He rubbed his handkerchief carefully over every article that he replaced in Grahame’s pockets, to remove possible finger-prints. The woods remained very quiet. To be sure, as the effect of the single shot wore away, there were little sounds near by. An old dog squirrel barked reassuringly, and his wife and relations came out of their holes and went about their businesses. A partridge that had frozen into stillness at the sound of the shotgun came to life and darted to a more promising spot. Colby heard it scratching and rustling among the fallen leaves.
It whirred off into nowhere when he picked Grahame up, however, and the squirrels lapsed abruptly into utter silence when his feet crackled on leaves and small branches as he staggered toward the stream with his burden.
Twenty yards, no more. He had seen the glitter of the stream curving toward the footpath before he shot Grahame. It was an unimportant little watercourse, nowhere more than half a dozen paces across, and it murmured and sang pleasantly to itself over its gravelly bed.
Colby went painstakingly down to its margin. He knew exactly where he was and what he was going to do. After a heavy rain the stream ran with a strong current. It was always carving at its banks or making minor changes in them, and at one spot it had undermined the six-foot clay wall which confined it so that a hollow of considerable depth was roofed over only by tree roots and the earth on top of them. Sooner or later that roof would cave in.
It was easy to push the dead body into the hollow, where it was well hidden. Few people ever came near this place, anyhow. No one would ever dream of creeping in there and risking a cave-in for no purpose. With one single rain of any size, the roof would probably collapse and bury Grahame securely. No one would ever think of looking for a missing man under a cave-in of that sort.
Colby climbed up the bank and tested the roof with his foot. It quivered promisingly. He stamped. He stamped harder. With a sticky thumping of rain-softened earth, it gave way. Small rootlets snapped, falling earth cascaded, and Grahame was safely buried under three feet of soil.
There was absolutely no suspicious sign above. The cave-in looked perfectly natural. No searching party would ever dream of anything hidden under there. No searching party would ever look for Grahame, anyhow. He had come up from Richmond by train, and had ostensibly gone out to hunt with Colby. Colby would explain that as they walked back along the concrete road toward town, a car had come by, headed for Richmond, and in it was an acquaintance of Grahame’s. The man had hailed Grahame and offered a lift, which the latter had taken.
There would be no inquiry, no investigation. There was no need for anything of the sort. It was unlikely that any one in Richmond knew where Grahame had gone.
After Colby had spent twenty minutes clearing away tracks and had carefully dropped one or two blood-spattered leaves into the hollow of a double-trunked poplar, there was absolutely no evidence of a murder anywhere except under that collapsed bank. There was the money in Colby’s pocket, of course, but nobody would know anything about that for a long time—not even Nesbit.
Colby had done his murder in an absolutely perfect way. As you see, this story is instructive.