Tom Slade in the north woods

Harrison McClintick, one of the most picturesque figures in the financial world, was found killed in his apartment in the Raleigh Arms on Central Park West early this morning. A maid, entering the living room to turn on the heat at a radiator, discovered the body on the floor. Greatly affrighted, she summoned Mrs. Estelle Trevor, the victim’s widowed sister, who has been the mistress of his home since the death of Mrs. McClintick in 1921. It was found that Mr. McClintick had not occupied his room during the night. Physicians later declared that he had been dead some hours. No weapon had been used; he had evidently been strangled. An overturned chair and disordered rugs gave evidence of a struggle.

Mr. McClintick’s pockets had been rifled and the contents of a wallet were strewn about the floor. Two twenty dollar bills and several bills of smaller denomination were found among the papers which had been thrown about the floor. Several of these papers contained finger marks and these markings are the only clew the police have to go upon. Robbery seems the only plausible motive, yet the discovery of the money left on the scene seems to discount this theory. If robbery was the motive, the police say, why did the robber leave this considerable sum? If robbery was not the motive, why did the murderer go through his victim’s pockets, leaving a gold watch and chain as well as the bills strewn on the floor?

The Raleigh Arms is a modern, but by no means palatial apartment house. Mr. McClintick’s apartment is on the ground floor, and is entered by a door in the foyer to the left of the main entrance. Three windows in the apartment overlook the street, but they are protected by heavy and elaborate grille work. Careful inspection of the premises gave no indication of violent entry and it is thought that the assailant must have rung the apartment bell and been admitted by Mr. McClintick himself sometime during the evening. Neither Mrs. Trevor nor the maid heard or saw any one in the apartment during the evening. Both retired at about ten o’clock. The telephone operator, who sat in the public foyer, does not remember seeing any one approach the apartment entrance during the evening. This young woman was reading a novel and though she heard people passing in and out, paid no attention to them. She went home at about nine-thirty and from that time on, no one was near the public entrance of the building.

The McClintick millions were a product of the world war. The rise of Harrison McClintick in that period was Napoleonic. He began life at a bench in a shoe factory in New England. Later he went west and worked in a tannery, subsequently becoming foreman, and in time owner. He was a prosperous, moderately wealthy man when the war broke out. Almost as if by magic the McClintick tannery became the center of a group of factories in which were turned out every variety of leather article used by the war department. During their period of intensive production, the McClintick plants fell under the frowning scrutiny of the government and charges of gross profiteering resulted in an investigation which put the leather king on the front page of the public prints.

McClintick’s profits were beyond the dreams of avarice and he spent and gave lavishly. His magnificent Wave Crest Villa at Newport was only one of his bizarre extravagances. His palatial yacht was seized by the government for use in the navy. His estate at Long Branch, New Jersey, was the scene of hospitality out of keeping with the tragic drama from which his princely fortune was drawn. His camp in the Adirondacks with its rubble-stone hunting lodge was a model of a wilderness retreat. It was here that a year or two ago, his only son lost his life in one of those tragic accidents that occur in the hunting season. On a misty morning he was shot while swimming in the lake, the shooter mistaking his bobbing head for a wild duck.

Misfortune fell heavily on the head of McClintick after the war. His wife died in 1921. Already the spectacular fortune was ebbing away. The place at Newport, and later, the place at Long Branch, was given up. His town residence on Riverside Drive was sold and the culminating tragedy of his death occurred in a comparatively unpretentious apartment where he was living in reduced circumstances with his widowed sister and one servant.

So that was the story of Millionaire McClintick. And such was his tragic end. I was shocked by his death, as the heedless public could not have been, for I felt almost as if I had known him. At least I could have added one item to the newspaper report; I could have told the curious that Leatherstocking Camp, the last of his properties, had been sold also, and was at that very time being made over to meet the requirements of a scout camp.

So, you see, two of my mind pictures were smashed. The noble son had been, to say the least, not without his faults. And the quiet camp, harboring only sorrowful memories for a bereaved father, had been sold not so much because of grief as because of pressing need. Well, well, that was quite a little dose for a story-book dreamer like myself.

But, after all, was the whole business any the less sad? Here was this crude, strong man forging his way ahead and making a vast fortune. The “tumult and the shouting died” and his house of cards began to fall about his head. His wife gone. One estate, then another, sold. Perhaps it was to get away from all his trouble just for a little season that he and his party, his son and their friend, went up to their wilderness retreat. Perhaps, after all, the quiet woods beckoned to this shrewd old hustler.

And there, in this remote lakeside camp, his only son was taken from him. What matter why he sold his camp? Poor man, the story was sad enough in any case, thought I. The newspaper had printed a picture of him which showed him a stolid looking man; a man with indomitable will printed on his hard rugged features. He had an uncompromising jaw. But, I thought, it is just these wilful and triumphant men who suffer keenest when fate shows itself more powerful and relentless than they.

It was about a month after the tragedy, and the newspapers were still full of false alarms about an arrest, when Brent Gaylong and I went up to the camp where Tom and his crew were working with might and main in the heroic hope of getting the place in some sort of shape during the late spring.

CHAPTER VII—INTO THE DEPTHS

At Tom’s request I asked Brent Gaylong to go with me and I’m glad I did, for I think he supplied just what was needed in our camp family. Perhaps you know him. He lives with his people here in town and is a very intimate friend of Tom’s. People, speaking likingly of Brent, say there is something funny about him. I think I know what it is. He is long and lanky, and wears old-fashioned spectacles and is physically lazy. Hence he always seems funny against the background of strenuous outdoor life; in camp he seems particularly amusing. He is sometimes excruciatingly funny by contrast with Tom’s untiring energy and enterprise. He will do anything you want him to do with a whimsical air of resignation. He will climb mountains, hunt for treasure, or trail an animal with an absurdly serious air. The funny thing about Brent is that, owing to Tom, his lot is cast in the theatre of adventure, while he looks for all the world like an old-fashioned schoolmaster. He must be twenty-two or three by now. He’s good company.

“You’ll go, won’t you?” I asked, alluding to Tom’s message. “Come and bring your knitting; that’s what he told me to tell you. I’m going to drive up as far as Harkness and Tom will meet us there with his flivver.”

“Do we have to walk much?” Brent asked.

“Why, as I understand it, Tom can push his flivver up a kind of trail to within a mile or so of the camp. That isn’t so bad is it?”

