Anderson stared at him in horror.
“Good gosh, Lucius, have you—have you had your hands cut off?” he gasped, looking hard at the flapping coat-sleeves.
“Course I ain’t,” said Mr. Fry, lifting his arms on high, allowing the sleeves to slip down a half a foot or more and revealing his hands. “This ain’t my coat. It’s Jim Banks’. A little too big fer me—and the hat too, I reckon.”
“I just couldn’t let him catch his death o’ cold,” explained the buxom Mrs. Banks.
“He just simply won’t go back into the house,” said Mrs. Ducker. “And I don’t blame him, either. He’s afraid he might throw her out of a window and—and break her neck, didn’t you say, Lucius?”
“No, I didn’t. I said I was afraid I’d break the winder,” said Lucius, glaring at Mrs. Ducker from beneath the rim of Mr. Banks’ hat.
“Where is your wife?” demanded Anderson.
“In there,” said Lucius, pointing a drooping coat-sleeve in the general direction of his domicile. “Come on over here by the lamp-post, Mr. Crow. I got something important I want to say to you.”
“You ain’t going to give yourself up without a fight, are you, Lucius?” cried Mrs. Banks in considerable agitation.
“You leave me alone,” snarled Lucius in a manner so malevolent that Mrs. Banks cried out delightedly:
“Oh, ain’t he just grand? Did you hear the way he spoke to me, Emma Ducker? Goodness, what would I give if I had a man that could talk to me like—”
“You ought to heard what he said to me when I asked him to come over to our house and—” began Mrs. Ducker somewhat acrimoniously.
“Oh, cut it out—cut it out!” rasped Lucius. “Beat it! Go home, all of you! Gosh a’mighty, can’t a feller lick his own wife without—Here! Leggo my arm! What in thunder are you tryin’ to do, Lou Banks?”
“I’m going to take you over to my house and put your feet in a hot mustard bath, and—”
“No, you ain’t! Leggo, I say! Fer the Lord’s sake, Officer, chase ’em away!”
“Move on, now—move on, all of you,” commanded the Marshal, waving the revolver in lieu of his well-known night-stick. “What you got to say to me, Lucius?” he asked as the women fell back.
“Do you think they c’n hear?”
“Not unless you whisper loudern’ that.”
“Well, say, I want you to do me a favour. I want you to take me up to the jail an’ lock me in.”
“You—you want to be locked in?”
“I don’t care whether you put it that way er to lock all these fool women out. It’s all the same to me. I ain’t had a minute’s peace for nearly two months. I—”
“Why don’t you go in your own house an’ stay there?” demanded Anderson.
“That don’t seem to help any. They come to call on me so often you’d think I was a preacher or a doctor. An’ what’s more, my wife’s beginnin’ to get her dander up. I c’n see what’s comin’. If she ever—gee, it will be awful!”
“Then you hain’t murdered her yet? I understood you had.”
* * * *
Vicious Lucius looked over his shoulder and drew closer to the Marshal.
“This here strain is gittin’ to be too much fer me, Mr. Crow. I can’t keep it up much longer. I’m breakin’ down. I been thinkin’ it over, an’ I can’t see any way out of it except to go to jail fer a month er two.”
“What’s the charge?” inquired Marshal Crow.
“There won’t be any. I’ll do it fer nothing. It won’t cost you a cent to arrest me.”
“That ain’t what I mean. What I mean is what offence have you committed? What law have you broke?”
“Well, it’s purty hard to say.”
“What charge will your wife make ag’inst you? Somebody has to make one, you know.”
“That’s just it. She won’t make any charge against me—positively not. So I’ve got to do it myself. You’ve had a lot of experience. What fer sort of a charge would you say I ought to bring?”
“Against yourself? It ain’t regular, Lucius.”
“How about insanity? Wouldn’t that be a safe sort of complaint? I been actin’ mighty queer lately.”
“I should say you had. Ain’t you goin’ to resist arrest?”
“No, I’m askin’ fer it. If you don’t want to be seen walkin’ through the streets with me, I’ll go on ahead an’ wait fer you at the jail.”
“Well, this certainly beats all! I thought sure you’d put up an awful fight, Lucius.”
