Francis Stevens - Citadel of Fear

"The marks on the doors?"

MacClellan shrugged "How do I know? A chisel, maybe. This fellow was clean bughouse, perhaps, with just the infernal cleverness and devilish sense of humor that some lunatics have. Or else it's a scheme of some sort in connection with something I don't know about."

He looked keenly from Rhodes to O'Hara, a flash of suspicion in his eyes. It was not the first hint he had given that he thought they were keeping something from him.

"Ah, now, don't start that again," snapped Colin. "You've already asked us every question in the world, man. What is it you think? That Tony here and myself ran home from the capital yesterday night and raised all this devilment just to destroy his house and the happiness of both of us?"

"Certainly not! What I am looking for and what you haven't helped me find, is the possible motive that lies behind. In our business-even you must know this-half the time to find the motive is to find the criminal. You ought to understand that, Mr. Rhodes, you being a lawyer."

"If I were the district attorney," observed that young man thoughtfully, "it might be worth while to review my record in search of some desperate criminal who had taken a vow of vengeance against me. But since my only cases have been in the civil courts, and those cases, I must admit, most obscure and unimportant ones, such a review seems hardly worth while."

He looked up with a faintly boyish smile.

"So far as I know, I haven't a personal enemy in the world!"

"Well," said the detective sulkily, "the analysis will show whether it's blood or not, and if you can't tell me anything else you-won't, that's all. Blake and I must be getting back to town."

"Sorry we can't help you out," said Rhodes stiffly.

"So am I. Well, I'll let you know what the analysis tells us about this stuff that's been spilled around here, and we'll keep right on the job till we get to the bottom of it. By the way, do you want me to send another man out to relieve Morgan for the night?"

Morgan was the officer still on guard at the front entrance. But Rhodes shook his head and O'Hara volunteered gloomily: "No need. The harm's done. They'll not come back, whoever they are-though by all the powers, 'tis the one wish of my soul that they might do just that!"

"MR. O'HARA, is it really true that you are going down into South America to find a gold-mine?"

The speaker's sister, a tall, dignified girl, frowned slightly and wished again that she had left Alberta, better known as "Bert", at home. The child was nearly fifteen, but her frank curiosity was a trait for which her sorrowing family had yet to find means of restraint.

Colin, however, rather liked "Bert" Fanning, and he smiled upon her pleasantly enough.

"That's my intention. Though," he added whimsically "if I don't find it, 'twill not be the first mine I've dropped the gold into instead of taking it out."

"How could you drop it in a mine you couldn't find?" inquired Bert, the matter-of-fact.

"Ah, the mine you don't find is an Irish mine-a bit of a bull like that never troubles it at all!"

Everyone laughed, and O'Hara beamed, amiably at their appreciation.

Again he was seated on a stone bench in Cliona's garden. But the luxuriant growth of Virginia rambler that covered the arbor above him was blossomless and with reddening leaves, for the season was mid-September. Nor was this the hilltop garden at Carpentier.

A short distance off rose the gray walls and moss-colored roofs of Green Gables, the new home purchased by Rhodes when it became evident that his wife should be removed to other surroundings than the unlucky bungalow.

By the time that Cliona's condition permitted her to be moved, he had acquired this house in a suburb many miles from Carpentier and working together, he and Colin had labored to furnish it in as different a style from the bungalow as be could.

On this day, which heralded her return to the freedom of the outer world, Cliona was holding a sort of miniature court in the rose garden. Her throne, a great invalid's chair, gave her more than ever the look of a little girl, and the day being cool though sunny she was half buried in a fluffy tumble of blue-and-white wool wraps.

Comfortably cuddled on the foot-rest sound asleep, lay the only memento of her terrible experience for which she had ever expressed a desire-the bull-pup, Snookums.

For some minutes Cliona had been sunk in silent reflections. At last, breaking into her brother's conversation with Bert Fanning, she inquired irrelevantly:

"Have you heard anything lately from Mr. MacClellan, Colin?"

"I have not." He shrugged a trifle contemptuously.

"Has he dropped the case, then?"

"It's still in his hands."

"Those chaps are not an overly brilliant lot, are they?" put in young Stockton Repplier. He was a fresh-faced, intelligent-looking boy, a distant relative of old Elbert Marcus, another guest. "As I understand it, they simply ignored your story, Mrs. Rhodes, and went off on a blind lead. Now any reasonable person must concede that the thing was some sort of wild beast and not — "

The young man suddenly broke off and subsided, with a scared glance at his hostess. Rhodes had caught his eye.

But the invalid only laughed.

"Come round here, Tony-and don't alarm poor Mr. Repplier like that! I know the doctor has told you that I am not to talk of that night, but really, I'm long past the hysterical stage. I was foolish about it for a while, but not any more. Are you perfectly sure, Tony, that this Mr. Brandon is going to buy the bungalow?"

"Perfectly. I am to meet him tomorrow at the office of his lawyers to conclude the deal. In another twenty-four hours the last thread of connection will be severed between ourselves and poor Cousin Roberts' bungalow. Are you glad, Cliona?"

She pondered, as if not sure of her reply, then said slowly:

"Yes, I am glad. Forgive me, people, for bringing up so unpleasant a subject, but-you don't know how I think and think about it! And whenever the picture of the place rises in my mind, it is as if a horrible red shadow had been laid on the house.

"Don't laugh-had you been there that night you'd not even smile, Tony dear! I tell you there's a red, red shadow hangs over it-and there's a thing that waits and hides watching for us three to come back there. I couldn't bear that any one of us should walk under the edge of that red shadow again!"

She was sitting straight up in her chair, her eyes shining and her lately pale face burning with a dangerous color.

"I am sure," said old Mr. Marcus earnestly, "that it would be far better if you could put the whole affair out of your mind, Mrs. Rhodes."

"Yes," agreed Colin with elaborate carelessness, "the place is sold now, so Tony will have no business there. And for myself, there'll soon be a few thousand miles' curve of the earth betwixt me and Carpentier. You've no cause to fret any more, Cliona."

His sister regarded him with puzzled, troubled eyes. Slowly the color faded and she sank back wearily, still with her gaze fixed on him.

"You said you'd not leave till I was well again," she reminded, in the tone of one renewing some former discussion.

"Nor do I-the doctor himself told me yesterday that all danger is past and gone."

"And-and you said you would not go till you'd got at the true secret of all that happened!"

Sensing a certain strain in the atmosphere, the two Fanning girls and young Repplier drifted off into conversation with Marcus on a different subject.

"I showed you Finn's letter," Colin said. "A good man he is, Charley Finn. I learned him well in the Klondike. When he says he's on the trail of a big find, you may reckon on the weight of his word. And it doesn't seem we'll solve our mystery now."