“The flivver?” Brent drawled.

“No, the walk,” I said. “You don’t have to have a wheel-chair just for a mile or so. Come ahead, Brent; Tom always says when you’re along something’s sure to happen. You can take some books along, you don’t have to work.”

“Is that a promise?” he asked.

“Absolutely.”

“How long do we linger near to nature’s heart?”

“Maybe two or three weeks, maybe all summer,” I said.

“I’m not supposed to take an axe or a gun or anything?”

“You can sit indoors all day long and read.”

“I’ll take my slippers and a bath robe,” he said.

We had a delightful motor trip, stopping over at old Ticonderoga and reaching the little mountain village of Harkness late on the second day. Keeseville, in the vicinity of the wonderful Ausable Chasm, is the last place of any size to be passed before entering that wild region to the west where only foot trails wind in and out among the dense mountains. Along the road from Keeseville to Harkness the glare of the declining sun dazzled my eyes so that I could hardly see to drive. It spread a crimson coverlet over the distant peaks and shimmered a tiny area in a lonely valley; I suppose it was the glinting water of some sequestered lake that we saw. It looked like a patch of gold in the deepening gloom. Then suddenly it was gone.

At Harkness Tom was awaiting us with his flivver. It gladdened my heart to see that outlandish little car piled full of provisions from the village store. I wondered how he would make shift to seat us for the last stage of our journey. The difficulty seemed not greatly to worry him, for he and a companion hurled a big meal bag into the rear seat even as Brent and I stood in rueful contemplation of the miscellaneous freight.

“You can sit right on the bag, Brent,” Tom said, as he hustled about, busy with a hundred matters. “We don’t get over here to the metropolis very often. Charlie, this is old Doctor Gaylong; meet Charlie Rivers, you chaps. I suppose we’ve got to find a place to store your car— Did you get the bacon, Charlie? And the macaroni? How about cocoa? This city trash will probably want cocoa. This is the darndest store,” he explained, turning to me. “You can get anything here. Climb right in, you ducks. I guess we won’t be able to take the grindstone this trip—never mind. We’re going to sharpen our own axes after this, bought a grindstone; unit production, is that what they call it? Here, hang on to this bag of flour, you. I thought you fellows wouldn’t show up till after dark. We were just going to start a game of pinocle with the sheriff. Are you all comfortable?”

“It’s like a bed of roses,” said Brent, as we drove off.

“Tom,” I said—

“You comfortable?” he interrupted.

“Tom,” I said, “I’m glad to see you’re going to keep the old name Leatherstocking Camp. I think it’s a fine romantic name.” I was referring to some rather gay lettering which had replaced the name of Temple Camp on the side of the Ford.

“Yep, that’s Paul’s work,” Tom rattled on.

“Are you Paul?” I asked the youngish man who sat beside him on the front seat.

“Didn’t I tell you this is Charlie?” Tom snapped. “Paul’s our artist, born and brought up in the Black Forest in Germany. Used to camouflage lunch wagons for the Kaiser in the war. We’ve got all kinds up here; happy family circle. We’re all living happily forever after, hey Charlie?”

“And working,” Charlie said.

“Working?” asked Brent.

“Yes, do you want to get out and walk home?” Tom asked.

“Is Tot Burke still with you?” I queried.

“Yep. So is Skipper Tim; you remember him. He’s building boats for the lake just now. Unit production, hey Charlie? You remember Piker Pete, the fire-lookout up near Temple Camp? He’s here too; going to stick all summer. Says he could never go back to the Catskills now, he’d be kept awake by the noise.”

“Speaking of noises,” Brent said, “hasn’t your Ford changed from a baritone to a soprano?”

“You’ll be glad enough to hear any kind of a friendly noise up here,” Tom said.

“How far is it to the drug store?” Brent queried.

“Heaven help me if I should run out of good cigars,” I said.

“You got right, as Paul says,” Tom laughed. “You won’t be bothered by the neighbors’ victrola, I’ll tell you that.”

He was certainly right. As we drove westward along the old, narrow, dirt road the wildness of the region was almost oppressive. I had an odd feeling that instead of our penetrating the winding passes among those clustering mountains, the mountains were slowly, relentlessly closing in about us. At one point, as the little Ford rattled along, it seemed as if the towering heights, now wrapped in the solemn gloom of approaching night, were creeping in on the narrow road from either side and would presently close upon our little tin toy like a pair of vast jaws. Then the heights would slope away as we seemed to dance merrily out of such peril. There was a chill in the air, the gloom and remoteness insinuated themselves into my very being and gave me a feeling which I can only liken to homesickness. Perhaps the early mariners felt so when they sailed out upon unknown seas.

I asked Tom how far the camp was from Harkness and he and Charlie Rivers immediately fell into an argument about whether it was five or seven miles. I later found that no two persons at the camp agreed about the distance. Brent and I walked it once, and he said it was fifty-seven miles. All I know is, it takes about an hour to drive in, and the way is through the wildest region I have ever seen. We passed no human abode, no sign of cultivation. Nothing but mountains, mountains, mountains.

“Pretty tough about old man McClintick, hey?” Tom said as we rattled along. “Talk about the wild places! Why they’ve got more bandits to the square inch down there in New York than they have all through the wild and woolly west. Am I right, Charlie? Seen anything of Mr. Temple lately?” he asked suddenly.

“No, I suppose you hear from him,” I said.

“He sent a check up last month to pay off with. I’ve got an account in Keeseville. Old McClintick didn’t leave much, I read. Well here’s where we turn in. Do you know if J. T. is coming up this summer?”

“I think he’s going to Europe,” I said. “How about Temple Camp, Tommy?”

“Guess they’ll have to get along without me this summer,” he said.

“Is this supposed to be a cross street?” Brent asked.

We had turned into a sort of wagon trail that led into dense woods. The branches of the bordering trees intertwined overhead and it needed only the thick foliage which would come later to make the place a tunnel.

“This is Main Street,” said Tom.

For fully a mile, I would say, we drove along this sequestered trail, deeper and deeper into the forest. Twilight shadows played among the trees. The night was coming on apace. At last the indomitable little, Ford stopped short; it could not go another yard. Beyond was only a foot trail.

We gathered into our arms such part of the provisions as we could carry and proceeded single file like a procession of homeward bound Christmas shoppers.

