Chapter X: More Trouble Threatens

As we climbed back into the flivver, I suddenly became conscious of an aching internal void. I had had nothing to eat since morning; in the shock of that unimagined verdict I had quite forgotten my lunch.

“Let’s go and eat, Peter,” I suggested.

“Right-o!”

Just as we climbed into the flivver the shrill whistle of an approaching train sounded. Peter swore.

“The Limited!” he said. “This is Monday night, and poor old Lewis’ best man will be on that train. We’ll have to stop for him, unk. I only hope he’s as good as the old boy thinks; maybe we’ll get a little action.”

“I hope so, indeed. But, Peter, he can’t have had much experience. He was Lewis’ classmate, you know. I’m afraid the boy overvalues him. We can’t look for too much from him.”

“Well, we’ll see soon enough.” Peter stopped the car beside the tracks, just as the long string of Pullmans clanked and squealed to a halt. Only one vestibule was opened, for this was the through train for Florida, and in summer it rarely left a passenger at Pinelands.

A single passenger alighted; a tall, lanky young man, whose hat was pulled down over his eyes. His arms and legs seemed extraordinarily long and thin. The porter dropped a couple of bags beside him, caught up his step, and climbed back; the long train wheezed and roared away.

The stranger stood still, looking irritably about the deserted platform. In winter the Pinelands station is lively enough, with gay-clad, chattering folk, with expensive motor cars parked the full length of its platforms; while passengers by the dozen, bearing golf bags and gun cases and tennis rackets, climb on and off every train. Ours is a tourist town, and it begins to be one of the best-known of the Eastern winter resorts. But in summer it is quiet enough.

The stranger scowled, I say, and glanced about him with an expression of acute dissatisfaction upon his dark, saturnine features. “Friendly looking beggar, what?” whispered Peter to me. Then he saw us and beckoned imperiously.

“Where’s Parker?” he demanded. “Doctor Parker?”

“He’s detained,” said I, advancing with outstretched hand. “I’m his uncle, George Uhlman. This is Doctor Somers?”

“How do?” he asked indifferently. “Pity Parker couldn’t take the trouble to come himself! Rotten town, this. Those are my bags.”

He stalked to the car and clambered in, his remarkably long, thin arms and legs giving him somewhat the appearance of that insect we used to call daddy longlegs. Peter winked at me, then picked up the bags, which our cavalier guest had indicated, and lugged them meekly to the car.

“Where to, sir?” Peter asked, burlesquing a chauffeur’s salute.

Doctor Somers grinned; his dark, sardonic face changed wonderfully, and for an instant became cheerful, friendly. “Don’t be an ass,” he requested equably. “You’re Peter McGregor, I take it. Lewis has written me about you, his best girl’s brother. He said you were a little runt.”

Peter snorted. “He never told me you were such a long, silly clothes prop,” he retorted. “Why, man, those legs haven’t any more meat on ’em than bean poles!” Peter’s size is a sore topic with him.

The stranger grinned again, quite undisturbed. “Climb in, climb in,” he urged. “I’m hungry. Where is old Parker, anyhow? Ministering to the needs of his extensive and growing practice, no doubt.”

I had found the man’s brusque, indifferent impudence rather engaging, but this question sobered me suddenly. “My nephew is in trouble,” I replied. “No”--Doctor Somers’ lips opened--“don’t make any fool joke about it. It’s a serious matter. He’s in jail, charged with murder.”

But, if I had looked for excitement or interest, I was disappointed. Doctor Somers made no comment, showed no interest whatever. “Well, drive on,” he said. “I’m hungry.”

We drove home in silence to an agitated household. Luckily Dorothy had not yet heard of the fire at the jail; she had been spared that further alarm. Over the supper table we told her, and she listened, wide-eyed and tremulous.

Aunt Mary did not come to the table. She had been much subdued all day, it appeared, and had kept to her room and scarcely opened her mouth, even to discuss her sufferings. So the nurse, Miss Christie, could eat undisturbed to-night. As usual, she had nothing to say. With her round, sleepy face bent over her plate, she ate hurriedly and pushed back her chair before we others were through, murmuring an apology. She must go and fix Miss McGregor’s tray.

Our guest, Doctor Somers, was taciturn also. Poor, distraught Dorothy had given him a word of greeting and then forgotten him. She was too upset to play the hostess. But he did not seem in the least embarrassed. He ate sparingly, his sallow face wearing that same expression of distaste for everything about him. His gray-green eyes, curiously light beneath black brows, were fixed keenly upon Miss Christie’s sleepy face. He did not seem at all interested in what Peter and I were saying to his hostess.

When the nurse had gone out he turned to me. “I take it that my friend Parker has got himself into trouble.” His face was sober enough, but, behind it, the hint of a sarcastic grin seemed to lurk. “Suppose you tell me just how it happened, now. All I gather from your discourse to date is that he’s in jail, charged with murder by a coroner’s jury--or, rather, that he was in jail until it burned down.”

