To say that I was excited over my find would be putting it very mildly. I stood there thumbing the bulky pile through and through to make sure there was no mistake. Mine was the intoxication of the medical student who stumbles on the correct diagnosis when the great surgeon failed, the smug satisfaction of the schoolboy who finds that his answer to a problem is correct, and the one in the back of the book is wrong. On the heels of a search made by the Sheriff, and his staff, I had picked up definite proof that some person who read the Miami Floridian had visited the Simmons house on the fifteenth of every month for over a year, and that the same unknown was there on the day of the killing. It was, furthermore, quite possible that my find might reveal his fingerprints, and a specimen of his handwriting.
It all comes back to me so vividly now as I am writing —the sudden realization that Ed Brown had been gone a long time and that I would have to hurry in order to get back home before twelve o’clock—the dying out of my exultation and the insidious creeping over me of a subconscious feeling that all was not right—then the numbing, gripping consciousness of the loneliness of the big room—and the deadly certainty that murderous eyes, which I could not see, were watching my every move and weighing my life in the balance.
The stark wild terror which grips us in our dreams took possession of me and rendered me incapable of action. I stood just where I was, in front of the fireplace, aimlessly rippling over the pile of newspapers. I think I even hummed softly to myself. I could hear the violent hammering of my heart, and I dreaded that it would betray my agitation to the silent watcher. Every instinct in me cried out to me to get out of that room—to run for the kitchen door, or to scream for help. I believe now that had I foolishly attempted any such move I would never have lived to write about it. My very incapacity saved me.
Exactly what had warned me that I was in danger I do not know. Possibly an incongruous noise in a house which should have been silent. Perhaps just the sensitiveness of one human being to the contiguity of another. Out of the turmoil of my racing brain I evolved a plan of action and it proved to be good. I placed all the papers, but one, back on the chair, lit a cigarette, sat down and pretended to read. In reality my eyes were surreptitiously searching every part of the room vainly seeking to find what had so unnerved me.
Gradually I began to get myself in hand. I casually turned over the pages of the paper held in front of me seizing every opportunity to study the windows. No sign of a peering face rewarded me. The door to the kitchen was partly open but five minutes of watching it convinced me there was no one concealed behind it. The walls of the big room were plaster. The fireplace appeared to be solid stone. There was no door to the hall behind me which led to the front door. I could hear my watch ticking loudly in my pocket. Still I leafed over the pages trying to appear unconcerned, trying to act as though I were deeply engrossed in the blurred print swimming before me.
My body grew rigid and tense and then relaxed with sheer weakness. I had heard footsteps on the porch and the click of the latch on the front door. I lowered the copy of the Floridian and turned to see the welcome figure of the Chief Deputy coming down the hall. Companionship had never seemed more welcome to me, yet I was utterly at a loss what to say. I certainly could not tell a practical individual like Ed Brown that I had been cowering in fear of something I could not see. Besides, unless my senses had played me false, it would be safer if I made no mention of my belief that there was something baneful and pernicious about that room. If someone was watching it would be just as easy for them to dispose of two people as one. I will admit that my courage rose as Ed entered.
“Good Lord, Doc,” he said when he saw my face. “You look like a Barbados nigger. You must have been up the chimney. Any luck?”
“Nothing at all,” I answered without hesitation. “I found a text in a bureau drawer upstairs, but that’s about all. I had a look in all the flues too, but there was nothing doing. How about you?”
His face clouded. “I found something. Just luck I guess. I’ll show it to you when we get to the boat. It looks bad, Doc. Very bad.”
“What do you mean?”
“When I left you I started in back of the house and made a search of the grove. I did a pretty slick job too. I searched from orange tree to orange tree so that I covered all the ground in checks. At the far end of the grove I saw a pile of brush. I passed it the first time but on the way back I got nosy and turned it over. There was a shotgun buried there, Doc. I hate to take it in. It looks bad.”
“Marvin Lee?”
He nodded. “It has two empty shells in it. There are the initials B. N. on the stock. That’s Bert Nelson you know. It was his gun.”
“You know—“ I started to tell him what Marvin had said about the gun being stolen but I checked myself. It would do no good and he probably knew about it anyhow. I could not rid myself of the idea that an eavesdropper was listening to us. “I’d like you to take a quick look over the house with me. I just want to show you that I haven’t overlooked anything.”
“I know you haven’t, Doc. But I’ll go if you like.”
The kitchen was empty, likewise the two front rooms. Upstairs I took especial notice of the floors in the back rooms. There was not an indication of a crack through which anyone could have looked down on me in the room below. I showed Ed the flue I had found under the wall paper.
“You’re quite a searcher.” He laughed. “Maybe I’d better bring you out again and let you look over the grove. You’d probably dig up all the orange trees.”
“I’ve had plenty for a long time. We’ll have to hurry, won’t we? Remember I have to be back in town.”
“We can make it all right.” He looked at his big watch. “It’s just ten-fifteen.”
We walked down the stairs and Ed opened the front door. I had no intention of leaving without my precious newspapers. I decided to walk quickly into the back room, pick up the pile and take them with me. I could explain to Ed when we were in the boat.
