He had made a swift, but accurate tracing of the muddy footprint, copied it painstakingly, verified it; then stuck one of the copies into his pocketbook and handed the other to Stevenson. “While Crane and I are off, see if you can find, in the marsh, any footprints or tracks to fit this.”
“What for?” Stevenson laughed. “It’s not worth it. Why, you don’t figure this is the first time I’ve seen tracks like these on my floors, do you? I’ve had to speak sharp time and again to Mrs. Hollifield and Mary about their wiping their shoes or taking off their rubbers at the door instead of tracking in.
“They always said they’d never been near the marsh and hadn’t made the tracks, but had left them there for me to see, so I’d know — whatever that meant. More than once, I told ’em to own up, instead of trying to blame it off on some one else when they’d made ’em all the time. And what possessed ’em to walk in the marsh, with all our nice lawn to — what’s wrong now?”
“Nothing,” said Ruggles. “I’ve just discovered that you keep a cat and are very fond of it, since you feed it on the rug in this room here.”
“Cat?” cried Stevenson. “Cat? No! I don’t keep a cat. Why—”
“Oh, just because of this saucer of milk here,” said Ruggles, “over here back of the couch, where you had put the suit case, Mr. Stevenson. You see, Crane,” Ruggles went on, turning to me, “he found the suit case too heavy to lift over the back of the couch, and the couch was too heavy for him to shove; so to get the suit case out, he had to open it and take out some of the contents; and, even then, it was quite a struggle for him, quite an effort.
“He hasn’t much physical strength, of course, and we can almost see him heaving and working and shoving and hauling to get the heavy suit case in a position where he could open it while standing with it behind the couch where the space was so cramped.
“But finally he got it open and the stuff out, then he scrambled over the back of the couch here,” indicating the mud stains, “then repacked the suit case, added to it, of course, his most precious possession, and left the house by the way he had come, as usual.”
“As usual?” Stevenson demanded. “What do you mean?”
“I was wrong,” Ruggles admitted; “he left in more of a hurry than usual, for he dropped, without being aware of it, something he needs, as he knows very well — something he will almost surely come back for to-night, if I’m not mistaken. Put this in one of your pockets and keep it about you until Crane and I come back, after lunch.”
Ruggles picked up from the rug back of the couch, and handed to Stevenson a small, pearlwhite object, pear-shaped, with small, irregular outcroppings and coarse little roots at its rounded bottom.
“What’s this?” Stevenson cried, staring at it intently.
“Oh, just a garlic bulb,” Ruggles said easily. “They don’t cost much, but they’re very hard to get, in this big house of yours, or the Hathaways’ next door, or on the — marsh.”
Then as Stevenson continued to stare at the small, pearlwhite bulb, Ruggles went on: “The man who lost that garlic bulb will come back here after it. So be careful! Come, Crane. Time we started!”
Ruggles and I left the room, Ruggles calling back over his shoulder: “Oh, one thing more: I wouldn’t use that saucer again until you’d washed it well with soap and boiling water — remember, boiling!”
Chapter VI
Dead of Fear
At the Deersdale station we found, as we had hoped, Mrs. Hollifield, the ex-housekeeper, and, as we had not counted on, Mary, the ex-housemaid. Their hysteria had passed, more, I believe, from their escape from the scene of their terrifying experience than from the interval of time which had elapsed.
But though their stories coincided from start to finish, the two women could not give us a single clew, as I looked at it; they had no idea who or what the mysterious being was who had appeared before them in broad daylight and dominated their wills and left them unconscious; except for the fact that he had mud from the marsh on his feet, they had no idea where he had come from, or where he had gone to with the suit case which he had taken from Stevenson’s study.
They had never seen the man before.
As soon as we got to the station, we got hold of them and, leading them off to the distant end of the platform where there was no one to overhear us, we let them talk until they got more or less talked out, if there is such an expression.
But as I have just said, the total of it all was disappointing; they simply repeated, over and over, what Mrs. Hollifield had told Ruggles and Stevenson and me earlier.
The only new fact which they volunteered was that, as Stevenson had said, the muddy tracks had been found on the kitchen floor several times before, and always when Mary and Mrs. Hollifield had come down to start the fire, the first thing in the morning. They had always spoken to Mr. Stevenson about the tracks, and he had always believed the tracks had been made by his two domestic servants.
“But, honest, they weren’t ours,” Mary insisted.
“No, they weren’t,” corroborated Mrs. Hollifield.
“Here comes the train,” Ruggles said, looking up the track; “we must walk up the platform a little, and you’d better not walk so close to the edge. There’s something you might have mentioned, but probably you didn’t think of it: you didn’t notice these tracks, I mean there weren’t any of these muddy tracks until about three weeks ago, when the Hathaways took the house next to yours. Is that so?”
“Why, yes,” said Mrs. Hollifield; “we noticed them first then. But how did you know it?”
“And,” said Ruggles, as the train came to a stop, “this strange-looking man, who came into the kitchen this morning, was very slender and short; his hair was straight, rather long, and a dull black, like his eyes, and his face and hands were about the color of strong coffee that’s got a little cream in it — not black, but a very dark tan.”
“Yes,” Mrs. Hollifield said shakily, while Mary gasped. “You don’t see him anywhere on this platform, do you?”
“No, he’s not here,” Ruggles said. “Don’t worry! And don’t tell any one about him.” He dashed down the address they said they should be at in New York, then helped them up the steps of the train.
“I’ve got to go to town,” he amazed me by saying. “I’ll drive out in our own car, so don’t bother trying to meet any train for me.” He swung himself aboard and I saw him turn into the “smoker.”
As I drove Stevenson’s car slowly back to his house, I tried to work out some clear-cut explanation of what the two women had told Ruggles and me, but the more I tried, the less sure I felt of the accuracy of my deductions.
When Stevenson finally unlocked the front door — I had decided that the bell was out of order — his face was white, and he locked the door instantly after admitting me, then caught my arm like a vice.
“Heard what’s happened next door? You couldn’t. One of the servants found dead, in that house, this morning. The doctor’s been there all the morning, trying to do something, or find out what—” Stevenson moistened his lips — “there’s no sign of any wound or disease or anything,” he said. “The man’s just dead, as he sat in the doorway at the back of the house, taking the air before going to bed.”
“He may have had a bad heart,” I suggested.
“No, the doctor said his heart was all right. He had examined him only two weeks or so ago for additional life insurance and found him perfectly sound. The fellow was about twenty-six or seven and one of the most active, powerful men the doctor bad ever seen; besides that, the doctor says, there are half a dozen medals for marksmanship on the walls of the fellow’s room, a little one opening off old Hathaway’s.