No one moved to get the whisky, from which I judged
there were three pocket flasks ready for emergency.
Gertrude threw a shawl around my shoulders, and we
all started down over the hill: I had made so
many nocturnal excursions around the place that I
knew my way perfectly. But Thomas was not on
the veranda, nor was he inside the house. The
men exchanged significant glances, and Warner got
a lantern.
“He can’t have gone far,” he said.
“He was trembling so that he couldn’t
stand, when I left.”
Jamieson and Halsey together made the round of the
lodge, occasionally calling the old man by name.
But there was no response. No Thomas came,
bowing and showing his white teeth through the darkness.
I began to be vaguely uneasy, for the first time.
Gertrude, who was never nervous in the dark, went
alone down the drive to the gate, and stood there,
looking along the yellowish line of the road, while
I waited on the tiny veranda.
Warner was puzzled. He came around to the edge
of the veranda and stood looking at it as if it ought
to know and explain.
“He might have stumbled into the house,”
he said, “but he could not have climbed the
stairs. Anyhow, he’s not inside or outside,
that I can see.” The other members of the
party had come back now, and no one had found any
trace of the old man. His pipe, still warm,
rested on the edge of the rail, and inside on the
table his old gray hat showed that its owner had not
gone far.
He was not far, after all. From the table my
eyes traveled around the room, and stopped at the
door of a closet. I hardly know what impulse
moved me, but I went in and turned the knob.
It burst open with the impetus of a weight behind it,
and something fell partly forward in a heap on the
floor. It was Thomas—Thomas without
a mark of injury on him, and dead.
DOCTOR WALKER’S WARNING
Warner was on his knees in a moment, fumbling at the
old man’s collar to loosen it, but Halsey caught
his hand.
“Let him alone?” he said. “You
can’t help him; he is dead.”
We stood there, each avoiding the other’s eyes;
we spoke low and reverently in the presence of death,
and we tacitly avoided any mention of the suspicion
that was in every mind. When Mr. Jamieson had
finished his cursory examination, he got up and dusted
the knees of his trousers.
“There is no sign of injury,” he said,
and I know I, for one, drew a long breath of relief.
“From what Warner says and from his hiding
in the closet, I should say he was scared to death.
Fright and a weak heart, together.”
“But what could have done it?” Gertrude
asked. “He was all right this evening
at dinner. Warner, what did he say when you
found him on the porch?”
Warner looked shaken: his honest, boyish face
was colorless.
“Just what I told you, Miss Innes. He’d
been reading the paper down-stairs; I had put up the
car, and, feeling sleepy, I came down to the lodge
to go to bed. As I went up-stairs, Thomas put
down the paper and, taking his pipe, went out on the
porch. Then I heard an exclamation from him.”
