Corpses at Indian Stone

by Philip Wylie

  Aggie's appearance--dirty, sweat-covered, bramble-torn--and his behavior--were a test of Sarah's nerve. But she understood, at least partly. To have possession of Hank Bogarty, now, was to be in as grave danger as Calder had once been--and George Davis.

  She pulled the blind on the one window ill the pantry. She made a cursory examination of Bogarty. She said, "No word yet from Wes! I've sent out as urgent a message as I could--

  to get them trailing him."

  Aggie nodded. "How long--how long--for an ambulance to come?"

  "Fifteen minutes. Maybe twenty."

  "Call one."

  When she came back from the phone, Aggie was breathing with less violence. He knelt over Bogarty. "Blood poisoning. From that sock on the back of his head.

  Ambulance coming?"

  "I told 'em," said Sarah, "that if they weren't here in ten minutes, I'd shoot the driver."

  "Somebody saw me taking him out," he went on. "Opened a trap door a slit. He was--just where we--figured--he would be. So they know--whoever it is--that I've got him out. And they know--"

  "--that the minute Hank can speak--it'll be all over for them."

  "That old exit from the hotel," he said, nodding, "has a room off it. The passage goes on--doubtless is blocked up. The room was probably for that safe--originally--but they hit water. Didn't use it for anything, I guess. Afraid it might be flooded. The brook runs in and out through a cave. Air comes up it. But I don't imagine sound travels down very far. It's probably crooked--like a muffler or a gun silencer. Hank was in there. He would have died--!"

  Sarah tried to calm the expression of horror in his eyes. "Don't think about it now, Aggie. We'll take Hank to the hospital--"

  "You," he answered. He stood up. His muscles were trembling so that his whole body seemed to shiver. "You get in that ambulance and go with Hank! Take Chillie too!

  I'll send old John away with Windle!"

  "You can't stay here! Your life isn't safe for a second!"

  "I'm staying! I hate--whoever did this! Somebody's going to pay for the last hour I went through! I believe I know who it is--but I'm not sure, and I don't care! You get out of here--and I mean it, Sarah! It's not a question--any longer--of being ingenious or of using my head! When I saw this poor devil dying in that hole--I lost my head! Do you understand?"

  Sarah stared at her nephew for a full ten seconds. "Yes, Aggie. I do. Be careful!"

  He left the pantry quickly. He was in his room, changing his clothes, when the ambulance came. Its siren murmured and its motor thrashed. The feet of men carrying a stretcher pounded in the cottage. Then the murmuring siren faded away on the dirt road.

  Indian Stones was silent again. It took Aggie a considerable time to change. But, when he had finished, he hurried downstairs and went to Sarah's teapot. The station wagon keys were gone. Windle and old John had used it for their departure. Aggie ran to the barn, started the vintage limousine, and drove up to the club.

  He entered the main lounge calmly enough and walked through the rooms. It was a quarter past eleven. The usual crowd had thinned. But the late-stayers were still on hand. Byron Waite, reading a newspaper, Ralph and Beth at their interminable game of table tennis, Mrs. Drayman shepherding her daughter and, in the exercise of that function, scolding Bill. Danielle wasn't there. Neither was Jack Browne. A more complete showing than Aggie had expected.

  He asked old Mr. Waite where Jack was and got the usual, irritable response:

  "How should I know! I don't keep track of him! He's supposed to keep track of me. Not that he does! In his room, I guess."

  "Where's that?"

  "The front room--on the floor above."

  Aggie took the staircase in agile, noiseless bounds. The floor above was carpeted.

  There was a transom over the door of the end room, painted black, as if to keep out the hall light. In the hall, on a small, round mahogany table, stood a vase of artificial flowers.

  Aggie removed the vase and carried the table to Jack's door. He stood up on it gingerly; his face came level with the painted transom. He moved his head until he found a crack in the paint and he pressed his eye close. The resultant partial view of Jack's room was adequate. It was in feverish disorder. Two bulging suitcases stood on the windowsill and another, nearly full, lay on the bed. A revolver lay on the bureau.

  Aggie restored the table to its place and knocked on Jack's door. It sprang open.

