The Glass Village by Ellery Queen Page A

they were half a mile from the crest of Holy Hill.
    â€œWe’re not doing bad!” roared the old man. “We’ve come about halfway. How d’ye feel, Johnny?”
    â€œReminiscent!” said Johnny. He never wanted to see another fish. “Isn’t there any traffic on this road?”
    â€œLet us pray!”
    â€œKeep your weather eye peeled for anything on wheels. A scooter would look good just now!”
    Five minutes later a figure swam into view on the opposite side of the road, heading in the direction from which they had come and leaning into the rain.
    â€œHi, there!” yelled Johnny. “Enjoying the swim?”
    The man leaped like a deer. For a moment he glared in their direction, the width of the road between them. They saw a medium-sized man of spare build with a face dark gray as the skies, a stubble of light beard, and two timid, burning eyes. The rain had fluted the brim of his odd green hat and was coursing down his face in rivers; patched black pants plastered his shanks and the light tweed jacket with its leather elbow patches hung on his body like a wet paper sack. He carried a small black suitcase, the size of an overnight bag, made of some cheap material which was dissolving at the seams—a rope held it together. … For a moment only; then, in a lightning flash, water squirting out of his shapeless shoes, the man ran.
    Soaked as they were, Johnny and the Judge stared up the road after the running man.
    â€œWonder who he is,” said the Judge. “Stranger around here.”
    â€œNever look a stranger in the mouth,” said Johnny.
    But the Judge kept staring.
    â€œForeigner, I’d say,” shrugged Johnny. “Or of recent foreign origin. He never got that green velour hat in the U.S.A.”
    â€œProbably some itinerant heading for Cudbury and a mill job. Why do you suppose he ran like that, Johnny?”
    â€œSudden memories of the old country and the People’s Police, no doubt. Two armed men.”
    â€œGood Lord!” The Judge shifted his rifle self-consciously. “I hope the poor devil gets a lift.”
    â€œHope for yourself, Judge. And while you’re at it, put in a good word for me!”
    A minute or so later a gray shabby sedan bore down on them from behind, shedding water like a motorboat. They turned and shouted, but it was going over forty miles an hour and before they could half open their mouths it was past them and out of sight over the hill. They stood in the slap of its wake, dejected.
    â€œThat was Burney Hackett’s car,” growled the Judge. “Darn his chinless hide! He never even saw us.”
    â€œCourage, your honor. Only a mile or so more to go.”
    â€œWe could stop in at Hosey Lemmon’s shack,” said the Judge doubtfully. “It’s at the top of the hill there, in the woods off the road.”
    â€œNo, thanks, I filled my quota of filthy shacks long ago. I’ll settle for your house and a clean towel.”
    As they reached the top of Holy Hill, the Judge exclaimed, “There’s old Lemmon now, footing it for home.”
    â€œAnother pioneer,” grumbled Johnny. “Doesn’t he have a car, or a buggy, or a tricycle, either?”
    â€œHosey? Heavens, no.” Judge Shinn frowned. “What’s he doing back up here? He’s hired out to the Scotts.”
    â€œPrefers high ground, of course!”
    The Judge bellowed at the white-bearded hermit, but if Lemmon heard the hail he paid no attention to it. He disappeared in his hut, a ramshackle cabin with a torn tar-paper roof and a rusty stovepipe for a chimney.
    Nothing human or mechanical passed them again. They fell into the Judge’s house at three o’clock like shipwrecked sailors on a providential beach, stripped and showered and got into clean dry clothes as if the devil were after them; and at three-fifteen, just as they were sitting down in the Judge’s living room