CHAPTER XVI
THE COLLIE TESTIFIES
IN the moment of stark dumbfounded hush that followed Dr. Lawton’s verdict the collie created a diversion on his own account.
For the past few seconds he had stood once more at gaze, muzzle upraised, sniffing the still air. The impulse which had sent him charging toward the house had been deflected at sight of the body on the brick pathway, and he had checked his rush.
Perhaps it was the all-pervasive fragrance of the boxwood bushes on every side, bakingly hot under the sun’s glare, that confused the scent he had caught. In any event he was sniffing once more to catch the lost odor which had guided him in his short hurricane flight.
Then he varied this by breaking into a fanfare of discordantly excited barks.
The racket smote on its hearers with a shock of horror. Thaxton Vail caught the dog by the collar, sternly bidding him to be silent. Trembling, straining to break from the grasp, Macduff obeyed the fierce command.
At least he obeyed so far as to cease his clangor of high-pitched barks. But he did not cease for one instant to struggle to liberate himself from the restraining grip.
Furiously his claws dug into the brick-crannies, seeking a foothold whereby he might exert enough leverage to break free. Vail, with another sharp command, dragged him to one side, meaning to tie him by means of a handkerchief to one of the bush stems.
The collie’s forefeet clawed wildly in air as they were lifted momentarily off ground. And one of the flying paws brushed sharply across the forehead of the dead man.
There was a cry from Miss Gregg followed by a gasp from both men. The curved claws had chanced to catch in Creede’s thick tangle of hair that clung dankly to the forehead.
Under that momentary tug the hair gave way. A mass of it as large as a man’s hand came loose with the receding forepaw of the dog. And lo, the dead man’s forehead was as bald as a newborn baby’s!
The change wrought by the removal of the curling frontal hair made a startling difference in the lifeless face. It was Miss Gregg who exclaimed shudderingly:
“That’s not Clive! That’s—that’s Osmun Creede!”
“Good Lord!” babbled the doctor. “You’re—you’re right! It’s Oz!”
Vail, still clutching the frantically struggling collie, stared in silence. It was uncanny—the difference made by that chance removal of the ingenious toupée. Instantly the man on the ground before them lost his resemblance to Clive and became Clive’s twin brother.
Lawton, catching sight of an object which the shift of posture had caused to slide into view in the prostrate man’s upper coat pocket, drew forth a spectacle-case.
In view of the amazing identification the intruders wholly forgot for the moment Dr. Lawton’s ridiculously incredible claim that Creede had frozen to death on the hottest day of the year.
They had even forgotten the heat that poured down upon them in perilous intensity. They forgot everything except this revelation that the supposed Clive Creede, their friend, was Osmun Creede whom they had detested.
Macduff strained and whimpered unheeded as Vail still held him with that subconscious grip on his collar. All three were staring open-mouthed at the sprawling figure on the bricks. For a space nobody spoke.
Then, with a start, as of one who comes out of a trance, Miss Gregg burst into hysterically rapid speech.
“I knew it all the time!” she volleyed. “I knew it all the time—clear in the back of my head where the true thoughts grow—the thoughts that are so true they don’t dare force themselves to the front of the mind where the everyday thinking is done. I knew it! There were no twins at all. There was only Osmun!”
The two others blinked stupidly at her. She rattled on with growing certainty:
“Osmun was the only one of the Creede twins to come back alive from France. I know it. There is no Clive Creede. There never has been since the war. He must have died over there. Stop and think, both of you! Did you ever see the two twins together since Osmun came from overseas? Not once. Did you?”
“Good Lord!” sputtered the doctor. “Of course I have. Often. At—at least, I—I’m sure I must have. I—”
“She is right,” interposed Vail in something like awe, “I swear I believe she is right. I never stopped to think about it. But I can’t remember seeing them together once since—”
“It was Osmun, alone!” declared Miss Gregg. “He played both rôles. Though heaven alone knows why he should have done such a queer thing. And he worked it cleverly. Oh, Oz always had brains! Clive was supposed to live here at Rackrent Farm, while Oz lived at Canobie—those two who had never lived apart before! That was to make the dual rôle possible. He couldn’t have pretended they lived in the same house without the servants or some guest discovering there was only one of them. But a couple of miles apart he could divide his time between Rackrent and Canobie in a plausible enough way.”
“But—”
“Bald and lame and with a stoop and wearing thick spectacles he was Osmun. Erect and with a mass of hair falling over his forehead and no glasses he was Clive. There was no need to make up the face. They had been twins.”
“It’s ingenious,” babbled Dr. Lawton, fighting for logic and for the commonplace. “But it doesn’t make sense. Why, I—”
“It will make sense when we get it cleared up!” she promised. “And now that we’ve got hold of both ends of the string we’ll untangle it in short order. When we do, we’ll find who killed Willis Chase and who stole our jewelry. That isn’t all we’ll discover either. We’ll—drat the miserable collie!” she broke off. “Has he gone crazy? Make him be still, Thax!”
For Macduff, failing to get free by struggling and by appealing whimpers, had now renewed his salvo of barking. Vail spoke harshly to the dog, tightening his hold on the collar.