  Jack stood there in a shirt and tie and gray slacks, with a fedora cocked on the back of his head. When he saw that it was Aggie, his face flickered and relaxed. He even smiled.

  "Something I can do--?"

  Aggie stepped toward him. "Take your hat off, Jack. You're not going anywhere."

  Jack backed into his room. "Yes, I am! Downtown! An errand." His voice rose.

  "Don't come in here!" His muscles twitched as he yielded ground--twitched with the restrained will to grapple with Aggie. But he did not. Aggie kept coming in, and Jack kept backing until he bumped against his bedstead. Then he tried to turn.

  Aggie, who had one hand in the pocket of his jacket, said, "I wouldn't go for that revolver if I were you, Jack. You'd never make it."

  Jack sat down on the bed. His face became shiny and his chest rose and fell jerkily. His eyes had a look of frantic speculation which subsided as Aggie did nothing more sinister than to push back some magazines on a desk and sit down.

  Jack said, "Why are you coming in here--like this? Suppose I am getting out? I can't stand this job any more! I hate the people! The orders! And this summer has been too much--already! My nerves are shot to pieces!"

  Aggie continued to stare at him. He was now a little closer to the bureau than Jack. "The trap door," he said, "is in your office. At least--I imagine so. You cut it yourself, I presume. And dug out the steps. Did you find out about the place from an old blueprint? Or did you find the opening outdoors--somewhere? I didn't dare look for that--

  tonight--"

  Jack said, "Are you utterly nuts? What trap door? What passage? My office? I've hardly been in it all evening."

  Aggie's face was like the face of a judge listening to some excruciating and unwitting testimony whereby a prisoner was hanging himself. "Why? Do you think that it is important for you to have been out of your office a good deal--tonight?"

  Jack blustered. "I don't know what you mean! You get out of here! I want to leave!" Aggie kept his hand in his jacket pocket. "You know I've got Hank."

  Jack said, "Hank who?" But he was slow in saying it.

  Aggie went on, talking almost as if to himself. "Of course--Hank's unconscious.

  Can't talk--probably won't be able to, for days. Still--" He shrugged and swung his foot.

  "Everything pointed to you--"

  Jack seemed to make some sense of the discussion. "Oh. This--Bogarty! You came here to accuse me of that! Aggie, old man! You've known me for years--since I was a kid! You know that I--" He smiled with considerable assurance. "Just because I took this moment to decide to beat it! You ought to know me better. If you've got something that'll scare the truth from somebody who is guilty of all the horrible things around here--

  I'll--I'll do anything I can! Stay here, even. But you're barking up the wrong tree."

  Aggie sat still on the desk--save for his foot--which went on swinging. He smiled a little, also. "Speaking of trees--they had a lot to do with it. Two good-sized ones--

  chopped down to make that deadfall to put Calder's body in. Two others that showed me how George Davis had been killed. A tree that the broken phone wire dangled from.

  Some high-up scars in the apple tree, convincing me the murderer--had been here last winter. You were here in the winter. And it had to be somebody who was in the club a lot.

  Somebody who could know about the old Sachem House foundations. Being here every winter--you could explore them."

  "Anybody could!" Jack was paying irregular attention because of what was going on in his mind.

  "Yes. That bo
ttle of hock. Somebody--following me the night I was down in the wine cellar and trying to leave ahead of me in a hurry--could have knocked it out of a bin.

  It could have landed standing up. You weren't down there that night? You didn't hear me going through the lobby--and follow me--and rush back and change into pajamas?"

  "Of course not! Beth saw me when I came downstairs that night--"

  "You didn't do it, then?"

  "No kidding--Aggie--!"

  "Funny. I thought you did. I thought Bogarty came in here with that fox in a cage.

  I thought he told you he'd left his calling card pinned on Sarah's door by his knife--and I thought he got talking about the old days and probably about his plans to get some more money for the British cause out of his old gang. I thought he realized you were close to everybody here and let out something about the fact that his old friends had a lot of gold he had mined for them. Had it hidden. I thought you'd dug out the old secret exit during the winter--just to relieve your boredom. I didn't know how you'd found it. And I thought that you were half crazed by the start of another season. A season of being ordered around and patronized by a community of people who were still rich--while you were poor, and your father was a suicide, and your mother was dead."

  "You're wrong!"

