“An’ me only three weeks off the rockpile,” Huckins sighed.
“Diggin’. What diggin’?”
Jay Rutherford’s voice dropped almost to a whisper. “We want you to take us to this Davis woman’s grave. We want to open it.”
“You want—?”
“You get the idea,” the fat man grinned.
“Why dog your hides!” old Ira shrilled. “You can’t do that!”
“We can’t?”
“ ’Course you can’t! It’s agin the law!”
A low laugh shook Jay Rutherford’s great stomach. “I’d certainly hate to break the law, Mr. Slater, but, on the other hand...”
“Why you want to open Nancy Davis’s grave, anyhow?”
“That’s our affair. All you have to do is point out the grave to us and take your fifty bucks and keep your trap shut.”
Ira pursed his lips. The shadows were deepening; on a far ridge a hound-dog was yelping mournfully. Suddenly the old sexton yapped:
“By glory, I know what you are! You’re body-stealers for some doctor school—!”
“Shut up.”
Ira kept muttering.
“Shut up, I say! We’re not body-snatchers. We’re — gem-dealers.”
“What in tarnation is that?”
Jay Rutherford told him. “As gem-dealers, Mr. Slater, as connoisseurs you might say, it saddens us to think of a beautiful string of pearls being buried from the sight of day. It doesn’t seem right. Those pearls won’t do anyone any good — buried six feet in the ground. So we want to dig them up.”
“You fellers are plumb fools,” Ira shrilled. “I know Jasper Davis well — mebby too well. He’s a mean old blow-hard. Nancy was worth a hundred of the likes of him. That warn’t a ten thousand dollar necklace. Myself, I doubt ye if it cost a hundred — I think it was a fake. If it hadn’t been a fake, old Jasper would’ve never put it into the ground with Nancy.”
“You’re crazy,” Jay Rutherford gruffed. “They’d never printed it in the paper if those pearls were phoney.”
“Mebby I’m crazy and mebby I’m not,” old Ira whined. “But I know one thing — Jasper Davis is a windy old tightwad. Never catch him puttin’ ten thousand in the ground. He said he did, but that was just to fool folks into thinkin’ he loved Nancy more’n he did.”
“I think,” Jay Rutherford said, “we’ll have a look, anyway. That offer still goes. All you have to do is take us to the grave. Easiest fifty bucks you ever made.”
Ira exclaimed, “I wouldn’t open Nancy’s grave fer the president of this land! You can take your fifty dollars and—”
“And what?” inquired Jay Rutherford, slipping an automatic from his pocket.
“Nothin’,” Ira said, with a nervous shrug.
“Now,” the fat man said smoothly, “you’re being sensible. Where’s your spade?”
“It’s there by the toolhouse door.”
“Let’s go. The sooner we’re done, the better.”
“I’ll say so,” Otis Koss put in, glancing round uneasily. “I don’t like this place.”
Ira shuffled toward the toolhouse. The sun had long since fled, and the bright moon poured frosty light into the valleys that fell away from this hilltop burying-ground.
“Give Huckins the spade,” Jay Rutherford Commanded.
“I ain’t in no hurry for it,” Huckins growled.
Ira handed it over. Then he said. “I’d better warn ye...”
“Warn us? What about?”
“There’s a haunt in these parts.”
“A what?”
“Some calls it a ghost. I calls it a haunt. I never seen it, but it’s been seen.”
“Nonsense.”
Very low, Ira replied, “Well, jest thought I’d warn ye. Ain’t no harm in that, I guess... Fact is, that’s why I didn’t take you fellers up on your offer. I ain’t never stayed here after dark. Ain’t money enough to make me...”
“What’s all this crazy talk!” Jay Rutherford demanded.
Otis Koss said uneasily, “Jay, I think we’d be smart to scram. To get on to Omaha.”
“Me too!” exclaimed Huckins.
“Boys,” Jay Rutherford boomed heartily, “don’t let this crazy old fool rattle you.”
Ira sucked his lips. “I know what I know,” he said darkly. “Thirty year ago, old Sam Evans was sexton here. He stayed once after nightfall, an’ he was found the next day. Dead. Not a mark on him. It was the White Man that done it. I took Sam’s job. Been at it thirty year. An’ this is my first time here after nightfall.”
Ira’s voice melted into the hush of the October evening. Far in the distance, down the misty valley, the evening passenger train whistled. A mile away, the hound-dog was still wailing at the moon.
Jay Rutherford tried to laugh. “You don’t expect us to believe that yarn, do you?”
“Don’t expect nothin’ of nobody.” Ira spat into the frost-crisped grass. “Jest warnin’ ye. It’s been seen, as I said. By several people. By Tim Bennett’s boy, fer one. Tim lives a piece down the road.” Ira jerked his head in the direction away from the village. “Jest a few weeks ago Tim’s boy, Charley, was cuttin’ through here after nightfall. He seen it. Said it was a man dressed in white, comin’ through that gate and along the driveway where your car stands. Charley ran. Don’t blame him. You couldn’t get him in here now after nightfall fer nothin’.”
The fat man’s gaze swept the driveway which ran bright in the quicksilver moonlight to the road.
“We — ought to — scram...” Otis Koss mumbled.
Jay Rutherford waved the automatic. “Get going. Where’s the grave?”
Ira Slater shrugged and led the way to a mound of fresh clay in an unmarked lot by the driveway.
“There it is.”
“Start digging,” Jay Rutherford told Huckins.
The chauffeur groaned, spat on his palms, and plunged the spade into the loosely heaped clay.
“I might as well be on the rockpile,” he muttered. “I don’t like this place, anyway... All these dead guys in the ground — well, it puts a man to thinkin’...”
“Never,” Jay Rutherford told him emphatically, “think. You weren’t made for it, Huckins, and you’re apt to strain something.”
The moon rose higher; the silhouettes of the yew trees were sharply cut against the silver-blue sky. In the distant valley, the tiny lights of the village twinkled yellow through the mist that bewitched the autumn night. The grave deepened. Jay Rutherford produced a flask and passed it around.
“No thank ye,” old Ira snapped.
“That hits the spot,” Otis Koss declared, shivering a little. “This place gives me the willies.”
Huckins took a great swig. “Whee — zowie!” he exclaimed, rubbing his stomach. “That’s got a kick like a shot-gun.” He drank again. “Makes me feel like singin’,” he said. “Ever heard me sing, Jay?”
“My name,” said Jay Rutherford Longworth with great dignity, “is Mr. Longworth. And if you ever start singing, you’re fired. If I want a canary, I’ll get one in a cage.”
“That was me!” declared Huckins. “A canary in a cage! The boys at Michigan City said they never heard such a voice.”
“Dig!” ordered Jay Rutherford. “Quit leaning on that spade. Dig!”
“Aw right, aw right! But it just goes to show how a guy with talent can get bum breaks.”
Ira stood silent at the edge of the grave, shrewdly observing his captors. Jay Rutherford did not drink; his automatic never wavered from the old sexton. Otis Koss kept twisting his head and nervously snapping his fingers. Then, from a patch of timber-land off to the east, a long wail ascended to the frosty moon. Tremulous and ghostly, it floated over the graveyard like the lament of a soul forever lost.