“What do we do next, when this trail stops?” Brent asked. It was laughable to see him walking soberly along, holding a flour bag as a woman holds a baby.

“We’re almost there,” said Tom.

CHAPTER VIII—SHADOWS

Tom had been right when first he told me of the spot. Surely there is not in the wide world a better site for a camp. Harrison McClintick had chosen well. Embosomed in the dense forest, on the shore of a small lake, was Leatherstocking Camp. There was no clearing; the beautiful rubble-stone lodge with its heavy, low, overhanging roof, was closely hemmed in by trees.

This main building was of a fine solid structure. Tom said the wagon trail had been open all the way in when the lodge was built. It must have cost much money to cart the materials to the spot. The lodge was oblong in shape and at one end was a massive chimney, a rugged marvel of masonry. The whole interior was one spacious living room. But a rustic stair led up to a balcony just under the heavy polished rafters and three small apartments opened onto this.

The furnishings of the former owner seemed all intact. Over the railing of the balcony hung a large bearskin. The walls were of exquisite masonry, the same as outside, and were decorated with the skins of smaller animals. Over the mammoth fireplace, which filled one end of the lodge, was a magnificent moose head with spreading antlers, on one of which (as if it had been tossed there) was a rather gay looking cap, albeit faded and dusty. I could not help wondering if it had belonged to Roland McClintick.

On either side of the fireplace hung guns and pistols and spring traps, and on the high, heavy mantel shelf several wooden decoy ducks sat comfortably in retirement. One of these was painted brown and it was easy to fancy its general resemblance to a human head when seen at a distance in the haze of early morning. I thought it bespoke a fine sentiment in the tough old warrior of commerce that he had taken nothing from his camp, but just the one thing—a sorrowful memory.

The lodge was much the worse for the irreverent usage of Tom and his strenuous crew. They cooked and ate and slept there, and in the evenings, and on rainy days, they played cards there.

They had felled trees enough to build seven cabins, and five of them were completed; they had a real woodland atmosphere about them, a pioneer look, which was lacking in the sumptuous lodge. A landing place of logs had been built at the lake and several rowboats floated ready for use. Tom told me they had carted the planking for these all the way from Keeseville in, or on, his Ford.

“And that’s old Hogback,” he told us, as he and Brent and I strolled out after supper while the others lingered in the lodge. “Wait till you see it in the daylight. You can climb up it if you want to. Some mountain, huh?”

“I don’t want to,” Brent said.

“See the hermit,” laughed Tom.

“I thought you’d have something like that,” Brent said. “It’s getting so there are no mountains left without hermits; they’re pushing in everywhere. They’re going to cause a lot of congestion if it keeps up.”

“Well, I don’t know about the hermit,” Tom laughed, “but I can promise you there are bears and wildcats up there.”

“Well then we won’t need to go up to find out,” Brent said. “As long as you’re sure.”

“Yes, and rattlesnakes too,” Tom said. “I found the tracks of a pretty big lynx one day. Well, you can see we’ve been working. Guess we better go in and talk to the bunch, hey?”

We went into the lodge where four of the young men were already playing cards at the carved library table which I suppose must always have been used as a dining table. The other fellow, the one they called Rivers, was starting a fire in the big chimney-place. It was a cozy, pleasant scene.

I knew Tim Daggett, of course, and he greeted me cordially. Tot Burke, also of my home town, I knew slightly. Piker Pete, the fire-lookout near Temple Camp, was hardly more than a boy. He returned to his aerial perch in the Catskills after I had been at camp a day or two. Paul Scheffler was a smiling, tow-headed young German who had worked as a farmhand near Ausable Forks; I never knew how Tom got hold of him. There is always a kind of drift toward Tom; odd characters find him somehow. Heinie, as we called Paul, had been in the German army and I believe he had also followed the sea. His home was in his hat.

Charlie Rivers had lately drifted into camp seeking work. He was a bronzed, taciturn man with an inscrutable look. He worked hard and said little. He was well versed in woods lore. His eyes had a quiet keenness about them and seemed always fixed on the distance. When accosted he would pause, listening patiently, with his gaze afar. I never got the impression that he could not look at me, but rather that what I said was not of enough importance to warrant such acknowledgment of my presence. I liked and respected him.

The tired workers did not remain late at their card game and Tom and Brent and I were left alone in the lodge where we sat late before the cheerful blaze. The men slept in another building, only less pretentious than this main structure; there were half a dozen rooms in it, and a large room for provisions. Besides these completely furnished apartments there were, I think, as many as twenty army cots piled in the storage part; they looked to me as if they had never been used.

I understood that the leather king had planned to carry electricity into his wilderness retreat, but Brent and I were glad that he had not done so. When the men adjourned to their own quarters that first night, they carried three railroad lanterns which had lighted their game. Somehow that silent little procession emphasized the solemnity and remoteness of our camp, as it made its way among the trees to the other building. The new cabins loomed momentarily in the dim passing lights. Then we could see only a faint gleam in a distant window to tell that the men had reached their lodging. We paused in the doorway a few moments listening to a dismal wailing somewhere in the lower reaches of the mountain which cast its gloomy shadow over our camp.

“That’s a cat,” said Brent. “There must be a back fence somewhere around here.”

“It’s a lynx,” Tom said. “We hear it most every night; seems to come from over on that second slope. Charlie Rivers says it’s a jaguar, but I don’t think so. He’s thinking of the Canadian lynx; he used to hang out up there in the Canadian Rockies.”

“I say it’s a Canadian lynx,” I said.

Tom laughed at me. “What do you know about it?”

“Maybe it’s the hermit having his singing lesson,” Brent suggested.

“I kind of have a feeling that if Charlie Rivers says a thing it must be so,” I observed. “I sort of feel that he always knows what he’s talking about. I say a jaguar.”

“Well,” laughed Tom, “we’ll have to find out if he stays up there till the hunting season opens.”

“Whatever he is, he’ll have to come to Bridgeboro if he wants to meet me,” Brent said. “I shall withdraw before the hunting season. I think too much of my head.”

We put a log on the fire and sat before it, talking late into the night. We discussed the violent end of Mr. McClintick, the progress of the work at camp, the probable time of opening which seemed likely not to be before the following spring. The tragic accident which had occurred on Weir Lake near by seemed not to weigh heavily on Tom’s mind; he was too full of plans. Brent sprawled in a big chair, one lanky leg over an arm, the other resting on a box. He always reminded me of an octopus when he sat at ease for he seemed to project in every direction.

