The man regarded her with cold stare.
“I am not interested in your personal problems, Mrs. Sanderson,” he said, delivering his ultimatum. “Either settle your bill in full by tomorrow morning or move on.”
Chapter Four
“What’ll we do?” Mrs. Sanderson looked despairingly at her husband. “Where will we get the money?”
I stepped forward into George Roth’s range of vision. He politely doffed his hat, a courtesy he had not bestowed upon the Sandersons.
“Mr. Roth, have you a checkbook?” I inquired.
“Yes, I have.”
“Then I’ll write a check for the seven dollars and seventy-five cents if that will be satisfactory. The Sandersons are friends of mine.”
“That will settle the bill in full.”
Whipping a fountain pen from his pocket, he offered it to me.
“Mrs. Carter, we can’t allow you to assume our debts,” Abigail protested. “Please don’t—”
“Now Abigail, it’s only a loan to tide us over for a few days,” Mrs. Sanderson interrupted. “Ted will get a job, and then we’ll be able to pay it back.”
I wrote out the check. I then cut short the profuse thanks of the Sandersons and insisted that Florence and I must return home at once.
“Driving into Greenville?” Mr. Roth asked as we were departing. “My car is in the garage, and I’d appreciate a lift to town.”
“We’ll be glad to take you, Mr. Roth,” I said. I’d have sooner filled the backseat of Bouncing Betsy with a colony of rabid bats, but I could hardly tell the man so.
En route to Greenville Flo lapsed into a moody silence, and I concentrated on the road. Mr. Roth, oblivious to our antipathy, endeavored to make himself an agreeable conversationalist.
“So, the Sandersons are friends of yours?”
“Well, not exactly,” I corrected him. “I met Abigail at the Palette Club.”
“The Palette Club?”
“An art club for young ladies. I visited her home for the first time today. I couldn’t help feeling sorry for the family.”
“They’re a no-good lot. The old man never works, and the boy either can’t or won’t get a job.”
I bit back an acrid crack about the lack of his own industriousness as evidenced by the deplorable condition of his cottages and asked, “Do you have many such families, Mr. Roth?”
“Oh, now and then. But I weed them out as fast as I can. One can’t be soft and manage a tourist camp, you know.”
I smiled, thinking that no person ever would accuse Mr. Roth of being “soft.” He had the reputation of ruthless devotion to his own interests. To change the subject, I mentioned that Mrs. Covington had returned to the city to take up residence at Roseacres.
“Is that so?” Mr. Roth inquired, pricking up his ears like a cocker spaniel who’s just heard a sausage drop to the floor from the dining table. “Will she recondition the house?”
I told him that I had no knowledge of the widow’s plans for the property.
“No doubt Mrs. Covington has returned to sell the estate,” Mr. Roth said. “I should like to buy the place if it goes for a fair price. I could make money by remodeling Roseacres into a tourist home.”
“It would be a pity to turn such a lovely place into a roadside hotel,” Florence protested. “Jane and I hope that someday it will be restored to its former glory.”
“There would be no profit in it as a residence,” Mr. Roth insisted. “The house is located on a main road though and, as a tourist hotel, should pay handsomely.”
Conversation languished. A few minutes later, I dropped the man at his own home. Although I refrained from speaking of it to Florence, I neither liked nor trusted George Roth. While it had been within his rights to eject the Sandersons from the tourist camp for non-payment of rent, I felt that he could have afforded to be more generous. I did not regret the impulse which had caused me to settle the Sandersons’ debt. There had been a time, not so far in the past, when letting go of nearly eight dollars would have represented quite a financial setback, but now that I was a bonafide lady novelist with not one but two—and another soon to be published—moderately successful novels to my name, I could afford to go about spreading largess.
After leaving Florence at the Radcliff house, I drove on home.
I greeted my father who had arrived from the newspaper office only a moment before. He was sitting on the davenport in the living room, a late edition of the Examiner laying on the table in front of him. I glanced carelessly at the headlines on the front page and said, “What’s new, Dad?”
