Daniel role as well as the best of us. That leaves only you and me to be accounted for.”

“But we know ourselves, don’t we?” He had thrown me into one of my disliking moods. His attitude toward women was disgusting.

“Do we, Dink? I sometimes wonder. In any ease, the others don’t. They may be quite as curious about us as we are about them. After all, we’re rearing a rather ponderous structure of doubt. It may prove to be nothing more than a novel week-end stunt. Let’s hope Little Zave knows his way around among the skillets.”

As we stepped down from the car we heard a muffled shout from up the road, “Ahoy-y-y the Ta-a-a-avern!”

“Ha! A belated guest,” Claine said. “Possibly Cousin Daniel in proper person. Ahoy-y-y!” he shouted through cupped hands.

“Yo-ho-ho and a bottle of gin. What ship is that and where the hell are you?”

Claine chuckled. “Presumably not Cousin Daniel, unless he, too, is play-acting. Couple points off your starboard bow,” he roared.

“Heave to; I’m coming aboard,” replied the voice, a somewhat husky baritone, drawing slowly nearer. “Where is the damn Tavern, anyway— or isn’t there any?”

I don’t know just what I had expected to emerge from the storm on the tail of this nautical melange. What arrived was a short, round gentleman in a raccoon coat and a bowler hat. He wore thin gloves and oxford shoes without rubbers. He carried a well-worn kit-bag adorned with the labels of foreign travel. His moon-like face bore plain signs of over-eating, over-drinking, late hours and elaborate grooming. He dropped the bag with a gusty “whoof!” that was as redolent as one of the Doctor’s exhalations. He said:

“Not meaning to cast aspersions on your personalities. you’re a hell of a disappointment. I expected to find a Tavern, complete with bar, and all I get is a couple of other fellows. Got anything to drink? I had the locker stocked for a ten-day cruise but it went down with the good ship, a couple miles back. Here I am, high and dry— what I mean, dry. Got anything to drink?”

“The Tavern is at hand,” Claine said, consolingly. “We shall take pleasure in leading you to it.”

“Please consider the insults withdrawn, sirs. Are you members of the tribal week-end? I’m Gladstone Conlord— William E. Gladstone Conlord, if you want to be snooty about it. When you’re feeling Rotarian, call me ‘Gladdy.’ ”

Claine introduced us. “Charmed, I’m sure,” said Conlord. “Now, if you’re quite rested, what say we shove off for the moaning bar. The air cools so rapidly up here, after the sun goes down.”

During our absence, Little Zave had set the dining room table. It looked, really, quite attractive with its white cloth and two shaded lamps. The parlor, in the soft light of the big lamp seemed positively homelike. At sight of the Doctor and his glass, Gladdy uttered a delighted, “Ah!” and clapped his hands. The bearded one regarded his approach with trepidation.

“From this moment you are marked and set apart as my favorite relative,” the newcomer assured. “No, no; I insist upon it.”

He skilfully transferred the half-filled glass from the Doctor’s hand to his own lips. When he lowered it, it was empty. He sighed, “A-ah!” and smacked his lips. “Sir and favorite relative, you have saved my veritable life.” He extended the glass. “Fill ’em up again and I shall drink the health of my benefactor.”

The Doctor surveyed him reproachfully. With one hand he snatched the now almost-empty bottle from the floor. From the shadow beyond his chair he lifted, with some difficulty, an oblong black bag. It was somewhat larger than a physician’s bag and, manifestly, heavy. It and the bottle he clasped to him with protective arms. Gladdy stared at the bag with rapt eyes.

“If I’m dreaming this, for Gawd’s sake don’t wake me up,” he implored. “Ah, sir, you and I shall sing duets.”

“No,” the Doctor responded, in a slow, protesting voice. “No— No— No— No, no, no, no—”

The door opened and the sharp, sullen voice of Little Zave announced:

“Suppair, she iss readee.”

Chapter 6

WHEN we straggled into the dining room, Little Zave was setting the food out on the broad shelf of the service window. “You sairve yourselfs,” he rasped, and thrust the slide shut.

The Doctor glanced from the slide to the door of the bar. He chose a seat on the far side of the table, facing both these means of access from the kitchen. Mr. Bakers performed the same routine and sat down beside him. Claine, with a glance of whimsical significance at me, took the third seat on that side.

To the others, position apparently meant nothing. Frieda dropped into the nearest chair, at the end of the table, with Syd next her. Gladdy made a movement to the chair beside Syd, but I was too quick for him. He had to content himself with the place on the other side of me. Beyond him was Dick, at the end of the table, with his back to the slide. Facing each other, he and Frieda indulged in a contest of long-range glowering.

I have never eaten a more toothsome meal. How Little Zave accomplished it, alone, on a small wood stove I do not pretend to explain. There were tender steaks, baked potatoes and other vegetables; raised biscuit, glazed and crisp on the outside and light as air within; jellies and a relish; milk in pitchers and drip-coffee in three-storied pots. Even Dick attacked the food as though he had no state of mind, whatever. Frieda, alone, seemed superior to gastronomic temptation.

As we were finishing, the service slide squeaked loudly. The right hands of the three men opposite me went down into the pockets of their coats as though they were executing a drill. We looked. The slide was open an inch or two. As we watched, a bit breathlessly, a hand appeared in the opening and pushed the slide back.

“Deesairt— you are raidee?” Little Zave asked, with that puzzling mixture of subservience and ugly defiance in his voice. He sat two pies on the shelf and closed the slide. The three right hands reappeared above the table. There was a quite audible drawing of breath. I rose and fetched the pies. They were of sliced apple, brown, crisp and piping hot. Claine sampled his wedge with an “Ah” of satisfaction. Then he said:

“Well, Cousin Daniel, isn’t it time you emerged from anonymity? Your guests would like to express appreciation of such hospitality.”

There was a mighty roving of eyes but, so far as I could see, no sign of guilt in any of them. It was, finally, Mr. Bakers who spoke. “There is no Daniel Bakers, Cousin— uh— Cobb— at least, not in the branch of the family to which— uh— I suppose we all belong.”

“No Daniel?” Claine exclaimed, with innocent amazement. “But who wrote the letters— I assume you all received those curious letters; and the guns?”

There was no answer. Every face, except the Doctor’s and Frieda’s, revealed keen interest. Even Dick had come alive. Mr. Bakers bent forward to peer at Claine, across the Doctor.

“Ah,” he said, “who wrote the letters? It would be interesting to know— heh-heh— yes, indeed, interesting to know who wrote the letters.”

“You seem to know all about the family,” Claine suggested.

“Oh, no, no; not all; really not much,” Mr. Bakers protested. “We all come down from Zera Bakers, I suppose. Cousin Richard and Cousin Dink— heh-heh— Dick and Dink — that’s good, isn’t it— Dick and Dink— the Delchesters and the Randalls trace back to Aaron Bakers. He was Zera’s son. They would not be connected with the Tavern. That came down through another son, Benjamin— all Benjamins in that line, right down to Benjamin X. But the young ladies now— you haven’t told us your last name— —”

“Sh-h; let sleeping skeletons lie,” Syd broke in. “If it’s of interest, my mother’s great-grandmother was Zera Bakers’ daughter. That takes us quite a way from the Bakers family and the Tavern, doesn’t it?”

“Yes, yes; quite a way. Let me see, that would be Hepsibah Bakers, wouldn’t it? And, Cousin Gladstone, the Conlords trace back to Hepsibah, don’t they? Yes, yes; I’m quite sure they trace back to Hepsibah.”

“NOT knowing, can’t say,” Gladdy replied. “Bakers in the family somewhere, way back, that’s all I know. Never got much excited about it till this baby took charge of my blood-pressure.” He leaned across my lap toward Syd. “Just close enough to be nice and not close enough to come between us, eh, Cousin Syd?”

He suddenly dragged her head down and kissed her, clumsily, right under my chin. I don’t know what happened to me. I have never experienced such a terrible feeling. It was fortunate his position deprived me of full use of my arms. I tried to free them and, in doing so, struck him rather violently on the throat with my elbow. It threw him back into his chair and almost upset him. He clung to the edge of the table. He was gasping quite alarmingly. His face was positively purple. As soon as he could speak he turned on me. He was fearfully angry.

“What the hell you trying to do, Randall?” he shouted.

“I was trying to get my arm free to hit you,” I was entirely frank about it. I could scarcely control my voice. I still wanted to hit him. Claine laughed aloud. He rarely did that. He said:

“Attaboy, Dink! You tell ’em. Hearken, Cousin Gladdy; you see what he does when he’s warming up. Don’t make him show his stuff. These professors are poison when you annoy them.”

“You mind your own damn business,” Conlord shouted at me, again.

“I propose to,” I told him. Syd squeezed my arm. It made my flesh creep, sort of. My face burned. I did not dare look at her. It was a great relief when the Doctor spoke.

“Bet you don’t know who I am,” he said, thickly. He had thrust his face close to Mr. Bakers’. That one seemed fascinated, almost frightened. His cheeks went very white. He simply stared. “Bet you, nobody knows who I am.”

Mr. Bakers continued to stare at him. He was breathing rapidly. When he spoke, his voice was not quite steady. He said:

“Oh, no. No, indeed. I haven’t the remotest idea who you are, Doctor. Zera Bakers had two younger sons— possibly you and Mr. Claine trace back to them.”

THE Doctor settled back in his chair. “Told you,” he growled, in tipsy defiance. Claine was watching him with a faint, speculative smile. “Told you. Nobody knows who I am.” He fumbled on the floor for his bottle and emptied it into his glass. He filled this with water from Claine’s. “Told you,” he repeated, and resumed his sipping. Mr. Bakers drew a deep breath and relaxed. Claine said to him:

“Does your genealogical knowledge give you any clue as to why we have been brought here? Do you know anything about this inn-keeper with the half-breed name— this Benjamin Xavier Bakers— I assume the X. is for Xavier?”

Mr. Bakers seemed to be acutely uncomfortable. His fulsome artificiality had dropped away. He glanced at the Doctor, covertly. Finally he said, hesitating as though he doubted the wisdom of it:

“Yes, he was my uncle. My father was his half-brother; his older brother. Grandfather married a French-Canadian girl for his second wife— I think she had Indian blood, too — a great many of them lived around here while they were logging these woods. Benjamin Xavier was their son. That accounts for the name— they compromised on it. My father felt that Uncle Benjamin tricked him out of the Tavern and the money— Grandfather had quite a good deal of money. I was born here in the Tavern— but we moved West when I was a baby,” he added, hastily, with a quick glance toward the Doctor. “I really know only by hearsay.”

“Your grandfather’s first wife— your grandmother— was white— was Yankee?” Claine asked.

“Most certainly!” Mr. Bakers declared with astonishing explosiveness. ‘There never was alien blood in the Bakers family until Grandfather married that woman. None of us had anything to do with Benjamin or his family.”

He broke off sharply as though he had said more than he intended. Claine demanded:

“What family did he have?”

“I could only speak vaguely of that— I am not sure I ought to mention it, at all, before— uh— young ladies. Uncle Benjamin was not a nice man— a half-breed, you see.”

“The facts of life are no secret to us,” Syd observed. Mr. Bakers seemed but little reassured. It was, palpably, something deeper than embarrassment that bothered him.

“Well— uh— of course this is all hearsay, you understand, entirely hearsay. I know nothing, myself; I was not here at the time ”

“We understand. Get on!” Claine broke in, irritably.

“Well— uh— Uncle Benjamin— we never called him that; we always spoke of him as Old Zave— he had— uh— an affair with a half-breed girl— a French-Canadian-Indian— at least that’s the story I’ve heard. She was a young girl; sixteen or seventeen, perhaps—”

“How old were you, then?” Claine asked. His voice, now, was disarmingly smooth and matter-of-fact.

“1?” Mr. Bakers seemed a little startled. “Why— uh— let me see— I suppose— yes, I must have been about eighteen or so, myself. But of course I was— uh— living out West. This is all hearsay, you understand.”

“Of course,” Claine agreed. “I was merely trying to date the period. It has no bearing.”

Just then I happened to glance at the Doctor. He was watching the speakers covertly but very keenly out of the corners of his eyes.

“Please go on with your interesting story,” Claine said.

“Oh, yes— well— uh— let me see— oh, yes, there was a child; a boy, I think. As I recall the story, the mother took him and ran away.”

“What made her run away; do you know?”

“No-o, I don’t think I ever heard the reason— disgrace, shame, something like that, I should say.”

“Do you know what the boy’s name was?”

“Why— uh— now, of course, he must have had a name— yes, yes, he must have had a name. You see, they disappeared and I don’t know that anyone has heard of them since. In our family the boy was always referred to as the— uh”— he looked apprehensively at the twins, swallowed twice and continued— “as— uh— ‘The Unfortunate.’ You see, there had never been a— uh— never been an illegitimate child in the family so the name was— uh— quite— uh— distinctive— yes, yes, quite distinctive.”

“The story is that, later, Old Zave had another— uh— affair with the girl’s younger sister. There was— uh— another child— another boy. She named him after his father— just Zave— they called him ‘Little Zave’ ”

I must have made some audible sound, for Mr. Bakers stopped, abruptly, and everyone looked at me. It alarmed me. I was terribly afraid I might have upset Claine’s plans. So I said, “Awfully sorry; cramp in my leg.”

It was a great relief to see a smile appear on Claine’s faces He said: “Perspicacious fella! Get up and walk it off.”

“It’s all right, now,” I said. “Go on, Mr. Bakers.”

I felt Syd’s hand on my arm and her soft breath in my ear. She whispered, “Perspicacious fella!”

“Well,” Mr. Bakers resumed, “Old Zave finally married — a real Yankee woman. They had one son and I think they named him Benjamin, after his father. The mother died and the boy either ran away or Old Zave drove him out. I think that’s all the children he had.”

“Amply sufficient, I should say,” Claine observed. “Let’s see if we’ve got this cosmopolitan family-tree straight. Our Benjamin X. Bakers— Old Zave, as you call him— was one quarter Indian. He had three sons by three different mothers. The oldest, ‘The Unfortunate,’ and the second, Little Zave, were sons of half-Indian sisters. They must have been about as much red as white. Both were illegitimate. The youngest, Benjamin, was born of a Yankee mother in lawful wedlock. He was the only legitimate offspring. All three disappeared without trace in infancy or boyhood.”

“No,” Mr. Bakers corrected. “I’ve always understood Little Zave lived here with his father after his mother died. Seems to me I’ve heard that Benjamin came back for a spell, too— must have been twenty, twenty-five years ago. I think there was some sort of a scandal— I can’t just remember— something about a girl; somebody Old Zave had here or she may have been one of the guests— I’ve forgotten, exactly. Seems to me Little Zave tried—”

He clipped off the sentence with significant abruptness. His breath was rapid. He said, in a tone of forced lightness and with the trace of a quaver in his voice:

“Let’s not go into that— not a pleasant thing to talk about on a night like this.”

“Not pleasant,” Claine said, with crisp incisiveness, “but possibly important to know. Go on— Go on!”

Mr. Bakers looked uneasily about. His manner suggested an animal seeking a way of escape from a corner.

“Go on!” Claine insisted. “Tell us the rest of it!”

“Well— uh— I’m not sure— uh— really, I have no knowledge of this, you know. Quite possibly it didn’t happen, at all— just a story. I think I heard, once, that Little Zave tried to kill Benjamin— stabbed him in the shoulder. Then the girl committed suicide and the two boys ran away — they must have been eighteen or twenty, then. That’s all I ever heard about it.” He seemed immensely relieved to be through with it. He hurried on. “After that I think Old Zave lived here, more or less alone, until he died. The place must have been falling down around his head. He had plenty of money— but he liked it up here, alone. He was wild— a savage.”

Mr. Bakers settled back and drew a deep breath. Syd was first to speak. “A right spiffy yarn for us Paleface Bakerses— but it doesn’t solve the dark mystery of who wrote those letters and why.”

“It may offer a starting point,” Claine said. He turned, suddenly, on Mr. Bakers. “Of course Benjamin, as the only legitimate son, inherits the Tavern and the money— does he?”

The look of anguish returned to the little man’s face. He seemed, again, to be seeking a way of escape. But he could not evade Claine’s eyes.

“Why— uh”— he began, unhappily, “I— uh— really I don’t know. Seems to me I heard that Old Zave left a will. I can’t remember— I can’t be sure— but seems to me he cut Benjamin off and left everything to ‘The Unfortunate.’ If ‘The Unfortunate’ died without heirs, Little Zave was to inherit.”

“Disinheriting his legitimate son, entirely?” Claine demanded. “Why should he do that?”

“Well— uh— I don’t know, of course. But I’ve always understood that first girl— ‘The Unfortunate’s mother— was the one he really loved—”

The door from the bar opened, suddenly, and Little Zave tramped in. “You go in parlair!”” he squealed. “Damn, mebbe you t’ink I been sit up, all night.”

Half amused, half startled, we thrust back our chairs. Claine, as he rose, drawled, “Cheerio, little— uh-h— one; you can sleep late in the morning.”

For a moment, I had thought Claine was going to speak his name. I realized that he had done that deliberately, to tease the man. I realized, too, that, during our long discussion of Little Zave, Claine had not revealed his knowledge of the cook’s identity. I wondered why.

Chapter 7

IN THE parlor, we took up the matter of sleeping quarters. Claine said: “I suppose the rest of you are all fixed. Dink, we ought to have scouted the upper regions before dark.”

“I must apologize,” Mr. Bakers said. “I have taken the best bedroom— over the bar. It is the warmest— the big chimney, you see. Ancient bones and joints, you know— heh-heh— I’m sure you will pardon an old man’s selfishness. The Doctor, I think, has the second-best, over this room. It has the other chimney. Not the corner— you’ve taken the little corner room, haven’t you, Cousin Dick?

“No doubt Cousin Cobb and Cousin Dink are going to sleep together. It has its advantages, this weather. The temperature is falling very rapidly. I’m afraid we are in for a very severe cold-snap. Perhaps you would care for the room between the Doctor’s and mine— at the head of the front stairs— unless, by chance, the young ladies have taken that?”

“We are sleeping at the extreme end of the L,” Syd began, crisply.

“Ha!” Gladdy burst in. “What is the number of your room, please?”

I wanted to hit him. My nature turned topsy-turvy whenever he directed his leering eye and his suggestive tongue at Syd. However, she appeared to require no aid from me. She produced that blue revolver from the hip-pocket of her breeches— produced it so suddenly that the rest of us gasped and Cousin Gladstone drew back quite hastily. Holding it by the barrel, upside down, she extended the butt. He reached forward, somewhat doubtfully, as though to take it. With her forefinger in the trigger guard, she snapped the butt smartly back into her hand. The muzzle pointed straight at Gladdy’s stomach. He instinctively thrust out his hands.

“Don’t!” he protested. Claine snapped at her, “Never do that movie stunt with a loaded gun! Put it down!”

“It isn’t a movie stunt, Great-Gran’ther,”’ she said, calmly. “I learned things from a practical gun-toter on a dude ranch, last Summer. They called me ‘Six-Gun Syd’ and,” she fixed Gladdy with a glittering eye, “no man offered to get fresh with me.”

Without warning, she turned and opened fire on a white spot in the wall. She fired deliberately, with no appearance of concentration. Fascinated, we watched three black spots appear in the white, one below the other; then three more in a parallel column. It was a veritable six-spot of spades. She lowered the gun and turned to Gladdy.

“Our room is the northeast corner of the L. You don’t suppose there is any danger of your mistaking our door for yours?”

“Not the least in the world,” he assured her. “I am moving my lodgings one room farther from yours, in case you start dealing faro on the wall in your sleep.”

The girls went out and the others straggled after— the Doctor last. Mr. Bakers lingered, as though he rather hated to go. He said, “The bedroom lamps are on a shelf in the kitchen. Listen to that wind! This is a genuine mountain blizzard.” The cackling, hand-washing manner had dropped from him. I found him no more appealing than before but there could be no question that his new seriousness was sincere. “I wish you a good night,” he said, “but I doubt if any of us will have one.”

When he had gone, Claine dropped into a chair with a “whoof!” of relaxation.

“Let’s talk a minute— where’s your gun?”

“Gosh,” I said, in some dismay, “it’s in the bar— in my overcoat— I forgot it.”

He spread his arms in a characteristic gesture of disgust. “Well, get it! And keep it on you!”

I crossed the entry and opened the door of the dining room. I had taken, I think, one step inside before I saw Little Zave. He stood at the far end of the table, facing me, with his back toward the closed service window. He was poised, tense. His right arm was extended, a little backward, in a throwing attitude. A hunting knife lay in the palm of his hand.

The slide behind him creaked sharply and opened an inch. He spun ’round with a low cry, guttural, like a beast in anger or in fear. There was a flash and a roar. Little Zave staggered backward toward me, wavered an instant and then folded down on the floor into a small shapeless heap.

Chapter 8

MY MIND seems to be poorly attuned to emergencies. According to Claine I quite instinctively do the wrong thing. So, now, I rushed to the slide. The handle was on the other side. I could get no finger hold. I was clawing at the thing when Claine burst into the room. He said, “Dink!” There was a peculiar quality in his voice. “Did you shoot him?”

“No,” I said. “Somebody did it through this window. I think he was preparing to throw a knife at me.”

“At you!”

“In my general direction.”

“Humph,” he grunted. He stooped and felt for Little Zave’s heart. “Dead— as the justly-celebrated doornail. And the world not noticeably poorer, I suspect.” That sort of recalled my attention to immediate events. Actually, I had been participating in a murder. I hadn’t realized it. I was astonished. Claine was looking at me with a funny speculative expression. He said:

“Just exactly what were you planning to do when you got that slide open?”

I thought that was a silly question. “How should I know — I didn’t get it open, did I?”

He broke out with one of those rare, low, gurgling laughs of his. He only does that when he’s really amused. He said: “Your psychology just doesn’t make sense. Weren’t you scared?”

“Of course I was scared,” I retorted— with some heat, I fear. I don’t like to be laughed at. “I wouldn’t have bothered, at all, if I hadn’t been scared, would I?”

He laughed again. “A proper poltroon, and no mistake!” His manner changed, sharply. “Not a laughing matter, Dink. Get that gun of yours.”

He stepped past me and threw open the door of the bar. “All right,” he said, when he had examined the room. I got the revolver from my overcoat pocket and followed him back to the parlor. He lowered the wick of the lamp and we sat down in the shadows of the corner behind the stove. With our backs safely to the inner wall we could command every entrance— at our left, the door from the entry; at our right, that from the deserted annex-room; in front, the windows in the two outer walls.

It was extraordinarily unpleasant. The wind, now, was hurling itself against the Tavern, like the onslaught of a screaming beast. The structure trembled, at times seemed actually to reel under the attack. It creaked, and rattled and slammed. When the wind-beast paused to gather strength, the drawing of nails, from the frost, sounded like the snap and crackle of burning wood.

“I suspect our Syd-For-Short would call this a gorgeous night for a murder,” Claine said, grimly. “Well, we’ve had one.— Dink, six people left this room within two minutes of that shot. Logically the last one out is the initial suspect— Mr. Bakers— though that is merely tentative. Some of the others certainly heard it— perhaps all of them. Not one has given a sign—”

In a lull of the gale we heard the crash and tinkle of breaking glass. It seemed to come from the room above us. We sat tense; straining our ears. Then the wind came roaring and shrieking back.