“Do you suppose that’s young McGinty’s cap up there on the moose horns?” he queried idly. “McClintick,” I corrected him.

“When was it—last summer?” Brent asked.

“It was a year ago last fall—in the hunting season,” Tom said. “The place here was closed up after that till Mr. Temple took it over last fall.”

“I thought you told me some game wardens were here when your friends, the surveyors, passed through,” I said.

“Sure they were,” Tom said. “But of course, the buildings were locked up. Mr. McClintick’s broker gave the keys to Mr. Temple. Why, what’s the idea?”

“You mean me?” Brent queried in his funny, lazy way. “I haven’t any ideas. It’s mighty nice and quiet here, that’s sure. Must be kind of slow in the winter—especially on rainy Sundays.” His idle gaze wandered about the room which lay in shadow save where the fire blazed. Wriggling silhouettes of the flames played upon the wall in the dim background, giving it a changing uncanny light. Brent gazed about in a kind of half interested, leisurely inspection. “Pretty heavy rafters, huh?” he queried. “What are they—ash?”

“Oak,” said Tom.

“Used to be a picture over there, didn’t there?” Brent drawled. “You can see a kind of square where the smoke didn’t get.”

“You don’t miss much, do you, Brent?” I laughed.

“I have an inquiring mind,” said he in his funny way.

“Well, so you won’t lose any sleep over it,” Tom laughed, “a painting of Mr. McClintick hung there.” I am always amused at the contrast between Tom’s briskness and Brent’s drawling half interest in everything. “When we got word that he had been murdered we took it down and laid it away in one of the rooms up there,” he added, indicating the balcony.

“I didn’t think you and your little circle were that sentimental,” Brent drawled. “Maybe I should say susceptible. What was it—a picture of the old geezer?”

“The old gentleman, yes,” said Tom. “We eat right here, you know, and there he was staring down at us all the time. We didn’t just like a murdered man to be staring down at us. Heinie said, ‘It remembers me of a ghost aready.’”

Brent lost interest and fell to gazing about again. Our talk drifted into other channels. Even in the lodge we could hear the distant moaning that we had heard before. The fire blazed away and crackled companionably. Even Brent had to drag himself together and withdraw a little from its increasing warmth. As he did so, he stooped to inspect what seemed to me to be but an imperfection in the cement hearth. His scrutiny seemed quite casual; there was always a kind of ludicrous snoopiness about him which I think he sometimes practised to amuse and sometimes to annoy Tom. To this day I remember saying to him, “Well, what is it—a lynx or a jaguar?”

“It’s a human footprint,” he said.

“I doubt it,” said Tom.

“Somebody must have stepped in the cement before it was dry,” Brent observed. “His foot went over the edge.”

“What’s that in the middle?” I asked him, rather amused. For I was only half convinced, and the matter was of no consequence anyway. “Looks like a scar,” Brent said, feeling of it.

as Longfellow says.”

“The sands of time,” I said.

“Dry cement is better,” Brent countered.

“Listen!” said Tom, not in the least interested. “Listen to that, now. That’s a lynx all right. Hear it?”

In an interval between the boisterous cracklings of our blazing log a long wail, spent by the distance, could be heard far off. The wind was rising, making a strong draught in the chimney and rustling the trees outside. A flickering shadow on the dim masonry behind me danced up and disappeared with such suddenness that I was startled as if by some ghostly presence. As I returned my gaze to the merry fire a shadow crossed one of the windows. Startled, I fixed my gaze there, for the moving thing, whatever it was, had not the erratic, jumping quality of the shadows cast by the fire.

“Did you see that?” I asked, my voice instinctively falling to a whisper.

Tom had evidently seen it. Without saying a word he arose, went to the cupboard beside the chimney, took down a lantern and lighted it.

“Maybe it was only a reflection of the blaze at that,” I said.

“Do I have to get up?” Brent asked.

Lantern in hand, Tom went to the door, and as he opened it a gust of wind rushed in, blowing a lot of papers from the open cupboard, and banging the cupboard door furiously back and forth. Through the window we could see the light of the lantern moving about outside. Suddenly I was moved to join Tom and together we went over to the other building and quietly opened the door. The men were all in their beds asleep. Only Rivers stirred and spoke to us; I would have picked him for one of those men who are not to be surprised even in sleep.

“I thought some one was around,” Tom said.

“Hear that animal?” Rivers asked.

“Yep; well, good-night, Charlie,” said Tom.

CHAPTER IX—THE SIGN OF THE FOUR

We looked all about before returning to the lodge and entered all the completed cabins, but no sign was there of anything amiss. We thought that one tree sheltered a lurking presence, and I saw Tom’s hand reach around to his hip pocket as we approached it. But it was only the shadow of a wind-blown branch that we had seen, and it dissolved as we drew nearer. We even went down to the lake, but there was nothing unusual there.

“I think that Weir Lake is a good name for it,” I said as we went back. “It’s so black and still.”

“Oh, that isn’t the reason for the name,” Tom said. “The old gent named it; it’s named after his wife; her maiden name was Weir. It didn’t have any name when he blew in here. Right about where we were standing is where Mr. Weston stood when he aimed and shot. Then he came up to the lodge and looked in the room you’re going to have, to see if young McClintick was there. Must have been an awful suspense to him, just that little while before he could muster up courage to take a peek and be sure of the truth.”

I just shook my head.

“Guess it was only a reflection of the fire you saw,” he said. “But it looked kind of funny, didn’t it? Moved sideways instead of jumping up and down. I don’t suppose any bandits would push in here. It’s just as well to be careful.”

We found Brent sitting in the middle of one of the long sides of the table; he looked ridiculously like a business man attending to his correspondence. He had lighted another lantern and with his spectacles half-way down his nose was studiously scrutinizing one of the many sheets of paper he had gathered from the floor.

“Did you find him?” he asked casually, never looking up.

“Guess it wasn’t anything,” I said. “What have you got there?”

“Targets,” he answered. “They’re very interesting.”

I saw then that the sheets of paper were of uniform size, about a foot square. Printed on each was a series of graduated circles with the bull’s-eye, so called, in the center. They were the regular practise targets familiar to all. I later found in the cupboard a board like a drawing board containing a screw eye by which to hang it on a tree. These targets had evidently been fastened to the board by thumb tacks.

