"Devil of a place at night," muttered Buckley, peering at the dense shadows that bordered the lake. "We might be a thousand miles from civilization."
Brill slid out of the car. "Reynolds must be here--unless he's gone for a midnight boat ride."
Their steps echoed loudly and emptily on the tiny stoop. Brill banged the door and shouted. Somewhere back in the woods a night bird lifted a drowsy note. There was no other answer.
Buckley shook the door. It was locked from the inside.
"I don't like this," he growled. "Car in front of the cottage--door locked on the inside--nobody answering it. I believe I'll break the door in--"
"No need." Brill fumbled in his pocket. "I'll use my key."
"How comes it you have a key to Reynolds' shack?" demanded Buckley.
"It was his own idea. I spent some time with him up here last summer, and he insisted on giving me a key, so I could use the cottage any time I wanted to. Turn on your flash, will you? I can't find the lock. All right, I've got it. Hey, Jim! Are you here?"
Buckley's flash played over chairs and card tables, coming to rest on a closed door in the opposite wall. They entered and Buckley heard Brill fumbling about with an arm elevated. A faint click followed and Brill swore.
"The juice is off. There's a line running out from town to supply the cottage owners with electricity, but it must be dead. As long as we're in here, let's go through the house. Reynolds may be sleeping somewhere--"
He broke off with a sharp intake of breath. Buckley had opened the door that led to the bedroom. His flash played on the interior--on a broken chair, a smashed table--a crumpled shape that lay in the midst of a dark widening pool.
"Good God, it's Reynolds!"
Buckley's gun glinted in his hand as he played the flash around the room, sifting the shadows for lurking shapes of menace; it rested on a bolted rear door; rested longer on an open window, the screen of which hung in tatters.
"We've got to have more light," he grunted. "Where's the switch? Maybe a fuse has blown."
"Outside, near that window." Stumblingly Brill led the way out of the house and around to the window. Buckley flashed his light, grunted.
"The switch has been pulled!" He pushed it back in place, and light flooded the cottage. The light streaming through the windows seemed to emphasize the blackness of the whispering woods around them. Buckley glared into the shadows, seemed to shiver. Brill had not spoken; he shook as with ague.
Back in the house they bent over the man who lay in the middle of the red-splashed floor.
Jim Reynolds had been a stocky, strongly built man of middle age. His skin was brown and weather-beaten, hinting of tropic suns. His features were masked with blood; his head lolled back, disclosing an awful wound beneath his chin.
"His throat's been cut!" stammered Brill. Buckley shook his head.
"Not cut--torn. Good God, it looks like a big cat had ripped him."
The whole throat had literally been torn out; muscles, arteries, windpipe and the great jugular vein had been severed; the bones of the vertebrae showed beneath.
"He's so bloody I wouldn't have recognized him," muttered the detective. "How did you know him so quickly? The instant we saw him, you cried out that it was Reynolds."
"I recognized his garments and his build," answered the other. "But what in God's name killed him?"
Buckley straightened and looked about. "Where does that door lead to?"
"To the kitchen; but it's locked on this side."
"And the outer door of the front room was locked on the inside," muttered Buckley. "Doesn't take a genius to see how the murderer got in--and he--or it--went out the same way."
"What do you mean, it?"
"Does that look like the work of a human being?" Buckley pointed to the dead man's mangled throat. Brill winced.
"I've seen black boys mauled by the big cats on the West Coast--"
"And whatever tore Reynolds' gullet out, tore that window screen. It wasn't cut with a knife."
"Do you suppose a panther from the hills--" began Brill.
"A panther smart enough to throw the electric switch before he slid through the window?" scoffed Buckley.
"We don't know the killer threw the switch."
"Was Reynolds fooling around in the dark, then? No; when I pushed the switch back in place, the light came on in here. That shows it had been on; the button hadn't been pushed back. Whoever killed Reynolds had a reason for wanting to work in the dark. Maybe this was it!" The detective indicated, with a square-shod toe, a stubby chunk of blue steel that lay not far from the body.
"From what I hear about Reynolds, he was quick enough on the trigger." Buckley slipped on a glove, carefully lifted the revolver, and scanned the chamber. His gaze, roving about the room again, halted at the window, and with a single long stride, he reached it and bent over the sill.
