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Show By BEN AMES WILLIAMS Copyright WNU SERVICE THE STORY SO FAR Driving home through a torrential rain, young, well-to-do Clint Jervies picks up a girl, scantily clad, running in terror-stricken flight down the road. She rides a short ways, leaves the car and runs into the woods. He decides to talk to his dear friends. Inspector Tope and Miss Moss, about his adventure. Clint still thinks ol her as Miss Moss, his former guardian, though she and the Inspector are married. Clint, having settled down, now manages the Jervies estate himself. In three shuttered houses, an gloomy and forbidding, on Kenesaw Hill, near where Clint picked up the frightened girl, lived three families. In one house lived old Denman Hurder, his wife, who bad been Ella Kenesaw, and his daughter, Kitty Leaford, and her daughter June. Living in a second house was Aunt Evie Taine, Uncle Justus and brothers Rab and Asa. The third held old Matthew Bowdon and his wife. Living on the estate was a man known only to June as "Uncle Jim." Following their usual custom the three families gathered in the Hurder home Saturday night. Kitty, June's mother, retired early with a headache. She was given varm milk, and insisted on taking two sleeping tablets, one more than usuaL Strangely upset, June slept fitfully, and in the middle of the night went in to see her mother. She finds her dead. Panic stricken. June ran from the room, out the unlocked door, and into the storm to get Doctor Cabler. It was here that Clint Jervies picked her up. Clint tells his story to the Inspector and Mrs. Tope. They communicate with the police, who are told by the family doctor that Kitty Leaford died of an overdose of sleeping powders. Clint and the Inspector are not satisfied and feel further investigation is necessary. When Clint and Tope drive back to Kenesaw Hill they find Inspector Heale and the medical examiner, who also reports the death due to an overdose of the powders. He becomes angry when Tope intimates that queer circumstances surround the death. After returning home June ran to see Uncle Jim and told him of her mother's death. There Clint and the Inspector visit them. Clint returns to the house with June, and tells her that he will call fier soon. Before they leave Tope questions the girl concerning the powders. Tope finds that the theory of the overdose is not logical. It would take more powders than Kitty Leaford knowingly took to kill her in such a short time. CHAPTER vn Continued 7 Heale had no more than finished giving instructions when Doctor Cabler arrived. The physician was a small man, grizzled, a little bent, his shoulders surprisingly heavy, with a steady, severe eye. After the introductions, Inspector Heale put the case to him. Tope, watching the Doctor, thought his lips stiffened and grew pale as he listened; and after Inspector Heale had finished, the physician was silent for a while. "Her heart was not strong," he said at last reflectively. No one commented on this; and in the end he nodded, surrendering. "I had overlooked that point," he confessed. "Yes, gentlemen, it must be true!" "You mean she must have had more than four tablets?" Heale asked. "Unquestionably," Doctor Cabler agreed. "To die so quickly." Inspector Heale said seriously: "You understand, Doctor Cabler, this gives her death the look of murder." mur-der." Doctor Cabler nodded slowly. "It seems incredible," he declared. "And yet there is something terrible terri-ble in those houses up there. Mrs. Bowdon rules them all. She has something massive in her, something some-thing like a crushing weight. "How about Mr. Bowdon?" Inspector In-spector Tope asked; and Doctor Cabler Ca-bler said guardedly: "He surrendered years ago. He is not at all well. His heart plays ugly tricks, and his blood-pressure is very high. He has not long to live." And he added: "I have sometimes some-times thought it was his imminent death which oppressed them all." The Inspector nodded. "I don't want to CDme right out and say 'murder,' Doctor Dabler," he explained. ex-plained. "But we want to look around inside the house. Mrs. Tope here suggested that they would all go to tht funeral. If they do, the house wiuld be empty then." Suddenly, then, Tope asked: "Doctor, can this drug be bought by anyjne, without prescription?" "Frcrn a friendly pharmacist, perhaps. per-haps. By some subterfuge." "Mrs. Leaford had used it long?" "F'mr or five years. 