Joe jumped, and switched on a flash. He had a momentary glimpse of his uncle, standing in the eternal darkness of the blind, serene and untroubled, and the sight gave him courage. The beam picked out faded walls, a chair, broken and discarded, the dusty floor, a doorway, a yawning staircase. Outside the yellow shaft of light there was naught but a blank, impenetrable, stealthy darkness. Darkness, and the hushed, unbroken silence.
“Well?” Dr. Stone asked.
There was a sound. At first it might have been the whimper of a wind around the eaves of the house. It rose, and fell away, and rose again. It fell away to a plaintive, worried whimper. And then, without warning, it became a human cry that filled the house with ghastly echoes. A voice—unmistakably a voice—sobbed wildly in writhing anguish. As abruptly as it had risen the cry was gone, and there was only a low, plaintive, heartbroken lamentation.
Mr. Sweetman’s teeth chattered. “You hear it, Doctor? From all over the house—upstairs, downstairs, everywhere.”
“Quiet,” said Dr. Stone.
There was a new sound. It seemed to come from nowhere and from everywhere. It was gone—it came again. A measured beat, a steady rhythm that hammered and throbbed like an unchanging pulse. Hammer and throb, hammer and throb! It beat upon the ears. Hammer and throb! All at once the sound stopped in the middle of a stroke and did not come again. The dark house lay in frozen silence.
“Doctor!” The farmer’s voice shook. “You know what that was?”
“Do you, Sweetman?”
The man’s answer came in a hoarse whisper. “I think it was a heart beating.”
Joe’s throat was a cramped vice. The flashlight shook in his hand and made fantastic splotches of light upon the floor.
“Upstairs,” Mr. Sweetman croaked.
They heard the sound of footsteps on the floor above. A child’s footsteps. Footsteps that ran and skipped lightly and gayly. Suddenly the sound was gone from above and in the same room in which they stood the same footsteps gamboled. Joe made a frantic circle of the room with the flash.
“See!” the farmer choked. “Nothing!”
A new sound joined the footfalls. Joe recognized it, and his scalp prickled. The beat of a heart! It throbbed momentarily and was gone. The unseen child continued to romp.
Dr. Stone’s voice, low and clear, came out of the darkness. “Lady!”
Joe’s light focused on the dog. Lady, her tail whipping restlessly, had eyes only for the blind master who had spoken.
“Find the baby,” Dr. Stone said.
Joe’s breath came and went in short, choking spurts. Find a ghost? He kept the unsteady light trained upon the man and the dog. The merry romp of invisible feet still filled the room. Lady, her tawny body red in the beam from the flash, went without hesitation to the nearest wall. And there she stopped, defeated, and whined.
“It’s all right, Lady,” the blind man said quietly. His left hand held the handle-grip of the dog’s harness; his right hand thrust out the cane until it touched the wall. He came closer and laid one hand upon the wall itself.
The echo of young footsteps had stopped.
“Come.” Mr. Sweetman trembled. “It is enough.”
“Wait,” said Dr. Stone.
Without warning the dark house was awake again with sound. Upstairs a childish voice sang softly. Then footsteps once more filled the room. Not footsteps in a home, but footsteps crunching over a graveled walk. Sounds, for a moment, became confused and fragmentary—the icy-clutch beating of that heart, a child humming, the wash and gurgle of water. Footsteps again crunching gravel. Joe could almost vision a child at play.
The idyllic picture was broken. All at once there was a piercing, terror-stricken scream. With amazing speed it thinned, waned, grew fainter, as though somebody was falling, falling—. Abruptly there was a heavy splash, the sound of water in commotion, a gurgling, strangling voice calling faintly for help.
Joe dropped the flash, and it went out. Mr. Sweetman cried something inarticulate and plunged for the porch. Outside they heard him shouting:
“Wingate! Wingate! Come quick! Wingate!”
The doctor’s voice, in the darkness, was steady. “Frightened, Joe?”
The boy fought for control. “Not—not when I’m with you and Lady.”
“Good lad. Find your flash. Got it? Spot it on the wall. Look sharply, now. Does that wall look strange in any way, in any way at all?”
Joe compelled himself to make the inspection. “No, sir.”
