The Rat Began to Gnaw the Rope

by C. W. Grafton

“You say Janet come up with her father? Where was Jolley? How does he fit in? I would think Janet would have driven up with him.”

  “That’s so,” said Mead, with a thoughtful expression on his face. “How was that? I distinctly remember that Janet came with her father and was getting ready to leave when he said he was leaving. Wait a minute. Janet did come with her father. Jolley had borrowed one of their cars and driven to the city earlier in the day and he joined us from in town somewhere. He was a little later than the others. It seems to me there was something about a call he wanted to make in town before going back to Harpersville.”

  “Then if Harper came up with Janet it was probably in the big sedan. How about Miles? Did he drive them or did Janet drive?”

  “You mean Miles, the chauffeur? Yes, I think he did drive them up. After I had talked to you I hung up and the crowd was all filtering out into the hall to get their wraps. You asked me that night when you called me from Harpersville, and I told you then that I hadn’t seen any reason to keep any secrets so I told them that it was my junior partner and you were borrowing the car to go to Harpersville.”

  There was nothing more to learn. I had hoped for something helpful, but if I had it I certainly didn’t recognize it. There had been a time the night before when I had felt convinced I was about to see the whole pattern of the thing, but every time I found a piece it seemed to be a different color and the wrong shape, and I was worse off now than ever before.

  Ruth came out of the dining room looking rather worn out. I excused myself to Mr. James Mead and joined her in the hall. She gave me an odd smile, but her lower lip was trembling and I could see she wasn’t far from tears.

  “Take me home, Gil,” she said, squeezing my hand. “I have had about all I can stand right now. They say there is no news of Tim, and I am practically frantic. I am sick of violence and all things I can’t understand.”

  The telephone pealed through the house like a fire siren. The sheriff snatched open the dining-room door, found the telephone on the stand in the front hall, and scooped it up. We all listened as if transfixed. My heart sank as I saw an expression of satisfaction on his face. Presently he put down the receiver and almost beamed at us. “They’ve got Tim McClure again,” he said. “And not only that, they’ve found a gun hidden in the McClure house, and I’ll bet ten to one it will prove to be the one that did for Harper.” We stood stock still. You could tell that he was holding out something and that it was the biggest news of all. He let us gape at him and after a long while he said, “It’s Tim’s gun. I think this case is about closed.”

  47

  My first thought was of Ruth. She had been shaky enough before this last telephone call came in and if ever she needed someone to help her hold up her head it was now. If she had burst into tears or fainted I would not have been at all surprised, but when they chose the material out of which Ruth McClure was cut they evidently picked the finest grade of Scotch wool unmixed with any cheap substitutes. Instead of weakening, her head came up and there was a flash in her eyes that was magnificent.

  “You’re a bunch of stupid idiots,” she said furiously, “all of you.” She turned to me. “They’re all against Tim. I’m for him. I’m going straight down to the jail and see him now. If you think the ship is sinking, you can leave it like any other rat.”

  “Don’t be silly,” I said as mildly as I could; “I’m a rat all right but the ship isn’t sinking and I’ll at least stay aboard until it does.”

  I took her arm and maneuvered her out and down the front steps to the drive, and then it dawned on me that I had come in a taxi and the police had brought Ruth so we were without transportation. I was not in any mood to take sheep-dip off of anyone so I stalked back in and peremptorily demanded the keys to one of the police cars. Believe it or not, I got them.

  We were halfway back to town before either of us said anything. I looked at Ruth out of the corner of my eye and the reaction had set in. Her lower lip was trembling again and a great big gob of tears was in the eye nearest me, about ready to run all over her make-up. I handed her my handkerchief and she blew loud and long. When she handed it back she said with a catch in her voice: “I didn’t m-m-mean it about the rat. I don’t know what got hold of me. If I didn’t have you I’d be lost.”

