Flynn’s Weekly Detective Fiction. Vol. 18, No. 3, September 18, 1926

“It’s only the dangerous criminal who is interesting,” I said, and ruggles did not deny it

Chapter I A Nervous Visitor

From our excellent breakfast at an adjacent café, Ruggles and I had just returned to our snug little apartment on West Eighty-Sixth Street; and, having got my pipe going well, I forgot for the moment the hazards of our profession and could view life from the standpoint of a reflective bystander.

“It’s only the dangerous criminal who is interesting,” I said. “The others are as harmless as toads.”

“As I’ve told you before,” said Ruggles, “all reptiles are dangerous, in their way. Frogs, toads, and lizards are poisonous. And don’t make the mistake of thinking them stupid! Remember, their secretions often are agreeable in odor and, therefore, disarming: the common toad produces a poison that has the fragrance of vanilla.”

“That sounds clever of the toad,” I said with a smile. “ ‘Magic in Animals: a Popular and Recent Discovery,’ you might call it.”

“One would not call it recent,” Ruggles corrected; “you forget Pliny’s work on natural history, which appeared in the year 77 A.D., and was dedicated to the Roman emperor, Titus. It filled thirty-seven volumes and contains some startlingly interesting passages on medicine, the treatment of maladies, and magic.

“Describing the great cleverness of certain animals, he says that they prepare themselves for combats with poisonous snakes by eating certain herbs: the weasel eats rue; the tortoise and deer use two other plants, while field mice that have been bitten by snakes eat condrion. The hawk tears open the hawkweed and sprinkles its eyes with the juice.”

“People may have believed that in the seventy-seventh year after the birth of Christ,” I said; “but modern science would not admit any such wisdom on the part of animals.”

“I’d hardly say that. For John Burroughs reminds us to-day that we have no means of estimating fully the knowledge, of animals. How does the red squirrel tell so unerringly on which side of the butternut the meat lies? Yet he always gnaws through the shell so as to strike the kernel broadside, the one spot where the meat is most exposed, and thus easily extracts it.”

“Interesting. But rather out of date in this age of radio, for instance.”

“Not out of date at all, Crane,” Ruggles reminded me; “the air was full of talk and music countless ages before man invented wireless broadcasting. Any number of other creatures, which we never hear and never can hear, are busy talking to each other.

“Spiders are constantly making sounds and listening to sounds that are inaudible to us. For some reason, a woman’s ear can catch a higher pitched sound than a man’s: a woman, for instance, can often hear a bat’s high note that a man cannot hear.

“We know that all sound comes to the human ear in the form of vibrations; and our ear is so constructed that it can catch only a range of seven octaves of sound, constituting from thirty to thirty thousand vibrations a second. Now, a bee’s wing normally vibrates about four hundred and forty times a second, making the musical note A. If the bee is tired, it makes the note E, with three hundred and thirty vibrations.

“Oh, yes, Crane, we can hear some things. But when it comes to the question of sight or hearing or the sense of smell, we fall far below the other animals. Some odors attract certain animals; other odors repel them — a fact taken advantage of by people who live in countries where protection is needed from poisonous or otherwise dangerous animals.”

“That’s enough for now, Ruggles,” I remonstrated. “I feel as if a cyclone had struck me.”

“The China Sea,” he replied absently, “is the greatest permanent reservoir of cyclonic circulation — low barometer, heat, and moisture.”

I said nothing. Ruggles’s prodigious mass of stored-up information flattened me. I had been associated with him for something close to ten years. I had known him to spend eight months in a native village in India for the sake of studying the reptiles, with which the adjacent jungles were alive, and the native remedies.

At another time, he had gone thirty degrees south of the equator for the sake of learning, first hand, some of the earlier symptoms of coast fever, so prevalent in that part of South Africa;[1] it was his familiarity with the quality of the cementlike mud of Texas, in the wet season, that enabled him to solve almost instantly a murder mystery which had baffled the best brains of Scotland Yard.

His restless, eager, and photographic brain was a veritable storehouse of information on every subject under the sun. What, in any other man, would have seemed to be only miraculously lucky guesses, in the case of Ruggles were deadly sure deductions, swiftly arrived at by turning on the problem all his accumulated knowledge of crime and criminals and their offensive and defensive methods, from the crude violence of primitive times down to the scientific refinements of modern murder.

It was thus, and thus only, that he could find so readily the solution of the most obscure tangle, produce the key to the most baffling mystery, and lay bare the trail of the most shrewd and resourceful criminal.

The morning was fair and a strong, inviting wind blew in from the river. “Come, Ruggles,” I said, “it’s too fine a morning to work! Let’s walk in the sunshine, so that we can run faster in the night, if we have to!”

Ruggles smiled. “Go out and enjoy yourself; but don’t expect me to come: I’ve got some things left from last night, and those have got to be cleaned up before I can start square with the work of to-day. I’ll walk with you for an hour, after lunch.” He turned to his work.

I was walking north along Riverside Drive in three more minutes, reveling in the beauty of the Hudson, which I verily believe is one of the loveliest rivers in the world. The air was like wine and, though I fell far short of Ruggles in physical strength and vigor, I am what any doctor would call an unusually well man.

What I mean is, I should have enjoyed my walk, but I didn’t; time and again, I found myself wondering whether the uneasiness I felt were nervousness or a warning that I was needed back at our apartment.

The result was that after half an hour of it, I faced back to West Eighty-Sixth Street. As I walked, I felt pretty sure that when I entered our rooms, I should find a new client with Ruggles, some man or woman who had got in a bad hole somehow, or thought she had, or was afraid she might; some innocent person who was being blackmailed, some one who was “wanted” by the police of some place or other, some one who had escaped from arrest, some fugitive from justice or from injustice.

Ruggles and I got about every class and kind. I mean, they came to him when their danger or dread reached the point where they couldn’t stand it another instant.

As I entered our living room and saw the rather short, squatty figure of a man sitting there deep in talk with Ruggles I asked myself whether our visitor was revealing a story of a toad or something really interesting. Then his voice rose;

“Do you ask me if there was anything more?”, he demanded impatiently. “Wasn’t that enough in itself to set any man’s mind working? I tell you, that hand bag, which he said held only books, had a jimmy in it, a folding crowbar, three hammers, some nippers, reamers, drills and a coil of rope!”

“Well,” said Ruggles, soothingly, “I admit that was something. But, well — suppose you go back to the beginning again, if you will, so that my assistant, Mr. Crane, can have the facts from you firsthand. Crane helps me on all my cases.”

Ruggles nodded toward me. “Dan, this is Mr. Lemuel Stevenson, whose new neighbors in the town of Deersdale, up in Westchester County, thirty five minutes from here by train, are making him a little nervous.”

“I wouldn’t call myself a nervous man,” said Lemuel Stevenson, closing the door, which I had left slightly open when I came in from the street. “I wouldn’t say I was what you’d call nervous.” He glanced quickly at our windows to see if they too were closed.

Chapter II Two Dogs and a Gun

But, for all that, he didn’t look nervous. There was not one heroic line in his commonplace features or in his dumpy body; there was nothing distinctive in his carriage; nothing particularly purposeful in his glance — his bluish gray eyes were rather kindly.

Yet something there was about Lemuel Stevenson that made me feel that he’d gone a long way, and might go much farther, without showing or feeling the least consternation when faced by danger. I judged that he was about fifty-five years old, in comfortable circumstances.

His bones seemed rather small, but there was plenty of spread to his shoulders, and he didn’t “carry a bass drum in front” of him, and there wasn’t a pad of fat at the back of his erect neck. I pictured him as a very vigorous, active man through his thirties and forties; not a New Yorker; his eyes had the freedom of glance, the unhurried look, of one who has known, and preferred, the open places.

I wondered where he’d moved over the face of the earth, and what his dominating impulse had been. I wondered about him. He set one wondering. Of one thing I was sure: he’d never showed the white feather.

As if he realized that Ruggles and I were sizing him up, he looked collectedly from one of us to the other. Then he said, “If you’re both ready, I’ll get ahead with it.” I noted his unconscious use of the English idiom, and also the fact that his speech showed no trace of an English accent, as he went on:

“I take things pretty much as I find them, and I don’t bother myself with what my neighbors are doing — not generally. But I’ll own up I don’t like the look of things at that big, dark house next to mine in Deersdale: the folks in that house aren’t right, and you’d agree with me if you’d seen what I have.” He lowered his voice to a whisper and leaned a little toward us. “It’s my opinion they’re in terror of their lives.”

“What makes you think that?” Ruggles asked. “And why do you keep looking at the street door and at those windows? Do you think that some one from that old, dark house may be following you?”

“I don’t know,” said Lemuel Stevenson. “I don’t really figure they are. But, on the other hand, I wouldn’t be surprised if they had. I don’t mean the young one, the son. It’s the old man, his father, that gives me the shivers every time I look at him.