“You say it was a year ago last fall they were here?” Brent asked, somewhat preoccupied. “And that was the finale, huh? One of these is dated November two, three of them are dated November three. They all seem to be dated, and when there were several used in a day, they’re numbered one, two, three. Here’s five of them that were used in one day. When was what’s-his-name killed, anyway? The young fellow, I mean.”

“Oh, how should I know that?” laughed Tom.

“In November, huh?” Brent said, soberly sorting over the old targets. He seemed to put Tom and me in the position of waiting clerks. He amused me, as he always did, he was so slow and businesslike.

“The hunting season, that’s all I know,” said Tom.

“That would be November. Let’s see, here’s one—here’s two—wait a second, here’s another for November thirteen. Those are the last. Maybe November thirteen was the unlucky day, huh?”

“Very likely,” I said. “And what of it?”

“He’s found something to beat crossword puzzles,” Tom laughed. “Come on, what do you say we turn in?”

“What I’d like to know,” Brent said calmly preoccupied, “is who the other chap was. I’ve only heard of three. There were four here in camp at the end. There was the old geezer,” (Brent always spoke of people with nonchalant disrespect), “and the young one, and Mr.—what d’you say his name was—Weston? Well, there were four here practising rifle shooting. You can see for yourselves.” He held up one of the targets as Tom and I leaned over the table, our interest suddenly caught. “Four shots,” said Brent, pointing a lanky finger at one after another of the bullet holes. “Here’s another—four holes. Here’s another—four holes. Every blooming one of them has four holes. Seems as if they might have been keeping a kind of score. Hmph,” he drawled. “What do you make of it? Each one took a crack, then they’d take another target. There’s not a single one with three holes, or a single one with five holes. Is there anything about a gun, or is there anything about a man, that would make him shoot just four times? Do they have such things as four-shooters? Were there any guns left around here?”

“Sure, there are a dozen or more,” Tom said. “They left everything. Brent, old boy, you’ve got me guessing. No, I never heard of a four-shooter, as you call it.”

“Well then, there were four people here,” Brent said. “I don’t know if that’s the usual way to practise or not—”

“It is,” interrupted Tom. “Boy, oh boy, you’ve got me guessing! How the dickens did you ever stumble on that discovery?”

“When I was a boy scout,” said Brent, “I learned that I must never allow papers to be littered about. So I picked these up while you were chasing shadows. Well, I suppose there was no harm in four people being here—”

“Oh no, I heard there were only three,” snapped Tom. “That doesn’t go at all; I heard there were only three. Of course, this doesn’t really, definitely prove anything—these targets—but it’s gol blamed funny! It looks as if there were four people here that November, doesn’t it?... What do you say?” he added, addressing me. He seemed to be quite aroused.

“Does it make any difference how many were here?” I asked.

“No, but a mystery is rather nice,” drawled Brent.

“I don’t understand it at all—I don’t,” Tom said. “You ask anybody in Harkness, or up at Keeseville, how many were here and they’ll tell you three. That’s what the surveyors told me. That’s what Hick Collison, the game warden, told me. That’s what Mr. Temple understood from Mr. McClintick and his broker—that there were only just the three men here, for a little hunt. Why I’ve heard it a hundred times!”

“Well, I don’t suppose these targets really prove anything,” I said. “We might have known that Brent would find something to engage his attention up here. Now he can play Young Sleuth, the boy detective, while the rest of us are working.”

But Tom would not accept this view, and he refused to take a humorous squint at what seemed to me a matter of no importance.

“I can’t understand it at all,” he said, as he fell to looking at the targets again. “It’s got me.”

“I have a suggestion,” said Brent.

“Yes, what is it?” Tom snapped.

“Let’s retire for the night.”

“Second the motion,” I laughed.

CHAPTER X—THE WORK PROGRESSES

Brent’s discovery (if it was a discovery) did not trouble my slumber. I could understand Tom’s reaction to what Brent had shown us. He was familiar with the story of the camp, the reason and circumstances of the sale. Certain things were fixed in his mind. To have any of these details rudely upset jarred and puzzled him. I think he took Brent’s casual discovery more seriously than Brent himself did. As for me, I thought it of no importance at all.

You will recall that I mentioned three apartments as opening on a balcony. I slept in one of these; Tom and Brent occupied the other two. I was awakened in the morning by the clatter of dishes and descended to find the oblong table which served so many purposes laid for breakfast while the welcome aroma of coffee permeated the lodge. It was on that day (or perhaps the next) that the young fellow they called Piker Pete left us, but on that first morning after my arrival the whole eight of us breakfasted together. It was fine to see how Tom hobnobbed with the crew, laughing and joking and chatting about the work, without seeming to lose any of his authority. He was, I thought, the ideal boss for just such a job as was being done.

“What do you think of old Doc Gaylong here?” he said. “Looks over some old targets and finds that there were four instead of three people here when young McClintick lost his life. Tell ’em about it, Doc. Four shot holes on each target. He and our fountain pen adventurer here,” (that was myself), “are going to hunt for more evidence to-day while the rest of us are out in the woods. They’re going to have supper ready for us when we come back. I bet by to-night Doc Gaylong will know who the other fellow was who was here.”

“He didn’t get no proof by dot,” said Heinie. “Dot’s no sign yet. Maybe he would each shot four times—why not?”

“It would be more likely to be three if they did it that way,” I suggested. “It’s always three guesses, or three chances, or three shots. Why four?”

“He’s right,” exclaimed Tom.

“I don’t see how a fourth person here two years ago is going to help out with the work now,” Charlie Rivers said, never looking up from his plate.

“And that’s true too,” Tom said cheerily.

Somehow (I may have been doing Rivers an injustice) I felt that what he said was intended as a slur on Brent and me, because we were not of the working force.

“How’d yer know them targets wasn’t put on the top shelf only a couple of days ago?” Rivers drawled. “How’d yer know but what mebbe four of us was target shootin’ afore you come?”

“That’s a good one on you, Doc,” Tom laughed.

“How did you know they were on the top shelf?” Brent drawled, addressing Rivers. “You’re a kind of a detective, too,—huh?”

For just a second I fancied that Rivers was disconcerted. Perhaps he was annoyed at being heckled by this lanky, bespectacled young fellow. It seemed to me as if he had the woodman’s contempt for city drones.

