THE inquest had come and gone. Its jury of Aura citizens and two summer folk, duly instructed by Lawton as to the form of their verdict, gave opinion that Willis Chase had met his death at the hands of a person or persons unknown, wielding a sharp instrument (to wit, a punch blade of an identified knife) and a blunt instrument (i.e., a similarly identified metal water carafe).
That was all.
Willis Chase’s sister and his brother-in-law came over from Great Barrington, where they had an all-year home, and they took charge of the dead man and his effects.
By noon Vailholme had settled to a semblance of its former pleasant calm. Doris and her aunt were the only remaining guests. Thanks to Horoson’s genius, enough servants consented to remain at only slightly increased subsidy to keep the household machinery in motion.
The actors and spectators of the preceding night’s drama had a strange sense of unreality as of having been part of some impossible nightmare.
Later the numbness would pass and the shock’s keener effects would play havoc with nerves and thoughts. But for the moment there was dull calm.
To add to the sense of gloom and of dazed discomfort, the day was the hottest of the year. The thermometer had passed the ninety mark before ten o’clock. By twelve it was hovering around ninety-seven, and not a vestige of breeze mitigated the heat.
Even in the cool old house the occupants sweltered. Outside, ether-waves pulsed above the suffering earth. The scratch of locusts sounded unbearably dry and shrill. The leaves hung lifeless.
The whole landscape shimmered in the murderous heat. South Mountain, standing benevolent guard beyond the Valley, was haze-ribbed and ghostly. The misty green range, to westward, cut by Jacob’s ladder, threw off an emerald-and-fire reflection that sickened the eye. The whole lovely mountain region with its sweet valleys swooned depressedly in the awful heat.
Directly after the early lunch at Vailholme, which nobody wanted, Miss Gregg took anxious note of Doris’s drooping weariness and ordered her upstairs for a nap. The past twenty hours’ events and a sleepless night had taken toll of even the girl’s buoyant young strength. Willingly she obeyed the command to rest.
“I’ll be along presently,” said Miss Gregg, as Doris started upstairs. “First, I want to verify or disprove a boast of my dear old friend, Osmun Vail. Soon after he built this house he told me there was one veranda corner where there was always a breeze even in the stiflingest weather. If I can discover that corner I shall believe in miracles. It will be a real sensation to sit for five minutes in a breeze on a day like this. Come along, Thax, and show me where it is.”
Irritated by her ill-timed flippancy, Vail, with some reluctance, left the more comfortable hall to follow her to the porch. Macduff had stretched his furry bulk flat on the hearthstone of the big hall fireplace in the sorry hope of deriving some coolness therefrom. As Vail went out after Miss Gregg the dog sighed loudly in renunciation of comfort, arose, stretched himself fore and aft in true collie fashion, and stalked out onto the torrid veranda with the two misguided humans.
For this is the way of a dog. Tired or hungry, he will follow into rain or snow or heat the man he calls master—sacrificing rest and ease and food for the high privilege of being with his god.
Thaxton Vail was not Macduff’s god. Vail had had the collie for only a few months. Yet man and dog had become good friends. And, to his breeder, Clive Creede, the collie nowadays gave little more than civility, having apparently forgotten Creede and their early chumship during the twin’s absence in France.
Clive had left him at Vailholme. There Vail had found him on his own return from overseas. When Clive came back a little later Macduff accorded him but a tepid welcome. He showed no inclination to return home with his old master, but exhibited a very evident preference for his new abode and his new lord. Wherefore Clive had let him stay where he was.
The heat waves struck through the collie’s massive tawny coat now as he followed Vail and Miss Gregg out onto the hot veranda. He panted noisily and began to search for some nook cooler than the rest of the tiled floor, where he might lay him down for the remainder of his interrupted snooze. Failing to find it, he looked yearningly toward the dim hallway.
“See there!” proclaimed Miss Gregg. “There’s no breezy corner out here to-day. If there was, Macduff would have discovered it. Trust him to pick out comfort wherever it’s to be found! No dog that wasn’t a connoisseur of comfort, would have elected to stay on at Vailholme instead of going back to Rackrent Farm with Clive. And yet one reads of the faithful dogs that prefer to starve and freeze with their loved masters rather than live at ease with any one else! It was a frightful shock to my ideals three months ago when I witnessed the meeting between the new-returned Clive and his canine chum. I had looked forward to a tear-stirring reunion. Why, Mac hardly took the trouble to wag his tail. Yet he and Clive used to be inseparable in the old days. A single year’s absence made the brute forget.”
“Mac, old man,” said Vail, rumpling the collie’s ears, “she’s denouncing you. And I’m afraid you deserve it. I’ve always read of the loyalty of collies. And it jarred me as much as it did the rest of them when you passed up Clive for me. Never mind. You’re—”
The clank and chug of an automobile interrupted him. Around the driveway curve appeared a rusty and dusty car of ancient vintage. At its wheel was a rusty and dusty man of even more ancient vintage—to wit, Dr. Ezra Lawton.
“Hello!” hailed Thaxton, as the car wheezed to a halt under the porte-cochère. “What brings you back so soon? I figured you would be sleeping all day. Anything new?”
