* * * *
Late that evening, Marshal Crow mounted the steps leading to Dr. Brown’s office and rang the bell. He rang it five or six times without getting any response. Then he opened the door and walked in. The doctor was out. On a table inside the door lay the slate on which people left word for him to come to their houses as soon as he returned. The Marshal put on his glasses and took up the pencil to write. One side of the slate was already filled with hurried scribbling. He squinted and with difficulty made out that Dr. Brown was wanted immediately at the homes of Situate M. Jones, Abbie Nixon, Newton Spratt, Mort Fryback, Professor Rank, Rev. Maltby and Joseph P. Singer. He sighed and shook his head sadly. Then he moistened a finger and erased the second name on the list, that of Mrs. Abbie Nixon.
“Husbands first,” he muttered in justification of his action in substituting the following line:
“Come at once. A. Crow, Marshal of Tinkletown.”
Compunction prevailed, however. He wrote the word “over” at the bottom and, turning the slate over, cleared his conscience by jotting down Mrs. Nixon’s “call” at the top of the reverse side. Replacing it on the table, he went away. Virtue was its own reward in this instance at least, for the worthy marshal neglected to put the slate down as he had found it. Mrs. Nixon’s “call” alone was visible.
He set out to find Harry Squires. That urbane gentleman was smoking his reportorial corn-cob in the rear of Lamson’s store. Except for Lamson’s clerk, who had seized the rare opportunity to delve uninterruptedly into the mysteries of the latest “Nick Carter,” the store was empty. The usual habitues were absent.
“Did you get her home?” inquired Anderson in a low, cautious tone.
“I did,” said Harry.
“See anything of the deacon?”
“No; but Bill Smith did. Bill saw him down at the crick an hour or so ago, knocking in the heads of three or four barrels. Do you know what I’ve been thinking, Anderson? If somebody would only empty a barrel or so of olive oil into Smock’s Crick before morning, we’d have the foundation for the largest supply of French dressing ever created in the history of the world.”
Mr. Crow looked scandalized. “Good gosh, Harry, ain’t we had enough scandal in this here town today without addin’ anything French to it?”
* * * *
The only moral to be attached to this story lies in the brief statement that Mrs. Crow’s indisposition, slight in duration though it was, so occupied Mr. Crow’s attention that by the time he was ready to begin his search the second night after the song service, there wasn’t so much as a pint of hard cider to be found in Tinkletown. This condition was due in a large measure, no doubt, to the fact that Smock’s Creek is an unusually swift little stream. It might even be called turbulent.
“JAKE MILLER HANGS HIMSELF”
“Have you heard the latest news?” inquired Newt Spratt, speaking in a hushed voice. He addressed Uncle Dad Simms, the town’s oldest inhabitant, whom he met face to face at the corner of Main and Sickle streets one fine morning in May. Now any one in Tinkletown would tell you that it was the sheerest folly to address Uncle Dad in a hushed voice. Mr. Spratt knew this as well as he knew his own name, so it should be easy to understand that the “news” was of a somewhat awe-inspiring nature. Ordinarily Newt was a loud-mouthed, jovial soul; you could hear him farther and usually longer than any other male citizen in Tinkletown. But now, he spoke in a hushed voice.
Uncle Dad put his hand up to his left ear and said “Hey?” This seemed to bring Mr. Spratt to his senses. He started violently, stared hard for a moment at the octogenarian, and then strode off down Main street, shaking his head as much as to say, “There must be something the matter with me. Nobody ever speaks to him unless he has to.”
And Uncle Dad, after gazing for a long time at the retreating figure, resumed his shuffling progress up Main street, pleasantly satisfied that Newt had gone to the trouble to tell him it was a nice day.
Although it would not have occurred to Newt, in his dismal state of mind, to look upon the day as a nice one, nevertheless it was. The sun was shining brightly, (but without Newt’s knowledge), and the air was soft and balmy and laden with the perfume of spring. Birds were twittering in the new green foliage of the trees, but Newt heard them not; dogs frisked in the sunshine, wagging their tongues and tails, but Newt saw them not; hens cackled, horses whinnied, children laughed, and all the world was set to music, but Newt was not a happy man.
