Uncle Abner, Master of Mysteries | Page 3

assassin enter?" "The answer is evident," said Randolph: "The one who killed Doomdorf hid in the room until he was asleep; then he shot him and went out."
"The explanation is excellent but for one thing," replied Abner: "How did the assassin bolt the door behind him on the inside of this room after he had gone out?"
Randolph flung out his arms with a hopeless gesture. "Who knows?" he cried. "Maybe Doomdorf killed himself."
Abner laughed. "And after firing a handful of shot into his heart he got up and put the gun back carefully into the forks against the wall!" "Well," cried Randolph, "there is one open road out of this mystery. Bronson and this woman say they killed Doomdorf, and if they killed him they surely know how they did it. Let us go down and ask them."
"In the law court," replied Abner, "that procedure would be considered sound sense; but we are in God's court and things are managed there in a somewhat stranger way. Before we go let us find out, if we can, at what hour it was that Doomdorf died."
He went over and took a big silver watch out of the dead man's pocket. It was broken by a shot and the hands lay at one hour after noon. He stood for a moment fingering his chin.
"At one o'clock," he said. "Bronson, I think, was on the road to this place, and the woman was on the mountain among the peach trees."
Randolph threw back his shoulders.
"Why waste time in a speculation about it, Abner?" he said. "We know who did this thing. Let us go and get the story of it out of their own mouths. Doomdorf died by the hands of either Bronson or this woman."
"I could better believe it," replied Abner, "but for the running of a certain awful law."
"What law?" said Randolph. "Is it a statute of Virginia?"
"It is a statute," replied Abner, "of an authority somewhat higher. Mark the language of it: 'He that killeth with the sword must be killed with the sword.'"
He came over and took Randolph by the arm. "Must! Randolph, did you mark particularly the word 'must'? It is a mandatory law. There is no room in it for the Vicissitudes of chance or fortune. There is no way round that word. Thus, we reap what we sow and nothing else; thus, we receive what we give and nothing else. It is the weapon in our own hands that finally destroys us. You are looking at it now." And he turned him about so that the table and the weapon and the dead man were before him. "'He that killeth with the sword must be killed with the sword'. And now," he said, "let us go and try the method of the law courts. Your faith is in the wisdom of their ways."
They found the old circuit rider at work in the still, staving in Doomdorf's liquor casks, splitting the oak heads with his ax. "Bronson," said Randolph, "how did you kill Doomdorf?" The old man stopped and stood leaning on his ax. "I killed him," replied the old man, "as Elijah killed the captains of Ahaziah and their fifties. But not by the hand of any man did I pray the Lord God to destroy Doomdorf, but with fire from heaven to destroy him."
He stood up and extended his arms.
"His hands were full of blood," he said. "With his abomination from these groves of Baal he stirred up the people to contention, to strife and murder. The widow and the orphan cried to heaven against him. 'I will surely hear their cry,' is the promise written in the Book. The land was weary of him; and I prayed the Lord God to destroy him with fire from heaven, as he destroyed the Princes of Gomorrah in their palaces!"
Randolph made a gesture as of one who dismisses the impossible, but Abner's face took on a deep, strange look.
"With fire from heaven!" he repeated slowly to himself. Then he asked a question. "A little while ago," he said, "when we came, I asked you where Doomdorf was, and you answered me in the language of the third chapter of the Book of Judges. Why did you answer me like that, Bronson?-'Surely he covereth his feet in his summer chamber.'"
"The woman told me that he had not come down from the room where he had gone up to sleep," replied the old man, "and that the door was locked. And then I knew that he was dead in his summer chamber like Eglon, King of Moab."
He extended his arm toward the south.
"I came here from the Great Valley," he said, "to cut down these groves of Baal and to empty out this abomination; but I did not know that the