Page:Weird Tales Volume 3 Number 2 (1923-02).djvu/23

22 E noticed that the room was in confusion. A chair was overturned; the cloth was dragged partly from the table and lay along the floor among a litter of broken china; a blackened log lay on the hearth-rug as if it had been seized for a weapon. He stood gaping like an idiot with the knife in his hand and his eyes riveted to the spectacle of his enemy slain. The work he had come to do was done. He could not move.

Then when he heard a heavy step approaching he could only stand helpless on the spot. Albert, the hired man, tall and blond almost to whiteness, with a smooth, boyish face and the wide-open, brilliantly-blue eyes of a child, came into the room, carrying an old straw suitcase in one hand and his cap in the other. He started on seeing a visitor, and if his face had not been already as white as paper he would have paled.

"Mr. Saubes—for God's sake—Mr. Saubes—" He looked with a shuddering glance at the body of his employer that lay between them.

Saubes put his knife away and said deliberately, "Do you know who killed him?"

The man stammered, "But what are you doing here, Mr. Saubes?"

A hard look came over the face of the would-be murderer, but he did not answer. He seemed hunting for words. Suddenly the Dane shut his square jaw with a snap and bright red color flowed into his face. The arteries in his neck stood out, and he pointed a finger that shook with emotion at the other man.

"You—you were his enemy! He told me! You did it, I saw the knife you put away."

"I did not do it." said Jeffrey Saubes quietly.

Albert dropped his suitcase and in the flash of a half second had an ugly looking revolver leveled at the other man.

"You sit down in that chair, I'm going to telephone for the sheriff. Wait—get that rope from the nail."

Saubes took a quick look at the ominous black mouth of the weapon and pulled down the rope sullenly. In a few minutes he was bound tightly to the chair and was sitting alone with the dead man while he listened to the farm hand's thick voice speaking into the telephone. He let his head fall to his breast, for suddenly all the energy that had riven him here subsided and left him weary and only desiring rest—sleep.

The Dane came back, striding thunderously in his big boots and sat down opposite his prisoner. For a long time they were silent, the one with his glance on the floor at his feet, sunk in an apparent apathy, and the other with his face averted from the huddle that had been his master. And then slowly, hesitatingly, his big blond head turned and he looked, but with aversion, at the dead man. As he did so, Jeffrey Saubes raised his eyes.

"I thought so, Albert," he threw out with a laugh. “You killed him."

"What? You think that I—Mr. Saubes—"

"You killed him," repeated Saubes. "I am only curious to know why. Do you mind telling me?"

"You think I—"

"I know it. Don't lie, boy. When you came in you didn't even go near the body, and you have hardly looked at it since. That's one reason. An innocent man would have gone over to see if he were really dead. You were the color of chalk when you came in and before you saw him. Also, I see by your face that I am right. Untie me."

For answer the younger man put his head down on his hands and burst into loud sobbing, and when he raised it again his face was wild and tear-streaked and his big strong frame shook. He was as a child who fears nothing so much as his own sin.

"I did it," he flung out, speaking quickly, "I did it; but I swear by my dear old mother in the fatherland, by my little sister, I didn't mean to. No, I didn't mean to kill him. I—I ain't the kind of fellow can kill anybody, Mr. Saubes."

He got to his feet and stood there wringing his hands.

"It was because of my little sister, Elsa, who works as maid in town. I sent for her from home last year. Seventeen, she is, and pretty—" He shuddered and looked fearfully toward the man he had killed. "He—began paying her attention, and when I asked him what he intended to do he laughed. He just laughed at me."

"And you killed him?"

"We fought, like two men. I called him a name and he struck me and we fought. He was a big man. Stronger than me. He took a knife from the table—it was fixed for supper—and he ran at me. It was me—or him."

Again Jeffrey Saubes laughed. Always his laughter had a sinister, dark note in it. He said lightly, or with an assumption of lightness:

"You'll have a hard time making the police believe your story."

"I know it. I was going to run away. But now I got to hang for that, Mr. Saubes, and little Elsa—my mother—" He sat down heavily again with his face hidden in his hands. "Me—" he muttered, "never—never could I hurt a fly—like a girl I am—"

He got up suddenly and came over to untie the ropes, but Saubes stopped him with a sharp word of command.

"Leave them alone. When they come keep your mouth shut, I'm the murderer—not you."

The Dane's eyes opened wide. "You—" he began.

"I came here tonight to kill him. I hated him for years, envied and despised him. I came with my knife in my hand through the neck of woods over the bridge and opened the door with the blade. I planned the whole thing. But for you, my hands would be red now. You killed him in an honest fight over a woman's honor; I wished to put him out of the way because he was richer, more lucky with the women. He lorded it over me. I came to kill him."

"Can I let you hang, Mr. Saubes, for what I did?"

"You'll have to, boy, because I left a note home in case anything happened to me. About my property and that. I'll tell them to get it. I'll swear I came to kill him. In my heart, I had committed the crime a dozen times over. The law would say you were the guilty man, but which one of us is a murderer, you or I?"

Voices and stamping and hurried feet outside, and three burly men came in, grim faced and hard-eyed and determined. They gave quick, comprehending glances about the room. Advanced to the man in the chair and unbound him.

He stood silently while they put the cold iron circlets around his wrists. He even smiled when the Dane seized his manacled hands and pressed them in a frantic, sobbing goodby.