UNCLE ABNER, MASTER OF MYSTERIES: 18 Detective Tales in One Volume. Melville Davisson Post
would in the end wrong these children more than the loss of this estate during the term of your natural life; but it is clear to me that they will not so regard it. And we are bound to lay it before them if you do not sign this deed. It is not for my brother Rufus and Elnathan Stone and me to decide this question."
"To decide what question?" said Gaul. "Whether you are to live or die!" said Abner. The hunchback's face grew stern and resolute. He sat down in his chair, put his stick between his knees and looked my uncle in the eyes.
"Abner," he said, "you are talking in some riddle...Say the thing out plain. Do you think I forged that will?"
"I do not," said Abner.
"Nor could any man!" cried the hunchback. "It is in my brother's hand-every word of it; and, besides, there is neither ink nor paper in this house. I figure on a slate; and when I have a thing to say I go and tell it."
"And yet," said Abner, "the day before your brother's death you bought some sheets of foolscap of the postmaster."
"I did," said Gaul-"and for my brother. Enoch wished to make some calculations with his pencil. I have the paper with his figures on it."
He went to his desk and brought back some sheets.
"And yet," said Abner, "this will is written on a page of foolscap."
"And why not?" said Gaul. "Is it not sold in every store to Mexico?"
It was the truth-and Abner drummed on the table.
"And now," said Gaul, "we have laid one suspicion by looking it squarely in the face; let us lay the other. What did you find about my brother's death to moon over?"
"Why," said Abner, "should he take his own life in this house?"
"I do not know that," said Gaul.
"I will tell you," said Abner; "we found a bloody handprint on your brother!"
"Is that all that you found on him?"
"That is all," said Abner.
"Well," cried Gaul, "does that prove that I killed him? Let me look your ugly suspicion in the face. Were not my brother's hands covered with his blood and was not the bed covered with his finger-prints, where he had clutched about it in his death-struggle?"
"Yes," said Abner; "that is all true."
"And was there any mark or sign in that print," said Gaul, "by which you could know that it was made by any certain hand"-and he spread out his fingers-"as, for instance, my hand?"
"No," said Abner.
There was victory in Gaul's face.
He had now learned all that Abner knew and he no longer feared him. There was no evidence against him-even I saw that.
"And now," he cried, "will you get out of my house? I will have no more words with you. Begone!"
Abner did not move. For the last five minutes he had been at work at something, but I could not see what it was, for his back was toward me. Now he turned to the table beside Gaul and I saw what he had been doing. He had been making a pen out of a goosequill! He laid the pen down on the table and beside it a horn of ink. He opened out the deed that he had brought, put his finger on a line, dipped the quill into the ink and held it out to Gaul.
"Sign there!" he said.
The hunchback got on his feet, with an oath.
"Begone with your damned paper!" he cried.
Abner did not move.
"When you have signed," he said.
"Signed!" cried the hunchback. "I will see you and your brother Rufus, and Elnathan Stone, and all the kit and kittle of you in hell!"
"Gaul," said Abner, "you will surely see all who are to be seen in hell!"
By Abner's manner I knew that the end of the business had arrived. He seized the will and the envelope that Gaul had brought from his secretary and held them out before him.
"You tell me," he said, "that these papers were written at one sitting! Look! The hand that wrote that envelope was calm and steady, but the hand that wrote this will shook. See how the letters wave and jerk! I will explain it. You have kept that envelope from some old letter; but this paper was written in this house-in fear! And it was written on the morning that your brother died...Listen! When Elnathan Stone stepped back from your brother's bed he stumbled over a piece of carpet. The under side of that carpet was smeared with ink, where a bottle had been broken. I put my finger on it and it was wet."
The hunchback began to howl and bellow like a beast penned in a corner. I crouched under Abner's coat in terror. The creature's cries filled the great, empty house. They rose a hellish crescendo on the voices of the wind; and for accompaniment the sleet played shrill notes on the windowpanes, and the loose shingles clattered a staccato, and the chimney whistled-like weird instruments under a devil's fingers.
And all the time Abner stood looking down at the man-an implacable, avenging Nemesis-and his voice, deep and level, did not change.
"But, before that, we knew that you had killed your brother! We knew it when we stood before his bed. 'Look there,' said Rufus-'at that bloody handprint!'...We looked...And we knew that Enoch's hand had not made that print. Do you know how we knew that, Gaul?...I will tell you... The bloody print on your brother's right hand was the print of a right hand!"
Gaul signed the deed, and at dawn we rode away, with the hunchback's promise that he would come that afternoon before a notary and acknowledge what he had signed; but he did not come-neither on that day nor on any day after that.
When Abner went to fetch him he found him swinging from his elm tree.
Chapter 3
The Angel of the Lord
I always thought my father took a long chance, but somebody had to take it and certainly I was the one least likely to be suspected. It was a wild country. There were no banks. We had to pay for the cattle, and somebody had to carry the money. My father and my uncle were always being watched. My father was right, I think.
"Abner," he said, "I'm going to send Martin. No one will ever suppose that we would trust this money to a child."
My uncle drummed on the table and rapped his heels on the floor. He was a bachelor, stem and silent. But he could talk...and when he did, he began at the beginning and you heard him through; and what he said-well, he stood behind it.
"To stop Martin," my father went on, "would be only to lose the money; but to stop you would be to get somebody killed."
I knew what my father meant. He meant that no one would undertake to rob Abner until after he had shot him to death.
I ought to say a word about my Uncle Abner. He was one of those austere, deeply religious men who were the product of the Reformation. He always carried a Bible in his pocket and he read it where he pleased. Once the crowd at Roy's Tavern tried to make sport of him when he got his book out by the fire; but they never tried it again. When the fight was over Abner paid Roy eighteen silver dollars for the broken chairs and the table-and he was the only man in the tavern who could ride a horse. Abner belonged to the church militant and his God was a war lord.
So that is how they came to send me. The money was in greenbacks in packages. They wrapped it up in newspaper and put it into a pair of saddle-bags, and I set out. I was about nine years old. No, it was not as bad as you think. I could ride a horse all day when I was nine years old-most any kind of a horse. I was tough as whit'-leather, and I knew the country I was going into. You must not picture a little boy rolling a hoop in the park.
It was an afternoon in early autumn. The clay roads froze in the night; they thawed out in the day and they were a bit sticky. I was to stop at Roy's Tavern, south of the river, and go on in the