“I want to be locked up so’s I won’t commit murder,” Lucius explained eagerly.
“Good gracious! You come along with me, Lucius Fry. You got to be put under lock an’ key ‘fore this night is over. I can’t take no chances on your murderin’ that pore defenceless wife of your’n. You come—”
“I ain’t thinkin’ of murderin’ my wife,” protested Lucius, holding back. “What I’m scared of is I’ll murder one or two of these pesky women—that Banks woman, fer instance. It’s gittin’ so I can’t stick my nose outside the door ‘thout her droppin’ everything an’ runnin’ out to gab with me. I don’t get a minute’s privacy. If it ain’t one, it’s another. You’d think I was Napoleon Boneparte, the way them women act. I don’t know what’s come over ’em.”
“Why, it’s just ’cause they think you can lick any man in town. That’s the way with some women. The more brutal a man is to his own wife, the more the other women seem to appreciate him. I must say, it takes a purty good man to lick that wife of your’n—she’s twice as big as you are, and—”
“Why, gosh dern it, Mr. Crow, I couldn’t lick Stella in a million years,” whispered Lucius fiercely.
“What’s that? You—you say you can’t lick your wife?”
“I should say not!” exclaimed Mr. Fry, raising his voice in earnestness. Instantly he lowered it, standing on his tip-toes the better to impart the following information to the amazed Marshal: “She can lick me with both hands tied behind her back. Nobody knows it better’n I do. I just got to keep throwin’ things at her an’ cussin’ an’ smashin’ furniture, an’ all that, ’cause if she ever got an idea how scared I am of her, she’d pick me up by the seat of my pants an’—Oh, I tell you it’s gettin’ to be more’n I c’n stand, Mr. Crow. It’s mighty hard to keep on thinkin’ you got to keep on bein’ brave when you’re scared plumb to death all the time. Why, if Stella ever got onto the fact that I—”
“But you keep on beatin’ her just the same, don’t you?”
“I never beat her unless her back’s turned. First I throw somethin’ at her. That’s the best way. But you never ought to throw anything unless you got somethin’ ready in the other hand. An’ hang onto that until you’re sure she’s not goin’ to run to’ards you ‘stead of the other way. If you’re goin’ to be a successful wife-beater, you got to use an awful lot of common-sense.” He looked over his shoulder. “Come on up the street a little ways, Mr. Crow,” he said nervously. “Them fool women are edgin’ nearer all the time. Next thing you know, they’ll be tryin’ to sick me onto you, an’—an’ I’d have to make good. They got all their husbands scared of me, an’ they keep tellin’ me that I’m the grandest little man in the world. You know Jim Banks? Well, he’s twice as big as I am. A week or two ago he came out on his back porch an’ called me a name. I started over to apologize to him, but he thought I was comin’ after him, so he jumped back in the kitchen an’ slammed the door. She told me he wanted to send fer you, Mr. Crow. I—I wish he had.”
“I understand you been makin’ threats about what you’d do to me if I ever tried to arrest you,” said Anderson sternly. “Is that true?”
“No, it ain’t. My wife’s been makin’ all the threats. She don’t make any bones about what she’ll do to you if you ever try to arrest me. She says she’ll bust your head fer you.”
Marshal Crow straightened up and glared at the Fry habitation. There was a light in the kitchen window.
“
You wait here, Lucius Fry, an’ don’t move till I come back. I’m going in there an’ talk to that wife o’ yourn.”
“You better take a gang o’ men with you. Remember, I’m givin’ you fair warnin’. She’ll eat you alive.”
“I’ll take my friend Mr. Squires with me fer a witness—that’s all. Is she out in the kitchen?”
“I don’t know. I ain’t been in the house since the row. She locked the door on me.”
The Marshal strode away, leaving Vicious Lucius to the mercy of the women. Harry Squires was nowhere in sight. Mr. Crow looked about in some alarm. His speed noticeably decreased. Fumbling in his coat pocket, he found his police whistle and proceeded to blow a shrill blast upon it. A few moments passed, and then Harry came hurrying around the corner of the house.
“Where have you been, dern you?”
“I’ve been in the house chatting with Mrs. Fry,” said the reporter.
“Is she conscious? Is she able to talk?”
“She certainly is. Come on. She wants to see you.”
