“How about that shot in the finger, Doctor? Do you mean he shot himself?”
“What’s your guess?” Dr. Stone asked mildly. “Mine is that, when he was sent out to look for Billy, he fired a shot in the air as an after-thought. Do you remember, when we got there, that his hand pained? He kept rubbing it as though it throbbed. Infection doesn’t set in so quickly, Captain; there must be a period of incubation. He had cut that finger earlier in the day. He objected to going to a doctor even after I warned him of lock-jaw. Why? Because he didn’t fear the lock-jaw that may follow a gun-shot wound. Because he knew that no doctor would look at that wound and believe it came from a bullet. Of course, he let me handle it; but, then, I am blind. He figured I didn’t count. My guess is that, in running the rope over his arms, he reopened a wound he had received earlier in the day.”
“By the Eternal,” Captain Tucker burst out, “this seems to be nothing but guesses. You guess this and you guess that. How about a few facts. We have placed this man in irons. If Billy isn’t found you and I may discover ourselves in a sweet peck of trouble.”
A voice called from the house: “Captain Tucker! Telephone.”
The captain mounted the porch steps. The doctor, fishing out his pipe, methodically stuffed it with tobacco.
“I can’t understand,” he said musingly, “why you didn’t light out last night, Ira, after trying to shoot Lady. Afraid to run and lose five thousand dollars, and afraid to stay and be caught. You were in one sweet peck of trouble, weren’t you, Ira?” Ira said nothing.
“How were you going to work it? Collect the money and then get word to them where to find the boy?”
The hired man glared in impotent fury.
Captain Tucker, looking slightly dazed, came back to the car. “They picked up our Italian in a small village fifteen miles above Peekskill.”
“Search him, Captain?”