“Yes and no,” answered Lawton, scrambling up the steps to greet Miss Gregg and his host. “I met Osmun Creede’s chauffeur as I was starting out on a call. I asked him how Clive is. He said he didn’t know and that Clive must be at Rackrent Farm, for he isn’t at Canobie. I got to thinking. And I’m going to take a run over there. He’s sick. He isn’t fit to be staying all alone or just with his two old negroes at that gas-reeking house. If he won’t go to Canobie and if he won’t come back here I’m going to kidnap him and make him come home with me till he’s more on his feet again.”
“Good old Samaritan!” applauded Vail.
“But that isn’t why I stopped here on my way,” pursued Lawton. “I’ve been thinking. You told me Clive brought that German army knife home to you. I’m wondering if he happened to bring home several of them as presents, or if that was the only one. If there are more than one it may throw a light on this muddle to find out who has the other or the others. If there are several and they’re all alike, it may not have been yours that killed Chase.”
“I see,” answered Vail, adding: “No, he didn’t tell me whether that was the only one or not.”
“Well, is there any mark on yours by which you can be sure one of the other knives didn’t kill Chase—if there are any other knives like it?”
“No. I can’t help you out even that far. I’m sorry. By the way, if you don’t mind, Doctor, I’ll go across to Rackrent Farm with you. All morning I’ve been feeling remorseful about letting the poor chap leave here. He’s so sensitive he’ll be brooding over the way he bungled in trying to help me. I’ll go over and see if I can’t make him feel better about it. Perhaps I can make him come back. It’s worth a try anyhow.”
“Come along!” approved the doctor. “Plenty of room. Hop in.”
“I think,” suddenly decided Miss Gregg, “I think I’ll do some hopping, too. I went over the boy roughshod. I was cross and tired. I’ll tell him I’m sorry. Besides, there may be a bit of breeze in driving. There’s none here.”
As Vail helped her into the tonneau Macduff leaped lightly from the veranda steps to the rear seat of the car beside her. The collie, like many of his breed, was crazily fond of motoring and never voluntarily missed a chance for a ride. Vail got into the front seat beside Lawton and the car rattled on its way.
Rackrent Farm lay less than a mile from Vailholme’s farther gate. As the car turned into the farmhouse’s great neglected front yard and stopped there was no sign of life in or about the unkempt house as it baked in the merciless sunshine. Neither of the old negro servants appeared. Clive did not come to door or window in response to the unwonted arrival of visitors at his hermitage. An almost ominous stillness and vacancy seemed to brood over the whole place.
“I don’t like this,” commented Lawton worriedly as he drew up at the end of the brick path which traversed the distance from carriage-drive to front door. “And— By the way,” he interrupted himself, “now I remember it. Oz said something about the two negroes being made sick by the gases and clearing out till the house could be aired. Aired! Why every window and every door in sight is shut!”
“Clive must be here all alone if his servants decamped,” said Vail. “Probably he hasn’t the energy to open up the house, sick as he is. Come on!”
He got out with the doctor, turning to help Miss Gregg to alight.
Before she could step to the ground Macduff crowded past her in right unmannerly fashion, leaping to earth and standing there.
The collie’s muscles were taut. His muzzle was pointed skyward. His sensitive nostrils deflated and filled with lightning alternation as he sniffed avidly at the lifeless air. He was in evident and keen excitement, and he whimpered tremulously under his breath.
Paying no heed to the collie, the three humans were starting up the ragged brick walk which wound an eccentric way through breast-high patches of boxwood to the front door of the farmhouse.
The bricks radiated the scorching heat. The boxwood gave back hot fragrance under the sun’s untempered rays. The locusts were shrilling in the dusty tree-branches above. Over everything hung that breath of tense silence.
Macduff, after one more series of experimental sniffs, flashed up the winding walk past the three and toward the front door.
Within six feet of the door he shied like a frightened horse at something which lay in his path. And he crouched back irresolutely on his furry haunches.
At the same moment the trio rounded the curve of path between two high boxwoods which had shut off their view of the bricked space in front of the doorway.
There, sprawling face downward on the red-hot bricks at their feet, lay the body of a man.
Miss Gregg flinched unconsciously and caught hold of Vail’s arm. The doctor, his professional instincts aroused, ran forward and knelt at the man’s side, turning him over so that the body lay face up beneath the pitiless furnace-heat of the sky.
The dazzling white glare of sunlight poured down upon an upturned dead visage.
“Clive!” panted Miss Gregg, dizzily. “Oh, it’s Clive Creede!”
“Not a mark on him,” mumbled Vail, who had bent beside the doctor over the lifeless body. “Not a mark. Sunstroke, most likely. In his weakened state, coming out of the house into this inferno of heat— You’re sure he’s dead, Doctor?”
For an instant Lawton did not answer. Then he finished his deftly rapid examination and rose dazedly to his feet.
“Yes,” he said, his face a foolish blank of bewilderment. “Yes. He is dead. But he has been dead less than fifteen minutes. And—it wasn’t sunstroke. He—”
The doctor paused. Then from between his amazement-twisted lips he blurted:
“He froze to death!”
Miss Gregg cried out in unbelieving wonder. Thaxton Vail’s incredulity took a wordier form.
“Froze to death?” he ejaculated, loud in his amaze. “And less than fifteen minutes ago? Doctor, the weather’s turned your head. This is the hottest day of the year. Out here in the sun the mercury must be somewhere around a hundred and twenty. Froze to death? Why, it’s im—”
“I tell you,” reiterated Dr. Lawton, mopping the streams of sweat from his forehead, “I tell you HE FROZE TO DEATH!”