“Well,” Claine began—

There was a sudden, heavy tramping of feet, over our heads. A door slammed. The steps came hurriedly along the corridor and down the front stairs. Claine drew his revolver and I imitated him. “I doubt we need them,” he said. “He has something urgent and unpremeditated on his mind. The Herr Doktor, at a guess.”

The door opened and the Doctor peered in, holding a lamp above his head. He carried his right hand pressed to his chest. It was bundled in a towel.

“Anyone here?” I never should have recognized his voice.

“Only Cousin Dink and me, holding hands in the gloaming.”

“Ah, Claine, I hoped I should find you; have you got a first-aid kit? I tripped and stuck my hand through the window— clumsy.”

We pocketed our revolvers and rose. “I have one,” Claine said. “You mean to tell me you haven’t! It’s in my bag, in the bar. Let’s go out there— no use messing up our living room,” he added, as the Doctor seemed to hesitate.

Unostentatiously, Claine herded him on ahead. He passed the body of Little Zave without looking at it but, suddenly, he turned his head and looked back at it. He stopped dead.

“Good God!” he gasped, “Who’s that?” He stared at Claine; then at the body, again. It was not quite convincing.

“That, on the face of it, is our paragon of a cook,” Claine replied. “Heaven help us, we shall have to eat our own cooking, now.”

“But— but who shot him?”

“Was he shot?” Claine asked, blandly. “There’s a knife beside him. Press forward, Doc. You have more need of medical attention than he has.”

The stove in the bar had burned low. The damp chill was beginning to reclaim the room. Claine threw in the last chunks of fire-wood from the floor. He observed, gloomily, “We’ll have to rustle our own wood, too. Most extraordinary poor judgment, killing the cook and houseman at this stage of the game. Let’s see the damage, Doc.”

It was a mean but not really nasty cut, across the back of the hand, close to the knuckles. Claine mixed an ice-cold lysol solution in a basin and unceremoniously soused the wounded member in it. “Do you insist on formal hocus-pocus, or will a gob of goo and a rag suffice?” he inquired not too solicitously.

“Anything to keep dirt out,” the Doctor said, crossly.

Claine smeared the cut with ointment, bandaged it deftly and trimmed the job with adhesive tape. “If it doesn’t develop appendicitis or pyorrhea, you may pull through. Drop in again, in a couple of days— it you’re still alive.” His manner changed. “Come into the parlor, Doe. I’d like your views on this thing.” The Doctor shook his head.

“It’s your funeral, not mine,” he grated.

“Meaning just exactly what?”

“Merely that you were down here and I wasn’t.”

“Oh, my mistake,” Claine said. “I hope it won’t give you bad dreams.”

There was an ugly gleam in the Doctor’s eyes. I noted that he did not again look at the body of Little Zave. As we reached the entry there was a rush of footsteps in the corridor above. It faded out in the direction of the L. The Doctor swore in his beard and started hurriedly up the stairs. Claine gazed after him with a puzzled look. Then he relaxed and grinned at me.

“So-ho, Cousin Gladstone has finally accomplished his purpose on the Doctor’s private stock. Wonder if he got it all.”

HE led the way into the parlor. We could hear the Doctor tramping back and forth above us. “Checking up his losses,’”’ Claine chuckled, “and barricading that broken window against the wintry gale.”

Presently the footsteps ceased. Claine waited some time. He drew an electric torch from his pocket and tiptoed to one of the front windows. He held the light against the upper sash and pressed his face against the glass below it, shading his eyes with his hand. He manipulated the light; shifting his own position. Finally he snapped off the beam and came softly back. There was a rather grim smile on his face.

“Low visibility,” he said. “Wait here.” He was gone five minutes or more. When he returned his clothes and his bare hands were covered with snow. He carried a revolver with snow still clinging to it. “Boy,” he grunted, “it’s cold out there. Must be under zero.”

I looked at him dumbly. “Out in the drift; under Doc’s window,” he explained. “Smell of it.”

I sniffed cautiously at the muzzle. The smell of freshly burned powder was very distinct.

Chapter 9

WE returned to our seats in the shadowy corner behind the stove. Claine said: “What do you make of that? Is the Doctor man plain dumb or is he playing some game we can’t fathom?”

“You think that’s his gun?”

“Of course it’s his gun; who else’s could it be? The question is, why was he so desperate to get rid of it, all of a sudden? If that had been part of his plan he would have found a less dangerous way. Something must have happened after he fired the shot— on the way to his room. At a guess, I should say he met someone— probably Mr. Bakers — in the kitchen or on the stairs or in the corridor, upstairs. Someone who might connect him with the shooting.

“He probably worked himself into a panic. No doubt he expected Mr. Bakers to burst in on him with a posse comitatus. Silly, of course. But his nerves are pickled in gin. It wouldn’t take much to start them jittering. He had to dispose of that incriminating gun, immediately. Presumably he couldn’t get the window open so he smashed a pane with the butt. It’s not easy to throw a revolver through a nine-by-seven hole and make it carry across a six-foot piazza. No wonder he cut his hand.”

“Why did he come down?” I said. “He didn’t act panicky.”

“There may have been method in that,” Claine rejoined. “Pain, a shock clears up panic, sometimes. He had a broken window and a cut hand to alibi. Excellent strategy to come right down and alibi them, on his own initiative. Perfectly bland about it, you see. Just a little accident; never had the remotest idea there was anything to conceal. Rather takes the wind out of our sails, in advance. Also, you know, he pins the accusation on us before we can pin it on him— hands us the defensive. His mind seems to be dumb and keen in streaks. Our problem will be to determine which is which.”

“But why should he shoot the man?”

“It would look as though our plot was beginning to unfold, wouldn’t it? Suppose we accept the main features of Mr. Bakers’ story. Old Zave had three sons— ‘The Unfortunate,’ Little Zave and Benjamin. ‘The Unfortunate is heir under the will. That lets him out; no need for him to remove anybody. Little Zave was the alternative heir. Benjamin was disinherited but, presumably, the property would go to him if both his brothers should die without direct heirs. That gives him a strong motive for eliminating them. He has eliminated Little Zave. Now he will shoot ‘The Unfortunate’ and collect the inheritance. Delightfully simple. Too simple to require all this stage-setting.

“For another thing, where is ‘The Unfortunate’? If he’s here, he hasn’t revealed himself. You four youngsters are definitely out— you’re too young. That leaves Mr. Bakers, the Doctor, Conlord and me as possibilities. Mr. Bakers, I should say, is too old. More likely he is what he says he is— a cousin; a son of Old Zave’s older brother. Furthermore, what earthly reason could ‘The Unfortunate’ have for attending this party? The letters hinted vaguely at matters of interest concerning the Tavern. But the Tavern is his, under the will. All he has to do is sit tight. Why should he come up here and let his unsympathetic relatives heckle him— or worse? And how come Cousin Daniel to be throwing a family party in ‘The Unfortunate’s’ Tavern? And why were you four young people invited? You don’t seem to fit into the picture Mr. Bakers painted— and that’s the only picture we’ve got, so far. I suggest we leave our minds wide open, for the time being.”

Well, positively, here I was in an atmosphere of wholesale murder, and taking it quite as a matter of course. I am, by instinct, timid and aloof. I abhor violence. The mere thought of such things turns me cold; makes me quite sick, really. And here I was, taking it as a matter of course. It was simply astounding. I don’t know, even yet, whether my faculties had become numbed or whether I had subconsciously adjusted myself to the environment. After a time, Claine said:

“You know, Mr. Bakers is not wholly without motive. He told us, you remember, that his father felt Old Zave had tricked him out of the Tavern and the money. They might revert to him if the three brothers were eliminated. It strikes me the Doctor missed a bet, there. If he had kept his head and held his tongue, I think suspicion would have turned naturally to our loquacious cousin. He was the last to start upstairs. Theoretically, he was in the best position to fire the shot. I can think of only one person in a better position.”

“Who?”

“Who, indeed, but the young gentleman at whom Little Zave was in the act of hurling a knife when the lamentable event occurred?”

“You mean me?”

“But yes. Who are you— in this neck of the woods— that you should be above suspicion? Who is to corroborate the testimony of a desperate and terrified homicide that the shot came mysteriously from behind the window slide?”

I had not thought of that. We had always been part of the police machinery. Our position had been assured. I had not realized the difference in our status here. It turned me quite cold.

“And our Cousin Syd,” he went on, quite cynically, “how do we know she hadn’t ambushed herself to defend your guileless innocence? Believe it or not, the mother-heart of that lady is inclining in your direction. Certainly no one in the party has revealed anything remotely approximating her skill with lethal weapons.”

“But, Cobb,” I protested, “that’s nonsense about Syd. She wouldn’t hide in that pantry to protect me.”

“Let your literal old heart be lifted up,” he said. “Nobody is going to suspect your Syd. I don’t believe anyone would even suspect you. I should hate the job of convincing a jury that you had committed homicide. What I’m getting at is that I am the only one in the house who couldn’t have done it. But nobody knows that except you and me. Incidentally, I have a hunch Little Zave intended that knife for me, not you.”

“Why?”

“Probably for the same reason that he outraged my solar plexus instead of yours— whatever that reason may have been. Well, he’s dead; that’s one problem off our minds, thanks to the Doctor.”

“What are we going to do about him?” I asked. “He may be planning to shoot someone else.”

“We might arrest him,” Claine said, with deceptive seriousness. “Under the authority of my reputation— if any — as an amateur criminologist. Or he might arrest us on the ground that we were, as he intimated, in the most favorable position to commit the deed. Also we are, at the moment, in possession of the weapon with which it appears to have been committed.”

“Well,” I said, uncertainly, “I think we ought to watch him, or something.”

Claine pondered that. “Might be a good idea. We’ll consider it. I think he’ll be safe enough for tonight—”

Chapter 10

THAT night vigil was a nightmare. The wind increased in violence until it seemed impossible the Tavern could stand against it. In spite of double windows and the roaring stove, the air of the parlor grew steadily colder. On our journeys for wood, we found the dining room and the bar all but uninhabitable, the kitchen frigid, the woodshed arctic. Sometimes we made these journeys together; sometimes alone.

I wondered how those above stairs could endure to sleep in the intolerable dank cold of the ruined chambers. I learned, later, that they did not sleep. They endured the evils above lest they flee to worse below. We sat, for the most part, in silence. It must have been about two o’clock when Claine said:

“It occurs to me that Little Zave, in his present estate, adds practically nothing to the cheeriness of our refectory. Suggest we use him to start a mortuary in the woodshed.”

It was a most unpleasant task. Claine covered him with a sheet from the cot the man had prepared for himself in the kitchen. The thermometer outside the window of the bar marked two below zero. The parlor, for a time, seemed warm and cozy. Presently the lamp began to burn low. We searched the woodshed for oil but found only a small can of it. There were traces of kerosene where a larger can had been.

“It would be enlightening to know just who took that oil out and hid it in the snow,” Claine said. “Not reassuring, what? I shall guard my flashlight very carefully.”

“I haven’t got one,” I said, unhappily.

“For their own sakes, I hope the others have,” Claine rejoined.

To conserve oil we extinguished the other lamps, downstairs. There were lamps burning in the corridors above but we decided against going up. “Some of those folks might be over-quick on the trigger. Not worth the risk,” Claine explained.

At the first sign of daylight we kindled a fire in the kitchen and started water heating for coffee. We had just filled the drippers— or whatever you call them— when Syd and Frieda came down. Their faces were drawn and white. There were circles under their staring eyes. They were shivering and, positively, their teeth chattered. Claine burst out:

“Good Lord! You poor kids! Give them some coffee, Dink; quick!”

I offered a cup to Frieda. She could not hold it. Claine took it. He put his arm around her shoulders and sat down beside her on the edge of the cot. She leaned against him and sipped from the cup he held. I had a strong desire to do the same thing for Syd. But I couldn’t, quite. I brought her a chair and knelt beside her, holding the cup. Her hair, after all, had turned out not to be golden. It was brown. But it was beautiful. It was wonderful. It was incredibly soft— sort of mousy. Once her head dropped against my shoulder, just for an instant. Her hair brushed my face. It was like being stroked with spun silk. My heart jumped and my blood pounded in my ears. But she straightened right up, again. Claine said:

“You children didn’t undress and try to sleep between those damp sheets?”

He looked from one to the other until Syd nodded, sullenly. Claine wagged his head. His voice was gentle, paternal:

“I meant to warn you— but events were a bit thick. Dry stockings, you know, and sleeping boots— if you’ve got them. And all your clothes. Roll yourselves up in the blankets. And keep the windows open. Sleep warm, that way, in any temperature. We’ll have the blankets downstairs and dry them out.”

Syd was leaning against me, a little. I wished she would lean harder. I wished I dared put my arm around her. But it was quite wonderful, just as it was. The top of her head fascinated me. I had all I could do not to kiss it. It was tremendously disturbing. Then she broke the spell by rising, suddenly. Frieda lay in the crook of Claine’s arm with her cheek against his shoulder. Her eyes were closed. She seemed to be asleep. But the wonderful thing was her face. All the strain and sadness, the bitter lines had been smoothed out of it. She looked peaceful, contented. She looked exactly like Syd.

“I’ll take her,” Syd said, quite snappishly. But, when Claine stirred, Frieda opened her eyes. She seemed dazed, puzzled. She watched Claine as he crossed the room. Then, as he turned helplessly to the stove, the corners of her mouth drooped again and the old expression returned to her face.

One by one, the others straggled down. The Doctor and Gladdy were plainly suffering from too much gin. The former was morose and silent. He made no attempt to explain his bandaged hand though it was attracting undesirable attention. Gladdy was plain ugly. His face, in its bloated slackness, was positively repulsive. Syd looked at him once and turned away. Dick’s appearance suggested that he, also, had sought refuge in strong drink. He continued to maintain his unbroken silence.

SO FAR, no one had hinted at untoward events, the night before. There was not even mention of the absence of the cook. It made me feel creepy— this avoidance of the topic that must have been uppermost in everyone’s mind. Mr. Bakers came last of all. His eyes, of course, were concealed by his dark glasses. But his face was ghastly— a pasty gray. The flesh on his jawbones sagged loosely under a film of gray beard-stubble. It was the face of a weary and a frightened old man. He could not endure the strain of the silence.

“What— what happened— uh— last night?” he faltered. Claine grinned; not pleasantly.

“Our Cordon Bleu departed this life with untoward abruptness,” he said. “Someone shot him on the wing from behind the service slide— ah, no; do not weep for him. He was in the act of pitching a knife at Cousin Dink. Our grief must be for the cooking, not for the cook.”

Mr. Bakers was washing his hands— the motion, now, seemed rather one of wringing them.

“I did not expect this,” he muttered. “I did not expect this.

“What did you expect?” Claine’s voice was elaborately suave,

“Eh— what— oh, you mean me? What was it I said?”

“You were saying you did not expect this.”

“Oh— yes, yes.” Mr. Bakers tried to smile. It was rather ghastly. “I must have been talking to myself. I sometimes do. I am an old man, you see— yes, yes; an old man. Who did you say shot him?”

“I didn’t say. There may be conflict of opinion as to that. What would your guess be?”

“Mine? Oh, I have none— of course, I know nothing about it. I was in my room when I heard the— uh— when I heard a noise—”

“Oh,” Claine said. “I see. I thought, perhaps, you might have been on the stairs— might have seen—”

“No, no,” Mr. Bakers broke in, hurriedly. “I saw nothing — I saw nothing. I was in my room, I tell you. I saw nothing— absolutely nothing.”

He glanced stealthily at the Doctor and drew an unsteady hand across his brow. Claine said:

“I see. Well, suppose we eat.”

Chapter 11

BREAKFAST was a farce, of course— quite ghastly— everyone for himself and not much to eat. As I finished mine, such as it was, Syd beckoned from the door, and went out. It was so confidential— so sort of clandestine, like— it thrilled me. I followed her to the parlor. She put her hands on my arms, firmly; almost clutching them. She looked intently into my eyes. She said:

“Cousin Dink, if I can’t trust you I can’t trust anyone.”

It struck me all aback— the suddenness of it— the wonder of it. I wanted to say something adequate; I could only stammer, “But— but of course you can trust me, Syd.”

I patted her elbow softly; it was very near my hand. I did not dare move very much for fear I might dislodge her hands from my arms. It was quite wonderful to feel them there.

“I don’t know what to do,” she said. “It is so terrible— I’m afraid. What is it all about? What are they going to do?”

“What is who going to do, and what is what about?” I said to her. I suspect it sounded quite inane.

“I don’t know, Dink; that’s what makes me afraid. They know something— Mr. Claine and Mr. Bakers and the Doctor. The way they look at each other— the way they talk to each other. They all know something that the rest of us don’t— perhaps you do know— do you, Dink?” She drew back. The confidence had gone from her eyes. “How close are you and Mr. Claine? How long have you known him? Why did that cook want to stab you?”

She was so like a frightened little girl— it was astonishingly easy to put my arm around her shoulders. I never expected to do that. She did not seem to resent it. I thought she relaxed a little and regained confidence in me. It was really inspiring, the revelation of girlishness behind that mask of sophisticated capability. It made me happy. I told her all about Claine. I explained that this was merely his way of getting at the facts. I told her Claine thought the knife had been meant for him, not for me.

“There, you see,” she insisted, in a weary voice. “That cook was in it, too. He knew something— who shot him?”

“The Doctor.” I thought it was better for her to know. “But don’t tell anyone. I don’t think Claine is ready to tell anyone, yet.”

“I don’t trust him, Dink. I don’t know why, but I don’t. I don’t like the way he looks at Frieda. There’s something wrong with her— she was like this when I came home, last Summer, but she won’t tell me. There’s never been anything before that she wouldn’t tell me. She’s been worse up here. And that Delchester! He looks at her. He hasn’t said a word to anyone. Don’t you know what it is, Dink?”

“I think, mostly, it’s because you’re tired and all upset by this— uh— thing. We’re all like that, Syd. But I know Claine will get to the bottom of it. He’s wonderful, Syd. Anyhow, there isn’t any danger for you and Frieda — not the slightest.”

I honestly think I comforted her. She actually snuggled against me, just for an instant. Then she drew away and pinched my arm and smiled.

“You’re a thoroughly staunch fella, Cousin Dink,” she said, “and a great comfort to little Syd.” She was like her old self, again. “I only hope I shan’t have to shoot that bald-headed Conlord ape.”

“You needn’t worry about him. Cobb and I are going to take turns watching, tonight.”

“Oh, be careful, Dink!”

“There’s no danger,” I began; but the others came.

The snow was still falling, though not so heavily. The wind had broken up into gusts. “Blowing itself out,” Claine assured us. “It ought to clear before night. If you go outside, be careful. You could easily come to grief in those drifted gullies. Cousin Dink and I are going to try for a nap. Call us if anything further— uh— transpires.”

I had nudged him, but it was too late. I hurried to Syd. I whispered:

“Don’t mind what he says. Nothing is going to happen — would you feel easier if I stayed down here?”

She comforted me and disconcerted me by laughing— a sort of half-laugh.

“You’re so reassuring, Dink— ‘No danger; shall I stay and guard you?’ Run along. Nothing can happen with the crowd around. I’d like to sleep, myself, but the bolt has been taken off our door—”

“Taken off!”

“Someone has taken it off quite recently, by the looks.”

That was alarming. She needed sleep. I cudgelled my brains, quite helplessly. She caught me at it. She said:

“It can’t be done, Dink. I won’t have you sitting outside our door. You’d fall asleep, anyhow. We can’t take you inside to nap with us; the bed’s too narrow for three, and it would cause gossip in the family. Run along and get your sleep— you old folks need it.”

It depressed me to have her say that. I’m only twenty-eight, really. I didn’t think she should consider that old.

While our blankets were warming, downstairs, Claine and I explored the upper regions. As I have said, the back stairs came up along the side and across the end of the kitchen entry. The main upper corridor ran the entire length of the building, along the rear wall. All the bedrooms were on the left, or front side of it. At the head of the stairs was the door of Mr. Bakers’ room, over the bar. Almost opposite, on our right, was the foot of the stairs to the third floor. Just beyond these the corridor of the L branched off. The door of our own room, next to Mr. Bakers, was almost opposite the L corridor.

Beyond our room was a branch corridor running to the front of the building. The front stairs came up into this. On the far side of it was the Doctor’s room and, beyond that, the corner room which Delchester occupied. Both of these were over the parlor. They projected a little over the closed-off annex-room which lay behind the parlor.

There were four bedrooms on each side of the L corridor. On the right, or east, the first and third rooms were empty. Conlord occupied the second and the two girls the fourth, on the far corner. We found the four doors on the opposite side nailed shut. The heads of the nails had not had time to rust. Claine shrugged but said nothing.

We climbed to the third floor, a quite astonishing place. It was a wide-open, T-shaped room, extending the full length of the main building and of the L. The ceiling was vaulted but most of the plaster had fallen and lay in powder on the floor. A wooden bench ran along the walls and there was a strange, pulpit-like platform.

“The fiddlers’ stand,” Claine explained. “This was the ball-room, you know. All these old taverns had them. It accounts for the ancient fiddlers that bob up, every so often, to astonish the naive gentlemen of the metropolitan press. A gay place in its day. Dance-floor enough for fifty speakeasies.”

There were broad windows at the three ends. The sashes were gone and the wind swept through, eerie and biting. At the western end, snow lay deep on the floor— “helping to explain the failing health of the old shebang,” as Claine expressed it.

“A hell of a place to spend a blizzard,” I complained, as we clumped down stairs. I felt morose. I was worried about Syd. My weakness angered me, that I could not forego sleep. I am not tough like Claine. He could have foregone sleep, to stand guard, but he did not offer to. That, also, angered me.

“Syd will be all right,” he said, answering my thoughts, as he often did. “No one will take liberties with that gun-hand of hers— except Gladdy when he’s drunk. And he won’t be drunk as long as the Doctor retains health and strength to guard the gin supply.”

I think I was sound asleep five minutes after we tucked those. warm blankets about our heads.

Chapter 12

IT WAS sundown when I awoke. Incredibly, I had slept the day through. Claine was gone. As I poked my head out of the blankets, the air from the open windows took hold of my throat like sharp fingers. The snow had ceased. The wind had fallen. Through a front window the sun was casting a last, backward glance before he plunged off the mountain.

Still clinging to the blankets, I wriggled into my boots and went to a window. It was beauty indescribable— the tall hemlocks in their capes of snow; the billowing drifts that glittered like diamond carpets where the sun touched them. For a moment I forgot cold, murder, Syd and all the other tangled elements of this confused melange.

The sun pitched out of sight. Swift gloom began to gather. I completed the complicated lacing of my boots and stepped into the corridor. As I passed the attic stairs, a slow, rhythmic, shuffling sound from above brought me up short. My silly heart began to race. It was uncanny. I could not identify it. It was like the rubbing of sandpaper, perhaps— long, dragging strokes and short dragging strokes, irregular yet seeming, somehow, to conform to a measured beat.

