Quill's Window Part 38

The R. F. D. postman making his rounds, came to Amos Vick's shortly after noon that day. He volunteered a bit of information. Rosabel had given him a letter when he stopped the day before. It was addressed to Caleb Vick. She asked him how long he thought it would take the letter to reach its destination. When he told her that it might be delivered to Cale early the next day, she thanked him and returned to the house.

He thought at the time that she looked "kind of white around the gills."

II

Jim Bagley and his new "hired man," pursuing a suggestion made by the latter, went to the top of Quill's Window for a bird's-eye view of the river and the surrounding country. The sharp eyes of the Pinkerton man descried the rowboat under the willows along the opposite bank of the stream.

Half an hour later, Bagley and several companions came upon the boat. On one of the seats lay Rosabel Vick's heavy coat and the black fur collar she was known to have worn when she left home.

Under the seat in the stern was a small paper bundle. It contained a nightgown, a pair of black stockings, and several toilet articles.

Across the river, several hundred yards above Quill's Window, a small gravelly "sand-bar" reached out into the stream. Here the practised eyes of Gilfillan found unmistakable indications of a recent landing.

The prow of the boat, driven well out upon the bar, had left its mark. Also, there were two deep cuts in the sand where an oar had been used in pushing off. It was impossible to make out footprints in the loose, shifting gravel.

Mr. Gilfillan pondered deeply.

"That boat crossed over here yesterday," he reflected. "It's pretty clear that it belongs over on that side. If the Vick girl came over in it, there's no use looking for her on this side of the river.

That boat couldn't have got back to the other side unless somebody rowed it over. If it was a woman I saw walking across the pasture in the direction of the river, it must have been this girl. Now--one of two things happened--in case it was the Vick girl. Either she was up near that old house before I got there, or she saw me when she was approaching, and turned back. In either case, she had an object in hanging around that house. Now we come to the object.

Was she going there to meet some one? If so, it would naturally be a man.

"Now let's get this thing straight. Thane crossed the pasture from this direction. That's positive,--because I followed him. It is a dead certainty he did not meet the Vick girl. I would have witnessed any such meeting. The fact that he lived at her father's house for several weeks may have something to do with the case,--but that's guesswork. What we want is facts. This much is certain. I did not see Miss Crown go into that house,--but I did see her come out.

I never was so paralysed in my life. It is clear, therefore, that she was in there before either I or Thane came upon the scene. Now the question is, was she there to meet Thane? I doubt it. Things begin to look a little clearer to me. Suppose, for instance, he went out to that big hill to meet some one else,--presumably the Vick girl, and that they had planned to go to that old deserted house. He was late. So, thinking she had gone on, he hustled across the field and received the surprise of his life. Now, we'll say the Vick girl was over there waiting for him when Miss Crown came to the house,--a thing they couldn't have foreseen in view of the fact that she shunned the place. Our hero comes up and enters the house as if he owned it. The other girl hangs around outside till it gets dark enough for her to risk making a getaway without attracting my attention,--in case she saw me. She beats it back to the river, and then, being afraid that I saw and recognized her, she concludes to beat it to somebody's house over in the next county, so's she'll have an alibi if I go to Miss Crown with the story.

Now, that's one way to look at it. The other angle is that she was jealous and trailed Thane to his rendezvous, as my old friend Nick Carter would say. In that case,--By thunder!" He gave vent to a soft whistle.

"In that case, she may have jumped into the river and--No, that doesn't hang together. She wouldn't have gone to the trouble to row back to the other side. Wait a second! Now, let me think. Here's an idea. We'll suppose somebody waylaid her over there on the other side of the river, put the quietus on her and chucked her into the water. Then he rowed across here and started for the turnpike.

Seeing me and also Thane, he turns back. It's a man I see in the darkness instead of a woman. He goes back to the boat, rows over to the other side again and--Holy Mackerel! Here's a new one. That girl's body may be lying up there in the underbrush at this instant.

Dumped there by the murderer, who turned back after seeing me--I'll take a look!"

For an hour Gilfillan searched through the underbrush along the bank. Finally he gave it up and started toward the village. He found the town in a state of great excitement. Everybody was hurrying down to the river. Overtaking an old man, he inquired if there was any news of the missing girl.

"They say she's been drownded," chattered the ancient. "My daughter says they found her things in a boat, but no sign of her. Did you ever see the beat? They's been more goin' on in this here town in the last week than--"

Gilfillan hurried on. He caught Charlie Webster as he was leaving the warehouse.

"I want to see Miss Crown as soon as possible, Webster," he said.

"Do you suppose she will go up in the air if I mention the fact that I know she was with Thane yesterday up in that old house? It's a rather ticklish thing to spring on her if she--"

"It's all right," interrupted Charlie. "I talked with her about it last night. She had no idea he was coming there. He told her he saw her from across the pasture and hustled over. She was surprised almost out of her skin when he popped in on her. She tells me she ordered him out of the house."

The detective was thoughtful. "I wonder if it has occurred to Miss Crown that Thane might have mistaken her for some one else at that distance."

"Not so's you'd notice it," declared Charlie. "He knew it was Alix all right. She isn't in any doubt on that score."

"It begins to take shape," mused Gilfillan. "He didn't wait for her, that's all."