  "I thought--hearing there was a cash deposit around here--a big one--you went nuts, slugged Bogarty--and hid him down below with the idea of making him disgorge the dope about where the gold was. I thought, when you got back up, you saw Calder playing with that fox in its cage. I thought he'd just ambled in here after leaving Sarah's house to get a highball--or something--"

  "I tell you, Aggie, if somebody did all this--!"

  Aggie waved his hand. "It was my impression that Bogarty told you he hadn't yet seen anybody. But there was Calder, fooling with the fox--so Calder could report that Bogarty had reached the club. I supposed that Calder opened the cage to pet the fox and it bit him and he let it out. A dog 'the size of a fox'--you said once. That was smart!

  Disarming. I thought you hit Calder with something, too. Then--as I figured it--you turned out all the club lights and put Calder in Hank's car and carried him up on the lumber road. You had all night to build that deadfall and run that car into Upper Lake.

  But you found out Bogarty didn't know where the gold was! And you couldn't turn him loose! I thought--you watched the excitement about Calder's death and Bogarty's absence grow, hoping one of the people who owned the gold would make a move to check it.

  Calder was dead and Sarah had mumps--so I presumed you'd kept close tabs on Davis and Waite. And I'd imagined Davis went down to his wine supply one day, maybe letting you know it--and you followed him. That led you to the gold--you probably watched him work the safe combination. Only--Davis has no wine down there any more. You realized that he could spot you as the thief, if you moved whatever was in that safe. He knew you'd seen him go down to the cellar and he might reason that you, alone, could know he'd gone there when he had no wine to look at. Maybe there was some other item--but you knew Davis could spot you somehow, and you knew you had to kill him. You knew he was already trying to work out who killed Calder--because you'd no doubt followed him enough to see that he was taking pictures of everything--the deadfall especially--and developing them in that darkroom. You had a knife like this one--"

  Aggie's hand came out of his pocket. Jack flinched. A hunting knife landed lightly on the bed at his side. Jack picked it up. Aggie went on talking. "I was pretty sure it was you. There was that veal bone on the cellar floor. I think it slipped out of the fox cage when you carried the cage to the furnace to burn it. I don't know. That's my knife, but it's the same type as Hank's. Of course--all I've said is guessing. Still--it's a mass of stuff--

  and who else fits it so well? When Bogarty is able to talk--we'll know, of course."

  Jack was staring. "You can't prove it! Not a word of it!"

  "No," said Aggie, "but you better come along with me and let Wes Wickman talk to you."

  They were perhaps ten feet apart--Aggie's eyes boring into Jack's and Jack's eyes widening, hardening, as his lips stretched. He threw the knife with a whiplike motion of his arm. It struck Aggie in the chest; his hand went up to the place with the swiftness of a reflex. Jack was on his feet, leaning forward. But the knife did not penetrate Aggie's heart. It made a hard sound and Aggie caught it as it bounced away. In doing so, he cut his fingers. Jack froze.

  "I don't need any more proof now, do I?" Aggie said. "I didn't think you'd try to leave the club tonight, till the people had gone. Why didn't you get me, when I carried Hank out?"

  Jack was straightening up, slowly. "Mrs. Drayman cornered me," he said huskily.

  "Talked and talked and talked. And I hadn't put the rug back--so I had to stand there."

  "I thought of blocking the Indian Stones road with Sarah's jalopy--in case anybody came through in a hurry. I dropped into the club to check up--though. On you.

  I've got on a sort of waistcoat. A rajah gave it to me. Water buffalo hide. It's supposed to be bullet-proof. And it's turned spears in its day. Will you come now, Jack?"

  For another second, Jack leaned toward Aggie--his face as white as plaster and as rigid. Then he spun around and started for the gun on the bureau. The knife caught him between the tendons at the back of his knee and drove deep into the joint. He staggered and screamed horribly. Aggie was on him, from behind.

  CHAPTER 18

  Windle drove the magnificent relic, which Sarah used for transportation, from the cement highway to Indian Stones, and stopped at the side of Rainbow Lodge. The springs genuflected to deposit her. She admired her ferns and the blue sky showing through the trees above them. When she entered her living room, where her nephew was whistling a popular air, her maternal smile faded to a look of consternation.

