“Thank you, no. I’m not a bit afraid. I’d much prefer to sleep in my room.”
The deputy stood aside to let her pass. George Coffin asked, “May I escort you to your room?”
“Yes, I’d be glad to have someone walk with me.” Her glance, contemptuous, swept across me, and she was gone.
“How about you, Mr Coffin?” asked the deputy. “Sleep downstairs?”
“I think I’ll sleep in my room too.”
I got out of my chair. The pain came back with a rush, and I closed my eyes. I must have swayed, too, because the deputy came over and took my arm. “Steady,” he said.
After a minute it was all right. My head hurt, but the dizziness was gone. I smiled at the deputy. “The fellow hit me a stout blow.”
“I’ll say he did.” The deputy’s blue eyes were shrewd. “I got an idea that your cousin was right when he said somebody beside the madman might be interested in all this business.”
“How do you mean?”
“The way that guy hit you, for instance. You stood in the door, your back to the light, and the guy had an easy time hitting your head. He could have tapped you one and got away easy.” The deputy wiped a smear of moisture from his sharp chin. “But instead he takes as hard a swipe at you as he could. You’d been dead if he’d connected squarely.”
“You mean …?”
“I don’t know for sure, but if I had any enemies around here I’d watch my step.”
I started to shake my head indignantly but remembered in time. “That’s ridiculous. Nobody would have anything to gain by disposing of me.” As George Coffin came back into the room I added, “And I haven’t been here long enough to make any such violent enemies.”
“Enemies?” George Coffin stared at me. “What enemies, Peter?”
“Nothing,” said the deputy. “We were just talking.” He produced a key. “I’m going to lock this place up and then go downstairs.” As he was thrusting the key in the door a thought came to him. “Say! How do you suppose the guy we saw got in here. This door was locked.”
I gasped. “By gad! I forgot.” I led them into my great-uncle’s bedroom and opened the door into the hall. “Here’s how he got in.”
“The deuce!” The deputy looked inquiringly at me. “He must have come within a few feet of where you were sitting.”
“I’m afraid I fell asleep,” I confessed.
“I know you did,” said the deputy. “You were asleep when we came up after seeing the light.” He closed the bedroom door and fastened the catch lock. “Nobody’ll be coming in this way now.” Back in the library he added, “Seems to me no intruder would take a chance of prowling down a corridor where a guy was sitting on guard.”
“What do you mean?” I asked.
His thin face was solemn. “I mean, couldn’t someone who lived in the house walk down the hall? Couldn’t they rig up some excuse for being in the hall if you woke up? And if you didn’t they could duck in through that bedroom door, couldn’t they?”
“That’s pretty smart.” George Coffin watched the deputy lock the door to my great-uncle’s study. “That’s pretty smart.”
My head was ringing so that there was no room for any of the deputy’s ideas. “I’m going to turn in,” I said. “We’ll see what comes up tomorrow.” I walked down the hall with them and opened my door. “Good night.”
“Good night,” they said.
Chapter VI
A GLOSSY FLY, evidently determined to land on the tip of my nose, awoke me. I aimed a blow at the creature, sending it to the ceiling in a hasty spiral, and sat up in bed. A tawny pelt of sunlight lay across the foot of the bed, and outside my window a breeze rustled green leaves. In the distance I could see Crystal Lake, as brilliant as a perfectly cut jewel, as blue as a cornflower, as cool looking as a cake of cobalt ice. The water, indeed, was so inviting that I decided to have a swim.
I glanced at my wrist watch and was astounded to discover that it was ten minutes past eleven. I had slept all morning! I hastily climbed out of bed and just as hastily halted, remembering that my head had been hurt. I found with my fingers that the place which had received the blow was still sore, but the ache was gone. I could move my head in any direction without the slightest twinge. I went into the bathroom and looked at my face in the mirror. It seemed perfectly normal and not at all the face of one who had encountered madmen, dead men, and had nearly been killed himself during the previous night. I rather admired the calm manner in which my face had withstood the rigors of the night. I felt that many an academician would have had a face filled with wrinkles and hollows and bags under the eyes.
