The Classic Mystery Novel MEGAPACK®. Hay James
two cent’s worth. “Mrs. Storm said it was a Negro. That don’t seem likely to me. Only three Negroes live in Crockford and they’re respectable folks.”
Dr. Rand turned sharply to Jack. “I thought you didn’t see who it was.”
“Lola thinks,” Jack replied, “it was a Negro.”
The remark was oddly framed; Jack’s glance was odd. I knew him better than the others; I realized he was holding something back. The physician addressed me.
“You saw the man?”
“When he came out of the closet. I glimpsed his black face as he rushed through the bedroom.”
Silence fell. Clear in the minds of three of us rose a scene on the streets of Crockford; a noisy, babbling crowd, a parked automobile, a rigid, upright body sitting in the rumble seat. We had, that night, played a part in one murder. Within nine hours of the murder this attack had occurred. Dr. Rand’s eyes traveled again to Jack’s wound.
“It runs through my mind that I did you a poor favor tonight. Apparently you’d have been better of if you had stayed—downtown.” He paused. “Of course, it’s possible there is no connection.”
Silas was baffled by the trend of the conversation. He interposed a quick, inquisitive question. “Connection, doctor? What are you talking about?”
“Please don’t interrupt, Silas.” To the physician Jack said, “How could there be a connection? No one wants to kill me.”
“Make no mistake! Someone tried to kill you.”
When I accompanied Dr. Rand to the door I asked him how he could be so positive. “After all, Jack has no enemies.”
“He has one deadly enemy. Whatever you may imagine, your husband was not the victim of an unpremeditated attack. His assailant didn’t strike with a stone or a branch torn from one of the near-by trees, as you may suppose. He struck with a heavy, blunt, metal weapon.”
“How can you know that?”
“I found bits of rust in the wound.”
Having alarmed me thoroughly, he advised me to go to bed and get some rest. His car roared in the yard outside and I returned to the bedroom. Propped high with pillows and still extremely white, Jack was energetically directing Silas in a search of the closet. The hired man crouched on hands and knees, staring owlishly and fruitlessly at the closet floor. Except that several garments had fallen from hangers and lay about in untidy heaps, there was no evidence that a black-faced man had hidden there within three feet of our bed. I put a stop to the search.
Bought by the promise of an extra fifty cents, Silas agreed to spend the remainder of the night on the living-room sofa. Pie seemed decidedly uneasy, and I thought it fortunate that he knew nothing about the murder. An uncourageous man, he was sharp enough to sense that certain facts concerning the evening had been withheld. This further impaired his morale.
“Can I keep the lights burning?”
“Certainly.”
“The light in the kitchen, too?”
“As many as you like.”
I closed the door on him. Jack retained sufficient spirit to flash a grin. “Silas isn’t much of a port for the Storms.”
Then, as he spread his open palms upon the coverlet, his grin faded. “Look at my hands, Lola.”
“They’re filthy!”
“That isn’t dirt. That’s soot.”
Uncomprehendingly, I stared. The palms of both hands were black; a smear of dense black discolored the back of the left hand.
“But Jack, how can that be? There isn’t any soot in the woods. Where-did you get it?”
“From the man who knocked me out. I think I must instinctively have caught at him in an effort to fight back. In fact, I’m sure I did.”
“But, Jack…”
“Look at the knob on the closet door. The inside knob.”
I went to the door. The white china knob was a grimy black. I extended an experimental finger; particles of soot came away.
“You didn’t see a Negro,” said Jack from his pillows. “You saw a man who had covered his face and hands with soot or burnt cork. You saw a man who had disguised himself.”
I spent a restless night. At dawn, leaving Jack asleep, I rose and tiptoed through the living room. The sofa was empty. I heard Silas moving in the cellar. I established his identity by taking what would have been a silly and unthinkable precaution—twenty-four hours earlier. I shouted down.
“Is that you, Silas?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“What are you doing?”
“Looking for dues.”
“I don’t suppose you’ve found any.”
Silas’s voice, satisfied, and, now that day had dawned, chipper enough, floated upward.
“I found out how that fellow got in.”
Immediately I descended the unstable wooden stairs. Dusty, musty, damp, smelling of faint, strange odors, the cellar of the cottage was an untidy catch-all which we referred to privately as the Hell Hole. For generations the Coatesnash family had accumulated possessions and for generations had stubbornly-clung to them. In every available corner Mrs. Coatesnash had stored superannuated articles she considered far too good to throw away. The assemblage included a decrepit phonograph with a painted horn, three bottomless reed chairs, ancient electric fixtures, a horrible, marble-topped dresser, a camp cot, an old mattress, a three-legged table poised drunkenly against a whatnot whose seams were bursting with dampness. It included bits of broken never-to-be-mended china and bric-a-brac gleaming on shelves along with empty ginger-ale bottles and preserve jars. It included a long, unpleasant roll of carpet which had not seen the light in forty years.
In the midst of this ruin of the past glowed a modern furnace pink with heat. Near by stood Silas, squinting at a pile of coal which mounted to a small window above. At once and certainly I knew where our intruder had got his disguise. Coal dust. In three rapid minutes, with coal dust, a white man could make himself a black man. It had been coal dust on Jack’s hands and on the doorknob. Coal dust from our own cellar!
As I left the stairs, I had the queer feeling that Silas also, independently, had arrived at and would suggest the possibility that the intruder had smeared himself with coal dust. We had planned to impart only to the police our information regarding the disguise. For an instant I wondered if Silas were as stupid as we had thought him, or if we had considered him stupid merely because he was unlike ourselves. Had he glimpsed Jack’s hands? Had he seen the grimy door knob and drawn his own conclusions?
“Right here, Mrs. Storm,” began the hired man in his flat, shrill tones, “is where the fellow got in. He busted that window-pane, unlocked the window and slid down the coal.”
I picked my way to the spot. Silas pointed out the broken window-pane, the bits of shattered glass sparkling on the browned grass outside. I said nothing. Standing beside the hired man, in daylight, in the cellar of my own home, I was swept by an appalling sensation of fright and insecurity. The pane could be mended. Bars could be wedged across the window. Still I knew that never again would I feel safe in the pretty little country cottage. At length I spoke calmly, steadily.
“You must show this to the police, Silas.”
With which I went back upstairs. Awake now and livelier than he had any right to be, Jack was clamoring for coffee. We were breakfasting from a card table pulled up beside the bed when Silas entered with a final, disquieting piece of news. Our poker had disappeared.
“You’re sure you saw it yesterday?”
“I used it yesterday.”
“Maybe