"I"ll verify it," he explained. "If some one is really anxious, I"ll get the car and take a scout around."
But he received no satisfaction from the Bullard girl, who, he reported, listened stoically and then said she was sorry, but she did not remember who had called. On his reminding her that she must have a record, she countered with the flat statement that there had been no call for us that night.
Willie looked thoughtful when he returned to the library. "There"s a queer story back of all this," he said. "I think I"ll get the car and scout around."
"He is armed, Willie," I protested.
"He doesn"t want to shoot me, or he could have done it," was his answer.
"I"ll just take a look around, and come back to report."
It was half-past three by the time he was ready to go. He was, as he observed, rather sketchily clad, but the night was warm. I saw him off, and locked the door behind him. Then I went into the library to wait and to put things to rights while I waited.
The dawn is early in August, and although it was not more than half-past four when Willie came back, it was about daylight by that time. I went to the door and watched him bring the car to a standstill. He shook his head when he saw me.
"Absolutely nothing," he said. "It was a ruse to get me out of the house, of course. I"ve run the whole way between here and town twice."
"But that could not have taken an hour," I protested.
"No," he said. "I met the doctor--what"s his name?--the local M.D.
anyhow--footing it out of the village to a case, and I took him to his destination. He has a car, it seems, but it"s out of order. Interesting old chap," he added, as I led the way into the house. "Didn"t know me from Adam, but opened up when he found who I was."
I had prepared the coffee machine and carried the tray to the library.
While I lighted the lamp, he stood, whistling softly, and thoughtfully.
At last he said:
"Look here, Aunt Agnes, I think I"m a good bit of a fool, but--some time this morning I wish you would call up Thomas Jenkins, on the Elmburg road, and find out if any one is sick there."
But when I stared at him, he only laughed sheepishly. "You can see how your suspicious disposition has undermined and ruined my once trusting nature," he scoffed.
He took his coffee, and then, stripping off his ulster, departed for bed. I stopped to put away the coffee machine, and with Maggie in mind, to hang up his motor-coat. It was then that the flashlight fell out. I picked it up. It was shaped like a revolver.
I stopped in Willie"s room on my way to my own, and held it out to him.
"Where did you get that?" I asked.
"Good heavens!" he said, raising himself on his elbow. "It belongs to the doctor. He gave it to me to examine the fan belt. I must have dropped it into my pocket."
And still I was nowhere. Suppose I had touched this flashlight at the foot of the stairs and mistaken it for a revolver. Suppose that the doctor, making his way toward the village and finding himself pursued, had faced about and pretended to be leaving it? Grant, in a word, that Doctor Lingard himself had been our night visitor--what then? Why had he done it? What of the telephone-call, urging me to search the road? Did some one realize what was happening, and take this method of warning us and sending us after the fugitive?
I knew the Thomas Jenkins farm on the Elmsburg road. I had, indeed, bought vegetables and eggs from Mr. Jenkins himself. That morning, as early as I dared, I called the Jenkins farm. Mr. Jenkins himself would bring me three dozen eggs that day. They were a little torn up out there, as Mrs. Jenkins had borne a small daughter at seven A.M.
When I told Willie, he was evidently relieved. "I"m glad of it," he said heartily. "The doctor"s a fine old chap, and I"d hate to think he was mixed up in any shady business."
He was insistent, that day, that I give up the house. He said it was not safe, and I was inclined to agree with him. But although I did not tell him of it, I had even more strongly than ever the impression that something must be done to help Miss Emily, and that I was the one who must do it.
Yet, in the broad light of day, with the sunshine pouring into the rooms, I was compelled to confess that Willie"s theory was more than upheld by the facts. First of all was the character of Miss Emily as I read it, sternly conscientious, proud, and yet gentle. Second, there was the connection of the Bullard girl with the case. And third, there was the invader of the night before, an unknown quant.i.ty where so much seemed known, where a situation involving Miss Emily alone seemed to call for no one else.
