Chapter XXIX: The Return

I woke with a start, in a strange room, staring about me in dull wonder. Oh, well, it was scarcely daylight, and I was still tired out. I would go back to sleep and save my questions until breakfast time. I turned over, yawning, but a familiar voice dragged me back from slumber.

“Get up, unk!” It was Peter McGregor. “You’ll have to get going; train leaves in an hour.”

Again I yawned. “What time is it?”

“Seven o’clock.” Then he laughed at my exclamation. “No, unk, seven at night. You’ve only slept twelve hours. Hurry up, now, we’ve got to be back in Pinelands by morning.”

Reluctantly enough I rose, every stiff old joint aching, and tumbled into my clothes. Peter and Doctor Somers were dressed and throwing their few belongings into traveling bags.

Presently we set out for the Asheville station and the eight-fifteen train, which would take us to Raleigh, a silent, disconsolate trio, as much at sea as on the morning of Doctor Gaskell’s mysterious murder. We had followed trail after trail with such high hopes; our suspicions had pointed here and there; and each suspect had cleared himself. I groaned aloud as we three sat in the Pullman smoking room.

“All we really know, up to date,” said I, “is that Gaskell left his house, and was killed an hour before Lewis came out there.”

Somers nodded. “Even that is going to be hard to prove,” he answered gloomily. “One point rests on the unsupported word of a notorious blockader, a fellow more than suspected of one murder, and now under arrest for making moonshine whisky. Vanbrugh will tear his evidence into tatters, even if he’ll testify. And the other point: that Gaskell had been dead some time when Parker fired; it rests on your word alone. And you’ll have to admit yourself that you were pretty well upset.”

“Maybe Rutledge killed him, after all,” I suggested weakly.

“I doubt it. And, even if he did, we can’t prove it. We can’t prove he even saw Gaskell that morning, except by his own statement, which wouldn’t go far in law.”

Peter leaned forward, scowling. “Look here,” he began. “Now don’t get sore, unk; promise? Because, even if he did, I’m for him all the way, and no doubt he had provocation we know nothing about. But have you thought that maybe Lewis did kill him, after all? No”--as I would have gone over the evidence once more--“no, I don’t mean then, when you heard the shot. But he might have gone out there at four o’clock; it was quite light, even at that time, and he might have met Gaskell and shot him. Then he was scared, of course, and he went to the house and cleaned his gun and reloaded it and came back at five, meaning, no doubt, to pretend he’d just found the body. He’d have said he just got up, and, when he went into that tangle after the quail, he found Gaskell’s body by the path, dead and cold. His gun would be clean, both barrels loaded, and nobody’d have suspected him. But, when he got out there, he tripped, and the gun went off by accident; that’s the way it happened, you said yourself, unk. And the constable just happened to be coming past and heard it, and there he was!”

“Nonsense!” said I. “That’s absurd.” But was it? I had to admit to myself that it was an adequate explanation, that it fitted most diabolically into all we knew about the case. I closed my eyes; I could see the whole thing. Lewis, gun in hand, prowling through the dawn after quail; Gaskell meeting him on the path, carrying his medicine case; the quarrel. There would have been hot words; my nephew had not forgotten his anger of the day before. A sneering laugh, perhaps, as the older man lost patience; Lewis’ unruly temper flaming forth; the shotgun in his nervous hands, leveling itself; the explosion! And then my poor, impulsive boy, shuddering at the sight of a bleeding body; creeping stealthily through the bushes, cleaning and reloading the gun with hands that shook; waiting for the body of his victim to stiffen; whipping round the old house to advance boldly down that fateful path--with what inward tremors and self-loathings! He comes on slowly, looking for the body; it should be about here. And then a stumble; the shotgun, forgotten in his unsteady hands, the finger tightening involuntarily upon its trigger; the second shot! And upon its heels an outcry, the pounding run of Constable Wakefield; the accusation!

No wonder Lewis had seemed dazed! He must have thought it retribution, the accidental discharge of his gun bringing back upon him all the public guilt he had sought so cunningly to conceal.

And then I shook my head stubbornly. Lewis Parker do that? No! He was my nephew, almost my son; I knew him as I knew myself.

“Nonsense!” I repeated sturdily. “My boy never did such a thing as that. He might have killed Gaskell in the heat of passion, but he never sneaked and hid afterward, or plotted out such a scheme as that to escape. I don’t--I won’t believe it!”

“I sure do hope you’re right, unk,” said Peter heavily. “But it does seem beastly logical.”

It did. It was fiendishly, horribly logical. I could see that if such an idea occurred to Vanbrugh, the solicitor, the poor defense we could proffer would become a boomerang to destroy us. For, on the face of it, we could make the killing appear an accident, perhaps; at the worst an impulsive, unpremeditated act. But this other, this sneaking off to reload and returning to discover the body--this cunning scheme frustrated, as Vanbrugh would make it appear, by the accidental discharge of the gun--why, it made my nephew a cold, deliberate murderer! Shuddering I recalled my dream of the explosion of that cannon in my bedroom. That must have been the first shot, the shot which had killed Gaskell! Had Lewis pulled the trigger?

All this while Somers had sat silent, chin in his long, bony hands, a cigarette drooping from his sour, discontented lips. I turned to him impatiently.

“What do you think, Somers? You know my nephew; is he capable of such a thing as that?”

The lanky physician raised his head and stared at me with deep-set, inscrutable, gray-green eyes. “I told you this morning,” he replied. “From all we’ve found out I’m beginning to believe it was the ghost killed Gaskell.” And his chin dropped again. Well, there was little enough satisfaction in that!