I felt as fresh as a college sophomore, and even the sight of my glass of baking soda and water, untouched, on the sink could not quell my high spirits. I simply poured the soda into the wash basin and let the oversight slip from my mind. Obviously I was not going to catch a cold.
After I had brushed my teeth and combed my hair I put on my swimming trunks, my bathrobe and my slippers. I discovered my hairbrush still in my bathrobe pocket, and in putting it on the bureau I saw the vase I had taken from the mantel in my great-uncle’s library. Since my choice of weapons had already caused a great deal of laughter in the household I decided to conceal it until I had a chance to return it quietly to its former resting place. I glanced around for a good hiding place and finally stood it on the window sill in back of one of the muslin curtains. Then I started for the pier.
Downstairs I encountered Bronson. His thin horsey face was pale, and his eyes were red, as though he had not slept much.
“Good morning, Mister Peter,” he said.
“Good morning, Bronson,” I replied. “What’s happened today? And why didn’t you wake me?”
“Dr Harvey thought, in view of the blow which you were said to have sustained, that it would be advisable to let you sleep.”
“That’s right, Bronson, you weren’t around when the man struck me with the poker, were you?”
“No sir.”
“Where were you?”
“I must have been asleep.”
“You didn’t hear the report of the shotgun?”
“No sir. I don’t believe the sound could have carried to the servants’ quarters because of the storm.”
“You were all alone in the servants’ house?”
“Yes sir.” Bronson stared at me with a troubled expression. “But you don’t think that I could have struck …?”
“Nothing like that, Bronson. I just wondered where you were. And by the way, where’s Mrs Spotswood?”
“She’s still in bed, but she’s much better.”
“Was she alarmed by all the noise last night?”
“No sir. Mrs Bundy, the cook, said Mrs Spotswood slept through it all. Mrs Bundy says she was so frightened that she didn’t dare unbolt the door to inquire what was wrong.”
“I don’t blame her.” I glanced around the living room. “Where are the others?”
“The older people are playing croquet in the rear of the house. The others are swimming.”
“That’s where I’m headed.” I started to go to the front door, then paused. “Bronson, what about Uncle Tobias?”
“The coroner came this morning and took the body away.”
“And the elusive madman?”
“The police have been unable to apprehend him.”
“That’s too bad. Bronson, what about lunch?”
“Twelve-thirty, sir. Though if you want a bite …?”
“I’ll wait, thank you, Bronson.”
On the pier, sunning themselves, were Miss Leslie, Burton Coffin and Dan Harvey. Burton was lying on his face beside Miss Leslie, and his back was brown and muscular. Miss Leslie’s back was slender and supple, but she was not so brown. She had on a blue rubber suit which left most of her back bare.
“Hello,” I said as I neared the end of the pier.
Dan Harvey and Miss Leslie both said, “Hello,” but Burton merely grunted without looking up.
/> Taking off my bathrobe and slippers, I said, “It’s a beautiful day, isn’t it?”
No one replied, so I walked out on the end of the springboard and peered down at the water. It was a dark blue, and it looked cold. I decided that I had better not dive because of my head, and I tried to remember the life saver’s running jump I had once learned. This jump, by virtue of moving legs and arms, enabled the life saver to leap into the water without submerging his head, and I didn’t want to wet my head.
I had learned this dive before I joined the water polo team at the university and had had no occasion to use it for the four years I played this rough but interesting sport, so I had some difficulty in remembering the correct leg and arm motions. I was thinking about these when a feminine voice, far out in the lake, called to me.
“Yoo-hoo! Yoo-hoo! Professor! Come on out.”
Miss Harvey was standing on a moored raft two hundred yards out in the lake, her arms waving invitingly. For a hideous instant I had an impression that she was entirely unclad, but at last I made out the lines of a skin-tight suit the exact color of her tan skin. I was about to reply when someone jiggled the diving board, and I lost my balance and tumbled into the lake.