Roscoe Sweetman’s boots thudded on the porch. The farmer came in, panting, followed by Frederick Wingate. Dr. Stone had moved away from the wall.
“What’s this?” the artist demanded. “Moans, screams, footsteps? It sounds like a dime novel. Let’s hear them.”
But the house now held to a soundless quiet. Ten or fifteen minutes passed.
“It looks,” Dr. Stone observed, “as though our ghost has called it a day.”
“Sweetman,” Mr. Wingate snapped impatiently, “this is the second time you’ve called me from my work for nothing. Where’s your ghost?”
“He was here,” the farmer insisted. He appeared to be filled with a dull surprise.
“The second time,” Dr. Stone repeated thoughtfully. “I’d call that strange, Fred.”
“You, too, Doctor.” The artist’s impatience had given place to amusement. “I thought better of you than that.”
“Did you?” the blind man asked mildly. Joe stood rigid. His uncle’s voice had carried an undertone that had not been there before.
But nothing more was said. They came from the house, and Roscoe Sweetman’s fumbling hand clattered the key against the lock. In the road Frederick Wingate paused.
“Doctor,” he asked curiously, “do you actually believe in ghosts?”
“I believe what I hear,” the blind man said without emotion.
Joe, struck with terror, hugged close to the safety of the dog. That night his sleep was broken by dreams—dreams of a great, monstrous heart throbbing so that all could hear it and of strange screams that faded into a swift, strange silence. In the morning an east wind blew down from the mountains and the sky was gray and overcast. Twice Joe walked toward the Farley farm, and twice he turned back. He saw Mr. Sweetman, hulked over the wheel of a small car, drive toward the village and, an hour later, drive back. And all through the morning Dr. Stone sat with his beloved pipe unlighted in his hands, and by that token the boy knew that his uncle was buried in disturbed thought.
Early in the afternoon Police Captain Tucker and Mr. Rodgers, the real estate man, came to the house in the captain’s car. Joe hovered in the doorway.
“Doctor,” Mr. Rodgers demanded, “what’s this talk about a ghost at Farley’s? Sweetman came in to see me this morning—”
“Sweetman?” The blind man was intent.
“Rubbed it under my nose that there was no market for a haunted house. Said you had heard the ghost. How about it?”
“Did Sweetman happen to be in a buying mood?” Dr. Stone asked quietly.
“An eager mood. That’s what I can’t understand.”
“How much did he offer?”
“Twenty-five hundred.”
And yesterday, Joe thought, the farmer had mentioned $3,000. He glanced at his uncle. The blind man had struck a match to the unlighted pipe.
“We heard a little of everything, Rodgers—groans, screams, the footsteps of a child, singing.” Blue smoke rose fragrantly from the pipe. “A child singing,” the doctor added, and turned sightless eyes toward the captain. “What brings you into this, Tucker. Planning to arrest a ghost?”
“Ghost?” Captain Tucker snorted. “I don’t believe in ghosts. There’s such a thing as hocus-pocus to steal away the value of a piece of property. Did you know Matt Farley?”
“No.”
“Rodgers and I did. A friend to tie to. Matt was doing well here, but his youngest boy, about four, died. It broke him up. Two years later he closed the house and went away. Now he’s out on the Coast, sick and penniless, and he asked Rodgers to sell the place and get money to him. I’m in on this to see that no swindle is put over on him.”
Dr. Stone asked: “How did the boy die, Tucker?”
“He fell down a well and was drowned.”
Horror froze Joe Morrow’s blood. Words passed back and forth in the room—he did not hear them. By and by the three men were in the road and headed for Farley’s. He trailed along. They stopped at Mr. Sweetman’s for the key.
“Doctor,” the farmer said heavily, “not for one thousand dollars would I go into that house again.”
“You’d buy it though,” Dr. Stone said mildly.
“Not now. Since this morning I am told that when you tear down a ghost house the ghost follows you into yours. Maybe it is so. I do not take a chance.”
“Who told you that?” the real estate man snapped.
Mr. Sweetman’s eyes shifted. “I do not say.”
