Corpses at Indian Stone

by Philip Wylie

  Opposite the battered spot, and somewhat higher from the ground, was the trunk that supported the knot-rim. He studied the marks again. They were deep, and beginning to heal over. They had been made before sap had flowed into the apple that year.

  Aggie went slowly back to the pergola. He sat again. He would have given a good deal for his pipe. The empty knothole--the hard rim--was a foot across, and it stared down upon the incised bark of the opposite tree like any eye socket. The knothole and the old tree were perhaps twenty feet apart, and the stump supporting the knot was a dozen feet high.

  Ten minutes passed. Aggie unfolded his legs as if they were stiff, and walked slowly back across the field. If what he had seen was a coincidence, it was nonetheless revealing. And the probability of coincidence was small. He increased his pace as he re-entered the woods.

  Beth was still paddling lackadaisically offshore. She pushed into the warm shallows. He took her place and she sat against the backrest.

  Beth eventually broke his extended silence. "There is pollen on your bathing trunks. By that I deduce you've been walking in a field. There is only one field near by--

  the one around the gazebo. Did you find out anything that will be of sinister import to the prime minister?"

  Aggie smiled. "Maybe."

  "But you're not telling?"

  He shook his head.

  "I think," she said, in a different tone, "I won't take up Sarah's invitation to be house guest and house manager. You're quite right, Aggie. I'm not your type. You're not mine. A girl gets beglamoured easily. But--really--I'm the comfortable sort--home-Ioving--a girl for club porches--beaches--cocktail parties. It's funny. You don't look romantic--and you are, horribly. I look like a foreign spy--and actually I'm a home girl."

  She sighed. "You tell Sarah, will you?"

  Aggie was jolted from his abstraction. "What?"

  She smiled. "Never mind. I will." She added, later, "Ralph is the very right sort--

  after all--I suppose."

  She was surprised when he looked up. "Ralph? I want to ask about Ralph. I mean-

  -what he does--what he's like?"

  "He owns an accounting firm. Very prosaic. His whole life is an open ledger."

  "He took care of the accounting end of your father's business."

  "Some of it," Beth replied. ''The honest part."

  "He knows about the other part. Remember the crack he made the night Wes cross-examined the whole club? What was it? About 'Some people report their incomes and others bury them.' Do you think he knew about--the gold up here?"

  Beth looked thoughtfully into Aggie's eyes. "I never even wondered! No doubt he knew Father had other accounts and other funds. Ralph doesn't tell me much about his business. Not anything, really. Typical American man of affairs. 'Don't bother your pretty little head.' And he's right, Aggie. It would bore me. Still--"

  "Still--what?"

  "He's enormously ambitious. He likes money. I know--right now--he's worried about my estate. I mean--about claims and entails that may be tacked on it which he's never heard of. It's odd! I'd thought of that interest as--just typical--of any businessman.

  The practical point of view. Looked at--from the angle you're looking--it seems different.

  Ralph's ambition might turn to cupidity, his cupidity to crime. Still--it's hard to picture him--standing over a victim--with a dripping blunt instrument--isn't it?"

  Aggie thought that she was a fairly detached person, on her own account, inasmuch as the picture connoted her own father in the role of victim. He said, "If it were easy to imagine a killer doing the deed, it would be a cinch to catch them all. If I asked you, 'What does a murderer look like?' you'd be hard put to make a successful answer."

  "That's right. A murderer--might look like me."

  Aggie grinned. "Let's hope not. So--you don't know whether or not Ralph was aware of the stacked gold?"

  "Not the foggiest."

  "Was he ever up here in the winter?"

  "Would you mind if I didn't get the connections?"

  "Nope. Was he? Were you?"

  Beth shrugged, smiling. "Lemme see. Of course--we all have been--at one time or another. House parties. We'd open a cottage for Christmas, sometimes, when we were younger. He's been here."

  "Last winter, by any chance?"

  "I don't think--I'm not sure--but I don't believe any of the crowd did anything here last winter. Why don't you ask Sarah? She's the timetable, geography, almanac and codebook of Indian Stones."

  "I will," Aggie said.