Harry Squires grasped his arm and led him toward the kitchen door. Mrs. Fry herself admitted them. She looked most formidable.
“Did my daughter Elfaretta ask you to come here and interfere with my private affairs, Anderson Crow?” she demanded.
“I am not supposed to answer questions like that, Mrs. Fry,” said Anderson with dignity. “I am pleased to inform you, however, that I have succeeded in arrestin’ your husband, an’ I intend to see to it that he is locked up fer—”
“Oh, my goodness!” groaned the gigantic lady, dropping suddenly into a chair and lowering her face into her apron.
The Marshal looked at her in astonishment.
“You have got to release Vicious Lucius at once,” said Harry Squires sternly. “We can’t afford to wreck this poor little woman’s life.”
“Little—what’s that you said?” stammered the Marshal, still gazing at the ponderous bulk in the chair.
“You heard what I said—wreck this poor but proud lady’s life. Speak up, Mrs. Fry. Tell the good Marshal all about it.”
Whereupon the woebegone Mrs. Fry lifted her head and her voice in lamentation.
“I knew it couldn’t last. I might ‘a’ knowed something would turn up to spoil it. It was too much to expect. Oh, if you only wouldn’t lock him up, Mr. Crow! What will people say when they find out you was able to arrest him single-handed, without a gang o’ men to help you? Oh, oh, oh!”
Mr. Squires interposed a suggestion just as she was on the verge of sobs.
“I dare say we could stage a perfectly realistic struggle between Mr. Fry and Mr. Crow. Mr. Fry could trip Mr. Crow up—all in play, you know; and then I could rush in and grab Mr. Fry from behind while he was letting on as though he was kicking Mr. Crow in the face. The spectators would—”
“I won’t be a party to any such monkey business!” exclaimed the Marshal in some heat. “What do you take me for? If I arrest Lucius Fry, I’ll jest simply pick him up by the coat-collar and—”
“That’s just it,” cried Mrs. Fry. “He wouldn’t fight back, and how would I feel if you carried him off to jail as if he was a lunch-basket? And I was beginning to feel so proud and happy. I was getting so I could look those cats in the face, all because my husband was the best little daredevil in the Gully. They used to pity me. Now they are so jealous of me they don’t know what to do. They’d give anything if they had a husband like Lucius—little as he is. My, how they envy me, and how I have been looking down on all of ’em the last six months! And here you arrest him as easy as if he was a little girl, when I been telling everybody there wasn’t anybody living that could take my man to jail. Oh, I—I wish I’d never been born!”
* * * *
Anderson Crow was puzzled. He pulled at his whiskers in the most helpless way, and stared wide-eyed.
“But—but ain’t you afraid to live with him?” he mumbled. “Ain’t you afraid he’ll lick you to death sometime when he’s in one of—”
“He couldn’t lick me if I was chloroformed,” blurted out Mrs. Fry, arising suddenly. She bared a huge right arm. “See that? Well, that’s as big as his leg. Don’t you ever get it in your head that I can’t lick Lucius Fry. That ain’t the point. I can do it, but I wouldn’t do it for anything on earth. I want to be proud of him, and I want these other women to feel sorry for me because I’ve got a man for a husband, and not a rabbit. Where is he, Mr. Crow?”
“He’s out there waitin’ fer me to take him to jail—that is, he said he’d wait. Course, if you won’t make any affidavit ag’inst him, I—I guess there’s no sense in me lockin’ him up. I was doin’ it as a—er—as a sort of favour to him, anyhow. He seemed to be afraid he’d kill some of them women that hang around him.”
“I just thought he’d act that way. I won’t make any charge against him. I want him to stay just the way he is—a fine, upstanding brutal sort of feller. You go out there an’ tell him to come in here. I want to go down on my knees again and forgive him.”
The Marshal hesitated. He was between two fires. He couldn’t very well oblige both of them. Lucius unquestionably was eager to go to jail for reasons of his own, and Mrs. Fry was just as eager that he should remain at large. The Marshal scratched his head.
“I feel kinder sorry fer him,” he mused. “Like as not, one of them women will git so foolish over him that her husband will take it into his head to get a divorce, an’—” He paused in confusion.