The house, on this drab, gray day, was bleak and forbidding in its emptiness. Cold shadows lurked in the corners. However, there was daylight, you could see, and Joe did not feel the frozen terror of last night. Captain Tucker relentlessly searched the house. In the end he came up from the cellar with a paper in his hand.
“Find anything,” Mr. Rodgers asked eagerly.
“The cover from a magazine and a scrap torn from a page. Matt’s been out of here for years; this magazine is a last August issue. How did it get here?”
“What magazine?” Dr. Stone asked.
“It’s called Wonder World. How did it get here?”
“Sweetman has a key,” the real estate man said. “Wingate did have a key. Either one of them could have brought it in.”
“How long did Wingate have his key?” the doctor asked suddenly.
“A month, probably. Painted in here for a while. Gave me back the key at last and said it would cost too much to change the upstairs to get a studio with a northern light.”
“Then these things mean nothing,” the captain grumbled in disappointment. He crumpled the cover and threw it into a blackened fireplace.
“That scrap of paper?” Dr. Stone asked.
“Half a dozen incomplete lines. Something torn out at random.”
“Might I have it?”
Captain Tucker grunted in impatience. “I tell you it’s merely a scrap——Oh, take it.”
They emerged from the house, and almost at once Frederick Wingate came out of his own dwelling wearing a paint-smeared apron.
“By Harry!” he cried angrily, “this ceases to be a joke. Now the police are here, and next it will be in the newspapers. They’ll howl it up with scare headlines, and the rabble will come down on us by train, and bus and private car. The neighborhood will be marked for sordid sensation. Sweetman’s place, Farley’s, mine—none of them will be worth a dollar. Nobody has heard these screams, and footsteps and heartbeats. It’s hysterical imagination.”
“I’ll come over tonight and try my imagination,” Captain Tucker said.
The artist stormed back into his house and slammed the door.
Dr. Stone, holding to Lady’s harness-grip, went serenely toward his home. Mr. Rodgers talked warmly. Wingate had the right idea—hysteria. But Joe, though silent, could still feel the tremor of his nerves. There had been screams and heartbeats. And a boy had fallen into a well and drowned!
Captain Tucker and the real estate man climbed into the police car and were off. Instantly the unconcern fell away from the blind man. He held out the scrap of paper.
“Read it, Joe?”
The boy read the few, disjointed words on the triangular strip:
If the effects sonority periments. By means of succeeded in
“Does it mean anything, Uncle Dave?” he asked, puzzled.
“Perhaps.” Dr. Stone’s face had become intent. “I think I’ll walk into the village with Lady. You’d better stay here, Joe. I may be gone a long time.”
He was gone three hours. When he returned he was whistling softly.
Darkness came early out of the drab day. Joe placed a log in the fireplace, and Dr. Stone smoked quietly and toasted his legs in the warmth of the blaze. At seven o’clock there were footsteps on the porch and a knock on the door. Frederick Wingate walked in.
“Still thinking of ghosts, Doctor?” he asked humorously. The afternoon’s ill-temper had disappeared.
The face of the blind man was inscrutable. “Still thinking,” he admitted.
And then, for a time, the Farley house and the ghoulish beat of its unseen heart seemed forgotten, and Joe listened to sparkling talk of the days when Mr. Wingate had been a student in Paris and Vienna. Abruptly, in the middle of a sentence, the man stopped short.
“What time will Tucker be back tonight, Doctor?”
“Eight-thirty.”
The artist pulled back the sleeve of his coat and glanced at the heavy, elaborately-scrolled, silver wrist watch. “Eight-ten,” he said. And then, seeing Joe’s fascinated eyes upon the watch, he continued to hold up the bared wrist. “A curious trinket, Joe. I picked it up in Austria. Keeps time to the split second. But it has a curious trick. Do you hear it ticking?”
“No, sir.”
“If your wrist happens to turn in exactly the right position——” The man moved his wrist, and all at once the boy heard the watch ticking out an emphatic, muffled stroke. Again the wrist moved, and the timepiece was no longer audible. The artist laughed. “Not bad, eh, Joe?”
Joe said “Gosh!” and looked at his uncle. Dr. Stone had ceased to smoke.
