“Well, what about a little golf?”
Chapter XIV.
Patton Telephones—“It's Murder”
Ranville, at the invitation to play golf, informed us very earnestly that he did not care for the game. So, leaving him with his nose buried deep in a magazine, we went out to the car. The morning was cool, with a breeze sweeping across the lake from the distant hills. Forty-five minutes later we drove up the sweeping road which led to the club house.
As we waited our turn to drive off from the first tee, I sank on the bench and studied the view before me. The club house was on a small elevation, and one could take in the countryside for miles around. The lake lay several miles away, its surface dark blue. Six miles in front of us we could see the church steeples in the town as they peered through the leaves of the trees. Across the lake the mountains stood forth etched into sharp lines by the clear air.
Golf was a game Bartley loved but one which, strange to say, he failed to play very well. Sometimes his game would be wonderful, at other times directly opposite. He started out with his first drive by one of the worst slices I have ever seen—one which took his ball off the fairway, across the rough and on to the fairway of another hole. When he sank the ball into the first hole with his eighth shot, he turned to give me a little grin.
By the time we had reached the fifth hole, his score was approaching forty. I had seen him play some rather poor golf, but never such a game as he was playing to-day. When the ball had dropped into the sixth hole, he motioned to me and walked over to a clump of trees by the side of the course. As he flung himself down upon the ground, I followed his example, wondering why he had interrupted his game. He took a cigarette from a case, which he passed to me, lighted it, and then said:
“I have been wondering, Pelt, if you told me everything that you observed that night you found Warren dead in his library. From what Ranville and the chief tell me, there have been no clews of any sort. Not a thing which would point to any particular person as the murderer. In a sense that is unusual. And as I have run this thing over in my mind, I have been wondering—wondering if there is anything which you did not tell me.”
I assured him that he must know, either from what I had told him or Ranville, everything that was of importance. But he shook his head as if he did not agree. He suggested I start in at the beginning and tell him the story as if he was hearing it for the first time. And so, carefully picking my words, I started to tell him of everything we had seen from the time we left the house until after we had found the body. When I came to the place where I said the body lay in a queer position on the floor he stopped me.
“There is something new, Pelt. What do you mean by a queer position?”
“Why, the arms were extended from the body,” was my reply.