“Nothing worthy of mention.”
I sank down on the davenport beside Dad and gave the front page a closer perusal. My attention was drawn to a brief item which appeared in an inconspicuous bottom corner.
“Here’s something worthy of mention,” I said. “It says that a big rock has been found on the farm of John Pitts. The stone bears writing thought to be the handiwork of Wild Bill Hickok.”
“Let me see that paper!” my father demanded.
With an increasingly stormy countenance, Dad read the brief article. Only twenty lines in length, it stated that a stone bearing an inscription by Wild Bill Hickok had been unearthed on the nearby farm.
“Wild Bill Hickok! What am I running? Wild Western Weekly? I don’t know how this item got past City Editor DeWitt,” my father fumed. “It has all the earmarks of a hoax. You didn’t by chance write it, Jane?”
“I certainly did not! Although I’d not knock those Western rags. They do a smashing business—of course, they do it all on the backs of their poor underpaid writers.”
My father just harrumphed. He’s never felt sorry for the countless poor put-upon penmen (and penwomen) who supply the reems of sensational bilge required to keep our nation’s popular fiction magazines afloat. I suppose I feel a sufficient quantity of pity for the both of us. I used to be one of those poor put-upon penwomen.
“You do know that Wild Bill Hickok was rumored to have spent some time around here,” I told my father.
“This far east of the Mississippi? Pshaw!”
“Local lore claims that Wild Bill fell in love with a young woman from Greenville who ran away from home to become an actress. During Wild Bill’s brief stint in the theater, they were part of the same cast. The girl in question gave up acting and returned home to marry a prominent local lawyer. Wild Bill followed her here to Greenville and convinced her to reconsider. The family didn’t take kindly to their genteel daughter jilting their choice and taking up with a violent-tempered cowboy, but the young lady refused to give old Bill the icy mitt. For a while, according to the story I was told, the pair fled the wrath of the young lady’s family and hid out on a farm somewhere around here. Then the girl’s lawyer fiancé managed to track them down. Inevitably, there was a showdown between the two men, and, equally inevitably, Wild Bill ended up killing the lawyer fiancé.”
“It does read a little like a Jack Bancroft story,” Dad said, ignoring my anecdotes about the questionable exploits of Wild Bill and glancing over the article a second time. “Are you sure you didn’t put Jack up to writing this story? You have undue influence over him, you know.”
I did know. Even back in the days when Jack Bancroft and I had been strictly platonic, I had been known to strong-arm him from time to time into reporting on the more sensational stories of the type that my father categorically resists.
“Maybe it was Jack who wrote the story,” I said, “but I swear I had nothing to do with it. This is the first I’m hearing of the discovery of any stone carving.”
My father telephoned the Examiner office—Jack was not in—and then Jack’s home. After talking with Jack for several minutes, Dad finally hung up the receiver.
“What did he say?” I asked.
“Jack wrote the story and says it came from a reliable source. He’s coming over here to talk to me about it.”
Within ten minutes Jack arrived. I loitered in the living
room to hear the conversation.
“Have a chair,” Dad said to Jack. “Now tell me where you got hold of that story.”
“Straight from the farmer, John Pitts. The stone was dug up on his farm early this morning.”
“Did you see it yourself?”
“Not yet. It was hauled to the Greenville Historical Society Museum. Thought I’d drop around there on my way home and look it over.”
“I wish you would,” my father said to Jack. “While there’s a chance that stone may be authentic, it doesn’t seem very likely. Why would Wild Bill Hickok bother with carving on rock? I have a deep suspicion someone is trying to pull a fast trick.”
“I’m sorry if I’ve made a mistake, Chief, but the Historical Society people think—”
“Oh, I’m not blaming you. If the story is a fake, it was up to DeWitt to question it at the desk. Better look at the rock though, before you write any more about it.”
As Jack got up to leave, I jumped up from my own chair.
“I’d like to see that stone, too,” I said. “Jack, do you mind if I go along with you?”
