Читать книгу The Doom of Stark House - Percy Keese Fitzhugh - Страница 6

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The horses neighed impatiently up on the snow-packed trail and high above the river the wild fowl screamed continuously. The biting wind moaned eerily and blew the wet, clinging snow into their faces. Suddenly Jacques Bonner was aware of Hal’s questioning gaze and, averting his enormous head, he raised his hand and pointed directly at the skeleton.

“’Eem was shot in head, no?” he said, leveling his finger at a telltale cavity in the skull.

“Gosh—yes!” Hal exclaimed, bending his head to examine the bullet hole in the bony skull. “That’s what finished that poor bird, whoever he was.”

“And if that didn’t,” Chester Stark whispered, “being buried in this cedar chest did for him. This is gruesome—awful!” He turned to Bonner impulsively. “Jacques, you’ve uncovered a crime, a terrible crime. I guess some pretty big hunch guided your hand down here—I wouldn’t have thought twice about bothering to open this mud-covered thing. I’d have thought it was packed full of junk and not worth opening.”

“The police!” Hal said in a deep, hushed voice. “You’ll have to get word to them, Ches!”

“Of course,” said Chester, looking off thoughtfully. “It means a trip to Sainte Beauve for one of us. It can’t be done before morning, though.”

“And what about this chest?” Hal asked. “We leave ’eem here,” Jacques answered quickly. “We pick ’eem up in morning an’ take on sleigh to Sainte Beauve.”

“Yes, that’s the best thing to do,” said Chester. “No one would be likely to come this way for weeks. You see, Hal, there’s only two ways to Sainte Beauve from this side of the river—the trail from Beyond and another trail which no native would take except in late spring and summer. Even then it’s a bleak trail; it’s called the Black Swamp country up there. Gets its name from the fact that the river floods it pretty well in the early spring. And the reason it’s undesirable in winter is because it lies pretty low and the thin ice is sometimes a terrible trap for the unwary. Besides, it’s a maze there—I’ll tell you about it sometime. And seldom, if ever, a native cares to take the trail through Beyond—my father doesn’t invite hospitality. So we needn’t worry about the chest being left here—it’ll be safe from meddlers— Suppose we get away from here now, eh?”

“Good suggestion, Ches. I’m chilled mentally and physically, believe me.”

Without delay then, they closed the lid and pulled the chest farther up under the protection of the river bank. Hal glanced back at it as they started away and shivered. Twenty years ago that gruesome thing had been a living man...twenty years, Jacques Bonner had said. He looked up and watched Bonner waddling toward the trail on his stumpy legs.

“Ches, what on earth do you suppose made your Jacques smile before?”

“Smile? At what?”

“That’s what I’m asking you. I caught him smiling at that—anyway, he seemed to be smiling while we were speechless over that terrible discovery. I’m sure I didn’t mistake that look of his to be one of horror. Another thing, he seemed to be pretty certain that that chest was buried for twenty years; he said it too quick somehow.”

“Just the way it struck me, too. Still, he’s a born woodsman and he’s got enough of that Indian strain in him to guess the age of wood at first glance. They do, you know. Yet, as you say, he seemed to say it not so much out of his woodsman’s experience, as from some other experience...something that made a pretty vivid impression on his mind.”

“Mm,” said Hal thoughtfully, “something that happened twenty years ago, huh? What a coincidence if this chest business had something to do with...”

“Confound it, Hal, you’ve got an analytical mind! Now you’ve got me started thinking that there might be some connection between the two...the chest and Jacques!”

“In the face of everything, it’s worth some thought.”

“Yes,” said Chester, his voice almost a whisper now, “but I don’t like the thought. Particularly about Jacques. I’ve felt all my life that there was evil enough about the man without actually seeing any evidences of it. I don’t like it, Hal, I don’t like it.”

“Forget about it then. I’m sorry I brought up the blamed thing. But that’s me all over—adding one and one and getting a total of four. Another thing, I’m suspicious as all get-out.”

“You’re not, Hal—you’re just too confoundedly observing, that’s all. I can readily understand now why three generations of your family have served the American government’s Secret Service so well. It’s in the blood. I didn’t think of it when I invited you to come on home with me, but I might have known that it wouldn’t take a Keen very long to analyze the evil in Jacques Bonner.”

“Aw, forget it, Ches,” Hal protested modestly; “I haven’t been analyzing your Jacques—I’ve just been thinking about him. That’s all,” he added.

“That’s all?” Chester Stark chuckled softly. “That’s enough. From my own experience with you, I happen to know that it means something when you think. Things just naturally begin to happen, that’s all.”

“A fellow can’t be right all the time, Ches. Perhaps this is one of the times when I’m not right—perhaps I just let my imagination run away with my head about Bonner. Anyway, we’re out here to recuperate and have some fun. Let’s forget about it, huh?”

“Sure we will,” Chester Stark answered.

Hal glanced at his friend and knew that he was only fooling himself. Neither of them could dismiss from his mind now the suspicion that in some inexplicable manner Jacques Bonner had acquired a definite knowledge of the identity of the chest’s gruesome contents some twenty years ago.

This thought was uppermost in their minds when they again settled themselves in the sleigh. Bonner’s guttural cry started the impatient horses off on a brisk trot. Once more they drove into the blinding snow and biting north winds leaving behind them the screeching fowl which still circled crazily above the dark, ice-choked waters of the Bete Noire. Long after they left the region, Hal seemed to hear its dismal, wailing echoes, and he wondered if the great wild bird sensed the tragic contents of the mud-covered chest.

He was to wonder still more about the wild fowl’s intelligence for they had not heard the last of its shrill, haunting cries.