“It’s going to be a bad night, Doctor,” Frederick Wingate went on. “There’s snow in the air. I’d advise you to sit snug and let Tucker do his ghost-hunting alone. It will be wasted time.”
“Why are you so sure of that, Fred?”
“Come, come, Doctor. You know how I feel about goblins.”
“Of course. I was wondering. Last night you insisted we hadn’t heard sounds. Tonight you become more positive. You predict we’re not going to hear anything. Why this added certainty? Is it because you had removed the cable running between your house and Farley’s?”
Joe Morrow suddenly found himself tight and expectant. The good humor had been washed from the artist’s face.
“It was hard,” the doctor said serenely, “to locate exactly where the sound originated. Lady, though, took me to one wall. After that, the trick was plain. A blind man’s touch is sensitive, Fred. I felt the vibration in the wall. I asked Joe if the wall looked at all strange. He said it didn’t. Who could break into a wall and then doctor it so it would let out sound freely and still look untouched? Who but an artist accustomed to skilfully blending colors?
“But at first I suspected Sweetman. The man’s anxiety to take advantage of a ghost scare and buy cheaply fooled me. We all stumble at times. I should have seen from the start it couldn’t be Sweetman. He was greedy, but he didn’t have the brains. Then, too, there were no creepy manifestations whenever you appeared. By the way, who told Sweetman the ghost would invade his house if he pulled down Farley’s? You?”
“You’re stumbling now, Doctor, aren’t you?” the artist asked. Joe saw that his eyes had become sharp and watchful.
“Not now,” the blind man said. “The road is too plain. Today, when Tucker searched the house, he found the cover of the August Miracle World and a fragmentary scrap torn from a magazine page. Only ten words were on that scrap, Fred, but one of them was ‘sonority.’ It’s a word dealing with sound. On a bare chance I dropped in at the public library. There I learned that one Frederick Wingate is a subscriber to Miracle World, and each month turns the magazine over to the library after he has read it. But this Mr. Wingate did not turn over his August copy; the library, wishing to keep a complete file, sent for the August number. There was a significant article in that number, Fred. The librarian read it to me. It had to do with sound effects by radio and telephone.”
Joe’s lips were parted breathlessly. Frederick Wingate stood as though he had lost the power of movement.
“I’m not up on those things. They developed after I became blind. Exactly how you worked the trick I do not know. After reading the August number you concocted your scheme. You took your time. But in December you got the key from Rhodes on the pretext you wanted to paint in the house and try out the light. In that month you did your wiring, broke through walls, inserted your loud speakers and tuned them to the proper pitch. The transmitting cable from your house to Farley’s was probably laid on the ground under the snow. No doubt you thought you would not have to give more than five or six manifestations. Let the ghost talk start. After that you could take up the cable. The thing would be done. Farley’s property would be ruined; you’d buy it in for a song.
“What did you do from December to March? Practice the act? Anyway, you ran into the unexpected. Sweetman also saw a chance to buy cheaply. So you filled him with the fear of inheriting a ghost. Then, when the road seemed clear, Tucker came in. You hadn’t expected the police. Today, when you protested to Tucker, Rodgers thought you were furiously indignant. I read your voice better. You were alarmed. So tonight, as soon as darkness fell, you took up the incriminating cable. You’re wealthy. Why does a man of means stoop to small cupidities? Is it because he thinks it clever and smart?”
The artist spoke hoarsely. “You’ll admit, Doctor, that this is all rather circumstantial?”
“It was until a little while ago. Then I found the absolute proof. Sometimes a thing becomes so much a part of a man that he forgets he has it and it betrays him. Do you mind telling me the time?”
The artist glanced at his wrist-watch. “It is now——” His eyes, startled, stared fixedly at the doctor. “I see,” he said.
Dr. Stone relighted the pipe. “Might I make a suggestion. We don’t want Tucker in on this. I’m more interested in Matt Farley. My suggestion is that you buy the place even below its worth, eight thousand dollars. Eight thousand will be a fortune to a man sick and penniless.”
Wet blotches fell against the windows. Snow!
“Doctor,” Frederick Wingate said, “will you believe me when I say I did not know Farley was destitute?” He picked his coat from a chair. “I’ll see Rodgers in the morning and put down a deposit. Good night.”