“A handsome, high-bred old gentleman I took him for when I saw him the first time, walking up and down the gravel path that runs from the back of his house to his garden. I’m a quiet, regular, steady-going man myself, and when I found he’d taken that house next to mine I said to myself — ‘Here’s a neighbor that looks on life the way I do,’ and it made me feel sort of comfortable.”

“Yes, of course,” Ruggles agreed. “When did he begin to make you — shiver?”

“I’m coming to that,” said Stevenson, slowly. “It was last night, three nights after they’d moved into the house, old Hathaway and his son and the two servants. That’s their name — Hathaway. I’d sort of expected one of them, the old man or the young fellow, to speak to me over the fence — at that time there was just a low, wooden fence between the two houses.

“But they hadn’t spoken to me; so, that third night after they’d moved in, I thought I’d just take a little look in for myself; and, it being a nice, fine night and the fence easy to get over, along about half past nine I—”

“Not wishing to disturb your new neighbors,” Ruggles supplied quickly, “you climbed over the fence and took a little stroll quite near the windows of their living room, where you had noticed there were lights going as if old Mr. Hathaway and his son were sitting in there; and, when you’d got quite close to the windows, you naturally looked in, as you strolled by. That’s what you mean, isn’t it, Mr. Stevenson?”

“Why, yes,” said our visitor in surprise. “Yes, that’s just what I did. You’re pretty cute, if I do say it, to know that! How—”

“Not cute at all,” Ruggles denied. “I was simply telling you what almost any one would have done, in your position.”

“In my position?” Our visitor asked the question with a cool abruptness which contrasted sharply with his manner of a moment before. “You’re using a big expression there, Mr. Ruggles. What do you know about my position?”

“Nothing,” said Ruggles, with equal self-possession. “If you’ll let me say so, Mr. Stevenson, I judge that you are a man who can keep his position very much to himself. But it’s not your personal position or situation that I’m concerned with,” Ruggles added smiling.

“Let’s go back to that third night after the Hathaways moved in: last night when you took that stroll past the windows of their lighted living room. You looked in, just as Crane or I would have done in your place. Do you mind telling us what you saw, when you looked in through that window?”

“Young Hathaway,” said Stevenson, nodding a little as he met Ruggles’s eyes, “was sitting there, in a big leather-covered chair, reading a book, at least there was an open book on the table beside him.”

“Nothing very shivery about that,” said Ruggles, himself smiling. “I’m disappointed.”

“You won’t be long,” said our singular visitor. “Young Hathaway was sitting there by the table; he’d been reading, but he’d laid the book down, keeping the place where he’d been reading by putting a revolver in the open place in the book; he kept looking around him all the time as if he thought some one might be trying to creep up behind him.

“There were two dogs on the rug at his feet, two heavy, big-boned dogs, black and savage-looking, the kind a man might see in a nightmare. They crouched there at his feet, not sleeping, for I could see their eyes shine as the light caught them.

“When I first saw them I didn’t think they were alive, they both kept so quiet. But then one of them growled, or maybe both of them did. The night was mild and the window was open a little at the top, and I heard it. I nearly let out a yell — they growled so deep and — sudden and savage.”

“What did they growl at, do you know?” Ruggles asked. He was not smiling now. “Could they have seen you? Or scented you? You know the astonishingly keen scent dogs have.”

“It wasn’t me,” said Stevenson, again clearing his throat. “It was the servant, a foreign looking sort of a little man. He came in through another room somewhere, and the two dogs must have heard him coming. Young Hathaway spoke to the dogs, then called to the servant, ‘It’s all right, Rajak,’ or some such name, I don’t know just what it was; ‘It’s all right, Rajak: the dogs won’t hurt you.’ Then the servant came in.

“He was afraid of the dogs, and I don’t blame him; but he came in and asked what young Hathaway wanted. Young Hathaway said, ‘I’ve been trying to find that suit case of books I brought out from town last night, but I can’t locate it. Maybe I left it in the car in the garage. Go out and look, will you?”

“And then,” said Ruggles, “you climbed the fence to your own yard, went into your house, locked your door, and went to bed.”

“No,” was Stevenson’s unexpected reply, “I ducked away from the window and beat it to the garage; the door was open and the car was there, and before I knew what I was doing I had that suit case in my hands — it took both my hands, it was so heavy. Then I threw it over my fence and shinned over after it, with my teeth feeling all loose in my head, and, I tell you, I was glad there wasn’t any moon light!”

“I should think so,” Ruggles ejaculated. “We can understand that!”

“You don’t understand yet,” said this surprising visitor of ours. “As I ran across my lawn to get into my back door I saw the figure of a man cross the ray of light which came through the windows of my living room.”

“You mean that a man had been looking into your living room, through your windows?” Ruggles asked, his eyes alight with eager interest.

Chapter III From Fiend or Devil

“There was a man there, but he wasn’t looking in through my garden, and, through my windows; he was walking back and forth from them, he kept on into my flower beds. He had a flash light in his hand, and he kept it on the ground, just as if he were looking for something.”

Lemuel Stevenson stopped abruptly in his strange narrative, and leaned back in his chair as if suddenly struck nerveless. “I don’t know what possessed me, Mr. Ruggles,” he said in a hoarse whisper. “I’m not what you’d call a brave man. I’m timid.

“But when I saw that man going through my flower beds like that, I set down that suit case on the grass and I went over to that man, touched him on the shoulder and asked him what he was doing there.

“And when I touched him he’d have screamed if he’d had breath enough — he just couldn’t do a thing but stand and stare at me, there in the darkness — his flash light dropped and lay just where it fell, in my flower bed. I picked up the flash light and turned it on him, right into his face; then I saw it was old Hathaway, and his eyes were the worst thing I’d ever looked at.”

“What do you mean?” Ruggles cried.

“Just what I’ve said — the worst thing I’d ever looked at — fear, horror — not of me, I don’t mean, but of something, and what it is, is what we’ve got to find out. Old Hathaway just stood there and looked at me, with that look in his eyes — the kind an animal might have, if it knew that something was hunting for it close by, something that meant to kill it.

“That was what I felt when I looked into that old man’s eyes. And, all the time, I kept my hand on his shoulder and kept asking him, over and over, ‘What are you looking for? What are you looking for?’

“And when my breath gave out, as it did, after another moment, old Hathaway said in the kind of a whisper you’d expect from a ghost:

“ ‘Garlic bulbs. Have you any garlic bulbs?’ ”

Stevenson’s head bent forward until his chin rested on his breast. “I dropped the flash light then,” he said, panting and shaking. “I dropped the flash light and ran for my life, to the back door of my house. Right near the steps up to the door I’d left the suit case, and I didn’t remember it until I tripped over it, and I lay there, just as I’d fallen, until I was sure old Hathaway had gone.

“Then I dragged the suit case up the steps and into my house — I hadn’t the strength left to lift it. I locked the door and put on the night latch and an old night chain I’d had put on that door years back and never used.

“Then I told my servant, who’d come to know what all the noise I’d made was about, to clear out and go to bed; and, when she’d gone, I hauled the suit case into a little ‘den’ I’ve got off my living room, and when I opened that suit case of books I found in it just what I’ve told you — a folding crowbar, some hammers, a jimmy, I suppose you’d call it, some nippers, reamers, drills, and a coil of hemp rope.

“And I’ve come to you, Mr. Ruggles, who the newspapers say can work out almost any puzzle that has crooked work at the bottom of it — I’ve come to you, Mr. Ruggles, to do two things for me: get that suit case back into that house for me and tell me what’s scaring the life out of that old man, old Hathaway.”

For a long moment Ruggles said nothing. His deep-set eyes remained fixed on Lemuel Stevenson. And when he spoke he said, slowly and earnestly, “I’ll help you. I’ll be glad to help you.” Then Ruggles glanced at the door, just as Lemuel Stevenson had done when he had settled himself on our couch to tell his amazing narrative. “If you haven’t any garlic bulbs, Mr. Stevenson, I suggest, as your first step, that you immediately get some.”

“Me get garlic bulbs?” Stevenson demanded. “You’re not turning joker, are you?” There was indignation in his voice.

“No, I am not joking,” said Ruggles, and I had never seen his face wear a graver expression, never seen him more eager, even impatient, to launch into action all his amazing powers. “Think I’m dreaming. Believe me, you’ve come to the wrong man for help and advice. Do anything you like, only get some garlic bulbs, man, and carry a couple of them in your pocket. I’ll tell you more about them later.”

“Tell me now!” Stevenson’s face was as grave as Ruggles’s.

“I’ll tell you when the time comes, but not now,” Ruggles said with decision. “First, as you drive on, with Crane and me, to your house, tell me what you meant when you said that when the Hathaways first came there was a low wooden fence around their house. Has the fence been altered, since then?”

