He smiled at the conceit and sipped the tea. It was not very good, but it was hot. Overhead he could hear the slow rocking of a chair.
“Poor child!” he said. “Poor little girl—all this for that damned skunk!”
He effected a further compromise with his sense of duty by getting up every few minutes and inspecting the street or tiptoeing through the kitchen and pulling open unexpectedly the back door. Always on these occasions he had his hand in his revolver pocket.
Three-thirty.
The storm had increased in violence. Already small drifts had piled in still corners. The glow of the base-burner was dull red; the rocking overhead had ceased. Cooper yawned and stretched out his legs.
“Poor little girl!” he said. “Poor li’l girl! For the sake—all for sake—”
He drew a deep breath and settled lower in the chair.
Molly Carter bent down from the top of the stairs and listened. The detective had come in and she had not heard him go out. It would not do to descend too stealthily for fear he were still awake. As an excuse she took down a bottle of the baby’s to fill with milk.
Cooper was sound asleep in the parlor, his head dropped forward on his breast. There was a strong odor of drying wool as his overcoat steamed by the fire.
Still holding the bottle, she crept to the kitchen and tapped lightly three times on the papered door. There was no reply. Her heart almost stopped, leaped on again, raced wildly. She repeated the signal. Then, desperately, she put her lips to the wall.
“Jim!” she whispered.
There was absolute silence, save for the heavy breathing of the detective in the parlor. Madness seized her. She crept along the tiny passage to the parlor door and working with infinite caution, in spite of her frenzy, she closed it and locked it from the outside. Then back to the kitchen again, pulses hammering.
The bottle fell off the table and broke with a crash. For a moment she felt as if something in her had given way also. But there came no outcry from the parlor, no heavy weight against the flimsy door. She got a knife from the table drawer and cut relentlessly through the new paper strips. Then, with the edge of the blade, she worked the door open. Jim was lying at the bottom of the closet where the air hardly penetrated. His face was a purple red, and his mouth was open and relaxed. She reached in and shook him, but he moved under her hand without opening his eyes.
With almost superhuman strength she dragged him out, laid him prone on the kitchen floor, brought snow and rubbed it over his face, slapped his wrists with it to restore his pulse. He came to quickly, sat up and stared about him.
“What’s the matter?” he asked thickly.
“Don’t talk, Jim. You know what’s wrong. You’re trying to get away. Lie still till you get your strength back.”
He nodded.
“Cooper is locked in the parlor, asleep. You can get away now. My God, don’t close your eyes again. Listen! You can get away.”
“Away from what?” he asked stupidly.
“From the police. Try to remember, Jim. You shot the clerk from the drug store and—and the girl at Heideger’s. The police are after you. There’s a thousand dollars on your head.”
That roused him. He struggled to his feet, reeled, caught the table.
“I remember. Well, I’ve got to get away. But I can’t go feeling like this. Get me some whisky.”
He needed it. She brought it to him, measured out. He grumbled at the quantity, but after he had had it his dull eyes cleared.
She had gone to listen at the parlor door. When she came back, he was looking more himself. He was a handsome fellow with heavy dark hair and dark eyes, a big man as he towered above her in the little kitchen. His face did not indicate his weakness. There are men like that, broken reeds swinging in the wind, that yet manage to convey an impression of strength.
She brought the overcoat and held it out for him.
“By Shultz’s fence, you said, Jim, and then to the railroad. There’s a slow freight goes through on toward morning, and if that doesn’t stop there’s the milk train. And—Jim, let me hear about you now and then. Write to Aunt Sarah. Don’t write here, and don’t think once you get away that you are safe. A thousand dollars reward will set everybody in the country looking.”
He paused, the overcoat half on.
“A thousand dollars,” he said slowly. “I see. When I’m gone, Molly, how are you going to make out?”
“I’ll manage somehow; only go, Jim. Go!”
“I don’t know about this going,” he said after a moment. “They’ll grab me somewhere. Somebody’ll get that thousand. You’ll manage somehow! What do you mean by ‘somehow’? You’ll get married again, maybe?”
“Oh, no; not that.”
He cared a little then—in spite of the girl at Heideger’s! If he would only go! This thing for which she had schemed the whole night might fail now while he talked.
“You can’t stay here,” he said slowly. “You can’t bring the children up where everybody knows about their father. They can’t run any sort of a race with that handicap.”
For answer she held out his overcoat. But he shook his head. Perhaps it was his one big moment. Perhaps it was only a reaction from his murderous mood of the afternoon. Suddenly he put his arms around her.
“I am not worth it, Molly,” he burst out. “I am not worth a thousand dollars alive or dead, but if they’re offering that for me, if you had it you could go out West somewhere and nobody would know about you. You could start the kids fresh. That’s about the only thing I can do for you—give you a chance to get away and forget you ever knew me. That red-eyed ferret in the parlor will get the money if you don’t. For the children, Molly; they’ve got a right to ask to be started straight.”