1 supplied it to her myself. She did not even know the name. I gave it to her in pl,in bottles, without a label, so that she would not know what it was. This was for her own protection. protec-tion. She could not secure it except through me." "If someone wished to poison her," Tope suggested steadily, "that person might have stolen tablets tab-lets out of her bottle, one at a time, over a period of weeks, without the theft being noticed. So he would kiave them when the time came." "Readily," the Doctor agreed. "I urged Mrs. Leaford to keep a count of the tablets she took; but she was careless and impetuous. She took an overdose once before. Three tablets. . It made her very ill." "I'm trying to understand," Tope explained, "how she was persuaded or compelled to take the extra dose. Were there any bruises on her lips, Doctor?" Doctor Cabler shook his head. "No, none." "Was there any other medicine she was accustomed to take? In capsules, for instance? So that someone could have crushed some pills into powder and filled a capsule cap-sule and put it with the others she had?" The Doctor said again: "No. I know of nothing of the kind." He rose, and he repeated: "No, nothing. noth-ing. I can't help you there." And he asked in a hushed voice: "Inspector, "In-spector, what will you do?" Inspector Heale hesitated. "I don't yet know," he confessed. Inspector Heale went with him to the door. And a few moments afterward after-ward Asa Taine was announced. Tope watched Asa with a deep attention, at-tention, from the young man's first appearance. This Asa Taine he may have been no more than thirty, but he looked older, and there was the shadow of dissipation on his countenance acknowledged the in troductions quietly, but with a quick, appraising glance for Tope and for Miss Moss. He spoke in a slow, sardonic tone, facing them fairly. "I'm told you want to see me," he said. "Why?" And before Inspector Heale could speak, he added in a grim drawl: "To save lying, I might say that I can guess you think Kitty Leaford's death was murder, so you can begin be-gin your explanations there." "Well, there are certain circumstances circum-stances " Heale began. "Someone was in Mrs. Leaford's room after she went to sleep." ' "How do you know?" "Because Miss Leaford put a certain cer-tain bottle in the medicine cabi- "Crushed with grief." net in her mother's bathroom, and it is gone." Asa Taine smiled without mirth, and drew from his pocket a small square bottle. "Here it is!" he said. There was a moment's incredulous incredu-lous hush; then Inspector Heale asked sharply: "How do you know this is it?" "I've seen it often enough," Asa declared. "Where? When?" "Kitty liked to play 'grande dame'," Asa explained. "She used to hold receptions in bed. She'd stay in bed half the day, sometimes. Rab and I liked her; and we used to go up and visit with her there. June and Grandma Bowdon did too." "Where did you find it?" Heale demanded. "This bottle." "In the cellar," said Asa. "Under the laundry-chute." "How'd you happen to look down there?" "Second sight, maybe," Asa suggested. sug-gested. "Viewing the scene of the crime!" "What made you think it was a crime?" Inspector Heale snapped. They were all watching him acutely; but Asa Taine said simply: "Kit wouldn't kill herself. And an ordinary overdose wouldn't kill her so quickly. I've handled criminal law, you know." "See any strangers around?" "Why?" Asa countered warily; and Tope said: "I heard there was a man in the woods back of the house this morning." morn-ing." "Oh, that was I," Asa assured him casually. "I saw you. I was afraid you'd spotted me, at the time." Tope for once in his life was pink with embarrassment; and Miss Moss smiled faintly. But Tope asked: "What were you doing? Why did you hide?" "Private business," said Asa gently. gen-tly. Miss Moss asked: "Mr. Taine, did Mrs. Leaford leave a will?" "No, madam," he said. "I answer you explicitly: She died intestate, and insolvent too, for the matter of that." They were for a moment silent, and he turned toward the door; but Inspector Heale said abruptly: "Wait 9 minute." "Taine." Inspector Tope explained ex-plained "Inspector Heale doesn't want to make too much trouble; but he must look into this. Can you arrange to give him access to the house during the funeral tomorrow tomor-row afternoon?" The young man hesitated. He said at last: "Yes, I should say so. You can prowl all you want, but it's too late now. There's nothing left to find." And he exclaimed in a sudden sud-den deep passion: "If she was killed, it was someone outside! They might torture her, but they'd never kill her. None of them up there." Then the door shut resoundingly behind him, and he was gone. Inspector In-spector Tope wiped his brow, and Inspector Heale muttered angrily: "That fellow knows something. Maybe I ought to hold on to him, make him talk." ( But Tope shook his head. "If you set out to arrest anyone right now," he pointed out, "you'd have to start with Miss Leaford." And Miss Moss suggested softly: "There might be another possibility. I wonder if Mrs. Leaford's husband is still alive? And how he felt toward to-ward her?" The two men stared at her with wide astonished eyes. CHAPTER VIII The fortnight after Kitty Leaford's Lea-ford's death was for Inspector Tope a long and tormenting time; for a search of the Hurder house while it stood empty revealed exactly nothing noth-ing at all. And his utmost urgencies urgen-cies failed to drive Inspector Heale to any vigorous action. And Dr. Derrie abetted him by sticking to the accident theory. The day after the funeral Tope and Clint talked with Heale in his office, and Tope said to Heale sternly: stern-ly: "Here's my notion, Inspector. Mrs. Leaford was about the most harmless person on Kenesaw