“Mr. Stoneman isn’t upstairs,” Perrin said from the doorway.
“Did you look as well as ask?”
“Yes, sir. I looked in his room and in Mr. East’s room. The ladies have locked themselves in the nursery and they say Mr. Stoneman was never with them. I suggest you speak to them yourself, sir. They appear to be nervous.”
“Right away.” He paused at the door. “Get along with dinner, Perrin, and, East, you might try the cellar for Stoneman. Joe takes to the cellar like other people take to prayers.”
Mark went down with Perrin, but Stoneman wasn’t there. Suddenly he knew he wouldn’t be. He didn’t know what Stoneman had feared, but whatever it was, it had caught up with him. Mark waited in the kitchen until Violet came, then returned to the library.
Morey was trying to get Wilcox on the telephone, but the operator told him there was no answer. She said he’d taken a call nearly an hour ago, from Crestwood.
“Stoneman seems to have reached him all right,” Morey said. “But where is he now?”
“Not in the cellar,” Mark said. “Perhaps—somewhere else in the house.”
“No. He’d be creeping out now, full of apologies and long explanations. . . . What’s that?”
Brakes squealed outside. “The law,” Mark said. “And about time, too.”
Wilcox was furious. He’d left a hot dinner and told them so. And who was the idiot who babbled over the ’phone that everybody was being killed? Where were the corpses? He looked sourly at the crackling fire and the table with bottles and empty glasses.
“Wait,” advised Morey. “Let me tell you.” When he finished, Wilcox looked serious.
“You mean the old gentleman is—gone?”
“Vanished in thin air,” Mark said.
Wilcox swung into action. He spied Perrin in the hall. “Get everybody in this room, including yourself and Violet!” He opened the French window and bawled, “Harry!” A blushing farmer lumbered in. “Take all the boys and cover the grounds. Go in the woods if you have to. Look for prints. Look for an old man—he’s probably fallen down somewhere. Bring me anybody you find, dead or alive, with or without guns.” Harry withdrew.
“I’m afraid you’ll have trouble with prints,” Mark said gently. “Three of us have been out there already and the snow’s pretty well churned up.”
Perrin came back with the people from upstairs, and Morey retreated to the fireplace while the interviews went on. Wilcox learned nothing. There had been a shot close by and Mr. Morey had sent them all away and asked Mr. Stoneman to telephone. Then the men had gone out.
“What made you think you’d need me?” Wilcox asked Morey.
Morey sent a shower of sparks up the chimney. “Past history,” he said.
Violet, with flour on her hands, was frightened to the point of impertinence. “I’ve got dinner to get on,” she said. “People got to eat. And somebody ought to be with those children upstairs. I don’t know where Mr. Stoneman is, but if it was me I’d look under his bed. As for shooting, the way I feel I don’t care if they shoot me next.” She burst into tears and went back to the kitchen.
Wilcox organized a search of the house, Mark to do the first floor, Morey the second, and Perrin the cellars. He dismissed the women with a wave. Beulah hung back nervously.
“There’s nothing in the nursery quarters, Perley,” she said. “Oh, excuse me, I mean Mr. Wilcox. We’ve been locked in there.”
“Omit the nursery quarters, Mr. Morey. Partridge is on the way and he’ll help. Don’t count on him too soon, he’s got a train coming. I’m going to stay right here in case my boys bring in something.”
The search went on. From all quarters of the house came the sound of banging doors, moving furniture. They were back in half an hour. There was no sign of Stoneman.
“His room is in order,” Morey said, “and all of his clothes are there.” He turned a listening face toward the terrace. “Somebody’s coming!”
They all stood up.
Harry stumbled through the window, followed by two men and two blinking boys carrying guns and dragging a sack. Harry was grinning broadly and the two men were carefully looking at nothing. “Here’s your gunmen,” Harry said. “Big-game hunters.” He pushed the boys forward.
Wilcox turned a rich red. “My—my son.” He cleared his throat. He turned on the smaller boy. “There’s a no-trespassing sign on these premises, and you know it. Open that sack, sir!”