“Wait just a minute, will you, Ed? I forgot something in the back room.”
I walked calmly down the hall, crossed the room, picked up the papers from off the chair and tucked them under my arm. As I straightened up I saw that my companion had followed me into the room. He was standing not more than six feet from me looking at the window to the left of the fireplace. On his face was an expression of horror which raised the hackles on my neck. Before I could move or speak he croaked: “Look out for God’s sake!” Then he launched his two hundred pounds on me. I felt his whip-like arms encircle me and with him on top we crashed to the floor. I made no attempt at resistance. I was too stunned to know what was happening. Quickly we rolled over together, and I felt us bring up with a thud against the wall under the window to the right of the fireplace.
It may have happened while we were rolling, or it may have been just as we stopped. I distinctly remember being conscious of a shooting tongue of flame and a double explosion which sounded like a charge of dynamite in the confines of the room. A cloud of white plaster rose like talcum powder beside the entrance to the hall as two charges of shot smacked viciously into the wall. Then Ed was on his knees beside me and I heard the tinkle of glass by my head as he fired through the window pane. Three times his forty-five automatic crashed out. Then he stood up and slipped it into the holster.
“God, I hope I didn’t hurt you, Doc! You’d have been mincemeat now if I hadn’t seen the muzzle of that cannon creeping through the window. Let’s go! Our friend, whoever he is, disappeared into the grove, and I’m not going after him in there without a posse. I promised to deliver you safely home!”
I gathered the scattered papers together and followed Ed out of the house. I was shaking from head to foot, and even when we were in the boat I felt that any minute that murderous shotgun might roar out from the shore and end both our parts in the case of David Mitchell.
12
We remained silent for some time. The clink and squeak of the oarlocks as the Deputy rowed
sounded unnaturally loud in my ears. He did not attempt to follow the west shore back the way we had come, but headed the boat straight out into the lake rowing for the opposite bank. I felt safe as the fog closed in behind us. Once in sight of the east bank, we could follow it to the landing without the danger of being trailed along the shoreline. The attempt on our lives in the Simmons house had failed, but there was no room in a rowboat to roll out of the way of a charge of buckshot. I sat indurated on the back seat, and did not relax until Ed backed water with his right oar and headed the nose of the boat up the lake. I saw his whitened knuckles redden as he eased up his grip on the handles of the oars.
“Gosh Moses!” he exclaimed softly. “Am I glad to be out of that? It’s a wonder that skunk didn’t plug me while I was in the grove. He must have been close to me a dozen times.”
“I don’t think so,” I said through stiffened lips. “He’s been watching me. I’m certain of it, although I was never able to see him. I felt that something was wrong and I was scared to death before you came. That’s why I asked you to go over the house with me. It’s plain now that he must have been watching through the window and seen me looking at the papers.” I riffled the pile in my lap.
“Say! I forgot about them. So you did find something of importance.” I explained to him about the dates, and the figures on the one in my coat pocket. He stopped rowing long enough to mop his forehead with a big handkerchief. “That explains the shooting then. Whoever it was was going to let us leave without trouble so long as you left those papers. He must have seen you reading them and realized that you had stumbled on something he had foolishly left lying around. There was a chance that you didn’t know the value of your find. When you came back to get them, and I walked into the room after you, he got into a panic and decided to let us have it. A couple of more dead men don’t seem to mean a thing to that damn louse.”
“There would have been just that, if it hadn’t been for you, Ed.”
“Ah, forget it, Doc. I was saving my own hide as much as yours. I’m sick I didn’t get a better look at him. Pete will have a fit when I tell him I was that close to the devil and didn’t even hit him. He’ll want to skin me.”
“You couldn’t tell anything about how he looked?”
“Not a chance. He was crouched over running and was gone in the trees in a second. I just saw his outline through the fog anyhow.”
The shotgun which Ed had dug up in the grove was lying at my feet in the boat. I glanced at it curiously. It was sandy and rusty and looked as if it might have been in the ground for several days. It struck me that if Marvin had wanted to conceal a weapon he would have had more sense than to bury it close to the scene of a crime, where there was every likelihood of its being found. I mentioned my thoughts to my companion.
“There are lots of funny things about this whole business, Doc. Pete and I have talked it over many times. What’s happened this morning don’t seem to clear it up much either. Makes it worse to my mind. Now take this gun.” He let the oars trail as he pointed to the incriminating weapon. “You think Marvin Lee would have been crazy to bury that where I found it and mark it with a brush pile. The question is—would he? Wouldn’t it be pretty slick?”
“I don’t see why!” I exclaimed, rather startled at his question.
“Well the case has looked black against him ever since the start. He came out here with Pete and me the day after he got back in town, and showed us where he talked to Mitchell on the afternoon of the fifteenth. That wasn’t more than a mile from where you found the body. He admitted that he had a gun with him. This gun. But he won’t say why he was so blamed anxious to talk to Mitchell, and he won’t say where he was nor what he went away for. Then he comes out with a story to Pete that the gun was taken from his room in the Nelson house. That leaves us only two guesses. Did the murderer take the gun in order to throw more suspicion on Marvin Lee, or did Marvin Lee bury the gun in order to throw more suspicion on himself?”
