Mystery

“His face had gone bright red. He looked back out at the veranda, toward that group of chattering Redwing cousins. He literally straightened his back. Then he asked me what I intended to do. I said that I wanted to take him into town, and get Minor Truehart out of jail as soon as possible. ‘You really are the Shadow, aren’t you?’ he asked me. Then he turned toward me so his back would be to the veranda. He leaned forward to whisper, and his face was already pleading. ‘Give me one more night,’ he said. ‘I won’t try to get away. I just want to have one last night here at Eagle Lake.’ He was a sentimentalist, you see. I told him I’d give him until nightfall.”

“Why until nightfall? Why give him any time at all?”

“Well, it might sound funny, but I wanted to give him some time to think about things while he was still a free man. Only he and I knew what he had done, and that changed everything for both of us. If I gave him only the hour or two until nightfall, I could make sure that he didn’t escape after it got dark. I intended to keep watch on his house, of course. So I agreed. I left the club and trotted home, ran down to my dock, untied my boat, and started across the lake. I thought my little outboard motor could get me to Goetz’s dock before he got home. When I was in the middle of the lake, someone took a shot at me.”

Tom opened his mouth in surprise, imagining himself out in the middle of a lake while Anton Goetz fired at him with a rifle.

“The shot hit the water about a foot from the dinghy. I cursed myself for letting him go and lay down in the bottom of the boat, soaking my clothes. A second later, there was another shot, and this one struck the side of the dinghy and went straight through to the bottom of the boat, about an inch from my head. I scrunched backwards, but I didn’t dare lift my head for another minute or so. I was going around and around in a big circle. Finally I dared lift my head again and steered toward Goetz’s dock, while still more or less lying down in the boat. At the dock I killed the motor and jumped out—the boat was about one-quarter full of water, and I just left it to fill up and sink. I ran up to the house, knowing that I’d made a terrible fool of myself—not only had he nearly killed me, but he had obviously managed to get away. I had to admit what I’d done and persuade the police to start looking for him. By the time I got to a telephone, Goetz could have been twenty miles away.

“But he hadn’t gone anywhere. His door was wide open. I rushed in and threw myself on the floor, just in case he was waiting for me. Then I heard something dripping onto the wooden floor. I looked up and saw him. He was hanging from one of the crossbeams in his living room, with a length of high-test fishing line around his neck that had nearly taken his head off.”

“He could have killed you!” Tom said.

“The funny thing was, he hadn’t even stolen the Colt from Arthur Thielman. It was lying on a table outside near the Thielmans’ dock the night Goetz thought he and Jeanine were going to run off. When she told him she had no intention of leaving her husband and turned away to go back inside, he picked it up and shot her in the back of the head. The next day, he thought that he could put the blame on Minor Truehart, and after Truehart’s wife left his house to do her next job, he went out through the woods, dead drunk, to their cabin, and threw it under the bed. Arthur Thielman was careless with everything, including his wife and his weapons.”

“Then who shot at you? It must have been Goetz.”

Mr. von Heilitz smiled at Tom, then knitted his fingers behind the back of his head and yawned. “Your grandfather’s lodge was about forty yards to the left of the Thielmans’. About the same distance to the right, in the direction of the club, was the boundary of the Redwing compound. This was only a year after I had exposed my parents’ murderer, who had spoken at great length about corruption on Mill Walk. Of course, it might have been Goetz. He could have fired at me, tossed the rifle into the lake, and then hanged himself. But Goetz was a very good shot—from at least thirty feet away, he killed Jeanine with a pistol that pulled badly to the left.”