Blood on Lake Louisa Read online

  I had tried closing the door to my room even on the hottest summer nights, but I soon found that it was also useless. No matter how quiet I tried to be Mae invariably called a “Goodbye” to me when I started out on a late case. As we had a guest in the house, I had taken care to throw the night switch on the phone. Then, after I was in bed, I had gotten up again and closed the door to my room so that -there would be no chance of Celia being disturbed. I was glad I did so for the phone began to ring stridently at three o’clock in the morning.

  With the mechanical proficiency of long practice my arm followed a fixed course and secured the phone without my having to open my eyes. My mind clicked into that semi-receptive state of doctors’ minds when they are awakened from a deep sleep. It was ready to probe my weary body into action if the call warranted, prescribe a simple remedy if a harassed parent wanted to quiet a fretting child, or slip back into blankness if a wrong number was the cause of the disturbance. It happened to be none of these. I recognized the voice of a wealthy visitor from the north, a Mrs. Jenkins, who came south every winter to nurse a heart which she was convinced was bad. As I dared not pit my humble opinion against her northern specialists, I treated her seven times a week with personal calls, and once a week at night by phone.

  My cagey brain prescribed a double dose of the medicine I had given her the day before. I lay back in bed waiting, in a semi-stupor, for the second call, which I knew from past experience would come within an hour. With an effort I opened my eyes and adjusted them to read the luminous face of the clock on the taboret. It was exactly ten minutes past three. Then I was painfully awake and ice cold, for the door to my room, which I had closed so carefully, was standing wide open and a gentle breeze was blowing the curtains of my windows out into the room.

  The horror of my morning’s experience was so fresh in my mind that it is a wonder I did not lose my head entirely. The moon had gone down, and the only light in the room was from a bulb in a street light at the front of the house. My bureau stood in a far corner, but I did not dare risk raising my head to see if it was distinguishable in the feeble rays. A dozen wild plans of action which paraded before me were promptly rejected. I knew that no common sneak thief had opened the door to my room. If the intruder was actually inside with me my position was as dangerous as jay-walking blindfolded on a city street. I had not the slightest doubt that if Mae, or Celia, happened to get in his way he would kill them as coldbloodedly as he had the helpless man on Tiger Creek. While I was thinking the ‘phone bell suddenly pealed out again. My nerve held out enough for me to let it ring three times before I answered. I recognized Mrs. Jenkins’ voice again, calling to say she felt better, and that I need not come. She probably still thinks I am crazy, for I exclaimed, excitedly: “Bleeding from the mouth? When did that start? Have the nurse give him a hypodermic immediately. I’ll be right over. I may have to operate.”

  As I hung up I heard a noise in the hall at the foot of the stairs as if someone had stumbled over a rug. It reassured me. At least the marauder was not in the room with me. I got quietly out of bed and opened the door of my closet. There was a loaded thirty-two revolver on the top shelf. As I reached for it I knew my mistake, but it was too late. I heard the movement behind me before the blow fell and saved my life by throwing up my arm. There was a shower of stars, and my left ear felt as if it had been torn from my head. Then I slipped to the floor too sick to stand.

  Feet scurried unheedingly down the steps, and the front door slammed, shivering the glass panel into long icicles.

  Then the light went on in my room, and Mae was holding me in her arms and wiping the blood away from around my neck.

  “Will, Will, are you all right? What’s happened? Oh, my dear!”

  There was a light footstep in the hall, and Celia ran’ into my room clutching a negligee about her. “I saw him, Doctor! I’m certain of it. He passed right under the light running at full speed. It was that man we talked to about Daddy’s watch—Harry Bartlett!”

  I pulled myself together with a mighty effort. “Mae, my dear. Will you do me a favor? Run downstairs and bring up that bottle of Scotch off the living-room table while Celia phones the Sheriff’s office.”