“Altered? You’ll see for yourself! Before it was just as I said, and you can see where the old posts were — just the little, old kind of a fence that a man like me could climb over easily, or even vault over, if he had the mind; but it’s different now: old Hathaway’s had carpenters and men take down that fence and put up another — not a fence,” corrected Lemuel Stevenson, “but a wall, a barricade, right close down to the ground it comes at the bottom, with thick posts sunk deep down in and running six feet up, if they’re an inch — the kind of a fence it would take a good man to climb even if it weren’t for the barbed wire they were putting on top of it when I started away this morning.

“This fortification runs all the way around the big house, with just one entrance at the front, with a lock on it that I’ll warrant is a first-class one.”

“You mean, it is as if the Hathaways wanted to protect themselves from some—”

“From some fiend or devil they think wants to get in at them from the outside,” Stevenson interrupted. “I know: it’s no business of mine. But you wouldn’t feel right if, for some reason you didn’t know anything about, the man who lives next to you here suddenly had people come and bar his windows with sheet iron and you saw him sitting in his front window fingering a revolver. Fiend or devil, animal or human, there’s something hanging around that house of old Hathaway’s, or he thinks there is, that’s driving him crazy with terror.”

Ruggles said nothing for a long moment. Then he spoke again — “Do you carry a gun?”

“I used to,” said Stevenson slowly, “but not of late years.”

“Have you one at your house, a good gun in good working order?”

“Yes,” said Stevenson, enigmatically.

“Are you any sort of a shot?”

“I don’t know. I — used to me.”

Both of us waited again for him to explain, if he cared to. But he apparently did not. As Ruggles had said, Lemuel Stevenson knew how to keep his own secrets about himself.

But I was determined to draw him out in spite of himself, and for that reason I put a straight question which, under the circumstances, I thought was not an improper one:

“By the way, Mr. Stevenson,” I asked casually, “what’s your business?”

“My business,” he said promptly. Then looking at me with one of his disconcertingly keen glances, Stevenson said — “As a matter of fact I haven’t any business now: I’ve retired from active life. Not but what it was active enough once,” he added, in a sort of undertone.

But I had had my lesson: I wasn’t going to try any more questions on him. His clean-shaven lips had set like a trap. He lighted an excellent cigar, and I noticed that the fingers which held the match were capable looking and steady.

“There’s a big marsh,” he said in his abrupt way: “it backs up close behind Hathaway’s house.”

“What makes you speak of it?” Ruggles asked quietly. “Do you think—”

“I don’t think much of anything about it,” said our strange visitor. “Only it’s big enough and thick enough grown up to make a good place for a man to hide in, if he wanted a place where it would be hard to find him. I saw a light out there three or four nights ago, but I couldn’t find anything when I went out and hunted until sun-up with a flash light.”

“If you’re ready, we’ll go out to your house with you,” said Ruggles. “Throw some stuff into a hand bag, Crane, while I do the same. Ready in five minutes.”

Chapter IV Servants Frightened Off

IN even less time we were in Stevenson’s car and instantly we were on our way up Riverside Drive. Stevenson drove the car himself, a fact which Ruggles welcomed, for he said to me in a whisper:

“No chauffeur. Stevenson does things with his own hands when he can — a good, safe rule to follow when possible; and good, too, in this case, because there’s no one to overhear us.”

But it was not until we had swung into the parkway which paralleled the Bronx River that Ruggles spoke again, and this time it was to ask Stevenson to pull up and park for a little. Then, when the car came to a stop, Ruggles began swiftly:

“How long have you lived where you do now? Are you married? Have you a family? Have you been confidential about yourself with your nearest neighbors? Be as brief as you can, for we’ve no time to waste!”

“Lived where I do fifteen years,” Stevenson shot back, a bit crustily. “Bachelor. Housekeeper and one servant. Only living relatives two nephews in Europe. Never tell neighbors anything.”

“Good,” said Ruggles. “You boil things down well! Crane and I are your two nephews, from Europe. Crane’s name, for the time being, is Howard, and I’m Paul — Howard and Paul Stevenson. We’re living with you, uncle Lemuel. Introduce your postman to us, that way, to-morrow morning.”

“What?” demanded Lemuel Stevenson.

“Yes,” said Ruggles. Then, with his nearest approach to real anger, “I say, don’t waste time! You’ve asked Crane and me to come into this, and we’ve come. You don’t realize it yet; but what you’ve blundered into by sheer accident is a life and death matter! Not your life or death — Mr. Hathaway’s!”

“Old Hathaway,” scoffed Stevenson. He settled himself obstinately in his seat and scowled at the lovely curve of the parkway, banked by the first, fresh green of early spring. “I see, now, I was a fool to feel as I did last night, a fool to go to you. Not that you weren’t cute to guess I peeked in through their windows, but a fool to think old Hathaway was in danger from anything.

“Garlic bulbs! Hathaway’s simply an old lunatic who ought to have a couple of keepers to stop him from treading down my flower beds! Well, I’ve got the thing straight at last, Mr. Ruggles, and,” with a glance at his watch, which, like himself, was fat and prosperous looking, “there’s just time for me to drive you and your friend back to your rooms and have you there in time for lunch.” He started his motor.

But before he could start swinging the car around Ruggles said tensely: “The garlic bulbs which old Hathaway looked for were for his protection from a danger more terrible and an enemy more merciless and cruel than you or Crane or I have ever known. It was not for garlic bulbs that Mr. Hathaway was looking that memorable hour in your garden — he was looking for life, and he knew it, if you don’t, Mr. Stevenson.

“You were not a fool when you asked for help in this matter: it was the wisest thing you ever did in your life. Trust me for forty-eight hours and see how soon this car of yours can get us to your house in Deersdale. I’m interested to see, among other things, that suit case which you — borrowed last night from your new neighbors.”

“That suit case,” Stevenson cried sharply. “I’d forgot all about it! I don’t know what possessed me to take it last night! I don’t, Mr. Ruggles! Honestly, I don’t! I’d never done such a thing in my born days before! It was just because I was so upset by looking into that living room, through that window and seeing that revolver and those devilish dogs and their growling that way — and their keeping so still, those black dogs!

“All I meant was to see what was inside the suit case, then heave it back over the fence. Then, when I saw old Hathaway in my flower bed and his eyes — and his raving about garlic bulbs, I—”

He stopped short. “Do you figure any one of them saw me there at the window? No, I wasn’t close enough. Or heard me? No, for there was soft grass under my feet. And old Hathaway — had his back to me — when I got to him — anyway, there wasn’t any moon — garlic bulbs?”

The spring of the car flung Ruggles and me back against the seat. Into second gear, then into high, and we were flying up the parkway at forty miles an hour. Like many another man who has got into a hole much deeper than he first realized, Lemuel Stevenson wanted action, swift, abrupt action to relieve his charged nerves.

It seemed only a few minutes before we reached Deersdale, and he swung the car off the smooth bed of the parkway and into an unpaved road which almost immediately began to climb up, up, and up into the hills, which were closely covered with beech, birch, cedar, and, now and then, a leprous-looking sycamore.

It was within half an hour of noon, but the sky was overcast. A glance at the speedometer showed that we had left the railroad station at Deersdale only a short three miles behind us, and yet the country on either side of the narrow, dirt road over which Stevenson was driving his car at high speed seemed a wilderness.

Then the road began to descend sharply, disclosing a valley through which a small river ran, scarcely more than a stream here, swelling into a small pond there, at other points appearing to lose itself altogether in patches of swamp.

“There, over there,” said Stevenson, slowing his car down and pointing to the left with one hand, “is where my land begins; and along this road we’re running on now. That’s my wall, there; and I planted that hedge myself. And that’s my house — you can just see the top of it over those pines. And that house over there, just this side of that bit of swamp, is the Hathaway’s. Well, well, I wonder what’s that for?” he broke off abruptly.

A taxi, with one trunk on the running-board and two boxes on the seat beside the driver, had just come out through the gate into which Stevenson was in the act of turning his car. The taxi had passed and was off up the road before Stevenson could hail it.

“I wonder,” he began again, clearly very much puzzled. “I wonder who—”

We were right in front of the porte-cochère now, and a grocer’s truck was just visible at the side door; as we looked the grocer’s boy came staggering out of the house with a battered little old trunk on his shoulder.

“What’s the meaning of this?” Stevenson demanded, springing out of our car and walking with angry strides to the boy. “That trunk belongs to my housekeeper, and I forbid you to touch it.”

“All right, Mr. Stevenson,” the boy said, sitting down on the trunk and fanning himself with his cap. “She’s inside. She’ll tell you.”

We followed Stevenson into his house.

“Suppose you let Crane and me look at that suit case while you are talking with your servants,” Ruggles said, to remove us from the scene of impending domestic disturbance.