I had no idea where to find Claine. Yet, manifestly, the matter must be looked into at once. I thought of animals — but what? Heaven preserve my simple soul, I thought of one of our sinister guests preparing an infernal machine. Back and forth— round and round— slow, measured, nervetearing— s-s-shuf-f-f, s-s-shuff-f-f, s-s-shuf-f-f!

WELL, there was nothing to be done but do something about it. I took out my revolver. Dumbly I wondered how hard one had to pull the trigger to make the hammer work. I distrusted my ability to do it quickly enough. I tried to cock the thing. The hammer almost escaped my thumb. I managed to lower it safely but my forehead was moist and cold. I clubbed the miserable implement and tiptoed up the stairs, the sounds becoming more and more hideous. The loose stair treads creaked. I tried to synchronize my steps with the noises above.

I was at the turn of the stairs when the shuffling abruptly ceased. Claine’s voice said:

“We’re making too much noise. Someone might come upstairs.”

Light footsteps approached. I was terrified. If I moved, the creaking steps would betray me. But they stopped to lean upon the window-sill, looking out into the gathering dark. It was Claine and Frieda.

“Cobb,” she said, with a sort of breathless ecstasy, “heaven must be like that.”

“Don’t be silly.” Claine’s voice was rasping. I knew that mood of his. But what were these two doing here, together, talking like that. It bewildered me. Also I was stricken with shame and fear at my eavesdropping. But I dared not stir foot on those eloquent stairs.

“Cobb”— her voice was miserable, pleading, now— “I can’t — I can’t— I’m mad about you. I’ll go crazy.”

“Now listen, my dear; we had our understanding at the start. There was to be nothing of this sort. We were to have our little adventure and go our ways. I thought you were strong enough, tough enough to live up to it. No matter how much I might care for you, I value my independence more. I do not propose to hang any woman around my neck.”

“I don’t ask you to marry me,” she burst out, passionately. “I don’t care whether you marry me or not. I want you—”

It was pitiful. I thrust my fingers into my ears. But I could not keep them there. That dumb-show of grief and passion was too ghastly— stripped of the words that belonged with it, it was too grimly ludicrous to be endured. I took my fingers out of my ears.

“Besides,” Claine was saying. He spoke sternly, like an exasperated parent. “I am old enough to be your father. It is absurd to say you feel like that toward a man past fifty. You are dramatizing yourself. It is pure self-deception. It’s neurotic. I wouldn’t have believed you were such putty.”

Frieda leaned on her elbows, staring out. I could see the movement of her shoulders, but she made no sound. Suddenly she straightened and seized Claine’s arm. There was a tensity of restrained fury in her poise and in her husky voice.

“Dance!”

“Damn it, Frieda, they’ll hear us.”

She laughed. It was quite a horrid laugh.

“If you don’t,” she snarled, “I’ll yell.”

He took hold of her roughly and they began, again, that hideous, slow, measured shuff-shuff-shuff upon the plaster-powdered floor. I wanted to run, but the sight of them held me there. I could never have imagined anything like it. They seemed to have melted into one body. They did not really dance; they vibrated, with shuffling feet. In the closing darkness they seemed, almost, to writhe. It was primordial. It was— it was orgiastic. It was horrible. It was fascinating. Suddenly I recalled that Claine had said of Frieda, “all flesh and emotions.” He bent over her and pressed his mouth to hers. I rushed blindly down the stairs — and on down to the floor below.

Chapter 13

I FOUND the cheery house-party as widely distributed as the accommodations would permit. I gathered there had been controversy over the fetching of fuel from the woodshed. It grew out of the discovery of Little Zave’s tenancy. Mr. Bakers had pleaded his age— with justice, I thought. He was, indubitably, an old and a sick man. The Doctor seemed to have no qualms aside from an invincible aversion to physical effort. As a measure of self-preservation he was keeping the home fire alight in the parlor. Dick was obeying similar impulses in the dining room.

Gladdy was quite plainly affected by the ghostly presence in the shed. He huddled by the stove in the bar. Almost on my heels, Syd entered, staggering under an armful of chunks. I did not like the way Gladdy looked at her and moistened his lips. I did not like to see him loafing while she worked. I was in a thoroughly vicious frame of mind. I went out and set a lamp in a sheltered corner of the woodshed. I came back and told him to start fetching wood and keep fetching wood until the three stoves were supplied for the night. He said, “Go to hell!”

It gave me a feeling of deep gratification. I walked over to him and took hold of the slack of his waistcoat and pulled. He came out of his chair with such ease that I felt silly. I was amazed to discover how weak he was. It had never occurred to me there might be men in the world to whom I could do such things. First I stared him down. Then I pushed him to the wall and beat him against it. I had seen Claine do that with satisfactory results. I said:

“You fetch wood until I tell you to stop. You don’t eat until it’s done.”

He began immediately. It was astonishing how it had relaxed the tensity of my feelings. Syd approached me. She was smiling in a disquieting way. I felt she was about to make fun of me. She took hold of my chin. She said, “Let me see them!”

“See what?” I said.

“Those hypnotic eyes. Man, you must be very careful how you use that power.”

I asked her, ‘What power?” I was afraid she was spoofing me.

“The power to bend strong men to your will. It’s a terrible responsibility.”

I knew then that she really was spoofing me. I said, “Oh, he’s terribly weak, really.”

“He’s no Samson,” she said, “but I’ve seen weaker men. — Have you seen Frieda?”

I said, “No; isn’t she in her room?” It made me feel queer, inside, every time I thought of that dance. Syd shook her head. I must have been improving; apparently my face did not tell her I was lying. She no longer smiled. Her face was worried, harassed. She said:

“Where is Mr. Claine?”

“I don’t know.” That was technically true. “Perhaps he’s outdoors. He’s rather fiendish on fresh air.”

Almost immediately he came down the stairs and went out. Apparently he tramped up and down in the path which the wind had swept along the house. Once he stopped to read the thermometer by the light of his electric torch. I crossed to the window. The mercury stood at 28 below zero. Claine was muffled to the eyes in the collar of his fur coat. I beckoned to him, but he shook his head. I felt more than a bit relieved. I was not yet clear in my mind what to say to him or what to leave unsaid. I knew I could not face him naturally without saying something.

He did not come in until we were picking up our dismal evening meal, in the kitchen. He ate a little, made some commonplace remarks and went upstairs. Syd carried eggs, toast and tea up to Frieda. She returned in time to compel us all to wash our dishes. She made even the Doctor wash his. Then she went upstairs again.

Mostly I had the bar to myself. I sat with my back to the inner wall, behind the stove, and wished I knew more about the habits of a revolver. I had the thought of asking Syd to instruct me, but it seemed likely to provoke invidious comment. I missed Claine’s strength. The violence of my feelings had worn off, somewhat. But I still dreaded the meeting with him. I had decided not to say anything.

About nine o’clock, it must have been, I was standing at an east window. I had scraped the crusted frost from the pane. I was watching a great, orange moon climb the spruce trees. Absorbed in the wonder of it I had lost thought of perils behind my back. I sprang around as a door-latch clicked. It was Syd. She came and stood beside me, looking out. Our faces were quite close together. She slipped her arm beneath mine and pressed it, lightly. I could feel her swift breathing. She said:

“I wish I could walk straight out there to it.”

I said, “So do I.”

Presently, without speaking or looking at me, she marched out of the room.

I was still at the window when Claine came down. I think all the others had gone upstairs. He stood beside me. He, too, put his hand through my arm. There was something affectionate, protective in his touch that always softened me and drew me to him. Tonight, there was something more; something of appeal as though he needed strength and help from me. Still, I did not dare try to meet his eyes or speak to him.

The gentle closing of the outside door made us both jump. We peered out through the window. “Syd, by the helmet of her,” Claine said. In the glory of the moonlight there could be no mistaking that helmet. She crossed the windswept path and plunged into the drifted snow. It was above her waist, already; deeper ahead. “That snow’s light as feathers,” Claine commented.

She was fighting her way through the drifts, straight east, toward the moon. I recalled what she had said about it and I was uneasy. She fought onward, step by step. She seemed, almost, to be swimming— leaning forward, swinging her arms. The snow was at her shoulders but she gave no sign of stopping. I said:

“Do you suppose she could get lost, out there?”

“If she goes far enough,” Claine replied, absently. “Out yonder it’s drifted over the tops of the cars. Syd— it doesn’t make sense. If it were Frieda, now— she’s in a state of mind.”

He was stirring, uneasily, and biting his lower lip. It always alarmed me when Claine showed signs of doubt. I said:

“Perhaps I ought to go after her.”

“A good idea.” He seemed relieved. “She wouldn’t welcome me, I’m afraid. Bundle yourself up. It’s cold beyond anything dreamed of in your steam-heated philosophy.” As I buckled the helmet strap under my chin, he said, quizzically: “Your Syd has walked into a swale or something. She’s in over her head. I think that black spot is the top of it. Lay your course by it, anyhow. Want me to go with you?”

“Oh no,” I said, a bit too briskly, perhaps.

“Stout fella. Go on then!”

As soon as I stepped through the side door I knew that Claine had not exaggerated the state of the atmosphere. I opened my mouth to call Syd’s name. The cold laid hold of my throat and I could not make a sound. I pressed my hand over my mouth and nose. Otherwise I could not have breathed. From the doorstone I could see the black spot which, Claine had suggested, might be the top of Syd’s head. I started toward it.

THE path she had broken was of very little help. The snow was, presently, almost to my shoulders. I am not much taller than Syd and my wind is not very good for outdoor effort. I found myself panting heavily into the mitten I held against my face. My breath poured forth like steam. It flooded into my eyes. It began to fog my glasses. Presently I could not see a thing.

I tried to rub the fog from the lenses but it was frozen upon them. They were completely opaque. I was, for all useful purposes, blind. My helmet bound my glasses on; I could not remove them.

I attempted to proceed by dead reckoning but quickly found myself off the path. I called Syd’s name through the mitten. She did not answer. I filled my lungs and, removing the mitten, for an instant, from my mouth, called her name twice. She answered, in a muffled voice, “Who is it?”

“It’s Dink,” I told her. “My glasses are fogged; I can’t see.”

“Stand still; you’re headed for the spring.”

I could hear her slow, swishing progress through the snow. Presently her hand touched me. I could see nothing except the front of my coat and a bit of snow, beneath my glasses. She began to guide me toward the Tavern. We had covered, perhaps, half the distance when she stopped. We were both panting. The snow still was shoulder-high. Tilting my head back I managed a vague glimpse of her chin and mouth from under my glasses. I don’t know what possessed me. It was not in the least like me. Possibly events had been working a change in me— or it may have been the moon. It was done entirely without premeditation, almost without consciousness. I put my arms around her and drew her to me and kissed her mouth.

At first she tried to draw away. Then she relaxed. Her mouth was warm and soft and wonderful. Of course, I had never done this before. I had no experience by which to measure my sensations. It was thrilling and wonderful, to be sure, but it was not at all what I should have expected it to be. I was stirred and my flesh did creep, a little, but it was hardly worth mentioning. I have to confess that I was disappointed.

Suddenly she drew away with a sharp little, “Oh!” It sounded like repugnance and I did not like it. I tried to draw her back to me. She held me off with her hands.

From the doorstone of the Tavern came a reddish flash and the report of a pistol-shot. A hot, stinging pain seared across my chin. I pressed my hand to it. The Tavern door slammed. Syd gasped— a strangled sound. I heard her go swishing off through the snow. The door slammed again. I was alone in the snow and the bitter cold— blind, bewildered, helpless— and wondering just what had happened to my smarting chin.

Chapter 14

MY mind, I think, has never been more active, or more muddled, than in those few seconds when I stood there, up to my neck in snow, blind from the ice on my glasses, shaken and angry from the smarting bullet-crease across my chin. The wound, of course, was nothing. But who had fired the shot? Why had it been fired at me? Bitterest of all, why had Syd run away and left me helpless there? It was not like her.

The door-latch clashed. Claine’s voice called: “Dink! What’s the matter?” It sounded choked, excited; not at all his usual imperturbable manner. I raised the mitten from my mouth. “I can’t see anything,” I said. I’m afraid I spoke petulantly. I was thoroughly put out. Claine’s hobnails screeched on the doorstone. Then he was beside me, with his arm around my shoulders. He was panting.

“Are you hurt? Where?”

“It’s the damn ice on my glasses,” I told him.

He said, “Oh!” in a tone of great relief. He put his arm around my waist and half-carried me into the bar.

“Unbuckle this damn helmet,” I said. I got those glasses off, finally, and thawed them out and put them on, again. I said:

“Now, who in hell was shooting at me?”

I saw, now, that he had run out, bareheaded, without coat or gloves. His hands were blue from cold. But I had no mind to think of him. He said:

“Your language, son, is getting rather terrible. You must try to fight it. Now, any time your mind begins to function again, I’d value a little information— the quicker, the better. Where did that shot come from? I was in the parlor; I wish I’d stayed here.”

“It came from the door,” I said. “That general direction. I couldn’t see.”

“Where did he go?”

“Inside, I suppose— the door slammed.”

“Was Syd with you?”

“Yes.” There must have been something about the way I said it.

“Ah-h,” Claine drawled. “And what did she do?”

“She ran into the house— she left me there.”

“So that’s what’s griping you!”

“It is not— it’s the whole damn thing. Do you think it’s any damn fun to stand out there, blind, and get shot at?”

“No-o-o,” Claine said, judicially, “on the whole, possibly not. But hardly sufficient, in itself, to account for all the damns and such. Women, yes; but bullets, no, no, no! By the way, has it occurred to you that Syd may have been pursuing the assassin?”

I hadn’t thought of that. It thrilled me. Then it frightened me. I jumped up and started for the door. Claine pulled me back. He said:

“If she caught him it’s just his bad luck. Don’t waste worry on that young lady. She’s rather more than a match for anyone around the place— including you. But, Dink,” his manner turned serious, “this thing doesn’t fit into the picture— not anywhere. Tell me exactly what happened.”

I told him part of it.

“How were you and Syd standing— close together?”

“About arm’s-length apart. She had her hands against my chest.”

“Ah, I see. Repulsing your advances. Now, son, no dignified reticences— come clean. Had you, by any chance, keen kissing her— or otherwise paying her marked attentions?”

“Certainly not,” I snapped.

“Spoken like a gentleman. Now, tell me the truth. You see, it is important that we find out who is flipping bullets at you. There is no apparent reason why the Red Bakerses should be shooting at the White ones. If the Palefaces are sniping each other it seems desirable to find out who and why before the marksmanship improves. God forbid that I should pry into the tender secrets of your soul but — you were kissing Syd just before the shot was fired— I’m not asking you; I’m telling you.”

I glared at him. There were times when he was insufferable. He quite ignored my evident feelings.

“Anyone coming out the door might have seen you in the clinch and fired just as you broke? I mean, you might have stepped out of range just as he fired— the timing of events would permit that?”

“I suppose so.” No doubt I did growl at him. The whole affair was dust and ashes in my mouth. The disappointment of that kiss; the shock of the shooting; Syd’s desertion, and, now, Claine’s vulgar way of tearing it all to pieces as though it were something commonplace— something that might be happening to anybody, any day! cannot describe the feeling of terrible emptiness, of disillusion, of weary goneness. One moment, there was Syd, a vibrant glory in my life, making me thrill and tingle at the very thought of her. I had kissed her— and, suddenly, it all had crashed. I wanted to walk right out of the filthy Tavern and keep on walking and never see anyone or speak to anyone, again. Life seemed frightfully useless. I discovered that Claine was shaking me.

“Listen to me, will you! For heaven’s sake where have you been? Listen, now— nobody else has shown marked interest in the Syd person, except our merry playboy, Conlord. It isn’t clear that his prepossession has yet developed homicidal tendencies. But, also, you applied a mean elbow to his Adam’s apple, last night. That, though you may not know it, is a rather unforgettable experience— for a day or two.”

I got up to feed the fire. The pile of chunks reminded me of something. I said, with a sort of glum satisfaction, “I gave him something besides his Adam’s apple to think about.”

Claine straightened up. “A little more detail, please.”

“I made him lug in wood for the night.”

“Ah-h, I caught him at it. It struck me, at the time, as a bit out of character. Just what means did you employ in the working of this serviceable miracle?”

“I banged his damn head on the wall.”

“Another ‘damn’!”’ Claine said. “But what an extraordinary rambunctious fella! What a veritable rough guy! I quite approve. But still, Dink, it doesn’t jell— it simply doesn’t jell. This Conlord jellyfish isn’t shooting anybody unless he’s lit up with bootleg fortitude. Nobody else around here would shoot you for kissing your own girl.

“WAIT— a— minute,” he said, in a different tone. I disliked the expression of his face. Whenever he looked at me, that way, I knew he was going to say something low. He went on: “I’ve had a happy thought. Let’s shoot at it and see what happens. You gave me the impression it was the lady who terminated the kiss. Was it your notion that she did it merely because she was out of breath or because she found it actively distasteful?”

I got up and started toward the door. Claine said, “Come back here and sit down.”

“I’m sick and tired of your vulgarity,” I told him.

“Vulgarity?” he retorted. “That? Man, you ain’t seen anything. Some day I’ll show you. Now, come out of the clouds and answer my questions. They are not wholly inane. When you kissed the lady, did she respond— did she kiss you?”

“How could I kiss her without her kissing me, you poor fool?” I said. I was thoroughly disgusted. That sort of thing, of course, is not discussed.

“Durable simpleton, have you ever kissed a woman, before?”

“Certainly not.”

“Venus An-a-dy-om-en-e! Lamp this guy! And he claims to be twenty-eight years of age. Now, son, this may hurt a little but I’ll be as gentle as I can. While you were kissing the lady was your whole being flooded with ecstasy— what I mean, did you thrill and quiver in every fibre? Did the blood rush to your head? Did you feel dizzy, blind, deaf? Did you seem to be floating away from solid earth? Did every other thought vanish—”

“No!!” I snapped. I think I actually barked at him. It was disgusting.

“Ah-h,” he said, in a tone of great satisfaction. “It left you entirely cold?”

“No-o-o,” I confessed. If he was really asking these revolting questions in good faith, I would try to be honest with him. “It did make my flesh creep, a little.”

“It did what?”

“Made my flesh creep— but only a little.”

He was silent such a long time that I looked up at him. He was pinching his nose between thumb and forefinger and pressing his hand over his mouth. His face was quite red. He seemed to be struggling against an impulse to sneeze. Presently he sneezed, or snorted, quite violently. He cleared his throat.

“Pardon me,” he said. “I hope I’m not catching cold. You say it did— uh— make your flesh creep a little. That is not the phrase ordinarily employed to describe this particular sensation, but I think I catch your meaning. However, it would not appear to have significance in this case. A slight creeping of the flesh is not infrequently observed even when the deeper motions are not involved. But the probabilities are that when the Syd person makes up her mind to really kiss you, you won’t come out of the ether in any such neutral frame of mind as seems to possess you at present. I mean to say, you’ll quite definitely know that you’ve been kissed.”

I rose out of my chair. There must have been something in my face for Claine rose from his and laid strong hands on me.

“Steady, all,” he said. “What we’re getting at is that the lady you kissed was probably not Syd but Frieda.”

That steadied me, indeed. It was like a bucket of cold water. Kissing Frieda when I thought I was kissing Syd! It was inconceivable. It was, likewise, embarrassing, if true. But, of course, it couldn’t be true.

“That’s nonsense,” I declared. “Frieda wears a scarlet toque-thing.”

“But it didn’t grow on her,” Claine pointed out. “She may, conceivably, have borrowed her sister’s helmet. Such things are known to have been done. And, if she did, it changes the face of things considerably.”

Chapter 15

AS though Claine’s words had been a stage cue, the door latch clicked— to the day I die I shall hear the sinister click and clatter of those ancient door latches, in my dreams. Syd marched in. Her face was grim. She marched straight up to me. She ignored Claine utterly; I am not sure she realized he was there.

“Why did you kiss Frieda?”

I think the shock of that must have driven Claine’s latest words completely out of my mind. I said:

“I didn’t kiss Frieda.”

“Don’t lie to me,” she said. Her cheeks were red but her voice was quite level. “Oh, I didn’t think you were that kind.”

Then she slapped my face. Really she is quite frightfully strong. For a moment, my eyes were full of flashing lights. My ears roared. I was quite dizzy. I think I even staggered a little. When I was able to see her clearly again, she was marching toward the door. I hurried after her. I seized her by the shoulders and shook her until her hair flew wild. She wears it rather short. I have always preferred hair that way. Even in the faint lamplight there were, after all, flecks of gold in it when it stirred. I had never known that brown hair could have gold in it. I was glad because, from the very start, my heart had been quite set on flecks of gold in Syd’s hair.

Suddenly I realized that, after all, I had kissed Freida. It made me feel rather silly. Still, it was no excuse for Syd to slap me, that way. It is disconcerting to be slapped by a woman, especially when it hurts like that. I shook her again.

“I thought it was you,” I said. “You ought to know

“Let go of me!” she said. She seemed out of breath. She twisted her shoulders and I let her go. ‘Don’t you know the difference between Freida and me?”

“I couldn’t see a thing,” I told her. “My glasses were covered with ice.

She stared at me as though I had said something queer. Then she laughed. It was a short, unpleasant laugh. She said, “He can’t tell the difference without seeing!” She laughed again and walked out of the room. She slammed the door hard. I started to follow her. Claine said:

“Hey!” I turned. He seemed to be preparing to sneeze, again, but he mastered it. “Where are you going?” he demanded.

“None of your damn business,” I said.

“Technically correct,” he admitted. “Still, I should not be doing my full duty as a friend if I did not advise you that your best bet is to sit tight. When a lad’s best girl slaps him for kissing her sister, his strategic position is practically impregnable. If you move out of it to pursue her she’ll ambush you in the defiles and cut you to pieces.”

“But she didn’t even ask me if I was hurt.” It had only that moment occurred to me. I was quite unconscious that I spoke aloud, until Claine answered:

“She’ll be back to rectify that, as soon as she thinks of it— Now if Gladdy was trying to avenge his firewood fatigue or his Adam’s-apple we can determine the fact by the condition of his gun. He apparently couldn’t have been doing it on Syd’s account— unless the headgear deceived him, also. Can you think of any one who might be roused to murder by the sight of you kissing Frieda in a snow drift?”

I was as though a light flashed suddenly in my mind. Out of nothing leaped a picture of that ugly, fascinating, pitiful scene in the ruined ballroom. It was on the tip of my tongue to say, “No one but you.” I did not say it. I was not ready, yet, to talk that out with him. Straightway I knew that I was afraid to say it. If he had fired that shot at me he would not hesitate to fire a surer one now.

I stared at him, fascinated. His eyes seemed to bore into mine with unfamiliar, daunting tensity. He was not the brutal, cynical yet always dependable friend. I recognized him as the materialization of a shadowy, sinister Claine who must always have been hovering in the background of our friendship. I was confused and afraid. Then he smiled— his bantering affectionate smile. I seemed to hear, again, the note that had been in his voice when he called to me over the body of Little Zave and out there in the snow.

“Calm your fears, old son,” he said. “Nobody is going to shoot our Dink as long as Cousin Cobb can prevent it.”