  The sun had set when he returned to Rainbow Lodge. Sarah was taking a nap.

  Chillie announced that dinner would be delayed until eight, owing to the fact that they had received the grocery order tardily. Aggie thought of going to his room to read, but another activity--one he had practiced regularly for several days with waning enthusiasm-

  -presently enlisted him.

  He swung away from Rainbow Lodge on foot. In the patch of fairly heavy woods between it and the club, he pushed through the trees and underbrush until he reached a tiny, open place that was covered with leaves. Between the leaves could be seen the jaws of a steel trap. The trap was set--and baited.

  Aggie strolled at an easy but distance-devouring stride up along the edge of the golf course. He had made four sets at suitable spots in the woods there--but they yielded nothing. So far, he had caught only one red vixen, in bad condition--and rather ashamedly buried her carcass. He followed the lumber road toward Garnet Knob for some distance.

  There was a trap under a log, one at the edge of the brook, one in an old run, and another beside a spring. Nothing. He came back, visiting other locations, and made the mental note that it would be a good idea to take up the trap line soon. His sets along Lower Lake were empty and he almost abandoned the idea of visiting the traps on the other pond. He went to them, however, and in the next to the last, he discovered unexpected success.

  The ground around that trap had been torn up. A silver-tipped black brush stood above a large stone beyond the bare earth. The fox came up standing--snarling and fierce-

  -his leg held firmly. Aggie looked about for a suitable club.

  The dead animal was a large one. Its coat was rusty with summer and it seemed thin. Domesticated, he thought. Not used to foraging for itself. Which was why he had caught it, no doubt--and precisely why he had hoped to catch it. A wild silver fox would have been far more cautious than this one. But the fox itself interested Aggie less than the collar it was wearing. A silver-studded, black leather collar. On it was a plate with the familiar initials, "H.H.B." in the familiar script.

  Aggie picked up the carcass and then--because he had compunctions about such things--he went back over his whole trap line--a distance of more than three miles--and sprang every trap. It made him very late for dinner.

  CHAPTER 15

  He left the carcass on the front porch--not without remembering that the monogrammed knife had been stolen from the railing right above the spot. He ignored Sarah's voice, cajoling from the dining room, until he had telephoned State Police Headquarters and left word that he would like to see Wes. He also left some instructions.

  Then he went in, tousled Sarah's hair when she started to lecture him about being late, and ate hungrily. While he ate, he thought. Sarah, after a couple of sturdy efforts, sniffed to herself and let him think.

  When he was ready for the ice cream, she tried talking again. "Fine sort of husband you'd make! You'd come home to a poor, dear wife who had spent a hard day in the beauty salon and the department stores--and behave exactly as if she were wallpaper!"

  "That reminds me. Beth nixed your invitation to stay here."

  Sarah studied him. "Well? Is that information! Come clean!"

  His face was bland. "Incompatibility. I'm too wild for her. Something."

  "I heard," said Sarah, "that you were out canoeing with her. Did she propose?

  Notice carefully that I didn't say, 'Did you propose?'"

>   "She had a stab at it. Told me I was glamorous--in spite of certain aesthetic hazards. Talked herself out of it."

  "A fine girl, Aggie. Warm, sensitive, intelligent, brave--"

  "Mmmm. Beautiful. Good figure. Finest dark hair in the county. Well-educated.

  Magnificent carriage. Spirit. Dash. Good golfer, a good tennis player, terrific at table tennis, good swimmer--everything a man like me would need if he had an extra life to give to his country clubs."

  Sarah chortled. "At least--Beth's one female in your class that you haven't run away from! That's some progress--for me."

  Aggie looked at her with eyes that were singularly penetrating. "I know your game, Miss Plum," he said.

  Sarah set down her coffee cup. "Honestly, I believe you do!"

  "I do."

  "Hunh!"

  "You have no sense at all! You're mad!"

  Sarah squinted at him, wrinkling her nose. "Am I? How about you?"

  "I'm mad too. It's familial. I'm cautious, though, about other people. You're not."

  "Was Beth very disappointed?"

  "Search me. She started talking about Ralph. They were thick when I arrived here.