Hill. She hadn't hurt anyone; she didn't want her own way about anything; she didn't have any money; she didn't have a thing that would make anyone want to kill her. But someone some-one did kill her; and whoever did it had a deep, hidden reason for doing it. And we don't know what that reason was. "All right. Now if we if you, Inspector In-spector pretend you don't suspect anything, whoever did it will get bold. He or she will do something else. That's what you're waiting for, isn't it?" Inspector Heale nodded nod-ded an emphatic agreement, and Tope said flatly: "You know what that something will be? Someone else will be killed, up there!" Inspector Heale stared at him. "Why?" he demanded. "What makes you figure that?" "Because there wasn't any reason rea-son for killing Mrs. Leaford alone," Tope insisted. "Killing her is bound to have been a part of a bigger scheme. If you let things slide, you'll have another murder on your hands." Clint, listening to the old man whose wisdom he knew, felt himself cold with fear for June, who dwelt in that shuttered house where death had been a visitor. But Inspector Heale said with a slow, fretful violence: vio-lence: "Well, Inspector, I'm glad to have your advice, any time, of course. But I have to make the decisions. de-cisions. You'll have to let me work this out my own way." And they could not move him. On the way back to town, Clint saw Inspector Tope irritated for the first time in his experience. "I hate a fool," the old man said fretfully. "And Heale's a fool. I tell you, Clint, there's death loose in those old houses." For the rest of the drive the old man sat silent, absorbed in his own reflections, till they came home to the little house in Longwood, where Miss Moss had dinner waiting. They sat long at table, going over and over the things they knew, seeking to read their implications. And Miss Moss was a guess ahead of the Inspector In-spector tonight. Tope had reported that Heale was trying to locate Jim Glovere. "He's gone," the Inspector pofnt-ed pofnt-ed out "So Heale thinks he's run away. Heale's like one of these whippets. He'll chase anything that runs." Miss Moss smiled faintly. "I may be responsible for that," she confessed. con-fessed. "You remember I suggested suggest-ed to Heale that he try to find Kitty Leaford's husband." And the two men stared at her; and Clint, whose thoughts now turned always in one direction, cried: "You think this man is June's father?" Miss Moss nodded. "What makes you think that?" "Why else did he live so near, except ex-cept to see June?" Miss Moss suggested. sug-gested. "And why did they let him live there, unless he had some such hold on them?" Clint asked: "Do you think June knows who he is?" Miss Moss shook her head; and Tope said reflectively: "If it's true, if that's who Glovere is, and Heale finds it out, he'll figure that Leaford Lea-ford wanted to marry someone else, and poisoned Mrs Leaford to be free." "I haven't seen the man," Miss Moss confessed. "Do you think he might have done it? Remember, the front door of the house was open. Someone went in from outside." Tope sat very still. "No, Glovere, Glov-ere, or Leaford, or whatever his name is, didn't do it," he decided. "But Mrs. Tope, if Mrs. Leaford's glass of milk that night was poisoned, poi-soned, why would anyone have to go into the house from outside? She'd drunk the milk and gone to sleep before the door downstairs was ever locked." "Someone might have stayed in the house, left the door unbolted when he went out." "But why?" Tope insisted. "If Kitty Leaford was already as good as dead, why?" He said half to himself: him-self: "Maybe they forgot to lock the door, that night. I'm going to see Mr. Hurder myself. See what he has to say." And he added: "I want to figure some way to meet Justus Taine too, and his sons. See what they're like. I've met Asa, but not the other one." Miss Moss suggested an expedient expedi-ent to this end; so during the next few days Clint, in his capacity as head of the Jervies Trust, pretended pretend-ed to revive that old project of buying buy-ing some of the woodlands belonging belong-ing to the Kenesaw farm and cutting cut-ting them up into house lots. The office of Bowdon and Taine controlled con-trolled the land; and Clint made an appointment to see Rab, and took Tope with him. Rab met them in friendly fashion, fash-ion, discussed the project arid made shrewd comments; at Tope's suggestion sug-gestion he led them into his father's office, and he and Clint shouted the details of Clint's proposal into the ears of Justus Taine, and that man sat stolid and silent, his eyes blank,' watching Tope while he heard, or did not hear, what they had to say. Himself spoke at last half a dozen words of dissent, and so dismissed them. After Kitty Leaford's death, Grandpa and Grandma Hurder moved dumbly about the house, crushed and broken with grief. June tried to comfort and to reassure them; but once when she sought to beguile Grandpa Hurder into some peace of mind he said in slow tones: "Your mother was crucified, June. For twenty years! And I was to blame." (TO BE CONTINUED) |