The Egyptian Cross Mystery

The countryside, except for the singsong rasping of crickets, seemed asleep.

Against the black background of the woods and shrubbery he was invisible — a stealthy blob of nothing unbetrayed even by the color of his skin. A few feet from the side of the easterly road he froze behind the shelter of a tree. Someone was pounding along the road, coming in his direction. From the dim silhouette Dr. Temple made out the figure of a uniformed county trooper, evidently on patrol. The trooper passed on, moving toward Ketcham’s Cove.

When the guard’s footsteps were no longer audible, Dr. Temple ran lightly across the road to the cover of the Bradwood trees and began to work his soundless way westward. It took him half an hour to cross Bradwood proper without arousing the suspicions of the occasional dark figures strolling about. Past the summerhouse and the totem post, past the high wire screen which marked off a tennis court, past the main house and the central walk to the Bradwood landing, past Fox’s little cabin to the westerly road separating Bradwood from the Lynn estate.

Here, his wiry body tense, Dr. Temple redoubled his caution, slipping among the trees of the Lynn woods like a wraith until the dark bulk of the house loomed ahead. He had approached it from the front; now he groped his way to the north side, where the trees grew thick almost to the house itself.

There was a light burning in the window nearest him, not five feet from where he crouched behind the trunk of an old sycamore. The blind was completely drawn.

He could hear shuffling footsteps from the room — a bedroom. Once the fat shadow of Mrs. Lynn crossed the window shade. Dr. Temple crept on hands and knees, feeling every inch of the ground before him, until he lay directly beneath the window.

Almost at once he heard the sound of a closing door, and Mrs. Lynn’s high-pitched voice, shriller than usual, say: “Percy! Did you bury it?”

Dr. Temple gritted his teeth, the perspiration poured down his cheeks. But he made no sound.

“Yes, yes. For heaven’s sake, Beth, don’t talk so loudly!” The voice of Percy Lynn was strained. “The bally place is alive with bobbies!”

Footsteps near the window; Dr. Temple hugged the base of the wall, holding his breath. The shade slid up, and Lynn peered out. Then the sound of the shade being drawn again.

“Where?” whispered Elizabeth Lynn.

Dr. Temple tightened all his muscles, strained his ears with an effort that made him tremble. But try as he might, he could not catch the words of Lynn’s whispered reply...

Then — “They’ll never find it,” said Lynn in a more normal tone. “We’re safe enough if we lie doggo.”