“Yes, that’s a good idea,” Stevenson said, gratefully. “The suit case is in there.” He pointed to a small room which adjoined the living room. “It’s over behind the couch where I left it this morning, I mean last night — this business has got me so fussed up I don’t half know what I’m saying. Anyway, the suit case is in there.”

“No, it’s not there, sir” a woman’s voice said shakily.

“Not there? Then where is it, Mrs. Hollifield?” Stevenson demanded, his voice suddenly taking a harsh tone and his eyes glinting almost savagely.

“It’s gone, and I’m going,” said the housekeeper. She was a capable-looking, honest-faced, middle-aged woman with thick, untidy, iron-gray hair. “I’ve looked after this house for you for near a year and I never thought the day ’d come when I’d leave you; but after you went away this morning he came again, and this time Mary and I saw him.”

Stevenson’s flushed face lost its color. He started back, then recovered himself with an effort. “It’s time you went,” he said coldly to the housekeeper. “I can forgive anything in the world almost but dishonesty. I’ve said this before to you, and I meant it when, a week ago, I warned you that another offense would terminate your employment.” Then, seeing the tears rise in the eyes of the housekeeper, Stevenson’s face changed. “I spoke hastily, Mrs. Hollifield, and I’m sorry.”

He put his hand gently on her trembling shoulder. “Don’t be alarmed. You’ve nothing to fear, with we three men here. Tell us about it, of course. But don’t do it now.”

“No,” she said, “I’d rather tell you now and get it over with. You left the house this morning at a quarter past eight. I remember I was out on the back piazza watching the carpenters Mr. Hathaway had got down from White Plains. They were putting up all that netting and barbed wire all around their place.

“I was out there and heard your car, and you drove out of the garage and down the drive. I heard your car, and so did he, whoever an’ whatever he is, for you hadn’t been gone three minutes when he come in, right into the kitchen, and I looked up and if he wasn’t standing right there, clear as you are now!”

Chapter V A Saucer of Milk

The housekeeper drew a long, choking breath, then went on: “I must have called out or done something — like as not I did, the way he looked — and his coming into my kitchen without knocking or anything. You know, sir, how it would be, even with some one that looked honest and safe, if you just happened to look up and find him standing there close to you, looking at you without speaking.

“I must have called out, or something, for Mary come running in, and she screamed — I never heard such a scream — then both of us stood just where we was, looking down at him.”

“Down?” Ruggles asked. “I beg your pardon. Please go on, Mrs. Hollifield. You said you and Mary stood looking down at him.”

“Just as we was. And I was just going to tell him to get out and be off about his business, the way I do peddlers and such folks, when he said to both of us, throwing his hand in our faces:

“ ‘You can’t speak! You can’t move!’ He had a bamboo stick in his hand, about three feet or four long, with something bright, that I don’t know what it was, in the end of it; and he moved that rod back and forth across in front of our eyes, with that bright-eyed thing in it and it was all we could see.

“Then he said, or I think he did — I think I heard it and Mary does — ‘You will stand here, just as you are, until—’ We couldn’t hear the rest.

“We couldn’t see very well, and I can’t remember just what was the rest; but it seemed to me he went to the pantry and got a saucer, then poured some milk, just a little, into it, and warmed the saucer over the stove, then, with the bamboo stick in one hand and the saucer of milk in the other, he went out through the pantry toward the dining room, and—”

“Yes, yes,” Stevenson interrupted, “what happened then? Tell me!”

“I don’t — know,” said the housekeeper, “for it was near ten, when I came out of the faint I’d fell into; and Mary was lying there, like I was, on the kitchen floor, and the suit case you spoke of is gone, and Mary’s gone, and I’m going, sir.”

She put her rough hands to her forehead, then passed them nervously over her dilated eyes, then she looked down at the floor. “There’s the tracks he made with the marsh mud on his feet. He came here from the marsh. I’m going—”

She spoke the truth; she collapsed and fell down on the floor, across the muddy tracks to which she had just pointed. It was Ruggles’s strong arms which lifted her to the couch in the little den, and it was he who sent Stevenson running upstairs to the medicine-chest in the bathroom for the ammonia which brought her back to consciousness.

She was made of good, stout material and she recovered herself quickly; but she was determined to get away as quickly as possible from the house which, to her, represented only danger. In another five minutes, she and her battered little trunk and her package of hats and odds and ends were stowed on the grocer’s truck and on their way to the railroad station at Deersdale.

“Well, anyway,” Stevenson said, getting down on his hands and knees and examining the mud stains carefully, “she was right on one point, anyway; that’s mud from the marsh, all right! The rest of what she said was just nonsense, crazy stuff that couldn’t possibly have been true.

“She was — I don’t know what possessed her to act that way; but I mean to be fair to her; she told the truth on one point — this is marsh mud, all right!” He scratched his head. “How do you figure the stuff got here?”

“The suit case is gone,” Ruggles reminded. “How do you suppose it got out of the house? That’s a simple, practical question for you to wrestle with, while Crane and I take your car, if you’ll let us, and follow Mrs. Hollifield to the station and talk with her there until her train comes. There are some questions I must ask her, before we lose sight of her. She was too excited and hysterical to talk just now; and everywhere she looked, in these rooms, reminded her of what she’d just been through. But she’ll be quieter after the fairly long drive to the station and reassured by being away from here, and ready for the questions I must put to her.

“Crane and I’ll be back inside of two hours at most. I’ve an errand at White Plains and Crane and I shall lunch there. Good idea; pasting that time-table on the wall, there, by the telephone. Crane, it’s just noon, and she can’t get a train to New York before one thirty-four. That’ll give us plenty of time—”

“Plenty of time,” Stevenson interrupted, “to talk with a woman who sees and hears things that ain’t there! I wouldn’t waste time on her, Mr. Ruggles, though you’re more than welcome to take the car. Wouldn’t it be better to have Mr. Crane stay here with me, just in case” — he looked out of the window toward the house on the edge of the marsh — “just in case some one came from over there and asked for the suit case? It would be better to have a witness, wouldn’t it?”

“No one will ask you for the suit case,” Ruggles said. “We can eliminate the suit case, for the time being. What is much more to the point is for you to measure these tracks on your kitchen floor, hall runner, and here on this den rug, and see—” Ruggles was measuring the footprints as he spoke, then jotted down the measurements and gave the figures to Stevenson. “There you are!”

He had made a swift, but accurate tracing of the muddy footprint, copied it painstakingly, verified it; then stuck one of the copies into his pocketbook and handed the other to Stevenson. “While Crane and I are off, see if you can find, in the marsh, any footprints or tracks to fit this.”

“What for?” Stevenson laughed. “It’s not worth it. Why, you don’t figure this is the first time I’ve seen tracks like these on my floors, do you? I’ve had to speak sharp time and again to Mrs. Hollifield and Mary about their wiping their shoes or taking off their rubbers at the door instead of tracking in.

“They always said they’d never been near the marsh and hadn’t made the tracks, but had left them there for me to see, so I’d know — whatever that meant. More than once, I told ’em to own up, instead of trying to blame it off on some one else when they’d made ’em all the time. And what possessed ’em to walk in the marsh, with all our nice lawn to — what’s wrong now?”

“Nothing,” said Ruggles. “I’ve just discovered that you keep a cat and are very fond of it, since you feed it on the rug in this room here.”

“Cat?” cried Stevenson. “Cat? No! I don’t keep a cat. Why—”

“Oh, just because of this saucer of milk here,” said Ruggles, “over here back of the couch, where you had put the suit case, Mr. Stevenson. You see, Crane,” Ruggles went on, turning to me, “he found the suit case too heavy to lift over the back of the couch, and the couch was too heavy for him to shove; so to get the suit case out, he had to open it and take out some of the contents; and, even then, it was quite a struggle for him, quite an effort.

“He hasn’t much physical strength, of course, and we can almost see him heaving and working and shoving and hauling to get the heavy suit case in a position where he could open it while standing with it behind the couch where the space was so cramped.

“But finally he got it open and the stuff out, then he scrambled over the back of the couch here,” indicating the mud stains, “then repacked the suit case, added to it, of course, his most precious possession, and left the house by the way he had come, as usual.”

“As usual?” Stevenson demanded. “What do you mean?”

“I was wrong,” Ruggles admitted; “he left in more of a hurry than usual, for he dropped, without being aware of it, something he needs, as he knows very well — something he will almost surely come back for to-night, if I’m not mistaken. Put this in one of your pockets and keep it about you until Crane and I come back, after lunch.”

Ruggles picked up from the rug back of the couch, and handed to Stevenson a small, pearlwhite object, pear-shaped, with small, irregular outcroppings and coarse little roots at its rounded bottom.

“What’s this?” Stevenson cried, staring at it intently.

“Oh, just a garlic bulb,” Ruggles said easily. “They don’t cost much, but they’re very hard to get, in this big house of yours, or the Hathaways’ next door, or on the — marsh.”