Willie put the matter flatly to me as he stood in the hall, drawing on his driving gloves.
"Do you want to follow it up?" he asked. "Isn"t it better to let it go?
After all, you have only rented the house. You haven"t taken over its history, or any responsibility but the rent."
"I think Miss Emily needs to be helped," I said, rather feebly.
"Let her friends help her. She has plenty of them. Besides, isn"t it rather a queer way to help her, to try to fasten a murder on her?"
I could not explain what I felt so strongly--that Miss Emily could only be helped by being hurt, that whatever she was concealing, the long concealment was killing her. That I felt in her--it is always difficult to put what I felt about Miss Emily into words--that she both hoped for and dreaded desperately the light of the truth.
But if I was hardly practical when it came to Miss Emily, I was rational enough in other things. It is with no small pride--but without exultation, for in the end it cost too much--that I point to the solution of one issue as my own.
With Willie gone, Maggie and I settled down to the quiet tenure of our days. She informed me, on the morning after that eventful night, that she had not closed an eye after one o"clock! She came into the library and asked me if I could order her some sleeping-powders.
"Fiddlesticks!" I said sharply. "You slept all night. I was up and around the house, and you never knew it."
"Honest to heaven, Miss Agnes, I never slep" at all. I heard a horse galloping", like it was runnin" off, and it waked me for good."
And after a time I felt that, however mistaken Maggie had been about her night"s sleep, she was possibly correct about the horse.
"He started to run about the stable somewhere," she said. "You can smile if you want. That"s the heaven"s truth. And he came down the drive on the jump and out onto the road."
"We can go and look for hoof-marks," I said, and rose. But Maggie only shook her head.
"It was no real horse, Miss Agnes," she said. "You"ll find nothing.
Anyhow, I"ve been and looked. There"s not a mark."
But Maggie was wrong. I found hoof-prints in plenty in the turf beside the drive, and a track of them through the lettuce-bed in the garden.
More than that, behind the stable I found where a horse had been tied and had broken away. A piece of worn strap still hung there. It was sufficiently clear, then, that whoever had broken into the house had come on horseback and left afoot. But many people in the neighborhood used horses. The clue, if clue it can be called, got me nowhere.
IV
For several days things remained in statu quo. Our lives went on evenly.
The telephone was at our service, without any of its past vagaries.
Maggie"s eyes ceased to look as if they were being pushed out from behind, and I ceased to waken at night and listen for untoward signs.
Willie telephoned daily. He was frankly uneasy about my remaining there.
"You know something that somebody resents your knowing," he said, a day or two after the night visitor. "It may become very uncomfortable for you."
And, after a day or two, I began to feel that it was being made uncomfortable for me. I am a social being; I like people. In the city my neighborly instincts have died of a sort of brick wall apathy, but in the country it comes to life again. The instinct of gregariousness is as old as the first hamlets, I daresay, when prehistoric man ceased to live in trees, and banded together for protection from the wild beasts that walked the earth.
The village became unfriendly. It was almost a matter of a night. One day the postmistress leaned on the shelf at her window and chatted with me. The next she pa.s.sed out my letters with hardly a glance. Mrs. Graves did not see me at early communion on Sunday morning. The hackman was busy when I called him. It was intangible, a matter of omission, not commission. The doctor"s wife, who had asked me to tea, called up and regretted that she must go to the city that day.
I sat down then and took stock of things. Did the village believe that Miss Emily must be saved from me? Did the village know the story I was trying to learn, and was it determined I should never find out the truth? And, if this were so, was the village right or was I? They would save Miss Emily by concealment, while I felt that concealment had failed, and that only the truth would do. Did the village know, or only suspect? Or was it not the village at all, but one or two people who were determined to drive me away?
My theories were rudely disturbed shortly after that by a visit from Martin Sprague. I fancied that Willie had sent him, but he evaded my question.