They halted beside the car, and Griswell stared morbidly at the grim house. Its dusty panes were empty and blank; but they did not seem blind to him. It seemed to him that ghastly eyes were fixed hungrily on him through those darkened panes. Buckner repeated his question.
"Yes. Be careful. There's a snake on the seat--or there was."
"Not there now," grunted Buckner, tying his horse and pulling an electric torch out of the saddle-bag.
"Well, let's have a look."
He strode up the broken brick-walk as matter-of-factly as if he were paying a social call on friends.
Griswell followed close at his heels, his heart pounding suffocatingly. A scent of decay and moldering vegetation blew on the faint wind, and Griswell grew faint with nausea, that rose from a frantic abhorrence of these black woods, these ancient plantation houses that hid forgotten secrets of slavery and bloody pride and mysterious intrigues. He had thought of the South as a sunny, lazy land washed by soft breezes laden with spice and warm blossoms, where life ran tranquilly to the rhythm of black folk singing in sun-bathed cottonfields. But now he had discovered another, unsuspected side--a dark, brooding, fear-haunted side, and the discovery repelled him.
The oaken door sagged as it had before. The blackness of the interior was intensified by the beam of Buckner's light playing on the sill. That beam sliced through the darkness of the hallway and roved up the stair, and Griswell held his breath, clenching his fists. But no shape of lunacy leered down at them.
Buckner went in, walking light as a cat, torch in one hand, gun in the other.
As he swung his light into the room across from the stairway, Griswell cried out--and cried out again, almost fainting with the intolerable sickness at what he saw. A trail of blood drops led across the floor, crossing the blankets Branner had occupied, which lay between the door and those in which Griswell had lain. And Griswell's blankets had a terrible occupant. John Branner lay there, face down, his cleft head revealed in merciless clarity in the steady light. His outstretched hand still gripped the haft of a hatchet, and the blade was imbedded deep in the blanket and the floor beneath, just where Griswell's head had lain when he slept there.
A momentary rush of blackness engulfed Griswell. He was not aware that he staggered, or that Buckner caught him. When he could see and hear again, he was violently sick and hung his head against the mantel, retching miserably.
Buckner turned the light full on him, making him blink. Buckner's voice came from behind the blinding radiance, the man himself unseen.
"Griswell, you've told me a yarn that's hard to believe. I saw something chasin' you, but it might have been a timber wolf, or a mad dog.
"If you're holdin' back anything, you better spill it. What you told me won't hold up in any court. You're bound to be accused of killin' your partner. I'll have to arrest you. If you'll give me the straight goods now, it'll make it easier. Now, didn't you kill this fellow, Branner?
"Wasn't it something like this: you quarreled, he grabbed a hatchet and swung at you, but you dodged and then let him have it?"
Griswell sank down and hid his face in his hands, his head swimming.
"Great God, man, I didn't murder John! Why, we've been friends ever since we were children in school together. I've told you the truth. I don't blame you for not believing me. But God help me, it is the truth!"
The light swung back to the gory head again, and Griswell closed his eyes.
He heard Buckner grunt.
"I believe this hatchet in his hand is the one he was killed with. Blood and brains plastered on the blade, and hairs stickin' to it--hairs exactly the same color as his. This makes it tough for you, Griswell."
"How so?" the New Englander asked dully.
"Knock any plea of self-defense in the head. Branner couldn't have swung at you with this hatchet after you split his skull with it. You must have pulled the ax out of his head, stuck it into the floor and clamped his fingers on it to make it look like he'd attacked you. And it would have been damned clever--if you'd used another hatchet."
"But I didn't kill him," groaned Griswell. "I have no intention of pleading self-defense."
"That's what puzzles me," Buckner admitted frankly, straightening. "What murderer would rig up such a crazy story as you've told me, to prove his innocence? Average killer would have told a logical yarn, at least. Hmmm! Blood drops leadin' from the door. The body was dragged--no, couldn't have been dragged. The floor isn't smeared. You must have carried it here, after killin' him in some other place. But in that case, why isn't there any blood on your clothes? Of course you could have changed clothes and washed your hands. But the fellow hasn't been dead long."
"He walked downstairs and across the room," said Griswell hopelessly. "He came to kill me. I knew he was coming to kill me when I saw him lurching down the stair. He struck where I would have been, if I hadn't awakened. That window--I burst out at it. You see it's broken."
"I see. But if he walked then, why isn't he walkin' now?"
"I don't know! I'm too sick to think straight. I've been fearing that he'd rise up from the floor where he lies and come at me again. When I heard that wolf running up the road after me, I thought it was John chasing me--John, running through the night with his bloody ax and his bloody head, and his death-grin!"
His teeth chattered as he lived that horror over again.
Buckner let his light play across the floor.
"The blood drops lead into the hall. Come on. We'll follow them."
Griswell cringed. "They lead upstairs."
Buckner's eyes were fixed hard on him.
"Are you afraid to go upstairs, with me?"
Griswell's face was gray.
"Yes. But I'm going, with you or without you. The thing that killed poor John may still be hiding up there."
"Stay behind me," ordered Buckner. "If anything jumps us, I'll take care of it. But for your own sake, I warn you that I shoot quicker than a cat jumps, and I don't often miss. If you've got any ideas of layin'
me out from behind, forget them."
"Don't be a fool!" Resentment got the better of his apprehension, and this outburst seemed to reassure Buckner more than any of his protestations of innocence.
"I want to be fair," he said quietly. "I haven't indicted and condemned you in my mind already. If only half of what you're tellin' me is the truth, you've been through a hell of an experience, and I don't want to be too hard on you. But you can see how hard it is for me to believe all you've told me."
Griswell wearily motioned for him to lead the way, unspeaking. They went out into the hall, paused at the landing. A thin string of crimson drops, distinct in the thick dust, led up the steps.
"Man's tracks in the dust," grunted Buckner. "Go slow, I've got to be sure of what I see, because we're obliteratin' them as we go up. Hmmm! One set goin' up, one comin' down. Same man. Not your tracks.
Branner was a bigger man than you are. Blood drops all the way--blood on the bannisters like a man had laid his bloody hand there--a smear of stuff that looks--brains. Now what--"
"He walked down the stair, a dead man," shuddered Griswell. "Groping with one hand--the other gripping the hatchet that killed him."
"Or was carried," muttered the sheriff. "But if somebody carried him--where are the tracks? "
They came out into the upper hallway, a vast, empty space of dust and shadows where time-crusted windows repelled the moonlight and the ring of Buckner's torch seemed inadequate. Griswell trembled like a leaf. Here, in the darkness and horror, John Branner had died.
"Somebody whistled up here," he muttered. "John came, as if he were being called."
Buckner's eyes were blazing strangely in the light.
"The footprints lead down the hall," he muttered. "Same as on the stair--one set going, one coming. Same prints--Judas! "