I smiled weakly and felt a fool. There had been nothing in his attitude toward Frieda to indicate that he would shoot anyone on her account. More likely to want to shoot her— shoot her? My chest grew tight again. What assurance was there that he had not known the girl out there was Frieda. Then why had he sent me out? To get me out of his way, of course— I could not make myself believe it. Furthermore, if Cobb had aimed at Frieda he would not have grooved my chin. That was not his manner of shooting. And still again

“Cobb,” I said, as casually as I could manage, “you haven’t fired your gun, have you?”

He studied me with a quizzical expression. “Our Watson is beginning to cerebrate as Holmes.” He produced his revolver and offered it to me, butt first. I felt ashamed. I shook my head and tried to smile. He grinned.

“Still pure and undefiled,” he said. “I shall find a simpler way of bumping you off, when I get around to it. And if I ever draw a bead on Frieda, I shall hope to miss her by something less than two feet. But your subtle ratiocination suggests an interesting possibility. Suppose Frieda really was the intended target. Who, that you can think of, might be driven to murder-frenzy by the sight of Dink Randall in the arms of Frieda Twin?”

“Dammit, Cobb,” I burst out, “you’re always insinuating nasty things about Syd.”

“And it always elicits coarse language from you. I am merely interested, as a student of crime, in pointing out that Syd possessed a possible motive, a probable opportunity and the indubitable nerve to shoot your apparent inamorata of the moment. She had been shooting up the place, high, wide and handsome, ever since she got here so, of course, the condition of her six-gun signifies nothing. It is comfortably certain, however, that if she had seriously set herself to eliminate Frieda, Frieda would have been eliminated. If she was merely trying to throw a salutary scare into you she wouldn’t have felt it necessary to draw practical blood from your chin.

“All of which suggests that the silent and mysterious Mr. Dick Delchester is the only member of the menage on whom we have no dope, either pro or con. I should like to take a look at that young man’s gun.”

The click of that accursed latch made me jump again. It was only Syd. I said, peevishly, “I wish you wouldn’t go tiptoeing around, that way.”

She looked at me quite haughtily and ignored what I had said. “Frieda thinks that bullet may have struck you. I came down to see.”

“So thoughtful of you,’ I said. “It is a mere trifle.”

“I felt sure it had not disabled you. I am glad.” She stalked out of the room. Once more I rose to follow her.

“Sit tight,’ Claine whispered. “Everything is lovely. Isn’t the old flesh beginning to creep satisfactorily, again?”

That reminded me, quite suddenly. Claine had talked so much I hadn’t had a chance to really collect my wits. But now I realized it hadn’t been Syd I kissed, after all. No wonder it disappointed me! And, when I shook her, it thrilled me all over. I had wanted to keep right on shaking her. I felt sure of happiness that almost choked me. Then I remembered that it was too late, now. That instant I determined that if Claine said one more objectionable word to me about that woman I would strike him in the solar plexus and abide by the outcome.

Chapter 16

I SAID to Claine, “I’m going to put a chair at the top. those front stairs, where I can watch the Doctor’s door.”

We had moved into the parlor. He groaned. “Boy, it’s perishing cold up there. Suppose we sit right here by the stove. We can hear every move he makes.”

“We can’t hear Conlord,” I said. “Those girls ought not to be up there, anyhow. They’ll get pneumonia. I don’t see how they stand it— any of them.”

“Folks can stand a lot when they’re scared,” Claine responded, grimly. “The animal instinct is to crawl into a hole. Much safer, really, if we all sat down here together and watched each other’s hands— a jolly old watch-party, what?— by and large, you know, quite a few people have slept in those bedrooms in a hundred and twenty-five winters and, probably, some of them escaped pneumonia.

“Mr. Bakers, now, he’s living the life of an orchid with that big chimney. Doc’s got a chimney. Dick enjoys the hot blood of youth, and a grouch. They’ve all got warm rooms under them. The front of the house is warm enough, now the wind has dropped. Gladdy has the kitchen stovepipe and the kitchen is under him. The girls have got the short end of it— but they asked for it. Over that open woodshed! The floor— you could build a hockey rink on it. I’ll bet they’re wearing silk scanties— or did someone tell me the girls were going in for Volstead-Act wool, this Winter? Well, the women are gluttons for punishment.”

It made me shiver. I said, “I’m going up and make them come down here.”

“Oh, you are? An interesting experiment. Let me know the results.”

I tramped up the stairs and down the L. I made as much noise as possible but I had to batter at the door for some time before Syd answered. Actually, her voice sounded drowsy. It made my heart beat fast— or that may have been the stairs. Of course, I should have known it is fright that makes the flesh creep. Silly of me to say that. Still, positively, Syd did make me feel just that way— up and down my backbone.

“Go away from that door!” Syd’s voice may have been drowsy, but it meant what it said.

“Syd, we want you and Frieda to come down stairs”—

“Oh, it’s you. What is the idea, a party? I give you credit, you’re better than Baldy Conlord. He wanted to throw his up here.”

“Now, Syd, listen; honest, you’ll get pneumonia. We’ll fix two cots in the parlor; you can sleep there. It’s too cold, up here. Honest, it isn’t safe.”

I was tremendously in earnest. Syd’s voice sounded a little different but you couldn’t call it really enthusiastic. “Thanks a lot, Dink. It’s really thoughtful of you. But, you know, safety is nothing but a state of mind. There are times when the old pneumonia looks right friendly, by comparison. Truly, we’re no end acclimated and cozy up here— you’d be surprised. Toddle on, now, like a good lad— you woke us out of a sound sleep. And don’t come banging at that door again. You startled me. I’m that nervous and jumpy I might do something I’d regret all my life. Go on back where it’s warm and safe and you won’t catch pneumonia.”

Well, actually, there didn’t seem to be anything else to do. Sound asleep! Startled! I said to Claine, “You’d think she’d been living like this all her life.” I was thoroughly irritated.

“It’s an outrage,” Claine agreed. “Women are born illogical, like that, Dink. Two protective male instincts going to waste beside a warm stove and those fool women sleeping their dashed heads off in a refrigerator. If they had any sense, at all, they’d be down here with their heads on our manly bosoms. Make the long night watches shorter, what?”

“Shut up,” I said. I always wanted to hit him when he talked that way about Syd.

“Sh-h-h; you’ll wake the Doctor. That classroom voice! I’ll bring the mattress from the kitchen. We’ll stand watch-and-watch, if you insist. You do the first trick and ll spell you in the dark hours before the dawn.”

“If I were you,” I said, as cuttingly as I knew how, “I’d stay awake and apply my master-mind to the solution of this affair. You’re not making your usual progress, you know.” My irony rather broke down. “You don’t act as though you really cared.”

“Talk low,” he warned. “Why not give my tottering intellect a boost? You have watched the master-mind at work— you must have picked up some useful ideas about criminal investigation. Apply them. What would you suggest as a starter?”

“Well.” I said. It wasn’t so easy, after all. “I— I’d disarm them.”

“Disarm whom?”

“Well— the Doctor.”

“But, to the best of our knowledge and belief, he is disarmed. I’m supposed to have his gun in my pocket.”

I confess I had forgotten that, for the moment. I didn’t like all this. I have no instinct for such matters. Claine was having me on— but I wouldn’t give him the satisfaction.

“Well, disarm the others, then.”

“Including you and me?”

“Of course not.” That was palpably absurd.

“Including Syd?”

“Most certainly not. She needs her revolver.”

“Quite. And so do you and I. And the others, poor fools, probably cherish a delusion that they need theirs— to carry out fell purposes of their own or protect themselves against the purposes of others. They may, even, be toying with the absurd idea of disarming us. We might start something we couldn’t finish— and leave the girls to fight it out alone with Gladdy and the Doctor and that strong, silent Delchester boy.”

HONESTLY, it made my blood run cold. I never knew what that expression really meant, before. I had not thought of that possibility. And I had forgotten that Claine had some sort of interest in Frieda. I wouldn’t have believed anything could drive that disturbing thing out of my mind— but things always were. Claine went on:

“You see, Dink, our position, here, is different. We have no standing. We are suspect with the rest— fair enough. It would be different if a thousand dicks had been combing the U. S. A. for dope on Cousin Daniel, and the Doctor and Gladdy and Mr. Bakers— not to risk a punch in the eye by suggesting that they might be cynical on the subject of Cousin Syd’s coyness about her legal monicker.

“We should have this Abode of Woe all lit up with detectives and flatfeet. We should know whose fingerprints are on that gun I dug out of the snow. We should know whether the bullet in Little Zave’s carcass was fired from it. In a word, we should have that elementary affair all washed up and ready for the jury. We might even have unearthed its background. You probably wouldn’t have been shot at. Certainly there would be little danger of further trouble— unless there is someone lurking about that we haven’t seen.”

“You think there is?” I was rather explosive, I fear. New things were all the while popping up.

“Pianissimo, Dink! The Doctor may have an ear to that stovepipe. — It is possible, of course. Cousin Daniel, for instance. He might have a hideout.”

“In the walls?”

“In the walls! Dink, what have you been reading, lately? There are no secret stairways in the walls of Vermont farm houses of the Jeffersonian period— except for mice and squirrels. Sometimes there are blind closets and cellar holes. But one doesn’t lie doggo in closets and cellar-holes with the temperature at thirty below.

“It seems highly unlikely— unless he has a warm lair off the premises and comes in to his work. He could have done Little Zave in and got away without trace; it was snowing, then. But if he shot at you, tonight, his tracks are still out there. The Zave affair is, clearly enough, the Doctor’s work. If an outsider fired at you why did he come and pose on the doorstone to do it? Why did he dodge into the house? He ran an excellent chance of meeting some of us. Unless, to be sure, he is hiding inside— and that brings us back where we started.”

I never knew Claine’s equal for suggesting unpleasant possibilities. His stock seemed practically inexhaustible. I had more or less adjusted myself to my environment. I had established relations with its potential perils. They had become orthodox routine. I knew everyone in the house to speak to. And here was Claine, interpolating a perfect stranger— not a material being who would rustle eggs and coffee with me in the kitchen, but a nameless, formless, incorporeal presence that would lurk— exactly the sort of thing to keep cold chills running up and down a chap’s back when he didn’t have it against a wall. I found myself somewhat less keen for my vigil over the tangible Doctor.

“We-ell,” I said, “I suppose if it’s got to be done, it’s got to be done. Suppose we could get one of these easy chairs up there?”

“We-ell,” Claine mimicked, “I haven’t heard anyone say it’s got to be done, except yourself, But if it’s a restful nap you’re planning, why not stretch out and take one in the orthodox manner, down here. If your idea is to stay awake and watch the Doctor I suggest two dining room chairs of the hardest.”

“Why two chairs?’

“One to sit on and one for your feet. Something tells me, my bold lad, that you haven’t reckoned all the costs of this jocund adventure. Have you, by any chance, measured the wind-velocity on those stairs?”

“I can stand it,’ I assured him.

“Dauntless fella! Up and at ’em!”

Chapter 17

WE set the chairs at the head of the stairway, close to the junction of the front and main corridors, with my back tight against the wall. I could see down the main corridor almost to the Doctor’s door. At the same time, I could keep an ear cocked around the corner, at my right shoulder, for sounds from the L. Ciaine wrapped a blanket around my shoulders and another around my legs. He bent over and whispered:

“While you are using your eyes and ears, don’t forget to keep the old sixth sense tuned up for movements of the Mysterious Unknown. No telling what medium he may employ to signal his approach. Make the old flesh creep, does it?”

I knew, instantly, that he was spoofing me. But it did make my flesh creep, a little. Really, when I came to think of it, it was very much the same sensation but the effect of it was, of course, entirely different. I did wish he hadn’t brought up the subject of that lurking possibility. I was very close to the corner; quite defenselessly close, in fact. I couldn’t see around it, into the main corridor behind my shoulder, at all. It was quite unpleasant. Claine suddenly became serious:

“Look sharp, now. If you feel the least bit sleepy, call me. You’re all right as long as you keep awake. But this is a right poor place for a nap. It’s midnight— Sunday morning. Let’s hope our Doctor will remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy. Wake me up at two o’clock; two hours is plenty in this draught. And don’t forget you can’t pull a trigger with that mitten on.”

I heard him bring Zave’s mattress from the kitchen. There were sounds of movement as he prepared his cot in the parlor. Then silence, except for the groaning and snapping of timbers in the cold. The moon did not strike the corridor windows directly but there was dim visibility from its diffused light. I took off my right mitten, clutched the revolver and wrapped a corner of blanket around my gun-hand.

Quite promptly I discovered what Claine had meant by the wind-velocity on those stairs. Outdoors it was calm, but a draught, sweeping up from the weathered front door on its way to the yawning windows of the ballroom, whirled past me like a gale from the regions of eternal ice. It numbed my face. It cut through blanket, fur and wool to the marrow of my bones. I drew the blanket over my head, holding a corner across my face, with only the eyes exposed.

It did not work too well. The edges, impinging on the frontiers of vision, set obnoxious shadows dodging about in the dim light. Also, it dulled my hearing. I dropped the blanket to my shoulders, again, and gathered it about my chin.

I was disturbingly conscious of that vast expanse of no-man’s land which lay behind my right shoulder, just around the corner— the closed rooms of the L, the unfastened side door, the wide-open woodshed, that eerie sinister ballroom above, the secret closets and the cellar-holes, Mr. Bakers, Gladdy, the Mysterious Unknown— At each explosion of a frost-drawn nail, my heart cut off the rhythm of my breath and my tingling legs went tense.

DOWN the corridor in front of me, a latch clicked softly. I threw back the blanket to free my shooting arm.

Utter silence. I bent forward and freed my legs from the encumbering blanket. Very cautiously I lowered my feet to the floor. An hour passed— or it may have been a second. I thought I heard a faint, rasping sound, as of a slowly turning hinge. A shadow appeared upon the floor and wall. A board creaked. The dim figure of a man came into sight, advancing cautiously on tiptoe, testing each step. I stood up, suddenly, and presented the gun. I said:

“Stick ’em up!” I had always understood that this was the proper formula to be employed in such circumstances. But I wondered, rather dumbly, what I should do if he did not stick them up. I decided that I would shoot. The thought aroused absolutely no repugnance.

The man stopped, with a subdued grunting sound and raised his hands above his head. For a long moment we faced each other— two vague shadows. I could not think of anything to say.

“Oh,” said the Doctor’s voice, scarcely above a whisper, “it’s you, Randall. I thought I heard noises out here,” I found the slow, purring drawl most unpleasant. “Taking the fresh air, eh? Be careful you don’t catch your death— a dangerous place to be sitting.”

I did not answer. I was still too startled and excited to rally my wits for speech. The Doctor turned and reversed his stealthy progress— a creaking board, the turning of a hinge, the soft click of a latch, and silence again. I drew breath deeply; it fluttered a little as I exhaled. My forehead was wet. I rubbed it with the tips of my fingers. Manifestly, midnight sentry-go was not the most congenial role in my repertoire. I looked at the watch on my wrist. It was half-past twelve. Half an hour gone and ninety minutes to go. I heaved a sigh and silently resumed my seat.

The frosted nails had taken up their drum-fire again. My mind was once more in condition to appraise the icy breath of the staircase gale. I tried to readjust the blankets but I could not manage. I could feel the bite of the speeding air through my heavy boots. It sought the openings of the disordered blankets and whirled around my body. Each move I made to close one gap served only to open a larger one.

I wondered why the Doctor had come out. Was he after me? “Catch your death”’—”a dangerous place.” He had not been talking about the draught. I abandoned my struggle with the blankets. I sat tense, listening and peering down the dim hallway. A long time passed. Then, sharp, clear unmistakable, the crash of a shot from the rooms below.

My first, subconscious reaction drove the chair from beneath my feet. It went clattering over upon its back. My legs were tangled in the blankets. I kicked them free and plunged noisily down the stairs. When I opened the parlor door, Claine was half-way from his bed to the door which led into the annex-room. He whirled on me; then grunted, “Oh!” He motioned me back and resumed his cautious advance. He carried the flashlight in his left hand, the revolver in his right.

Relief at finding him unhurt submerged every other thought. I stood in my tracks. Claine reached the door and laid his hand on the latch. Standing aside, pressed to the wall, he jerked the door and let it swing wide, away from him. It clashed against the wall.

I began to move forward. He heard me and waved me back, without looking. Even my inexperience recognized that he faced a dangerous situation. The room was dim but the moonlight was sufficient to outline him clearly if he stepped into that doorway. He snapped on the torch. Still hugging the wall he thrust it, at arm’s length, into the opening. There was no result. Still holding the light at arm’s length, he edged forward and suddenly lurched through the door. I rushed after him and we stood, side by side, revolvers poised.

The beam of Claine’s light completed a circuit of the annex-room without revealing anything except the litter on the floor and that solitary, incongruous wooden chair. He searched the room again and again, with the light. The place was absolutely empty. The dirt-filmed, rag-stuffed windows stood closed as we had seen them first. No one could have opened and closed those age-sealed sashes in the time that had elapsed. The remaining window was blocked, as before, by the blank sheet of wallboard. Yet the air was heavy with the reek of fresh-burned powder. There could be no doubt that the shot had been fired in there.

Claine grunted softly. “He may have got out those folding doors to the dining room ”

There was a shrill, barking scream— terrified, horrible, indistinguishable as beast or man. It came from somewhere above, shrieking down the front stairs and through the open parlor-door. It came again, taking form as words:

“Ben— Don’t— Oh God— Ben-n-y—”

The voice died suddenly in the roar of two swift shots.

Chapter 18

EVEN Claine seemed numbed by that gurgling scream. He stood as frozen and helpless as I was. That was a new experience for me— but then, I had never seen him face anything quite so dreadful as that scream. The silence that followed was even more dreadful. It throbbed on the air like the throbbing of a noiseless drum.

For once, it was I who first gathered wits to move. I dashed headlong through the parlor. At the foot of the stairs Claine overtook me and jerked me back into the room.

“God’s sake!” he whispered. “Are you trying to get yourself killed? Those stairs are poison.”

We strained our ears. There was nothing to be heard. Presently Claine said:

“Stay here and make stealthy noises. I’ll try the back stairs. Attract his attention, but don’t show yourself.”

He slipped across the entry and through the dining room door. I began to stir around but I could not seem to make convincing noises. Almost immediately, I stopped trying. It suddenly became clear to me. It was all a pious fraud of Claine’s to keep me out of danger. Of course, no self-respecting murderer would rise to such obvious bait. I could fairly see him, lurking at the top of the back stairs, to shoot Claine down. I had no mind to be left to wrestle alone with the affairs of this accursed Tavern.

I took a deep breath, clutched my gun and rushed the stairs. The dim moonlight was deceptive. At the top I stumbled over one of my chairs. The edge cut viciously across my knee-cap. I said “Ow!” quite distinctly. A beam of light flashed. Claine said, low but distinct:

“Steady, Dink; come here.”

I hobbled around that sinister corner, swearing rather dreadfully under my breath. I was sure my knee-cap would be cracked across. Claine was standing in Mr. Bakers’ door, near the top of the back stairs. He said:

“But for your headlong impetuosity and the alertness of that chair, we might have shot each other up. Look!”

In the room an oil lamp burned dimly by a disordered bed. On the floor, in a ghastly sitting posture, was Mr. Bakers. His legs were bent grotesquely under him. His shoulder rested against the bed. His head had fallen over upon the tumbled blankets. The staring eyes said, plain enough, that he was dead.

Claine pointed to two holes in the coat, above the heart, so close together they seemed like one. The cloth about them was powder-burned. “A thoroughly cold-blooded job,” he said, “though I’ve no doubt he deserved it.”

I think even his tough fibres felt the tug of it— that pitiful, despicable, cringing old man, pleading for his life; the murderer looking him in the eyes and pumping those two swift shots into his breast. But who?—

Claine had not once turned his back to the door nor taken his eyes from it for more than a flash. Now, sharply, his revolver snapped up. I turned. The Doctor stood inside the doorway. His head was tilted a little sidewise; his lips were pursed. With his left hand he slowly, meditatively stroked his beard. He was, to a T, the gentle physician, considering his diagnosis.

“Ah, promptly on the scene, once more,” he drawled. I found the unctuous, bedside manner quite appalling. But Claine said, briskly:

“Come right in, Doctor, and take your hand out of your pocket.” He might have been saying, “Come in and take your coat off and stay a while.” The Doctor removed his right hand from his pocket. Claine lowered his revolver. He said: .

“Won’t you examine the body and give us your opinion, Doctor?”

For a moment the man seemed not quite sure. His eyes narrowed and he pressed his lips together. Then he smiled, faintly. He drawled: “Quite unnecessary. I’m sure you have attended to the case in your usual adequate way.”

He quickly thrust his hand into his pocket, again, and stepped aside, along the wall. Claine’s revolver rose to cover him. A floor-board creaked and Gladdy, treading softly, appeared in the door. His eyes instantly fixed themselves on Mr. Bakers. They widened and grew round until they seemed about to pop out of his head. I never saw a more ridiculous expression on a human face, but what it signified I could not determine. Claine said:

“Come right in, Cousin Gladdy.”

Conlord shook his head, violently, and drew back into the hall. Instantly he stepped forward, with haste, into the room again. A door had slammed and firm, swift, forthright footsteps were tramping down the corridor.

“Ah,” Claine said, as Dick appeared. “So you two gentlemen are beginning to interest yourselves in affairs at Mountain Tavern—”

Dick interrupted him. He had grasped the meaning of the scene. He gasped, “My God!’ and stared with his Jaw hanging. It was the first time I had heard his voice. The Doctor linked arms with them both and turned them toward the door. He said, suavely, “I think we may leave these gentlemen alone with their dead.”

At the L they stopped and talked in low tones. Then they separated, each to his own room. We lifted the body to the bed and Claine spread a blanket over it. He extinguished the lamp and we returned to the parlor. I looked at my watch; it was not yet one o’clock. Claine lighted the lamp.

“Let us squander a little of our precious oil— I suspect I have the only flashlight on the premises. It’s a gift of the gods; we must guard it.”

“You think the Doctor did that, too,” I said. “I thought you had his revolver.”

“I have— or rather, it’s behind the clock over yonder— the one Cousin Daniel sent him. But I am quite certain the Doctor did it. I can’t seem to pin it onto Gladdy— or Syd,” he added, spitefully. “It was done with an automatic; there are two shells on the floor, up there. He probably brought along an extra gun.”

“But why shoot Mr. Bakers? He was only a nephew; he wasn’t in line of inheritance.”

“That is what he told us. Really, I think he was telling the truth. But suppose he wasn’t. Suppose he was ‘The Unfortunate,’ the heir. He called the man who shot him, ‘Ben’ — presumably the Doctor. By that hypothesis, Benjamin — the Doctor— has killed Little Zave and ‘The Unfortunate,’ alias Mr. Bakers, thus removing the two men who stood between him and the inheritance. Simple, what?”

“Ye-es,” I said, a bit doubtfully. Claine retorted:

“Exactly; much too simple to explain the intricate convolutions of this frivolous week-end.”

“I can’t understand that first shot,” I said, at length.

“Eh?” he said, absently. “Oh— well, the logical explanation would be that it was fired to draw you away from the top of the stairs, when the Doctor discovered you blocking his road to Mr. Bakers.”

“Yes, but the Doctor couldn’t have got down here to fire it.” I had one of my brilliant thoughts. “Someone else must have fired it for him.”