Then as Stevenson continued to stare at the small, pearlwhite bulb, Ruggles went on: “The man who lost that garlic bulb will come back here after it. So be careful! Come, Crane. Time we started!”

Ruggles and I left the room, Ruggles calling back over his shoulder: “Oh, one thing more: I wouldn’t use that saucer again until you’d washed it well with soap and boiling water — remember, boiling!”

Chapter VI Dead of Fear

At the Deersdale station we found, as we had hoped, Mrs. Hollifield, the ex-housekeeper, and, as we had not counted on, Mary, the ex-housemaid. Their hysteria had passed, more, I believe, from their escape from the scene of their terrifying experience than from the interval of time which had elapsed.

But though their stories coincided from start to finish, the two women could not give us a single clew, as I looked at it; they had no idea who or what the mysterious being was who had appeared before them in broad daylight and dominated their wills and left them unconscious; except for the fact that he had mud from the marsh on his feet, they had no idea where he had come from, or where he had gone to with the suit case which he had taken from Stevenson’s study.

They had never seen the man before.

As soon as we got to the station, we got hold of them and, leading them off to the distant end of the platform where there was no one to overhear us, we let them talk until they got more or less talked out, if there is such an expression.

But as I have just said, the total of it all was disappointing; they simply repeated, over and over, what Mrs. Hollifield had told Ruggles and Stevenson and me earlier.

The only new fact which they volunteered was that, as Stevenson had said, the muddy tracks had been found on the kitchen floor several times before, and always when Mary and Mrs. Hollifield had come down to start the fire, the first thing in the morning. They had always spoken to Mr. Stevenson about the tracks, and he had always believed the tracks had been made by his two domestic servants.

“But, honest, they weren’t ours,” Mary insisted.

“No, they weren’t,” corroborated Mrs. Hollifield.

“Here comes the train,” Ruggles said, looking up the track; “we must walk up the platform a little, and you’d better not walk so close to the edge. There’s something you might have mentioned, but probably you didn’t think of it: you didn’t notice these tracks, I mean there weren’t any of these muddy tracks until about three weeks ago, when the Hathaways took the house next to yours. Is that so?”

“Why, yes,” said Mrs. Hollifield; “we noticed them first then. But how did you know it?”

“And,” said Ruggles, as the train came to a stop, “this strange-looking man, who came into the kitchen this morning, was very slender and short; his hair was straight, rather long, and a dull black, like his eyes, and his face and hands were about the color of strong coffee that’s got a little cream in it — not black, but a very dark tan.”

“Yes,” Mrs. Hollifield said shakily, while Mary gasped. “You don’t see him anywhere on this platform, do you?”

“No, he’s not here,” Ruggles said. “Don’t worry! And don’t tell any one about him.” He dashed down the address they said they should be at in New York, then helped them up the steps of the train.

“I’ve got to go to town,” he amazed me by saying. “I’ll drive out in our own car, so don’t bother trying to meet any train for me.” He swung himself aboard and I saw him turn into the “smoker.”

As I drove Stevenson’s car slowly back to his house, I tried to work out some clear-cut explanation of what the two women had told Ruggles and me, but the more I tried, the less sure I felt of the accuracy of my deductions.

When Stevenson finally unlocked the front door — I had decided that the bell was out of order — his face was white, and he locked the door instantly after admitting me, then caught my arm like a vice.

“Heard what’s happened next door? You couldn’t. One of the servants found dead, in that house, this morning. The doctor’s been there all the morning, trying to do something, or find out what—” Stevenson moistened his lips — “there’s no sign of any wound or disease or anything,” he said. “The man’s just dead, as he sat in the doorway at the back of the house, taking the air before going to bed.”

“He may have had a bad heart,” I suggested.

“No, the doctor said his heart was all right. He had examined him only two weeks or so ago for additional life insurance and found him perfectly sound. The fellow was about twenty-six or seven and one of the most active, powerful men the doctor bad ever seen; besides that, the doctor says, there are half a dozen medals for marksmanship on the walls of the fellow’s room, a little one opening off old Hathaway’s.

“He’d served in the British army in India, evidently. But all his strength and courage and being a quick man with a gun hadn’t helped him when his time came. The queer part of it is — the look on his face. Go and see for yourself!”

“What?” I asked in surprise. “Where is the body?”

“In the back part of this house,” said Stevenson. “Old Hathaway couldn’t stand its being in his house. The doctor told me that, and I had him bring it over here until the funeral.”

“You say Mr. Hathaway couldn’t stand—”

“It does seem strange. But it’s not so queer after you’ve had a look at it. I’ll show you where it is.”

I followed him to the rear of the house and one glance was enough for me; the man had been young and seemed the embodiment of physical vigor; the lines of his face were strong and magnificently resolute; I mean, they must have been when he was alive.

But that face showed, in death, every evidence of the most frightful, speechless terror; moreover, the unfortunate victim had died with his right hand pressed against the right side of his neck, high up, close to the ear — such, a position as a man might take if listening intently for the repetition of a sound which had arrested his attention suddenly. Death, abrupt and awful, had caught him in that attitude and fixed him there.

We left the room and went back to the living room. I admit that I was shuddering. “Good God,” I said to Stevenson, “that man looks as if he’d died of fright!”

“That’s what the doctor told me — but he said I wasn’t to tell any one.”

I had had no lunch, and I didn’t want any. I wondered what Ruggles would say, at this new development.

It was five before he returned. He came in with a paper-wrapped box, about eighteen inches long and five inches across, under his arm. I noticed that air holes had been punched in the wrapping paper and I asked him what he had in the box.

“A pet,” he said lightly, “to keep us company, during the nights we spend here.”

He was beginning to untie the string on the box when Stevenson broke in with the news of the tragedy of the night before. Ruggles instantly made the string fast again and we stood, in another moment, by the body of the unfortunate victim.

“No wound or disease,” Stevenson explained. “Just killed by fright. Look at his face! Ever see such a sight in your life? No, or any one else! Fright did it, Mr. Ruggles. The doctor agrees with me, though he said I mustn’t tell any one. This poor fellow had thought he heard something, and he put up his hand, up there to his ear, to listen, and then—”

Ruggles replaced the sheet over the body and led the way back into the living room. After a long moment of silence, he turned to Stevenson: “I don’t wonder the doctor told you not to say that that man died of fright. The doctor himself will not admit that he believes that. His face shows terror in its most horrible form, but it was only because he recognized, too late, the midnight marauder which had attacked him.”

“Attacked?” Stevenson-cried hoarsely. “You think the man was murdered? What do you mean — attacked?”

“You would not believe me if I told you now,” Ruggles said thoughtfully. “You have never heard of such a thing- happening; you would tell me that it was impossible for such a thing to happen, here in America, in the year 1924. But the time is coming, fast and soon, when you will believe it because you have been forced to believe it. Then I shall give you the facts which I now withhold.”

Then, as Stevenson stared at him, speechless with amazement, Ruggles went to the center table, on which he had laid the oblong, paper-wrapped box and slowly undid the string.

“Mr. Hathaway lost one protector last night,” he said quietly. “I am able to provide him with another and even a better one, if he will accept it from my hands.”

He took off the wrapping paper and lifted the cover of the box.

Chapter VII Our Strange Ally

He took from the box what looked, at first glance, like a small cat, for it seemed to have a cat’s fur and tail; but its head was shaped like a weasel’s and its restless eyes and the end of its sharp nose were pink.

When Ruggles lifted him out of the box, the small creature sat up and put his fur in order, just as a cat does; then it looked around, walked to the edge of the table, and jumped from there to Stevenson’s shoulder.

“That’s all right,” Ruggles cried as Stevenson started to fling the little thing off. “Don’t be afraid! He won’t hurt you! He’s simply making friends.”

“Well, I’ll say he’s tame enough,” Lemuel Stevenson laughed. “He’s—”

“He’s an ichneumon,” Ruggles explained, “and they’re all like that. It’s been quite a long trip, in that box, out here from the animal shop where I bought him, on lower Broadway, and probably he’s tired and hungry. We’ll give him a little piece of raw meat, then he’ll go to sleep, so as to be ready for the night.”

“What does he do at night?” Stevenson asked.

“He gets up,” said Ruggles slowly and significantly, “and attends to every noise he hears and finds out what made it. He’s a good little friend and ally: if he’d been in the Hathaway house last night that man wouldn’t have died.” He lifted the little animal from Stevenson’s shoulder, saying: “Come, old fellow, you’ve got to have your supper.”

“Just a minute,” said Stevenson, “you said raw meat was the ticket, didn’t you?”

“Yes,” said Ruggles, “but we’ll let Mr. Hathaway give it to him. It will be a good way for them to become acquainted.” Ruggles lifted the ichneumon back into the box and put back the cover and tied it.

“But,” said Stevenson, “I thought he was going to stay here, with us, I mean.”