  “Never mind,” I said cheerfully. “I’ve another rat in mind and I think it is me. I’m thinking about the nursery rhyme where the rat began to gnaw the rope, the rope began to hang the butcher, the butcher began to kill the ox, and so on down until the pig got himself over the stile and the poor old woman at last got home.”34

  You could tell that she was taking her mind off of something else and pointing it in the direction of what I had said and you could see the knobs turning as she brought the lenses to a focus. I let her soak for a while. Finally she said: “You mean there’s a chain of events all hooked together and you’re ready to identify the links?”

  “I don’t know whether I’m ready but I think I have most of them on the table in front of me. I don’t know what follows what exactly and I’ve got an awful feeling that one or two of the most important links are somewhere at the bottom of the sea, but we’ll find them if I have to put on a diving helmet and go down myself. First of all, you’ll have to humor me and put off your visit to Tim long enough to get me something I need.”

  “Can’t it wait?”

  “No, but don’t worry, it won’t take over a minute. OK?”

  “If you say so.”

  I turned at the next corner and we drove around and pulled up in front of Ruth’s house. I didn’t even turn off the motor. I said: “I think I saw a picture of your father in the living room. Be a good girl and hop out and get it and I’ll take you straight down to Tim.”

  She hadn’t the faintest idea why I wanted it but she got out and ran in. Inside of a minute she was back and we were off.

  “The suspense is what gets me, Gil. I don’t understand any part of anything. All I know is that Tim couldn’t and didn’t kill Mr. Harper. He’s not the sort who would shoot a man in the back of the head. He probably wouldn’t shoot at all. He’s as strong as a steam shovel and if he wanted to do anything like that he would just take your neck in his hands and break it all in little pieces without half trying. Can’t you tell me just enough so I can manage not to go crazy?”

  “I would, Ruth, but I’m not sure I know that much. I know that there are two sets of circumstances that are at work. Whether they’re working separately or together or whether only one of them is responsible I can’t tell any more than you. Furthermore neither one of them is complete in my own mind and the one that I think is the most important is terribly jumbled up and there are some things evidently of the greatest importance that I don’t know and can’t understand or figure out.”

  “Maybe if you’d think out loud I could help.”

  “Think you can take it?”

  “After what I’ve already taken, can you doubt it?”

  “No, I guess not. All right, but don’t say I didn’t warn you. Ready?”

  “And waiting.”

  “I think you must have figured part of it out for yourself already. I don’t think there is any doubt that Tim is the son of William Jasper Harper and I’ve a pretty good idea that his mother was Miss Katie. Some deal was made and your father and mother adopted Tim. Or maybe there wasn’t a deal. At any rate it seems certain that both your father and Miss Katie have been living off of William Jasper Harper for a long number of years, probably ever since Tim was adopted in May, 1915.”

  I do not know how much of it was new to Ruth McClure but at least some part of it was a terrific shock. When I looked at her I was sorry I had dished it out so fast. The color was completely gone from her face and her fists were so tight that the knuckles were white. I pulled over to the curb and shut off the motor.

  “I’m sorry,” I said penitently, “I ought to have known better
than to put it so bluntly. You look ill. Are you going to be all right?”

  With a visible effort Ruth pulled herself together and looked at me unflinchingly. “I’ll be all right,” she said in a small strained voice. “The ugly implications were too much for me all at once, that’s all. I won’t get anywhere closing my eyes and ears. I want all of it. Go right ahead.”

  “I don’t think it’s wise. Let’s wait until another time. I think a drink of whiskey would do you good. You’ve been through a lot and it’s a wonder you’re operating under your own power as it is.”

  “No, give it to me straight. I’ll be all right. Don’t be afraid for me.”