Normally Claine would have laughed at me. He merely shrugged his shoulders. He spoke testily. “You’ve seen everything that I have. It’s hardly likely there is anyone else working with him, if that’s what you mean. Let’s forget it till daylight.”

The door suddenly swung open. We leaped to our feet. The Doctor stood in the doorway, covering us with a pistol. Behind him we could see Conlord and Dick, also bearing arms. The Doctor said, suavely:

“Put up your hands, please!”

Chapter 19

CLAINE surveyed the Doctor with an air of dispassionate appraisal. He said: “I think it might be wise to obey the gentleman. You will note that he has his automatic.”

We raised our hands. A subtle inflection in Claine’s voice had made the word “automatic” stand out. The Doctor stiffened but the smoothness of his voice belied the vicious gleam in his eyes. He drawled:

“It is not often one has the honor of catching Cobbden Claine, the great detective, off his guard. The tiger, I am told, always sleeps after the kill.”

“We had so assumed,” Claine said. “Apparently, there are exceptions to the rule.”

“Get their guns!” the Doctor snapped to Dick. The boy took the revolvers from our pockets. “Search him!” The Doctor gestured at Claine. The latter’s voice expressed a mildly-shocked, benignant protest:

“My dear Benjamin, you will never make the grade— never. Noblesse oblige— fair field and no favor— the sporting chance— all quite meaningless to you, are they not? I brought no gun, except the one with which Cousin Daniel endowed us all, alike. I play the game, as is.”

Again and again, I had thought the Doctor would shoot. For some reason, Claine’s slow words seemed to bruise him, like lead-tipped whips. His eyes, just then, were the meanest, the ugliest I have ever seen. He turned to Dick.

“Put those guns on the chair— over there, by the door.” Then, to us, “Sit down.” He took his own seat opposite, his gun-arm resting on the table. He said:

“We’ve decided it’s time to stop this thing.” He was talking at us but, quite plainly, for the benefit of Gladdy and Dick. I watched their faces. There was no mystery about Dick— he was simply a bewildered boy. Gladdy’s face was a puzzle. He looked like a slack and flabby playboy, deprived of his barber. But his eyes were peculiar. They might mean something; or they might not.

“The same thought had occurred to us,” Claine said.

The Doctor was disciplining himself to his bedside manner. He said:

“I came downstairs, last night— night before last; how time does fly. I found these gentlemen in the dining room, bending over the body—”

Claine interrupted him, speaking casually in the direction of Conlord and Dick:

“Or, to put it in different words, sitting in here with our backs to the wall. A minor point— pray go on, Benjamin.”

The Doctor struggled with himself, for a moment. He resumed, “I found the body of our cook lying on the dining room floor—”

“That is scientifically accurate,’ Claine broke in. “Much better to be accurate, even in small things.’ He turned to the other two. “Our cook, by the way, was Little Xavier Bakers, son of Old Xavier and half-brother of that Benjamin whose name you may have heard Mr. Bakers invoking on the eve of his shocking demise. It may help your understanding of the Doctor’s absorbing tale.”

HE smiled benevolently at Dick and Gladdy. The former was staring, with his mouth open— that seemed to be his normal reaction to exciting events. He was plainly trying to fit things together but not making sense out of them. Conlord was studying the Doctor, with narrowed eyes and a speculative expression. The Doctor flashed one of his stealthy glances at them and turned back to Claine, with his eyes concealed. He seemed to be having another struggle with himself.

“Go on with your story, Doctor. Most thrilling. You were saying you heard a shot in the night. You seized your trusty shooting-iron. You rushed downstairs, hoping to capture the assassin, red-handed—”

“I heard the shot and came downstairs,” the Doctor began, with an assumption of dignity, speaking toward Conlord and Dick. Claine cut in on him, again:

“Do let me tell it for you, Doctor. I’m a much more accomplished liar. — You found Professor Randall and me bathing our hands in the victim’s gore. You covered us with the trusty shooting-iron— not this automatic; the slender, graceful revolver that Cousin Daniel sent you. You disarmed us. You alarmed the house. You locked us in separate rooms and set guards at the doors. Unless we’ve jumped out the windows, we’re still there, awaiting the police—”

He broke off. The Doctor’s feet were shuffling nervously, under the table. His mouth was compressed. He was breathing fast and audibly through his nostrils. The nervous movements of his finger on the trigger frightened me. Claine said, in a soothing voice:

“The levelled automatic is annoying, Dink, but we shall have to concede it to the Doctor’s state of mind. He feels, quite strongly, the necessity of shooting us but he can’t make up his mind as to the advisability of doing it in the presence of armed witnesses. A most annoying situation. So many things hinge on the decision— hanging-by-the-neck, and that sort of thing.”

The Doctor let the automatic sink slowly to the table, but he kept his hand on the butt. Claine smiled approvingly. He said:

“You’re absolutely right about that, Doctor— miserable weather to be hanged in. Now, where was I? Oh, yes; I was about to apologize. I’ve been telling the wrong story, Doctor; I do confuse things so. I recall, now, it was you who came downstairs red-handed, so to speak, to get your damaged knuckles bandaged. Oh yes, I remember, you had fallen against the window and broken out a pane. No doubt the shock of hearing that shot— or was it seeing Mr. Bakers on the stairs as you went up. Most disturbing, either way.

“BY the way, that reminds me. I said I had no other gun. I had quite forgotten— there is one on the shelf there, behind the clock. Won’t you get it, Dick, and put it with the others. It was your mishap with the window that reminded me, Doctor— the train of thought, you know — broken window— fresh air— room stuffy— take a walk. Positively, after you had told us about that broken window, the fresh-air urge was so overpowering that I went right out in that terrible storm and took a walk. The strangest coincidence, Doctor, I found that revolver in a snowdrift, right under your broken window. Most remarkable— a revolver just there— just then— with one chamber fired.”

The Doctor sprang to his feet. Dick and Gladdy had made some sort of movement. I think it signified merely realization of the import of Claine’s rambling words. But the Doctor’s nerves had been ground to a thin edge. He swung the automatic to cover them. There was a note of hysteria in his voice.

“Put up your hands— stick ’em up— quick!”

“Under the circumstances, very sound advice,” Claine drawled. “I’d follow it.”

They did so. “Turn around,” the Doctor ordered. With an eye on us, he sidled over. Fumbling nervously, he removed the revolvers from their pockets and put them with the others. He retrieved his chair and sat down, pointing the gun at Claine. I held my breath. I really thought he was going to shoot. He said, in a hoarse, threatening voice:

“Just what are you hinting, Mr. Daniel Bakers?”

I jumped half out of my chair, literally. Dick spun around. We stared at Claine. Conlord did not stir. Claine’s eyes slowly lighted with apparent amusement, but I had learned that this did not always signify. He possessed amazing power over his outward manifestations. He said, “No use trying to conceal anything from the old super-mind, is there, Ben?”

That seemed to unsettle the Doctor’s convictions. His voice lost its confidence. It conveyed more question than threat.

“Do you mean to tell me you didn’t write those letters?” Claine turned to Gladdy’s unrevealing back.

“What do you say, Cousin Gladstone? Is it your reasoned opinion that I wrote those letters?”

Gladdy turned. His face expressed sodden surliness. He said: “What the hell should I know about it? You leave me out of this, see. I got nothing to do with this, see.”

It was surprising, really, but I knew Claine’s shocked astonishment was simulated. He said, “My word, Cousin Conlord, what has happened to your native suavity? That was a terrible slip; you must be on your guard.”

“I don’t know anything,” Gladdy said, dully. His mind worked smoothly enough when it was oiled with liquor. In periods of abstinence, he seemed stupid. The Doctor, too, seemed to be feeling the lack of stimulant. That thought alarmed me. Claine began to speak, swiftly, but in a low, level voice.

“Before you shoot, my friend, consider the winds of Vermont, how they blow in Winter; you will remember from night before last. No end grisly, hanging by the neck in a gale like that— creak, creak; back and forth; back and forth. I should imagine one’s corpse might get thoroughly chilled. Or do they hang you in a steam-heated room, up here. Their justice is reputed to be swift and thorough but I imagine they are as merciful as circumstances permit.”

It does seem incredible, but it worked, every time. Perhaps it was the lack of stimulant. The Doctor’s glance wavered. He seemed puzzled, uncertain in his mind. His hand relaxed upon the gun. When it began to tighten, again, Cobbden Claine became confidential.

“You see, Doc, you’ve backed yourself into a bad corner — unstrategic. You’ve disarmed all the rest of us and now you’ll have to stand the rap for everything that happens. You had a truly gorgeous set-up. All you needed was an automatic with two or three shells gone and my fingers or Randall’s on the butt. Now you’ve got the automatic and nobody else has got anything.”

This time, it did not work. The Doctor’s gun-hand came back to his body. He rested the heel of his other hand on the edge of the table, as though to hoist himself to his feet. I felt, rather than saw, Claine’s hands go down to grasp the bar of the table from beneath.

Sharply, Syd’s voice cut in:

“Drop that gun!— Drop it!— DROP IT!— DROP IT!”

Chapter 20

SYD stood in the doorway, her revolver leveled at the Doctor. Frieda peered fearfully over her shoulder, pressing a clenched hand against her teeth. The blurred patter of Syd’s words told of nerves near the breaking point.

I felt a wave of relief that seemed to turn my bones to wax. Claine spoke casually but his relief was plain enough.

“A goddess descends from the machine,” he said. “Steady, Cousin Syd.” Then, crisply, “I’d drop it, Doc.”

The Doctor laid the automatic on the table. Syd said, “Put up your hands— all of you!”

We obeyed, but Claine said, good-naturedly: “The Doctor has mobilized the artillery for you. It’s all there, on the chair.”

“Frieda, pick up that gun,” Syd ordered. Frieda shrank back. She cried, hysterically, “I can’t.”

Without turning from us, Syd reached back and dragged her sister into the room. “Pick it up!” she urged, and pushed Frieda forward. The girl’s eyes were blank, expressionless, as though her mind were dead. She advanced to the table but seemed unable to force herself to touch the gun.

“Pick it up by the barrel, Frieda, please,” Claine said, gently. “There are priceless finger-prints on the handle.”

She looked at him and the dead eyes came alive. lt was amazing to see— and pitiful.

“Pick it up,” Claine urged. “It’s harmless.”

She picked it up gingerly, with her finger tips, and put it with the others.

“Now get a basket from the kitchen,” Syd commanded.

“It’s dark, out there,” Frieda wailed. It was, literally, just that; a wail. I had never seen a woman in that condition of nerves; it was perfectly fearful. Syd shrugged her shoulders in a gesture of nervous exasperation. Her left fist was beating gently against her hip. I think she was not far removed from hysterics, herself. But the muzzle of the revolver did not waver. She looked toward me. “You get it, please, Dink.” It was sweet to have her turn to me.

I brought a basket from the kitchen. “I’ll put them in for you,” I said.

“Never mind. Get back where you were.” That was not so sweet. But I did as she bade me, and promptly. Claine said:

“Please, Cousin Syd; by the barrels. The police, you know.”

“I’m going to put them where they won’t bother the police, or anyone else.”

“But, gallant lady,” Claine protested, “give thought, a moment. The police are presently going to reduce this phantasmagoria to commonplace reality. If they find a house full of dead men and no weapon but your reeking gun, they’re going to ask you, “How come?” Hide the evidence, if you want to; but mark the spot, “X”— Has that one been fired?” he asked, sharply.

Syd sniffed at the revolver in her hand, and nodded. Claine bent toward me and whispered, “Cousin Dick’s.” It took a moment for me to grasp the significance of it. When I had grasped it, I looked at the young man with considerable interest. I assure you a person who has been shooting at you in the moonlight is quite an interesting sight.

The girls took the basket of revolvers out of the room and were gone some time. When they returned, Syd demanded, abruptly, “How much longer have we got to stay ere?”

She looked at Claine and he answered her, “Until someone breaks out the road; a day— or a week.”

“Frieda and I are starting as soon as it is light. Where did you put our snowshoes?”

“In the bar. But you can’t use them in this snow. It’s too light. You’d perish miserably— and I mean that.”

“They seem to have disappeared,” Syd remarked, significantly.

“I’ll see if I can find them,” I told her.

“That would be a waste of time, wouldn’t it?” She addressed Claine, in an unpleasant manner. She took Frieda’s arm and led her out of the room.

Claine surveyed us with a whimsical look in his eyes. “Well,” he said, “that’s one way to bring about peace on earth. Doctor, I advise you to go and take a drink; it may restore your mental balance.”

“For God’s sake, Doctor, give me one,” Gladdy pleaded. Actually, it was pitiful. The man was suffering. But the Doctor growled, “Go to hell!” He glared at us, one after another, and shambled out of the room.

“I’ll go crazy,” Gladdy whined.

“Not necessarily,” Claine rejoined. “Personally, Conlord, I like you better drunk; but for the young women’s sake we shall try to keep you sober.”

Conlord flashed an ugly glance at him and went out. Claine laid a detaining hand on Dick’s arm and led him to the table. He assumed his best faculty manner, gentle, suave yet ominous. He said, “Dick, why did you shoot at Randall?”

The boy started, violently. He glanced about, with a hunted look, like a cornered animal. Finally he said, sullenly:

“I thought it was you.”

It was a tremendous shock to me but Claine seemed not the least surprised. He said:

“Ah, your eyes need attention, Delchester. Randall and I are not often mistaken for one another. Just why were you so desirous of my death that you would risk hanging or it?’

“You know damn well what it is.”

“No— tell me.”

“It’s Frieda— you know that, well enough.”

I suppose I must have been very dumb or I should have interpreted the expression that always came into Dick’s face when he looked at Frieda. But, positively, it came upon me out of a clear sky. I stiffened so perceptibly that Claine glanced at me with a bleak smile. He seemed to be very much in earnest. He said, quietly:

“Just exactly what do you mean?”

“You’ve taken her away from me.”

“How long have you known Frieda?”

“Since last Summer,” the boy replied, morosely.

“My relations with Frieda have been established for more than two years. That would make it appear that you have been trying to take her away from me.” Suddenly he smiled. No smile could be more captivating than Claine’s when he chose to make it so. He dropped his great hand upon Dick’s locked fists. The boy did not remove them. In a moment, the sullenness went out of his face. He raised his eyes to Claine’s for the first time. The latter went on:

“Dick, you have thirty years advantage of me. But to sulk and glower is not the way to win a woman. It doesn’t give her the idea that life with you would be one glad, sweet song. You must interest her; stir her. If you should succeed, even mildly, my doddering years would do the rest.”

HE rose, briskly. It was really quite marvelous, the relief, embarrassment and timid hopefulness in the boy’s face. He thrust out his hand, impulsively. Claine took it and held it, with an air of paternal benignity. Dick said:

“That’s awfully white of you, Mr. Claine. I’m sorry I was rotten.”

“You are the only sufferer, my boy. Let’s forget it.”

Under other circumstances, I might have been impressed by this gesture of noble renunciation. But in the light of that pitiful dialogue in the ballroom, it assumed a quite different aspect. It affected me most unpleasantly. Furthermore it was I who had been shot at. I felt it should have been my privilege to do the forgiving— if any. I said, a bit snappishly:

“How did you know it was Frieda, out there? She was wearing Syd’s cap.”

“I guess I know Frieda from Syd.” That made me uncomfortable, if it was what he wanted. I remembered what Syd had said on that subject. Evidently there was something wrong with me. The boy’s eyes were filled with ugly hostility. Suddenly it flashed on me that, after all, I had been keeping his date. I think I should have offered some sort of apology, if he had given me time. But, quite abruptly, his face was suffused with a truly astonishing expression of joy. He said— he was quite breathless:

“You mean you thought it was Syd? Was that why you kissed her?”

It was with difficulty that I restrained myself from striking the young man in the face. It impressed me as most impertinent. I said, with what dignity I could manage:

“That’s none of your damn business. Get out!”

He seemed somewhat bewildered; but he went. I thought, by the expression of Claine’s face, that he was going to make one of his low remarks. But he didn’t. He said:

“In spite of your perhaps justifiable suspicion, my remarks to the young man were wholly sincere. I shall try to enlighten you before I die. For the present, bear with me.”

Before I could make much out of that, Syd came in. She said to Claine:

“Whose gun was that you asked me about— the one that had been fired?”

“Cousin Dick’s,” Claine told her.

Her face hardened. “He was the one who shot at Dink?”

“He thought it was me,” Claine explained.

“Oh,” she said, with a change of expression. “Well, better luck, next time.”

She marched out of the room and slammed the door. I rushed after her. She was on the first stair. As she turned and recognized me, I thought the expression of strained alertness went out of her face. I put my hands on her arms. She smiled, faintly. I said:

“You’re terribly tired, Syd.”

“I’ll tell the cockeyed world,’ she said. It was quite frightfully pitiful and appealing. For a moment I really thought I was going to put my arms around her. But I restrained myself. I said:

“Let me have the gun. Or let me have my own gun. I’m going to keep watch, and you can rest.”

She hesitated; then shook her head. It meant she didn’t trust me. It was disheartening. She seemed to understand. She took hold of the end of my nose. It is quite a long nose and not the least attractive. She wagged my head back and forth. It was quite thrilling. She said:

“Silly ape, it isn’t that. But I don’t trust your best friend. He’d wangle that gun away from you in no time. Then the crime wave would be on again.”

“But Syd,” I gasped, “it isn’t Cobb— you know it isn’t. He’s the only one we can depend on to stop this thing.”

“Well, if he’s as good as you think he is, he can stop it without a gun. At least, he can’t possibly do worse than he’s been doing with one. Good-night.”

She tweaked my nose and went upstairs. The gun dangled limply from her right hand; her left crawled wearily up the banister. But her shoulders were squared and the little round head poised gallantly as ever on the firm column of her neck. She did not look back.

Chapter 21

DICK had left us, to go to his room.

I found Claine tramping back and forth in the parlor. I had seen him do that only once before— the night of the ballroom episode. There was something alien in the atmosphere. Perhaps he felt it. Claine seemed stiff, constrained.

“That was a narrow escape,” he said.

“What were you driving at, anyhow?”

“Stalling, mainly. There was a chance those two fatheads might feel inspired to horn in and disarm him. Failing that, there was nothing to do but keep his mind balled up and trust to luck for an opening. The Doctor is a killer, plain enough. But his wits are thick; he’s easily confused and he’s too cautious to kill when he is confused. He wants to figure it out, first, and that is a slow job. As a last resort, I should have had a try at heaving the table over on him, lamp and all. Well, we owe a bit to your gallant lady, Syd,” he said. “How about a spot of sleep?”

“It’s too damn cold up there,” I said.

“Well, what do you want to do?” There was an unfamiliar note of petulance in his voice.

I didn’t know what I wanted to do. I pondered it. Finally I said:

“I’m going to have another try for Syd’s gun. I’m going to watch the Doctor.”

“Oh, all right. Call me if you need me.” His manner was listless; not at all like himself. But, then, he was tired. He had had less sleep than I.

I knocked lightly at the girl’s door. In a moment it startled me by swinging open. Something hard poked into the pit of my stomach. It was as suddenly withdrawn. I recognized it as Syd’s revolver. Syd was behind it. She whispered: “Oh, it’s you. Be quiet; Frieda’s asleep. What’s wrong, now?”

“I want your revolver.”

“I heard you the first time— and answered frankly.”

“But I want to watch the Doctor.”

“Has he got another gun?” I thought there was a brighter note in her voice. It occurred to me that firearms might have assumed a new interest in her life since she started collecting them. I said:

“Not that I know of, but I wouldn’t put it beyond him. I’m watching him on general principles.”

SHE thought for a moment. Then she said, “I’ll watch with you— if you’ll bring the chairs around where we can watch this L, too.”

The idea of watching with Syd was pretty thrilling. But it would not do. I said, “That would put you close to Mr. Bakers’ door— and he’s in there.”

“And reasonably certain to stay there,” she retorted. “He and the cook person are the only ones in this caravansary that never give me a moment’s anxiety.”

“But Frieda— she won’t stay alone.”

“Oh, won’t she? You watch her. She’s practically full of sleeping capsules. If they don’t kill her they’ll cure her. Either way, she’s off my mind for the time being.” The bitter weariness of her tone! I said:

“You’re worn out. Why don’t you take a nap, yourself.”

“Never. Not ever again. I’m off the sleep, for life. I’ve broken myself of that habit.”

I tried to be sorry she wouldn’t listen to me but I couldn’t, really. We brought the chairs around the corner and sat down with our backs to the wall.

We put one blanket around our shoulders, the other around our legs. We were between Mr. Bakers’ door and Claine’s and mine. We faced directly down the L. To our left were the front stairs, the Doctor’s room and Dick’s; to our right, the back stairs; diagonally opposite, the stairs to the ballroom. It was a highly strategic position, but cold and windy, my word!

Syd sat at my left. Her right hand, bare and holding the revolver, rested on her thigh. In the faint light it looked so small and frail to be so efficient. And it must be cold! I drew off my left mitten and laid my hand over it. She did not seem to resent it. I asked her to let me hold the revolver but she shook her head— merely in weary stubbornness. Presently I felt her hand relaxing, under mine. Very slowly her head settled over against my shoulder. Her breathing grew slower, more measured. I looked down into her face. Her eyes were closed; her lips parted a little; she was sound asleep.

I took the revolver and slipped her hand into my great mitten. The blanket had dropped from her shoulder and I could not reach across to fix it. She must not sit there, relaxed in sleep, with that icy gale upon her. There seemed nothing else to do— I slipped my arm behind her shoulders. I drew her a little closer and held the far corner of the blanket up about her breast and throat.

It might have been five o’clock— my arm had had time to become quite numb— when I heard Claine come out of the parlor. He flashed his light up the front stairs, and then went back. Some time later I heard a board creak. There was no one moving in the corridors. It sounded like the front stairs. There seemed no reason for Claine to be so extraordinarily cautious.

I thought, suddenly, of the Lurking Presence at which Claine had hinted. I don’t know what there was about that Thing to frighten me but it always did; every time I thought of it. It made the hair on the back of my neck stir and bristle. It made cold, crinkly things march down my spine. Positively, it made my ears wriggle. I took a fresh grip on the revolver and tightened my arm around Syd.

A dim figure appeared at the head of the front stairs. It advanced a step and halted, as though it had detected us. After a moment it strolled forward, quite boldly. To my astonishment, it was Claine. I could not imagine why he should be so elaborately circumspect. He stopped and smiled down upon us. His expression, I thought, was rather insulting. I laid a finger on my lips.

He turned away and went softly up the stairs to the ballroom. I caught reflected flashes of his light, as it swept the walls, up there. He came down and moved on tiptoe to the end of the L and back. He started for the front stairs, then returned and entered Mr. Bakers’ room. I heard the bed creak as though he were moving the body. He came out, waved his hand and went down the back stairs. I could not make out what he was up to. If he were seeking the Mysterious Unknown, it seemed a bit foolhardy without a gun.

I was still muddling over it when I became aware that faint daylight was creeping into the corridors. Syd began to stir, uneasily, and sigh and groan very gently. Presently she opened her eyes. Then she sat up, quite vehemently, and stared at me. I braced myself. But she did not reproach me, at all. She merely said: “Oh, for heaven’s sake!— How long have I been asleep?”