He was not a happy man for the simple reason that everybody else in town had heard the “news” long before it reached him. For half-an-hour or more he had been putting that same old question to every one he met; indeed, he even went out of his way five or six blocks to ring the front door bell at the home of William Grimes, night watchman at Smock’s Warehouse, rousing him from a sound sleep in order to impart the “news” to him, only to have Bill call him a lot of hard names while making it clear that he had heard it before going to bed for the day.
The more Newt thought of it, the more he realized that it was his duty to go back and look up Uncle Dad Simms, even though it meant yelling his head off when he found him; it was a moral certainty that the only person in Tinkletown who hadn’t heard it was Uncle Dad,—and he would take a lot of telling.
The Weekly Banner would not be out till the following day; for at least twenty hours Uncle Dad would remain in the densest ignorance of the sensation that had turned Tinkletown completely upside down. Somebody ought to tell him. Somebody ought to tell poor old Uncle Dad Simms, that was all there was about it.
Moved by a sharp thrill of benevolence, Mr. Spratt retraced his steps, an eager look in his eyes. He found the old man standing in the broad, open door of Bill Kepsal’s blacksmith shop. The blacksmith’s assistant was banging away with might and main at his anvil, and Uncle Dad wore a pleased, satisfied smile on his thin old lips. He always said he loved to stand there and listen to the faint, faraway music of the hammer on the anvil, so different from the hammers and anvils they used to have when he was a boy,—when they were so blamed noisy you couldn’t hear yourself think.
Newt took him by the arm and led him away. He was going to tell him the “news,” but he wasn’t going to tell it to him there. The only place to tell Uncle Dad anything was over in the Town Hall, provided it was unoccupied, and thither he conducted the expectant old man. As they mounted the steps leading to the Hall, Uncle Dad’s pleased expression developed into something distinctly audible—something resembling a cackle of joy. Mr. Spratt favoured him with a sharp, apprehensive glance.
“Are they goin’ to hold the inquest as soon as all this?” shouted Uncle Dad, putting his lips as close as possible to Newt’s ear.
Newt stopped in his tracks.
“Have you heard it?” he bellowed.
“What say?”
“I say, have you heard it?”
“Speak up! Speak up!” complained Uncle Dad. “You needn’t be afraid of him hearin’ you, Newt. He’s been dead for six or eight hours.”
“My God!” groaned Newt.
For the second time that morning he left Uncle Dad high and dry, and started swiftly homeward. There was the possible, but remote chance that his wife hadn’t heard the news,—and if she had heard it, she’d hear from him! He’d let her know what kind of a wife she was!
Never, within memory, had he failed to be the first person in Tinkletown to hear the news, and here he was on this stupendous occasion, the last of them all. And why? Because he had taken that one morning to perform a peculiarly arduous and intensive bit of hard work up in the attic of his wife’s house. He had chosen the attic because Mrs. Spratt rather vehemently had refused to let him use the parlour, or even the kitchen. And all the time that he was up in the attic, working his head off trying to teach his new fox terrier pup how to stand on its hind legs and jump over a broom stick, this startling piece of news was sweeping from one end of Tinkletown to the other.
Never, said Newt firmly, as he hurried homewa
rd by the back streets,—never would he do another day’s work in his life, if this was to be the result of honest toil. And what’s more, he hadn’t even received a single word of praise from his wife when he descended from the attic and triumphantly told her what he had accomplished,—he and the pup between them—after three hours of solid, painstaking endeavour.
Mrs. Spratt had merely said: “If you could learn that pup how to split firewood or milk a cow or repair the picket fence or something like that, you might be worth your salt, Newt Spratt. As it is, you ain’t.”
As Newt turned gloomily into the alley leading up to his back gate, he espied the Marshal of Tinkletown, Anderson Crow, leisurely approaching from the opposite direction. Mr. Crow, on catching sight of Newt, hastily removed something from his mouth and held it behind his back. Perceiving that it was nobody but Newt Spratt, he restored the object to his lips and began puffing away at it,—but not until he had sent a furtive glance over his shoulder.
