Flynn’s Weekly Detective Fiction. Vol. 27, No. 2, September 24, 1927

Indeed, he was willing to talk about the affair to any chance gossip who happened to come along and ask for information. By doing this, he told every one, he would have more people on the lookout for that poor, dear, innocent little Essie Crocker, who was likely to meet a fate that was worse than death.

But no clews seemed to turn up, during the next exceedingly hectic forty-eight hours, for either the sheriff or the dozens of other folk, who had busied themselves with the affair.

Essie had left home, in the flivver, at about eight o’clock on Monday morning, and the last any one had seen of her was when she had passed a house a few miles out of East Chatham, presumably headed for the Cranberry Lake section.

If the car had left the road at any spot there was no way of telling it by the time that the thoroughfare had been examined, for a heavy rain early Tuesday morning would have wiped out all traces of tracks.

Bemis, at the insistent instigation of Amos as well as several others, had investigated the gang of foreign laborers down at Gorham. But from them, he reported, nothing was to be gained; that is, none of their number was missing, none of them had been away from work on Monday, none of them had seemed at all worthy of suspicion under shrewd cross-examination.

Still... still — and Whitcher had slowly cocked an eye in a sinister manner when he had drawled this out — them fellers was a funny breed, all right, all right, and p’r’aps mebbe they was one or two things a backwoods hick had noticed that he meant t’ foller up.

Porcupine Cave on Creepy Hollow Mountain, needless to state, was also thoroughly looked into. That is, Whitcher and several of the best deer men in the region — noted for their woodlore — explored the immediate vicinity with scrupulous care.

They fine tooth combed it, in other words, so exhaustively that they were able to assure themselves that no human foot had been about the place since that downpour of Tuesday morning. Of this they were certain, although Whitcher admitted that there were mighty few tilings about which one could feel that way in what the poets termed this vale of tears.

But on Wednesday or Thursday — whichever it was — it appeared as if some person affiliated with the so-styled Avenging Society had been somewhere in the proximity of Porcupine Cave. At least, late Thursday night Amos Crocker paid another of his visits to the sheriff of Noel’s Landing. On this occasion — to do away with possibly bothersome details concerning his actions — the hardware man showed Bemis the following message:

Amos Crocker:

Tell everybody to keep away from Porcupine Cave. The next time they will get hurt. No, not hurt, exactly. They just won’t know it, for the man who will do the shooting never misses. I guess you ought to know that we’re pretty good, because the crowd of picked men that looked over the ground weren’t able to even find any of our tracks. Yes, we know the woods.

We’re getting more businesslike, now that the time approaches. Unless the ten thousand dollars in small bills is placed in the cave by ten o’clock Saturday morning, God help your daughter, is all we can say. And don’t forget not to try any funny business. It may be one or two or three days before we take the money, but we’ll know if it’s put there or not. When we get it, we’ll free your daughter. If not

Avenging Society.

As Whitcher perused the communication, written in the same printed form on the same ruled paper, he... well, he actually seemed to pale. He shook his head glumly:

“By... by Judas Priest, Amos,” he breathed hoarsely, “but it sure do look ’s if these fellers mean w’ot they say!”

“Mean what they say?”

Crocker almost shrieked out the words, and his hands went to the lapels of the sheriff’s worn canvas jacket. He gripped them convulsively and began trying to shake that massive figure in a manner that would have been ludicrous had the situation not been so tragic.

“Why, Whitcher, they’re probably one of the most desperate bands of criminals that’s ever been let loose on the world. Some branch, it sort of strikes me, of that famous Black Hand, maybe.