  “Very well, if you say so. But remember that I’m on your team and remember that when I say what I think is a fact, it doesn’t mean I believe all the distorted implications that may suggest themselves. This thing has to be worked out and the answer has to be found and as you say, we won’t get there by closing our eyes and ears and kidding ourselves. Obviously, Miss Katie has not been making a living either from her garden or from her chickens. She probably hasn’t gotten enough eggs for her own breakfast. She bought them at the grocery store and what she didn’t give to you and Tim she ostensibly sold to Harper, but that won’t work because she called them country eggs which they weren’t and sold them at less than they cost her. You don’t have to be a cash register to know that you can’t make money that way. Even Harper didn’t expect me to believe she was living on profits and he told me himself he gave her something every few days or weeks for sweet charity, and I don’t believe that either. You and Tim know you didn’t go to flossy schools and dress nicely and have a car of your own on thirty-five dollars a week. Your father’s bank account is a thirty-five-dollar-a-week bank account but every item that would be of any real interest isn’t reflected there. Harper offers to buy your stock at an absurd price, which is one thing, but he adds a condition that smells to high heaven. Why would he want to be in charge of your father’s estate and take over all the records he could find if the records didn’t connect with him somewhere? We can be as loyal as we want but we mustn’t be fools.”

  “Then you think my father stumbled into the picture and found a way to make a good thing out of it? To be brutal about it, you’re thinking about blackmail.” Her voice was dead and matter of fact like a voice that comes up out of a big cold lump in the middle of your body.

  “That would be one explanation. There may be others. I’m not saying I think that’s the right answer.”

  “But you’re afraid it is.”

  “I don’t know. That’s the trouble with talking when you’re only halfway through a room full of confusion.”

  “And it also means that Tim is—well—a bastard.”

  “That’s something I’m sure of. But remember that Tim is Tim no matter who his father and mother may have been and no matter what the circumstances. It’s a cockeyed world that visits the children with the sins of their parents. Personally I don’t give a tinker’s dam who Tim is or where he came from, and neither do you. He’s here and he’s one hundred per cent in my book and he’ll stay that way. What we call society, which includes all of us, is a bunch of dopes. Whatever else you may think about William Jasper Harper, don’t you ever forget that whatever the reason might have been, he went for better than thirty years and took care of his own after his own fashion and did something from what must have been a distorted sense of shame or justice or fair play or something to shield the human product of his wild oats.”

  “But there is a fatal weakness in the story.”

  “Yes, I know. You know your father didn’t play ball that way. I never knew him but I know you better than you think and you’re right. There is something wrong and we’ve got to find out what it is. At least we’ve got to proceed on the conviction that something’s wrong. Somehow I feel that the whole thing’s too easy figured out this way. Either too easy or totally cockeyed. It doesn’t explain anything. It doesn’t explain why William Jasper Harper got bumped off. He was the goose and the supply of golden eggs was probably inexhaustible.”

  “Yes, that’s true. But the sheriff and the chief won’t figure that way. They’ll figure Tim finally found the pieces and put the puzzle together for himself. They’ll figure he lost his head and killed Harper on some wild idea he could thereby cover up his own history. They’ll figure he escaped and went after Miss Katie as soon as he had had time to brood about things in jail and come to the same conclusion you have come to. It’ll all be cut and dried. There’ll be nothing to it. I wouldn’t bet an old hat they won’t prove Tim’s gun did it. The whole thing will look simple and beautiful.”

  “I’m way ahead of you. That’s why we have to hurry. If it isn’t Tim, then someone’s loose and for all we know there may be other chapters to come. We don’t even know the plot and characters. We’ve got to hurry.”

  “What next?”

  “It’s twenty minutes to ten. County court opens at ten o’clock. You go in and tell Tim to keep his chin up. Then meet me in front of the Court House and we’re going to get you qualified as executrix of your father’s estate right now. We’ve got something definite to learn and we’ll never get to first base unless we are clothed with evidence of authority.”

  She did not say a word but she reached over and turned the ignition switch. I drove her to the jail, let her out and then went and parked in front of the Court House.