“What you doin’ back here?” inquired Newt, somewhat offensively, as the two drew closer together. “Lookin’ fer clues?”
Anderson again removed the corn-cob pipe, spat accurately over the hand with which he shielded his straggling chin whiskers, and remarked:
“Do you see anything wrong with this here pipe, Newt?” he asked, gazing rather pensively at the object.
“I don’t see anything wrong with it,” said Newt. “Still, I think you’re mighty sensible not to smoke it any place except in an alley. Why don’t you get a new one? They only cost ten cents. If you got a new one once in a while,—say once a year,—your wife wouldn’t order you out of the house every time you light it.”
“She don’t order me out of the house when I light it,” retorted Anderson. “’Cause why? ’Cause I never light it till I get two or three blocks away from home.”
The subject apparently being exhausted, the two alley-farers lapsed into characteristic silence. Mr. Spratt leaned rather wearily against his own back fence, while Mr. Crow accepted the support of a telephone pole. Presently the former started to say something about the weather, but got no farther than the first two or three words when an astounding conjecture caused him to break off abruptly. He glanced at the old marshal, swallowed hard a couple of times, and then hopefully ventured the time-honoured question:
“Anything new, Anderson?”
The marshal responded with a slow, almost imperceptible shake of the head. He was gazing reflectively at a couple of English sparrows perched on one of the telephone wires some distance down the line.
Newt experienced a sudden, overwhelming joy. Caution, however, and a certain fear that he might be mistaken, advised him to go slow. There remained the possibility that Anderson might be capable of simulation.
“Where’s the body?” he inquired, casually.
Marshal Crow’s gaze deserted the sparrows and fixed itself on Newt’s ear.
“The what?”
His companion exhaled a tremendous breath of satisfaction. Life was suddenly worth living. The Marshal of Tinkletown had not heard the “news.” The marshal, himself!
“Well, by Gosh!” exclaimed the revivified Mr. Spratt. “Where have you been at?”
“That’s my business,” snapped Anderson.
“All I got to say is that you ought to be attendin’ to it, if it’s your business,” said Newt loftily. “You’re the marshal of this here town, ain’t you? And everybody in town knows that Jake Miller is dead except you. You’re a fine marshal.” There was withering scorn in Newt’s voice. He even manifested an inclination to walk off and leave the marshal without further enlightenment.
Anderson made a valiant effort to conceal his astonishment. Assuming a more or less indifferent air, he calmly remarked:
“I knowed Jake was a little under the weather, but I didn’t think it was serious? When did he die?”
“He didn’t die,” said Newt. “He hung himself.”
“What’s that?” gasped Anderson, his jaw sagging.
“Hung himself some time last night,” went on Newt joyously. “From a rafter in Ed Higgins’s livery stable. With a clothesline. Kicked a step-ladder out from under himself. Why, even Uncle Dad Simms has heard about it. Ed found him when he went out to—wait a second! I’m goin’ your way. What’s the rush? He’s been dead six or eight hours. He can’t escape. He’s down in Hawkins’s undertaking place. Hey! You dropped your pipe. Don’t you want it any—”
“If you’re goin’ my way, you’ll have to run,” called out Marshal Crow as he unlimbered his long legs and made for the mouth of the alley. He was not running, but Newt, being an undersized individual, had no other means of keeping up with him unless he obeyed the sardonic behest. For ten or fifteen rods, Mr. Spratt jogged faithfully at the heels of the leader, and then suddenly remembered that it was a long way to Hawkins’s Undertaking Emporium in Sickle street,—at least an eighth of a mile as the crow flies,—and as he already had had a hard day’s work, he slowed down to a walk and then to a standstill. He concluded to wait till some one came along in a wagon or an automobile. There wasn’t any use wasting his valuable breath in running. Much better to save it for future use. In the meantime, by standing perfectly still, he could ruminate to his heart’s content.
