Corpses at Indian Stone

by Philip Wylie

  B-E-D. . . . Look up that in the dictionary! . . . Statement? . . . Well . . . Yes." He considered. "You can say that, in my opinion, James Calder died accidentally and George Davis by his own hand, after peculations that involved the missing million in gold." He was silent, for a moment, grinning. "You haven't heard about the gold, yet? Well--send your reporter to see Byron Waite. He'll be happy to supply the details, I'm sure!"

  Aggie hung up. "That was Metropolitan News and Photo, in New York. They got a tip from a local reporter at State Police Headquarters. I hope--I earnestly hope--their man will rout out old Waite just as he is dropping off--say about nine or ten this morning!"

  "Yours is a blithe, sweet spirit, Agamemnon! Why did you tell them that rubbish about accident and suicide and the libel about George stealing the gold?"

  "Because," he answered, "I have a strong suspicion my statement will be regarded, eventually, as a singularly prophetic estimate of the conclusions to which everybody will come. By that I mean, unless Wes or you or I run into something new, we've come to the end of the trail. Bogarty--or whoever murdered James Calder and caused George Davis to die--is so many jumps ahead that we won't catch up. Maybe ever.

  I predict a period of public fanfare--and a gradual dying out of excitement."

  ' That's an alarming idea," she said, "and I hope you're wrong."

  Aggie yawned and started toward the stairs. "There's somebody in this vicinity so clever, and so intuitive, that the less I think about it the better I'll sleep!" He called down, a moment later, "Incidentally, Sarah, have Windle get me about three dozen steel traps, will you? I was serious about that. Fox traps. And good night!"

  CHAPTER 13

  On a day in the early part of July, a dazzling day, of the sort that makes people who cannot swim wish they had been braver, and people who can, hasten to the nearest lake, river or pool, Agamemnon Telemachus Plum, A.B., B.S., M.A., Litt.D., Ph.D.--and Phi Beta Kappa, as a matter of course--sat on the edge of Lower Lake at Indian Stones with his feet in the water up to the ankles. Two weeks in the mountains had made changes in the eminent paleontologist. The most readily discernible change was superficial: his skin was now as brown as a filbert, instead of the academy white which it had been. His beard was neater and shorter.

  Another change was in his social station. That is to say, as he sat on the tepid margin of the pond, people spoke to him amiably and in such a way as to suggest esteem.

  A child, aged about six, threw itself on his shoulders and shouted, "Dive in with me, Aggie!"

  Aggie laughed and said, "Soon. As soon as I go overboard."

  Another youngster--some years older--approached with diffidence and spoke after summoning up a modicum of boldness: "Will you make me one of those Nairobi fish spears like you make Fred? He got a pickerel with it, yesterday!"

  Aggie laughed again. "I will, Johnnie, if you'll mend your grammar. A spear 'like the one you made for Fred'--or, 'as you did for Fred.'" Johnnie was pleased. "It's a duzie!"

  he said with fervor. "Whammo! Fred don't miss--hardly ever!"

  "'Doesn't,' " Aggie repeated with pain on his face.

  The boy ran off yelling, "Hey! Socksie! I get one, too!"

  Mrs. Drayman, who was sitting near by in a deck chair, clucked over her knitting.

  "It gets worse and worse," she said. "Children these days don't pay the slightest heed to their grammar. When I was young--"

  Aggie watched Johnnie skid off the dock into the water. "I dunno," he meditated.

  "I can't recall that I had mastered the rhetorical irregularities at twelve. And I do know that at his age I was unable to hook up a radio. Or to send in code. He may never be a purist. But he ought to be a good engineer."

  "I hope so!" She busied herself with her work in a way that suggested she had a problem in her mind rather than in the stitches. "I--I understand Sarah has asked Beth to keep house for you?"

  Two weeks ago, Aggie would have blushed and stammered. Two weeks ago, the fact that a young woman had been invited to move in with himself and his aunt would have caused him to depart from Indian Stones. Now, his embarrassment was only moderate. "Why--yes. Company. Someone to run the place for us. Sarah's better--but convalescing slowly. And after all, Beth's at loose ends."

  "Hunh!" said Mrs. Drayman.

