The Flying Death - Samuel Hopkins Adams (story reading .txt) 📗

disappeared in the greyness. Their tacit purpose was to find some trace of the Wonderful Whalley. All the morning they rode, keeping a keen outlook from every hilltop, but without avail. They lunched late at First House and started back well along in the afternoon.

“He may be in any one of those thousand scrub-oak patches,” said Haynes as they remounted. “It’s like hunting a crook on the Bowery. This fog is thickening. Let’s hustle along.”

To hustle along was not so easy, for presently a fine rain came driving down, involving the whole world in a grey blur. For an hour the three circled about, lost. From the professor came the first suggestion:

“I believe that I hear the surf,” said he. “Guiding our course by the sound, we may gain the cliff, by following the line of which we easily should reach our destination.”

“Bravo, Professor!” said Haynes, and they made for the sea.

As they reached the crest of the sand-cliff some eighty feet above the beach, the rain ceased, a brisk puff of wind blew away the mist, and they found themselves a quarter of a mile west of Graveyard Point.

A short distance toward the point a steep gully debouched upon the shore, and a few rods out from its mouth the riders saw the body of a man stretched on the hard sand.

The face was hidden. Something in the huddled posture struck the eye with a shock as of violence. With every reason for assuming, at first sight, the body to have been washed up, they immediately felt that the man had not met death by the waves. Where they stood, the cliff fell too precipitously to admit of descent; but the ravine farther on offered easy access. Half-falling, half-slipping, they made their way down the abrupt declivity to the gully’s opening, which was partly blocked by a great boulder, and came upon a soft and pebbly beach, beyond which the hard clean level of sand stretched to the receding waves. As they reached the open a man appeared around the point to the eastward, sighted the body, and broke into a run. Haynes recognised him as Bruce, the Bow Hill station patrol, who had been on the cliff the night of the wreck. Dick Colton also started forward, but Haynes called to him:

“Hold on, Colton. Don’t go out on the sand for a moment.”

“Why not,” he asked in surprise.

“No use marking it all up with footsteps.”

At this moment the coastguard hailed them. “How long has that been there?”

“We’ve just found it,” said Colton.

“I’m on patrol duty from the Bow Hill station,” said the other. “Oh, it’s you, Mr. Haynes,” he added, recognising the reporter.

“These gentlemen are guests at Third House, Bruce,” said Haynes. “Here’s fresh evidence in our mystery, I fear.”

“Looks so,” said the patrol. “Let’s have a closer look.” He walked toward the body, which lay with the head toward the waves. Suddenly he stood still, shaking.

“Good God! it’s Paul Serdholm!” he cried. Then he sprang forward with a great cry: “He’s been murdered!”

“Oh, surely not murdered!” expostulated Professor Ravenden. “He’s been drowned and—”

“Drowned?” cried the man in a heat of contempt. “And how about that gash in the back of his neck? It’s his day on patrol from the Sand Spit station, and this is where the Bow Hill and Sand Spit lines meet. Three hours ago I saw him on the cliff yonder. Since then he’s come and gone betwixt here and his station. And—” he gulped suddenly and turned upon the others so sharply that the professor jumped— “what’s he met with?”

“Perhaps the surf dashing him on a rock made the wound,” suggested Haynes.

“No, sir!” declared the guard with emphasis. “The tide ain’t this high in a month. It’s murder, that’s what it is—bloody murder!” and he bent over the dead man with twitching shoulders.

“He’s right,” said Colton, who had been examining the corpse hastily. “This is no drowning case. The man was stabbed and died instantly.”

“Was the unfortunate a friend of yours?” asked Professor Ravenden benevolently of the coastguard.

“No, nor of nobody’s, was Paul Serdholm. No later than yesterday he picked a fight with me, and —” he broke off and looked blankly at the three men.

“How long would you say he had been dead?” asked Haynes of Colton.

“A very few minutes.”

“Then we may catch the murderer!” cried the reporter energetically. “Professor Ravenden, I know I can count on you. Colton, will you take orders?”

“You’re the captain,” was the quiet reply.

“Then get to the cliff top and scatter, you three. The murderer must have escaped that way. You can see most of the gully from there. Not that way. Make a detour. I don’t want any of our footprints on the sand between here and the cliff.”

The patrol hesitated.

“Bruce, I’ve had twenty years’ experience in murder cases,” said Haynes quickly. “I’ll be responsible. If you will do as I direct for the next few minutes we should clear this thing up.”

“Right, sir,” said the man.

“Come back here in fifteen minutes, then, if you haven’t found anything. Professor Ravenden, I will meet you at the Sand Spit station in half an hour. You the same, Dr. Colton.”

As the three started away, Haynes moved up to Colton and said in a low tone: “The same wound?”

Dick nodded. “Without a shadow of doubt. It’s Whalley of course. What will you do?”

“Stay here and collect the evidence we shall need.”

