Читать книгу The Mystery Of The Second Shot - Rufus Gillmore - Страница 10

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About forty people alighted from the train with Ashley when it arrived at Mossett, at a little after four. He watched them tumble, laden with bundles, into the waiting carriages, automobiles and buses. Not one did he recognize, but he knew them to be small Boston business men who sought this distant, sleepy little shore town to secure a refuge from the summer heat for their wives and children. By the time he had learned that the Newhall house was over a mile from the station, and that he could best reach it by one of the station buses, this conveyance had filled. He climbed up on the seat beside the driver.

For momentum the bus depended upon an old spavined horse who was induced to believe things were better ahead because a young red-haired boy plied the butt end of a whip so vigorously behind.

“You don’t know whether Miss Newhall came down this afternoon or not, do you?” asked Ashley, partly to call off the driver from his prey.

“Sure,” answered the boy, “she came down on the three and I took her over.” He stopped drubbing the horse to take a look at Ashley. “Be you a relative?” he asked.

“No; just a reporter.”

He was rewarded by another and longer look from the boy. A reporter in Mossett evidently excited as much interest as an actor or a magician.

“Well, you ain’t the only one,” the boy went on after a moment.

Ashley knew that Newhall’s disappearance had sent a flock of reporters to this little town. He said nothing. He was planning what he should do when he reached Second Cliff, the abode of the Newhalls.

“Second Clift’s got a new name now,” the boy broke in with a grin.

“That so?” responded Ashley without interest.

“Use’ter call it ‘Newhall’s Folly’; now he’s gone and shot hisself, we’re callin’ it ‘Suicide Clift.’ ”

Ashley, interested, offered the boy a cigarette, lighted one himself. The overture, as he had expected, kept the boy talking. “ ’Taint the first suicide we’ve had on Second Clift. Old man Thorpe who lived up next to Newhall, shot hisself there a little while ago. Guess it’s contagerous, like scarlet fever.”

“Thorpe!” mused Ashley, carefully dissimulating his attention. “Who was he—some relative of the Newhalls?”

“Relative!” the boy laughed. “Ain’t you never heared of the trouble down here between Newhall and old man Thorpe?”

Ashley shook his head.

“Well, that’s kinder strange—an’ you a reporter!” The boy studied Ashley out of the corner of an eye. Evidently he made up his mind that he was not being beguiled. He went on:

“Thought everybody knowed ’bout that. Old man Thorpe, he come down first an’ put up a real clever house over on the clift. No one thought of buildin’ there before—nothin’ to see but the ocean, an’ ’skeeters so thick they bit a dog to death. Then, he invites his friend, Newhall, to come down an’ see what a fine place he’s got. Newhall comes; somehow he gets looney over the place, too, an’ the first thing anyone knew, he’d bought up all the rest of the land on the clift. Thorpe, he got sore—sorer than a man who’s missed the last train to town. He only had the handfull of land on top the clift where he’d put up his house. He said he tole Newhall he ’tended to buy the rest an’ Newhall was mean enough to get it ahead of him.

“Then Newhall went to work an’ put up a house on the clift as big as a hotel an’ fixed up the whole darn place. His mansion made Thorpe’s house look like a shack. When the old man kicked, Newhall just handed him another left-wallop to the jaw, tole him he’d better get busy an’ buy a balloon or an airship, or somethin’; he wasn’t goin’ to have the old man goin’ and comin’ over his land any longer. You see, Newhall, he’d been sharp enough to buy the only road up the clift. Thorpe, he couldn’t get into or out of his land—not without wings. Thorpe claimed he had a right of way to the road—guess he had, anyways the nail-keg ’tops’ argued it out nights ’round the Post Office stove and said so—but he found it another matter gettin’ it. Newhall put up a fence an’ a trespassin’ sign. Then they both went to law ’bout it.

“Now, I ain’t sayin’ this, but I heard it; they say that Newhall had the whole thing planned, egged the old man on, was just waitin’ to get old Thorpe into court an’ bust him so he could get hold of his little pinch of land, too. By cripes, but he near done it! He skun the old man of his money all right. Newhall was just gettin’ ready to step in, was ’round askin’ one of us to buy it in for him, when one day old man Thorpe sneaks down into the empty house and shoots hisself through the head. Everybody says Newhall druv him to it. An’ now, Newhall, he ups an’ does the same thing hisself! That’s why we’re thinkin’ of callin’ it ‘Suicide Clift.’ Strange, ain’t it, how a man can’t do anybody dirt without gettin’ a wipe in the face hisself?”

But Ashley was too keenly interested in facts to care for their philosophy. “What about the Thorpe house? Did they have to give it up and leave here?” he inquired.

“Not on your life! The old man’s widder an’ son had to mortgage it; they had to yank young Thorpe out of college to keep their heads above water, but they held onto the house. Guess the robins ’ll be wearin’ trousers ’fore they give up that after what’s happened.”

“Why, what else happened?” demanded Ashley.

“Ain’t that enough?” The glint in the boy’s eyes suggested that there was more.

Ashley shook his head. “Go on,” he said.

“Well, young Thorpe, he was girlin’ with Newhalls daughter, an’ they kept it up through ’bout all the trouble between the families. But that was broke off quick after the old man shot hisself.”

Ashley seemed to be much more interested in the end of his cigarette than in his next question. “Are the Thorpes here now?” he asked.

“I dunno. I thought I see young Thorpe down on the marsh this momin’, but the house ain’t been open sence the old man died, an’ he didn’t come on any of the trains or I’d ’a’ seen him.”

“What was he doing on the marsh—fishing?”

“I dunno. Ain’t sayin’ ’twas him. All I know is, I was driving the barge over to the early train when I see somebody that looked like him sittin’ down and lookin’ into the creek over there where it forks. But he didn’t have no fishin’ pole, an’ there ain’t no fish there anyway—’cept clams.”

The bus had separated from the crowd of vehicles which had kept company with it along the main road from the station, had taken to a road which led straight across the marsh. On the left was a wharf or two and a huddle of weatherworn buildings which must be Mossett; on the right from road to horizon stretched a waste of marshland intersected by a shallow stream. About a hundred yards from the road this creek forked, separating into two smaller streams. Ashley turned and looked toward the point on the marsh where the driver thought he had seen Thorpe. A man might have wandered out upon that barren, muddy waste to shoot small birds, but this was not the season for peep or yellow-legs. What, then, could have taken Thorpe out there? Could it have been Thorpe? If it were, had Miss Newhall hastened down here to meet him?

“You get out here, if you wanter go to the Newhalls,” the bus driver broke in on his ruminations. “You take this road right up the clift. I turn off here to the beach with the rest of my load.”