The smaller boy looked ready to cry. “Pop,” he began, “Pop—”
“Open it!” thundered Wilcox. “Not on the rug! Get a newspaper! Is this the way you do your mathematics?”
The older boy got a paper and spread it carefully. Then they emptied the sack. Six fat rabbits fell out.
Wilcox counted them with a calm voice and a heavy foot. “Six rabbits is six shots,” he said to Morey. “You told me one.”
Floyd tried again. “Pop,” he said desperately. “Pop—”
“One was all we heard,” Morey said.
Mark gave the boys a conspiring grin. “They’re beauties. Where did you get them?”
They grinned back like reprieved men facing the governor. “I tried to tell Pop,” Floyd babbled. “I tried to tell him. We got ’em over back of the hotel right after we hit the woods. We weren’t anywhere near here when we got ’em. We weren’t even on this land.”
Chester cleared his throat and winked rapidly. “I fired the one they heard, Mr. Wilcox. I thought it was all right. I mean I could see lights in the dining room and all and it was dinner time and I aimed downhill. I knew nobody would be outside to get hurt. I—I only took a crack at that guy’s hat.”
His audience recoiled. “Hat!” Morey repeated sharply. “He wasn’t wearing a hat!”
“The snowman. I couldn’t help it.”
Wilcox sighed. “How long have you been here?” he asked heavily.
“How long, Chester?” asked the miserable Floyd.
“Since after five. We were just going home.”
“Did you see anybody?”
They looked uneasy. Floyd was struck dumb by a sudden seizure of coughing, and Chester took it up.
“Come, now. You were near enough to the house. Did you see anybody before or after that shot?”
Chester quailed. “We saw that man, and that man, and that one.” He pointed a sure finger at Mark, Morey, and Perrin. “They came out of that glass door and run all over the place. After.”
“What did you do then? Floyd! Cat got your tongue?”
Floyd rounded off his seizure with a small artistic hack. “We—we sort of guessed it was our shot that brought ’em out, so we hid. And we watched.”
Mark drew a deep breath. “Were you out there all the time?”
“Yes, sir. Behind some bushes.”
“That’s what I call a thorough search,” Wilcox said grimly. “Two big strapping boys with guns and a sack full of rabbits! What about fresh tracks, Floyd?”
“Nobody been through there for hours, Pop.”
“You know what’s happened, don’t you?”
Harry had been quiet too long. He stepped forward. “I told ’em, sir. To impress ’em with the severity. They say they’d like to help, but I dunno.”
Morey advanced, wallet in hand. “Can’t you put them on a cradle roll or something, Wilcox? They look smart to me. And they cleared up the shot angle; now we know where it went.”
“His mother will kill me,” said Wilcox, eyeing the wallet.
“Five dollars each retaining fee.” Morey handed it over. “You chaps know this place better than I do. You may find something.”
“W-well,” said Wilcox. “Take off your caps! Where are your manners!”
“I’m very fond of rabbit pie,” Morey went on. “That is, if you have no other plans?” More money found its way to mackinaw pockets and was buttoned in.
“Get along home now,” Wilcox ordered. “And you’d better make it before your mother does. And if you have any conscience
left, which I doubt, you’ll rub out that bit about mathematics and urgent quarters. You can come back to-morrow if we haven’t found him by then.”
Mark had kept in the background as much as possible. He’d begun to form a theory, but Floyd and Chester had knocked it into a cocked hat. Hat. He’d have a look at that snowman to-morrow. He wondered if Chester’s aim was as good as Anne’s.
Morey and Wilcox went into a huddle at the window; Harry and his silent partners refreshed themselves at Morey’s insistence; Perrin left for the kitchen with his reluctant hands full of dangling rabbits. Mark went upstairs and found Beulah.
“What do you think?” he asked her.
“I think Mr. Stoneman went out to help you and that Green boy shot him by mistake and buried him. You’ll find him when it thaws.”
“Talk sense! . . . He was alive when we left him. He telephoned Wilcox. . . . Beulah, is Stoneman out there now? Did he follow us, in a panic, and lose himself?”
“I’ve told you what I think.”
There were only three of them at dinner, Morey, Mark, and Beulah. The others ate upstairs. Morey took a cup of soup, drank it hastily, and excused himself.