“There you go, Charlie; how about that?” laughed Tom.

“They happen to be dated,” Brent said.

“Well,” Tom laughed, “you two make yourselves at home around here to-day and get a good rest. We’re going to fell trees. To-morrow, if you want to, you can give us a hand. Pretty soon we’re going to take a couple of days off and go down the Ausable and see the Chasm. We’re going to get some fish in a place where they hang out. Charlie will show you birds how to play a trout, won’t you, Charlie?”

“I sure will,” Charlie said. So I knew there was no bad feeling following the little duel of wits.

Left to ourselves that day, Brent and I enjoyed the freedom of the camp. In the daylight I saw how the camp was situated on an area of flat woodland between the somber lake and the great Hogback Mountain. This frowning giant was steep and densely wooded. I longed to ascend it, yet knew full well that I would not attempt the climb.

After luncheon (we had been given the absolute freedom of the larder) we fell to making a casual sort of inspection of the cupboard and its contents in search of evidence which might confirm the rather doubtful evidence of the targets. But we could not find one thing which even remotely suggested the number of persons at the camp in that last fatal autumn. We found many mementoes of the former occupants; indeed, it seemed as if they had taken nothing away. But not all of Brent’s whimsical snooping around revealed a single sign which suggested anything.

We examined the markings in the hearth, which had certainly been made by the front part of a naked human foot before the cement had hardened. But of course this imprint told us nothing. It might have been anybody’s footprint. The fact that it was the print of a naked foot was not a matter for remark. A bather about to go to the lake, or returning from it, could have inadvertently made that impress.

“It seems to me that we’re going a long way out of our course hunting for a mystery,” I said. “What difference does it make whether there were three or four persons here just before the place was finally deserted?”

“Not the slightest,” Brent said.

So there was an end of his little deductive triumph in connection with the targets. It seemed bright and observant of him, but it signified nothing. He and I fell into the busy life at camp, helping in our unskilled way, to make the place ready for opening. We painted the new rowboats, and after the men had widened the footpath in to camp, we cleared away the roots and brush so that wagons and Tom’s precious Ford could enter. I think I never worked so hard in my life, but I dare say it did me good. It was amusing to see lanky Brent at these strenuous labors.

In this wholesome, arduous work Leatherstocking Camp ceased to have any pathetic associations. We were all too busy to think of the tragedy and it was seldom mentioned. On an early stroll one morning, I paused on the shore of the lake and my thoughts did wander back to the ghastly mistake that to me had cast a shadow over the place. A gauzy cloud hung over the lake and as I gazed out on the misty waters a bobbing object, probably some drifting log, moved in the partial concealment of that hazy curtain. I could not help torturing myself with the appalling thought of how I would feel if after an ill-considered shot I saw a human arm raised up out of the water. How long would I linger in torturing suspense before going to the room of my young friend to learn the truth?

But, as I said, we were too busy to talk or even think of these things. Even Harrison McClintick was seldom mentioned. We wondered how the authorities in New York were progressing with the case. But we seldom saw a New York paper, and that dreadful crime, like the mishap at camp, was a thing of the past. On the other hand, Leatherstocking Camp was a reality. Soon there were seven cabins up and enough logs hauled for two more. We were waiting for planking from the sawmill in Rogers Gap, so that we could begin work on the “grub” pavilion and the commissary shack which were to be of a less primitive construction. I can say now that I hope never to see another axe as long as I live. I still dream of chinking spruce logs with sphagnum moss and laugh as I recall Brent bringing in this growth in an improvised hod, with which he went wandering about the neighboring forest. He was our hod-carrier, humorous, leisurely, lanky. Sometimes he chipped the logs for binding and he says now that he cannot play cards with any pleasure, because the chips remind him of his “pioneer days” as he calls them.

CHAPTER XI—ALONE

As the days passed I thought less and less about Brent’s rather ingenious deduction. For, to be sure, it made no difference how many persons had been at Leatherstocking Camp at the time of the fatal accident. As for Brent, he was always snooping around, adopting the pose of an amateur sleuth, but I think he did not take himself or his discovery too seriously. He seemed amused at the confusion he had caused in poor Tom’s mind. “Maybe they used to have the hermit down for week ends,” he suggested. But that did not satisfy Tom.

“I think the hermit is like the mock-turtle,” I said. “There ain’t no such animal.”

“Well, it’s blamed funny,” Tom commented. He and I were strolling around the lake after a strenuous day of log hauling; he seemed never weary. “I always understood that there were only three here—the old gent and his son and the man Weston. Now it looks as if there were four. Did you ever know anybody like Brent for mixing things up? He’s uncanny, that’s what he is.”

“It doesn’t seem to be worrying him,” I said.

“Well, I’d like to know who the other one was,” said Tom. “I asked about it down in Harkness, but nobody seems to know any more about it than we do. It’s got me. I don’t like anything I can’t understand,” he went on in his vehement way. “When I get a thing settled in my mind I don’t like to have somebody come along like an old spook and set everything endways. There were four people here all right and I’d gol blamed like to know who the other one was and why we never heard anything about him. It was darned funny, that shadow we saw outside the window the night you and Brent came. I can’t get it out of my noodle. Hang it all, wherever Brent goes there are mysteries and shadows; they seem to follow him around. And he’s so plaguy calm about it all.”

“The hod-carrier sleuth,” I commented.

“That’s him,” Tom said. “Well, we’ve got some realities anyway. My arm is sore from chopping logs. There’s no mystery about how we’re getting ahead anyway. I’d like to have that mysterious fourth person here now to help. I could use him drilling for end pegs. These cabins are going to stand when the pyramids of Egypt are in the ash heap. Eats pavilion is going to look nice, huh? Heinie says we ought to have more eats-boards, but that’s the way it is with Germans, they don’t think of anything but eats.”

“Heinie’s a good worker,” I said.

“I’ll say,” enthused Tom. “They’re all good—nice bunch. I can’t make Charlie Rivers out, but he sure gets through with the work.”

“I think he doesn’t like Brent and me,” I said.

“Nonsense!” Tom exploded. “He’s just quiet, that’s all—kind of—what d’yer call it—taciturn?”

“Inscrutable is the word,” I said.

