by Max Brand
The doctor went on in his rather irritated manner: “That may change your viewpoint altogether, as a matter of fact.”
“About helping her?” asked Sherry.
“Exactly.”
“No,” said Sherry, “it doesn’t at all.”
“Ha! I wonder,” said the doctor. He began to pace up and down again, kicking in his half-abstracted and half-venomous way at the small stones in the path. He halted, with his back turned. “No one can help her without pouring his whole heart into the job.”
“I suppose not,” answered Sherry.
Layman swung about on him. “You’re free to go. You know that,” he said. “You won’t get the ten thousand that you were hired for.”
Sherry did not reply to this. He wondered if the other were trying to torment him as a test of his temper and of his steadfastness.
“You’re not going?” inquired Layman.
“No.”
“In addition, there may be danger in staying about this place and trying to help Beatrice. Have you thought of that?”
“More sailors, do you mean?” asked Sherry.
“Ha?” exclaimed the doctor. Then he went on, thoughtfully: “You’ve looked a little way beneath the surface, at least.”
“Thank you,” said Sherry dryly.
“Don’t be proud,” said the doctor. “There will be plenty of time for you to show what you’re made of before this little affair is over.” He laughed suddenly, and added: “I can assure you of that. Plenty of time, and plenty of ways.”
He went up to Sherry and gripped his arm with such force that the big man was surprised. “You went down to the hotel. Did you find out anything about Fennel? Did you find out anything about the murderer?”
“I found out that he’s pretty deep,” said Sherry.
“In what way? What did you find out?”
“He posed as a drunkard. Matter of fact, he probably never touched a drop except in public.”
“Huh?” said the doctor. “How could that be? I’ve said that he was a victim of alcoholic poisoning. Do you think that I imagined it, my friend?”
“Good bye,” said Sherry.
“What?”
Sherry walked off, but Layman followed after him and touched his arm.
“You’re right,” he said, when the other turned again. “I have no right to take advantage of your generous attitude toward Beatrice . . . and me. But the fact is that I’m half mad. This thing has upset me, naturally. You see that, Sherry? As a matter of fact, I value your help hugely. It might make the difference of the turning of the scale.”
“I hope so.”
“So go on and tell me about the sailor . . . the pretended sailor . . . whatever he was. You say that he didn’t drink?”
“I don’t go against a doctor’s word. I suppose you know your business.”
“I’m not a genius of the profession,” said Layman. “But I think I know alcoholism when I see it. It’s not the rarest disease in this part of the world.”
“Very well. I tell you only what I know. I’ve been in Fennel’s room twice. I saw that more than a bottle of whiskey had been used up between visits. Well, that seemed incredible. A man with more than a quart of whiskey in him doesn’t walk up a path and confront another as Fennel confronted Wilton a while ago . . . even allowing that he’s a freak and can carry twice as much liquor as a normal man.”
“More than a quart? Of course not. That’s impossible for human nature, without making a man nearly senseless, I suppose.”
“Very well. The liquor was gone. I looked about to find how it had vanished. And I saw a little trap set into the lead of the drainage pipe. I went down below. The ground was reeking with whiskey fumes. There you are. It’s fairly clear that, if Fennel drank enough to have alcoholic poisoning, he dodged a lot more by pouring the stuff down the pipe.”
“What idiots,” said Layman, “men can be. There’s a fellow with murder planned, and incidentally he wanted to work up a great reputation as a drinker. And so the drainage pipe scheme. Well . . . and still there’s no trace of Fennel. And the fool of a sheriff,” he went on, “is trying to hang the guilt on the shoulders of Beatrice Wilton. Heaven forgive him for a blind man.”
“I don’t see this . . . why should Fennel have killed Wilton?”
“Is that strange? He couldn’t get what he wanted. Look at his clothes. Rags and tatters. And a beggar never gets enough. He wants nothing less than a fortune laid into his hands. So with our friend Fennel. He couldn’t get what he wanted. So he used a gun.”