“No, he must go to the Hathaways and go at once, for the enemy which struck body servant and protector last night, will strike again. There’s no time to be lost. Come!” Ruggles turned to the door, the box under his arm.

But Stevenson called him back. “Got a gun on you?”

“Of course.”

“You’ll need one, once you’re over that fence.”

“Why?”

“The dogs.”

“They, too, are protecting Mr. Hathaway and, God knows, he needs all the guards he can have, human or animal. I don’t want to shoot them.” Ruggles thought a moment.

Stevenson went closer to him and spoke earnestly: “Look here, Mr. Ruggles, I know you’ve done some great work against crooks in New York and other big cities; but you’ve always worked alongside of the police, as I remember it. Why don’t you call in the police now? We’ve got a good one in Deersdale.

“All you’ve got to do is drive down there to-morrow morning and ask him to help you. The fact of it is” — he looked irresolutely at Ruggles, then at me, then back at Ruggles again — “I don’t like the way this thing is going. When I called you in, all I wanted was to have you get that suit case back to its owner and—”

“And find out,” Ruggles supplied, “what was threatening old Mr. Hathaway. That’s what you said.”

“Yes,” Stevenson admitted unwillingly, “that’s what I said; and I meant it, then. But it’s different now: some fiend or devil has come into this house of mine and scared my servants into a faint so they’ve run off and left me; and something else has killed a man next door — anyway, you say he was killed, and he’s dead, that’s sure, and you say that’s only the beginning.”

He threw an anxious glance about his solidly furnished, comfortable living room. “You make me feel as if anything might happen here, any time, and I want to get out of it.” He hesitated again, then relighted his cigar nervously, then began again:

“So, I’ve decided to go to New York and put up at a hotel there for a few days. You and Mr. Crane stay here, in this house of mine if you want to. I’ll be glad to have you do it, honest! But I’m going to a New York hotel and stay there until what’s about to happen here has — happened.

“I’ll be at the Melbourne on West Forty-Fourth Street. You know the place.” Ruggles nodded. “Drop me a line there when things have stopped — happening out here, and I’ll be glad to come back.” He smiled in a simple, honest way on both of us.

“Don’t think I’m a coward. I’m not. But I’ve reached a time in life when a man, who likes things quiet, wants them — quiet, especially in the house he lives in and expects to be taken out of, when his time comes. But you and your friend will stay on here, won’t you?”

“Yes, we’ll accept your hospitality and be grateful for it,” said Ruggles; “and I promise to let you know just as soon as things have — stopped out here.”

“Good,” said Stevenson with evident relief. “And, as soon as I get to the Deersdale station — that ’ll be in half an hour about — I’ll tell that policeman there in the village you’re up here and would like to have him help you.”

“No, don’t tell him anything,” said Ruggles. “I’ve no doubt he’s a good man, as you say he is; but he wouldn’t know anything about — a ichneumon, or mongoose, which is another name for him.”

“About a mongoose or garlic bulbs? Is that what you mean?” Stevenson asked.

“Yes, that’s what I mean. But put it another way: Mr. Hathaway, who would be the natural one to call on the police for help, has not done so. Doesn’t it look as if Hathaway didn’t want the police brought into his troubles?

“Look at it in still another way: if you knew that a relentless enemy was lying in wait for you, day and night after coming a very long distance to find you, would you want that enemy to be just driven away for the time, or would you want him to be captured?”

“Do you mean,” Stevenson asked, “that it was an enemy of old Hathaway that killed that man last night?”

“I mean just that,” said Ruggles. “The servant was not the one the killer was after, but the servant was Hathaway’s most effective protector, so the killer had to put him out of the way.”

“But where does old Hathaway’s son come in? Wouldn’t he be the one you’d think would protect his father best?”

“Yes,” Ruggles admitted, “on the face of it, but it is possible that the father has a chapter in his life of which he has never told his son — something he does not want his son to know about — something the father thought had been forgotten — until suddenly this implacable enemy appeared.

“Suppose that the father, now an old man and a loved and loving father, after having thought himself safe for many years, is suddenly confronted by his all but forgotten enemy who is seeking his blood payment for an ancient wrong. Driven distracted by fear, the father lacks the courage to confide the facts to his son.”

“Fear for himself, you mean?” said Stevenson hoarsely.

“Fear for his son first and for himself next,” said Ruggles. “It was not the son but the servant whom old Hathaway selected as his bodyguard, the post of danger.”

“Danger from what?” Stevenson demanded, his face pale. “That’s what I want to know. Tell me this before I go down to New York. Tell me one thing, Mr. Ruggles, and I won’t tell a living soul or ask you anything more: what was it that killed that poor fellow that lies in back there?” Stevenson indicated the rear wing of the house with a gesture. “You say he was killed. What killed him?”

“It was a karait, a dusty brown snake, a native of India. The karait is very small, but his bite is as deadly to its victim as a cobra’s.”

Stevenson said nothing. His face, so memorable though its features were so indistinctive, showed amazement but no incredulity. “Are you sure it’s a — what did you say it was, this snake?”

“A karait,” said Ruggles quietly. “There can be no doubt of it.”

“You speak as if you knew.” It was more of a question, though, than a statement indicating agreement.

“I know,” said Ruggles, “because I once made a particular study of snake venom, and, in the course of that study, I spent some months in India. I know this snake and the precautions the natives of India take against it.”

For a long moment none of us spoke. Then Stevenson said slowly, “I’m going to get away from here, Mr. Ruggles, as I said I would. I’m going to New York. I’m — going.”

Strangely enough, those last two words were the ones the housekeeper had used. And it was almost as true in this case: after standing a moment, rigid and tense, he staggered slightly, and Ruggles’s strong arm eased him to the nearest chair.

It was a good half hour before his dilated eyes had recovered their normal and he was sufficiently his rugged self to justify us in letting him start for the Deersdale railroad station.

Just before he left us he thrust his hand into one of his pockets and brought out a small, pearl-white, pear-shaped object and handed it to Ruggles, saying: “Here, I shan’t need this where I’m going. You take it!”

“For old Hathaway?” asked Ruggles, taking the garlic bulb from Stevenson’s hand.

“For old Hathaway — or for yourself, whichever of you needs it most,” said Stevenson.

Chapter VIII The Snake from India

As we watched Stevenson’s car glide down the drive and swing out into the country road, then disappear in the direction of Deersdale, Ruggles turned to me thoughtfully:

“He believed what I said of the karait, and he’s left the field of danger. Do you think him a coward?”

“No,” I said instantly.

“You’re coming along, Dan,” Ruggles said approvingly. “Mr. Lemuel Stevenson is no coward: I would even go so far as to say that he is one of the most determined men I have ever known — a man of the most conspicuous courage. You agree with me?”

I nodded.

“Then,” asked Ruggles, “has it struck you that if Lemuel Stevenson ever did turn from the straight and narrow path into a crooked way, we should have a foeman worthy of our very best efforts? What do you think his past life has been?

“What was he before he turned into almost a recluse and decided to make his home in this ancient house in this remote and isolated wilderness? He’s getting along: I should set his age as well on in the fifties.

“Yet, as you see, he’s as solid as an oak: one of those quiet, unobtrusive men who is capable of forcing to any end a relentless purpose, a generous friend and an unforgiving enemy, yet a man who, if he forgave at last, would take prompt measures to make full restitution.”

“What evidence have you of this?”

“Of his quick desire to atone, if he found himself in the wrong? Why, look back a little: you saw how sternly he reproved his housekeeper for trying to escape blame for making those muddy tracks on the floor of the kitchen. He was convinced, let us assume for the moment, that the housekeeper had made the tracks herself or that the maid had.

“But as soon as I had suggested the impossibility of the servant making them, I mean the housekeeper, her feet being much larger than the muddy tracks on the floor, you saw how quickly his manner changed and how kindly he addressed her.”

“By the way,” I said, “I noticed something, which of course you did: Stevenson has a small foot, much smaller than his housekeeper’s.”

“Yes, that’s true,” Ruggles agreed, “but it’s equally true that the man who left those muddy tracks on the kitchen floor is flat-footed; and it’s equally true that Stevenson isn’t. There’s no good in following that clew; Dan Stevenson didn’t make those muddy footprints.”

“Yes, I should have noticed that.” Then, because I was a little chagrined at having made such a blunder just when I made what I thought was a telling discovery, I went on: “You have accounted for your thinking him one who would eagerly repair a wrong he had done to any one; but what makes you think he has such notable courage?”

“For one thing, he has been haunted by a nightmare, out here in this lonely house, and yet, until he appealed to us this morning, he had called in no one to help him.”

“What do you mean?” I asked, looking at Ruggles in surprise.