Marshal Crow’s long strides soon carried him to the corner of Maple Street, where he made a sharp turn to the right, shooting a swift look over his shoulder as he did so. His late companion was leaning against a tree. Satisfied that he had completely thrown Mr. Spratt off the trail, Anderson took a short cut through Justice of the Peace Robb’s front and back yards and eventually emerged into Main Street, where he slackened his pace to a dignified saunter.
He caught sight of Alf Reesling, the reformed town drunkard, holding conversation from the sidewalk with some one in a second story window of Mrs. Judy O’Ryan’s boarding house, half a block away.
“Hello!” shouted Alf, discovering the marshal. “Here he comes now. Where you been all morning, Andy? I been huntin’ everywhere for you. Something horrible has happened. I just stopped to tell Judy about it.”
The marshal stopped, and gazed upon Alf with mild interest. He nodded carelessly to Mrs. O’Ryan in the upstairs window, and addressed the following significant remark to Alf:
“I guess I’ve got Jake’s motive purty well established, Alf. You needn’t ask me what I’ve unearthed, because I won’t tell you. It’s a nice day, ain’t it, Judy?”
Before Mrs. O’Ryan could affirm or deny this polite bit of information, Alf cried out:
“You don’t mean to say you know about it?”
“The rain yesterday and day before has brought your lilacs out splendid, Judy,” said Anderson, ignoring him.
“I was up to your house before eight o’clock, and your wife said you’d gone out in the country to practise your new Decoration Day speech, Anderson. How in thunder did you find out about Jake?”
Marshal Crow turned upon the speaker with some severity. “See here, Alf, are you tryin’ to act like Newt Spratt?”
That was a deadly insult to Alf.
“What do you mean?” he demanded hotly.
“Nothin’—except that Newt had the same kind of an idee in his head that you seem to have got into yours. Next time you see Newt you tell him I been laughin’ myself almost sick over the way I fooled him,—the blamed iggoramus.” Having planted a seed that was intended to bear the fruit of justification, the venerable marshal decided that now was the time to prepare himself against anything further in the shape of surprise. So he linked arms with Alf and started off down the street.
“Now, see here, Alf,” he began, somewhat sternly. “I won’t stand for any beatin’ about the bush from you. You got to tell me the whole truth an’ nothin’ but the truth, and if your story hangs together and agrees with what I’ve already worked out,—I’ll see that you get fair treatment and—”
Alf stopped short. “What in sassafras are you talkin’ about? What story?”
“Begin at
the beginnin’ and tell me where you was last night, and early this morning, and where and when you last saw Jake Miller.”
The marshal’s manner was decidedly accusative, although tempered by sadness. Something in his voice betrayed a great and illy concealed regret that this life-long friend had got himself so seriously entangled in the Jacob Miller affair.
“Where was I last night and this morning?” repeated the astonished Alf.
“Percisely,” said Anderson, tightening his grip on Alf’s arm.
“In bed,” said Alf succinctly.
“Come, now,” warned the marshal; “none of that. I want the truth out of you. When did you last see Jake Miller,—and what was he doing?”
“I saw him about half an hour ago, and he wasn’t doin’ anything.”
“I mean, before he came to his untimely end.”
“I don’t know what you’re drivin’ at, but if it gives you any satisfaction I c’n say that the last time I saw him alive was yesterday afternoon about four o’clock. He was unloadin’ some baled hay over at Ed’s feed-yard and—that’s all.”
“How was he actin’?”
“He was actin’ like a man unloadin’ hay.”
“Did he appear to have anything on his mind? I mean anything more than usual?”
“Couldn’t say.”
“Did he look pale or upset-like?”
“I kinder thought,—afterwards,—that he did look a leetle pale. Sort of as if he’d eat something that didn’t agree with him.”
“I see. Well, go on.”
“Go on what?”
“Tellin’ me. Where did you next see him?”
“Oh, there was a lot of people saw him after I did. Why don’t you ask them?”
“Answer my question.”
“I didn’t see him again until about half past seven this morning. He was hangin’ from a rafter in Ed’s stable. My God, it was awful! I know I’ll dream about Jake for the next hundred years.”
“Did he have a rope around his neck?”
The George Barr McCutcheon Megapack: 25 Classic Novels and Stories Page 282