“I don’t see him using a gun with a silencer,” said Sherry. “He didn’t impress me as that type. A common fore-the-mast sailor would hardly go in for the niceties.”
“You forgot what the newspapers do for people these days,” said the doctor bitterly. “They not only suggest crimes, but they also suggest safe ways of working them. If murders were never reported in the public prints, you’d find the lists cut down ten percent in no time.”
“But there was Fennel,” persisted Sherry, “not asking for a great deal. Apparently all that he wanted was enough to keep drunk on. Wilton would have given him that much.”
“Wilton was a stubborn fellow,” said the doctor. “What makes you think that he would have given it?”
“Because he was almost frightened to death,” said Sherry.
“Are you sure of that?”
“I walked down the path behind him. He hardly could keep himself in hand.”
“Fennel a sham . . . Wilton frightened to death by a sham . . . hands pointing at Beatrice . . . great heaven,” said Layman, “who can see through this muddle?”
They were interrupted by the arrival of the sheriff, the coroner, and the coroner’s jury, who had been hastily gathered. They were brought into the living room of the Wilton house, where the murdered man had been placed on a couch. He looked very pale and peaceful to Sherry, with the smile of death on his lips. And yet that death seemed more horrible than usual in such a place, for all the process of a normal life was scattered about—a newspaper here, a book, open and face down, there. The disarray of the chair, the rumpled corner of a rug, all seemed to make it impossible to believe that Oliver Wilton lay dead.
The coroner was a fat man whose wind was quite gone. He dropped into a chair and fanned himself with his hat. “Pretty neat room, ain’t it?” he said. “I never been here before. You, Pat?”
Pat admitted that it was his first visit.
“That’s the trouble with a lot of these rich swells,” declared the coroner. “They’re above the common people. They got no time for them. And then the first thing that they know, they trip up their heels, and they got to have just as much law around as the next man.”
There was general agreement with this statement.
Then the coroner ordered the room to be cleared except for the clerk, the sheriff, and the first witness, who was to be Dr. Layman.
Back to the garden went Sherry and Pete Lang. And the face of Pete was serene and happy.
Sherry said to him quietly: “I suppose you’re heading back for the range, Pete?”
“And why?” asked Pete.
“Because you’re through here, as far as I can make out.”
“And how do you make it out, son. Will you tell me that?”
“Your boss is dead, Pete. There’s no more money here for you.”
“Then I’ll be a dog-gone philanthropist,” said Lang, “and work on just for sheer patriotism, as you might call it.”
“To hang a girl if you can?” asked Sherry coldly.
“That rides you, partner, don’t it?” asked Pete.
Sherry was silent, and Lang looked calmly upon the stern face of his friend.
“I’m gonna work, and work,” he said. “I never felt more at home than I do right now. The law can do what it wants, but I got an idea that Pete Lang is the one that’s gonna prove the case.”
“What makes you think that?”
“Lemme ask you
. . . what become of the letter that Wilton received from Fennel?”
“I forgot about that. It must be in his coat pocket. I remember that he put it there.”
“I remembered, too. And here it is.” He spread it out in the hand of Sherry, and the letter read:
Dear Skipper: So that we can cut the business short, suppose that you cum along with some of the perls? I don’t ask for much. Just say that you bring along a handful, and not of the smallest. That wood hold me. I don’t want to rob you. I just want my shair.
Respektfuly,
Fennel
“But he didn’t bring the pearls,” said Sherry, “and so he was murdered.”
“Didn’t he bring them? What do you think of this?” asked Pete calmly.
And, scooping a hand into his pocket, he brought it out with the palm well filled with the milky luster of a heap of pearls.
XX
Over these jewels they bowed their heads. They were by no means of uniform size, shape, or quality, but some were like small pears, and others were irregular globes, and others, again, were what are called perle boutons by jewelers, that is to say, flat on the bottom, and formed like hemispheres. There were very small pearls, and there was one pear-shaped jewel of considerable size.
