Egyptian Cross Mystery (24 page)

“No,” said Van heavily, “that’s true. Stefan, tell them.”

The yachtsman straightened in bed—the pain had either left him or in his excitement he had forgotten it—and stared at the low ceiling of the cabin. “How shall I begin? It happened so damned long ago. Tomislav, Andreja, and I were the last of the Tvar family. A proud and wealthy mountain clan in Montenegro.”

“Which has vanished,” said the schoolmaster in a frozen voice.

The sick man waved his hand as if it did not matter. “You’ve got to understand that we came of the hottest Balkan blood. Hot—so hot it sizzled.” Megara laughed shortly. “The Tvars had a traditional enemy—the Krosacs, another clan. For generations—”

“Vendetta!” cried the Professor. “Of course. Not properly vendetta, which is Italian, but certainly a blood feud, like the feuds of our own Kentucky mountaineers. I should have thought of it.”

“Yes,” snapped Megara. “We don’t know to this day why there was a feud—the original cause had been so smeared in blood that our generation didn’t know why. But from childhood we were taught—”

“Kill the Krosacs,” croaked the schoolmaster.

“We’d been the aggressors,” continued Megara, scowling, “and twenty years ago, due to the ferocity and ruthlessness of our grandfather and father, only one male Krosac remained—Velja, the man you’re after. … He was a kid then. He and his mother were the sole survivors of the Krosac family.”

“How far away it seems,” muttered Van. “How barbaric! You, Tomislav, and I, in retaliation for the murder of father, killed Krosac’s father and two uncles, ambushed them. …”

“Utterly incredible,” murmured Ellery to the Professor. “It’s hard to believe that we’re dealing with civilized people.”

“What happened to this youngster, Krosac?” demanded Isham.

“His mother fled with him from Montenegro. They went to Italy, hiding there, and the mother died shortly after.”

“And that left young Krosac to carry on the feud against you people,” said Vaughn thoughtfully. “I suppose his old lady pumped him full of hop before she died. You kept track of the boy?”

“Yes. We had to, in self-protection, because we knew that he would try to kill us when he grew up. Our paid agents tracked him all over Europe, but he disappeared before he was seventeen and we never heard of him again—until now.”

“You people didn’t see Krosac personally?”

“No. Not since he left our mountainside, when he was eleven or twelve years old.”

“Just a moment,” said Ellery, frowning. “How can you gentlemen be so sure Krosac wanted to kill you? After all, a child …”

“How?” Andrew Van smiled bitterly. “One of our agents wormed his way into the boy’s confidence while he was still under observation and heard him swear to wipe us all out, if he had had to follow us to the ends of the earth to spill our blood.”

“And you mean to say,” demanded Isham, “because of a kid’s wild nonsense, you actually ran from your home country and changed your names?”

Both men flushed. “You don’t know Croatian feuds,” muttered the yachtsman. He avoided their eyes. “A Krosac once followed a Tvar into the heart of southern Arabia—generations ago. …”

“Then it’s certain that, if you were face to face with Krosac, you wouldn’t know him?” asked Ellery abruptly.

“How could we? … We were left alone—we three. Father, mother—dead. We decided to leave Montenegro and go to America. There wasn’t a tie to hold us—Andrew here and I were unmarried, and while Tom had been married, his wife had died and there were no children.

“We were a rich family; and our estates were valuable. We sold all our property and under assumed names, separately, we came to this country, meeting by prearrangement in New York. We had decided to take our names”—Ellery started, and then smiled—“from different countries; we consulted an atlas, and each of us assumed a different nationality—I Greek, Tom Roumanian, and Andrew Armenian, since at that time we were unmistakably Southern European in appearance and speech, and couldn’t pass for native Americans.”

“I warned you about Krosac,” said the schoolmaster darkly.

“Tom and I—we’d all been well educated—went into our present business. Andrew here was always a restless soul and he had preferred to work alone, studying the English language by himself, and ultimately becoming a schoolteacher. We all, of course, became American citizens. And gradually, as the years passed, since we’d heard nothing of or from Krosac, we almost forgot him. He became—at least to Tom and me—a legend, a myth. We thought him dead or hopelessly off the trail.” The yachtsman set his jaw. “If we’d known—At any rate, Tom married. We did well in business. And Andrew went out to Arroyo.”