The blazing log broke and fell, and sparks showered up the chimney. So there really had been no ghost! Relief went through Joe Morrow in a fervent tide.
“Did—did you really have the proof, Uncle David?”
“The absolute proof, Joe. You saw it yourself.”
“I saw it?” The boy was bewildered.
Dr. Stone stretched back in the chair and placed his hands behind his head. “I don’t know whether he used a telephone mouthpiece or a microphone. Whatever he used he was right in front of it. His hands must have been active—he had to produce the sounds of water, footsteps, gravel. Every time the watch began its mystifying tick——”
“Oh!” Joe breathed.
“Yes,” the blind man said quietly. “You and Sweetman thought it was the beating of a human heart.”
“Hard!” said Police Captain Tucker. “That’s what he is, Doctor—hard,” and the policeman drove a smacking fist into the palm of his other hand to emphasize the point.
The dog, lying in front of the fireplace, lifted her head. Dr. David Stone puffed his pipe serenely in the warmth of the blazing logs. The winter wind whistled about the house, a shutter banged like the report of a gun, and Joe Morrow jumped.
“Talks tough, Doctor, and sticks out his chin as though asking you what you were going to do about it. I’ve sent out his fingerprints. Wouldn’t be surprised if it turned out he was a bit of a gangster.”
“You have him safely in jail,” Dr. Stone pointed out.
“Safe enough for the present,” Captain Tucker admitted, “but I can’t hold him forever on mere suspicion.”
“Then you’re not charging him with murder?”
“How can I? You can’t prove a murder without producing a body. Where’s the corpse? Where’s Boothy Wilkes, alive or dead? He hasn’t been around——. You pass his place every day, Joe. When did you see him last?”
“Wednesday,” Joe Morrow, Dr. Stone’s nephew, answered. “He asked me had I seen Jud Cory hanging around.”
“Nobody’s seen him since Wednesday. That was six days ago. That morning he and Jud had a talk outside the post office—something about money—and suddenly Jud yelled out that he’d kill him. Dozen people heard it. And since late Wednesday Boothy hasn’t been seen.”
“Why did Jud want to kill him?” the blind doctor asked.
“How do I know?”
“Might be worth looking into,” the calm voice drawled.
“Haven’t I tried to sweat it out of him? Haven’t I grilled him trying to make him tell where he hid the body? What do I get? A stuck-out chin, and a scowl, and him telling me he’s not a squealer. That’s gangster talk.”
The blind man’s head rested against the back of the chair; his sightless eyes seemed to stare unblinkingly at some object on the ceiling; the pale face had the calmness of graven stone. Joe, highly excited by all this talk of murder and a hidden body, pulled at a thought that had occurred to him more than once in the past. Could anything happen that would shake his uncle out of that unruffled tranquillity?
“How old did you say he was, Captain?”
“Twenty.”
The doctor sat up and knocked the ashes of his pipe into the fireplace, “No boy is hard at twenty, Captain. He only thinks he’s hard. Mind if I talk to him?”
Captain Tucker sighed. “I was hoping you would.”
Dr. Stone reached for the dog’s harness. “More work for us, old girl,” he said, and the dog looked at him steadily. Joe wondered if she understood. They went out to the small police car, the tawny shepherd anxiously leading the blind man through the snow to the running-board. Crowded into the car, Joe and the dog in the rear seat, they rode toward the village.
“How long is it since Jud Cory left here?” Dr. Stone asked.
“Seven years. That’s what I can’t understand. Why should he come back after seven years to do a murder? He used to live with Boothy; did chores for his keep. We’ve sent for his brother.”
“Jud’s?”
“No; Boothy’s.”
The doctor said, surprised: “I didn’t know he had a brother.”
“Neither did anybody else. But for that matter Boothy was a tight-lipped man who told his business to no one. After the neighbors reported him missing we searched the house. Found a will and a note written the day before the quarrel outside the post office. The note said if anything happened to him——. See that, Doctor? He was afraid that something would happen.”
“He wrote that note the day before Jud threatened to kill him,” the blind man said slowly.