  Meaning, Aggie thought, that Mrs. D. is onto the fact that Sarah will go to any lengths to arrange things between Beth and me. Mrs. D.--and the rest of Indian Stones.

  He let the insinuating syllable hang in the air for a while. He had almost packed up when Sarah suggested it. But not quite. He was uncertain why he had stayed. Perhaps out of scientific curiosity--to see how a young and very handsome woman behaved, from a proximate viewpoint. Or perhaps because he had grown somewhat more blasé, owing to the fact that he had recently been interviewed by reporters, policemen, detectives, coroners, and the like--the fact that the papers had been full of his name and his statements--and the fact that Indian Stones had changed its opinion of him. He was no longer regarded as a bearded, bookish anachronism.

  He was thought of, rather, as something of a fireball. The sort of man who would ingeniously and calmly break in on a dead body in the middle of night, using an automobile jack. The sort of fellow who would barge into a secret cellar all alone and without a weapon, when there lurked in it a dangerous thief. A man in whom a captain of the State Police had implicit trust. A man, moreover--according to the testimony of numerous wide-eyed kids--who could tell the greatest stories on earth about Indians and Eskimos and African natives--every one of them true.

  Aggie yawned. It was very restful. No more horror or alarm. Jim Calder buried--

  and his family trying to forget. Danielle gone. .

  He saw that Mrs. Drayman was about to cluck some more, so he overrode the topic. "An extraordinarily lovely day," he said.

  She veered reluctantly. "Quite lovely. Quite."

  "The lake," he continued, "is especially--vivid."

  "I prefer Upper Lake," she replied, still wanting to hear further items about Beth's prospective residence with the Plums. "It's more private--and nearer our cottage. Still--

  since the bay water's been spoiled--we've had to swim here. It's turned quite brown, you know. Algae--or some sort of weeds, I presume. Very nasty and nothing like it ever happened before. Where is Beth, by the by?"

  "Changing her clothes," he answered calmly. "Going in with me." He looked at the other bathers. "Us." His dark eyes defied the upraised stare of Mrs. Drayman.

  "Extraordinary, too, the way things have settled down," he said.

  Since Mrs. D. was the mother-in-law of the son of the deceased Mr. Calder, her interest in the drama at Indian Stones was second to nothing else. "Isn't it? I was terribly upset for days. Our Bill's predicament was so embarrassing! He did disapprove of his father, you know. My Martha, too. And that Davis girl--practically forcing William up on Garnet Knob the night--Jim--was found! It was providential that you followed them--and listened! Otherwise--what could my poor daughter have thought?"

  "The worst!" said Aggie solemnly.

  Mrs. Drayman did not know she was being kidded. "Yes! Exactly! As it was, she's kept Bill in the doghouse practically ever since!"

  "Hmmm," said Aggie. "She ought to let up, about now. Bygones. I find Bill Calder an extremely likable chap."

  "I disagree," Mrs. D. responded. "Not about Bill; He's generous enough, as young men go. About Martha letting up. Danielle will be back shortly--"

  Aggie sat up straighter. "That's news. I thought she was staying in New York. She wrote me a note-after the funeral--saying she didn't feel like a summer here, any more.

  Understandable."

  "Then she's changed her mind--as usual. Really! There ought to be some way to get legal protection against a woman of that sort! I told Martha--"

  "Oh, come," the professor said. "Danielle's gaudy--but not wicked. She's unmanageable--but that's because she's spoiled. The Bills of this world spoiled her. I think she's quite n
ice--and I've missed her."

  "Nice!" said Mrs. D. "Any word but-- nice!"

  "Who's nice?"

  Aggie turned farther on the bank. Beth was standing behind him in a magenta bra and shorts. Her hands were full of dark hair which she was twisting up so that it could be covered by her cap. She was a darker tan than he. Her posture made her mannequin's figure an unavoidable--and admirable--spectacle. He remembered he had once said to Sarah that Beth was the sort of girl you found yourself getting mixed up with when you least expected it. Now he found himself reflecting that such an involvement would have its merits. He grinned. "Danielle."

  Beth was startled. "Danielle?"

  "She's coming back." He made up reasons. "Hot in New York. She's lonely. Sat in the apartment getting morbid. Can't blame her."