“You’re going to show those to the coroner and his jury?” asked Sherry.
“Of course,” said Lang. “These and the letter. They’re testimony, ain’t they?”
“You’re not going to show them,” declared Sherry firmly.
“And why not, Tiny? Is there anything else in the case that argues as much as this?”
“And what does it argue?” asked Sherry.
“That Fennel never killed Wilton.”
“How do you make that out?”
“That’s a simple trick. Look here. Fennel writes to Wilton. ‘Bring me down a flock of pearls,’ he says. Wilton does it. Still, Fennel shoots him? Why, I ask you? It ain’t reasonable and it ain’t likely. A gent holds up Wilton. Wilton comes through with the goods. At least, he takes down the stuff that’s asked for. He wouldn’t’ve done that if he hadn’t intended to pass them over.”
“And then?”
“Then what happened is easy to guess. The girl, all worked up about things, comes through the woods, sees Wilton, and takes a crack at him. He drops on his face. Fennel, scared to death, figures that his turn is coming next . . . maybe that the bullet really was meant for him. He beats it into the trees.”
“Why should he chuck off hat and shoes and coat?”
“Why not? He wants to make tracks as fast as he can go. As he goes whisking through the brush his hat is knocked off. He can’t make time in that long overcoat . . . you remember that it pretty near dragged the ground? . . . so he throws that off. And still his shoes are in his way. Look at the size of those shoes. Twelves, I’d say. Well, he chucks those shoes off, too, and goes on bare-footed.”
“Through that rough going?”
“What’s rough going to a sailor that’s hardened up his feet using them bare to go aloft on iron-hard cordage?”
Sherry, stumped and disgusted with this perfect logic, still struggled. “Look at it another way,” he suggested. “They walk down the path together, Fennel and Wilton. Fennel wants to see the goods, and Wilton shows him the pearls. Fennel says they’re not enough. That’s the point, perhaps, where they stop and argue. You remember?”
“Yes.”
“Wilton insists that’s all he’ll give to Fennel. Fennel gets angry. Finally he pulls a gun and shoots Wilton down, in a blind rage.”
“And goes on without taking the pearls that he’s just seen Wilton, by your account, drop back into his coat pocket?”
“Yes, because he’s too frightened by what he’s done.”
“Tell me straight, Sherry. Was Fennel the sort of a fellow who would be easily scared?”
Sherry bit his lip. Certainly Fennel had appeared to be a man who had plenty of nerve.
“Half a second to lean over and drag out this stuff. Was Fennel the fellow to overlook such a sure bet as that?” went on Lang, triumphant in his progress toward the truth. Then he summed up: “Fennel couldn’t have been shown those pearls, if he committed the murder. And he wouldn’t have shot unless he’d had a chance to see them. And once having seen them, he would have taken them along when he bolted.”
“Maybe the pearls were only a dodge with him,” suggested Sherry. “Perhaps he only wanted to use the pearls as a snare to trap Wilton and get him out into the garden?”
“You can fit in a perhaps to pretty near anything,” said Lang, “but I tell you this, old son, when I finish telling my yarn to the coroner and his jury, I’ll lay the long odds that they put the girl in jail charged with murder in the first degree.”
“And that,” said Sherry, “is what you’re not going to do.”
“Hello!” cried Lang. “And why not?”
“She’s got to have a fair chance,” said Sherry. “You can’t stack the cards against her.”
“Stack the cards? I’m not pulling any tricks against her. What have I got against the girl?”
“You hate them all . . . everything in skirts,” said Sherry. “Isn’t that true?”
“I see through them,” answered Lang. “They’ve smashed my life. They’ve double-crossed me every turn.”
“But here’s one case where you’re going to talk soft and be nice,” said Sherry.
“Are you as hard hit as that?” asked his friend.
“I am.”
“You want me to hold out this stuff?”
“I do.”
Lang groaned. “Don’t you see, man,” he urged, “that the girl’s a cold-blooded little piece? She’s too pretty to be good, in the first place.”