Dorothy turned upon him, a heartbreaking hope shining from her eyes. “Oh, Doctor Somers, we’re so upset! You must forgive us. But Lewis told me you’d straighten it out for him. Why----”

Somers’ thin lips parted in an acid grin, but he said nothing. We all began to talk at once, pouring out breathlessly the whole dreadful story, and he listened abstractedly, or, at least, we supposed he was listening.

“And so the jury recommended that he be held,” I finished. “There were no grounds at all--it was pure accident. If it hadn’t been for that miserable lawyer Vanbrugh----”

Somers yawned and nodded his head. “I’ve got it!” he announced. “Of course I’ll make an examination in the morning, but I’m sure of it now.”

We all gaped at him, open-mouthed. “That girl, the nurse,” he went on placidly, “deficient thyroid! That’s what ails her. No wonder she looks sleepy!”

“Gr-r-r-r!” said Peter indignantly, and pushed back his chair. “I’m going for the mail.” He stalked out.

Doctor Somers looked from Dorothy to me and back again, with that curious suggestion of a sardonic grin behind his sober face. Plainly enough our faces expressed disgusted hopelessness.

“I’m sorry,” he said in apology, and there was something very likable in his frank, direct gaze. “I’m a queer sort, I suppose. I’m always getting off on the wrong foot like this. But, after you get to know me better, you’ll find I’m not so bad after all. I heard all you said,” he went on, to Dorothy’s implacable face. “I’m used to thinking of two or three things at once; in my work one has to. Cheer up! That’s better,” he declared, as Dorothy, in spite of herself, softened before his friendliness.

“It’s a pretty serious thing--to us!” she replied.

“My child,” he answered very gravely--and he could not have been over thirty, I supposed, but suddenly he seemed older, wiser, more mature than I am at sixty--“I know it, but the only way to handle a matter like this is to go at it dispassionately. I’m fond of old Parker myself”--and the dark, sour face softened wonderfully for a second--“but I can’t let myself get flustered and upset and run round in rings as you folks have. For example: You heard the shot, Uhlman. You ran out at once, got there within five minutes, and put your hand on the dead man’s chest, didn’t you?”

I nodded in amazement. The fellow had heard all we said, after all!

“You touched the body, then, within perhaps five minutes of the time Parker shot. Now, did it occur to you to notice whether it was still warm--or cold?”

I stared dumbly, searching a confused memory. “Why--why, I never thought of that. I was too upset. But now I remember. Why, of course, I noticed it at once; his flesh was as cold as a stone! That’s why I was sure he was dead.” Then an illuminating thought struck me; I jumped up, shouting. “Hurrah! He didn’t do it, Dorothy, he didn’t do it by accident or any way! He couldn’t have, of course! I must run right down there and tell him; that’s what has been troubling him all along--the thought that he’d killed a man!”

“Sit down,” suggested Somers equably. “Take it easy. There’s been altogether too much of this running round and talking, and too little plain thinking.”

I accepted the rebuke. “You’re right. Why, if I’d only thought of this before, there wouldn’t have been any trouble at the inquest. I’m an old fool!”

“No bigger fool than your nephew or the constable,” he replied. “If any one of the three of you had thought to observe that the body was cold, or had stopped bleeding, you’d have known the man hadn’t been killed before your eyes. Of course, by the time the coroner got there, it was too late to fix the time of death exactly.”

Dorothy sighed ecstatically, her face rosy with new-born confidence in this brusque, saturnine stranger. “What shall we do next?”

“Humph! Wedding was set for Wednesday, wasn’t it? How many invitations did you send out?”

She looked at him blankly. “Why, about a hundred and fifty; we didn’t ask everybody. Oh, dear, we can’t have it now, can we?”

“Hardly. Have you sent out notices of postponement?”

“We never thought of that!”

Doctor Somers yawned. “I think you needed me,” he said.

Just then the front door opened, and Peter burst in, white-faced and trembling.

“Come, Uncle George!” he exclaimed. And then, with a glance of supreme disfavor at Doctor Somers, “And you, too! Lewis claims you’re a wonder. I doubt it like blazes, but, if you are, now’s the time to show it. Come on, get up, man! Hurry!”

We stared at him. Dorothy, paper-white, one hand at her breast, asked the question that trembled also on my lips.

“Oh, what’s happened? What’s happened now?”

Peter hesitated. His eye caught Somers, leaning back in an armchair, calmly lighting a cigarette. He could contain himself no longer.

“They’re going to lynch Parker to-night!” He blurted his news defiantly, as if it had been a bomb to shatter our guest’s indifference. “I just heard it downtown. A lot of ’em are drinking; they’ve taken the keys away from Wakefield already; they’re going down to the lockup and get poor old Parker and hang him!”