And he started off down the road at that long loose stride of his, which was swifter than a trot and much less tiring.
“Hold on a minute, Tug,” drawled a rasping nasal voice.
“What is it, Hawker?” demanded Blackstock, turning impatiently on his heel.
“Ye hain’t asked nothin’ yet about the Book Agent, Mister Byles, him as sold ye ‘Mother, Home, an’ Heaven.’ Maybe he could give us some information. He said as how he’d had some talk with poor old Jake.”
Blackstock’s lips curled slightly. He had not read the voluble stranger as a likely highwayman in any circumstances, still less as one to try issues with a man like Jake Sanderson. But the crowd, eager to give tongue on any kind of a scent, and instinctively hostile to a book agent, seized greedily upon the suggestion.
“Where is he?” “Send for him.” “Did anybody see him this mornin’?” “Rout him out!” “Fetch him along!” The babel of voices started afresh.
“He’s cleared out,” cried a woman’s shrill voice. It was the voice of Mrs. Stukeley, who kept the boarding-house. Every one else was silent to hear what she had to say.
“He quit my place jest about daylight this morning,” continued the woman virulently. She had not liked the stranger’s black whiskers, nor his ministerial garb, nor his efforts to get a subscription out of her, and she was therefore ready to believe him guilty without further proof. “He seemed in a powerful hurry to git away, sayin’ as how the Archangel Gabriel himself couldn’t do business in this town.”
Seeing the effect her words produced, and that even the usually imperturbable and disdainful Deputy Sheriff was impressed by them, she could not refrain from embroidering her statement a little.
“Now ez I come to think of it,” she went on, “I did notice as how he seemed kind of excited an’ nervous like, so’s he could hardly stop to finish his breakfus’. But he took time to make me knock half-a-dollar off his bill.”
“Mac,” said Blackstock sharply, turning to Red Angus MacDonald, the village constable, “you take two of the boys an’ go after the Book Agent. Find him, an’ fetch him back. But no funny business with him, mind you. We hain’t got a spark of evidence agin him. We jest want him as a witness, mind.”
The crowd’s excitement was somewhat damped by this pronouncement, and Hawker’s exasperating voice was heard to drawl:
“No evidence, hey? Ef that ain’t evidence, him skinnin’ out that way afore sun-up, I’d like to know what is!”
But to this and similar comments Tug Blackstock paid no heed whatever. He hurried on down the road toward the scene of the tragedy, his lean jaws working grimly upon a huge chew of tobacco, the big, black dog not now at his heels but trotting a little way ahead and casting from one side of the road to the other, nose to earth. The crowd came on behind, but Blackstock waved them back.
“I don’t want none o’ ye to come within fifty paces of me, afore I tell ye to,” he announced with decision. “Keep well back, all of ye, or ye’ll mess up the tracks.”
But this proved a decree too hard to be enforced for any length of time.
When he arrived at the place where the game-warden kept watch beside the murdered man, Blackstock stood for a few moments in silence, looking down upon the body of his friend with stony face and brooding eyes. In spite of his grief, his practised observation took in the whole scene to the minutest detail, and photographed it upon his memory for reference.
The body lay with face and shoulder and one leg and arm in a deep, stagnant pool by the roadside. The head was covered with black, clotted blood from a knife-wound in the neck. Close by, in the middle of the road, lay a stout leather satchel, gaping open, and quite empty. Two small memorandum books, one shut and the other with white leaves fluttering, lay near the bag. Though the roadway at this point was dry and hard, it bore some signs of a struggle, and toward the edge of the water there were several little, dark, caked lumps of puddled dust.
Blackstock first examined the road minutely, all about the body, but the examination, even to such a practised eye as his, yielded little result. The ground was too hard and dusty to receive any legible trail, and, moreover, it had been carelessly over-trodden by the game-warden and his son. But whether he found anything of interest or not, Blackstock’s grim, impassive face gave no sign.
At length he went over to the body, and lifted it gently. The coat and shirt were soaked with blood, and showed marks of a fierce struggle. Blackstock opened the shirt, and found the fatal wound, a knife-thrust which had been driven upwards between the ribs. He laid the body down again, and at the same time picked up a piece of paper, crumpled and blood-stained, which had lain beneath it. He spread it open, and for a moment his brows contracted as if in surprise and doubt. It was one of the order forms for “Mother, Home, and Heaven.”
He folded it up and put it carefully between the leaves of the note-book which he always carried in his pocket.
Stephens, who was close beside him, had caught a glimpse of the paper, and recognized it.
“Say!” he exclaimed, under his breath. “I never thought o’ him!”
But Blackstock only shook his head slowly, and called the big black dog, which had been waiting all this time in an attitude of keen expectancy, with mouth open and tail gently wagging.
“Take a good look at him, Jim,” said Blackstock.
The dog sniffed the body all over, and then looked up at his master as if for further directions.
“An’ now take a sniff at this.” And he pointed to the rifled bag.
“What do you make of it?” he inquired when the dog had smelt it all over minutely.
Jim stood motionless, with ears and tail drooping, the picture of irresolution and bewilderment.
Blackstock took out again the paper which he had just put away, and offered it to the dog, who nosed it carefully, then looked at the dead body beside the pool, and growled softly.
“Seek him, Jim,” said Blackstock.
At once the dog ran up again to the body, and back to the open book. Then he fell to circling about the bag, nose to earth, seeking to pick up the elusive trail.
At this point the crowd from the village, unable longer to restrain their eagerness, surged forward, led by Hawker, and closed in, effectually obliterating all trails. Jim growled angrily, showing his long white teeth, and drew back beside the body as if to guard it. Blackstock stood watching his action with a brooding scrutiny.
“What’s that bit o’ paper ye found under him, Tug?” demanded Hawker vehemently.
“None o’ yer business, Sam,” replied the deputy, putting the blood-stained paper back into his pocket.
“I seen what it was,” shouted Hawker to the rest of the crowd. “It was one o’ them there dokyments that the book agent had, up to the store. I always said as how ’twas him.”
“We’ll ketch him!” “We’ll string him up!” yelled the crowd, starting back along the road at a run.
“Don’t be sech fools!” shouted Blackstock. “Hold on! Come back I tell ye!”
But