"What say?"

"I was just thinking," replied the other. "Where is Thane at the present moment, Webster?"

"He just went off in an automobile with d.i.c.k Hurdle and a couple of fellows to stretch one of Joe Hart's big fish nets across the river down at the Narrows, five or six miles below here."

"Would you mind inviting me up to your room at the Tavern for a little while, Webster?"

"Well, I was going down to the ferry. There are half a dozen skiffs down--"

"See here, Webster, as I understand it, my real job is to find out all I can about this chap Thane. I am really working for you, not for Miss Crown, although she is putting up the money. I am just as thoroughly convinced as you are that Thane staged that masked robber business himself. It's an old gag, especially with lovers--and occasionally with husbands."

Charlie grinned sheepishly, a guilty flush staining his rubicund face.

"I guess I might as well confess that I was guilty of something of the sort when I was about seventeen," he said. "That's how I came to figger out that maybe he was up to the same kind of heroism."

"Nearly every kid has done the same thing. It's boy nature."

"I reckon that's right. I fixed it for a boy friend of mine to jump out of a dark place one night when I was walkin' home from a church sociable with my girl. He had false whiskers on. I helped him glue them on,--and he had an awful time getting 'em off. Course when he jumped out and growled 'hands up,' I just sailed into him and the fur flew for a few seconds. Then he run like a whitehead.

It didn't work out very well, however. That kid's sister got onto the trick and told my girl about it, and--well, I almost had to leave town. But it ain't a game for a grown-up man to play, and that's what I think this feller Thane has been pulling."

"What you want to find out, before it's too late, is whether Thane is all that he professes to be," said the other. "Well, I'm simply sitting tight on the job, stalling along until I hear from our people in New York. They have cabled England to find out whether he was connected with the British air forces. Now, what I want to do is to get into that fellow's room for ten or fifteen minutes.

Can you fix it?"

"It--it wouldn't be legal," protested Charlie. "You've got to get out a search warrant."

"My dear fellow, I'm not planning to steal anything," exclaimed Gilfillan. "I merely want to get into his room by mistake. That happens frequently,--you know."

Charlie was finally persuaded. He cast an apprehensive glance down the road leading to the ferry, searched the Main Street for observers, and then led the way over to the practically deserted Tavern.

Half an hour later Mr. Gilfillan re-entered Charlie's room.

"Remember I don't know where you've been or what you were up to,"

warned the fat man firmly. "I'm not a party to this nefarious--"

"Righto!" said the detective cheerily. "Your skirts are clear. They are immaculate. Let's beat it."

"Well, what did you find out?" inquired Charlie, when they were in the street once more. He was bursting with curiosity.

"In as much as you don't know where I was or what I've been doing, it will not compromise you if I say that I found a thirty-eight calibre revolver with three empty sh.e.l.ls in the cylinder. I also found a theatrical make-up box, with grease paints, gauze, and all that. Also currency amounting to about three hundred dollars.

Nothing incriminating, nothing actually crooked. Simply circ.u.mstantial as relating to recent events in your midst, Mr. Webster."

"Makes it look mighty certain that he was the feller with the mask, don't it? Only three shots were fired, you know. I've been thinking a lot about what you said awhile ago. You don't think that he had anything to do with--with putting the Vick girl out of the way?

You spoke about him being mistaken in the woman."

"He had nothing to do with it, Webster. I told you I saw a figure in the pasture after he had gone into the house. If it was the Vick girl, she was certainly alive then. He went straight home after leaving that house. He didn't go out of the Tavern again last night, that's positive. Now, what I want to find out is this: was the girl in love with him? Was there anything between them? If she's at the bottom of the river down there, it's a plain case of suicide, my friend, and people do not take their own lives unless there's a mighty good reason. With a young girl it's usually a case of unrequited love,--or worse. According to that letter Miss Miller had from New York, Thane is not above betraying a girl. Of course, if the Vick girl is dead and left nothing behind to implicate Thane, it will be out of the question to charge him with being even indirectly responsible for her death."

"The main thing," said Charlie, who had turned a shade paler during this matter-of-fact, cold-blooded a.n.a.lysis, "is to keep Alix Crown from falling into his clutches. He's a bad egg, that feller is, and he's made up his mind to win her by fair means or foul."

"Well, if she falls for him after reading that lawyer's letter and when she hears what I believe to be the truth about that heroic episode the other night,--why, she ought to get what's coming to her, that's all I have to say," said Mr. Gilfillan flatly. "I've discovered one thing, Mr. Webster. If a woman makes up her mind to marry a man, h.e.l.l-fire and brimstone can't stop her. The older I get and the more I see of women, the more I am convinced that vice is its own reward. I guess we'd better stroll down to the river and see what's doing."

"I've been thinking," said Charlie as they walked along, "that if Thane wasn't in the British Army and wasn't in our army, then he must be a slacker and wanted by the government for--"

"Nothing doing on that line. You forget he was crippled long before the war. He couldn't get by a medical board. They'd turn him down in a second. If he was in this country at the time of the draft, he would have had no trouble getting an exemption. What I can't understand is why he, a New Yorker, should be hiding out here in the jungles of Indiana. There's something queer about that, my friend."