the house by the road

CHAPTER I Tue Knire BETWEEN THE SHOULDERS II SuspecTep oF MuRDER

III A Nicut in Jar IV Tue INQUEST V_ Bartitey TAKES THE CASE .

VI Ketity Makes AN ARREST .

VII We Hear More Axsout CULVER VIII Tue Licut at THE WINDOW IX A NIcHT oF SUSPENSE .

X A MEsSAGE IN CIPHER .

XI Bartiey DIscussEs THE CRIME XII A New Twist To THE CASE XIII I Ser Cutver’s BROTHER .

XIV ANOTHER MURDER XV WE RECEIVE AN EarLy VISITOR XVI We Have Ovr SuRpPRISE XVII Bartiey Enps His Case

MeRCANTIT A | PRAT

THE KNIFE BETWEEN THE SHOULDERS

OR the last hour or so the motor had not RK been running smoothly, and, as I came to the top of the long hill, it was with a sigh of relief that I saw the lights of the small city far below. That I was glad to see them was putting it mildly. I had been driving all afternoon, and, ever since the darkness had fallen, the car had been acting badly. I had looked under the hood several times to discover what the trouble might be, yet I had found nothing. Nursing a heavy car along a dark country road, with the rain threatening to fall at any moment, is not a task that I enjoy. As I slid over the top of the hill, I saw there was a gradual drop of several miles before I could reach the lighted city in the valley below. The road was slippery and muddy, while the great trees on each side made it even darker than the night itself. It was a somber, lonely road, without the slightest 1 sign of life, or, for that matter, of houses. But I had seen very few houses during the afternoon, the roads that I had traversed being of the usual Vermont type, with farms far and few between. I had hoped to reach Springfield by evening, but the trouble with the engine had delayed me. Now I decided that I would have the car looked over in a garage and spend the night in the town whose lights lay before me.

The car picked up in speed, as I started to run down the hill, and the lamps threw a yellow ray of light through the misty darkness. Not only were the first drops of rain dashing against my face, but, by the way the wind was rising, I could tell that it would be raining very hard in a few moments. I was glad the town was near at hand, for a heavy storm in an open car was not to my liking. The car skidded all over the road, which, like most country roads, was very narrow. The woods on each side seemed simply a black mass, and it was one of the darkest nights I had ever seen. For a moment I pictured Bartley in his library—the fireplace with its cheery blaze—and the great room with its walls of books making me wish that I, too, were there. It was about ten o’clock, and Bartley ‘would be seated in his large chair, a book in his hand, and his Airedale, “Trouble,” at his feet.

The wind had heightened considerably during the short time that had elapsed since I first saw the lights of the town, and it was now blowing in short and angry gusts that caused the trees on each side of the road to lash to and fro. The rain was falling steadily and heavily, and already I was pretty wet. I no longer could see the lights of the town, a bend in the road ahead of me hiding them from sight. One of the headlights had gone wrong, and, the hill being very steep at this point, I had to put on the brake. The car lurched and slipped from one side of the road to the other, and I cursed the friend who had picked this route for me, saying that the dirt roads were very good.

I think I had gone about a mile when I noticed that the speed of the car was decreasing. I threw on more gas, but with no appreciable result. Suddenly, with a half sigh, the engine gave a little cough and “died.” The car rolled a few feet farther and stopped. I could tell that I had come to a level place in the road, beyond which the hill dipped away again—but that was not very consoling. I tried everything I could think of to start the car again, but in vain. Climbing out into the mud, I grasped the crank and cranked till I thought my back would break, but nothing came of it. The engine refused to respond.

Straightening up, I made a few choice remarks to no one in particular, and then, feeling a bit better, threw the crank into the car and tried to think what I should do next. Somewhere below me was the town, not more than a mile away. If I walked there, I could soon have a garage send a man out to the car. But I did not feel overmuch like walking. The wind was blowing the rain in sheets against me, a cold rain that seemed to cut through my clothes. Long before I reached the town, I would be in the state of the proverbial wet hen. The walking itself would not be pleasant, for the road was slippery with mud, the wet, clinging soil of a country road. What to do, I scarcely knew, and the longer I stood in the road, the wetter and colder I would become.