Joe thought that Captain Tucker had the look of a man stumbling over a rock he had not seen. “Well——.” The captain coughed awkwardly. “Why couldn’t Jud have gone to the house several times before that meeting outside the post office? Certainly he didn’t come here planning to loiter in the streets until Boothy appeared. Anyway, the note said if anything happened to him to notify his brother, Otis Wilkes, at once.”
“Any witnesses to the will?”
“No. Oh, it’s in his handwriting. We proved that.”
“Who gets his property?”
“This brother, Otis Wilkes.”
Dr. Stone said, “I’d like to meet Otis.” Joe, sitting taut on the rear seat, had the feeling that his uncle had touched something hidden in the dark. The car halted outside the village lock-up.
“I won’t go down with you,” Captain Tucker grunted. “He wouldn’t talk if I were there.”
“I’ll want Joe with me,” Dr. Stone said, and a turnkey led man, boy and dog down a damp staircase. It was the first time Joe had ever seen this forbiddingly bleak corridor of cells, and his heart grew heavy with a sick chill. A key rasped in a lock, and the jail attendant threw open an iron-barred door.
“Somebody to see you, Cory.”
“I don’t want to see nobody,” a voice answered harshly.
The blind man said, “Lady, left,” and followed the dog into the cell. Joe saw a disheveled youth who sat scowling upon a cot. At sight of them he arose with an air of bravado. The cell door closed.
“What’s the idea?” the harsh voice demanded. “Trying to scare me with a dog?”
“Nobody’s trying to scare you, Jud. Don’t you remember me? I’m Dr. Stone.”
“Another cop?”
“No,” the blind man said gently; “your friend. And here’s another friend—Joe Morrow. You ought to remember Joe. He was only a little tyke then, and always followed you when you brought the cows in from pasture.”
Joe saw the hard eyes waver. At that moment Jud Cory looked, not the murderous gangster, but a frightened, bewildered, sick-souled boy.
“He always brought me a cake with raisins in it,” Jud said huskily. And then, like some wild animal touched by danger, the youth had sprung back against the wall of the cell. “Hey! Trying to pull soft stuff on me? Nothing doing, I don’t talk.”
“You’ve had your share of bitter days, haven’t you?” Dr. Stone asked quietly.
The hard eyes wavered.
“I knew your father, Jud. It doesn’t seem possible that his son could butcher a man for a few dollars.”
“It wasn’t a few dollars,” the lad cried thickly. “It——”
Joe shivered. Then this had really been a murder for a lot of dollars. The youth had choked off the sentence and stood against the stone wall shaken by the appalling significance of what he had said.
“Jud,” the blind man said, “don’t try to fool me and don’t try to fool yourself. You’re just a poor, miserable kid who’s caught in a squeeze that’s too tight for him. Don’t you think you ought to tell me.”
The chin wasn’t a hard chin now. It quivered, tried to steady itself; and suddenly, like a tree that snaps in a storm, Jud Cory broke. One moment he stood against the wall, still suspicious, still afraid; the next he was on the side of his cot, his head in his hands, sobbing.
“You don’t know what it’s been like in here, Doctor. Everybody telling me I was a murderer and asking what I did with the body. When I said I’d kill him I was mad. I didn’t mean it. I tell you, Doctor, I didn’t mean it.”
The blind man groped across the cell, and sat upon the cot, and one hand reached out and rested on the boy’s shoulder.
The sobbing had stopped. “We—we lived in the city,” came from between the lad’s hands, “my pop and me, and pop got sick and they said he should go to the country. I don’t know how it happened, but we came to Boothy Wilkes’. I liked it there. Then pop died, and that changed everything. I was nine then, nine nearly ten, and Wilkes made me do all the chores—said I had to earn my keep. Telling me every day I was a pauper and threatening to send me away to the pauper farm. Then he began to shout and yell that I ate too much. That was when I lit out.
“I went to Philadelphia and sold newspapers. They told me to keep out of the way of the cops or they’d slap me in a home because I ought to be in school. It wasn’t so bad in the summer, but in the winter it was tough. Snowy days I wouldn’t sell many papers, and maybe I’d have to sleep in a hallway that night.”
“How old were you then, Jud?”