“If you’d taken my advice,” snapped Van, “this would not have happened, and Tom would be alive today. I told you repeatedly that Krosac would come back and take his revenge!”

“Please, Andr’,” said Megara in a hard voice; but there was something pitying in his eyes as he looked at his brother. “I know. And you didn’t see us often. Your own fault, as you must realize. Perhaps if you’d been more fraternal …”

“Stay with you and Tom where Krosac could wipe us out with one blow?” cried the man from Arroyo. “Why do you think I buried myself in that hole? I love life, too, Stephen! But I was wise, and you—”

“Not so wise, Andr’,” said the yachtsman. “After all, Krosac found you first. And—”

“Yes,” said the Inspector. “So he did. I’d like to get that little business of the Arroyo murder straight, Mr. Van, if you don’t mind.”

The schoolmaster stiffened at some bleak memory. “Arroyo,” he said hoarsely. “A place of horrors. It was my fear that led me, years ago, to assume the character of Old Pete. A dual personality, I felt, would stand me in good stead, should Krosac”—he snarled—“find me. He found—” He stopped and then said rapidly: “For years I kept that hut, which I had discovered by accident, abandoned, when I was exploring some old caves in the hills. I set up the barbed wire. I purchased my disguise in Pittsburgh. Once in a great while, when I was free from my regular duties as the schoolmaster, I stole up into the hills and dressed as Old Pete, appearing in town often enough to make the personality real in the minds of the Arroyo people. Tom and Stephen—they always laughed at this subterfuge. They said it was a childish thing to do. Was it childish, Stephen? Do you think so now? Don’t you think that Tom, in his grave, is sorry he didn’t follow my example?”

“Yes, yes,” said Megara quickly. “Tell the story, Andr’.”

The eccentric schoolmaster took a turn about the cabin, hands behind the back of the borrowed uniform, eyes distraught. … They listened to an amazing tale.

With the coming of Christmas—he said in the intense voice characteristic of all his utterances—he realized that for two months he had not appeared in Arroyo as the old hillman. His absence over such a long period might well have led some of the townspeople—Constable Luden, perhaps—to seek out the ancient hill-dweller and investigate his cabin … an event which, he pointed out, would have been disastrous to his carefully maintained deception. He faced more than a week between Christmas Day and New Year’s when his tiny school was closed; and he saw that for several days at least he could act the eremitic Pete with impunity. On previous occasions when he had assumed the ragged character it had been when the schoolmaster was supposedly on a holiday, or over weekends.

“How did you explain these absences to Kling?” asked Ellery. “Or was your servant in the secret?”

No!” cried Van. “He was stupid, a halfwit. I merely told him that I was going into Wheeling or Pittsburgh for a holiday.”

On Christmas Eve, then, he had informed Kling that he was bound for Pittsburgh to celebrate the Yuletide. He had left in the evening for the shack in the hills—all his hillman’s trappings, of course, he kept in the hut. There he became Old Pete again. Rising very early the next morning—Christmas morning—he set out on foot for town, for he needed food supplies and he knew that he could get them from Bernheim, the storekeeper, despite the fact that it was Christmas Day and the general store was closed. He had struck the road at the junction of the main highway and the Arroyo pike and there, alone, at half-past six in the morning, had made the horrifying discovery of the crucified body. The significance of the diverse T’s had struck him at once. He hurried to his house a hundred yards up the Arroyo road. The shambles that the others had seen later had painful meaning for him; he realized instantly that by sheer accident Krosac had come the night before, killed poor old Kling (thinking him to be Andreja Tvar), had cut off his head, and crucified him to the signpost.

He had had to think rapidly. What was he to do? Through an unexpected generosity of fate, Krosac now believed he had fulfilled his vengeance against Andreja Tvar; why not keep him believing it? By taking the character of Old Pete permanently not only would Krosac be deceived but the little West Virginia world in which Van lived, as well. … Fortunately the suit of clothes which Kling had been wearing when he was murdered was one which Van himself had given the man a few days before, an old and well-worn garment. He knew that the Arroyo townspeople would recognize the suit as Andrew Van’s, their schoolmaster’s; and if he should put some papers in the pockets identifiable with Andrew Van, there would be no question of identification.