That was the argument that moved her finally into a sort of acquiescence. There seemed nothing else for her to do. He even planned the thing for her. He would hide in the barn in the loft. The swift snow would soon fill the footprints, but in case she was anxious, she could get up early and shovel a path where he had stepped. When Cooper wakened she could say she had thought the thing over, that she needed the money, that she would exchange her knowledge for the reward.
“Only you get a paper for it—get a paper from Heideger. He’ll bluff it out if he can. He was stuck on the girl himself.”
“Jim, did you—care for that girl so much?”
His face hardened. “I thought I did; for a—for a little while. She made a fool of me, and I—showed her! But all the time I loved you, Molly.”
He kissed her solemnly as she half lay in his arms and went toward the door.
“Good-by and God bless you,” he said, “And kiss the—”
He choked up at that and made his way out through the drifts on the porch to the little yard.
She closed the door and fastened it behind him. Then very carefully she unlocked the parlor door and opened it. Cooper was still in his chair, sunk a little lower perhaps and breathing heavily, the over-turned teacup on the floor beside him. She went back to the kitchen and filled a fresh bottle for the baby. As before, it served as an excuse for her presence; with it on the table near at hand she trimmed carefully the rough-cut edges of the papered door. The inside of the closet was a clear betrayal. Still listening and walking softly, she got a dust brush and pan and swept up the bits of wood and sawdust from the floor. The bit she placed on the shelf, and, turning, pan and brush in hand, faced the detective in the doorway. He made a quick dash toward the closet.
“What have you got there?” he demanded shortly.
But now, as through all the long night, her woman’s wit saved her.
“Don’t jump at me like that. I’ve broken one of the baby’s bottles and I am just about to sweep it up.”
She stooped and swept the broken glass on to the pan. He stared into the empty closet.
“I’m sorry, Molly—I didn’t mean to startle you. That tea and the heat of the stove put me to sleep. I’ve been half frozen. I guess it w
as the bottle breaking that wakened me. I thought you said you would go to bed.”
“I couldn’t sleep,” she evaded, “and about this time the baby always has to be fed.”
She took the bottle of milk from the table and set it inside the teakettle to warm. Every vestige of suspicion had died from the man’s eyes. He yawned again, stretched, compared the clock with his watch.
“It’s been a long night,” he said. “Me for the street again. Listen to that wind. I’m sorry for anyone that’s out in the mountains to-night.”
He went into the parlor and, putting on his overcoat, stood awkwardly in the little hall.
“I guess you know how I hate this, Molly,” he said. “I—I—this isn’t the time for talk and there ain’t any disloyalty in it, but I was pretty fond of you one time—I guess you know it, and—I am not the changing sort. I have never seen anybody else I liked the same way. It don’t hurt a good woman to know a thing like that. Good night.”
Before she went upstairs she took a final look out the back door. Already Jim’s footprints were effectively erased by the wind. An unbroken sheet of white snow stretched to the barn. By morning, at this rate, the telltale marks would be buried six inches or more.
She blew out the kitchen lamp and went slowly up the stairs.
The baby cried hoarsely and she gave him his bottle, lying down on the bed beside him and taking his head on her arm. He dropped asleep there and she kept him close for comfort. And there, lying alone in the darkness with staring eyes, she fought her battle. She had nothing in the world but the cheap furniture in the house. Her own health was frail. It would be a year perhaps before she could leave the children to seek any kind of employment.
The deadly problem of the poor, inextricably mixed as it is with every event of their lives, complicating birth, adding fresh trouble to death—the problem of money confronted her. Jim had been, in town parlance, “a poor provider,” but at least she had managed. Now, very soon, she would not have that resource.
To get away from it all! She drew a long breath. From the disgrace, from the eyes of her neighbors, the gossip, the constant knowledge in every eye that met hers that her husband had intrigued with another woman and killed her. To start anew under another name and bring her children up in ignorance of the wretched past—that was one side.
But to earn it this way—that was another. To sell out to the law! All her husband’s weaknesses and brutalities faded from her mind. She saw him—with that pitiful memory of women which forgets all but the good in those they love—only as he had looked in the one great moment of his life an hour ago. Once again he was her hero—her lover; once again he held her in his arms. “I would like to feel that I have done the decent thing.”
The battle waged back and forth. She no longer cried. There are some tragedies to which the relief of tears is denied.
Four o’clock.
She slipped the baby’s head from her arm and got up. Cooper was still across the street, huddled against a house, stamping to keep warm and swinging his arms. In an hour the milk train would come in and wait on the siding for the express. That would have been Jim’s chance. If he could get away he could start all over again and make good. He had it in him. He was a big man—bigger than the people in the village had ever realized. They had never appreciated him—that was the trouble. Why should she have a fresh start? It was Jim who needed it. She moaned and turned her face to the pillow.