“Only a few minutes,” I assured her. She looked about her. Then she said:

“You’re a liar, by the clock. I’ve been asleep hours— it’s daylight. I’m so sorry, Dink.”

“It’s quite all right,’’ I told her. “Really, I haven’t minded a bit.”

“Well, run down like a good lad and start the hot water. We’ll be right down. Let’s have some regular breakfast, for a change. I feel like somebody else, again— give me that gun!”

At the head of the back stairs, I turned. She stood there, watching me. I didn’t want to go down until she was safely in her room. But she gestured, quite decisively, and I went on. After all, she had the gun and knew how to use it. If she needed help she knew how to yell.

I suppose I was ten minutes getting the fire under way. As I opened the kitchen door, to go back upstairs, the sound of a muffled shot came thudding down to me. I declare to you, shots had become so much a part of the conventional life of the establishment that my heart did not miss a beat.

An instant later, it was missing them all— and turning somersaults, besides. It had flashed upon me that Syd possessed the only known gun remaining in the Tavern.

Chapter 22

AS I dashed up the back stairs I could hear Claine leaping up the front. He turned toward the Doctor’s room. I saw Syd coming up the L corridor. Her revolver was in her hand. Her head was bare and she was tugging her sheepskin coat on, as she ran. The sight of her lifted one burden of fear.

Claine had kicked open the Doctor’s door. He relaxed, suddenly, and turned toward me. There was a grim, unmirthful smile about his mouth but his face, in the gray dawn light, looked haggard. He pointed with a limp hand. The Doctor lay in an outlandish heap beside a straight-back chair. An empty cartridge shell was beside his hand.

Syd was pressing against me, peering in. She asked, “Is he dead?”

“Apparently,” Claine said.

“Please see.” Her tone was expressionless.

Claine straightened the Doctor’s body. “Quite so,” he said.

“Who did it?” Syd demanded.

Claine looked at her intently. She met his gaze, quite unmoved. “So far as the facts are publicly known,” he said, “you have all the weapons in the house— including the Doctor’s automatic from which this shell apparently came.” He picked up the shell and regarded it, speculatively.

“I thought I had them all,” Syd said. “I’ll go down and check them up.”

“See how many shells are gone from the automatic,” Claine suggested.

When she returned, she said, “The guns haven’t been disturbed. Three shells gone from the automatic.”

“Three, eh? Two of them are present and accounted for in Mr. Peters’ room. This would seem to be the third. — I’d suggest, Cousin Syd, that you seek your bower and get a little rest.”

“No!” Her tone was explosive. “I’m going to stay with you, this time, until the thing is straightened out.”

Claine shrugged his shoulders. “A rather big contract, with our limited facilities. We’re back in the Primitive, you see— no modern conveniences— no authority, no police, no finger-prints, no microscopes, no ballistics— no nothing. We are tolerably helpless.”

“The Doctor,” Syd said, “was an explanation of anything that might happen.” She spoke absently, as though she were trying to explain something to herself. “As long as we kept him blockaded we could feel safe. Now someone has shot him, and that upsets everything. I don’t know which one of you to watch. I’m going to watch you all. — He was shot in the forehead?”

THERE was a hole at the edge of the hair. Claine shook his head. “That’s where it came out.” He lifted the Doctor’s head and turned it a little. There was another hole at the base of the skull. Syd looked away. Her face was chalk-white. “Not pleasant work for a woman, Syd.” Claine suggested. He resumed his other tone:

“He was shot from behind and from low down. That is a most curious thing. I am sure he was sitting in that chair, facing the door. Judging by the angle the shot must have been fired from the level of the floor. Why should anyone go around behind him and fire from that clumsy position, It will bear a bit of explaining.”

I said, “Was he asleep?”

“He must have been. No one could have come in the door and got behind him if he’d been awake. Probably dozed off in the chair. I doubt if he’s been sleeping any more soundly than the rest of us, lately.”

He stepped backward, carelessly. His heel struck a square of wallboard that lay on the floor. It slipped away, revealing a rectangular hole, a foot or more in length. Claine’s lips twisted in a wry grin. He spread his hands, with an expressive gesture.

“There you are,” he said. He held up the cartridge shell and regarded it with whimsical intentness. “And there you are, again.”

Syd and I stared at him, quite without comprehension. He proceeded to explain, in words of one syllable:

“That is a register hole. At some time there was a metal register there, a grating, like the register of a hot-air furnace. Its purpose was to let surplus heat from the annex-room come up into this bedroom. In old country houses that was the only method of heating the bedrooms. The Doctor stuck his gun through that hole and fired the shot we thought was fired downstairs. This would be the shell his automatic ejected when he fired it. Elementary, my dear children. But, apparently, it didn’t occur to his simple mind that the rule might work both ways. He thoughtlessly sat down with his back to the hole and someone made use of it to shoot him from downstairs. Let’s go down and take a look.”

The annex-room was still almost dark. Claine led us along the wall toward the register-hole in the ceiling. His feet dragged as though he had become too weary to lift them. The shuffling sound, in the powdered plaster, was distressingly reminiscent of that unpleasant dance of his, in the ballroom. The incongruous wooden chair stood exactly under the hole. Claine said:

“Too bad we didn’t explore this room more carefully. This chair ought to have stirred one’s curiosity. It palpably doesn’t belong here. I think it is one of the few physical traces we have found of Cousin Daniel’s activities.”

He flashed his light on the seat of the chair. There were smears of snow on it, like blurred footprints. In the center, was a hole— a fresh bullet-drill.

“The Doctor’s decoy shot,” said Claine. “And these would seem to be the footprints of the man— or woman— who stood on the chair to shoot him.”

The snow tracks led from the chair to that window which was closed by a sheet of wallboard. Claine pried at the edge of it with his fingers. It yielded and swung smoothly inward, leaving a small hook dangling from the window casing, outside.

“Hinges!” Syd exclaimed.

“Exactly, hinges!” Claine echoed, with exaggerated solemnity. ‘Carefully and elaborately prepared in advance to make entrance easy. The one palpable clue in the whole blasted go-down— and we seem to have missed it.”

Outside, under the window, there was a small trampled spot in the snow with a trail of queer little indentations leading away from it toward the corner of the house. They looked to me like the trail of some small animal. Claine said, “Let’s go outside and have a closer look at those.”

Midway through the parlor, Syd exclaimed, “We’re making a mess of this carpet.”

In truth, our boots were leaving a glaring trail of white plaster-dust. Claine said:

“There speaks the perfect housewife. To me, that ‘mess’ is the perfect alibi. Presently some keen intellect is going to point out that I was down here, alone, when the Doctor was shot from that next room. I call you to witness there were no plaster-marks on this carpet until we made these.” There seemed a touch of seriousness under his light tone.

In the entry he stopped to try the unused front door. It was fastened. An immense, old-fashioned brass key stood in the lock. Claine tried vainly to turn it. It required all the strength he could apply with both hands before it yielded and threw back the rusted bolt, with a terrific screeching. “I suspect, Cousin Syd, you were sleeping in a cradle, the last time this door was opened,” he commented.

Some snow had settled into the windswept path along the house, after the gale fell— an inch, perhaps. Along the front and the two ends Claine’s boots had tramped it hard, in his nervous march after the dance with Frieda. But along the rear the snow lay unmarked except by those queer indentations. Claine bent to examine them. He straightened up with a rueful laugh.

“Walking on the rear edge of his heels,” he said. “A clever guy. And tough muscles— it’s brutal on the shins.”

We were able to trace the marks clear around the front of the building to the side door. “And a lot of good they do us,” Claine complained. “Apparently he heeled it around to that window, did his stuff and heeled it back to this door. But how did he get out and in again? You’re sure you didn’t take a nap up there in the hall, Dink.”

“I did not,” I protested. He made me mad, with his innuendos.

“How long were you down in the kitchen?”

“Long enough to start a fire— ten minutes or so.”

He turned to Syd. “You were in your room?”

“Yes,” she said, “and the door was closed.”

“Then he could have gone out, easily enough,” Claine said. “But he couldn’t have got back in after the shot— unless he waited until after we came downstairs. We ought to have checked up on Delchester and Conlord before we came down. A bit strange, isn’t it, their failure to join in the excitement?”

“I don’t know,” Syd remarked. “I should rather expect them to crawl under the bed. I can’t see either of them doing this heel stunt— let alone thinking it up.”

“He didn’t come out that door while I was in the kitchen,” I said, with sudden conviction. “Nobody has lifted one of those damn latches, yet, without my hearing it. I haven’t heard anything else but latches since I came into this damn house.”

Claine said to Syd: “This ‘damn’ complex of his is something entirely new. It must be the general atmosphere of crime. He never talks that way when he’s home — What is your idea, Dink; are you still enamoured of your Mysterious Unknown?”

“It stands to reason those two fatheads didn’t do it,” I retorted, rather warmly. That Mysterious Unknown had dallied too intimately with my spinal column to be treated with levity. “There is no reason why someone shouldn’t have come in from outside and done it.”

“Presumably in a pocket airplane,’’ Claine jeered. “There are no marks in the snow.”

“We haven’t looked,” I said. “I’m going to make a circuit of the place and see.”

“I think that’s a good idea,” Syd said, earnestly.

“Good exercise, at any rate,’ Claine grunted. “I’ll wait for you here, on the doorstone.”

We started along the L toward the woodshed. As we floundered through the drifts, keeping a sharp lookout for radial trails, my mind busied itself with Claine. There was something about him, this morning, that puzzled me. Superficially, his manner seemed the same. But there was an air of weariness, of dullness or lassitude about him. He acted as though he were going through a prescribed set of motions without any particular enthusiasm. Of course, as he had pointed out, our primitive surroundings limited the possibilities narrowly. But I should have expected that to pique his enthusiasm, to spur him on.

We had rounded the woodshed and were half way along the far side of the L, up to our waists in snow, when we heard a scream from within the Tavern. It was faint and muffled, but the words were plain enough:

“Dick! — Dick! — Help! — Dick!”

Chapter 23

THE scream brought us up, rigid. Syd cried, “Frieda! Oh, God!” It was like a sob. The human instinct to cry, “Oh, God!” in moments of crisis had always struck me as silly and deplorable. But, if Syd did it, there must be something fundamental, irresistible about it.

We started back along our trail. I took Syd’s arm, to hasten her floundering progress. The screams continued for several moments. They ceased abruptly. The silence was yet more appalling. Syd shook off my hand. She gasped:

“Go on— hurry— hurry!”

I went on alone, in clumsy leaps and bounds. And again my mind turned to Claine. I am astonished, now, at the suddenness with which our suspicions veered against him. With the Doctor removed from the picture, he was, I suppose, the only one among us whose personality was strong enough to support suspicion. But Frieda! I had learned enough to know that he regarded her as a burden — perhaps a threat. Much as I loved the man, I believed that strange, rebellious mind of his was capable of anything, no matter how grotesque. But openly— in broad daylight— it would be stark insanity. Gladdy popped into my mind. I dismissed him, instantly. He was harmless, except in his cups.

I staggered through the woodshed and the kitchen. My heart was pounding and the breath actually stabbing at my lungs. I am not inured to violent exertion. The entry door stood open. I thought I never should reach the top of the stairs. I came to the open door of Frieda’s room, and stopped, abruptly.

SHE lay on the bed, motionless. There was a cloth across her forehead and eyes. I thought it was a bandage, and thought she must be dead, or dying. Claine knelt on one knee, beside her. He was chafing one of her hands. His back was toward me. I do not believe he knew I was there. He bent over and kissed her mouth. She jerked to a sitting posture and the cloth fell from her eyes. They were utterly blank. She stared at Claine and one could see the slow growth of angry emotion in her face. She said:

“Oh!”

It is difficult to find words to describe that moaning “Oh.” Repulsion, certainly; anger, even hatred, perhaps. She moaned: “Go away— Oh, go away!”

Claine took hold of her arms. “Frieda,” he said. There was infinite tenderness in his tone. “Frieda!” He shook her, not violently, angrily, as I shake Syd when I am mad at her, but gently, as though to bring her back to herself. “Frieda, listen to me,” he pleaded. “Everything is all right. I love you. Don’t you understand? I have always loved you. We’re going to be married, Frieda. Everything is all right.”

She wrenched free and sidled away from him, on the bed. The life had come back into her eyes. She knew what she was doing, now. “All right?” she railed. “Everything is all right! I nearly killed myself and everything is all right! Killed myself for an old man like you!”

She laughed. It was shrill; really, it was horrid. The scorn in that laugh and in her voice— it was perfectly ghastly. I saw Claine cringe; he seemed fairly to shrivel. He reached forward, groping for her hands but she snatched them away and edged farther from him.

“Frieda— darling— don’t you understand? I’ve always loved you. I was only doing it for your own sake. Frieda, I want you— please—”

Positively, he was begging— on his knees. This was not my Claine. If the ground should begin to crumble away under my feet, this minute, I would feel exactly as I felt then. She laughed again in that shrill, horrible, scornful way. Then she stopped, suddenly and spoke calmly:

“Don’t you understand, Cobb? I am awake, finally. If you want to find out about yourself, take poison, like I did. When you think you’re dying, things look different. You made a fool of me— a fool! I don’t want to see you again— ever. Go away!” Claine did not move. She cried, “Go away!” He rose and stood bewildered.

Abruptly, Frieda stretched her arms toward me. She called, “Dick” I had not heard him approach, but he was there, beside me. “Dick!” she called, again, “Oh, Dick!” He hesitated, then rushed forward. She moaned, “Dick!” He sat down on the edge of the bed and took her in his arms. She dropped her head upon his shoulder and began to sob. Claine gazed at them, fascinated. Then he strode past me, out of the room. His eyes stared emptily. I do not think he saw me, at all.

Next instant, Syd was clinging to my arm, as though to steady herself. Her breath was sobbing, as mine had been. She carried her revolver in her hand. The sight of Frieda must, of course, have reassured her. She appeared merely puzzled and exasperated, but I could sense that her nerves were tearing at her. She stared at Dick and Frieda; then turned questioningly to me. Before I could speak she abruptly pushed me back, through the doorway. I said: “What’s the matter, Syd?”

“I don’t know; I don’t know,” she gasped, with nervous intensity. ‘Please go.”

She slammed the door, almost against my nose. I had the silly feeling that comes when one is hustled back by the police. I was wholly at a loss. I did not know what to do. Claine had resumed his nervous, tramping, outdoors. I had no mind to face him with this appalling thing. By the gathering clouds, it was going to snow again. God forbid more snow!

I was deathly curious about this Frieda business. It irritated me. The thought of Claine upset me, terribly. I wanted to know what it all meant. But, more than anything else on earth, I wanted to sleep. I was utterly worn out, mind and body. If I woke up with a bullet in me, what of it? I was past caring.

Before I had finished tucking myself in, Claine came clumping up and went to the Doctor’s room. When he came back, past my door, he was carrying the black bag of gin. He stopped in Mr. Bakers’ room, then went downstairs and outdoors again. My first thought was that he wanted the stimulant for himself. But he was not that kind. More likely he was removing temptation out of Gladdy’s way. Amazing that he could think of it in this terrible crisis of his own emotions. But he was like that. An excellent idea, anyhow. I dropped asleep, almost instantly.

Chapter 24

IT was past noon when I awoke, with violence. Syd was bending over me. She was shaking me and calling:

“Dink!” quite plaintively. Her eyes looked unnatural— wild, sort of. My brain was numb from sleep. I couldn’t put things together, very well. She frightened me. I said: “What’s the matter?”

“I wa-anted you.”

Well, the way she said it, really, it was sort of pitiful. But it frightened me more than ever, her saying a thing like that. I thought it must be something rather terrible. In a flash, I remembered Frieda. I said: “Is anything wrong with Frieda?”

“Why, she committed suicide.”

I can’t remember feeling at all shocked or grieved on Frieda’s account. My thought regarding her was that she was a pest, anyway. And persistent about the suicide thing. But I could tell, from the way Syd spoke, that this, coming on top of everything else, had practically unhinged her. That was pretty alarming. She was all tied up with hysteria. I kicked off the blankets and swung my legs across the bed. I yelled: “Where is she?”

I suppose it was the yell, as much as anything. It was a rough yell, probably. It seemed to wake Syd up, a little -— not entirely. She said, rather blankly: “What?”

“Where is she— where is Frieda?”

“Oh. She’s in our room. Dick’s with her.”

“You told me she committed suicide.”

She still had that vague, dazed way of looking at me. She said, uncertainly:

“Did I? I meant, she tried to— this morning— why, you knew about it— you were in there. She took all the headache tablets, at once. She’s all right, now. Dick’s with her.”

Well, it made me mad— to wake me up for that! I hadn’t more than closed my eyes, and I needed hours of sleep. I stood up. I took Syd by the shoulders and shook her, good. Shaking Syd always has a salutary effect on me; soothes me and invigorates me, sort of. It makes her hair fly and the gold in it flashes. I felt better, almost immediately. I said:

“You desiccated ape; what did you wake me up for that, for?”

She looked at me. Her eyes were big and round as though she couldn’t believe it. She said: “But, Dink, I wa-anted you.”

Well, I have to admit it was sort of pitiful. But I was mad. I’d been figuring on a good long sleep. Then, all of a sudden, she began to cry, and tremble all over. I hadn’t noticed before that she didn’t have her overcoat on. And that Tavern like a Siberian mortuary vault! She had no business running around without any overcoat on. She made me mad, anyway. One minute she was swinging a gun and ordering strong men about; the next she was blowing up with hysterics and spoiling my sleep. And running around without any overcoat on! I pretty nearly told her to go back to her room and let me sleep, but, somehow, it seemed sort of brutal. But I couldn’t let her stand there and catch cold.

I picked her up and dropped her on the bed, not any more gently than I could help. I tucked the blankets around her. That left me without any place to finish my nap. She had stopped crying. She was looking up at me with one eye, which was all that remained out in the open air. She looked so snug and warm and I was relaxed from sleep and my pores all open— all of a sudden, the cold struck right into me. My knees shook and my teeth began to chatter. I had forgotten I didn’t have any overcoat on. Syd stuck her head out of the blankets. She sounded more like herself. Perhaps the crying had done her good. She said:

“For heaven’s sake, haven’t you got any more sense than to be running around without any overcoat on? Lie down and cover yourself up.”

“Yeah,” I said. I realized, instantly, that it sounded like Gladdy. But really, you know, I was feeling rather like Gladdy in one of his less polished moods. I can go without sleep when I set myself to it but, once I start sleeping, [ want to finish it. It ruins me to be waked up in the middle. “Yeah,” I said. “And where, for instance, am I going to lie down? Out in the snow or in with Mr. Bakers or in with the Doctor, or where?”

“What’s to prevent your lying down, right here?”

“Certainly not,” I said.

“Well, I suppose a young boy can’t be too careful. I’ll go back down in the Bar and you can finish your nap. But probably I’ll shoot your Claine. Every time he’s been in to fix those stoves he’s had a narrow escape.”

“I don’t see why you can’t go back in your own room.”

“You’re so peevish,” she said. “I told you Frieda and Dick were in there.”

“Well then, you certainly ought to be in there— or somebody.

“So-o-o,” she said, “that’s it, is it? Well, Mr. Eighteen-ninety-five, I’m here to tell you you’ve got a vile mind.”

“I think you’ve got the vile mind,” I told her.

“It isn’t vile enough to see any harm in lying down here, like this— in an emergency. Especially with you a hundred-and-one per cent asleep.” Her voice became quite serious. “Can’t you understand, Dink? Freida and Dick are at a crisis of their lives. I don’t know why, or anything about it— but it’s so. Any time I think Frieda and I need police protection, I’ll phone for some.”

Suddenly the solution came to me. I said: “I’ll go in and sleep in Dick’s bed.”

Syd sat up straight. “If you do, I’ll follow you. I’m not going to be left alone. I’ve been lone-wolfing around this murder mansion for forty-eight hours. I’m fed up. I’m all set for a tantrum you’ll love to tell your grandchildren about.” She dug the revolver out of her hip pocket. “Take that! From now on, I’m a clinging vine. If anything starts, Syd’s head goes under the blankets, and stays there— — Now, lie down and go to sleep.”

WELL, really, there wasn’t much a chap could do when Syd started giving orders. After all, what difference did it make? Apparently people did things like that. It might be good for me. I’ve always believed people ought to have experiences, a little. To broaden them. As soon as the road was broken out, that would be the end of Syd, for me, anyhow. It would be something to remember. I stretched myself out on the edge of the bed. She thrust her arm under my head and drew it over onto her shoulder. It certainly was an experience. I felt her relax. She drew a slow, deep breath and expelled it, quite violently, in my neck.

“O-o-o-o-h! What a reassuring beard! Dink, you won’t let anybody shoot me, will you?”

I told her I certainly would do all I could— there was probably not much danger, anyway. I think it reassured her. She seemed to grow quite calm. Her breathing became easier, more regular. I thought she was falling asleep but. presently, she said: “I don’t see what made Frieda do it.”

“Well,” I said, “what did she do?” Not that an incomplete suicide, more or less, amounted to much in that Tavern but, still, I couldn’t help being a little curious.

“I told you, she took all the headache medicine— gosh. an awful lot. Then she changed her mind and yelled for Dick; we heard her. He missed the train— I guess he generally does. Your Claine tickled her throat and got all the capsules back.”

Well, I was glad I hadn’t been there to see that. I dislike such things. I’m fastidious, really. I suppose it’s necessary, sometimes.

“He’s frightfully versatile,” Syd said, drowsily. Presently she went on, in a sleepy, drawling voice: “It was lousy of me to go off the deep end, this way. I don’t do it often, Dink, honestly. But you’ve no idea what it’s like to have an identical twin go sour on you. It’s been like this for ages, and she won’t tell me. It’s ghastly. And now she bobs up, way out here in the woods, doing a Bernhardt with two perfect strangers. Are they the guys who have been ruining my life right along? Or are they a couple of other fellows she’s engaged to keep her miserable over Sunday? Is Claine her permanent Secret Sorrow? And who is this Dick bird? And how came Frieda to eat the pain-killer— we’re not naturally suicidal, really. And how come she changed her mind so extraordinary quick? And how come the three of them to be among those present at this Indian massacre? That would keep me awake nights if I hadn’t been awake so darn many, already. If I can only sleep, I don’t care what happens to me— or anybody else.”

I felt a good deal the same way about it, myself. The next I knew, someone was tickling my ear and giggling. It sounded like Syd.

Chapter 25

I TURNED my head and looked up. It was Syd. She was standing by the bed, with Dick beside her. His arm was around her shoulders; hers around his waist.

It was too much— too damn much. First Gladdy and now Dick. I tried to sit up. There was an arm around my neck and it drew me down, again. I looked. It was Syd, to be sure— with my head on her shoulder. We had been sleeping— like that. It was appalling. My cheeks burned.

The other one was Frieda, of course. Her face was transfigured. So was Dick’s. There was a kind of youthful glory of happiness upon them both. They were grinning at me— perfectly vile. Frieda said— I could have sworn it was Syd’s voice:

“Well, Syd, you’re quite thoroughly compromised, now.”

Syd said: “Tragic, isn’t it?” She didn’t seem to be wholly awake.

“Maybe he’ll do the honorable thing by you,” Frieda said. Syd shook her head.