“Glad to have you.”
Before I could collect my hat and coat, Mrs. Timms appeared in the doorway to announce dinner.
“Jane, where are you going now?”
“Only over to the museum.”
“You’ve not had your dinner.”
“Oh, yes, I have,” I told her. “I dined on chicken at the Dorset Tourist Camp. I’ll be home in an hour or so.”
I fled from the house before Mrs. Timms could offer further objections. Besides, the way I saw it, my father and Mrs. Timms could probably do with the opportunity for a quick canoodle on the davenport.
Jack made a more ceremonious departure and joined me on the front porch. His mud-splattered coupe sat at the curb. The interior was only slightly less dirty, and before getting in, I brushed off the seat. The condition of his coupe gave me pause. I’ve been known to go about with torn stockings and shoes that are run down at the heel, but I draw the line at living in actual filth. If Jack ever did get around to suggesting we feed out of the same nosebag for life, I would have to take our future living conditions into consideration.
In order to sit down in the passenger seat, I had to remove a pair of muddy boots from the floor.
“What’s all this?” I asked. “Been mucking out pigsties?”
“Just a little gardening,” Jack replied stiffly.
“Gardening? You don’t have a garden. You don’t even have a window box.”
“There’s this elderly aunt of mine.”
“What elderly aunt of yours?” I demanded. “I don’t recall ever being introduced to any elderly aunt. Where have you been hiding her?”
“Never mind,” said Jack irritably. “You needn’t know everything about me.”
“Needn’t I? No, I suppose not. I know how to mind my potatoes. We’ll speak no more of this elderly aunt.”
It wasn’t my intention to speak any more on any subject. I turned my face to the window and concentrated intensely on the parade of telegraph poles whizzing by, but after a few minutes of this, I relented and broke the silence by asking Jack about the stone which had been discovered at the Pitts farm.
“Nothing to tell except what was in the paper. The rock has some writing on it, supposedly written by Wild Bill Hickock.”
“What does the writing say?”
“It details Wild Bill’s exploits.”
“What kind of exploits?”
“It appears to memorialize one of the men he killed.”
“How many men did he kill?”
“Don’t know. On this stone, only one is mentioned by name.”
“I thought Wild Bill killed lots of people.”
“Maybe he did,” Jack said. “John Pitts found this stone while he was plowing a field. Apparently it had been in the ground for many years.”
“I should think so if it was carved by Wild Bill Hickock himself. The man’s been dead for over fifty years. I’m curious to see it.”
We drew up before a large stone building with Doric columns and climbed a long series of steps to the front door, then entered the museum through a turnstile.
“I’ll go and find the curator, Mr. Klein,” Jack told me. “I’ll be with you in a minute.”
While waiting, I inspected the contents of the display cases. I was admiring a flock of stuffed ducks whose expressions were suggestive of being bored with life when Jack returned, followed by an elderly man wearing horn-rimmed spectacles. Jack introduced the curator, who began to talk enthusiastically of the stone which had been delivered to the museum that afternoon.
“I shall be very glad to show it to you,” he said, leading the way down a long corridor. “For the present, pending investigation, we have it stored in the basement.”
“What’s the verdict?” Jack asked. “Do museum authorities consider the writing authentic?”
“I should not wish to be quoted,” Mr. Klein prefaced his little speech. “However, an initial inspection has led us to believe that the stone may indeed be the handiwork of Wild Bill Hickok. You understand that it will take exhaustive study before the museum would venture to state this as a fact.”
“Don’t you find it odd that Wild Bill would have chosen to immortalize his violent exploits in stone? Mightn’t the discovery be a clever hoax?” I asked the curator.
“Always that is a possibility,” Mr. Klein acknowledged as he unlocked the door of a basement room. “However, the stone has weathered evenly, and it appears to have been buried many years, and there are other signs which point to the authenticity of the writing. Local legend has it that Wild Bill was active in the area during the time the stone is dated.”
