She was out of the car before it had stopped and was running toward them. The man who had accompanied her followed, and joined them on the porch. Shannon threw her arms around Mrs. Pennington’s neck.
“He is safe!” she cried. “Another has confessed, and has satisfied the district attorney of his guilt.”
“Who was it?” they asked.
Shannon turned toward Eva.
“It is going to be another blow to you all,” she said; “but wait until I’m through, and you will understand that it could not have been otherwise. It was Guy who killed Wilson Crumb.”
“Guy? Why should he have done it?”
“That was it. That was why suspicion was never directed toward him. Only he knew the facts that prompted him to commit the deed. It was Allen who suggested to me the possibility that it might have been Guy. I have spent nearly two months at the sanatorium with this gentleman from the district attorney’s office, in an effort to awaken Guy’s sleeping intellect to a realization of the past, and of the present necessity for recalling it. He has been improving steadily, but it was only yesterday that memory returned to him. We worked on the theory that if he could be made to realize that Eva lived, the cause of his mental sickness would be removed. We tried everything, and we had almost given up hope when, almost like a miracle his memory returned, while he was looking at a snapshot of Eva that I had shown him. The rest was easy, especially after he knew that she had recovered. Instead of the necessity for confession resulting in a further shock, it seemed to inspirit him. His one thought was of Custer, his one hope that we would be in time to save him.”
“Why did he kill Crumb?” asked Eva.
“Because Crumb killed Grace. He told me the whole story yesterday.”
Very carefully Shannon related all that Guy had told of Crumb’s relations with his sister, up to the moment of Grace’s death.
“I am glad he killed him!” said Eva. “I would have had no respect for him if he hadn’t done it.”
“Guy told me that the evening before he killed Crumb he had been looking over a motion picture magazine, and he had seen there a picture of Crumb which tallied with the photograph he had taken from Grace’s dressing table - a portrait of the man who, as she told him, was responsible for her trouble. Guy had never been able to learn this man’s identity, but the picture in the magazine, with his name below it, was a reproduction of the same photograph. There was no question as to the man’s identity. The scarf-pin, and a lock of hair falling in a peculiar way over the forehead, marked the pictures as identical. Though Guy had never seen Crumb, he knew from conversations that he had heard here that it was Wilson Crumb who was directing the picture that was to be taken on Ganado. He immediately got his pistol, saddled his horse, and rode up to the camp in search of Crumb. It was he whom one of the witnesses mistook for Custer. He then did what the district attorney attributed to Custer. He rode to the mouth of Jackknife, and saw the lights of Crumb’s car up near El Camino Largo. While he was in Jackknife, Eva must have ridden down Sycamore from her meeting with Crumb, passing Jackknife before Guy rode back into Sycamore. He rode up to where Crumb was attempting to crank his engine. Evidently the starter had failed to work, for Crumb was standing in front of the car, in the glare of the headlights, attempting to crank it. Guy accosted him, charged him with the murder of Grace, and shot him. He then started for home by way of El Camino Largo. Half a mile up the trail he dismounted and hid his pistol and belt in a hollow tree. Then he rode home.
“He told me that while he never for an instant regretted his act, he did not sleep all that night, and was in a highly nervous condition when the shock of Eva’s supposed death unbalanced his mind; otherwise he would gladly have assumed the guilt of Crumb’s death at the time when Custer and I were accused.
“After we had obtained Guy’s confession, Allen gave us further information tending to prove Custer’s innocence. He said he could not give it before without incriminating himself; and as he had no love for Custer, he did not intend to hang for a crime he had not committed. He knew that he would surely hang if he confessed the part that he had played in formulating the evidence against Custer.