“This,” said my friend, whose strangely keen eyes missed nothing. He went to the nearest window and indicated what I had not seen: “This lock is not the ordinary one: this small wire, which you see now, is so cunningly adjusted that no one can raise this sash either from the inside or from the outside without—”

Ruggles slipped the lock and lifted the sash of the window a short inch, and instantly the room was flooded with light from the chandelier; so was the hall; so, from as much as I could see, was every room in the huge old house; and from every room came the ringing of bells — more than that, a sustained alarum, which did not cease until Ruggles had shut and locked the window.

“The unnecessary precautions of a nervous old bachelor,” I scoffed.

“No,” Ruggles corrected me; “the wise precautions of a man as free from nerves as I have ever known a man to be.”

“You call these precautions wise?” I reminded him. “Do you mean you think Stevenson was actually in danger here?”

“I have every reason to think so. Yes, I am sure of it.”

“What threatened him?” I was irritated by an increasing conviction that Ruggles was speaking very guardedly.

“Whatever it was,” Ruggles said thoughtfully, “it was enough to worry him, for all his precautions. Unquestionably he saw death staring at him through every one of these windows; and this must have been going on for some little time too, for you observe that these effective window locks and these wires were not put on yesterday.”

I examined the locks and the staples which held the wire which descended from the window frame to the floor. “They’ve been there several days at least,” I had to admit.

“During which,” Ruggles went on, “Stevenson remained here when he could have taken refuge in New York or fled for further safety to the most remote part of the world. To face it here as he did, even for a matter of only a few days, required cool courage.”

“I admit all that,” I said obstinately. “But still you don’t speak out. Why can’t you be frank with me?”

“I shall let things speak for themselves,” said Ruggles quietly. “We shall see Lemuel Stevenson again, and, when that time comes, he himself will answer your questions.

“It’s a strange world that we live in, Dan, and a strange fate that is mapped out for some of us: a chance slip, made at a critical period, the sudden development of an over-mastering passion, some such thing takes the tiller of a man’s life and steers him into what he has never planned for.

“And a fine life is wrecked with little chance of salvage; and not the one life alone — that’s the pity of it: the wrecked life wrecks the life of others. But,” coming out of the almost sad reverie into which he had fallen, “of that, later! We must dismiss Stevenson from our minds for the time and follow close on the trail of the murderer of Hathaway’s servant: there’s enough to require all our energies there, and the need of immediate action is desperate.

“That is the house of death over there, Dan,” he said, indicating the Hathaways’, “and this house we’re in is equally dangerous. I wish you’d go back to New York now, and let me face this through alone.”

“You are sure that that snake killed old Hathaway’s servant?” I asked, ignoring his suggestion that I quit the field.

“There can be no doubt about it. And it is equally sure that to-night or to-morrow night, or on the next night at the very latest, the deadly karait will be turned upon Hathaway himself.”

“But Stevenson said the doctor examined the servant’s body and found not the least sign of any wound.”

“The doctor didn’t look in the right place,” said Ruggles obstinately. “Come, I’ll show you.”

He led the way to the rear wing of the house where lay the powerful body of the man from whom the life had gone. Ruggles moved the rigid right hand.

“There,” Ruggles said, “look there under where that hand pressed — that hand which, even in death, remained pressed against his neck. Let others believe that this man died of fright! Let his secret die with him! But we know that he died of a tiny wound, high up there on his neck where the snake’s poison proved almost instantly fatal! Bend down a little and you will see it.”

I did so, and there, as Ruggles had said, high up on the neck, were two punctures so tiny that scarcely a drop of blood had oozed through.

“You realize,” said Ruggles, allowing that rigid hand to return to its former position, “that there can be no doubt of what caused this man’s death.”

“But just a moment,” I objected. “How could a snake, as small as you say this one is, reach to a man’s neck even when, as in this case, the man was sitting down?”

“The snake was lifted to the man’s neck by human hands.”

“You can’t mean that this servant held the snake, in fact committed suicide! No man would have selected such a terrible way to die!”

“No,” Ruggles said. “Human hands directed the snake; but they were the hands of the half crazed fiend whom the snake serves.”

“Who and what is this fiend, Ruggles?”

“There’s no time to go into that now. But I’ll tell you this: many years ago, Hathaway wronged this man or the man thinks Hathaway did. It’s the same, for our purposes. And now this ancient enemy has come, like a living nightmare, to wreak his vengeance on Hathaway.

“You remember that the description which the servants gave us of him tallies exactly with what I said before that: he was short and slight, black haired and black eyed, of a dark tan skin. It is from India that he has come here with his deadly little snake as executioner; and it is to India that they will return with the errand completed unless we save Hathaway from them.

“Once I am in that house,” Ruggles said, looking from the window across to the looming house on the edge of the marsh, “once there, Dan, I shall be able to defy these two demons successfully. But, though I bring the safety which Hathaway longs for, I am by no means sure he will let me enter his house.”

He stopped abruptly. “A young man has just unlocked the high gate in front of the Hathaway house, locked it after him, and — yes, he’s coming this way. He has no coat or hat on. It must be young Hathaway. We’ll manage it! Good; he’s turning in this driveway.”

As he went out to meet the newcomer Ruggles said to me, confidently: “He’ll take us back to his house with him when he goes; and, after his father and I have had a moment in private together, our course will be clear.

“Make it a point, Crane, to give me a private audience with the older man as soon as possible after the son takes us to the house. Occupy this young fellow’s attention, and leave his father to me! I don’t believe the son has been told of the danger his father—”

Ruggles hurried to the front of our house and I followed him.

Chapter IX Despair Reigns

It was young Hathaway. He introduced himself immediately, and Ruggles said that we were friends of Lemuel Stevenson, and that we were visiting him over the week-end.

“I am sorry,” said young Hathaway, “that my father and I have made you, in a way, sharers in the unfortunate occurrence which took place at our house last night.” He was tall and fair-haired and held himself in a simple, manly way, looking us frankly in the eyes in a way which commended him to us at once.

He did not seem over twenty-five, nor overvigorous, but with a resolute will for all that. He was clearly ill at ease over the fact of the body of his father’s dead servant lying in the house which, as Stevenson’s guests, we occupied. “If I could have avoided the situation in any way—” he went on.

“Please do not think of it again,” Ruggles said cordially. “Mr. Stevenson has been called to the city and will not return until to-morrow, but he told us—”

For the first time young Hathaway’s face showed more than embarrassment. He was anxious on the instant: “What did Mr. Stevenson tell you?” young Hathaway asked nervously.

For a moment Ruggles hesitated. Then he said earnestly, “I will tell you more than you may expect to hear. I am, as I have said, a friend of Mr. Stevenson; but he asked me to come here because I have had the good fortune to be able to help, in some cases, those who were threatened with danger beyond their own power to escape.”

Hathaway’s frank manner had gone, as I have said; but now his nervousness gave way to almost hostile aversion. “Are you a detective?” he asked bluntly.

“Perhaps you might call me one,” my companion said quietly. “My name is Ruggles.”

Young Hathaway’s expression did not change. “I have not the honor of your acquaintance,” he said haughtily. “You may be well known in New York; but my father and I do not go to the city. Since coming here, three weeks ago, we have kept wholly to ourselves.”

“Do you prefer this country to Europe?” Ruggles asked, careless in manner now, as Hathaway was tense and alert. “I imagine that, to any one who has lived, for example, in India—”

“I am afraid,” young Hathaway interrupted, “that you are not showing much skill, just now, as a detective, Mr. Ruggles; neither my father nor I have ever set foot in India.”

“It is an interesting country,” said Ruggles lightly. “The people native there have their own way of doing things. I was just speaking to my friend, Crane, about it. The subject came up from something I found here in Mr. Stevenson’s house just now.” Ruggles slowly took from his pocket the garlic bulb.

“But if Ruggles or I expected any confession from young Hathaway’s face, we were disappointed; he showed only fierce anger.

“I might have known,” he said bitterly, “that Stevenson would tell you what any gentleman would have realized was to be kept a matter of confidence; I mean, of course, my father’s — visit — to Mr. Stevenson’s property last evening. I hope that Mr. Stevenson told you that my father is very old, a sick man, a victim of an illness of long standing—”

“A victim,” Ruggles interrupted sternly, “of a danger which you obviously know nothing about. We lose time, Mr. Hathaway!”

“We do, indeed, lose time,” cried young Hathaway, turning away from us. “I may as well tell you that, when you speak of danger threatening my father, you are acting impertinently and are talking nonsense! I have come to look once more at the servant who died last night—”

“You mean, who was killed, last night,” said Ruggles evenly.

“I must refer you to the doctor,” said Hathaway insolently. “The man died a natural death.”

“With terror written, even in death, on his face!”

Hathaway, who had turned away, swung back and faced us.

“I remember you now, Mr. Ruggles,” he said, less scornfully. “Though I do not go to the city and have been in this country only a few weeks, I read some of the newspapers, and I recall some of the stories printed about your ability. But I must tell you that in this case you are wrong.”

