The Mystery Megapack

swamp; looking from his window, Frank Weston could make out only masses of shadow relieved by a pallid glimmer that revealed no details. Directly below him, and standing on the old grindstone by the front door, was a dark figure that looked too large to be a man. Who could have any business with them at such an hour, long after the countryside had retired to slumber, the oil lamps blown out in distant windows?
    His voice, despite his efforts to control it, quavered a little as he leaned out into the cool night air, and called softly: “Yes? Who is it, and what do you want?”
    The man below raised his head to the sound, his face showing as a whitish blur masked in a heavy beard and shaded by an old, floppy, black felt hat.
    “Your name Weston? Just got here from the city, ain’t ye? Well, I’m Jason Hodge—your nearest neighbor down the road a piece. Come down so’s I can talk without hollerin’. Got something important to say, and there’s no telling who may be listenin’.”
    “What is it, Frank? Is anything wrong?”
    The anxious voice of his wife came from the adjoining room as Weston hastily slipped into trousers and shoes, not bothering to put on his stockings nor fasten the laces.
    “Oh, nothing much, I guess,” he answered lightly, though his nerves still jumped a little after being roused so startlingly from profound sleep. “Only a neighbor; says his name is Hodge. Probably wants to borrow something; folks out in the remote country are always running out of matches or flour or something. It’s all right; tell you all about it soon as he’s got what he wants and gone home.”
    He took a pocket torch from the bureau, and snapped on its cold, white beam as he stole down the narrow stairway with its carved mahogany railing, which some misguided tenant had long ago painted white. For just an instant he hesitated at the door, before slipping the heavy iron bolt; then with a smile at his timidity, which he realized came solely from the unfamiliar isolation of one accustomed to living packed in among teeming thousands, he threw open the door. It creaked loudly in the silence; and unconsciously he stepped back a pace, his hand tightening on the metal cylinder of the torch.
    The strange caller blinked as the beam played about his rugged, homely face. “I won’t step in,” he said, his voice pitched cautiously low. “And sorry to wake ye up this time o’ night. But fact is, there’s trouble afoot. I knew you and your wife just got in today; we see ye pass with Jed Hooper. Wanted to warn ye to keep doors and windows locked tight, and it might not be a bad idee to have a gun handy. Have you got one?”
    “I have an automatic,” Weston admitted a little sheepishly. “Thought I might amuse myself shooting at a mark. Had it a long time, and never got a chance to fire it off in the city.”
    The bearded figure nodded. “Mebbe you’ll have a real mark to shoot at. Hope not, and tain’t likely. This neighborhood is very peaceable. Everybody knows everybody else, or at least, we cal’lated we did. But I just got a telephone message; we’ve all of us got telephones, but you. That’s why I came over to warn ye. Didn’t seem right, somehow, with you two city folks sleeping like as not with the door unlocked—which nobody down here ever bothers to lock up nights—”
    Weston shivered a little. The chill night air was penetrating his thin shirt and ruffling his thin hair. “But what is it all about? What did you come to warn us about, if the village is as peaceable as you say?”
    The bewhiskered man coughed. “That’s what I was coming to, mister. As I was saying, I got this telephone message from the sheriff over to Allsworth. That’s the county seat. Something terrible has happened at the Bronsons’, ten miles away on the Cranberry Beach road. A man—don’t know who, because he wore a mask—near killed Mrs. Bronson. This was along about sundown; she only managed to get word through to Allworth half an hour ago. Her husband, Elmer Bronson, was down at the beach, a mile away, floating off that big sloop of his. High tide tonight, and he’s been putting in some new strakes and painting her up. So the Bronson woman was all alone. Well, this stranger, he knocked on her door and asked for a drink of water. Soon as she opened the door and see he was masked, she tried to shut it in his face, but he was too quick for her. Set his foot in the opening and pushed on through. Then seems as if he