“Not a chance. There isn’t a spark of chivalry in him.”

It was an embarrassing situation. It was terrible. I wanted to explain. I began, “Honestly, Frieda ”

She stopped me. She said, quite sternly: “Don’t try to explain. You’ll only make it worse.”

When she was not smiling there was something in her eyes that I had never seen in Syd’s. I hoped I might never see it in Syd’s. There still was a weary drag in her voice. She said to Syd:

“It’s five o’clock. I thought we might get some dinner— I mean, on a table. It might make things more cheerful.”

Syd spilled my head off her shoulder, quite briskly. “Right snappy headwork,” she said. “I haven’t taken nourishment off a table since the Civil War. Go start a fire while I beautify myself.”

She came bustling into the kitchen before I had the fire going. She said:

“Now, Scullions, a lot of action. Who knows how to cut steaks off that beef-critter in the shed? As I feared. Fetch the inimitable Claine— he can do anything. And summon Fatty Conlord. I want to watch him go over the culinary jumps. Scram!”

Claine cut the steaks and departed, without speaking. Conlord was of no earthly use. He simply followed Syd around, like a hungry poodle. I feared I might be going to strike him.

Judged as food, dinner that night was as good as Little Zave’s. As a social event, it had shortcomings. Claine was silent and ugly— a new manifestation. He kept his eyes down. Dick glared at him and hardly ate at all. Frieda, having fully recovered from her too large dose of sleeping tablets, which Cobb had forced out of her system in the nick of time, was enjoying an attack of talkative exhibitionism, apparently for Claine’s benefit. The vacant places of the Doctor and Mr. Bakers rather dominated the feast. It was altogether verminous.

Out of a clear sky, Syd hailed Claine, “Have you decided who it was that shot the Doctor?”

I think his thoughts were not with us, at the moment. “Eh?” he said. “Oh— well, do you think a discussion of that would add anything to our peace of mind, just now?”

“What do you mean, peace of mind?” Syd demanded. “We’ve got a murderer in our midst. It wouldn’t do my peace of mind any harm to know which one of us is It. We might take steps.”

Claine stared at the tablecloth and drummed with his fingers. Finally he shrugged and looked eh at Syd.

“You’ve seen as much as I have,” he said. He sounded bored and unwilling. “That seems to indicate that our murderer went out the side door, walked around the front of the house on his heels, climbed in the annex window, stood on a chair and fired through a hole in the ceiling. He returned by the same route. It would have been impossible for you or Dink or me to have done all that and reached the second floor at the time we met there.

“That eliminates you and Dink. But I was downstairs in the parlor. I might have stepped into the annex, fired the shot and returned through the parlor. But we have discovered no way in which I could have done that without leaving plaster-marks on the parlor carpet. Your sister, of course, could not have left the bedroom without your knowledge. Either Conlord or Delchester could have got out the side door while you were in your room and Dink was in the kitchen. But they could not have come in again until after we three had finished in the Doctor’s room and come down stairs— ten or fifteen minutes. We have no means of determining where they were during that period.”

Dick’s face was congested with anger. Conlord looked sulky and uneasy. Neither spoke. I just chanced to look at Syd. My heart came right up into my throat. That instant— I don’t know how it happened but, out of a clear sky, it flashed on me that I was interested in her— in a serious way, I mean; really in— well, quite terribly in love with her. I was simply appalled. I hadn’t had the remotest suspicion. What was I going to do? She must be pretty important. She told us she didn’t dare reveal her name because people recognized it. It must be pretty well known.

Claine had acted as though he knew— why, darn it all, of course he knew. He knew Frieda. He wouldn’t care how important they were. He wasn’t afraid of anything. But I wouldn’t dare ask him. And I don’t keep track of such things. I seldom read newspapers, especially society news or the picture pages or anything of that sort.

She was speaking to Claine, again, “Some one might have worn overshoes in the plaster and taken them off before he stepped on the carpet.”

“Given time enough,” Claine conceded. “But, if I had stopped to take off overshoes, I should not have reached the second floor when I did.”

“Could any of us have gone into his room and shot him, there?” Syd asked.

“An interesting idea,” Claine said. “It could have been done if the Doctor was asleep. I shouldn’t have had time to go down the front stairs and back again, after it. We know Dink built a fire in the kitchen; so he didn’t have time to do it. You could have done it and dodged into the L and out again. We have only your sister’s testimony that you actually went to your room.”

“Syd had her hat off,” I blurted. “She was just putting on her coat. She couldn’t have done it, of course.” It struck me aghast to have him dragging her into things, that way, now that I realized who she was. But she was such a good sport. She didn’t seem to mind, at all.

“Attaboy!” she grinned. “That’s my parfait, gentil knight.” It did make me glow, kind of; but, right afterward, I felt desolate and forlorn.

“That’s what you saw as you ran, Dink,” Claine rejoined, calmly. “She might merely have thrown her hat on the floor. -— -Conlord is out. He couldn’t have got back to his room before Syd came out of hers. Delchester had the best opportunity— his door isn’t six feet from the Doctor’s. It might explain his curious deafness to a shot in the next room.”

“I sleep with my head under the blankets,” Dick burst out, angrily.

“An excellent refuge in time of trouble,” Claine said. “But, really, young man, I am not crediting the thing to you. I doubt it was done in the room. Silly risk and trouble to creep around behind the Doctor and kneel down to fire from the edge of that hole ”

“Unless someone wished to give the impression that it was fired from downstairs,” Syd broke in.

Claine turned toward Dick with a suggestive: “Ah-h!— A pregnant thought. Snappy way to settle a grudge with the fella downstairs— what?”

Dick brought his fist down on the table. He half rose. “You’re trying to pin it on me,” he shouted.

Claine raised a deprecating hand. “No, no,” he said, mildly. “I told you I didn’t credit it to you. The snow tracks, downstairs, for instance— they don’t fit the upstairs theory. They might, of course, have been planted in advance, as a blind. They would last indefinitely in that temperature. But that involves a more or less intricate plot— a bit beyond this young man’s capacity, I suspect.”

“Who was the Doctor?” Syd demanded, suddenly. ‘What part did he play in the sweet little bedtime story Mr. Bakers told us?”

“What makes you think he played any part?” Claine began. Dick broke in on him.

“You called him ‘Benjamin,’ last night.” His voice was ugly and triumphant.

“A simple enough deduction. Mr. Peters called the man who shot him. ‘Ben.’ We think the Doctor was the man who shot him. Therefore the Doctor was Benjamin.”

“Then who was Mr. Bakers?” Syd asked.

“We have nothing to indicate that he was not ‘Mr. Bakers.’ ”

“I was wondering,” Syd said, “if he could have been that oldest brother— the one with the fragrant nickname— ‘The Unfortunate.’ Perhaps your Mysterious Unknown just hovered around until Benjamin had killed the other two and then stepped in and killed Benjamin. That might explain why they were invited to this quaint week-end. But it doesn’t explain why the rest of us were invited— unless our turns are yet to come.”

Claine laughed, shortly. He said: “No danger of that, I think. Your inference would be that the Mysterious Unknown, if any, is Cousin Daniel? But Mr. Bakers made no mention of a fourth party who might be interested in the demise of the three brothers. I do not think Mr. Bakers was ‘The Unfortunate.’ I think he was what he said he was and that Cousin Daniel was one ”

“The Doctor called you ‘Daniel,’” Gladdy shot at him, viciously. “You tried to put it off on me.”

“Merely spoofing you, Cousin Gladstone. You’re an irresistible temptation. I think the Doctor’s remark was intended as a random shot.”

“Just the same, Claine, there was something between you and the Doctor,” Dick interjected, with ugly emphasis. “You both knew something.”

“Are you Cousin Daniel?” Syd asked, smoothly. It made me gasp. I think it made everyone gasp except Claine. He smiled at her. It was the first sign of the old Claine that I had seen. He said, drawling:

“If I were Cousin Daniel, might it not be dangerous to run me into a corner with such a question?”

She smiled back at him and shook her head. “I should not be a bit afraid that Cousin Daniel would harm me. Besides, you haven’t any gun.”

“Cousin Daniel must have had a gun if he shot the Doctor,” he said, quizzically. “But I thank you, angel lady, for the compliment implied in your first remark.”

I was completely bewildered— but Frieda interrupted: “I’m fed up on this kind of talk. If we’re going to wash the dishes, let’s get at it.”

“Let the dishes go,’ Claine said— to Syd, not to Frieda. “I think we’ll be getting out of here, tomorrow.”

“You think the gory drama is at an end?”

“I feel quite sure of it, Cousin Syd.”

She studied his face. So far as I could judge it was blankly non-committal. She said, cryptically,

“Ask Cousin— uh— Cobb; he knows.”

Chapter 26

I HAD expected to sleep. But when I closed my eyes the old apprehension, the old, strained vigilance came back upon me. And there were my unhappy thoughts about Syd and my misgivings and anxiety about Claine. But it was more Syd than Claine.

He had gone outdoors— to resume his gloomy tramping, I supposed. I heard him come in, at intervals, to put chunks in the stoves, but it was half-past twelve before he came upstairs. With the moon overcast, he was merely a moving blur as he tiptoed to the bed.

“Hello,” I said.

“Oh— you awake? What’s the matter?”

“Nothing. Can’t get to sleep.”

“Foolish,” he said. ‘Nothing to worry about, tonight. Go to sleep.”

“Coming to bed?”

“No.”

“Why not?” I demanded. “What’s the matter? What are you afraid of?”

“Nothing, I tell you.” He was snappish, irritated. “I give you my word there is absolutely nothing to worry about. Go to sleep!” .

He left the room, abruptly, and began to pace the corridor. He went downstairs and came up again. For at hour he roamed the house, like a questing cat. It was a negation of his whole temperament as I had known it. It was incredible; it was upsetting. It was a riddle that I could not solve. I knew that strange mind of his— self-sufficient, rebellious, impatient of conventional restraint. Claine was a cold-blooded, logical realist with a code all his own. In some of his relations it went far beyond the conventional inhibitions of the herd; in others it denied them utterly. Into what had it led him now?

DOWN the L a door opened. I heard heavy steps. I sat up, very suddenly. There was a danger I had forgotten— Gladdy’s hunger for Syd. But the steps came forward to join Claine in the main corridor. I heard Gladdy pleading; Claine firm and denying. Gladdy cursed him and tramped back to his room. I surmised it was the matter of the Doctor’s gin. It brought a startling thought. Syd’s revolver was in my overcoat pocket. She was without means of defense. After some debate, I decided to take it to her. In the hall, Claine intercepted me.

“Taking Syd’s revolver to her,” I explained. “She left it with me, this afternoon.”

“You’ll wake them up,” he objected, “frighten them. She won’t need it.”

“Gladdy,” I began.

“Gladdy?” he seemed puzzled. “Oh, I’d forgotten. He’ll never bother her when he’s sober. I’ve put the booze where he can’t find it. I’ll be stirring around, anyhow. Go back to sleep— you’ve been asleep?”

“Yes,” I lied, to avoid argument.

He might be right. At any rate, I should be awake and ready. I went back to bed, holding the revolver in my hand, under the blanket. I felt not the slightest desire ts sleep. Syd filled my mind, now— or, rather, the bitter thought of life without Syd.

Again there were heavy footsteps, from the other direction, this time. My heart jumped— the Doctor! I had to laugh at myself. The Doctor had become an obsession. He was dead. This must be Dick. Claine met him and they talked, in tense undertones. Then, together, they went down the front stairs. What could that mean’ Those two!

They were gone more than half an hour, by the glow of my watch-dial. One came back, alone, and tramped away. down the corridor. It must be Dick. I heard the faint. distant closing of his door. It was another hour before Claine came up. He tiptoed into the room. I simulated sleep. He bent over me, so close that I could feel his breath He whispered my name several times. My nerves grew taut.

In the nick of time he straightened up and left the room. He went down the back stairs and out of doors, I thought. Quite soon he returned and moved quietly down the L to Gladdy’s door. I heard the faint rumble of their voices. with a sudden change in the timbre of Gladdy’s. The door clicked shut. There was dead silence; then the sound of Claine moving cautiously about in the L. I caught brief faint flashes of his torch. Then I lost track of him until. suddenly, I saw the blur of his shadow in the doorway. I braced myself but he did not approach the bed. He reached in and drew the door closed, with one sharp squeaking of a hinge. Incongruously it flashed upon me that, in all this ancient, weathered, rusty Tavern, it was the first real squeaking of a hinge that I had heard.

I was in a pretty state of mind. I was frightened— not for myself; I never questioned Claine’s loyalty to me. But what was he up to? It seemed clear that he had brought gin to Conlord. Certainly not from kindness of heart toward that cheerless dipsomaniac. Incredible that he could be deliberately inflaming him to make trouble for Syd. But why had he closed my door unless to cut me off?

I did not know what to do. I dreaded to act a fool and bring Claine’s irony down upon me. It would be quite characteristic of his mother-instinct to close that door for the safeguarding of my slumbers. If I rushed out upon him what could I say to him except the truth? I am wholly without the gift of dissimulation. Yet, subconsciously, I knew that something impended and that I must be ready.

I swung out of bed and moved stealthily to the door. Clutching the revolver in my right hand, I located the latch with my left. I pressed my ear against the crack and stood, waiting. It seemed an age. From my unspecialized knowledge of the workings of intoxicating liquor, I should say it could not have been less than twenty minutes — it’ may have been thirty. Several times, I had to shift position to ease the intolerable rigor of my muscles. More than once I was on the point of bursting forth to confront Claine. Just as often I made up my mind to kick myself and go back to bed. Then Syd’s voice— sharp, angry, terrified— screamed:

“Dink !— Help— Dink!””

Before she had called my name the second time, I was in the corridor. Almost instantly, the thump of other boots mingled with mine. Hands grasped my shoulders from behind. Ahead of me, down the L, I heard the rush of feet; saw a shadow lurching toward us. It swerved to one side; disappeared. A door slammed.

The lunge of my rush carried me on, dragging my assailant with me. His grip tightened. I fought to writhe free. Our struggle turned us around. For a step or two, we staggered backward, down the L, the other man in advance of me. There was a flash; a barking explosion. I felt the shock of it; felt the heat of it— so violently that, for an instant, I thought I had been shot.

The man at my back grunted, horribly. His grip relaxed. I shook myself free of him. As I dodged past, he was gliding down into a shadowy, boneless, most appalling heap.

Chapter 27

I DO NOT clearly remember anything of the split-second that followed. Syd’s need of me possessed my mind to the exclusion of every other thought. What had happened there behind me, was merely a confused, unrelated nightmare.

Then Syd came rushing through her door. She carried a lamp above her head. At sight of me she stopped short. We both gasped, “Oh.” I thought her relief seemed as great as mine. She cried, breathlessly, “You’re not hurt?” I shook my head. “What was it?” I must have gestured, in my numb helplessness, for she looked past me, then went striding up the hall. When I overtook her, she was peering down at that distressing heap. She turned and gripped my arm. She said, very gently,

“Dink— it’s Claine.”

I knew what was in her voice was not her own feeling for Claine but her thought of my feeling for him. The sudden, sharp pain in my heart; the bewilderment of my mind— I could not speak. She pressed my arm and knelt, setting the lamp on the floor.

“He’s breathing,” she said. “Get that fool Delchester.”

I found his bedroom door open. That seemed a strange thing. He appeared to be sound asleep, with his head under the blankets, as advertised. He was still more or less asleep when I delivered him to Syd. He asked, stupidly, “Who is it?”

“Claine. Help Dink lift him. I wish I had your gift of sleep.”

We made clumsy work getting his great bulk down the stairs. We stretched him on the cot, in the parlor, and got his clothes off to the waist. There was a bullet hole, low in his right side. It had not bled much. I thought Syd ought not to see it, but she passed the lamp to me and bent over to examine it. She said, crisply:

“Heat some water— just a little. Dick, get some chunks for the stoves.”

She was the only one who knew what to do. When I brought the water she was tearing a sheet into strips. She had been upstairs alone, in the dark, to get it. Frieda had come down with her. She and Dick were in the dining room together. I said:

“There’s an aid-kit, upstairs.”

“Get it,” she ordered, “and whiskey, if there is any.”

Seeking Claine’s flashlight, I realized suddenly that he had not been wearing his overcoat. He had roamed that Tavern for hours, without it— outdoors, too, no doubt. I wondered if there had been something I might have done to ease the pain that tormented him into these things. He would not have left me alone as I had left him.

I fetched the kit and a flask of whiskey from Claine’s bag. Syd sterilized the wound and bandaged it. She forced a little whiskey down his throat. She said, “Bad medicine, I suppose, but the best that offers. I want to give his heart a little help.”

It seemed to help. His breathing grew stronger and more even. I said, miserably, “What can we do?” Syd took my hand in both of hers, patting it gently.

“There is nothing to do, my dear, but grit our teeth and wait. A body like this one can take a powerful lot of punishment.” She took hold of the blankets. For a moment we stood, looking down upon his massive torso— the skin as smooth as a boy’s, and the long muscles beneath. Syd whispered, “He is magnificent,” and drew the blankets over him. She did not seem to be speaking to me.

We looked at each other with some constraint. I think we both dreaded to approach this thing. It may have been partly sheer weariness of mind; partly fear of the problem, itself. A sound of maudlin singing came down the stairs. It brought me a sense of relief and a certain unlovely satisfaction. I started for the door.

“Where you going?” Syd demanded.

“I’m going to get that gin.”

Conlord was reclining on the bed, propped with pillows and swaddled in blankets. He held a tumbler in his hand and he was crooning happily to himself. The Doctor’s black bag was on the floor. I picked it up and took the half-empty bottle from the table. Conlord shouted:

“Hey!”

I walked toward the door. He unwrapped himself, set down the tumbler and rushed after me. He tried to wrench the bag from my hand. I turned and pushed him back. He rushed at me again and struck at my face. Fortunately, I was able to roll my head aside, as I had seen Claine do. Conlord’s knuckles merely rasped across my cheek but they hurt me quite painfully. I had never been struck in anger, before.

I dropped the bag and the bottle, and struck him, as hard as I could, in the stomach— or whatever place it was that Little Zave struck Claine— the solar plexus, I think Claine called it. I am not sure that I hit the right spot, exactly, but it answered the purpose. He grunted, “Ow!” and doubled up over his folded arms. I immediately struck him in the face. It was a weak blow, so I struck him again, with the other hand. He attacked me very fiercely, then. Really, now that he was drunk, he was quite lion-like, just as Claine said. It gave me immense satisfaction. I had not taken any great pride in subduing him, that other time when he was sober.

At that moment I think I became possessed of a lust, or frenzy. What with my grief and fear for Claine coming on top of everything else, I was in a quite beastly state of mind. It came over me that for days I had been nourishing a hunger to pound this indescribable scoundrel in the face. So I kept striking him, first with one hand and then with the other. Whenever he put up his arms to shield his face, I struck him in that stomach place and he put them down again.

At first I was clumsy and ineffective and he struck me quite as often as I struck him. I was wholly without experience in such matters. But I improved astonishingly as I went along. Finally I managed a really tremendous blow, a swinging, upward blow with my right hand, directly under his ear. He fell sidewise, rolled over on his back and lay entirely still, with his eyes closed.

For a moment, I actually thought I had killed him, but I saw he was breathing. I knelt down and shook him and called to him. He gave no sign of hearing me. His face was really quite appalling. I could hardly believe I had done all that with my knuckles— they pained me, frightfully. I began to be alarmed. It was possible that he might be going to die. Not that this was undesirable, in itself. It was merely that we seemed to have an ample supply of dead men, without him. I decided I had better consult Syd; her mind is so much better than mine. I took the gin and went downstairs.

“Syd,” I said, “I don’t know what to do about Conlord.”

“What’s the matter with him?”

“He’s unconscious. I can’t rouse him.”

She gave a funny little laugh. “Oh,” she said, “Cover him up and let him sleep it off.”

“It isn’t that,” I said. “I— uh— struck him.”

She looked at me. Then she leaned forward and began to stare at me. The light was not good. She got up and came over to me. She began to touch my cheeks and nose and forehead with the tip of her finger, quite gingerly. They were quite painful and it soothed me, really. She said:

“My word; that face! You little rascal— you’ve been fighting.”

“Well,” I admitted, “we were striking each other.”

“And you knocked him cold? Dink, you coarse, brutal daring! Lead me to him! Quick, before he comes out of it.”

She ran up the stairs, ahead of me. When I reached Conlord’s room she was standing before him with an expression of rapture on her face.

“There is a Santa Claus,” she said. “Look at that face! A workman-like job, I call it. You’re a genius. Honest, Dink, did you do that alone, without anybody helping you or telling you how, or anything?”

“I’m afraid I lost control of myself, rather,” I said. I really was beginning to feel a little ashamed. It seemed sort of a horrid thing to do to a fellow-creature. “You’re sure he’ll come out of it, all right?”

“I’m afraid so— unless we take steps to prevent. It would be a patriotic act. Still, there may be someone who loves him.”

She broke the ice in the water pitcher and emptied it on his head, ice and all. He sat up with astonishing suddenness, gasping and staring. It was ludicrous, really.

“Patch yourself up and go to bed,” she told him, “If you show that face downstairs I’m going to let this mauler have his will of you.”

When we were walking up the dark hall she slipped her arm under mine and pressed it against her. She said, rather unsteadily:

“Dink, for what you have done for me, this night, may God reward you— if I don’t find a way.”

I thought that was a funny thing to say— but it made my flesh creep, sort of; the way she said it.

Chapter 28

WHEN Syd had patched the broken spots in my face— a quite enjoyable experience— we sat for a long time, watching Claine and saying almost nothing. I could not force myself to bring up the subject that was in both our minds. I did not know how to face it without Claine. It was Syd, finally, who broke the ice. She said:

“Well, what are we going to do? Who fired that shot?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “I didn’t see anyone. I don’t see how anyone could have been there.”

“Conlord went out of our room, just before the shot. Frieda screamed and I hit him in the eye, and he ran out.

“Frieda screamed!” I exclaimed. “I thought it was you. Why did she yell for me?”

“I never screamed in my life,’ Syd declared. “It was Frieda. She didn’t yell ‘Dink’; she yelled ‘Dick.’”

I said, “Oh.” I hadn’t thought of that. “But it wasn’t Conlord,”’ I added. “He went into his room and shut the door. It wasn’t fired from that side, anyway.”

“Could it have come from that empty room on the other side?”

I shook my head. “We were four or five feet from that door. The shot was so close I could feel it— I thought it had struck me. I could swear nobody was in that hall close enough to fire it.”

“It couldn’t have been Dick, then,” she began. That brought a startling thought. I said:

“His door was open when I went to get him.”

“Open!”

“Wide open. But I’m sure he was really asleep. Anyhow, he isn’t tough enough to shoot anyone.”

“He shot at you, the other night.”

Positively, I had forgotten that— and it suggested something else. “He thought I was Claine,” I reminded her.

“There you are,” she said. “His door was wide open and he claims he didn’t hear Frieda scream. He tried to shoot Claine, the other night; he hates him. There’s this mess about the three half-breeds and this other mess about Frieda and Claine and Dick. And there isn’t any connecting link unless Claine provides it. Why did Claine attack you?” she asked, sharply.

