“This little fellow is a born investigator of smells, noises, and a thousand other things which his miraculously keen senses reveal to him, but of which we never dream of the existence. He is brave and yet, generally, cautious.
“I mean that though he sometimes rushes on a snake so eagerly that he gets wounded, his most frequent and certain mode of proceeding is by a cautious, quick dart either on the head or the neck of the reptile, disabling it by breaking its back in one bite. You can see what a valuable little guardsman he will be to old Mr. Hathaway, if only the father and son will consent to accept him.” Ruggles stopped abruptly, for the door bell had rung. “I wonder if that can be young Hathaway, back so soon?” he said.
We gave up, for the moment, the search for fresh meat for the little ichneumon, and hastened to let Hathaway in. His face, as we led him into the living room, told the tale.
“My father,” he began at once, in a tone and with a manner very different from his earlier visit, “asks me to express to you his gratitude for your interest in his personal safety and your offer to help him in any way in your power. But he asks me to tell you as well, Mr. Ruggles, that he cannot accept your offer. I have done all that I can to try to induce him to admit you to his confidence; but he is immovable. He now will trust no one!”
“Can you let me have two minutes with him — one?” Ruggles said with deep feeling. “Why did he come here to Stevenson’s garden, seeking garlic bulbs? It was because the garlic bulbs which your father ordinarily kept close to his bed every night, had been mysteriously taken away. I have not been in your house. You are the only member of the household I have talked with; but, I ask you, is not what I have just said the truth? Yes or no, Mr. Hathaway?
“Hasn’t your father, back as far as you can remember, kept a jar of garlic bulbs by his bed every single night? When they were taken away, has not he always showed terror immediately on discovering the loss of the bulbs? And when he has acquired fresh bulbs, has he not always showed as mysterious but as evident relief? That’s the truth, I say! Isn’t it?”
“Yes, it’s true as that we’re standing here,” said young Hathaway. “But how could you know it?”
“Have you ever asked him why he kept the bulbs by his bed every night of his life?”
“Yes, and he said that it was simply a habit of his.”
“But it was not habit which made your father begin to insist that you, too, have garlic bulbs by your bed, since arriving here, three weeks ago,” said Ruggles.
Young Hathaway stared at him. “You’ve never been in our house, as you say, or talked with any of us except me! And yet you know, in some manner I can’t account for, about my father’s passion for garlic bulbs. Tell me what has been puzzling me for years, Mr. Ruggles: why does my father insist on having these bulbs in his bedroom and in my own?”
“Because,” said Ruggles slowly, “the natives of India believe that the odor from the bulbs offends the delicate mechanism of the olfactory nerves and nasal organs of the karait and cobra — with the result that these deadly reptiles will not go into a room where garlic bulbs are kept. So the natives keep garlic bulbs as a protection against these most dangerous snakes.”
“But my father—”
“He is taking this means to protect himself, as best he can, against the karait. Similarly, he believes he is protecting you.”
Young Hathaway put his hand to his forehead in a bewildered way. “Can you tell me more? It will help me to — protect my father—”
“I will tell you this much more now,” said Ruggles, “because it is most important for you to know it: the reptile which killed your servant, Tom, and now threatens your father and yourself with the same terrible fate, is beyond question the karait.
“It cannot be a cobra, for the relentless being, who has brought this snake here, carries it about in a hollowed-out bamboo rod, i. e., a slender, little bamboo rod from which he has hollowed out the pith at the joints; and no member of the cobra family is sufficiently small to be carried in such a space. Keep your eyes open every instant you can, night and day, for a dark-skinned, small, slender, black-haired, black-eyed man who carries in his hand a thin bamboo walking stick.”
“Your description fits our Japanese butler, except for the bamboo walking stick,” said young Hathaway. “Could he be—”
“No, your father’s enemy and yours is from India, and India alone. From there, he has come here to wreak his vengeance on your father and has brought the deadly little karait as executioner.”
Young Hathaway started back and his cheeks paled. “Have you seen this man and his — snake?”
“No, but during Mr. Stevenson’s absence, the man came into the kitchen of this house with his bamboo rod in his hand. The housekeeper and the cook saw him, and they saw the snake’s eyes, without recognizing them as such. But even so, the sight and the man’s exertion of his strange, hypnotic power, threw the two servants into unconsciousness.
“That was the first time and the only time they have seen him; but there is strong reason for believing he entered this house, in the night, several times before, probably to steal food for his snake and himself. He comes and he goes again, soundless as a ghost.
“He may be in this house now, crouched motionless as a huge bat in one of the blackest corners of the huge old attic, or where the shadows are deepest in the cellar beneath — waiting for the night to come — always waiting for the long-sought opportunity to strike your father down.”
“Good God!” cried young Hathaway. “If only I could convince my father of this creature’s existence — this inhuman devil and his snake—”
“No need to do that,” Ruggles said somberly: “your father knows of their existence only too well, as I have tried to make clear to you.”
“Do you mean that my father knows this Indian native?”
“Beyond any doubt.”
“But I tell you my father has never been in India!”
“Before your birth, your father undoubtedly lived there long!”
Ruggles looked at the clock on the mantelpiece. “You have been here too long already. Go back to your father and tell him all or nothing — just as you see fit — of what I have said. Try to persuade him to let Crane and me come and spend the night in your house.
“And,” Ruggles added, as we entered the living room on the way to the front door of the house, “take with you this ichneumon, or, as many people prefer to call it, this mongoose: he, too, is an enemy of the karait, as your father knows. Your father may consent to receive the mongoose, though refusing to accept my offices.”
“A mongoose!” said young Hathaway. “May I see it a moment, before I take it back with me to our house?”
“Certainly,” said Ruggles, undoing the string and lifting the cover of the box.
Then Ruggles started back with a fierce cry, and, thrusting his hand into the box, he brought out the limp and lifeless body of the mongoose, whose head had been crushed within the past few moments by a relentless hand, for the soft, flexible body was still warm.
The One-Time Criminal
by Louise Rice
Criminologists and detectives fail to explain the ingenuity and fiendishness of this peaceful citizen in his only crime