The brief interruption switched the current of Dr. Lawton’s thoughts back from this mystery of identity to a more startling and more professionally interesting mystery—to that of a man who had achieved the garishly impossible exploit of freezing to death in a sun-scourged temperature of 120 degrees or more. Again the doctor knelt by the body, swiftly renewing his examination.
But even before he did so he knew he could not have been mistaken in his diagnosis.
Lawton was a Berkshire physician of the old school. He had plied his hallowedly needful profession as country doctor among those tumbles of mountains and valleys for nearly half a century.
Winter and summer he had ridden the rutted byroads on his errands of healing. Often in olden days and sometimes even now he had been called on to toil over unfortunates who had lost their way in blizzards with the mercury far below zero, and who had frozen to death before help could come. Every phase of freezing to death was professionally familiar to him. The phenomena were few and simple. They could not possibly be mistaken.
And, past all chance of doubt, he knew now that Osmun Creede had frozen to death—that he had died from freezing in spite of the tropical torridity of the day.
The fact that the thermometer was registering above one hundred in the shade and was many degrees higher here in the unchecked sun-glare—this did not alter the far more tremendous fact that Osmun Creede had just died from freezing.
Lawton raised the rigidly frozen body in order to slip off from it the coat which impeded his work of inspection. Deftly he pulled the coat from the shoulders, the sleeves turning inside out in the process, and he tossed it aside.
The flung coat landed on a twig-tangle of the nearest box-bush, hanging upside down from the twigs. From its inner pocket, thus reversed, fell a fat wallet. It flapped wide open to the bricks, the jar of contact shaking from its compartments three or four objects which glittered like colored fire as they caught and cast back a million sun-rays.
Miss Gregg swooped down on the nearest of these glowing bits, retrieving it and holding it triumphantly out to Thaxton.
“Doris’s marquise ring!” she announced. “And there’s my pearl-and-onyx brooch down there by your left toe. I said last night Oz Creede was the thief. I knew he couldn’t possibly be. But that made me know all the more he was.”
She stooped to gather up other items of the scattered loot. Vail bent down to help her. In doing so, instinctively, he slackened his hold on Macduff’s collar.
The dog took instant advantage of the chance to escape. Never pausing, he flashed toward the shut front door of the farmhouse. No time or need now to bark or to struggle. He was free—free to follow up the marvelous news that his sense of smell had imparted to him.
Like a whirlwind he sprang up the hot brick walk to the closed door.
“What on earth—?” began Miss Gregg, looking vexedly from her task of jewel-collecting as the flying collie sped past her.
Then the half-uttered question died on her lips.
For as Macduff cleared the wide flagstone in front of the threshold the farmhouse door swung open from within.
In the doorway stood—or rather swayed—a man.
The man was Clive Creede.
The three intruders gaped in dazed unbelief at him. Vail and Miss Gregg were too stupefied to rise from the ground, but continued to crouch there, the recovered plunder in their stiffening fingers.
Lawton blinked idiotically across the body of Osmun, his old face slack with crass incredulity.
Yes, there in the threshold swayed Clive Creede. He was thin to emaciation, his hair was gray at the temples, and his face was grayer. He seemed about to topple forward from sheer weakness. His hollow eyes surveyed the group almost unseeingly. The man looked ten years older than did his dead brother.
With a scream of agonized rapture—a scream all but human in its stark intensity—the collie hurled himself upon his long-absent master.
Leaping high, he sought to lick the haggard face. His white forepaws beat an ecstatic tattoo on Clive’s chest. Dropping to earth, he swirled around Creede in whirlwind circles stomach to the ground, wakening the hot echoes with frantic yelps and shrieks of delight.
Then, sinking down at Clive’s feet, he licked the man’s dusty boots and gazed up into his face in blissful adoration. The dog was shaking as with ague.
After two years’ absence his god had come back to him. He had caught Clive’s scent—blurredly and uncertainly—through the sharp fragrance of the boxwood and the stillness of the air—as far off as the gateway. Every inch of the houseward journey had confirmed more and more his recognition of it.
Then, just as he located the scent and sprang forward to find the unseen master, Thaxton Vail had collared him and checked his quest.
But now he had come again to the feet of the man he worshiped. Henceforth Thaxton and all the rest of the world would be as nothing to the dog. He had re-found his god—the god for whom he had grieved these two dreary years—the god who most assuredly was not the “Clive Creede” that had imposed himself upon these mere humans.
Lifting his head timidly, yearningly, Macduff stood up once more. Rearing himself, he placed his forepaws again on Clive’s chest and peered up into the man’s face. The collie was sobbing in pure happiness, sobbing in a strangely human fashion. His god had been brought back to him.
Clive laid two thin and trembling hands on the silken head.
“Mac!” he murmured huskily. “Mac, old friend!”
At sound of the dear voice the collie proceeded once more to go insane. Capering, dancing, thunderously barking, he circled deliriously about his master.
But Clive was no longer heeding him. His hollow gaze rested now on the three humans who were clustered about his dead brother—the three who still eyed him in vacant disbelief.
From them his glance strayed to Osmun Creede. And again Clive’s white lips parted.
“He’s dead,” he croaked. “He’s—he’s—frozen—frozen to death. I—”
He got no further. Attempting to take a forward step, he reeled drunkenly. As he pitched earthward Thaxton Vail sprang toward him, catching the inert body in his arms as it fell.