As I sped down through the cold water I decided that Burton Coffin was the perpetrator of this trick, and I determined to have an immediate revenge. I allowed myself to stay below for nearly a minute, and then, beating my arms wildly in the water, I came to the surface and shouted:
“Help! Help! Hel-ubb!”
I could see the assumed expressions of innocence and nonchalance on the faces of the two men and Miss Leslie change to alarm before I went down again. The moment I was far enough below the surface I took five vigorous strokes in the direction of the center of the lake and then appeared again. I assumed a wild expression, beat my hands on the surface and pretended I was unable to shout because of water in my mouth. I did, however, succeed in making some weird animal-like noise which must have been quite alarming.
Burton Coffin was poised on the springboard. He shouted, “Take it easy, Professor, I’m coming,” and dove into the water.
Immediately I submerged again and swam rapidly to the right, paralled to the shore. I swam as long as my breath held out, and when I emerged Burton was twenty yards away. I threw up my arms and uttered sounds similar to “Glub-glub-glub.”
Burton heard me, swung around and swam toward me with a powerful crawl stroke. I waited, still throwing up spray, until he was ten yards away. Then I sank under the water and swam almost directly under him so that he had passed me when I arrived at the surface. I had intended to keep up this sort of a will-o’-the-wisp proceeding for a considerable time, but my plan was thwarted by Miss Leslie, who had been watching from the pier. She cried:
“Back of you, Burton.”
Then she dove into the water, evidently intending to take a part in saving my life.
Immediately I altered my plan. I allowed Burton to come up to me on the surface at almost the same moment Miss Leslie reached me.
“I’ve got him,” Burton called to her. “Better keep away.”
He attempted to turn me over on my back so that he could tow me in, at the same time saying, “You’re all right, Professor. Take it easy. Take it easy.” But I resisted, breaking his grip and moving about with abandon, sometimes allowing an elbow or an arm or a hand to strike his face.
“I can’t do anything with him,” Burton called to Miss Leslie. “I’m going to have to sock him.”
He aimed a terrific blow at my jaw and would doubtless have knocked me senseless if I had not blocked it with my right arm. Then I allowed myself to sink again. He followed me down and grappled with me, and I gave him a brief lesson in the technique of water polo. I caught him under the chin with my shoulder; I grasped his ankles and whirled him around; I turned him upside down, and as a climax I rested both feet on the pit of his stomach and sent him toward the bottom with a tremendous kick. The recoil flung me to the surface almost under the astonished eyes of the Miss Leslie. I floundered about for fifteen seconds until Burton finally reached the surface. He had swallowed a great deal of water, and his face was blue. He could barely swim.
“I’m finished,” he managed to say to Miss Leslie.
She swam over to me. “You fool,” she said. “If you’ll only lie still we’ll get you ashore.”
I diminished my struggles.
“That’s right,” she said. “Now let me turn you over on your back.”
She rolled me over and hooked an arm under my chin. We started for the shore with Burton following us. He was coughing a great deal, and he seemed barely able to swim. Miss Leslie swam strongly, and I relaxed and looked at a fat cloud in the turquoise sky.
“This is what you should have done in the first place,” approved Miss Leslie. “You shouldn’t have lost your head.”
In a few minutes we were in shallow water. Burton Coffin, some of the color back in his face, was the first to stand up. “Whew!” he exclaimed. “I nearly died out there.”
“You can stand up now,” said Miss Leslie to me. “You’re perfectly safe.”
As I stood beside her Dan Harvey came running up to the shore with a life preserver. His face fell as he caught sight of me. “Why didn’t you wait until I got this?” he demanded.
“Of all the idiots, you’re the worst, Dan Harvey,” said Miss Leslie. “He would have drowned a dozen times if we had waited for you.”
“Oh, I hardly think a dozen times,” I said. “Perhaps not even once.” I grinned at Miss Leslie. “Thanks for the nice ride.”
I plunged into the water and swam out to the raft, employing the new Japanese crawl with which I had set a university tank record for the hundred yards last January. Miss Harvey was sitting on the raft, her arms about her knees.