“There’s a date on the stone?” I asked.
“April 14, 1872.”
The curator switched on an electric light to reveal a room cluttered with miscellaneous objects. There was an old horse-drawn carriage minus its wheels, boxes overflowing with antiquated books, framed paintings of dubious artistic value and various moth-eaten stuffed creatures most of whom wore expressions just as blasé as the flock of ducks upstairs. At the rear of the room was a large rust-colored stone which might have weighed a quarter of a ton.
“Here it is,” Mr. Klein said, giving the rock an affectionate pat. “Notice the uniform coloring throughout, and note the lettering chiseled on the surface. You will see that the grooves do not differ appreciably from the remainder of the stone as would be the case if the lettering were of recent date.”
I bent to inspect the crude writing. “I, William Hickok, killed a man on this spot,” I read aloud. “Shot him down with my very own hand. One John Timmons, April 14, 1872.”
“What’s that marking at the top?” Jack asked.
“It looks like a number,” I said. “Forty-two, perhaps? What do you think, Mr. Klein?”
“My theory is—” Mr. Klein said, “that Wild Bill was in the habit of leaving a stone carving to memorialize every one of his victims. Perhaps Mr. Timmons was the forty-second man he’d killed.”
“That many?” I said doubtfully. “I do know that Bill Hickock is thought to have killed his lover’s jilted fiancé on a farm near here, but it seems a bit far-fetched to think that this Mr. Timmons was his forty-second victim."
“In truth,” Mr. Klein said, “some of the old timers around here say that Wild Bill shot not just the fiancé, but also the two friends he brought with him.”
“In that case, similar rocks may be found near here,” Jack said thoughtfully.
“Numbers forty-three and forty-four,” I said, trying not to smile as I said it.
I didn’t think Mr. Klein’s theory very likely, myself. I just couldn’t reconcile a man who made a habit of stealing other people’s fiancées and murdering people at the drop of a hat with the type who might spend weeks chipping away at solid stone to commemorate the event. I would have thought he’d have been much too busy running away from the long arm of the l
aw. Shoot one person and questions will be asked. Shoot three people and tongues begin to wag. I was inclined to agree with my father that the stone was likely a hoax.
“It is an interesting possibility,” said Mr. Klein. “There might indeed be other stones.”
“Just why does the stone have historical value?” I asked. “It’s not as if it’s all that old.”
“Because there never was any proof that Wild Bill visited this part of the state,” Mr. Klein explained. “If we could prove such were the case, our contribution to history would be a vital one.”
“Mr. Klein certainly believes the writing is genuine,” I told Jack after we’d left the museum. “All the same, anyone knows a carved rock can be made to look very ancient, never mind a mere fifty years old or so, and that business of numbering the rocks, it’s almost as if someone were setting the community up for subsequent discovers. No, I think my father’s instincts may be right about this one.”
“The Chief may be right about it being a fake,” Jack said. “But if it is, who planted the stone on Pitts’ farm? And who would go to such great effort just to play a joke? That stone must have taken weeks to carve.”
We started across the street. Jack was a few steps ahead of me. An automobile bearing Texas license plates whizzed past, too close to the curb. As Jack leaped backward to safety, the automobile screeched to a halt. Two men occupied the front seat, and the driver, a well-dressed man of fifty, leaned from the window.
“Excuse me, sir,” he said, addressing Jack, “we’re trying to locate a boy named Ted Whitely. He and his sister may be living with a family by the name of Sanderson. Could you tell me how to find them?”
Jack said he had never met anyone by that name, but I said: “I know both Ted and Abigail Whitely. They’re living at the Dorset Tourist Camp.”
I told him how to get to the camp. The stranger thanked me, and he and his companion drove off in the direction of the Dorset Tourist Camp.
“I wonder who they can be?” I said to Jack as I stared after the car. “And why did they come all the way from Texas to see Ted and Abigail?”
Jane Carter Historical Cozies: Omnibus Edition (Six Mystery Novels) Page 74