The Classic Mystery Novel MEGAPACK®. Hay James

The sun was setting and its last red rays made everything around me sharp and mercilessly clear. The upset furniture, all those signs of dreadful sanguinary battle, the dead man. My nerves screamed violent protest, and I started backing toward escape. I trod upon something soft—a bakery cookie. Half a dozen other cookies lay scattered on the floor. I noticed them with the tense consciousness that accompanies shock, and noticed also the upended table, the coffee pot, the two smashed cups. Two cups.

      I said out loud, “They had been eating before they fought.”

      Reuben had quieted. He heard me now, scratched at the kitchen door, and whimpered like a child. Perhaps the bravest thing I ever did was to cross the room to let him out. I walked unsteadily. I stumbled against a pail of water. A scrubbing brush floated in the pail, and sunk to the bottom was a bit of stained rag. An area of the floor was freshly scrubbed, a section of the wall was smeared where a damp cloth had been drawn over it, and I knew my arrival had interrupted a hurried attempt to clean up the place.

      I opened the kitchen door. Reuben shot forth, jumped wildly up and down, licked my hands and then rushed to the spot where Silas sprawled.

      I looked into the kitchen. Pans of milk were setting about, and the dog had turned one over. I saw the print of a man’s foot in the spilled milk, and I saw how the killer could have fled from the Lodge and reached the yellow car, without my glimpsing him as I approached. A back door led from the kitchen to a covered porch—a sort of utility room equipped with an ice box and cream separator—and beyond the porch was a back path. Someone had run along the path. Deep footprints showed in it.

      I closed the kitchen door, and then remembered that I shouldn’t touch anything. Reuben crouched beside Silas’s body. I called to him. He lifted his head and howled. The sound rose and kept on rising. I ran outside, and Reuben followed.