  15

  Outside of contusions to my right arm and scalp, and a painful abrasion of my left ear, I had escaped lightly from the vicious blow dealt me by my nocturnal visitor. If I had not heard him behind me in time to divert the full force of it with my arm, I think it would have crushed my skull like a china cup. The strange part of the adventure was, that in the excitement of the moment, I could not for the life of me figure out why anyone, particularly Harry Bartlett, should have wanted to break into my house. The Miami Floridians ensconced in my bureau drawer did not enter my head until Ed Brown arrived on the scene in answer to Celia’s phone call.

  “Bad business,” he remarked at the sight of my bandaged head. “Might have finished you for sure. Did he get the papers?”

  “I never even thought of them,” I had to confess. “Have a look. They were in the top bureau drawer. I won’t move off this bed for anything. My head is splitting.”

  “O.K.” he reported after a short delay. “Fifteen of them. I think I better take them along with me and give them to Pete in the morning. I don’t think your friend will return, but you’ll rest better if they’re not here.”

  “For your information, Ed, Miss Mitchell saw a man run under the light in front of the house. She thinks it was Harry Bartlett.”

  “Bartlett! Is she sure?”

  “She seemed pretty certain of it. Of course—”

  “Doc, I’m going to leave you right now. You can give us the details in the morning. I’m going to take a run out on the Louisa road and see if Mr. Bartlett’s at home. If he’s been in town he had to use that lizzie of his. I want to get there before the radiator has a chance to cool. Hope you’re better in the morning.”

  It was half past four when Ed left. I settled down to try to get some sleep. Mae came in to see if there was anything I wanted. Urged on by my throbbing head I had her fix me a mild hypodermic, which eventually gave me some rest.

  I had nearly finished my breakfast when I heard voices on the porch announcing the arrival of Pete Crossley, and the State’s Attorney. They came on into the dining room without ceremony, greeted the three of us with an air of suppressed excitement, and accepted our invitation to join us in a cup of coffee.

  “We just got back to town an hour ago,” the Sheriff explained. “Drove in from Fort Pierce. Ed told us about your close call at the lake yesterday, and your visitor last night. I’ll never forgive myself—”

  “What happened at the lake, Will?” Mae’s face was as white as the cloth on the table. “You didn’t tell me anything about it.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said, very much abashed. “I didn’t want to worry you too much, and I was so upset myself, that I was afraid I would make the story sound worse than it really was. I found some Miami newspapers in the Simmons house, and it appears that I was being watched. Somebody poked a shotgun through the window and took a pot shot at me as I was leaving. Ed Brown happened to see the muzzle of the gun and pushed me out of the road in time.”

  “So he brought the papers home with him, instead of—”

  “Don’t rub it in, Pete. My head’s bad enough without that.”

  “I understand that you saw a man under the street light, Miss Mitchell. Ed Brown says that you thought it was that Bartlett fellow.” Sanderson regarded Celia over his poised cup.

  “Everything happened so quickly, Mr. Sanderson. I heard a clatter on the stairs, and the front door slam. I ran to my window without thinking. I was in the back room but there is a window in the ‘L’ which faces the front of the house and the gate is clearly visible. The man was running and I could not see his face—”

  “Did he come out of the gate?”

  “I don’t think he did. He was running along the sidewalk, close to the fence, in the direction of Mr. Rogers’ house next d
oor.”

  “That’s to the left as you were standing, isn’t it?”

  She nodded. “I watched until he disappeared into the shadows. There was something very familiar about the way he moved. I’m almost certain it was Harry Bartlett.”

  The Sheriff interrupted. “How would you describe him, Celia?”

  “Short, stocky, dressed in a dark suit and felt hat, and a very fast runner.”

  “I’m afraid that wouldn’t convince a jury, Miss Mitchell. I think the Sheriff will bear me out that it’s very hard to identify a person seen at a distance, especially at night. Unless I’m mistaken Bartlett isn’t short. He must be over six feet.”

  “But bent over running he might look short and stocky,” Mae said.