I gave a glance around, and then for the first time I noticed distinctly where stretched the woods, dark and forbidding; on the other, at my right, I could make out the dim figure of a house—a house that loomed ghostly and faintly against the darkness—a huge black mass. It was set some distance from the road, with a few trees in what I thought must be a yard—trees bending and swaying in the wind. The house was not far away, but in the darkness I was unable to distinguish any signs of life about it. No light streamed from any window; no dog barked a warning at me from the yard. Back of the house, simply great masses of darkness, were what I judged to be the barns.

For a moment I gazed at the house. I had not noticed it when the car stopped, because all my attention had been needed to keep the car in the road. But it struck me that the car could not have stopped in a better place. True, the house seemed to be uninhabited, yet I instinctively felt that some one must live there. If so, then I could telephone to a garage in the town, I thought, or perhaps find in the house somebody who knew about cars.

Leaving the car, I walked over toward the house. I came against a fence, but in a second found the gate, which was swung half open. A pebbled walk, the stones slippery from the rain, led to the house which loomed silent before me. ‘Though it was very dark, yet I could faintly make out the yard. The grass was almost waist-high, overhanging the sides of the walk, which was littered with the small branches which the high wind had blown from the trees. Even the steps that led to the veranda had rotted away with age.

I found myself on a large piazza that seemed to extend the entire length of the front of the house, and it was here I received a surprise. There had been no signs of light from any of the windows, and I soon discovered that there could not have been, for all the windows were boarded up with heavy, thick boards which had been nailed across them. Evidently the house was deserted, and I would receive no help here.

For a moment I stood wondering whether it would not be wiser for me to walk to the village. The only sound was the wind lashing through the trees, the dropping of small branches in the near-by woods, and the dashing of the rain against the side of the house. It was certainly raining hard, and seemingly it was increasing—a steady, heavy downpour, a rain that would wet one to the skin in a few seconds if one were out in it. Even on the veranda it was nearly as bad, for the wind whipped the rain across it in sheets. Crouching up against the side of the house, I decided to wait there, at least till the storm had abated somewhat.

I had stood there perhaps five minutes, feeling lonely and a bit depressed, when I noticed that the front door of the house was only a few feet away. I had made up my mind it was useless to expect to find that any one lived there, since the whole appearance of the house and yard, to say nothing of the boarded windows, testified that the place was deserted. But I went over to the door and then suddenly I stopped and stood silently looking at it. The door was open, swaying back and forth with the wind, yet for some reason not swinging to far enough to close.

As I stood, watching the door swing to and fro, I was frankly puzzled. If the house was deserted, with the windows boarded as they were, I would have expected to find the door locked—but it was open. I placed my hand against it and peered into the dark hall. It was a black cave, silent, gloomy, depressing. Not a sound came from within—only the wind and the dashing of the rain could be heard. I looked steadily, as if by the intensity of my gaze I could pierce the dense blackness. As my eyes became more accustomed to the darkness, I could dimly make out the darker shadows that marked the furniture in the hall. The house was deserted, yet it was furnished.

My hand, groping over the door, fell against a bell, one of those old-fashioned bells which you turn to ring. Hardly knowing why, I turned the bell. There came a loud, clanging ring, that surged through the house like the sound of a clarion, dying away in a ghostly echo. But there came no response, and I did not ring again; the sound had been a bit more dismal than I enjoyed under the circumstances,

There came another gust of wind, and I felt the house rock, followed by a burst of rain that dashed over me and into the hall. I was rapidly getting soaked more and more, and if I stayed on the outside I would be drenched to the skin in a moment. I turned and gave a half glance at the road, where the lamps of the car cast a friendly shaft of light in the distance.

Now I turned again and stepped into the hall, going a few feet, then pausing. Why I paused I do not know. But for a second it seemed that, above the sound of the storm, the dashing of the rain against the house, I had heard a sound, a sound that I could not locate definitely, a sound which seemed to come from overhead. Yet I was not sure. I paused, waiting, listening eagerly. In another moment I concluded that I had been deceived, for there was nothing to be heard but the wind and the rain.

