The Millionth Chance/Chapter 10

NIMATED by the same thought, the same intention, we reentered the corridor, Carney closing the French windows behind us. He started for the stairs, but I clutched at his arm.

“I’m going with you,” I said.

“Sure,” agreed the sheriff. For the first time his voice lived up to the humorous promise of his face. “If you can do some more Weatherbee Jones stunts like this I’ll begin to take more stock in that hero of yours. Funny I didn’t think of it. Wish I had.”

Captain Perkins sat behind his desk in the hotel office. Ravenell and Minot conferred together in low tones by the fireplace. From the dining-room came the sounds of Polly setting the table for supper.

“We’re going outside a few minutes, Cap’n,” said Carney. “See that those two gents stay here.”

“I’ll ’tend to them if they git gay,” said Captain Perkins with a frown.

But if Minot and his companion were interested in our action, or suspicious of it, they gave no signs, beyond swift glances as we procured our coats and hats from the hooks on the wall. They were talking together, apparently without excitement, as we left the hotel.

We turned to the left, in the opposite direction from that which I had taken on my previous trips from the Inn. A moment of swift walking and we had rounded the corner of the hotel and were beneath the French windows where Carney had joined me a few minutes earlier. I noticed what I had previously noticed on the other side of the Inn: the balcony on the second floor ended at the French windows. It did not surround the building; it merely ran across its front and half-way along its sides.

But this was subconscious noting of the unimportant. What really held my notice was the deep impression in a snow drift, almost directly beneath the end of the balcony, and thus below the French windows. Some one, greatly daring, had leaped from the balcony, and only the presence of this heap of snow, piled by some vagrant eddy of the wind, had saved him, perhaps, from broken limbs or worse.

“He sure struck it with a bang,” was Carney’s comment as he stared at the tumbled drift. “Must ’a’ sunk in over his waist. Pretty lucky for him it happened to be there. Fifteen feet is some jump! Still,” and he scrutinized the edge of the balcony above us, “maybe he didn’t jump. Maybe he didn’t stand on the edge; maybe he climbed over the rail and then squatted down and swung with his hands from the edge and then dropped. That’s more like it. And he could do it almost as quick, too. He wouldn’t have to drop more’n seven feet or so that way.”

“But wouldn’t he have feared that his hands would slip and drop him before he was ready?” I objected.

Carney chuckled.

“I don’t believe he figgered he could drop any too soon,” he replied. “And a guy runnin’ from what he was runnin’ from don’t bother much about his hands slippin’. He wasn’t riskin’ his neck any more that way than he was by jumpin’. But we should worry about what he was thinkin’! We’re wastin’ time!”

On the word he plunged across the drift into which the fugitive had jumped or dropped. I swung into step beside him.

“Easy trail,” commented the sheriff, as we reached the edge of the woods that ran steeply down to the shores of Rider’s Pond.

It was. Even without the moonlight we would have had no difficulty in following the path from beneath the window to the trees. Nor was it much more difficult in the shadow of the woods. The fleeing fugitive had known that there was no chance of hiding his trail; he had only, judging by the length of his strides, thought of getting into the shelter of the woods as soon as possible.

But if he had slackened his pace here, as the closeness of his tracks would indicate, he had not slackened his efforts. Making straight for the lake, save when the trunk of a tree barred his progress, he had crashed through bushes and over fallen trunks with but the one idea, it seemed—to make the lake.

“And I don’t understand it,” panted Carney, as we ploughed through the snow in the fugitive’s wake. “You’d think he’d kept to the trees until he’d got a good ways off, instead of bustin’ for the lake where any one might see him.”

Breathless, we burst through the last underbrush and dodged around the last tree that barred our way to the edge of the pond. Simultaneously we paused, sweeping the reach of ice and snow before us in the vain hope of seeing some shadowy figure that might be the murderer.

“Hell’s bells!” said Carney, after a moment. “We’re a couple dumb-heads to be standin’ here. I’ll bet that feller ain’t stopped runnin’ yet! ’S if he’d be out on the ice under this moon!”

He stepped upon the snow-covered ice of the lake. Before us, the tell-tale marks of the fugitive stretched straight out, headed across the lake. The snow was quite deep here and I dropped in behind Carney, letting him make still easier the path which the fugitive had begun. For the tracks were a path here, because of the depth of the snow, not a series of footprints. But within fifty yards the covering of snow grew thinner.

I gained the sheriff’s side. With every stride the snow grew less deep, until at last, a hundred yards from the shore, less than an inch covered the ice.

“Hell’s bells!” cried Carney again.