“Wait a moment,” Ruggles said earnestly; “believe, if you will, that your servant died a natural death. Yet his face, as I have just said, shows the uttermost terror. He was a fearless man, accustomed to danger. You admit that?”

Hathaway inclined his head. “Yes,” he said.

“Have you not thought yourself that it was strange for his face, in death, to bear the expression it has?” Again young Hathaway bowed. “He died in terror,” Ruggles went on, “and your father knows the cause. Your father will die as his servant died unless—”

Young Hathaway shook himself free of the spell of Ruggles’s strange words. “I will not believe it,” he cried obstinately. “If danger threatened my father, he would have told me! If poor Tom” — young Hathaway with a gesture indicated the rear wing of the house — “had died of a wound or—”

“Look at his body again,” Ruggles said slowly. “Press back the right hand and look at the skin high up on the neck against which the hand presses. You will see there two small punctures, where the tiny fangs set the poison in. Then go back to your house and realize your father’s deadly danger and his — despair.

“Then if your father and you will let my friend and me help you against the enemy who means to kill both of you as he has already killed your servant, come back and tell us that we can be by your side when that enemy tries to strike again.”

For a moment young Hathaway seemed about to speak. Then, with a baffled gesture, he turned and left us, and we saw his tall, slender form pass with lagging steps to the rear wing of the house.

A few minutes later we saw him descend the drive on the way back to his home, his shoulders slumped, his head drooping forward on his breast.

Chapter X The Killer Stalks the Killer

“In half an hour, perhaps less,” said Ruggles, “we shall have their decision.”

“What if—” I began.

“Let’s not cross any bridges before we come to them. By the way, it’s only fair to let this little fellow have his supper now. I’d wanted old Hathaway to meet him that way; but I shan’t wait any longer. The ichneumon has had nothing to eat since early morning and is probably ravenous. A piece of raw meat is what he needs, and there’s probably some in Stevenson’s icebox.”

“I know where it is,” I said; “I noticed it when we talked in the kitchen this morning with Mrs. Hollifield.” Then, as I led the way, I said: “I don’t know much about the habits of the ichneumon, how often he should be fed, or much of anything about him. What part do you expect him to play in this present situation?”

“I should have gone into that more with you; the ichneumon is more dreaded by snakes than any other animal in the world. Small as he is, he will take on an eighteen-foot cobra as quickly as he will a garter snake. He’s one of the quickest things there is in the animal world and one of the most fearless.

“Though he looks so harmless, he is really a natural killer, and snakes are his specialty. That’s what I mean when I say that if this little creature had been in the Hathaway house last night, Tom, the servant, would not have died.

“For the ichneumon’s sense of smell is enormously developed, and he would have smelled out that karait in time to spring on it before it could bite; or if, as I am sure was the case, the karait was lifted by its savage keeper, to where it could reach Tom’s neck, this little ichneumon would still have saved Tom, for he would have made such a fuss, having smelled the karait from a distance, that he would have warned Tom to be on his guard.

“This little fellow is a born investigator of smells, noises, and a thousand other things which his miraculously keen senses reveal to him, but of which we never dream of the existence. He is brave and yet, generally, cautious.

“I mean that though he sometimes rushes on a snake so eagerly that he gets wounded, his most frequent and certain mode of proceeding is by a cautious, quick dart either on the head or the neck of the reptile, disabling it by breaking its back in one bite. You can see what a valuable little guardsman he will be to old Mr. Hathaway, if only the father and son will consent to accept him.” Ruggles stopped abruptly, for the door bell had rung. “I wonder if that can be young Hathaway, back so soon?” he said.

We gave up, for the moment, the search for fresh meat for the little ichneumon, and hastened to let Hathaway in. His face, as we led him into the living room, told the tale.

“My father,” he began at once, in a tone and with a manner very different from his earlier visit, “asks me to express to you his gratitude for your interest in his personal safety and your offer to help him in any way in your power. But he asks me to tell you as well, Mr. Ruggles, that he cannot accept your offer. I have done all that I can to try to induce him to admit you to his confidence; but he is immovable. He now will trust no one!”

“Can you let me have two minutes with him — one?” Ruggles said with deep feeling. “Why did he come here to Stevenson’s garden, seeking garlic bulbs? It was because the garlic bulbs which your father ordinarily kept close to his bed every night, had been mysteriously taken away. I have not been in your house. You are the only member of the household I have talked with; but, I ask you, is not what I have just said the truth? Yes or no, Mr. Hathaway?

“Hasn’t your father, back as far as you can remember, kept a jar of garlic bulbs by his bed every single night? When they were taken away, has not he always showed terror immediately on discovering the loss of the bulbs? And when he has acquired fresh bulbs, has he not always showed as mysterious but as evident relief? That’s the truth, I say! Isn’t it?”

“Yes, it’s true as that we’re standing here,” said young Hathaway. “But how could you know it?”

“Have you ever asked him why he kept the bulbs by his bed every night of his life?”

“Yes, and he said that it was simply a habit of his.”

“But it was not habit which made your father begin to insist that you, too, have garlic bulbs by your bed, since arriving here, three weeks ago,” said Ruggles.

Young Hathaway stared at him. “You’ve never been in our house, as you say, or talked with any of us except me! And yet you know, in some manner I can’t account for, about my father’s passion for garlic bulbs. Tell me what has been puzzling me for years, Mr. Ruggles: why does my father insist on having these bulbs in his bedroom and in my own?”

“Because,” said Ruggles slowly, “the natives of India believe that the odor from the bulbs offends the delicate mechanism of the olfactory nerves and nasal organs of the karait and cobra — with the result that these deadly reptiles will not go into a room where garlic bulbs are kept. So the natives keep garlic bulbs as a protection against these most dangerous snakes.”

“But my father—”

“He is taking this means to protect himself, as best he can, against the karait. Similarly, he believes he is protecting you.”

Young Hathaway put his hand to his forehead in a bewildered way. “Can you tell me more? It will help me to — protect my father—”

“I will tell you this much more now,” said Ruggles, “because it is most important for you to know it: the reptile which killed your servant, Tom, and now threatens your father and yourself with the same terrible fate, is beyond question the karait.

“It cannot be a cobra, for the relentless being, who has brought this snake here, carries it about in a hollowed-out bamboo rod, i. e., a slender, little bamboo rod from which he has hollowed out the pith at the joints; and no member of the cobra family is sufficiently small to be carried in such a space. Keep your eyes open every instant you can, night and day, for a dark-skinned, small, slender, black-haired, black-eyed man who carries in his hand a thin bamboo walking stick.”

“Your description fits our Japanese butler, except for the bamboo walking stick,” said young Hathaway. “Could he be—”

“No, your father’s enemy and yours is from India, and India alone. From there, he has come here to wreak his vengeance on your father and has brought the deadly little karait as executioner.”

Young Hathaway started back and his cheeks paled. “Have you seen this man and his — snake?”

“No, but during Mr. Stevenson’s absence, the man came into the kitchen of this house with his bamboo rod in his hand. The housekeeper and the cook saw him, and they saw the snake’s eyes, without recognizing them as such. But even so, the sight and the man’s exertion of his strange, hypnotic power, threw the two servants into unconsciousness.

“That was the first time and the only time they have seen him; but there is strong reason for believing he entered this house, in the night, several times before, probably to steal food for his snake and himself. He comes and he goes again, soundless as a ghost.

“He may be in this house now, crouched motionless as a huge bat in one of the blackest corners of the huge old attic, or where the shadows are deepest in the cellar beneath — waiting for the night to come — always waiting for the long-sought opportunity to strike your father down.”

“Good God!” cried young Hathaway. “If only I could convince my father of this creature’s existence — this inhuman devil and his snake—”

“No need to do that,” Ruggles said somberly: “your father knows of their existence only too well, as I have tried to make clear to you.”

“Do you mean that my father knows this Indian native?”

“Beyond any doubt.”

“But I tell you my father has never been in India!”

“Before your birth, your father undoubtedly lived there long!”

Ruggles looked at the clock on the mantelpiece. “You have been here too long already. Go back to your father and tell him all or nothing — just as you see fit — of what I have said. Try to persuade him to let Crane and me come and spend the night in your house.

“And,” Ruggles added, as we entered the living room on the way to the front door of the house, “take with you this ichneumon, or, as many people prefer to call it, this mongoose: he, too, is an enemy of the karait, as your father knows. Your father may consent to receive the mongoose, though refusing to accept my offices.”

“A mongoose!” said young Hathaway. “May I see it a moment, before I take it back with me to our house?”

“Certainly,” said Ruggles, undoing the string and lifting the cover of the box.

Then Ruggles started back with a fierce cry, and, thrusting his hand into the box, he brought out the limp and lifeless body of the mongoose, whose head had been crushed within the past few moments by a relentless hand, for the soft, flexible body was still warm.