I had stumbled against what must have been a table, and for a second I stood silent, steadying myself with one hand. There seemed to be stairs that ran to the second floor, for there was a dark mass at the end of the hall. But I could not distinguish anything, and I wished that I had brought my flash light from the car. The house was still, though once in a while I could hear something creak, as a dash of wind beat against the walls.

As I stood there, waiting for the rain to let up, I began to feel a bit queer. The darkness, the old house, the weird sound of the wind in the trees, began to affect me. There seemed to be something that I could feel, some psychological thing that made me nervous. I peered down the hall. It stretched dark and lonely ahead of me. Nothing moved, and no sound came to my ears except the wind and the rain outside. Yet I felt lonesome, and that old racial fear of the dark which is in us all began to sweep over me. I thought of Bartley’s assertion that “‘we fear the dark because in man’s subconscious mind there is the long heritage of the past, when the darkness held danger of mankind.” I was not afraid, but I began to wish more earnestly than ever that the car had not broken down.

Shaking off the feeling that was creeping over me, I moved a few feet farther into the hall, stumbling over a chair, the noise of which echoed through the house. Before me, on my right, was a door that evidently led into a parlor, and it was open. The room, because of the boarded windows, was darker than the hall. In the hall, the open door had afforded a glimmer of light from without, but the room I peered into was black—with a darkness that one could not pierce, nor distinguish even the shadow of an object.

Why I did it, I never knew, but I groped my way into the room, stumbling against a chair in which I seated myself. At any rate it was better than being out in the rain and better than standing in the hall. But the longer I sat there the more uneasy I became. There seemed to be nothing to cause the uneasiness. Perhaps it was the loneliness of it all, the dark, deserted house, the sound of the storm. But, as I sat there, I began to feel creepy. The darkness seemed almost as if it were alive—a darkness that crept around one, stifling one, that even seemed to move. The room appeared alive, as if in the shadows there were objects waiting to reach for one, to clutch and envelop one.

I tried to explain the feeling away. Reason and education told me that it was caused by depression. Yet, at the same time, reason helped little. I could feel something, something that seemed to threaten me, something indescribable that was around, that held a portent of evil. I half started to rise to go out into the open, raining though it was, when the thought of running away simply because it was dark caused me to fall back into my seat.

For a while the feeling of depression vanished, as I listened eagerly, hoping the storm had died away sufficiently for me to walk to the town. Then the feeling began to come back. Something told me I was not alone in the room, something was there with me, something that in the dense darkness waited, as I was waiting, something evil, something I could feel, but could not see. A little shiver of fear went over me, and to throw it aside I reached for my cigarette case. Finding my lighter, I opened it, and there came the little burst of flame that split the blackness around me. I started to apply it to my cigarette, when suddenly my glance fell at my feet—at an object lying there.

As my hand trembled, and I bent forward to look, the cigarette was forgotten, and the flame in the lighter shook because of the trembling of my hand. Half dazed, I looked at the object at my feet, and I know my face went white. With a hand that shook I held the lighter lower and half bent forward. I had felt a presence in the room, I had known I was not alone there, and I had not been.

' For, as I looked, there at my feet lay a man—a man who would not stir again, to whom the storm and the darkness would never matter. A man, half turned on his side, with a look of horror and fright upon the upturned face. And, as I looked, it did not need the sight of the knife that protruded between his shoulders to tell me what had taken place. Something had been there with me. There in that darkened house, with the wind and the rain dashing against its sides, I was alone with a murdered man.

CHAPTER II looking at the still figure that lay at my feet.

My hand was trembling, and the little flickering flame from the lighter cast weird dancing shadows over the floor. Before I had started to light my cigarette I had felt afraid; I was still afraid. There in the lonely house, with only the wind and the rain to break the silence, I was alone with a dead man—a murdered man. ‘The combination was a bit too much for me. I was afraid.