He stopped and pointed. Hooked. There on the ice, some fifty yards ahead of us, was something black, too small to be a man.

“What”

But Carney did not wait to hear my question. He let out a link of speed, careless of the ice that with every stride came closer to one’s soles, and that afforded a most treacherous footing. He reached the dark objects—there were two of them—a moment before me, and picked them up. They were a pair of overshoes. And we were a good ten yards from where the snow ceased, to give way to sheer, smooth ice.

Silently Carney turned back to where the snow covered the ice. He fitted the overshoes to tracks made by the fugitive. There was not the shadow of a doubt; the overshoes had made the trail that we had followed. But where was their wearer?

“Ain’t he clever?” said Carney, reluctant admiration in his voice. “Made for the ice as fast as he could lick it; dropped the overshoes when he’d passed the snow, and walked away on the smooth ice that won’t leave ever a trail, beyond a scratch here and there that any one’s shoes might make. Ain’t he clever?”

I nodded. It was clever. But a gleam of hope came to me.

“He’s had to leave the sheer ice somewhere,” I said. “And all we’ve got to do is find footsteps leading away from the ice. Then find the man whose shoes will fit those prints”

“Good Weatherby Jones stuff,” derided Carney. “If you was writin’ about a case of his that’s what you’d have the murderer do and people would think how clever your detective was! But this ain’t one of your stories. The man clever enough to leave them overshoes and continue in his ordinary shoes ain’t fool enough to do what you suggest. He’d find some well-worn path in the snow and foller that from the lake.”

“But are there any?”

“Around the point,” and he pointed, “there’s a path where the village boys and girls come upon the lake to go skating. School lets out at half-past three. I saw several of them on the road from the village as I come down to the hotel in answer to the captain’s message. I saw them turn down that path. If none of them had been down it yesterday—and some of them was, I know—still they’d probably have trampled out whatever tracks our friend might have made when they went down it today. And anyway, there’s a path nearer than that. There’s the path that leads up to the back of the hotel, where we’re headed for now, and where you had the run-in with them two detectives that you just told Reese and me about. That’s the way the guy we been chasin’ left the ice.”

“How do you know?”

“Stands to reason! When he jumped from that balcony and made for the trees his one idea was to get out of sight. But once he got in them trees—didn’t you notice anything funny about his tracks?”

I shook my head.

“Why, every time he pushed through any brambles there was a bunch of snow trampled down on the other side. He was in a hurry, he was, but not in so much of a hurry that he couldn’t stop and see that his clothes hadn’t been torn and hadn’t left any shreds of cloth on the bushes. Leastwise, I’m a fair woodsmen, and I didn’t see any cloth hangin’ to the bushes, and that’s how I figger it.

“But, for all those stoppin’ periods—which didn’t take long, any of ’em—he was in a powerful hurry to git rid of them overshoes. Likewise, if he was clever enough to think of the trail, he was clever enough to know that it wouldn’t do for him to stay out on the ice long. Too liable to be seen. He’d make right for the nearest path that was trampled, so his footprints wouldn’t be so noticeable, and that nearest path was the path we’re on now.”

I stopped.

“But this path, then, will show footprints. We can make every one in the hotel—every one that’s been seen near the hotel, fit his shoes to every mark.”

“Yours would fit some of these marks, wouldn’t they? And so would Minot’s and Ravenell’s and Miss Gilman’s. Mine, too, for I’m makin’ some now.”

“But then, there’d be some other”

He shook his head decisively.

“This guy’s too clever. Suppose he was somebody besides those I’ve mentioned. Well, he’d know that he couldn’t make his way to Folly Cove village without some one seein’ him and rememberin’ seein’ him, eh? Nor he couldn’t go toward Shreeveport, which is the nearest town in the other direction, without being seen by somebody, eh? And when the news of this murder gits out, every one that’s been seen cornin’ from this neighborhood this afternoon will have to explain themselves, won’t they? Traffic ain’t very heavy in the Winter, in these parts, and the people livin’ along the road, some of them, would be sure to notice any one that went by. Especially as he’d be a stranger.”

“Why do you say that?” I asked.

“Does it stand to reason that a native sneaked into the Inn and did that killin’? Why would he do it, in the first place? I know everybody in these parts, and no one round here did it! Where’s your motive? How would the native dare take the chance of sneakin’ in without bein’ seen? Not to speak of the sneakin’ out! It ain’t imaginable, that’s all.”

“I guess you’re right,” I admitted. “But suppose it was a stranger? Couldn’t he take to the woods whenever he approached a house?”

