“I don’t like this,” commented Lawton worriedly as he drew up at the end of the brick path which traversed the distance from carriage-drive to front door. “And— By the way,” he interrupted himself, “now I remember it. Oz said something about the two negroes being made sick by the gases and clearing out till the house could be aired. Aired! Why every window and every door in sight is shut!”
“Clive must be here all alone if his servants decamped,” said Vail. “Probably he hasn’t the energy to open up the house, sick as he is. Come on!”
He got out with the doctor, turning to help Miss Gregg to alight.
Before she could step to the ground Macduff crowded past her in right unmannerly fashion, leaping to earth and standing there.
The collie’s muscles were taut. His muzzle was pointed skyward. His sensitive nostrils deflated and filled with lightning alternation as he sniffed avidly at the lifeless air. He was in evident and keen excitement, and he whimpered tremulously under his breath.
Paying no heed to the collie, the three humans were starting up the ragged brick walk which wound an eccentric way through breast-high patches of boxwood to the front door of the farmhouse.
The bricks radiated the scorching heat. The boxwood gave back hot fragrance under the sun’s untempered rays. The locusts were shrilling in the dusty tree-branches above. Over everything hung that breath of tense silence.
Macduff, after one more series of experimental sniffs, flashed up the winding walk past the three and toward the front door.
Within six feet of the door he shied like a frightened horse at something which lay in his path. And he crouched back irresolutely on his furry haunches.
At the same moment the trio rounded the curve of path between two high boxwoods which had shut off their view of the bricked space in front of the doorway.