  “I’ll not dispute that, Mrs. Ryan. Miss Mitchell may be right in every detail. She’s an observant young lady, and the information she has given us is very valuable. I’m merely saying that, to a jury, no man six feet tall could ever appear short. In the mind of a jury a short man is almost a midget, and a tall man a giant.”

  “Did Ed check up on Bartlett last night?” I asked. “He said he was going to drive out’ there after he left me.”

  “He found him in bed,” Pete enlightened me. “Apparently he had been asleep. His car was standing in the yard and the radiator ice cold. Ed made some excuse about running short of gas and borrowed a gallon. It would be a pleasure to have something in this case fit together. Would you mind going over your story about what happened yesterday and last night? We have plenty of time before the inquest on Salmon. Mr. Sanderson came back with me to attend that. I’ll have to ask you to come along with us—if you’re able.”

  “You talk as if I was fatally injured. I have a headache, but that’s all.” I repeated the story of my trip with the Deputy almost word for word as I had told it to Marvin the night before. It was interesting to watch the effect on my listeners. Mae and Celia stopped eating as I proceeded with my adventure. It was evident that their concern was all for my safety rather than for what points I might develop in the telling. The Sheriff sat sideways to the table with his legs crossed drumming idly on the cloth with the handle of a knife. Sanderson leaned back in his chair and allowed his second cup of coffee to grow cold. He interrupted me only once.

  “When you picked up the first copy of the Floridian were you close enough to a window so that a man standing outside could have seen the figures written on that ad?”

  “That’s hard to say. I believe I was a trifle to the right of the fireplace. I had pulled the chair over with the intention of using the papers to build a fire. It might have been possible for somebody to have seen them through the window by the fireplace.”

  “The one to the right?”

  “‘Yes. I had dropped my wood on the floor to the right of the mantel. I must have been standing with my back to the corner of the room when I first noticed the writing.”

  “Facing the mantel?”

  “No. It was really at my right hand.”

  “I see. There were two windows at your back then, weren’t there? One to the left and one to the right, that is the one at the east end of the room, and the one at the right of the fireplace.” He drew a rough diagram on the table cloth.

  “You were standing where I have marked the x in the circle and facing in the direction the arrow points. Is that correct?”

  “As near as I can remember, it is.”

  “Fine. Now there is just one thing more before you go on. You said you tried to look through the windows opening on to the front porch, but they were so dirty you couldn’t see anything inside. How about the windows in the back room. Were they any cleaner?”

  I thought for a moment, trying to visualize them. “I believe they were. You see the fog was thick outside, and it was hard to see out of the windows anyhow. But the room was fairly light.”

  “Wouldn’t the windows shielded by the porch be dirtier than those the rain could get to?” Mae asked.

  “Thank you, lady! I believe they would.” Sanderson smiled. “I hope to be in town long enough to go out there with Pete and see for myself. Now, if you don’t mind, Doctor, I’d like to hear the rest.”

  In telling the rest of my story I did not mention about the shotgun which Ed had found, nor did I say anything about the suspicions he had voiced against Marvin. It would all be common knowledge soon enough and I wanted to spare Celia in every way possible. I knew that the Sheriff was .already in possession of the facts and would not speak of them for the same reasons which restrained me. I also kept to myself the fact that I had told Marvin everything I knew about the whole affair.

  “You don’t think there will be any repetition of what happened last night, do you?” Mae asked the Sheriff when I stopped.

  “Not a chance, Mrs. Ryan. Whoever attacked the doctor was after those papers without a doubt. The ringing of the phone, and his own failure to knock Doc unconscious spoiled his plans. You didn’t hear a thing, did you?”

  “Only the ringing of the phone. It always wakes me. I must have dozed off after it rang the first time, but I woke again on the second call. I heard the doctor fall, and the man run downstairs and slam the door, but that’s all.”

  “You thought you heard a noise in the hall downstairs, as I understand it, Doc.”

