Uncle Abner, Master of Mysteries | Page 6

"I would like to see the assassin who could do a murder like this, whether he be an imp from the pit or an angel out of Heaven."
"Very well," replied Abner, undisturbed. "When he comes back tomorrow I will show you the assassin who killed Doomdorf."
When day broke they dug a grave and buried the dead man against the mountain among his peach trees. It was noon when that work was ended. Abner threw down his spade and looked up at the sun.
"Randolph," he said, "let us go and lay an ambush for this assassin. He is on the way here."
And it was a strange ambush that he laid. When they were come again into the chamber where Doomdorf died he bolted the door; then he loaded the fowling piece and put it carefully back on its rack against the wall. After that he did another curious thing: He took the blood-stained coat, which they had stripped off the dead man when they had prepared his body for the earth, put a pillow in it and laid it on the couch precisely where Doomdorf had slept. And while he did these things Randolph stood in wonder and Abner talked:
"Look you, Randolph...We will trick the murderer...We will catch him in the act."
Then he went over and took the puzzled justice by the arm.
"Watch!" he said. "The assassin is coming along the wall!"
But Randolph heard nothing, saw nothing. Only the sun entered. Abner's hand tightened on his arm.
"It is here! Look!" And he pointed to the wall.
Randolph, following the extended finger, saw a tiny brilliant disk of light moving slowly up the wall toward the lock of the fowling piece. Abner's hand became a vise and his voice rang as over metal.
"'He that killeth with the sword must be killed with the sword.' It is the water bottle, full of Doomdorf's liquid, focusing the sun...And look, Randolph, how Bronson's prayer was answered!"
The tiny disk of light traveled on the plate of the lock.
"It is fire from heaven!"
The words rang above the roar of the fowling piece, and Randolph saw the dead man's coat leap up on the couch, riddled by the shot. The gun, in its natural position on the rack, pointed to the couch standing at the end of the chamber, beyond the offset of the wall, and the focused sun had exploded the percussion cap.
Randolph made a great gesture, with his arm extended.
"It is a world," he said, "filled with the mysterious joinder of accident!"
"It is a world," replied Abner, "filled with the mysterious justice of God!"
Chapter 2
The Wrong Hand
ABNER NEVER WOULD have taken me into that house if he could have helped it. He was on a desperate mission and a child was the last company he wished; but he had to do it. It was an evening of early winter-raw and cold. A chilling rain was beginning to fall; night was descending and I could not go on. I had been into the upcountry and had taken this short cut through the hills that lay here against the mountains. I would have been home by now, but a broken shoe had delayed me.
I did not see Abner's horse until I approached the crossroads, but I think he had seen me from a distance. His great chestnut stood in the grassplot between the roads, and Abner sat upon him like a man of stone. He had made his decision when I got to him.
The very aspect of the land was sinister. The house stood on a hill; round its base, through the sodded meadows, the river ran-dark, swift and silent; stretching westward was a forest and for background the great mountains stood into the sky. The house was very old. The high windows were of little panes of glass and on the ancient white door the paint was seamed and cracked with age.
The name of the man who lived here was a byword in the hills. He was a hunchback, who sat his great roan as though he were a spider in the saddle. He had been married more than once; but one wife had gone mad, and my Uncle Abner's drovers had found the other on a summer morning swinging to the limb of a great elm that stood before the door, a bridle-rein knotted around her throat and her bare feet scattering the yellow pollen of the ragweed. That elm was to us a duletree. One could not ride beneath it for the swinging of this ghost.
The estate, undivided, belonged to Gaul and his brother. This brother lived beyond the mountains. He never came until he came that last time. Gaul rendered some accounting and they managed in that way. It was said the brother believed himself defrauded and had come finally to divide the lands; but