“She’s got a hard enough row to hoe now,” answered Sherry. “When the sheriff and I broke into her room, she tried to shoot herself. That’s about enough to finish her, I suppose, when the sheriff gets through talking. I ask you again . . . will you give her a chance, man?”
At this, Pete Lang struck a hand against his forehead. “Here’s my only pal,” he said, “and he comes to me and says . . . ‘Pete, old man, for the sake of old times, will you gimme a chance to tie a rope around my neck and hang myself from your front door?’ What am I to say? Boy, boy, you’d never get nothing out of her except a big laugh when she was in the clear.”
“You may be right,” said Sherry.
“What do you think yourself about her?”
“Lord knows.”
“Tiny, you think that she’s guilty.”
“I do,” groaned Sherry.
“But you’d carry on?”
“I love her,” Sherry said with a sad simplicity.
Lang rolled a cigarette with fumbling fingers. “You love her,” he said. “You gotta chuck yourself away for her. By grab, it’s always that way. The straight gents love the poison.” He lighted his cigarette, and through swirling smoke his tormented eyes stared at his friend.
Sherry held out his hand and waited, and finally Lang made a convulsive gesture of last argument. “They’ll jail her and try her, without this,” he said. “But with this handful of stuff, they’ll hang her. Without it they won’t, I should say. They’ll only hang a doubt on her that’ll disgrace her all her life, until a poor sucker like you comes along and marries her . . . and gets his throat cut a couple of months later.”
The hand of Sherry still waited in mid-air, and at last Lang clutched and shook it with vigor.
“I’m wrong,” he said. “I’m turning loose another plague on the world, and all because it wears a pretty face. Lord forgive me for the damage that she’s gonna do.”
“We’ve got plenty of other things to do around here,” said Sherry. “We want to run down the whole secret life of this Oliver Wilton. It may be that we’ll learn enough to clear her altogether. You’re fighting on my side now, Pete?”
Lang nodded mournfully. “But mind you, son,” he cautioned gravely, “the best thing tha
t we can do is to turn in our evidence straight, and then pack and ride for the range. We never have had any luck in Clayrock. We’re never going to have any luck. And there you are. It’s my hunch. I’ve given you a fair warning.”
To this Sherry made no answer, for the door opened, and he was summoned in before the coroner to give his testimony.
They wore gloomy, stern faces, these twelve men. One might have thought that they had eaten something extremely bitter to the taste, so were their mouths puckered and awry.
The coroner was no stickler for form or legalities. He said directly: “Things look bad for the girl, Sherry. Now, what you gotta say about her at the murder?”
Sherry looked slowly around the room. “Nothing,” he answered at last.
At this, the sheriff rose from his chair. “You’ve said things in my presence, Sherry. I want you to say them again. It’s your duty.”
“My duty?” said Sherry. “My duty to help toward the hanging of a girl I know is innocent?”
He said that in such a ringing voice that the jury started of one accord, and the fat coroner so hastily clapped his spectacles upon his nose that they dropped off at once before he could examine Sherry carefully.
“What you think,” said the coroner, “ain’t specially interesting just here and now, Sherry. We think that you’re a straight shooter . . . both ways of using the word. Now we want to know what you seen and heard and did today, about the time that Wilton was murdered? And though I take a lot of interest in a gent that’s willing to help a poor girl, still, justice has gotta have its chance in the game. I ask you, man to man, will you talk out?”
Sherry raised a finger at them. “I can tell you what I saw and heard,” he said, “but I can’t tell you what I felt. And that’s what counts. And every man of you that has a wife, and every man of you that has a daughter, knows what I mean.”
“That’s not testimony,” said the sheriff.
“The coroner runs this court, I believe, and not the sheriff,” said Sherry icily.
“My dear lad,” said the quiet voice of Moon, “we have our own way of fulfilling the law in this county, but we know testimony when we hear it. We don’t want your opinions. We want your facts.”