“Crumb had been the means of sending Allen to the county jail, after robbing him of several thousand dollars. The day before Crumb was killed, Allen’s sentence expired. The first thing he did was to search for Crumb, with the intention of killing the man. He learned at the studio where Crumb was, and he followed him immediately. He was hanging around the camp out of sight, waiting for Crumb, when he heard the shot that killed him. His investigation led him to Crumb’s body. He was instantly overcome by the fear, induced by his guilty conscience, that the crime would be laid at his door. In casting about for some plan by which he might divert suspicion from himself, he discovered an opportunity to turn it against a man whom he hated. The fact that he had been a stableman on Ganado, and was familiar with the customs of the ranch made it an easy thing for him to go to the stables, saddle the Apache, and ride him up Sycamore to Crumb’s body. Here he deliberately pulled the off fore shoe from the horse and hit it under Crumb’s body. Then he rode back to the stable, unsaddled the Apache, and made his way to the village.
“The district attorney said that we need have no fear but that Custer will be exonerated and freed. And, Eva” — she turned to the girl with a happy smile— “I have it very confidentially that there is small likelihood that any jury in southern California will convict Guy, if he bases his defense upon a plea of insanity.”
Eva smiled bravely and said:
“One thing I don’t understand, Shannon, is what you were doing brushing the road with a bough from a tree, on the morning after the killing of Crumb, if you weren’t trying to obliterate some one’s tracks.”
“That’s just what I was trying to do,” said Shannon. “Ever since Custer taught me something about tracking, it has held a certain fascination for me, so that I often try to interpret the tracks I see along the trails in the hills. It was because of this, I suppose, that I immediately recognized the Apache’s tracks around the body of Crumb. I immediately jumped to the conclusion that Custer had killed him, and I did what I could to remove this evidence. As it turned out, my efforts did more harm than good, until Allen’s explanation cleared up the matter.”
“And why,” asked the colonel, “did Allen undergo this sudden change of heart?”
Shannon turned toward him, her face slightly flushed, though she looked him straight in the eyes as she spoke.
“It is a hard thing for me to tell you,” she said.
“Allen is a bad man — a very bad man; yet in the worst of men there is a spark of good. Allen told me this morning, in the district attorney’s office, what it was that had kindled to life the spark of good in him. He is my father.”
THE END
THE RESURRECTION OF JIMBER-JAW (1937)
CONTENTS
CHAPTER 1
CHAPTER 2
CHAPTER 3
CHAPTER 4
CHAPTER 5
CHAPTER 1
Credit this story to Wild Pat Morgan, that laughing, reckless, black- haired grandson of Ireland’s peat bogs. To Pat Morgan, one-time flying lieutenant of the AEF, ex-inventor, amateur boxer, and drinking companion par excellence.
I met Pat Morgan at the country-club bar, one of those casual things. After the third highball we were calling each other by our first names. By the sixth we had dragged the family skeletons out of the closet and were shaking the dust off them. A little later we were weeping on one another’s shoulders, and that’s how it began.
We got pretty well acquainted that evening, and afterwards our friendship grew. We saw a lot of each other when he brought his ship to the airport where I kept mine. His wife was dead, and he was a rather lonely figure evenings; so I used to have him up to the house for dinner often.
He had been rather young when the war broke out, but had managed to get to France and the front just before the end. I think he shot down three e
nemy planes, although he was just a kid. I had that from another flyer; Pat never talked about it. But he was full of flying anecdotes about other war-time pilots and about his own stunting experiences in the movies. He had followed this latter profession for several years.
All of which has nothing to do with the real story other than to explain how I became well enough acquainted with Pat Morgan to be on hand when he told the strange tale of his flight to Russia, of the scientist who mastered Time, of the man from 50,000 B.C. called Jimber-Jaw.
We were lunching together at The Vendome that day. I had been waiting for Pat at the bar, discussing with some others the disappearance of Stone, the wrestler. Everyone is familiar, of course, with Stone’s meteoric rise to fame as an athlete and a high-salaried star in the movies, and his vanishing had become a minor ten-days’ wonder. We were trying to decide if Stone had been kidnapped, whether the ransom letters received were the work of cranks, when Pat Morgan came in with the extra edition of the Herald and Express that the newsboys were hawking in the streets.