I arose to my feet and made a hasty exit to the hall, and in a second I was out on the veranda. There I paused for a moment to catch my breath and to think. It was still raining, though not so hard as it had been a few minutes ago. But now it seemed even darker than before, with heavy, thick clouds lying low in the sky. The light from the car, which split the darkness of the silent road, was the only thing that reassured me. Somehow that thin ray of light seemed cheerful and friendly.

| CANNOT say just how long I bent forward,

I moved over to the rail, away from the door, not minding the rain that beat upon me. Two thoughts were running through my mind. There was no doubt that the man within the house had been murdered. The knife which was still between his shoulders spoke more eloquently of that than anything else. No one could commit suicide in such a manner. But what was he doing in the house? That it had been deserted, I could tell by the boarded-up windows. Yet the faint glimpse I had had of the room told me that it was furnished. The unkempt lawn, however, with its high grass that had brushed against my feet when I went up the walk, showed that for some time, at least, no one had lived there. But why had the front door been unlocked?

A sudden resolution came to me. To be honest, I did not care to reénter the house; yet my association with Bartley was one reason why I knew I must. Then, again, a man had been murdered, and there was the possibility that I would be able to find some clew that would lead to the discovery of the murderer. Somewhere in the car was a flash light, and under the seat was a revolver. One would give me the light I needed, the other the protection. Yet, as I hurried down the steps onto the pebbled walk toward the car, I wished, with all the zeal I could muster, that I had chosen some other route to return to New York.

Only a moment was required to find the gun and light, and I hurried back to the veranda. The gun I held tightly in my hand, but, as I came to the door, I paused and listened before I flashed on the light. Though I waited several moments, I heard nothing; all was still within the house, not a sound came from its gloomy depths. The hall loomed dark before me, seemingly stretching silently into a vast distance. As I peered into it from the half open door, I shuddered, as I thought of the man who lay in the silence beyond.

I pressed the button of the light, and it flashed a circle of brightness at my feet, falling on the floor and the edge of the door. Then I saw what had kept the door open, despite the wind that had been blowing. A book, with a rather gay jacket, lay between the edge of the door and the sill. The door was swinging slowly, moved by the wind, but it could not close. I gazed at the book a moment, though I did not pick it up. It looked very much as if some one had placed it there in order to keep the door from closing.

As I entered, I turned the light down the hall. It was a long hall, which seemed to divide the house. A hatrack and a table of some kind were along one side, while a couple of chairs were placed on the other. Several doors, which were closed, led to some rooms, though what they were, of course, I did not know. The hall ended in a winding stairway that led up to the second floor. But there was one thing I noticed, as the light fell upon the furniture; the chairs, table, and hatrack were covered with thick dust. The house had evidently not been lived in for a long time, perhaps for some years.

Rather slowly, for I did not like the task before me, I went down the hall, pausing at almost every step to listen. I realized, of course, that, if the murderer were still in the house, say in the upper story, I would make a fine mark for him, standing in the hall, with the light in my hand. But, though I stopped every foot or so, I heard nothing. There hung a deep silence over the house, one that was heavy with evil, that seemed sinister and perverse— a silence that once more caused the feeling of fear and dread which I had first felt creep over me.

I paused at the entrance of the room and threw the light into every corner, sweeping it from one end of the silent apartment to the other. I did not expect to find anything there, nor did I. As the yellow ray rested upon each bit of furniture, I saw that at one time the room had been a parlor, one of the old-fashioned type. Old hair-covered chairs

SUSPECTED OF MURDER i7 stood in their proper places; a large walnut table occupied the center of the room, and a few steel engravings were on the walls. There were even several books upon the table, their covers musty with disuse. Only one thing I saw rather puzzled me. Directly opposite the door, on the other side of the room, was a great wall mirror. Its gilt frame was faded with age and black in spots, but the surprising thing was the mirror itself. It was broken —broken right in the center, the glass shattered as if from a blow.

I took this in for a second; then my eyes turned to the floor, and again I saw the object that I had put off looking at as long as I could. There, a few feet from the door, lay the body of the man, his legs in a queer position, one arm hidden from my sight. I stepped within the room, and I could see, as I kept the light on the still figure, the knife that protruded between the shoulders. I stood looking at the still face. It was the face of a man of about forty-five, with dark hair and a rather prominent nose. As I flashed the light over the features, I noticed that his ears were very large, much larger than the average man’s, and that he was clean shaven. I dropped on my knees by his side, and then for the first time I noticed the other hand, the one which had been hidden by the position of the body. In it was clasped an automatic revolver.

