Black Mask (Vol. 7, No. 5 — April 1950), British Edition

“When Pops was a kid, he worked for awhile on a newspaper. He was a reporter like you. One time he was assigned to write up a penitentiary execution. They died by hanging in that state and Pops had to watch it. It got him. He was sick for a week afterward. It was so bad, that was the end of his newspaper career.

“He’s told me about it many times. It gave him sort of a phobia about ropes, even. He hated to even touch a piece of rope. Once, he got up and walked out of a movie when they showed preparations for a hanging. If he was going to — to get rid of himself, that’s the one way he wouldn’t do it, Matty. Can you understand that?”

“Maybe,” I said. “But you’re going to have a tough time selling that to the police.”

I helped her to her feet. She was dizzy for a moment and clung to me. Somewhere out over the mist on the lake a catbird shrieked. Stray puffs of mist swirled around us. I thought about the things Lee Marlow had said and they began to make sense. But if she was right, then there’d been a double murder.

Chances were, the same person had killed old man Marlow. But, why? They were safe enough as it was, without doing that. If Harry’s death got by as an accident, they were okay. If murder was suspected, the I.O.U. practically put it into Willis Marlow’s lap. Why go to the trouble of killing him, too?

It hit me, then. “Maybe your father saw them. Maybe he saw who it was that heaved Harry Wenzel into the dog pen. They killed him to shut him up about that.”

Her eyes grew very wide. “Yes,” she breathed. “When he’d been drinking, Pops never went right to bed. He had a fear of lying down when he was drunk. He didn’t like the way everything spun around and it sometimes made him sick. He liked to get out and get a lot of air and sometimes walk a lot. Maybe he was out back there, somewhere, when the murderer thought everybody had gone to bed and like you say, Pops saw the thing done.”

“The fishing rod?” I said. “Would he have that?”

“He might,” she said. “Maybe he decided to try a little night fishing. He was very anxious to try that spinning outfit, anyhow.”

“But would he go through with his plans, calmly, go down to the lake to go fishing after witnessing what was obviously a murder?”

“No,” she said. “But he could have become afraid. Maybe the murderer saw him, knew that he’d been a witness. Maybe Pops ran down here, trying to get away.”

We pushed it around some more and the more we talked, the more convinced I was that we had the correct answer.

“If we’re right, the killer is very clever. It’s going to be hard to prove anything against him. But I’ve got an idea how we might root him out into the open, if you’re game for it.”

Her lovely mouth thinned and a vein stood out along her young white throat. “I’ll do anything,” she said. “Anything to prove Pops was innocent, that he didn’t hang himself.”

“Maybe it won’t work,” I said. “And I might get into a lot of trouble but I’m willing to take a chance on it.”

I told her this crazy idea, then. I was going to cut down Willis Marlow’s corpse, carry it back to the lodge, slung over my shoulder. There was a side entrance that led upstairs. If we could get Willis Marlow up to his own room without anybody seeing us, there was a chance we could put this over.

“We’ll go back to the others, then,” I told Lee. “We’ll tell them that we found your father, passed out and sleeping it off and that we helped him back up to his room. Only the murderer will know that we’re lying. He’ll worry and think maybe that we might even suspect him. He’ll get nervous and jumpy and maybe make a slip of some kind that will tip us off. That’s about all we can hope for.”

“Maybe,” she said. “You keep saying ‘he’, Matty. What about Irma Wenzel?”

“I don’t think so. It would take somebody much bigger and stronger to heave Harry over that fence.”

Lee was dubious about the possible success of the idea and so was I. But there didn’t seem any other alternative. We went back down onto the path. She kept her back turned to the corpse gently swinging from the tree limb.

“I... I’m afraid I can’t be much help, Matty. I can’t watch even. I couldn’t take it. I feel sick, as it is.”

My own stomach felt as though a lot of cold, creeping things were slithering around inside of it. I went over and stopped and wrapped my right arm around Willis Marlow’s legs. With my left hand, I reached up and sawed through the clothesline rope with my pocket knife until I felt Marlow’s dead weight fall full over my shoulder. I hefted him into a more comfortable carrying position and joined Lee. She didn’t look at me. She kept a few steps ahead as we moved along the path.