  They might thicken up again." That was all he said until they had left the dining room. He took a leather chair near the center table and picked up the evening paper. His aunt cast in his direction several glances that were surprised-and very affectionate. Finally he said,

  "You know, Sarah, the most interesting phenomenon in nature is the one which is conscious of nature itself."

  "Meaning--?"

  ' The brain. what else? The human mind. There are two parts to man--the mind and the body. All the physical world belongs to the body. All the world of ideas--to the mind. Both parts must be served. If you think too. much about things--their arrangement and acquisition and enjoyment--you'll stultify your mind. If you project your mind on ideas too completely, they'll absorb you and exhaust you and you'll lose your health.

  Everybody tries to strike a balance--to have enough things to be comfortable--and enough ideas to be sensible. Right?"

  "Wonderful--if obvious."

  "But few people succeed. Some go over to gross materialism. Some--a smaller number--to complete introversion. Either state is--substantially--insane. Take the deaths of Calder and Dr. Davis."

  Sarah sat forward in her chair.

  Aggie went on. "We have considered things in relation to those deaths. Things--

  and not ideas. Not--motives. Not really. We have dozens of what might be called clues--"

  he heard Wes Wickman's step on the porch--"and I think we'll have another, before much longer! But it's not enough. We haven't let our minds--our imaginations--do sufficient work. We've tried to consider everything by the logic of things." He leaned around his chair. "Hello, West Come in! Bring that fox, out by the steps--will you?"

  The trooper came in, carrying the fox by the tail. He was perspiring, for the night was hot, but he wore a spick-and-span uniform. He held the fox toward Sarah. "Your nephew's a smart trapper, Sarah. I'd have given him fifty to one he wouldn't have nailed this beast."

  "Bad bet," Aggie said. "Wonder it didn't walk into somebody's house and give itself up! This fox was accustomed to people. I see you brought the photographs."

  Aggie cleared a space on the table. He spread out the evening paper. Wes put the fox on it, and opened a Manila envelope. Sarah moved close. The photographs were glossy prints of a man's hand--with teeth marks on it. "We didn't blow any up to life size," Wes said. "No need. No fox. I did take an impression of the bite of the chefs pooch-but it wasn't at all similar."

  "I'll get some calipers," Aggie said. He ran up the stairs.

  The trooper looked at Sarah. "What's he got--besides this? It's sticking out all over him!"

  "I don't know."

  "I hope it's something good!" Wes walked to the cold hearth and back. "I've run down leads on Bogarty till I hate the name. The guy vanished. Thin air. I've uncovered two missing persons that didn't want to be uncovered---one in Albany and one in Goversville--just looking for Bogarty. And there's no trace of the gold. Either Calder or Davis cleaned it out before they died--as we've suspected---or else whoever took it has planted it somewhere. But not in a bank and not in a deposit box, I'll guarantee! I went nuts on this case so long ago that I'm almost back to sanity again!"

  Sarah smiled. "Aggie will figure it out."

  The trooper was indignant. "Holy hat!"

  "He's just been resting for the last two weeks. Vegetating.

  Letting his mind lie fallow. I've known all the time that, when he was ready, he'd call you up and tell you the answers."

  "What answers?" Aggie said, coming back. "I know a couple more. That's all. I sent for Wes for help. I'm hot at uncovering old cities and unsuspected racial strains--but anything contemporary is out of my line."

  He had, in addition to calipers, the paraffin top of a jelly glass. He thrust the paraffin between the jaws of the dead fox, pushed them together, and set the impression thus made beside the photograph. "Crude," he said as he worked, "but adequate." He bent over. "They look identical. We'll take a half dozen measurements and compare their ratios. If the ratios match--that ought to be good enough. Dogs and foxes are related. Not the same thing. A dog might make a bite that would look like a foxbite--anomalies and accidents considered--but it would be mighty funny if there were by chance a dog around here--or even another fox--that happened to have a set of teeth corresponding exactly to the teeth of this guy." He stroked the fur.

  They went to work on the measurements. Aggie took them--first from the paraffin and then from the photograph. Sarah wrote them down. Wes set them up as ratios. After fifteen minutes he said, "That ought to do," and calculated. "Checks!" he soon reported.