  Beth's face lost the animation that had marked her inquiry. "Let's swim, Aggie. It must be ninety in the shade."

  "Oke," he said. He raised his voice. "Hey! Bugsie! If you want to dive on my shoulders--here's your chance!"

  A juvenile chorus took up the offer. It was perhaps four o'clock--the sun was casting a blue shadow from Garnet Knob--when Beth, righting a canoe which she and some of the children had deliberately overturned, spotted Aggie in the water near by.

  "Take me for a ride," she said. "Sure." He assisted in towing the canoe to the dock. He heaved himself ashore, drew up the boat, spilled out the water, mopped the ribs with a towel, and invited Beth to step in. He found a backrest and some cushions for her. They started toward the islands--through a flotilla of boats. Two teams of boys were practicing rowing for a race. Some girls were doing lifesaving. Fred, owner of the fish spear, was being propelled along the shore by a smaller boy. Fred stood in the bow of his boat, taut, ready--a figure of menace to frogs, water beetles, and small fish. In a distant cove, Byron Waite was casting for bass--annoyed, no doubt, at so much laughter and sound.

  Aggie paddled fairly swiftly, although he was not hurrying. They were soon out of sight. Beth leaned back, trailed her fingers, absorbed the sun, and watched the man.

  "It's swell," she said, "of you and Sarah to offer to take me in."

  He nodded. "We heard you were about to strangle Mrs. D. Hence the missionary invitation."

  "You're funny. You have the most convenient ear in the camp. Everything you want to know--you find out. Like--Danielle's coming back."

  "The knowledge was thrust upon me."

  "Are you in love with Danielle?"

  He stopped paddling. There was a twinkle in his eyes. "Heaven forbid!"

  Beth smiled. "That's no answer. Are you?"

  "Not I. Not Plum. Not Agamemnon. Shall I swear it?"

  "Wouldn't mean anything, either. You've thought about her a lot. Asked Sarah about her. Asked me, even."

  "Just trying to figure her out," he answered. And he had been. He had been trying to assure himself that there was--or was not--a chance Danielle might have killed Jim Calder with her father's help--and caused her father to kill himself. The possibility had taunted him ever since she had gone back to New York with her father's body. Gone independently, sadly--refusing companionship or aid.

  Beth watched him think. "She's easy to figure out. Too easy. Or--do you still believe we've had murder here as well as burglary? Do you still wonder if she did it? She could have, you know, if she'd wanted to. She's got spirit. Determination. Too much."

  "Wes Wickman's satisfied that if he catches up with Hank Bogarty, he'll have all the answers. So am I."

  "Honestly?"

  "Honestly." Aggie smiled at her. "Want to turn back?"

  "In a minute. Aggie!" Her voice had sunk so that it was difficult to hear, even in the drowsy quiet on the glassy water.

  "Ho?" he said, when she did not go on.

  "Are you shy?"

  He felt shy, then--and nervous. He pretended to consider the question detachedly.

  "Why--yes. Yes and no. Less so, every day."

  "You know I'm kind of batty about you, I suppose? Everybody else does. You're damned romantic, Aggie."

  ' There were rumors," he replied. "Jack told me--one night--that you were selling my stock above par. He said, I believe, that you had been taken by my manly figger. It's misleading. I got this way doing hard work--not by the glamorous and athletic route of the boys in the advertisements. The boys like Jack himself. I study primitive people--and dig in ruins--which happens to keep me in shape."

  "Yes," she said. "But it wasn't that--although that surprised me. It was a clue to the rest of you. Sometimes you pretend to be studious and eccentric--and sometimes slangy and familiar--like everybody. But behind that--"

  ' The pedant. The cold brain. The field worker--"

  ' The brain, all right. But a shy one. Old-fashioned. The kind girls have to lead around. Maybe all men have that kind. You notice things, even when you don't let yourself know that you've seen them."

  He felt fearfully uncomfortable. "I don't expect to get married, ever, Beth. My work means too much. I wouldn't ask anybody to share the rough part--or to be alone while I went at it. I don't even know if I can love anyone."

  "Nevertheless," she said quietly, "I still--feel that way. And you can do whatever you like about it. It's funny--kind of--since I thought you were such a lemon when I first saw you. I wouldn't dare say--what I think, these days."

