"How you going to stop them from knowing? They'll see—that—" His shaking finger pointed at the corpse; now the little pool of blood had grown to an appallingly large smudge—and was still growing. Timothy looked away, a dreadful revulsion sickening him. But his wife was becoming steadily calmer. She went on:
"Nobody is going to see that thing. We're going to hide it."
"Hide it?"
From the bed came Gilbert's shrill repetition:
"You're going to hide the doctor, Mom!"
"Yes, hide him—hide him where no one will ever find his body!"
In his anxiety, Timothy was actually cringing before her.
"Where?" he asked tremulously.
Agatha's deep voice was lowered. Her eyes narrowed.
"In the well!" she said.
"The—well?"
"Yes, the dry well! You're going to fill the thing up with dirt, aren't you? It's no good any more."
"I know, but—"
"But nothing, Tim! That's going to be the doctor's grave, that well! We'll throw him into it tonight-now. You'll carry him out. And then we'll put the boards over it. No one will find him. After they go away—or, better, after a couple of days, we'll fill it as we were going to do. No one will be the wiser."
Had he found the courage to do such a thing, Timothy would have hugged his wife. Her plan was beyond reproach. The old well in the yard, long since dry, offered an ideal tomb, an ideal place of concealment. No one would search for the doctor's body there—especially after it would be filled. The well. . . .
"You're a good girl, Agatha," he murmured.
She did not answer. But from Gilbert came a gleeful exclamation:
"The well! Hide the doctor in the well, Mom! That'll be fine!"
Uneasily, Timothy glanced down at the body.
"The blood, Agatha," he stammered. "They'll see it—"
She looked at the fearful stain. Its dark crimson was joined by the yellow of the oil lamp, forming a queer, indescribable blot of color.
"Don't you worry about the blood, Tim. You take the body out to the well. I'll wash the signs away. I'll fix up the room so no one will guess. Don't worry about the stains."
She wondered, of a sudden, why she was taking all these precautions on behalf of the man who had neglected her so cruelly during the entire nine years of their married life. But she brushed aside the hesitancy. He was her husband! Gilbert was her son! For their sakes she must fight the law. She could not afford to lose Timothy; and she could not bring disgrace upon the boy. She must fight. .
Peculiar, she told herself, was the fact that she could speak so boldly of blood and a corpse and burial; she no longer suffered from the horror of the situation. Instead, her mind was coolly planning a means of escape. Funny how the mind works under a strain. . . .
Timothy interrupted her musings. Again his voice trembled with misgivings; and again he stammered weakly:
"But his wife, Agatha—she knows he came here! They're bound to suspect us!"
A contemptuous smirk twisted her full lips.
"You fool, can they prove he came here arrived here, I mean? Suppose we insisted he didn't arrive."
"We can't! His his horse and buggy are outside!"
Energetically Timothy sprang to the window. He stared through the streaming pane into the blackness, his nose pressed against the glass.
"Sure," he hissed. "There it is tied to the porch!"
Agatha considered. She bent her head and frowned. That horse could not remain outside. That evidence, too, must be destroyed—all evidence must be destroyed. They must find a perfect alibi, a story that would convince the villagers. For a long time she remained motionless, gazing with listless eyes at the floor but not that part of the floor on which the dreadful thing lay. Timothy, quaking and baffled, stood by the window. He watched her anxiously, watched her because he knew his life depended on her decision, watched her as a criminal watches the foreman of a jury.
And after many minutes she spoke quietly, decisively.
"Very well," she said, "we'll change our story. Tim, after you get that—that thing into the well, you're going to get into that buggy and drive about half way to the doctor's house. There you can tie the horse to a tree, and walk home."
"Drive half way—say, what's the idea?"
"Just do as I say, and we'll be all right. You leave the horse half way to the doctor's house, see? Then we'll admit that he was here, that he left about half past two. They'll find the empty buggy and—well, let them wonder about the mystery of what happened to the man. He'll just sort of—disappear, see? We won't know anything about what happened to him after he left. His buggy half way home will show that he started away from us."
Again Timothy Cruze experienced a surge of admiration for his wife. He had never suspected that she could behave so sensibly, so tranquilly, under trying circumstances. But an inherent sulkiness and shyness stilled him; he did not express his thoughts.
"It's a good thing," Agatha continued, "that it's raining. Your tracks around the buggy, and from the buggy home, and around the well—they'll all be washed away."
"That's right! Never thought of that."
"You haven't thought of anything—yet," she answered, somewhat bitterly. "There's something else, too. Look in the buggy. If you can find some sort of doctor's kit—I guess it ought to be there—take out a bottle of some medicine. Proof that he visited us, just to make our story true."
At this evidence of keen scheming, Timothy could no longer suppress a word of praise. He rubbed his hands, shifted his weight from one foot to another, and declared:
"Agatha, you're all right!"
"Thanks," she replied dryly. "Now, let's get busy. Take—him—out."
It was a gruesome duty, one which was repellent even to Timothy. But he stiffened himself in grim determination, and bent to the corpse. And as his hands touched the still warm body, he abruptly paused—for Gilbert, almost forgotten in the excitement of planning safety, called:
"Throw him in the well, Pop! Throw him in the well!"
Sudden frenzy in his eyes, Timothy glanced up at his wife-rigid and ominous. Her hands were clasped, her face was hard; she stood as stolid as a sphinx, watching him.
"Say," he whispered, "we can't tell when the kid is in—in delirium or when he's all right. Suppose—suppose he blabbers to the people about this same as he blabbered to the doctor? Suppose—"
Agatha scowled in concern; the weird illumination cast black shadows under her drawn brows.
"First good thing you thought of," she muttered. "We've got to be careful—can't give the boy a chance to blabber. We—we—"
She stopped, pondering. But she had trained her mind to overcome obstacles