I followed Pat to our table and he spread the paper out. A glaring headline gave the meat of the story.
“So they’ve found him!” I exclaimed.
Pat Morgan nodded. “The police had me in on it. I’ve just come from Headquarters.” He shrugged, frowned, and then began to talk slowly:
CHAPTER 2
I’ve always been inclined to putter around with inventions (Pat Morgan said), and after my wife died I tried to forget my loneliness by centering my interest on my laboratory work. It was a poor substitute for the companionship I had lost, but at that I guess it proved my salvation.
I was working on a new fuel which was much cheaper and less bulky than gasoline; but I found that it required radical changes in engine design, and I lacked the capital to put my blueprints into metal.
About this time my grandfather died and left me a considerable fortune. Quite a slice of it went into experimental engines before I finally perfected one. It was a honey.
I built a ship and installed my engine in it; then I tried to sell the patents on both engine and fuel to the Government — but something happened. When I reached a certain point in these official negotiations I ran into an invisible stone wall — I was stopped dead. I couldn’t even get a permit to manufacture my engine.
I never did find out who or what stopped me, but I remembered the case of the Doble steam car. Perhaps you will recall that, also.
Then I got sore and commenced to play around with the Russians. The war- winds were already beginning to blow again in Europe, and the comrades of the Soviet were decidedly interested in new aircraft developments. They had money to burn, and their representatives had a way with them that soothed the injured ego of a despondent inventor. They finally made me a splendid offer to take my plans and formulae to Moscow and manufacture engines and fuel for them. In addition, as a publicity and propaganda stunt, they offered a whacking bonus if I would put my new developments to the test by flying there.
I jumped at this chance to make monkeys out of those bureaucratic boneheads in Washington. I’d show those guys what they were missing.
During the course of these negotiations I met Dr. Stade who was also flirting with the brethren of the U.S.S.R. Professor Marvin Stade, to give him his full name and title, and he was quite a guy. A big fellow, built like an ox, with a choleric temper and the most biting pair of blue eyes I’ve ever gazed upon. You must have read in the papers about Stade’s experiments with frozen dogs and monkeys. He used to freeze them up solid for days and weeks, and then thaw them out and bring them alive again. He had also been conducting some unique studies in surgical hypnosis, and otherwise stepping on the toes of the constituted medical poobahs.
The S.P.C.A. and the Department of Health had thrown a monkey-wrench into Stade’s program — stopped him cold — and there was fire in his eye. We were a couple of soreheads, perhaps, but I think we had a right to be. Lord knows we were both sincere in what we were trying to accomplish — he to fight disease, I to add something to the progress of aviation.
The Reds welcomed Dr. Stade with open arms. They agreed not only to let him carry his experiments as far as he liked but to finance him as well. They even promised to let him use human beings as subjects and to furnish said humans in job lots. I suppose they had a large supply of counter-revolutionists on hand.
When Stade found that I planned to fly my ship to Moscow, he asked if he might go along. He was a showman as well as a scientist, and the publicity appealed to him. I told him the risk was too great, that I didn’t want to take the responsibility of any life other than my own, but he pooh-poohed every objection in that bull-bellow voice of his. Finally I shrugged and said okay.
I won’t bore you with the details of the flight. You couldn’t have read about it in the papers, of course, for the word went out through official channels that we were to get a cold shoulder. The press put a blanket of silence on us, and that was that. There were passport difficulties, refusals to certify the plane, all that sort of thing. But we managed to muddle through.
The engine functioned perfectly. So did the fuel. So did everything, including my navigation, until we were flying over the most God-forsaken terrain anyone ever saw — some place in Northern Siberia according to our maps. That’s where my new-fangled carburetor chose to go haywire.
We had about ten thousand feet elevation at the time, but that wasn’t much help. There was no place to land. As far as I could see there was nothing but forests and rivers — hundreds of rivers.