“Well,” he rattled on, “we’re going to have our holiday pretty soon. I hear the fish are so thick in the Ausable River that they have to have traffic regulations over there. I thought we might all close up shop this Friday and drive over through the Ausable Chasm—that’s worth seeing, you know—and then stay over till Monday, fishing. I think we all need a little outing. Brent says this city life is killing him. The way I figure, we’ll be held up here for a few days till the boards come from the sawmill so it’ll be a good time for a little recess. You know Tot Burke is crazy about fishing. Brent says he’d rather we’d bring the Ausable Chasm here and let him look at it, but of course he’ll go. He’ll always do anything anybody wants him to do.”

“Sounds good to me,” I said.

“Sure,” Tom enthused, “the boys want to see the Chasm before they go home and now’s our chance.”

I had not the heart then to tell Tom that the absence of this hustling group would afford me just the opportunity I wanted to be alone at my writing for a day or two. To tell you the truth, I abhor fishing. The fish never bite on my hook. I not only do not catch any fish, but I invariably drive my companions to distraction with my restlessness. I therefore indulged a secret hope that I might excuse myself from this excursion and in the quiet of our lonely retreat finish two magazine articles on which I had been working.

I broke the news gently while we were at supper the night before they started. “If you don’t mind,” I said, “I think I’ll spend a quiet few days here and try to get my writing up to date. I’m not much of a sightseer and I haven’t the patience to fish.”

“Fishing is my ideal sport,” said Brent. “You don’t have to do anything all day; the fish does all the work. You’d better come along and see America first. All work and no play—”

“Sure, come ahead,” said Tom.

“Vot diffrence if ve don’t got no fish?” Heinie said. “Och, anyvays ve do see-sighting mitt Tommy. Ve don’t got nuttings here till it comes der planks yet.”

“I think I’ll stay here and work,” I persisted. “It’s really just what I want, to be alone for a few days. I’ll watch the camp.”

Tom threw up his hands in despair and shook his head ruefully at Tot Burke and Skipper Tim. But I had my way. The next morning they all started off in Tom’s flivver. It was a chill, bleak, rainy day. Yet I came very near to envying them as they rode away, they were so full of the spirit of their long promised excursion. Brent carried a brief-case and looked funny enough in a little worsted skull-cap which one of the others had offered him. Tom laughed at him and protested against the umbrella which Brent also carried.

“Here!” he laughed, snatching it from him. “Are you afraid of getting wet?”

“It isn’t myself I’m thinking of, it’s the fish,” said Brent.

“I guess I don’t want this either,” said Charlie Rivers, handing me the old coat which lay across his knees.

So there I stood in the drizzling rain holding Brent’s umbrella and Charlie’s coat as the merry little caravan went rattling off along the woods trail. For a few moments the sequestered camp did seem gloomy enough. The great, rugged mountain which towered above the spot looked wild and somber enough in pleasant weather, but in that chill haze it seemed to me almost unearthly in its forbidding aspect. Surely no human being had ever penetrated its black and trailless wilderness. What prowling beasts, I wondered, paced the unknown fastnesses high in its precipitous reaches? Even as I gazed at it and noted how the drenched trees near its rock-ribbed base were all merged in the heavy gloom, I heard that dismal wailing afar off, somewhere on those jungle-covered slopes. Tom said it always came from the depression beyond the second ridge. I don’t know why he thought so; it seemed to me to be the very voice of the whole wild mountain. The lodge seemed cozy indeed as I entered it and threw the coat and umbrella on the table. I went out again and dragged in a couple of good-sized logs so that they might dry in time to keep me company with their crackling blaze throughout the lonely evening.

CHAPTER XII—SIGNS ON THE MOUNTAIN

I must now tell you of an incident which shook me as nothing else in my whole life has ever shaken me, and the meaning of it was not clear to me till long afterward. I suppose that the gloom of that cheerless day affected me. I can hardly describe my feeling more than to say that throughout the long, bleak afternoon, as I sat at work in the lodge, I was harassed by a strange presentiment as of something impending.

I had looked forward to a few days of solitude, but the loneliness of the place was intolerable in the half darkness and that continuous, blowing rain. By mid-afternoon I was in such a state that I blew out the smelly little lamp which had lighted my work in the dim apartment and resigned myself to idleness. I stood at one of the windows gazing out upon the dismal scene. Through the thin, driven rain, the lake looked hazy and there was the odd effect of the water moving toward me. It was not like the surf on a seashore, ever lapping and receding, but a sort of straining of the whole body of water under the impetus of the wind. There occurred to me the whimsical fancy that if the water should succeed in its effort the bed of the lake would be laid bare and I would see, perchance, the object which had enmeshed and held for so many days the body of poor Roland McClintick. I think I never saw a more gloomy sight than Weir Lake on that dreary, haunting afternoon.

The lodge, you will understand, was between the base of the mountain and the lake. I stepped across the room and stood looking out upon the deserted scene of our recent labors. And there I beheld a strange sight which for the moment startled me. It was a trail passing between two of the new cabins. It ran behind the stone bungalow of the old camp (where the boys slept) but beyond this, in the direction of the mountain, I saw no certain trace of it. At one spot where the rugged ascent began I could just make out a faint line perhaps fifty feet in extent. It hovered between visibility and invisibility; I thought it was the trail.

The sight of this hardly tangible and broken line leading, as I thought, up the mountain, astonished me. I had always understood that there was no regular trail up Hogback. Tom is a perfect fiend on such matters; he will find a trail if there is one, but he knew of none up those dense slopes. Many times I had looked from that window, and heaven knows I had never seen the faintest sign of a trail. Nor had any of our group ever mentioned one. In talking of our projected ascent after the prowling creature whose moaning we had heard, Tom had said that he thought the best way was to hike around the base of the mountain and ascend the easier slopes of the farther side.

I was so curious about what I had seen that despite the weather I went to the cupboard beside the fireplace and took from its hook the great oilskin coat with hat to match, which belonged to Skipper Tim. How many times I had seen him in this storm attire helping canoeists at the boating club home in Bridgeboro! It was then that I noticed (I don’t know how I happened to think about them) that the used targets were not in their place upon the shelf. I don’t know that the disappearance of these telltale squares of paper aroused any suspicions in my mind. But as I told you before, the gloom and loneliness somehow gave the whole place a certain ghostly unreality, the McClintick tragedy seemed to haunt the bleak scene, and I was strangely unnerved by every sound and by this discovery. I was curious enough to go up into Brent’s little room to see if the targets were there. But they were neither in his room nor Tom’s and I was puzzled. As I descended the bare stairs my own echoing footsteps startled me and brought home to me a vivid sense of my isolation.