“He didn’t; he was trying to stop me.” I realized, suddenly, that she actually didn’t know what had happened. I told her everything.

“There you are,” she said again. “Why did he bring the gin to Conlord? Why did he want you to be sound asleep? Why did he close your door? Why didn’t he come, himself, when Frieda screamed? That wasn’t like him. Perhaps it was he who opened Dick’s door. Why? And why did he try so hard to keep you from coming to help us? Do you suppose he thought you were Dick and tried to shoot you— and shot himself?”

“He knew me,” I told her. “He saw me come out of my room. He couldn’t have fired that shot— he had his hands on my shoulders. He didn’t have a gun— we’d have found it.”

“Did he know you had my gun?”

I stiffened so suddenly that she stopped. I uttered that vulgar phrase which I so firmly deplore. I groaned, “Oh, God!”

Syd cried, “What is it, Dink?” She looked positively frightened. It was my face, I suppose. I said:

“I shot him, Syd.”

“You!”

“I had the gun in my hand. It must have gone off.”

“But, Dink, if it had gone off in your hand you would have known it.”

“I didn’t know anything— it was all mixed up.”

“Well, that’s easily decided.” She picked up the revolver, broke it and examined the shells. She snapped the breech closed. “Not guilty,’ she said, with a note of relief. “All there— six of them. But that doesn’t help much.”

She extinguished the light. Day was beginning to enter the room. The reaction had left me rather weak. Before I could frame words, Claine called, faintly, “Dink.” His voice was weak, but, really, quite astonishingly firm. We hurried to the bed. He was trying to smile.

“Everybody all right?” he asked.

“Everybody but you,” Syd replied.

He seemed relieved. “I’m all right; quite satisfied. A bit lingering, perhaps, but it may be for the best. There are certain things to be done.”

Syd caught his meaning before I did. She sat down on the bed and laid her hand over his. She said, “We’re going to pull you through, Cobb.”

A faintly bantering look came into his eyes. He said, “All things considered, Cousin Syd, would that be desirable?”

She looked steadily into his eyes. “I don’t know all the facts, Cobb,” she said, “but I trust your judgment.”

His hand turned under hers and closed about it. “Stout fella!” he whispered. I felt bewildered. These two always seemed to understand each other and I could never understand either of them. Claine went on:

“We shall be spared the burden of decision, I think. I want to do what I can to ease your ordeal with the police. We must hurry. A little hot broth or coffee, if you can manage.”

When he had had these, he seemed stronger. He asked that Conlord and Frieda and Dick be called in as witnesses. I wrote as he dictated. He was, plainly, in great pain and he paused frequently to rest. But he held himself grimly to the task until it was finished:

“To the Police or Whomsoever:

“I, the undersigned, legally known as Cobbden Claine, but christened Daniel Bakers, do solemnly affirm that the following statement of the events of the past three days is the truth and that I make it of my own motion, of my own free will and under no compulsion whatsoever except the expectation of imminent death:

“(1)— Xavier Bakers was killed, by his half-brother, Dr. Benjamin Bakers, as he was in the act of attempting the life of Artemas Laurence Randall; the said attempt being made in the belief that the said Randall was myself, Cobbden Claine.

“(2)— Charles Bakers, cousin of the two half-brothers, Bakers, aforesaid, was killed by Dr. Benjamin Bakers.

“(3)— Dr. Benjamin Bakers was killed by the undersigned, Cobbden Claine, half-brother of the aforesaid, Benjamin and Xavier.

“(4)— The wound, from which I confidently believe myself to be dying, was wholly the result of my own acts.

“(5)— The aforesaid, all and several, richly deserved their fates.

“(6)— None of the others present in the so-called Mountain Tavern during these events, to wit: Artemas Laurence Randall, Richard Delchester, William E. Gladstone Conlord, Frieda Smith and Alsatia Smith, had any part in or knowledge of the said events.”

We witnessed his signature. My brain had been whirling so that I could scarcely write. Claine was Cousin Daniel! Syd’s name was Alsatia Smith! Claine had killed the Doctor! Syd’s name was Alsatia Smith! Claine had shot himself— with both hands on my shoulders! Syd’s name was Alsatia Smith! What did that signify? I could not recognize it. Who was Alsatia Smith? Claine had opened his eyes again. He was saying:

“They will surely break out of the road, today. Notify the authorities and stay here till they come. It will be unpleasant but these chaps are not like city police. They have more commonsense and less itch for newspaper notoriety. I want to talk with Dink and Syd. Good-bye and good luck. I am truly sorry for all this.”

When the others had gone he smiled, faintly, with a pallid flash of his old self. He said: “Alsatia, I want you to promise me you’ll watch over my Dink. He’ll need someone to guide his artless soul through this complicated world.”

She looked at him with a sort of queer expression on her face. I couldn’t tell what it meant. She said:

“That would be a terrible responsibility, Cobb. But I’ll try to check up on him, once in a while, if I can find time.

“Dink,” he said, “please go over by the door.”

They whispered, intensely. Claine seemed to be urging something; Syd denying, vehemently. Finally she appeared to yield. Claine smiled, weakly, and patted her hand. Quite suddenly she bent and kissed his forehead. When she went out, her face was flushed. She did not look at me. I thought there was happiness in Claine’s eyes. I said, “Cobb, who is Alsatia Smith? I don’t recognize the name. Is she really terribly important?”

He began in the old teasing way. Those frail wraiths of the old Claine were, I think, the hardest things of all to endure. He said: “Dink, there are people who think she is the most important person in the world—” He broke off and his manner changed. “No, son, I do not want the term of our fellowship to close on that chaffing note. Listen— Syd is no more ‘terribly important’ than you and I are. ‘Smith’ is one of the most common names in the world and almost everybody would recognize it. She was spoofing her own name, that’s all. She does not like it— but, remember, she thinks ‘Randall’ is a ripping name.”

His face suddenly went sombre, again. He said, in a weary voice: “There is a letter for you in my coat pocket. Read it aloud with Syd. She may help you to understand it.”

The last faint light of interest faded from his eyes and he closed them. His hand groped for mine. I took it. I sat thus, for a long, unhappy time. Then he opened his eyes. They peered toward me in a curious, blurred, yearning way. He said, with great difficulty:

“Thirsty, son. Will you get me some water— fresh— from the spring?”

He died while I was gone. I think that is why he sent me.

Chapter 29

THE Parlor— Saturday afternoon.

Dink:— Little Zave is dead. The first act is ended. I do not know what the second act will be. But, somewhere in the course of this affair, I shall be killed. If no one else does it I shall do it, myself, at the end. I have that understanding with myself. Otherwise, of course, I should not be doing what I am.

I am fed up— sick and weary of the infinite numskull-duggery of the human herd. When this job is cleaned up, my work is done. I’m through. My views and conduct have puzzled and distressed you but you have tolerated me. Set this affair down as merely the last and greatest of my incomprehensibilities. Do not try to explain or justify me to anyone else.

Now, while you are finishing your nap, upstairs, I want to sketch the story as far as it has gone. Actually the vital facts have all been presented to you, in one form or another. I merely draw the threads together. I am, of course, “The Unfortunate” of Mr. Bakers' tale. I did not know they had given me that name. My mother christened me Daniel Bakers though none of these others was aware of that. Little Zave and Benjamin— the Doctor— are my half brothers. Mr. Bakers is our cousin Charles, the son of our father’s older brother. His father and my father quarreled bitterly over the inheritance of the Tavern and their father’s money.

My father— Old Zave— was a maverick, a lone wolf, but he was a gentle and an honorable man, according to his lights. My mother was of French-Indian blood. She was a woman of character and intellect. She loved my father and he loved her. He wanted to marry her.

Charles Bakers lied to us when he said he was taken West as a child. He grew up in this neighborhood. He was about my mother’s age. He loved her, perhaps honorably— if he was ever capable of anything honorable. He was always a mewling, despicable cad. She feared and detested him. He learned of her relations with my father and tortured her. She ran away to escape him. That was before I was born.

My father tried to find her but he never did. Charles found her twice. Both times she gave up her home and her livelihood and ran away to escape him and his lying tongue. The fear of him brooded over her. It broke her spirit and her health, and she died. She was Indian— and so am I. She drilled that story into me as a litany of revenge. She pledged me to find him and kill him, when I was old enough.

Soon after she died my father’s agents found me. He would not leave his forest. I could not bring myself to come up here. I never saw him but he provided for my living and my education, and he made me his heir. When I grew up, I changed my name. I thought it might make it easier for me to find Charles Bakers.

My father had had an affair with my mother’s younger sister. Xavier— Little Zave— was their son. Later, my father married another woman. Benjamin— the Doctor— was born to them. He was my father’s only legitimate offspring.

I want to touch this part lightly. It hurts. The girl Charles Bakers told you of, last night, was to have married me. She came up here to get acquainted with my father. It is the bitterest thing in my life that I let her come alone. Zave and Benjamin were here. Benjamin found her walking in the woods, and assaulted her. Zave came upon them. He and Benjamin fought. He stabbed Benjamin in the arm and took her from him. When she finally escaped from Zave she wrote me a letter and killed herself— in the room upstairs where Benjamin is now. I hope to kill him in that room, tonight.

I hunted these three men steadily but I could not find them. That, really, is why I resigned from the faculty— to devote myself to finding and killing them. To finish my work and pass on. I located them, one by one, last year.

So much for the background of the story.

Chapter 30

YOU have heard me say that the criminal in a case has most of the fun. He knows all the facts. He sets the problems for us to wrestle with. I have always hankered to try his end of it. I had three men and myself to dispose of. There seemed to be material for an interesting experiment.

Of course, I had no thought of a “perfect crime.” Quite impossible to control the actions of four major characters. The idea was, simply, to put actors and audience into primitive surroundings and let nature take its course. I rather fancied the dual role. — Cousin Daniel and Cobbden Claine; the villain and the detective. In that aspect it threatens to be a grievous disappointment; like doing a jigsaw puzzle with a duplicate picture.

It was a problem how to persuade the actors to join the cast. I offered special inducements in each case. I let Zave know that I would be here— the only obstacle between him and the inheritance. I told Benjamin that both Zave and I would be here— his two obstacles. It does not seem to have occurred to them, or to Mr. Bakers, that I might have made a will— which I have, as you will discover; so that neither of them could inherit, in any case.

Benjamin and Zave knew each other, of course, and were able to identify me as their missing brother. Thus we three entered the action on equal terms except that no one knew it was I who wrote the letters. I tempted Charles Bakers by reminding him of his father’s claim to the property. He apparently has no suspicion of my identity. To complicate things I invited four neutral characters. Conlord was the only one who came.

I brought you as a matter of course. There would be no point to the thing unless I had you to expound it to. I thought it might provide the roughage which your intellectual diet has lacked. I offer you no apology on that ground. But I had no thought of danger for you. Your affair with Zave, last night, has disturbed me seriously. The Frieda-Delchester-Syd group, has no connection with the other. I brought them for personal reasons which I do not feel justified in revealing, even to you. But they are wholly without guile and blameless in the matter.

This blizzard is a bit of sheer luck. I had planned to disable the ignition of the cars. Even so, you might all have walked out on me, after Zave’s death, if the snow had not held you here. The only preparations I made were to remove the bolts from the bedroom doors, oil the hinges and prepare two “plants”, which I may or may not have occasion to use. These were random shots— to create an atmosphere of mystery, as much as anything else.

It was I, of course, who hid the kerosene can in the snow. The less light on the subject, the better. And it gives you something to think about. I also buried the girls’ skis and snowshoes in a drift. They haven’t discovered that, yet. Aside from these minor things I am doing nothing to influence the course of the action. I merely play my own role according to my cues.

I think the detective Claine has been honest with you. He has revealed everything he legitimately discovered. But Cousin Daniel cramps his style more than I expected. There are some obvious lines that he cannot follow up without revealing the villain’s work prematurely and stopping the show. That is not done to protect me. I am quite ready to be suspected, any time. In fact, some of my acts and some of Claine’s right supernatural deductions have been deliberately designed to raise a question in your mind. That is part of the game.

Zave and Benjamin took up their roles with an enthusiasm beyond my fondest hope. Zave, of course, was expecting me, not you, to come through that door, last night. He was planning to eliminate his obstacle without delay. Fortunately, Benjamin chose that moment to eliminate the first of his obstacles, and he beat Zave to it by a hair.

I ought to shoot Benjamin before he gets a chance to shoot me. But I am inclined to wait. I hope he may feel impelled to attend to Charles Bakers, first. That is a job I do not fancy. I hate to kill soft, squashy things. Benjamin must know that Charles is cognizant of his guilt. You remember, I emphasized that point, in the kitchen, this morning. I hope the seed may take root.

Chapter 31

THE Parlor— Sunday Afternoon.

Dink— You and the Syd person make a charming picture of young love and innocence, asleep in each other’s arms, upstairs.

I hope it is a portent. At least, it gives me a chance to write, free from your gentle espionage.

I am not sure, now, that you will ever see this. Things have crashed quite badly, my son. I did not dream the Frieda-Delchester thread would develop this spontaneous violence on its own initiative. It has brought you close to death from the bullet Delchester meant for me. It has impelled Frieda to attempt suicide and to turn against me. It has brought my own philosophy tumbling about my ears. In Frieda’s room, this morning, you saw me out of control for the first time in my life. My impulses and my plans are still so confused that I do not know what will emerge from them. I shall have to tell you about Frieda, now— but first I will clean up the other phase which ended when I shot Benjamin.

I had prepared that annex room in advance— the wallboard at the window and the chair under the register-hole. I did one other thing which you have not seen. I prepared a path through the plaster from the chair to the parlor door. I brushed footholds and wiped the floor with a damp cloth so that I would not track plaster-dust on to the parlor carpet. While I was outdoors, last evening, I made those heel-marks around the house and the snow tracks in the annex— purely mystery stuff.

The decoy shot that Benjamin fired through the register hole into the annex, puzzled me as much as it did you. I approached it from the wrong angle. I thought he was after me. I thought he had, somehow, got down into that room and had fired the shot to draw me in there, expecting to shoot me as I came through the door, My timorous maneuvers in that doorway were entirely sincere. As soon as I heard the two shots that killed Charles Bakers, the whole thing became clear. It was stupid of me.

Benjamin’s talented performance of his role has, unquestionably, saved the show from being a complete flop. But it has added nothing to my self-esteem. He has rather had it on me. His hold-up was particularly humiliating. But for your stout-hearted Syd it might have been disastrous for all of us. The trouble has been, I think, that since my talk with Frieda, in the ballroom, my heart hasn’t been in it.

After Syd had disarmed us, I had Benjamin to shoot and nothing to do it with. My problem was to get Charles Bakers’ revolver which the rest of you seem to have overlooked. My elaborate tour of exploration, this morning, while you were held thrall in the bonds of young love, up there in the corridor, was a pretext for entering his room. You must have heard the bed creak when I turned his body over to get the gun. I returned it later, at the same time that I salvaged Benjamin’s gin.

HAVING the gun, it was simple enough to slip into the annex from the parlor. Nasty to shoot him in his sleep. But I was weary of the thing. I wanted to clean it up and be done. And Benjamin deserved no better. From the time I showed you the hole in the floor there could be no doubt that it was I who shot him. It remained only to discover how I had been able to return through the parlor and meet you upstairs, without leaving plaster marks on the parlor carpet. I had an impulse to show you the missing link, the path through the plaster. That would have clinched the case against me. Quite dramatic; really what I had hoped for at the start; the detective running his criminal self to earth. Then I could have withdrawn to a quiet spot and taken myself off your hands.

But I was no longer sure I wanted to take myself off. I destroyed the path before your eyes by scuffing plaster over it with my feet. You must have wondered, a little, at that. I destroyed the one vital clue and wrecked the career of Cobbden Claine, the great detective. So much for trying to be criminal and investigator at the same time. And so much for trying to introduce an alien Ieitmotif into a straightforward drama of revenge.

“I suppose this Frieda motif has puzzled you. My motives in bringing her here may seem obscure. They are less clear to me than they were.

I followed many blind trails in my search through the Bakers family jungle. One of them led me to Frieda. Another led her to Delchester, last Summer. That explains the existence of our triangle within the frontiers of the Bakers clan. You must not judge Frieda by what you have seen here. She has been under terrific strain for a long time. Fundamentally she is as fine a woman as your Syd— I could not say more, could I?

Frieda took deeper hold on me than any other woman in my life. I won’t go into that. But to marry her, to shackle a young woman to man past fifty, doom her to spend the prime of her life nursing me through old age, seemed to me a cruel thing. I did not know Delchester. But things she said convinced me that she could find happiness with him if I were out of the picture. But, if I were to die, this obsession of hers might crystallize and torment her all her life. I thought things might happen, up here, which would disillusion her so violently that she could turn to him and be happy.

Her hysterical revulsion against me, this morning, was inevitable under the circumstances. She suddenly faced the fact that she was actually destroying her young life “for an old man,” as she expressed it. Her feelings must have been beyond analysis— terror, anger, disgust, hatred. I do not question her attitude. But my own change of heart, I cannot understand. It is inexplicable to me. I tell myself that I can solve my problem by shooting myself, as I planned— an easy way out. But I cannot bring myself to do it. It may be perverted pride. I have never been flouted like that. It hurts, in spite of the fact that I thought I was seeking it in all sincerity. I simply cannot face the prospect of going out of life and leaving that puling whippersnapper to gloat over me and enjoy her. She cannot enjoy him for long. He is not man enough to make her happy.

Perhaps I shall be able to bring some reason out of my chaos. But, right now, I do not know what I am going to do. So much for the lifelong delusion that I was big enough to boss my own destiny.

Monday, 2:30 a.m.— I have just finished a talk with young Delchester. It was of his seeking. He has said things that I never expected to take from any man. I am going to lay this problem on the knees of the gods of chance and let them decide between him and me. The odds will be greatly in his favor.

There is a spring-gun in the wall of the L corridor. I put it there when I prepared the annex-room “plant.” You will find it behind a wallboard patch in the partition of the bedroom opposite Conlord’s. It is a revolver clamped in a small bench-vise. The muzzle comes through a hole and is flush with the plastering of the corridor. It is covered with a bit of wallpaper.

The trigger is wired back. The hammer is fastened back with twine. There is a wire hooked into a strand of the twine. It leads out, through a hole in the plastering, to the corridor. It hangs there now, behind a loose strip of wallpaper. There is a screw-hock in the opposite wall. The gun can be set by stretching the wire across the corridor and looping the end over that hook. If anyone runs against that wire it will snap the twine and release the hammer of the gun. I tell you all this so that you will know how to remove the thing, safely, if it has not been fired.

You have Syd’s gun. The girls are without protection. When I finish this, I shall go up and give Conlord his gin and close your door. You are sleeping more soundly than I ever knew you to sleep. If the gin works on Conlord as it has before, it will send him to Syd’s room. Frieda’s impulse in fear, yesterday, was to scream for “Dick.” I shall open, his door. If Conlord goes to their room and if Frieda screams and if Delchester hears and responds, he will run against that wire and be killed. In that case, I shall destroy this letter and see what I can do with life. If he does not respond, I shall accept the decision and shoot myself, as planned. You will note that there are three big “ifs” on Delchester’s side of the gamble. I think he will win.

I shall stay there, in the hall, to make sure no one else blunders against that wire. If Frieda’s dashing young knight does not get his head out from under the bedclothes promptly, I shall, of course, take Conlord off Syd’s hands before any harm is done.

Good-bye, my son. May you fare well. You are the one thing in life that I regret to leave.

Cobb.

AFTER a long silence, Syd said, “He was fighting to keep you from that wire.’

I could not answer her.

Chapter 32

SYD says all the rest of this is anti-climax and ought to be thrown out to the chickens. It may be anticlimax to her but it makes a hit with me.

The police were quite decent, considering Syd’s provocative conduct. She started right in by telling them that, if they had waited a bit, she would have had three more corpus delictis ready for them— maybe four, counting me. A little later I saw her shooting tin cans on the wing for the entertainment of a swank young trooper or constable or whatever you can call them. It seemed untactful in a murder suspect.

But that was later. This other was while Syd and Frieda and I were in the kitchen, getting something to eat. Frieda backed me into a corner. She said:

“Dick is going to make an honest woman of me. What do you propose to do about Syd?”

“Syd doesn’t need anybody to do anything about her,” I said, with quiet dignity. Frieda said:

“You can’t squirm out of it, that way. She’s my sister and no young wastrel is going to do her wrong. You’ve compromised her—”

I turned my back. I was going to walk out of the room. I thought it was very poor taste. Frieda seized my arm. She said: “Syd, he’s trying to walk out on you. He’s an unprincipled scoundrel.”

SYD came over to us. Her face was flushed from the stove, and the collar of her flannel shirt was open. She was terribly beautiful but her eyes were terribly sad, I thought, and the corners of her mouth trembled, sort of. She put her arms around my neck and laid her face against my coat. She began to sob. I swear, I was at my wits’ end. I never can make out about women, anyhow. I didn’t know how to express it. I said:

“Have I really compromised you, Syd?”

She nodded, quite vigorously, against my coat.

“Does she mean I ought to— uh— marry you?”

She nodded even more vigorously. Well, that thought made my head whirl. It frightened me, too. I had never dared think of such a thing— especially with Syd. I’ve always been terribly afraid of women— and Syd was so frightfully wonderful. I said:

“Why, of course I’ll marry you, Syd.”

Then she shook her head— violently.

“But I will, Syd, honest.”

She shook her head again. She said— her voice was sort of muffled in my coat, “It’s noble of you, Dink, but I couldn’t accept such a sacrifice.”

“It isn’t a sacrifice,” I told her.

“It is, and I won’t accept it,” she said, quite unsteadily. “I’ll get along, somehow. It was my fault, as much as yours. I can’t let you sacrifice your whole life for a girl you don’t love.”

Well, that made me good and mad. I took hold of her and shook her. I said, “Damn it all! Do I have to tell you I love you?”

Then she looked up at me. Really, you know, I don’t think she had been crying, at all. Her face was pretty red but her eyes were sparkling, positively. She said, “Of course, it isn’t absolutely mandatory, but it’s quite often done. Some girls prefer it that way.”

Well, I guess it must have been her eyes. I simply could not believe it. I said, “Do you mean you would want to marry me, anyhow, Syd— even if I hadn’t— uh— compromised you?”

“And how!” she said. “Besides, I promised Cobb I’d marry you if I had to propose, myself.”

Then, positively, I kissed her. As nearly as I could determine, it was exactly as Cobb had said it ought to be. It was not the least like kissing Frieda—

But, of course, I cannot go into details. That sort of thing is not discussed.

End

Table of Contents

- Chapter 2
- Chapter 3
- Chapter 4
- Chapter 5
- Chapter 6
- Chapter 7
- Chapter 8
- Chapter 9
- Chapter 10
- Chapter 11
- Chapter 12
- Chapter 13
- Chapter 14
- Chapter 15
- Chapter 16
- Chapter 17
- Chapter 18
- Chapter 19
- Chapter 20
- Chapter 21
- Chapter 22
- Chapter 23
- Chapter 24
- Chapter 25
- Chapter 26
- Chapter 27
- Chapter 28
- Chapter 29
- Chapter 30
- Chapter 31
- Chapter 32