I went into a straight glide with a tail-wind, figuring I could cover a lot more territory that way than I could by spiraling and every second I was keeping my eyes peeled for a spot, however small, where I might set her down without damage. We’d never get out of that endless forest, I knew, unless we flew out.
I’ve always liked trees — a nature-lover at heart — but as I looked down on that vast host of silent sentinels of the wilderness, I felt the chill of fear and something that was akin to hate. There was a loneliness and an emptiness inside me. There they stood — in regiments, in divisions, in armies, waiting to seize us and hold us forever; to hold our broken bodies, for when we struck them, they would crush us, tear us to pieces.
Then I saw a little patch of yellow far ahead. It was no larger than the palm of my hand, it seemed, but it was an open space — a tiny sanctuary in the very heart of the enemy’s vast encampment. As we approached, it grew larger until at last it resolved itself into a few acres of reddish yellow soil devoid of trees. It was the most beautiful landscape I have ever seen.
As the ship rolled to a stop on fairly level ground, I turned and looked at Dr. Stade. He was lighting a cigarette. He paused, with the match still burning, and grinned at me. I knew then that he was regular. It’s funny, but neither one of us had spoken since the motor quit. That was as it should have been; for there was nothing to say — at least nothing that would have meant anything.
We got down and looked around. Beside us, a little river ran north to empty finally into the Arctic Ocean. Our tiny patch of salvation lay in a bend on the west side of the river. On the east side was a steep cliff that rose at least three hundred feet above the river. The lowest stratum looked like dirty glass. Above that were strata of conglomerate and sedimentary rock; and, topping all, the grim forest scowled down upon us menacingly.
“Funny looking rock,” I commented, pointing toward the lowest ledge.
“Ice,” said Stade. “My friend, you are looking at the remnants of the late lamented glacial period that raised havoc with the passing of the Pleistocene. What are we going to use for food?”
“We got guns,” I reminded him.
“Yes. It was very thoughtful of you to get permission to bring firearms and ammunition, but what are we going to shoot?”
I shrugged. “There must be something. What are all these trees for? They must have been put here for birds to sit on. In the meantime we’ve sandwiches and a couple of the
rmoses of hot coffee. I hope it’s hot.”
“So do I.”
It wasn’t....
I took a shotgun and hunted up river. I got a hare — mostly fur and bones — and a brace of birds that resembled partridges. By the time I got back to camp the weather had become threatening. There was a storm north of us. We could see the lightning, and faint thunder began to growl.
We had already wheeled the plane to the west and highest part of our clearing and staked it down as close under the shelter of the forest as we could. Nothing else to do.
By the time we had cooked and eaten our supper it commenced to rain. The long, northern twilight was obliterated by angry clouds that rolled low out of the north. Thunder bombarded us. Lightning laid down a barrage of pale brilliance all about. We crawled into the cabin of the plane and spread our mattresses and blankets on the floor behind the seats.
It rained. And when I say it rained, I mean it rained. It could have given ancient Armenia seven-and-a-half honor tricks and set it at least three; for what it took forty days and forty nights to do in ancient Armenia, it did in one night on that nameless river somewhere in Siberia, U.S.S.R. I’ll never forget that downpour.
I don’t know how long I slept, but when I awoke it was raining not cats and dogs only, but the entire animal kingdom. I crawled out and looked through a window. The next flash of lightning showed the river swirling within a few feet of the outer wing.
I shook Dr. Stade awake and called his attention to the danger of our situation.
“The devil!” he said. “Wait till she floats.” He turned over and went to sleep again. Of course it wasn’t his ship, and perhaps he was a strong swimmer; I wasn’t.
I lay awake most of what was left of the night. The rising flood was a foot deep around the landing gear at the worst; then she commenced to go down.
Delphi Collected Works of Edgar Rice Burroughs (Illustrated) (Series Four Book 26) Page 766