  "A few very trifling differences--Aggie's bad measurement--or camera angle--the curve on the hand. But I'd buy the idea that this fox bit Calder before he died--and after he walked out of this room. Proving that Calder saw Bogarty. So what?"

  "Proving nothing of the sort," Aggie answered. "Proving--merely--that Calder saw Bogarty's fox. Or maybe--vice versa, only. A point I was trying to elucidate, philosophically--to Sarah just now. We have piled up a mountain of information and we have done only a pint of thinking."

  "You haven't been watching me lie awake nights!" Wes said.

  "I mean--real thinking. Speculation. Pushing out in the blue. For example, have you ever thought that Hank Bogarty may never have reached Indian Stones?"

  "That's impossible!"

  Aggie grinned. "Is it? Prove it! We know that his car got as far as Upper Lake--

  and went in it. We know that his fox got loose--and we now have the fox. We know his fox bit Calder--and since foxes--even reasonably tame ones--don't just rush up and bite men, we can assume this fox, at the time of the biting, was on a leash, or in a car, or something of that sort. But does that demonstrate Hank Bogarty was on the other end of the leash or at the wheel of the car? Not positively. We know that Hank Bogarty's knife pinned Hank Bogarty's calling card to Sarah's door--or--at least . . . I think it was the same knife. We know Hank Hogarty's knife was found in George Davis's heart--because you sent the knife out to Seattle and the man who made it identified it, as the press duly reported. We know the calling card was Hank's--because you sent that out. We know Hank was in Albany--because the clerk at the telegraph office identified him from a photograph made for 'Aid Britain' propaganda in Seattle. The newspapers, again. We--"

  "Good Lord," said Wes.

  Aggie chuckled. "We know all that--but not any of it proves Hank was here. Let us say, purely for argument, that somebody knew Hank was coming and caught up with him in Albany. Let us say this person killed Hank, set him in a barrel of cement and threw him in the Hudson--or otherwise effectively disposed of the body. This person then drove to Indian Stones with the car, the fox, the knife, the calling cards--and anything else that may yet turn up. The car--"

  Wes slapped his knee. "Sure! Th
e car is driven into the lake! A cinch! The card is stuck to Sarah's door--for her to find. But Aggie puts the knife on the rail, Calder picks it up, the murderer is around with the fox on a leash--Calder runs into them--the murderer bangs Calder one on the head--because being seen with that fox would give him away!

  He gets back Hank's knife from Calder's person! The murderer lets the fox go--or it escapes--he doesn't care. That's wonderful! From there on--the murderer only has to go on making it look as if Bogarty was round to keep me, and the newspapers, and everybody, looking for Hank--instead of somebody else!" The trooper's excitement faded.

  "Except for one thing."

  "Exactly," said Aggie.

  Sarah looked blank. "Exactly what?"

  Wes glanced at Aggie. "How does this murderer pass through a locked and bolted door--or a window the size of a book--and put that knife in Davis? Or--did Davis kill himself--after all? Had he stolen the money in the cellar--and did he come across Hank's knife somehow--and use it?"

  "No," Sarah said, "George never did!"

  "Then I wish," Wes grunted, "you could explain what did happen in that darkroom!"

  "I can," Aggie answered. "It was very simple. Finding out--was what put me onto the theory of blue-sky thinking." Nobody interrupted him as he described, meticulously, the two trees he had seen at the summerhouse--the tree with the scars and the tree with the knothole. "In other words," he said, "if you think of the knothole as the little window-and the big tree as Davis--you get the picture. Somebody threw that knife into Davis."

  Sarah gasped. "I thought of that long ago. But I didn't believe you could throw a knife hard enough--and, besides--George had the thing in his hand."

  "Somebody," Aggie answered, "was out there at the summerhouse--throwing a knife through that knothole and into the tree beyond it--hard enough to dig the point into the wood well up on the blade! The slits were an inch wide! Anyway-Sarah's wrong. That was a heavy knife. You could throw it as hard as a baseball. You could throw it clear through a man, I daresay, except that it had a guard on it."

  "But--George was holding it--" she protested.