Securing letters and keys from old suits of his, the schoolmaster had stolen back to the crossroads, taken from Kling’s mutilated body all objects identifiable with Kling—a gruesome task, and the man in uniform shuddered at the recollection—put on the dead man the Van objects, and then deliberately hurried farther up the road into the woods. Here he built a guarded little fire, burned Kling’s personal possessions, and waited for someone to come along.

“Why?” demanded Vaughn. “Why didn’t you beat it back to your shack and lie low?”

“Because,” said Van simply, “it was necessary for me to get to town at once and by some means warn my brothers of Krosac’s appearance. If I went into town and said nothing about the body at the crossroads, I should be regarded with suspicion, for it was necessary to pass the junction on the way to town. If I went into town and related the story of my discovery of the body—alone—I might very well come under suspicion. But if I waited for someone to come along, an innocent citizen of the neighborhood, I should have a companion for the ‘discovery’ of the body, and at the same time would be able to get to town, stock up on provisions, and notify my brothers.”

Michael Orkins, the farmer, had come along in an hour or so. Van, or Old Pete, contrived to be tramping the road in the direction of the junction. He had hailed Orkins, the farmer told him to jump in, they found the body … the rest, as Van said soberly, “Mr. Queen knows from having attended the inquest.”

“And you managed to notify your brothers?” asked Isham.

“Yes. While I was in my own house, after discovering Kling’s body at the crossroads, I scribbled a hasty note to Tomis—to the man you know as Thomas Brad. In the excitement when we got to town, I managed to slip the letter through the slot in the post-office door—the post office being closed. I told Tom in the letter briefly what had occurred, warned him that Krosac was probably heading his way bent on vengeance. I wrote too that from then on I meant to be Old Pete, and neither he nor Stephen was to say anything of this. I, at least, meant to be protected from Krosac; for I was dead.”

“You were lucky,” said Megara bitterly. “When Tom couldn’t reach me after receiving your letter, he must have written that note we found addressed to the police—as a last warning to me, should anything happen to him before I returned to Bradwood.”

The brothers were pale and tense; both men showed plainly the nerve strain they were experiencing. Even Megara had succumbed to the spell. From the deck outside came a man’s coarse laugh; they looked startled, and then relaxed as they realized that it was only one of the
Helene’s
crew bantering a trooper.

“Well,” said Isham at last, rather helplessly, “that’s all well and good, but where the devil does it leave us? Still up a tree, as far as nabbing Krosac is concerned.”

“A pessimistic attitude,” said Ellery, “royally justified. Gentlemen, who knows or knew about the Tvar-Krosac feud? A little investigation along that line may help us narrow the field of suspects.”

“No one but ourselves,” said the schoolmaster darkly. “I naturally told no one.”

“There are no written records of the feud?”

“No.”

“Very well,” said Ellery thoughtfully. “That leaves only Krosac as a possible disseminator of the story. While it’s conceivable that he may have told somebody, it isn’t probable; why should he? Krosac is now an adult—a maniac obsessed with a vengeance-fixation, besides. His vengeance, he would feel, must be personally consummated; those things aren’t delegated to agents or accomplices. Eh, Mr. Megara?”

“Not in Montenegro,” replied the yachtsman grimly.

“Of course; it’s axiomatic to anyone who knows the psychology of feudism,” said Professor Yardley. “And in the old Balkan feuds, which were considerably more gory than even our own mountaineer feuds, only a member of the family could wipe out the stain.”

Ellery nodded. “Would Krosac have told anyone in this country? Hardly. It would place him in such an individual’s power, or would leave a trail to himself and Krosac is, from the cleverness he has displayed, a wary scoundrel despite his monomania. And if he took an accomplice—which he would not do—what had he to offer such a creature?”

“A good point,” conceded Isham.

“The very fact that he rifled Mr. Van’s house of whatever cash the tin box contained—”

“There were a hundred and forty dollars in the box,” muttered Van.

“—indicates that Krosac was hard up and took what he could find. But your brother Tomislav’s house was not looted. Certainly no accomplice, then, for had there been one the accomplice would not have passed up the opportunity to steal what he could. These have been murders for revenge, not gain. … Other signs of the nonexistence of an accomplice? Yes. In the murder of Kling, only one person was seen in the vicinity of the crossroads, and that man was Velja Krosac.”