THE REST HOLLOW MYSTERY
BY REBECCA N. PORTER
NEW YORK
THE CENTURY CO.
1922
Copyright, 1922, by
The Century Co.
Printed in U. S. A.
TO MY BROTHER
WILLIAM STRATTON PORTER
That ideal reader of mystery stories—with
the ardor to pursue, the faith to believe
and the magnanimity to guess wrong
THE REST HOLLOW MYSTERY
CHAPTER I
Kenwick himself had no recollection of the accident. But he knew thatthere must have been one, for when he recovered consciousness, hisclothes were full of burrs, his hat was badly crushed, and there was aviolent throbbing in one of his legs.
With both hands gripping the aching thigh in a futile effort to sootheits pain, he dragged himself into the clearing and looked about. It wasone of those narrow, wooded mountain ravines that in the West areclassed as cañons. Back of him rose a succession of sage-covered slopes,bleak, wintry, hostile. In front was a precipitous cliff studded withdwarf madrone trees and the twisted manzanita. Overhead the baredistorted sycamore boughs lashed themselves together and moaned a drearymonotone to the accompaniment of a keen November wind. No sign of autumnlingered on the landscape, and the shed leaves formed a moldy carpetunderfoot. The cañon was redolent with the odor of damp timber anddecaying vegetation.
Kenwick buttoned his heavy overcoat about him and limped painfullytoward the cliff, keeping as nearly as possible a straight line from hisstarting-point. Although his surroundings were totally unfamiliar hismind was clear. But he had that curious sensation of a man who has sleptall night in a strange bed, and in the first moment of wakening isunable to adjust himself to his environment. While he groped his waythrough the tangled underbrush his memory struggled to clear a passageback to the present.
At the foot of the cliff he stopped short, staring in horror at a spot afew paces ahead of him. A scrub madrone had been torn from the side ofthe ravine and had fallen to the bottom of the cañon, its mutilatedroots stretching skyward like the grotesque claws of some prehistoricanimal. The force which had torn it from its moorings had scarred theslope with other evidences of disaster; a limb lopped off here, a massof brush ripped away there. A glistening object caught his eye. Hestooped laboriously and picked it up, then dropped it, shuddering. Itwas a triangle of broken glass spattered with blood.
For half an hour he poked around in the brush searching for, yetdreading to find, a more gruesome object. Perhaps the driver had notbeen killed after all, he reassured himself. As he dimly remembered him,he was a friendly sort of fellow whom he had engaged to drive him out tothe Raeburn place. As he climbed the steep hill now Kenwick tried toremember what they had been talking about just before this thinghappened, but the effort made his head ache and landed him nowhere. Amore vital conjecture was concerned with how long he had been lying atthe foot of the ravine and why no one had come to his rescue.
When he gained the road there was nobody in sight. It was a splendidlypaved bit of country boulevard curving out of sight into what Kenwicktold himself must be the land of dreams and romance. He turned to theleft and started to walk, aimlessly, hopping part of the time to savehis aching leg. Surely some one would overtake him in a car soon andoffer assistance. He had dragged himself over ha