“Go on—go on!” pleaded Mrs. Fry, her eyes sparkling.
“Well, from all Lucius says, he despises the whole lot of ’em. Still, that ain’t goin’ to help him any if Jim Banks er one of them other idiots gits all het up an’ jealous an’ goes and sues fer a divorce, namin’ Lucius Fry as—”
Mrs. Fry slapped him violently on the back.
“That’s just what I want!” she cried eagerly. “I’d be the proudest woman in Tinkletown.”
The Marshal stared. Harry Squires covered his mouth with his hand.
“Well, of all the gosh—”
* * * *
His ejaculation was cut short by the opening of the kitchen door. Lucius stood outlined in the aperture. He was clapping his arms about his body, and his teeth were chattering. The voluminous sleeves flapped like great limp wings.
“Say,” he whined, “I can’t wait out there all night in this kinder weather. If I got to go to jail, I want to do it right away. It’s cruelty to animals to leave me standin’ out there with nothing on my feet but carpet-slippers. Come on an’—”
“Come in to the fire an’ get warm, Lucius dear,” called out his wife, as shrinking and as timid as a whipped child. “I forgive you. Julie! Jul-ie! Come down here an’ help me get some hot coffee an’ something to eat fer your Pa.”
“I—I guess we’d better be goin’, Harry,” said Marshall Crow uncomfortably. “I got to disperse that crowd o’ women out there in the street. Good night, Lucius. Night, Mrs. Fry. If you ever need me, all yer got to do is just send word.”
Lucius followed him to the door, and would have gone out into the night with him if the Marshal had not deliberately pushed him back.
“You—you ain’t goin’ to desert me, are you?” whispered Lucius fiercely.
The Marshal leaned over and whispered to Lucius.
“If all the other men in this here town had as soft a snap as you’ve got, Lucius Fry, they’d hate to die worse’n ever, because they’d know they’d never git back into heaven ag’in.”
THE VEILED LADY AND THE SHADOW
A veiled lady is not, in ordinary circumstances, an object of concern to anybody. Circumstances, however, are sometimes so extraordinary that a veiled lady becomes an object of concern to everybody. If the old-time novelists are to be credited, an abundantly veiled lady is more than a source of interest; she is the vital, central figure in a mystery that continues from week to week, or month to month, as the case may be, until the last chapter is reached and she turns out to be the p
erson you thought she was all the time.
Now, the village of Tinkletown is a slow-going, somnolent sort of place in which veils are worn by old ladies who wish to enjoy a pleasant snooze during the sermon without being caught in the act. That any one should wear a veil with the same regularity and the same purpose that she wears the dress which renders the remainder of her person invisible is a circumstance calculated to excite the curiosity of even the most indifferent observers in the village of Tinkletown.
So when the news travelled up and down Main Street, and off into the side-streets, and far out beyond Three Oaks Cemetery to the new division known as Oak Park, wherein reside four lonely pioneer families, that the lady who rented Mrs. Nixon’s house for the month of September was in a “perpetual state of obscurity” (to quote Mr. Harry Squires, the Banner reporter), the residents of Tinkletown admitted that they didn’t know what to make of it.
The Nixon cottage was a quaint, old-fashioned place on the side of Battle Hill, looking down upon the maples of Sickle Street. The grounds were rather spacious, and the house stood well back from the street, establishing an aloofness that had never been noticed before. A low stone wall guarded the lawn and rose-garden, and there was an iron gate at the bottom of the slope. The front porch was partly screened by “Dutchman’s Pipe” vines. With the advent of the tenant, smart Japanese sun-curtains made their appearance, and from that day on no prying eye, no matter how well-trained it may have been, could accomplish anything like a satisfactory visit to the regions beyond.
Mrs. Nixon usually rented her house for the summer months. The summer of 1918 had proved an unprofitable season for her. It was war-time, and the people who lived in the cities proved unduly reluctant to venture far from their bases of supplies. Consequently Mrs. Nixon and her daughter Angie remained in occupancy, more heartsick than ever over the horrors of war. Just as they were about to give up hope, the unexpected happened. Joseph P. Singer, the real-estate agent, offices in the Lamson Block, appeared bright and early one morning to inquire if the cottage could be had for the month of September and part of October.
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