“We’re going out to make another try,” he said. “Partridge sent lanterns up from the station. He’ll come along himself, later; so will Perrin.”
“You ought to eat more,” Beulah said.
“Violet’s filled some thermos bottles. East, I’d rather you stayed here, if you don’t mind. I don’t like to leave the women alone, and we all know the grounds better than you do. If you’ll stay in your room, I think my wife will feel easier. Man within reach, you know.”
Mark nodded and followed him into the library.
“Better lock this after we go.” Morey indicated the window. “I’ve got a key to the front door.” He stepped out, trailed by Harry and the two speechless deputies. Wilcox had gone earlier. Mark went back to Beulah and finished a dinner he couldn’t taste.
“Did you have a chance to do anything about—Citrus City?” she asked.
“Yes. I found it, and I mentioned it. I think I got a reaction and I wish now that I hadn’t. . . . You know, we ought to cover that dictograph to-night.”
“Why, for heaven’s sake? There’s nobody here but us.”
“Somebody might come back.”
“Perrin or Morey!”
“Don’t jump at things. I imagine even Amos and Wilcox could get admission to my lady’s boudoir if they had a good story. And—somebody might telephone.”
“That would be plain foolish. You could listen in and they know it.”
“Not in my room. That’s the beauty of it. No ’phone there.”
“I’ll do it. As soon as I get Bessy to bed.”
He patted her hand. “I don’t know what I’d do without you. . . . You look dead. Why don’t you go up now and rest before you take over? There wouldn’t be a cot in that sewing room?”
“There would.”
“The whole thing’s too perfect. Go on—I’ll bring Violet when she’s ready. Lock her in with Bessy. I give you the usual warning; if you want me, yell. I’ll be around somewhere. When Wilcox comes back he and I are going to have a heart-to-heart talk. I want him to do some fancy official telephoning.”
He delivered Violet to Beulah an hour later, when Perrin left to join the hunt. In that hour he had thoroughly searched Stoneman’s papers and found nothing. There was not even a postcard. There was very little clothing.
Except for his bulky manuscript, Stoneman had travelled light. Too light. A dinner coat, but only six handkerchiefs; toilet articles in small sizes, such as a man buys hastily when he finds himself obliged to spend the night in a strange town.
At ten o’clock Morey called up the stairs. He said he and Amos were going to the cellar for wood to build fires. Mark didn’t go down to help them because they didn’t ask him. He heard them both leave fifteen minutes later.
He was restless and a little angry. It was Perrin’s job to stay with the women. He belonged outside with the others. He patrolled the upper and lower halls and even went down to the kitchen. Everything was in order. Once he stopped at the nursery door, prudently left ajar by Beulah. She heard him and came out. Nothing, she told him. Mrs. Morey had moved about earlier but now she was quiet. She’d cried, too. He went back to his room and looked out of the window, but there was nothing to see. The trees were too thick. He tried a window at the front end of the hall and that was better. For half an hour he stood there, watching the moving lights and stooping figures. It was like a gallery view of an old-time spectacle.
Someone came and stood beside him in the dark. He thought it was Beulah and started to say something about the dictograph. He caught himself in time. It was Laura Morey.
She didn’t speak, so he said nothing. Looking out of the corner of his eye he saw she was intent on the scene below.
Finally he said: “Pretty picture but confusing plot.”
“Yes.” She didn’t turn her head. Then, “Do you think he ran away?”
“Why would he do that?” he answered carefully.
“I don’t—I don’t know.”
They stood in silence, watching the lights. There were fires along the driveway.
“He was a very old friend, I know,” he said. “This must be a shock to you. But—I’ll get him.’’
“G—get him?”
“Yes.” He nodded to the panorama spread below. “They won’t find him,” he said softly, “but I will.”
“No!” she said. “No!”
He let her go without comment. Then he went back to his room and read about Stoneman’s dead kings.
At midnight the searchers came back, unsuccessful, and dumped their ropes and lanterns in the hall. Morey was staggering with fatigue and went directly to bed. Harry and the deputies had already gone home, but Wilcox declared his intention of staying. He would sleep on Stoneman’s bed with one eye open and maybe he’d see something.