“What are you trying to do?” she asked, smiling. “Scare us all to death?”
I explained that I was having my revenge upon the person who forced me to fall off the diving board.
“I saw you were faking when you kept coming up in different places,” she said. “A drowning person doesn’t move about like that under water.”
“I fooled the others, though.”
“Yes, but Burton Coffin is a bad enemy. And he’s half again as big as you are.”
“I’ll dive in the lake each time he comes after me. I can handle him in the water.”
She giggled. “I’ll bring your breakfast out here to the raft if you want me to.” Her face, with its bright blue eyes and pert nose, was amused.
I swung myself up on the raft. “I think I’ll take a chance and try to have breakfast—or rather, lunch—in the house. Maybe the sheriff will be there to protect me.”
“He doesn’t look as though he’d hurt a mouse, or save you from one either. I think I’d depend upon my own legs in case of necessity.”
“They aren’t as nice as yours,” I said, “but perhaps they’ll do.”
Miss Harvey balanced on the edge of the raft. “Professor, I underestimated you,” she said. “Let’s swim in.”
As I paddled along beside her I thought with pride that the Earl of Rochester wouldn’t have been too ashamed of me.
Chapter VII
WE ATE LUNCH in the big french-windowed dining room overlooking the verdant lawn and the blue water of the lake. It was a sober meal, and few words were uttered. Burton Coffin and Miss Leslie, sitting at the end of the table opposite me, studiously ignored me. Burton’s sullenly handsome face was set in a pout, and once when I encountered Miss Leslie’s eyes she apparently failed to recognize me.
I realized I was in—to make use of an expression lately employed by my aunt Nineveh—the doghouse.
The elder Harveys did not speak to me either. Indeed Mrs Harvey spoke but once during the meal and then to her son, urging him to eat all his greens. He wanted to know if she thought he was Popeye the sailor man, a reply which drew a giggle from his sister but passed over my head.
George Coffin, sitting at th
e head of the table, ate heartily of chicken hash and mashed potatoes and several times peered around his majestic wife to smile at me.
I had ample opportunity to examine the room. One long side was windowed, with lake and grass and crimson and purple heads of tall hollyhocks in the background, while against the wall of the other stood an ornately carved sideboard, backed by a huge silver roast platter and covered with a fine Sheffield tea set. Behind George Coffin was a smaller mahogany table on which reposed two huge candelabra, each holding seven pink candles. Above the sideboard a grim portrait of old Matthew Coffin, miller, church elder, witch hunter and member of the New London town council in 1654, adorned the wall.
Finishing the last bit of his hash, George Coffin addressed me. “I’m the champion croquet player of this shebang,” he announced. “I have a small trophy to prove it.” He drew a five-dollar bill from his pocket and handed it to me. “You wouldn’t believe that rare old bill, just a few minutes ago, was locked in old Doc Harvey’s wallet, would you?”
I pretended to examine the bill. “It looks as though it had been kept in good condition,” I said. “I expect it’s worth nearly three dollars on the open market.”
“Three dollars!” George Coffin snatched the bill from me. “Say, any bill that’s been taken away from the doc is worth twice its face value. I’ll bet this is the first five-dollar bill he’s parted with since his honeymoon.”
Dr Harvey’s red face, really quite angry, looked like that of a great northern pike. He looked as though he’d eaten something bitter. He flashed a furious glance at George Coffin, but he didn’t attempt any reply.
“I’m going to frame this bill,” continued George Coffin, evidently profoundly pleased with his humor, “and under it I am going to have inscribed: ‘Saved from life imprisonment by George Coffin, croquet champion of Crystal Lake.’”
I couldn’t help laughing at his extravagance, and I was rewarded by a glare from Dr Harvey. Dorothy Harvey was smiling, too, but when her father’s glance turned toward her she quickly assumed an expression of profound vacancy. I imagine the humor was particularly galling to the doctor because of his widespread reputation for parsimony. My aunt Nineveh always described him as “that little doctor who let women pay his luncheon check” after a meeting with him in New York.
The Search for My Great-Uncle’s Head Page 6