“He’d have to come out sooner or later, wouldn’t he?” demanded the sheriff. “And if it was a stranger and he’s gone toward Shreeveport or Folly Cove, we’ll hear of it. Reese has had the telephone busy long before this, in every direction, inquirin’ for strangers. Reese has a head on him. But the man clever enough to think of that overshoes trick—he wouldn’t sneak off. He’d know that we’d be shrewd enough to think of the footprints in this path where we’re shivering now, and that if there was an extra footprint that didn’t belong to some one workin’ or stoppin’ at the Inn, and it fitted him after he was brought back here.”

“But you think,” I cried, “that he did come up this path? You mean that he dared to do it because”

“Because his footprints were already here or he could say that they had been made before the murder,” finished Carney for me.

“Then you think he’s in the hotel now?”

“Where else would he be?”

I gasped.

“But all of us—except Ravenell and Minot—you mean”

“I follow Reese’s lead, always,” said Sheriff Carney emphatically. “I can do a little figgerin’ myself, but I’d give more for his instinct than for my figgerin’. Didn’t you notice how polite he was to them two men?”

“You, too,” I said.

“That’s because the doc was. Lemme tell you, when the doc is as soft-spoken as he was to them, at a time like that, he’s thinkin’ hard about them.”

“He was quite courteous to Miss Gilman,” I stated.

“Her? Yes. You see—don’t git sore, now—at the go-off, though guessin’ you’re interested in the lady from what you didn’t tell us, me and the doc both has eyes and could see the way you looked at her. Well, to save your feelin’s, the doc said he hadn’t suspected her at all. But up in the major’s room—well, he said then what I’m sayin’ now—if we don’t hang it on somebody else it’s goin’ to look bad for her. Not that we either of us think she done it, for we don’t. We couldn’t make any jury think she did, even if we wanted to, not unless there was some mighty big motive to go by. But it looks bad!”

“But his politeness to Minot and Ravenell? Why did he suspect them?”

“I didn’t say he suspected them; he just hadn’t made up his mind about them. Like me, he was kinda doubtful about their story about leaving the hotel when the captain said that they didn’t. A-course, the captain wasn’t sure, but still—well, there was room for some doubts about them, after that. Mind, the doc didn’t tell me that he thought that they done it, but after he learns what we’ve been doing, the trail we’ve followed, I’m thinkin’ he will suspect them.”

“But not unless the overshoe belongs to one of them,” I objected.

“Huh? Well, we’ll soon find that out,” snapped the sheriff.

He led the way up the path where I had rescued Miss Gilman from the clutches of the two Greenham men. I followed in silence. If Carney’s reasoning were correct, and I could find no flaw in it, the man who had made the footprints outside Major Penrose’s window, after I had made mine, was at present in the hotel. And as that man could only be Minot or Ravenell, he must be one of the twain.

I remembered that Minot admitted having gone up-stairs. It was possible that he could have been the man. He must be the man, for he cleared Ravenell by his own statement. Unless, of course, the sheriff were all wrong.

It was a puzzle, made more difficult by Captain Perkins’ inability to swear that the two detectives had not left the hotel at a quarter to three. If he could swear to that, it would help in solving the crime. But so long as there was no evidence that they had not been away from the hotel at the time of the murder it was going to prove hard, I felt, to obtain evidence that they had been in the building. Especially as it was indubitable that they had been out after the murder, and had not been seen to leave the Inn. Captain Perkins was wrong. One of them, at least, had left the hotel by the front door; the other—if the other had left the Inn by the balcony, if these overshoes belonged to him, the mystery, save for the motive, was solved.

ARNEY stopped our rapid pace toward the front door. He scrutinized footprints in the ground at our feet. He looked up.

“I should say we was about under the major’s window, wouldn’t you?”

“Yes.”

“Looks as though somebody had been waiting here a few minutes. See?”

He flashed his pocket lamp and showed me where certain footprints were deeply indented in the snow, as if the maker had stood there some time.

“Suppose,” and he voiced my own unspoken reasoning, “the captain was half right and half wrong. Suppose Minot did go up-stairs like he says, and the captain, busy plannin’ the Sunday menoo, thought both of them went up. Suppose Minot sneaked out on that balcony and Ravenell waited for him below the major’s window? If they wanted something the major had, that might be the way to get it. Minot might have hoped to sneak in, if the major was out, and steal it, and then toss it to Ravenell. Or he might have figgered on sneakin’ into the major’s room, but not goin’ back the way he’d come, through the French windows. Instead, he mighta planned droppin’ from the balcony here, with Ravenell to break his fall. Sounds O.K. Let’s go in the house and see whose overshoes these are.”

