The crooked cross

by Charles J. Dutton

It was a granite wall almost ten feet high. I wondered a moment how I was going to get over it. A near-by tree, which had a branch hanging a few feet over the top of the wall, solved the difficulty. I climbed the tree, crept out on the branch, and dropped to the top of the wall. There I sat a moment to get my bearings.

Behind me stretched the grounds of the murdered scientist, the many trees hiding all but the top of the house. Directly back of me was the summer house, where we had found the body. But to my surprise, when I turned and looked in the other direction, I found that in front there was a slight hollow—a mass of tangled underbrush and small trees. Beyond this stretched a pasture, losing itself in the woods some little distance away. The underbrush below me ran the entire length of the wall, but stopped on my right where the wall ended. In fact here the ground rose a few feet to a grass lined meadow.

As I looked at the mass of trees and shrubs, the more I began to wonder what any one had been doing on the wall. It was not the way to leave the grounds, for the person would have been forced to climb the smooth stones. And then there was nothing but the distant woods and the field. I wondered if the boy had been right when he said the man had thrown something away.

My eyes came again to the slight hollow below me. It was a tangled mass of shrubbery, with high grass, only hidden by the small trees which grew to the height of about eight or nine feet. To try and find anything in that tangle seemed impossible. But after a moment I dropped from the wall and started to make my way through the underbrush.

It was even worse than I had expected. The ground was soft because of a spring which must have been near by. Not only were the trees thick, but there was a tangle of wild rosebushes. Their thorns clung to me as I tried to push my way through the bushes. Long before I reached the other side I realized that it was too late to expect to make any kind of a search. It had begun to be dusk by the time I reached the wall, and when I plunged into the underbrush, the thick foliage made it impossible to see.

Floundering at every step, my clothes pulled and twisted by the thorns, and with the branches whipping across my face, I stumbled through the swamp. Luckily it was not very wet, for if it had been, I would have been unable to have gotten through. But long before I reached the more solid ground I swore at myself for what I was doing. And then, just when I began to wonder if I would ever reach solid ground, I plunged out of the thicket into the high grass of the field. With a sigh of relief I flung myself down on the grass for breath.

My excursion had been of little value. True, I had discovered that the boy could have seen some one on the wall, for I could see its dim shape a few hundred yards away. I glanced at it a moment, then looked behind me at the distant woods, and then glanced back at the wall. And as I looked, to my great surprise I saw a figure slowly drop from the same branch I had been on. A dim, indistinct figure, which seemed to be covered with a long coat—a figure of a man who, as I looked, dropped lightly on the top of the wall.

It was now dark, but not so dark that I could not make out the man. The features I could not see, for he was too far away and the darkness too dense. But there in front of me, on the other side of the swamp, was a man—a man who remained but a moment on the wall and then dropped to the ground. For a second I lost him from sight, and then I saw the darkness split by the glare of a flashlight. Like myself, he was going into the underbrush, throwing the light carefully before him and going slowly, step by step, as if he was looking for something.

For a second I wondered what I had better do. There was no doubt he was searching for something, and searching very carefully. I could hear the sound of the underbrush as it broke under his feet. Once even I heard a muttered exclamation as the man half fell. The small trees and vines hid him from my sight, but I could catch the circle of flame from the flashlight as he swept it to and fro. He was looking for something, but what? And then it dawned on me that the boy had been right after all. Something had been thrown from the wall into the small swamp.

There was little danger of my being seen. Not only was I in the shadow, but it was also dark. The man was about a hundred feet away, directly opposite from where I sat, crouched on the grass. He seemed to be searching over a rather small circle of ground, and evidently the search was not very successful. Then suddenly he threw the light from off the ground at his feet and directed it through the undergrowth in my direction. This caused me to move quickly a few feet to where the grass was higher.