This put a new complexion on things. My first thought was that the man had been suddenly struck down from behind. Why—and, above all, the reason for his being in the empty house—was more than I could even guess. But the revolver threw a new light on the crime. The man must have been struck down from behind, the position of the knife showed that. But he must have had a moment’s warning, or else he had been suspicious when he entered the house. The second surprise came when, after a moment’s investigation of the gun, I found that one shot had been fired.

Rather soberly I rose to my feet, and once more I threw the light around the room. The murdered man had fired one shot, where and at what I did not know. I decided not to spend any time in trying to find out. My first task was to notify the police in the town that lay about a mile away. But, as I turned to leave the room, it came to me that I ought at least to look in the other rooms. I was pretty sure by this time that there was no one in the house, but still I might find a clew.

The rather brief search proved to be in vain. The rooms leading from the hall turned out to be a dining room and a back parlor, and there was one room the door of which was locked. The two rooms were furnished, and in each the dust lay heavy and undisturbed. A kitchen in the rear, which I did not enter, simply throwing the light over the room, completed my search of the first floor.

I hesitated for a moment at the foot of the long stairs which led to the second floor, then went up. Halfway there was a landing, from which the stairs ran in two ways to the upper floor. Reaching the second floor I found myself in a hall that stretched to the front of the house, with two doors on each side. These were all locked but one, and that proved to be a bedroom in the same undisturbed condition as I had found the rooms below. The search had been very far from complete, but, brief as it was, there had been found nothing out of the way.

For a second I stood at the head of the stairs before I descended, trying to figure out what it ali might mean. ‘That the man had been murdered was, of course, clear. Why, and for what reason, I had not the slightest idea. Why the deserted house should be used, was more puzzling. The thought flashed over me that perhaps he had been asked to come there. But of this I was not sure. Dismissing all idea of trying to fathom the mystery I had found, I started down the stairs. My first duty was to notify the police.

As I went out into the air, I found that the rain was over, and it had become a bit foggy. Through the faint mist flared the light of the car in the road. When I reached its side I looked at it a moment, wishing it had never stalled on me in the particular spot it had chosen. But it had; and, perhaps, if it had not, the crime would not have been discovered for many days. I climbed into the machine, more in order to place the flash light under the seat than for anything else, and in some manner I stumbled upon the button of the starter. With a sudden roar the engine started into life.

I knew I swore at the sound, not because it was unpleasant, but at the perversity of engines in general. A short while before the starter had refused to start; now, when I placed my foot on it by accident it had worked. But the noise of the engine sounded good, for it meant that I would not have to walk down the muddy country road to the town.

Slowly the car started to creep down the hill, slipping from side to side in the mud. Whatever had been the trouble with the engine before, it was going all right now; so half slipping, half driving, I crept along till I reached a bend in the road. I saw the first electric light of the town a few hundred yards away. It was a welcome sight, and I half

SUSPECTED OF MURDER Zu grinned at the friendly lights shining through the mist.

In a moment I was running past the first light, over a smooth pavement. I had hoped to find a policeman at once who would direct me to the police station; but, as I drove along, there was none in sight. In fact, the town seemed larger than I had thought it would be. The street I was driving down was wide, with great trees lining each side. Through them I caught glimpses of well-kept lawns and large houses set back from the road. Far ahead the lights seemed to be brighter, and I judged that I was approaching the business section. Once there, I should have no trouble in finding the police station.

Several moments later I swung over the car tracks and turned into a rather well-lighted street that ran down a slight incline. Stores, mostly small, it is true, were on either side of me, and I passed the gayly lighted fronts of several picture houses. Then came a large square, evidently the center of the town, with a bank on my right and a white church with a tall steeple on my left. I knew that in the country towns the court house, the jail, and the police station often occupied the same building and, as a rule, faced the town square. If it were so here, I should find it in a moment. About a second later I saw a dim electric sign that read “Police Station.”