  Aggie, in trunks and sandals, was staring into a mirror which, lay flat on the center table. Beside the mirror was a round tin of brown shoe polish. He dabbed his left thumb into the tin and applied the polish to his chin, which was shaved bare. Then he wrinkled his nose. "Smell," he said. "No good. But it'll look like Sam Hill till it's sunburned."

  Aggie's chin--the Plum chin--was pronounced. Not massive, but sharp and belligerent. It was also a pale color in comparison to the rest of his face. Sarah repressed a desire to have hysterics as he solemnly wiped away the shoe polish.

  "John's idea," he said. "I didn't have much confidence in it, anyhow."

  "John told you to shave off your beard!"

  "No. Oh, no. John told me to use shoe polish till I got a sun tan. How's Hank?"

  Sarah settled in a chair--carefully--so as not to burst into laughter. "He's fine. He made a statement for Wes today. Jack--that fiend--!"

  "'Lamb' was always your word for him."

  "I'll never have faith in my judgment of human nature again!"

  "You were saying?"

  "Jack put Hank in that--that dungeon--and then tried to worm out of him where the gold was hidden. When he was satisfied Hank really didn't know--he just--stopped seeing him. Left him with the tinned food and a few candles and some solidified alcohol.

  He'd have gone away and let Hank starve to death--or die of infection--"

  "He isn't a nice fellow," Aggie said, rising. "Bright--but in the wrong way. Has Wes found where Jack put the gold, yet?"

  Sarah was some time in replying. "There isn't any gold. Calder stole it all. Ralph's checking his records--and they show it--indirectly. Nothing but my platinum. Jack buried it on the green at the ninth hole--where they'd just done some resodding. It's a strange thing that Jim Calder would rob Byron and George--but not me."

  "Human nature," Aggie said, "is strange. Well--" He gestured a sort of salute with his right hand, which was bandaged.

  Sarah shuddered slightly at the sight of the bandages, "Every time I think of you going after Jack-barehanded, that way--"

  "I was in a hurry and I was mad," he answered. "Besides, I knew that I wasn't safe that ni
ght, and you weren't. I was morally sure that it was Jack--and equally sure I couldn't prove it sufficiently or fast enough to convince anyone else. If he'd had a gun in his pocket--and used it--I might have been able to close in. That buffalo shirt has several layers. Tough as metal. But I figured that if I supplied him with a little less penetrating weapon--he'd use it. And the hide is ideal for knives. My fingers are okay." He grinned.

  "I thought you didn't want to hear any more, ever, about my prowess at analysis and deduction."

  "I don't," said Sarah. "Where are you going?"

  "Swimming. You ought to be able to dope that out. Trunks--and sandals. And--

  speaking of deduction--about Beth."

  Sarah started with such force that the chair creaked. "Beth? What about Beth?"

  "She isn't engaged, is she?"

  The effect of that question was remarkable. Sarah's color waned and she opened her mouth twice before she spoke.

  "Do you think, Agamemnon, that a girl like Beth--handsome--but rather prosaic--

  ?"

  "I think she'll make Ralph a swell wife! He told me last night he was going to propose." Aggie walked innocently toward the door.

  His aunt stared at him with hostility. "You beast!"

  "Am I so naïve--so contrary, stubborn and dense--that it is necessary for you to force one woman into my cognizance in order to draw attention to another?"

  Her stare began to melt. "Just exactly what--?"

  "When we first rode up here," Aggie went on, "you vouchsafed you had a bride picked out for me. Now, you have always known that I shy from females. You've threshed out the subject with me in the past. You are too adroit--much too adroit--in all these matters--to do anything so obvious as to name a woman and expect me to rush after her like the fire on a skyrocket. So--I said to myself--as we rode along and you lay snoring in a most astonishing way--"

  "I do not snore!"

  "--I said, 'Aggie, what's her game?' And I answered myself, 'There must be a nigger in the woodpile. Or a blonde.''

  "Rubbish! You were very interested in Beth."

  "Well, I will admit--when I saw her--I wondered if you were being subtle enough to try the direct method. Beth has something. That ebony hair and ivory skin combination--with the turquoise eye. Stirring. But I was never really baffled. You see--