“About fourteen.”
Joe shot a glance at his uncle. The unruffled tranquillity was gone. The blind man’s face was dark with a bitter wrath.
“I figured I’d go some place where there wouldn’t be so much cold, so I beat it to California. There I got jobs doing this and that, and got along. One day, when I was out of work and feeling pretty low, a man stopped me and asked wasn’t I Jud Cory. He said I looked as though I was on my uppers, and I said I was. He said I must have gone through the money pretty fast, and I asked him what money, and he said he had been cashier for the bank here and that just a few days before my father died he was sent for, and went to Wilkes’ house, and that my father put nine thousand dollars in Wilkes’ account for me. It seemed pop didn’t want any dealings with lawyers and courts and thought Wilkes was honest. Maybe this man was telling me straight and maybe he wasn’t. I got thinking it over, and it seemed maybe Wilkes had laid it on me heavy so I’d light out and he’d have the money to himself. So I came back here, and the first time I spoke to Wilkes I knew it was true.”
“How?” Dr. Stone asked.
“By his face.”
“What was the name of this man, Jud?”
“I—I don’t know. I got so excited I forgot to ask, and when I went looking for him afterwards I couldn’t find him. Does that make any difference?”
“I’m afraid so.”
Jud Cory’s hands went out in a hopeless gesture. “I don’t suppose anybody’ll believe me.” He was up from the cot, frantic, terror-stricken. “But I didn’t kill him. I didn’t.”
“I know you didn’t,” Dr. Stone said quietly. “I’ve known that for the past ten minutes.”
Serenity had come back upon the blind man. Holding the handle-grip of Lady’s harness he followed the dog up the damp stairway to the headquarters room. There he told Captain Tucker Jud Cory’s story.
“A fairy tale,” the police captain scoffed. “He got it out of a book or the movies. Anyway, it doesn’t explain the riddle. Where’s Boothy Wilkes’ body?”
“Let’s go to the bank,” the doctor suggested.
Again they rode in the police car, and again Lady cautiously conducted her master through the snow. Bryan Smith, president of the bank, admitted them to his private office and closed the door.
“The Wilkes case, gentlemen?”
Captain Tucker shrugged. “In a way. Cory has burst forth with a wild——”
“Just a moment, Captain,” Dr. Stone said sharply. “Mr. Smith, did a cashier resign eight or nine years ago?”
“Eight or nine years?” The banker considered. “That would be Herman Lang. He resigned about that time.”
“Do you know why he resigned?”
“Yes. He had an offer to join a land development company.”
“Where?”
“In California.”
Joe saw Captain Tucker’s mouth sag, but his uncle’s face was impassive. Bryan Smith lowered his voice.
“Ordinarily, gentlemen, we do not discuss our depositors’ business. However, there is something I think you should know. Boothy Wilkes drew out five thousand dollars in cash the day he vanished. Cash!”
The sag that had been in Captain Tucker’s jaw was gone. Out in the car he spoke a positive judgment.
“There’s your motive, Doctor. Find Boothy’s body and Cory’ll soon tell us what he did with the five thousand dollars. Anyway, we all know Boothy kept a tight fist on a dime. Suppose he did rob the boy. Is that any excuse for murder?”
“You haven’t yet proved Jud did commit a murder,” the blind man suggested gently.
“The body?” Captain Tucker snapped an impatient finger. “That’s only a matter of time. It couldn’t have been taken far.”
Outside the village town hall a constable awaited their coming. Otis Wilkes, he said, had arrived from Baltimore and was now at the Wilkes farm. Captain Tucker turned the car about. Fifteen minutes later they swung into a driveway between trees and skidded to a stop. On the Wilkes porch a thin, wiry man paced back and forth restlessly.
“I’d know him for a Wilkes anywhere,” Captain Tucker said in an undertone. “Favors Boothy in looks, only this one’s all whiskered. Mind if I use Lady while you’re here, Doctor?”
“What for?”
“Clues. She might scent us something.”
As they left the car and came toward the house, Joe Morrow had eyes only for the man on the porch. A voice called down to them across the railing.