Five o’clock.
The milk train whistling for the switch. It was still very dark. She crept to the window and looked out. It was a gray dawn with snow blowing like smoke through the trees. The cold was proving too much for Cooper. He was making his way cautiously across the street through the snow toward the house. Once in the parlor again she could get to the barn. The freight waited on the siding ten minutes sometimes, and tonight, with the snow, it might be longer.
She leaped off the bed and hurried down the staircase. Just before the front door opened to admit the detective, the kitchen door closed behind her. She was out in the storm. She stumbled along, sometimes knee-deep, holding up her thin cotton wrapper.
The barn door was open and she slipped in. “Jim,” she called. “Jim!”
She was standing at the foot of the loft ladder, all her heart in her voice. “I can’t do it, Jim. I can’t sell you out, even for the children. Jim!”
There was no sound from above. She climbed up, trembling. The loft was dark. She would not believe the silence, must creep around to each corner. “I can’t do it,” she said over and over. “I can’t do it, Jim!”
He was gone. She felt her way down through the darkness and staggered to the door of the barn. Cooper was standing there quietly waiting for her. From the railroad came the whistle of the express as it raced through, and the slow rumble of the milk train as the engine took up the slack.
“He’s gone, Molly,” said the detective. “He went out by Shultz’s at a quarter to five. I guess he’ll make his getaway.” There was shame and something else in his eyes.
The freight had gathered way. As they listened it moved out on to the main track.
Acknowledgments and Story Sources
All of the stories in this anthology are in the public domain unless otherwise noted. The following gives the first publication details for each story and the sources used.
“The Game Played in the Dark” by Ernest Bramah. First published in the UK in News of the World, 28 December 1913 and collected in Max Carrados (London: Methuen, 1914), from which this text is taken.
“The Blue Cross” by G. K. Chesterton. First published in the USA in Saturday Evening Post, 23 July 1910 as “Valentin Follows a Curious Trail,” and in the UK in The Story-teller, September 1910, from which this text is taken. Collected in The Innocence of Father Brown (London: Cassell, 1911).
“The Case of Oscar Brodski” by R. Austin Freeman. First published in the UK in Pearson’s Magazine, December 1910. Included in The Singing Bone (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1912), from which this text is taken.
“The Case of the Scientific Murderer” by Jacques Futrelle. First published in the USA in The Popular Magazine, 1 September 1912. Text taken from Futrelle website www.futrelle.com.
“The Second Bullet” by Anna Katharine Green. First published in the USA in May 1913 (source not identified) and included in The Golden Slipper, and Other Problems (New York: Putnam, 1915), from which the text is taken. No prior serial publication yet traced.
“Whither Thou Goest” by Edward H. Hurlbut. First published in the USA in Collier’s, 1 June 1912 and included in Lanagan, Amateur Detective (New York: Sturgis & Walton, 1913), from which the text is taken.
“The Three Knocks” by Edith Macvane. First published in the USA in McClure’s Magazine, December 1913 and in the UK in The Premier Magazine, July 1914, from which the text is taken.
“The Ninescore Mystery” by Baroness Orczy. First published in the UK in Cassell’s Magazine, June 1909, from which the text is taken, and included in Lady Molly of Scotland Yard (London: Cassell, 1910).
“Naboth’s Vineyard” by Melville Davisson Post, first published in the USA in the Illustrated Sunday Magazine, 4 June 1916 and included in Uncle Abner, Master of Mysteries (New York: Appleton, 1918).
“The Crime at Big Tree Portage” by Hesketh Prichard. First published in the UK in Pearson’s Magazine, July 1912, from which the text is taken. Included in November Joe: Detective of the Woods (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1913).
“Spontaneous Combustion” by Arthur B. Reeve. First published in the USA in Cosmopolitan, July 1911 and included in The Silent Bullet (New York: Dodd, Mead, 1912), from which the text is taken.
“The Papered Door” by Mary Roberts Rinehart. First published in the USA in Collier’s, 21 March 1914, from which the text is primarily taken, with slight revisions from the first book publication in The Romantics (New York: Farrar & Rinehart, 1929).
“The Man Who Lived at Clapham” by Edgar Wallace. First published in the
UK in The Strand Magazine, May 1921, from which the text is taken, and included in The Law of the Four Just Men (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1921).
“Christabel’s Crystal” by Carolyn Wells. First published in the USA in the Sunday Magazine of the Sunday Record-Herald, 15 October 1905.
“The Tragedy on the London and Mid-Northern” by Victor L. Whitechurch. First published in the UK in The Royal Magazine, August 1905, and included in Thrilling Stories of the Railway (London: Pearson, 1912), from which the text is taken.
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