The Black Lizard Big Book of Black Mask Stories

Where the house had been was now a mound of blackened ruins. We poked around in the ashes for a few minutes — not that we expected to find anything, but because it’s the nature of man to poke around in ruins.

A garage in the rear, whose interior gave no evidence of recent occupation, had a badly scorched roof and front, but was otherwise undamaged. A shed behind it, sheltering an ax, a shovel and various odds and ends of gardening tools, had escaped the fire altogether. The lawn in front of the house, and the garden behind the shed — about an acre in all — had been pretty thoroughly cut and trampled by wagon wheels, and the feet of the firemen and the spectators.

Having ruined our shoe-shines, McClump and I got back in our machine and swung off in a circle around the place, calling at all the houses within a mile radius, and getting little besides jolts for our trouble.

The nearest house was that of Pringle, the man who had turned in the alarm: but he not only knew nothing about the dead man, but said he had never seen him. In fact, only one of his neighbors had ever seen him: a Mrs. Jabine, who lived about a mile to the south.

She had taken care of the key to the house while it was vacant; and a day or two before he bought it, Thornburgh had come over to her house, inquiring about the vacant one. She had gone over there with him and showed him through it, and he had told her that he intended on buying it, if the price, of which neither of them knew anything, wasn’t too high.

He had been alone, except for the chauffeur of the hired car in which he had come from Sacramento, and, save that he had no family, he had told her nothing about himself.

Hearing that he had moved in, she went over to call on him several days later — “just a neighborly visit” — but had been told by Mrs. Coons that he was not at home. Most of the neighbors had talked to the Coonses, and had got the impression that Thornburgh didn’t care for visitors, so they let him alone. The Coonses were described as “pleasant enough to talk to when you meet them,” but reflecting their employer’s desire not to make friends.

McClump summarized what the afternoon had taught us as we pointed our machine toward Tavender: “Any of these folks could have touched off the place, but we got nothing to show that any of ’em even knew Thornburgh, let alone had a bone to pick with him.”

Tavender turned out to be a crossroads settlement of a general store and post office, a garage, a church, and six dwellings, about two miles from Thornburgh’s place. McClump knew the storekeeper and postmaster, a scrawny little man named Philo, who stuttered moistly.

“I n-n-never s-saw Th-Thornburgh,” he said, “and I n-n-never had any m-mail for him. C–Coons” — it sounded like one of these things butterflies come out of — “used to c-come in once a week t-to order groceries — they d-didn’t have a phone. He used to walk in, and I’d s-send the stuff over in my c-c-car. Th-then I’d s-see him once in a while, waiting f-for the stage to S-S-Sacramento.”