“You don’t expect either of them to admit owning them, do you?”

“Huh? Why, no! But the captain or the chambermaid will remember if either of them had overshoes, and if they ain’t got any now—get it?”

We entered the hotel. Tony Larue and the captain were behind the desk. Carney went directly to them. He held out the overshoes.

“Captain, I found these in pecooliar circrumstances. Do you know if Mr. Minot or Mr. Ravenell possess any overshoes?”

But Tony Larue forestalled the captain’s reply.

“Those are my overshoes,” he said. “Where did you find them? I left them in the bathroom up-stairs when I came in from the village today.”

“What time was that?” snapped Carney.

“About half-past one.”

“And you ain’t had them since? But pshaw, a-course you ain’t! You was in your room playin’ the violin.”

He turned disgustedly to me.

“I mighta known all along,” he said, “that a guy as clever as all that wasn’t goin’ to use his own overshoes. Hell’s bells!”

“Still,” I suggested, as I drew him aside from the desk, “you don’t know but what Ravenell or Minot took those shoes from the bathroom.”

“Why, sure, of course one of ’em did! But how’m I goin’ to prove it? It can’t be done.”

He stood a moment in deep despair. Then his head lifted.

“I didn’t examine them bushes closely, to look for threads. I’m goin’ to do it,

He turned and plunged out into the night again, carrying his pocket-flash in his hand. But when he returned, just as I was finishing supper, his face was disappointed. He sat down to the table with me. Ravenell and Minot had finished and left the dining-room.

“Not a thread. I’ll look again tomorrow, though, in daylight. And them overshoes—they fitted the marks outside the major’s window, O.K. But then, we was sure of that.”

Despite his disappointment, he fell to his meal and ate prodigiously. After he had finished, we went out to the office. Ravenell and Minot had gone up-stairs, so our landlord told us. We informed him of our unsatisfactory pursuit and finding of the overshoes.

“They might sneak out the same way tonight,” suggested the captain, anxiously.

But Carney shook his head.

“They ain’t such fools. They know better. And they don’t think they’re in any danger, anyway. And they ain’t so far’s I can see,” he said bitterly. “I only wish tomorrow was here. Maybe a little sweating before the coroner’s jury will get the truth out of them.”

But he didn’t look confident, nor were his tones hopeful.

Neither Ravenell nor Minot appeared down-stairs during the evening, which was broken by the coming of the village under taker who held a conference with Miss Gilman in her room, where Nelly the cook was keeping the girl company. On his return he told us that the girl had authorized him to do whatever was needful, but had refused to state where the body would be buried, or give out any of her plans.

But she had ordered an expensive casket and had paid for it in advance, so Bowler, the undertaker, cared not a whit that he might not be able to earn burial expenses in addition. The tragedy meant a good stroke of business for the phlegmatic Bowler, and nothing more.

At nine Dr. Reese telephoned Carney that the coroner’s jury had been selected and notified and would sit at eight-thirty the next morning. He also told the sheriff that he had notified, by telephone, all persons living on the road to Shreeveport to watch out for any stranger. No stranger had been seen in Folly Cove, during the day, save drummers whose presence was well accounted for. Further, he said that he had received a telegram from Dr. Odlin, vouching for me, and Carney was good enough to express gratification.

“Not that I’ve doubted you, for I ain’t; but it’s good to know that no one else, male or female, can,” he said.

I knew that he referred to Miss Gilman by the second sex and, though I inwardly cursed his rural presumption and questionable taste, outwardly I was pleasant enough, for I had come, in a few hours, to have a decided liking for the sheriff and admiration for his intelligence.

We stayed talking until almost ten. Then we went up-stairs. And though I was tremendously excited, as was but natural, the excitement was exhausting and did not make me wakeful. Also, I had had a hard morning on the ice.

I was asleep, or so I seem to remember, the very moment my head touched the pillow. But before that had happened, I had uttered a fervent prayer that no more unhappiness might come to Ruth Gilman and that, if any untoward event did threat en, I might be there to avert its dangers. Youth—thirty-two is young, I think—and love are cruel. They have little time in which to mourn for death.

I thought much more of Ruth Gilman than I did of her dead uncle. He was at rest, at peace. God alone knew, judging by the past, what might come to threaten her! But I was smiling, I think, as I thought of this. I was strong. I was young. I was in love.

When she learned, as she would soon, that I was not of the Ravenell-Minot stripe, maybe she would let me face those threatened dangers with her. I hoped so.