  34 The traditional version of the tale is: An old woman was sweeping her house, and she found a little crooked sixpence. What, said she, shall I do with this little sixpence? I will go to market, and buy a little pig. As she was coming home, she came to a stile: but the piggy would not go over the stile. She went a little further, and she met a dog. So she said to the dog, Dog! bite pig; piggy won’t go over the stile; and I shan’t get home to night. But the dog would not. She went a little further, and she met a stick. So she said, Stick! stick! beat dog! dog won’t bite pig; piggy won’t get over the stile; and I shan’t get home to night.’ But the stick would not. She went a little further, and she met a fire. So she said, Fire! fire! burn stick; stick won’t beat dog; dog won’t bite pig (and so forth, always repeating the foregoing words). But the fire would not. She went a little further, and she met some water. So she said, Water! water! quench fire; fire won’t burn stick. But the water would not. She went a little further, and she met an ox. So she said, Ox! ox! drink water; water won’t quench fire, &c. But the ox would not. She went a little further and she met a butcher. So she said, Butcher! butcher! kill ox; ox won’t drink water, &c. But the butcher would not. She went a little further, and she met a rope. So she said, Rope! rope! hang butcher; butcher won’t kill ox, &c. But the rope would not. She went a little further, and she met a rat. So she said, Rat! rat! gnaw rope; rope won’t hang butcher, &c. But the rat would not. She went a little further, and she met a cat. So she said, Cat! cat! kill rat; rat won’ t gnaw rope, &c. But the cat said to her, If you will go to yonder cow, and fetch me a saucer of milk; I will kill the rat. So away went the old woman to the cow. But the cow said to her, If you will go to yonder haystack, and fetch me a handful of hay; I’ll give you the milk. So away went the old woman to the haystack; and she brought the hay to the cow. As soon as the cow had eaten the hay, she gave the old woman the milk; and away she went with it in a saucer to the cat. As soon as the cat had lapped up the milk, the cat began to kill the rat; the rat began to gnaw the rope; the rope began to hang the butcher; the butcher began to kill the ox; the ox began to drink the water; the water began to quench the fire; the fire began to burn the stick; the stick began to beat the dog; the dog began to bite the pig; the little pig in a fright jumped over the stile; and so the old woman got home that night. James Orchard Halliwell, ed., The Nursery Rhymes of England, Collected Principally from Oral Tradition (London: Printed for the Percy Society, 1842), 159–60.

  48

  The office of the telephone company was righ
t across the street. I swapped a five dollar bill for a handful of small change, went into the booth and placed a station-to-station call to the office of Yoland & Jolley in Louisville. After a minute I recognized Miss Judson’s voice. I said: “This is the chief of police in Harpersville.”

  “What?”

  “Harpersville, Harpersville, do you get it?”

  “Yes, I get it, Harpersville. Who did you say you were?”

  “I said I’m the chief of police.”

  “Oh, I see. To whom did you wish to speak?”

  “You’ll do. It’s important that I reach Mr. Jolley at once. I understand he’s out of town. Where can I reach him?”

  “Could you give me an idea what you want to talk to him about? Perhaps someone else in the office can give you the information.”

  “Lady, if I wanted to talk to somebody else I’d say so. I want to get in touch with Mr. Hillman Jolley. Where is he? Is it a secret?”

  “Of course not,” hastily, “I was only trying to be helpful. Just a minute.”

  I knew that “Just a minute” stuff was a gag but there was nothing I could do about it so I hung on and waited. I could hear heels clicking and a door opening and shutting. Pretty soon a door opened and shut again and then Miss Judson said: “Mr. Jolley was in Overton yesterday. One of the junior accountants was talking to Mr. Yoland today and reported that Mr. Jolley heard about—that thing in Harpersville and left a message at the hotel that he was going down on the night train. Isn’t Mr. Jolley in Harpersville?”

  “If he was would I be calling you? What business did he have in Overton? I’ll call down there myself and see what I can find out.”

  “Well, I guess it’s all right. He went down to start the annual audit for Overton Christian College.”

  “Why didn’t you say so in the first place?” I said and hung up.

  I waited maybe thirty seconds and then put through a call to the business manager of Overton Christian College. Yes, Mr. Hillman Jolley had been there. No, he didn’t come with the junior accountants. They had come several days before to start the dirty work. Mr. Jolley came in the morning, pretty close to noon. He was there for lunch and as a matter of fact had lunch with the business manager. Yes, he stayed after lunch for a while and then said he was going to discuss another account and told the junior men that he could be reached at the Palace Hotel. No, he didn’t know the name of the other account.