  “I was certain of it. That’s why I got out of bed so bravely and started to get my revolver off the closet shelf. My first intimation that anything was wrong was when I noticed my door was open. When I heard the noise downstairs I thought that whoever had been in the room had gone.”

  “Do you still think that?”

  “Why yes, why?”‘

  “Well, someone hit you, didn’t they?”

  “There’s no question about that.”

  “No. But there is a question in my mind as to who hit you. Did the man you heard downstairs have time to sneak back up and crack you on the head, or didn’t he?”

  I felt my bandaged head in perplexity. “I hardly think he did.”

  “Neither do I,” Pete agreed. “There were undoubtedly two people in the house!”

  16

  The small room which served as a chapel in Pryor’s undertaking parlors was crowded to capacity when we arrived. By dint of placing the collapsible chairs so close together that there was hardly room to move, seventy-five people had been seated in acute discomfort in a space designed to accommodate thirty at the most. We had to force our way through the idlers gathered around the entrance, drawn there by the holiday, Washington’s Birthday, and by a morbid eagerness to be the first to hear news which might leak out of the proceedings within.

  The crowd was of a different type from that which had attended the inquest of David Mitchell such a short time before. The death of the banker had been a terrible shock to the town, but the inquest had been held before the news of his murder had spread abroad over the countryside. Then the death of a wealthy citizen of Orange Crest was an event more or less detached from the lives of the people who lived and worked in the woods and on the farms, while the killing of Red Salmon in his lonely shack on Tiger Creek was a threat which struck directly at the safety of their own homes. Lean, wrinkled-faced men, overalled and high booted, tanned by wind and sun, inflexible and unsmiling, had been trickling into town since early morning by battered Ford and mule team. As we made our way down to the front, where seats had been reserved for witnesses and the Jury, Crossley whispered in my ear: “There’s a long-barreled horse pistol stuck in every waistband in the place.”

  An ordinary kitchen table had been placed at the end of the room to serve as a desk for the Justice of the Peace, Donald Atwater, who presided over the court. There are no regular Coroners in Florida, and in the cases where an inquest is necessary the duties fall on the local Justice. Atwater, an elderly attorney whose failing health had caused him to abandon a lucrative practice in one of the larger cities, was a capable man and highly respected in our community. He took the office of J. P., which he had held in an honorary capacity for
some years, very seriously. Anything which fell under his jurisdiction was assured of a fair and impartial handling. Miss Phillips, Crossley’s secretary, was acting as court stenographer. She was seated at the table when we entered. Atwater’s chair, and the six chairs placed to one side for the Jury were vacant.

  “They’re inside,” Luke Pomeroy informed us with a nod toward a door which led to the embalming room at the rear. We seated ourselves beside him and immediately had to rise, for the door opened and Atwater entered followed by the six jurors. They took their places rather stiffly, a gavel sounded, and we seated ourselves again.

  The necessary formalities were gone through quickly. Lawrence Rogers, my next door neighbor, was sworn in first as Foreman of the Jury, and the other five were given a shorter form of oath. Justice Atwater then charged them that it was their duty to determine from the facts presented whether Salmon’s death was a felony, an accident, a suicide, or from natural causes. In the event they found it was a felony, they were to determine, if possible, the guilty party. The finding of the inquisition would be presented to the Circuit Court, together with the material evidence, under seal.

  Although I knew I would be called upon to testify, I was very nervous when Atwater handed a list to Luke Pomeroy, and I heard the Deputy read out my name as the first witness. As I was taking the oath there was a stir at the back of the room and I saw Marvin Lee and Ed Brown making their way down front through the crowded chairs. Crossley found seats for them near him. I took my place in the impromptu witness box. The Justice asked me a few preliminary questions concerning the length of time I had known the deceased John Salmon—more commonly known as “Red Salmon,” and when I had answered he requested me to tell exactly how I had happened to discover the body. I repeated the story in detail, and told him that I had already made a written statement which was in the hands of the State’s Attorney. He gazed reflectively at the ceiling when I had finished.