That was all.
Peter Stoddard was ever a man of brisk action, and nine o’clock that evening found him driving into San Paulo. It must be admitted that his quest for the Parsee Sunrise was overshadowed by the extraordinary postscript that had been added to Hammond’s letter. The engineer had not penned it, of course. Who had, then? This diverting question, and his inability to answer it, had alternatively puzzled and delighted him ever since he had read the postscript. That queer boyish streak in his otherwise staid and responsible nature had dressed it in the iridescent garb of romance.
At one of the hotels Stoddard was informed that Hammond’s place was some ten miles northeast of the town. He was instructed to proceed over the county highway, then turn east along the second dirt road. Two giant eucalyptus trees marked the entrance to the estate.
A strong wind had risen in the past half hour; before it drove scudding banks of cloud that spread a pitch-black pall across the sky. As Stoddard’s roadster swept along the purple highway, so dense had the night become that impenetrable walls of blackness seemed to enclose him on three sides. The fan-shaped glare from the headlights of his car alone gave him any sense of dimension. The wind, rising steadily, clawed at his face, whipped the red into his cheeks; he was compelled to narrow his eyes to slits, thus increasing his visual difficulties.
After some twenty minutes of this difficult going, Stoddard perceived an opening in the continuity of wire fencing on his right. Swinging his car, he found himself bounding over a rutted, weed-grown road which apparently extended into the invisible mountain range bulking hugely before him. The grade rose steeply. The scent of deciduous orchards assailed his nostrils. He slowed down and began to peer ahead, seeking the two eucalyptus trees. Presently he saw them: vague and indistinct in the all-pervasive gloom, and creaking and groaning and whispering in the howling wind.
Stoddard swung into the drive and slowed down to a crawl. He found himself in an avenue of smaller eucalyptus trees that whipped his nostrils with their pungent scent. As the machine glided up the cindered drive, headlights cutting a white swath before it, the Hammond house emerged from the pall of darkness that enveloped the estate. It was a white, sprawling, flat-topped structure with cool porches and shadowy terraces, ivy-covered and embowered in a profusion of subtropical plants and shrubbery. A light burned dimly in a single window.
Stoddard stopped his roadster in front of the house, alighted, and hammered on the stout oak front door with a bronze knocker which he found fastened thereto. A dull booming noise like muffled thunder seemed to emerge from the interior of the house. He waited, but there came no response. He repeated the summons... Still no response. For the third time he wielded the bronze knocker. Then he glanced at his watch. Nine forty-five! The wind swished and howled in the trees now, and ran shrieking around the corners of the building... No response!
Stoddard stepped back and regarded the house contemplatively. It had a somber, menacing appearance in the brooding darkness; an atmosphere of evil seemed to enfold it and press down upon it. Once again he evoked muffled thunder from the bronze knocker, and waiting, listened attentively. A full minute elapsed. Still the house retained its tomb-like silence.
A cinder path skirted the front of the house. Stoddard ran softly along it toward the lighted window. A queer, apprehensive feeling was taking possession of him. Stopping in front of the window — it consisted of two long French doors — he saw that it was approached by a small porch. To this he quickly ascended. Curtains were drawn across the glass doors, but there remained an inch or so of space between them, affording a limited view of the room.
At what he saw, Stoddard caught and held his breath; his face whitened to the lips; his heart seemed to stop beating.
The room was evidently a library. Books lined two walls; there were several comfortable chairs; a fire crackled in a cobblestone grate. Against one of the walls stood an antique desk, richly carved. Stoddard could see only the front of the desk. Before it, in an arm chair, sat a man with his body slumped forward, head and shoulders sprawled over the left-hand front corner of the desk. The left side of his face lay on the edge of the desk. Stoddard glimpsed a smear of red against the light grey of his coat. His body was limp and strangely still.
Nat Hammond was dead. Of course, Stoddard knew this intuitively. But so devastating to his mental poise was the shock of thus finding the man he had come all these miles to see, that for a moment or two he could merely stare at him, incapable of thought or movement or speech. Then a gust of fury shook him. Hammond had been shot down like a dog — perhaps within the last few minutes. Casting caution to the winds, he shook the French doors vigorously. They were locked. He took off his cap, pulled it over his hand, and drove his fist through one of the center panes of the doors. In a moment he had drawn the bolt, pushed the door open, and stepped into the room.