  Aggie cast his eyes about, seeking a way to change the mood and the subject of their conversation. "It's nice to have somebody like you around. I never did. You're very beautiful." His gaze touched the place where Danielle's canoe had once been drawn up.

  ' This is the second time I've been up at this end of the lake," he continued. "Gives me a funny feeling--somehow."

  Beth did not respond for a long time. Then she said slowly, "Yes. You were here with Danielle. I saw you come back--remember? She dumped you! She was in a spin of some sort."

  "She'd gone ashore here," he said, as if he had not listened to Beth. "Wonder why? I never thought to wonder about it enough--until now."

  "Keeping another date with Bill--or somebody."

  "I doubt it," Aggie answered. He turned the bow of the canoe toward the shallows. His eyes became--introverted. Beth watched the change with a face as expressionless as his. He looked at her, after a moment. "Would you mind--if I parked you for about twenty minutes?"

  She shook her head.

  CHAPTER 14

  Aggie walked away from the shore. He saw Beth take his place on the stern seat and commence to paddle in random circles. When the woods had closed behind him, he ran. He had a long light stride, and an inexhaustible wind. Within six of his minutes, he had covered more than half a mile. The path forked away from the lake. Its branch was indistinct, like the old road down which he had hurried on his second night at Indian Stones. Leaves filled it in places; in others, ferns, plants, brush, pine needles. Aggie went on soundlessly. When he came near to the abandoned summerhouse, he slowed, and took care not to break a twig or let a branch fly back.

  There was an opening. He stopped at its edge, behind a tree. The pergola--or gazebo--was made of fieldstone, part toppled, all grown with vines. It stood on a grassy rise, overlooking a vast valley at the end of which were rugged, hazy mountains. He surveyed it before leaving his sanctuary: the remnants of an apple orchard which the storms had left, and the stone fantasy itself--a Victorian incredibility built for almost no reason and abandoned for the same cause. His thoughts, as if elevated by the rise of his breathing, came in a quick sequence. There were three of them: One was the reiterated note that Danielle had said there was nothing at the pergola; but nobody, so far as he knew, had examined it to be sure. The second was a feeling--a pang--at the forgotten spectacle itself, the place where he had spent so many days in games both conventional and invented; this was the nostalgia he had felt when Sarah's limousine had turned onto the Indian Stones road. The third was an intuition--

  subtle--largely unconscious until that moment. There was more mystery in this place than a huge theft. There was
the mystery of death; the mystery of the man from the West. And he, Aggie, had by sheerest coincidence the very sort of experience and training which fitted him to pursue an investigation of such things. His skill in the outdoors surpassed that of anybody in the region. His scientific career had been made up of deducing seemingly irrelevant facts from time-rotted fragments.

  He came out of the woods, walking easily. There was no sound, no stirring in the pergola. Grasshoppers rattled in the long shade of it. Ants had made hills on its floor. The door of the closet in which they had kept their games was rotted entirely and from it had spilled the dolls Danielle had mentioned. Faded, moldy half-familiar dolls. A chipped checkerboard. A decayed archery butt. Some matting. A forgotten sewing basket.

  Modeling c1ay--or the box for it--and tiddly-winks. Hank Bogarty had not been there and Danielle had only peered in--disturbing nothing--leaving the water-blanched remnants of many childhoods in a heap.

  Aggie sat down on the valley-facing side, under a high stone arch. He remembered an apple tree that was gone, and another from which the top had broken away leaving only a punk-filled trunk that supported an empty, giant knot, like a doughnut on a vertical fork, or a lorgnette with one rim and no lens at all. Across from it, still dauntless, was the old "climbing tree"--gnarled and buckled but full of small, hard, green fruits. He looked into its branches, trying to remember the route to the topmost, and his own size-scale, by discovering it. His eye held. One limb, some ten feet above the ground, was hacked, chipped, scarred and sliced. He saw it because he had always looked for the unnatural in nature. He dwelt upon it, because there was no easy explanation for it.

  Someone, he first thought, walking over and looking up, had shinnied the thick limb and hacked at the tree with an ax--an act without meaning. Then he saw that the bark had been marked and incised by a narrower tool than an ax--a tool not much more than an inch in width--a tool like a chisel, or a knife. He turned around and looked back.