"What for?"
"This young lady saw a man tied up down there."
The woman's eyes were not so drab as the rest of her. They examined Tyl with contempt and curiosity. "There's nobody in the cellar," she said. "I don't know what you're talking about.”
"But there is!" began Tyl.
Grandy's hand warned her to keep calm, reminded her that they were among the officers of the law and all would proceed in due order.
"Well take a look, if you don't mind," said Blake, and one felt that it would come to pass as he had said.
The woman surrendered to that certainty. "I guess I can't stop you" she said ungraciously.
The other uniformed man stood on guard where he was, there at the front door. The rest of them followed the woman into the house, down the dingy brown hall, past the doors to the sitting room, past a dining-room door. The cellar steps went down opposite here.
The woman opened the door and snapped on a light for them as if she said, "You fools!"
Tyl went down too.
There was a little furnace room, cluttered with old boxes, not neat. It smelled of stale wine and coal gas. Tyl looked up and saw the woman, standing above them with her hot, angry eyes fixed on Chief Blake's burly back.
There were two doors out of here, one to a laundry. Gahagen opened that and peered in, closed it again. They all turned to the second door. It was not locked. It led to a perfectly empty room.
"Any more rooms down here?" the chief said. His voice boomed.
"The cellar don't go under the hull house!" the woman called shrilly. "There's nobody down there! I told you!"
Mathilda stood in the empty little room and looked around at the stone walls. It was gloomy. Someone found the light. She blinked as the bare bulb sprang into glowing life.
"Where would the place be?" Chief Blake looked down at her. "Which side of the house, Miss Frazier, eh?"
"Mrs. Howard," said Grandy softly.
She felt her heart sink down—that sick, falling feeling. The taste of fear rose in her throat. Why did Grandy put that in? The fiction of her marriage? Why did he want them to think— She couldn't understand.
She moistened her lips. "It was right here," she said. Her voice was too thin. It piped up like a child's voice. "Here," she repeated, “because, don't you see, that's the window I broke?"
They all looked up. Sure enough. The window was broken.
"Now—uh—you say you saw him?" Chief Blake shifted around to face her—grill her, she thought.
"I couldn't see very well," she admitted, "but it was Francis, because he answered me."
"You talked to him, eh?"
“He couldn't talk, but—"
“But you say he answered. What do you mean by that, Miss—er—”
"He did. You see, he could make a kind of thudding noise somehow. Like a heavy tap on the floor. So-" She swallowed. It didn't even sound plausible to her. It sounded ridiculous, and yet it was true.
"Its true!" she cried aloud. "He did answer me! He pounded once for 'yes' and twice for no.' I asked if it was Francis!"
"Pounded, eh?" Chief Blake seemed to take what she said perfectly literally, and he looked about him.
Tom Gahagen said, "Maybe you weren't as smart as you thought you were, Luther. Could be, you were seen. Better search the whole place. . . . What d'ya say, Blake?"
"If the young lady's so sure—"
"I'm absolutely sure!" Mathilda told them desperately.
So the house was searched. She went along. She had to see it for herself. The cellar. They thumped the stone walls. They shifted the low pile of coal with a long shovel. Then the kitchen, cupboards, pantry. The dining room. She saw Gahagen lift the long tablecloth
and look under. It struck her as absurd, as if a man like Francis were a child, hiding from them. They searched the sitting room. Not there. They looked thoroughly into the clothes closet in the hall.
The woman of the house stood by, against walls. She followed along and stood contemptuously back and watched. She was arrogant and sulky and sure.
"There's nobody here," she kept saying.
They went upstairs. Three bedrooms, more closets, a bath—a cubbyhole off the hall. No living thing. No dead thing, either. No person at all. They asked about the attic. There was a ladder to let down, and they let it down and a man went up. He came back sneezing.
"Nobody up there," he said.
And that was all there was to the house.
Chief Blake looked sidewise at Tyl's white face. "Try the garage."
The garage was cold and vacant. Just a tin shack. Nobody, nothing in it.
The men poked about the little back yard, lifted the slanting cellar doors with sudden energy and let them down again, slowly. There was nobody in the house or on the grounds except the woman, who stood on the porch now to watch in contemptuous
silence.
"Well," said Gahagen. He let his shoulders fall helplessly. He looked at Mathilda. They all did.
"But I know he was here!" she said.
"He's not here now, miss," said one of the men.
"But he was. . . . Grandy!" she wailed for help.
"How long before you met Luther and sent him back to stand watch?" asked Gahagen sharply.
"Not long," she faltered. "A m-minute."
They shook their heads. They shrugged.
She wanted to scream.
"If you're through, I'd be obliged if you'd leave," the woman said, from the porch, her voice thin and dry with her contempt.
Tyl turned to her. "What happened?" she cried. "You know! . . . Mr, Gahagen, don't you see she must know? Why don't you make her tell?"
"Why, you—" The woman's eyes blazed. "Call me a liar?"
"Hush, hush," said Grandy. . . . "Tyl, darling, its possible you were mistaken."
She moistened her lips. "No."
The woman said, "Now you seen what you seen, you better all get out of here." She went indoors contemptuously.
Grandy looked at Gahagen. "Perhaps Mathildas overwrought—" His voice was gentle and sad.
"I'm not!" cried Tyl, knowing that the squeal of desperation in her tone denied her words. "I'm not." She tried to make it sound firm and sane.
"Oh, my dear"—in pity.
"Francis was here!”
"Hush."
Tyl thought, I won't scream. I wont cry. She said, "How could I have been mistaken? I told you about the candy."
"Candy? What candy was that, Miss Frazier—Mrs.—" Chief Blake would listen.
"Candy!" she cried. "That's how I trailed him! He dropped pieces of candy, like a paper chase. . . . They were some of your Dutch chocolates, Grandy. That's how I found the house. Did you think I went looking in every cellar window? Come out here to the front.
I'll show you." Her voice rang with new confidence.
But on the dull grass, just emerging from its winter brown, there was no glittering little heap of candies now. There was nothing there. Nothing on the grass anywhere.
They stood and looked at the ground. Gahagen scraped with his sole, made a mark.
Grandy said softly, "Come home, Tyl."
"No."
"He isn't here, dear. You saw that."
"But he was!" she wailed. "Because I know he was! Grandy, you believe me, don't you?w
"There, there. Hush."
"This is the little girl that was on the ship?" Chief Blake was asking delicately.