Perrin moved soundlessly from room to room, checking on doors and windows. Before he went up to his own room he said there was food and drink in the kitchen for anyone who wanted it. Mr. Morey’s compliments. Amos, ostentatiously counting his lanterns, set them down with a clatter at the mention of drink. He reminded Wilcox that the mail train wasn’t due until six and said he felt as gay as a lark.
That gave Mark his opportunity. He led them both downstairs and brought out the cold meat and beer. Then he began to talk.
At the same time, over in Bear River, the Fates tossed a monkey wrench. Mrs. Wilcox telephoned that Mamma had it bad this time and nobody was to look for her until after breakfast. And water the ferns. Next door, Mr. Green crawled into his blankets without washing and was off on the first lap of his favourite run. The Cradle Roll, released from supervision, moved like an army down the snowy midnight streets, ducking and crouching and weaving toward Crestwood.
Mark began with an admission of his own identity. If he hoped for a sign of dropped jaw or even a demonstration of bated breath, he was disappointed.
Wilcox calmly opened another bottle. “We thought you were too interfering for a secretary,” he said. “And Violet noticed how you typed with two fingers. This is what I’ve been waiting for. Go on.”
“First, what about that tramp you’ve got locked up?”
“I haven’t got a tramp. I gave that out to see if it would please anybody. Go on—you tell me, then I’ll tell you.”
He told them about Stoneman’s fall and gave the details as he had them from Violet. He was sure he’d been hired as a bodyguard, although Stoneman denied it. And he was sure Mrs. Lacey had recognized Stoneman’s assailant. That recognition had been a shock she couldn’t hide. She’d tried to get away to New York, but the murderer couldn’t afford to let her go. She’d been given a dose of sleeping pills and her room was deliberately fired. There’d been opportunity. She’d gone out to the stables, or garage, for a piece of rope to bind her luggage, leaving her customary thermos jug of tea or c
ocoa beside her bed. And her little box of pills. Lacey knew too much.
Florrie. Florrie didn’t know anything definite. Her trouble was curiosity and pique. He told them about the trash baskets. He pictured Florrie being questioned, perhaps too harshly, and her growing resentment. She must have made a second, surreptitious search before the trash was burned. She found a newspaper clipping and decided it was important. “Nobody knows what made her decide that. We can only guess. She may have overheard, at some time, a scrap of conversation and unconsciously remembered it. The clipping may have brought it back with terrifying clearness and significance. She may have tied it up with Mrs. Lacey’s death. She lost her head. She had to tell somebody. Then she remembered how Miss Pond had offered to take her in if things got bad. She was too frightened to wait until morning, too frightened to think of anything but her own skin. She got up in the dead of night, put the clipping in her purse, and crept out of the house. I think she tried to conceal her destination because she took the footpath through the woods. We found her hat there. But somebody was watching her, waiting to see what she would do. She was either followed or met. Anyway, when she reached Miss Pond’s she knew she wasn’t alone. Miss Pond wasn’t home. She stood on that icy doorstep and wrote a little note. She slipped the note under the door. I think her murderer was under cover then because he missed that. Then she ran for her life, towards Mrs. Lacey’s house, where there was sanctuary. But death caught her. I’m so sure that’s the story that I’m going to put it in a report. Unless something changes my mind.
Wilcox put out his hand. “Got the clipping?”
Mark handed it over, with Florrie’s note. “Read the note first.”
Amos edged closer to Wilcox. They read together.
“Dear me,” said Wilcox. “So that’s what happened to the lipstick.” He read the clipping next, slowly and carefully, and handed it back. “You don’t seriously think she was killed for a thing like that?”
“Why not? She was killed for something. That thing came from this house. It fits in somewhere, either with the owner or the tenants.”
Wilcox shook his head. “It might have been a bit of wrapping paper, tied around some old shoes or such. It might have been here for years, lining the bottom of a drawer, and just got thrown out. Florrie could have imagined it meant something. She always was kind of high-strung. Why, all it says is that somebody got run over. It don’t say who or where or when. I don’t attach any importance to it.”
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