I began to get a glimmer of what was in the Deputy’s mind. Marvin’s statement that the Sheriff’s office, or someone, was trying to hang the murder on him came back to me and fitted into the plan with devilish neatness. Suppose he had buried the gun and left a mark that might cause it to be discovered. “You think he might be trying to give the impression that the whole thing is a frame-up?” I asked.
“Sure. I’m not accusing Marvin Lee, but the thing is possible. He’s a lawyer, and a darn good one. He could run a jury crazy trying to figure out why he should bury a gun when there was no necessity to do it. It’s possible that he has an A-l explanation of why he went away, and why he talked to Mitchell. Maybe he’s just trying to act suspicious to build up the idea that he’s a victim of circumstantial evidence.”
“I’ll tell you the same thing I told Pete. You haven’t explained the murder of Red Salmon.”
“No? Then I’ll tell you something, Doc. I’ve been doing a bit of figuring myself since Salmon was killed, and I’ve found out that Marvin Lee could have killed him.”
“You’re crazy,” I gasped.
“Yeah? Listen to this. Day before yesterday Marvin Lee came out here with Pete and me as I said, but we were back in town before one o’clock. You got back from your case in the lumber camp after five. Mrs. Ryan told you that Marvin Lee had phoned you three times, but did she tell you that those three calls were within an hour and a half before you got home?”
“No, she didn’t. I thought—”
“All right. I managed to check those calls at the local office. The first was about three forty-five from Nelson’s house to yours. So we can place Mr. Lee’s movements after three forty-five. But we can’t place his movements from one o’clock until three forty-five. And a man can get to Red Salmon’s shack from Orange Crest and back in two hours and a half.”
“I don’t see how it’s possible. It’s a terrible trip.”
“I didn’t say he could do it the way you went through the swamp, but it can be done with a boat. You traveled about twenty miles out of town before you left the state road, but you doubled back on yourself nearly ten miles through the woods, and nearly two miles more through the swamp. It’s only fifteen miles from Orange Crest to a place on Tiger Creek which is two miles below Salmon’s cabin. I can drive there easily in forty-five minutes. Allow thirty minutes for taking a boat upstream against the current, and you’re there in an hour and a quarter. You can get back quicker, for your boat trip is with the current.”
“But what did Marvin say he was doing between one and three forty-five? Did anybody ask him that?”‘
“Yes. Sanderson asked him casually last night before you came.” The Deputy sent the boat hurtling into the reeds at the landing place with a terrific shove. “He said he was asleep at the house until he phoned you. It’s too bad there was nobody else there to prove it.”
We made a stop at Buddy Nixon’s house on the way back to town. They had heard our automobile pass early in the morning, but so far as they knew there had been no other car over the road all day. We left them with an admonition from the Deputy to keep their mouths shut, and back in the sedan I took up the subject of Marvin again.
“Assuming that Marvin actually killed Mitchell, and Salmon, and that he was the man who shot at us this morning, there are still a lot of things I can’t see. How did he know we were coming out here? And if he did know it how could he follow us? Wouldn’t he have to pass the Nixons house?”
“Not necessarily. There’s an old road which Simmons used to use from the dock across the lake from the house. It’s a few miles longer than the one we are on, but I think it may be still passable. Of course he’d have to have a boat. But if he has—and the Salmon murder would have needed one too—then he could have landed nearly any place around the house without us hearing or seeing him.”
“But he must have known that we were coming. How? He had left last night when Pete asked me to come.”
“Maybe he didn’t know. Has it occurred to you that he mi
ght have thought of those papers himself? If he did, he couldn’t have picked a better morning to come and get them.”
“It’s insane, Ed. Why should Marvin Lee have been at the Simmons house on the fifteenth of every month for the past fourteen months?”
“Why should anybody? That’s one of the many things we have to find out. Anyhow, I wish you’d give him a ring at his office as soon as you get to the house. I’m interested to know where he was this morning.”
We pulled up in front of my home, and I climbed out still clutching my bundle of papers. It never entered my head that I might just as well have been carrying around a package of nitroglycerin. I had certainly had sufficient warning that the Miami Floridians were dangerous, and there was nothing to stop me from asking Ed to put them in the safe in the Sheriff’s office until Pete returned. My head was whirling with thoughts of Marvin Lee, and the narrowness of my own escape from death. It was after twelve and I had an important meeting with the County Commissioners at one o’clock. Ed drove off with a wave of his hand, and I ran upstairs to change my clothes, and shoved the papers in the top drawer of my bureau. It was the dumbest thing I ever did.
Mindful of my promise to the Deputy I phoned Marvin’s office. His secretary told me he had not been in all morning. I called him at Nelson’s, but there was no answer. Very much upset, I finished dressing and went down to lunch, to find Mae and Celia Mitchell waiting for me at the table. I was in a great hurry, and decided to postpone my story of the morning’s happenings until later.
Blood on Lake Louisa Page 8