I sallied forth into the storm to examine the trail and follow it a little distance. But I could not find it. Try as I would, I could not find it. I returned indoors and looked again from the window, but could not see it. Then in a sudden gust of wind I saw it even more clearly than before. And I saw, too, that the elusive line upon the mountainside was indeed a visible section of it.

Here was a strange phenomenon. I was reminded of a certain novel toy I had in childhood, a bit of glass which one had only to breathe upon to see a picture which immediately faded out with the dissolving breath. And so it is with trails, the trails of bygone days. Uncle Jeb Rushmore, up at Temple Camp has told me that the route man has trodden in the wilds is never wholly obliterated. The freakish wind, a lucky vantage point, a certain slant of light and the obscure path is revealed in hovering uncertainty, if only for a moment. I have not the scout’s eye. I think now that the rushing wind, swaying the long grass, showed me stretches of that faint hidden trail. Perhaps the soaked and glossy condition of the vegetation had something to do with it. All I know is that I saw it, the ghost of a departed trail, and that when my friends returned we could not find it again.

I went out again into the driven rain and the heavy, bending grass clung to my limbs, impeding my progress. It was like trying to walk through seaweed. The rain smote my right cheek leaving my left cheek almost dry; it seemed horizontal. I plodded through this drenching artillery of the elements to the space between two cabins where I had seen the trail from the window. I had thought to surprise it, as it were, in this narrow pass. But there was no sign of a trail there. Why could not my exploring limbs and hands lay bare this elusive marking, so apparent from the lodge? I parted the drenched grass, searching in vain. In heaven’s name, I said aloud, is this desolate wilderness haunted by a spectral trail? I had seen it; where was it?

But there upon the rugged lower reaches of the mountain, between two mighty rocks, I could see, not the trail, but a certain narrow length of gray earth where surely, if there were indeed a trail, it must pass. It would pass between those sentinel rocks for that would be the path of least resistance in the arduous ascent. And it seemed to me that the farthest section of the broken line I had seen from the window was in that direction.

Well, I was in for it now; I was thoroughly soaked, a fine, adventurous resolve was aroused within me, and I would not be baffled and confounded by storm and taunting shadows. I vowed that I would scramble over obstacles and through soaking foliage to those two mammoth rocks which I thought were Nature’s rough portals, to the unknown upper reaches of the towering Hogback Mountain.

I don’t know what I expected to find there. But if the passage between those rocks were clear surely that would prove that the trail passed through there in its circuitous windings up the mountain. Perhaps at that point I could get a clear sight of it, up or down. And if I could I would have something to say to Tom Slade and Brent Gaylong. I would be a scout and a detective rolled into one. They could no longer call me a fountain pen adventurer.

I shall never as long as I live forget that laborious scramble. What I had called the lower reaches of the mountain proved to be a whole range of mountains before I had attained my goal. One looks at a mountain and says, “I would like to climb it.” Looking and doing are two such different matters where mountains are concerned. There are cliffs and crevices that one never sees from the land below. And yet in plain fact those two huge rocks were not a fifth part of the way up that mighty jumble of rock and forest. I stumbled and groped and climbed and in places became enmeshed in dripping, tangled undergrowth. No sign of any trail could I find in my difficult progress.

Excepting one sign. At the head of a certain short, precipitous place I saw a long withe tied like a rope around a tree trunk with a long end hanging loose. It was perfectly evident to me that this had been fastened there to assist a climber in scrambling up or down, probably down, this declivity. By holding the loose end one might be saved from falling while groping for a sure foothold below it. It could have been fastened there only by a human being and my discovery of it in that desolate jungle quite startled me. I thought the wood seemed fresh; I pulled with all my strength, but could not break it. I was not a good enough scout to know what kind of wood it was, but I thought it was willow. Yet there were no willow trees thereabouts. I suppose that willow retains its moisture and pliancy a long time, though surely not for years or even months. Whence, then, came this crude device to brace one on that perilous climb?

To search for any sign of a trail in that topsy-turvy thicket was out of the question and I made my way by easier progress now to the great rocks which I have called the portals to the upper reaches of Hogback. Here I could look down upon our camp. How strange it appeared in bird’s-eye view! I wondered how it would look from the summit of the mountain. The lake seemed small and the fine, rustic effect of the lodge was even more attractive from my vantage point than it was at closer range. The new buildings stood out clear and detached from the surrounding disorder of our labors. The whole scene was wrapped in mist so that I saw the camp as through a gauze curtain.

Now these rocks were of an odd formation; quite different from their appearance as seen from below. That front view of them, as I might call it, had shown them as two great rocks with a passageway between them. But on closer view, I saw that one rock leaned against the other (save at the entrance) so that the narrow passage was not only between precipitous walls, but was roofed also by the meeting of these walls above. The falling of one rock against the other had made a sort of triangular passage with the converging walls touching the head as one passed through.

Into this narrow pass the storm had not penetrated, and I later found that the crevice between the two rocks was completely overgrown outside. But the narrow pass was dank and mossy and frequented by little lizards that paused, heads upraised, then scooted this way and that. If human-kind had ever used this passage in following a trail, there certainly was no sign of a trail at the time of my inspection. The ground was rocky so that one might pass through the entire length of a dozen yards or so without stepping on earth. But there was one little area of earth, hard but with a thin mossy surface, or rather hardened scum. It was as if moss had started to grow there, but had not developed; a thin, damp crust of vegetation, compact but sensitive to pressure.

Upon this natural film some living being had laid a naked foot, and all the beating fury of the drenching storm, and of other storms for aught I knew, had not obliterated it. What I noticed particularly about it was that running diagonally across the ball of the foot was an irregular mark which identified the footprint with the one I had seen permanently embedded in the concrete of the McClintick lodge on the first night of our arrival at Leatherstocking Camp.

Then suddenly, before my consternation had subsided, I noticed some crude lettering on the rocky wall of the passage. If the letters were intended to form a word their irregular size and positions suggested an erratic, not to say irrational, procedure in the work. Yet large and small and tilted crazily as they were, they were still in proper order to form the appalling word STRANGLE.

I recalled with a shudder that Harrison McClintick had met his tragic end at the hands of an unknown strangler.