Abner repeated his question.
‘Where is Doomdorf?’
‘Oh, sir,’ she answered with a queer lisping accent, ‘he went to lie down in his south room after his midday meal, as his custom is; and I went to the orchard to gather any fruit that might be ripened.’ She hesitated and her voice lisped into a whisper: ‘He is not come out and I cannot wake him.’
The two men followed her through the hall and up the stairway to the door.
‘It is always bolted,’ she said, ‘when he goes to lie down.’ And she knocked feebly with the tips of her fingers.
There was no answer and Randolph rattled the doorknob.
‘Come out, Doomdorf!’ he called in his big, bellowing voice.
There was only silence and the echoes of the words among the rafters. Then Randolph set his shoulder to the door and burst it open.
They went in. The room was flooded with sun from the tall south windows. Doomdorf lay on a couch in a little offset of the room, a great scarlet patch on his bosom and a pool of scarlet on the floor.
The woman stood for a moment staring; then she cried out:
‘At last I have killed him!’ And she ran like a frightened hare.
The two men closed the door and went over to the couch. Doomdorf had been shot to death. There was a great ragged hole in his waistcoat. They began to look about for the weapon with which the deed had been accomplished, and in a moment found it – a fowling piece lying in two dogwood forks against the wall. The gun had just been fired; there was a freshly exploded paper cap under the hammer.
There was little else in the room – a loom-woven rag carpet on the floor; wooden shutters flung back from the windows; a great oak table, and on it a big, round, glass water bottle, filled to its glass stopper with raw liquor from the still. The stuff was limpid and clear as spring water; and, but for its pungent odor, one would have taken it for God’s brew instead of Doomdorf’s. The sun lay on it and against the wall where hung the weapon that had ejected the dead man out of life.
‘Abner,’ said Randolph, ‘this is murder! The woman took that gun down from the wall and shot Doomdorf while he slept.’
Abner was standing by the table, his fingers round his chin.
‘Randolph,’ he replied, ‘what brought Bronson here?’
‘The same outrages that brought us,’ said Randolph. ‘The mad old circuit rider has been preaching a crusade against Doomdorf far and wide in the hills.’
Abner answered, without taking his fingers from about his chin:
‘You think this woman killed Doomdorf? Well, let us go and ask Bronson who killed him.’
They closed the door, leaving the dead man on his couch, and went down into the court.
The old circuit rider had put away his horse and got an ax. He had taken off his coat and pushed his shirtsleeves up over his long elbows. He was on his way to the still to destroy the barrels of liquor. He stopped when the two men came out, and Abner called to him.
‘Bronson,’ he said, ‘who killed Doomdorf?’
‘I killed him,’ replied the old man, and went on toward the still.
Randolph swore under his breath. ‘By the Almighty,’ he said, ‘everybody couldn’t kill him!’
‘Who can tell how many had a hand in it?’ replied Abner.
‘Two have confessed!’ cried Randolph. ‘Was there perhaps a third? Did you kill him, Abner? And I too? Man, the thing is impossible!’
‘The impossible,’ replied Abner, ‘looks here like the truth. Come with me, Randolph, and I will show you a thing more impossible than this.’
They returned through the house and up the stairs to the room. Abner closed the door behind them.
‘Look at this bolt,’ he said; ‘it is on the inside and not connected with the lock. How did the one who killed Doomdorf get into this room, since the door was bolted?’
‘Through the windows,’ replied Randolph.
There were but two windows, facing the south, through which the sun entered. Abner led Randolph to them.
‘Look!’ he said. ‘The wall of the house is plumb with the sheer face of the rock. It is a hundred feet to the river and the rock is as smooth as a sheet of glass. But that is not all. Look at these window frames; they are cemented into their casement with dust and they are bound along their edges with cobwebs. These windows have not been opened. How did the assassin enter?’
‘The answer is evident,’ said Randolph: ‘The one who killed Doomdorf hid in the room until he was asleep; then he shot him and went out.’
‘The explanation is excellent but for one thing,’ replied Abner: ‘How did the assassin bolt the door behind him on the inside of this room after he had gone out?’
Randolph flung out his arms with a hopeless gesture.
‘Who knows?’ he cried. ‘Maybe Doomdorf killed himself.’
Abner laughed.
‘And after firing a handful of shot into his heart he got up and put the gun back carefully into the forks against the wall!’
‘Well,’ cried Randolph, ‘there is one open road out of this mystery. Bronson and this woman say they killed Doomdorf, and if they killed him they surely know how they did it. Let us go down and ask them.’
‘In the law court,’ replied Abner, ‘that procedure would be considered sound sense; but we are in God’s court and things are managed there in a somewhat stranger way. Before we go let us find out, if we can, at what hour it was that Doomdorf died.’
He went over and took a big silver watch out of the dead man’s pocket. It was broken by a shot and the hands lay at one hour after noon. He stood for