No sooner had the searchers disappeared up the gully than Haynes set himself whole-heartedly to the work he loved. His nerves were tense with the certainty that the answer was writ large for him to read. Indeed, it should have been almost ridiculously simple. On three sides was the beach, extending eastward and westward along the cliff and southward to the water-line. Inland from where he stood over the body, the hard sand stretched northward, terminating in the rubble at the gully’s mouth. In this mass of rubble, footprints would be indeterminable. Anywhere else they would stand out like the mark on a coin.

On their way forward to meet the patrolman the party from Third House had passed along the pebble beach and stepped out on the hard sand at a point east of the body, making a circuitous route. Haynes had contrived this, and as he approached he noted that there were no trail marks on that side. Toward the ocean there was nothing except numerous faint bird tracks, extending almost to the water. Now, taking off his shoes, Haynes followed the spoor of the dead man. Plain as a poster it stood out, to the westward. For a hundred yards he trailed it. There was no parallel track. To make doubly certain that the slayer had not crept upon Serdholm from that direction, Haynes examined the prints for evidences of superimposed steps. None was there. Three sides, then, were eliminated. As inference at first had suggested, the killing was done from the cliff side.

Haynes’ first hasty glance at the sand between the body and the ravine’s opening had shown him nothing. Here, however, must be the telltale evidence. Striking off from the dead man’s line of approach, he walked out upon the hard surface. The sand was deeply indented beyond the body, where his three companions had hurried across to the cliff. But no other shoe had broken its evenness.

Not until he was almost on a line between the body and the mouth of the gully did he find a clue. Clearly imprinted on the clean level was the outline of a huge claw. There were the five talons and the nub of the foot. A little forward and to one side was a similar mark, except that it was slanted differently.

Step by step, with starting eyes and shuddering mind, Haynes followed the trail. Then he became aware of a second, confusing the first, the track of the same creature. At first the second track was distinct, then it merged with the first, only to diverge again. The talons were turned in the direction opposite to the first spoor. From the body of Serdholm to the soft sand stretched the unbroken lines. Nowhere else within a radius of many yards was there any other indication. The sand lay blank as a white sheet of paper; as blank as the observer’s mind, which struggled with one stupefying thought: that between the body of the dead lifesaver and the refuge of the cliff no creature had passed except one that stalked on monstrous, taloned feet.

Sitting down upon the beach, Haynes reasoned with himself aloud: “This thing,” he said, “cannot be so. You ought not to have sent the others away. Someone in full command of his eyesight and faculties should be here.”

Then, the detective instinct holding faithful, he hastily gathered some flat rocks and covered the nearest tracks, in case of rain. A field sparrow hopped out on the rubble and watched him.

“Tomorrow,” said Haynes to the sparrow, “I’ll pick up those rocks and find nothing under them. Then I’ll know that this was a phantasm. I wonder if you’re an illusion.”

Selecting the smallest stone, he threw it at the sparrow. With a shriek of insulted surprise the bird flew away. Haynes produced a pencil, with which he drew, upon the back of an envelope, a rough but pretty accurate map of the surroundings. He was putting on his shoes when Bruce came out of the gully.

“See anything?” called Haynes.

“Nothing moving to the northward,” replied Bruce, approaching. “Have you found anything?”

“Not that you could call definite. Don’t cross the sand there. Keep along down. We’ll go to Sand Spit and report this.”

But the man was staring beyond the little column of rock shelters.

“What’s that thing?” he said, pointing to the nearest unsheltered print. “My God! It looks like a bird track. And it leads straight to the body!” he cried in a voice that jangled on Haynes’ nerves. But when he began to look fearfully overhead, into the gathering darkness, drawing in his shoulders like one shrinking from a blow, that was too much.

Haynes jumped up, grabbed him by the arm and started him along.

“Don’t be a fool!” he said. “Keep this to yourself. I won’t have a lot of idiots prowling around those tracks. Understand? You’re to report this murder, and say nothing about what you don’t know. Later we’ll take it up again.”

The man seemed stunned. He walked along quietly, close to his companion, to whom it was no comfort to feel him, now and again, shaken by a violent shudder. They had nearly reached the station, when Professor Ravenden and Colton came down to the beach in front of them. Colton had nothing to tell. The professor reported having started up a fine specimen of sky-blue butterfly, which led him astray. This went to show, he observed, that a man never should venture out lacking his net.

“Whalley might have bumped into him, and he probably wouldn’t have noticed it,” remarked Haynes aside to Colton. “It takes something really important, like a bug, to attract the scientific notice. A mere murderer doesn’t count.”

“Then you’ve found evidence against the juggler?” asked Colton eagerly.

“I’ve found nothing,” returned the reporter, “that’s any clearer than a bucket of mud.”

He refused to say anything more until they were close to the station. Then he tested a hopeless theory.

“The man wasn’t stabbed; he was shot,” he observed.

“What’s the use?” said Colton. “You know that’s no bullet wound. You’ve seen the same thing twice before, not counting the sheep, and you ought to know. The bullet was never cast that could open such a gap in a man’s head. It was a broad-bladed, sharp instrument with