“Captain Tucker?” The tone carried a high, nasal twang. “Land o’ Goshen, I’ve been a-waitin’ for you until I’m like t’ freeze.” The sentence ended in a choking, sputtering cough. The man spat violently with a burst of breath. “Come in; come in out of the cold.”
The house, untenanted for a week, was scarcely warmer than the outdoors. But it was the house from which a man had disappeared, and Joe Morrow kept staring about uneasily as though expecting to find a ghost. They went into a front room that overlooked some of the land bordering the road. Here, at least, there was sun.
“Did they get him?” Otis Wilkes demanded. “This Jud Cory?” Speech was momentarily halted by that same choking cough, that same sputtering outburst of breath. “This Jud Cory who killed Boothy.”
Joe was conscious of a sudden, intent look on his uncle’s face. Captain Tucker answered very, very slowly.
“Did you stop at the police station, or did you come straight to the house?”
“To the house, of course. Where else with maybe Boothy lying dead?”
“How did you know he was dead?” Captain Tucker demanded.
“He wrote me, Boothy did.” One hand made a frantic reach for the inside pocket of his coat and drew forth a folded paper. “Boothy said it was on him. Here!”
Captain Tucker read the letter aloud:
Dear Otis: Like as not you’ll be surprised to get this letter seeing as we have not seen or heard of each other in twenty years. But when a man feels he is going to be took, it is natural he should turn to his only kin. I have wrote a will leaving everything to you, and you will be notified when necessary. If anything should happen to me sudden, look for Jud Cory. He has made talk of killing me, and I think he is the kind to do it.
Your brother, Boothy.
Captain Tucker folded the letter. “Well, Doctor?” he asked in poorly-concealed satisfaction.
The blind man’s face was inscrutable. “Does a man facing death, a man known to keep a tight fist on a dime, stop to draw five thousand dollars in cash from a bank?”
“Boothy was a-tryin’ t’ buy him off,” Mr. Wilkes shrilled.
“How do you know that, Mr. Wilkes?”
“Reasonable, ain’t it? Reckon a man would ruther pay five thousand dollars than be laid out stiff. What about Jud Cory?”
“We have him,” Captain Tucker answered, “but Boothy’s missing. We believe he’s been murdered.”
“Then why you standin’ ’round wastin’ time doin’ nothin’?” Mr. Wilkes’ outburst arose to a tremulous falsetto. “Find him. I’ll pay a reward.”
“We’re starting a search now with the dog,” Captain Tucker soothed the agitated man. “If you wish to come along——”
But Mr. Wilkes was seized with a shuddering reluctance. “It ain’t fitten’ I should, seein’ as folks might say I was powerful anxious t’ find him so’s t’ claim the property. Besides——” Straggling hairs again bothered his mouth, and there was another spell of coughing and sputtering. “Besides, I ain’t so spry anymore and the cold gits into my bones. I’ll set here by the window in the sun an’ watch out through the apple orchard.”
“It’s a fine orchard,” Captain Tucker observed.
“Boothy set great store by it,” Mr. Wilkes said feelingly. “Blasted the soil with dynamite before settin’ out the trees.”
“Coming, Captain?” Dr. Stone asked.
There was an undercurrent to the words. Joe, roused out of his expectation of a ghost, saw that the strained lines were gone from his uncle’s mouth and that now the face was placid and serene. The boy knew the sign. Once more Dr. Stone had touched something hidden in obscurity. Light had come to the brain that lay behind those blind eyes. And so they came outdoors, to the snow and the frozen ground.
“Careful, Doctor,” Captain Tucker warned.
“Lady won’t let me on ice,” the doctor answered. “Search, old girl.”
The dog winnowed through the snow, back and forth, ever advancing. The quest took them past the house, on past the summer kitchen. Suddenly the animal, no longer advancing, began to dig in the snow with her paws.
“She’s found something,” Joe cried.
Out from under the snow Lady dragged a hat. Captain Tucker seized it eagerly.
“It’s Boothy’s, Doctor. Here are his initials. B. W.”
The doctor asked a question. “Where are we, Joe?”
Joe’s throat ached. “On the driveway to the barn.”
“Doesn’t it strike you as strange, Captain, that Boothy’s hat should be found here?”