The Steel Box

by Max Brand

  “To hound Beatrice Wilton!” exclaimed Sherry, black rage swallowing his judgment. He stepped toward the sheriff. “But if you’re loading the dice against her,” he said, “I want you to know that there are those who will stop your game.”

  “Hold on, young man!” exclaimed the coroner.

  The jury gazed at the audacious Sherry with frightened eyes. For twenty-five years the sheriff had played something more than human role in that community.

  “He’s young,” said Herbert Moon as gently as ever. “He’s young and he has a heart . . . a big heart, and a hot one. I hold nothing against him, but I think you’ll get nothing worthwhile out of the testimony of Sherry, coroner.”

  “It looks like you’re right,” agreed the corner. “Sherry, are you gonna talk, or do we have to bind you over for contempt . . . is that the right word, Sheriff?”

  “If you think that you need more testimony . . . yes,” said the sheriff. “I suppose that we can hold him until he’ll talk.”

  “If we need more?” muttered the coroner. “Well, we’ll try Pete Lang, next. Sherry, we’re finished with you, for a while.”

  So Sherry walked from the room, and found the doctor walking up and down the hall outside. He cast a bitter eye upon Sherry as Lang was called in to play his part of witness.

  “You meant well, Sherry,” he said, “but do you think that holding back in this fashion will be of any real use to Beatrice? They’ll all guess blacker things than you could have said about her actions.”

  Sherry did not answer. He felt that he had played a foolish part. This was a riddle that wits could not solve. But perhaps a force of hand could serve his purpose. So he looked darkly upon Layman and said nothing.

  XXI

  The testimony of Lang was as disappointing as that of Sherry. He did not refuse to talk, but he refused to say anything of importance. “I don’t know,” was his invariable answer when he seemed to have been crowded into a corner, and at last the coroner said to the jury: “You boys can see for yourselves. Lang won’t talk . . . he’s an old bunkie of Sherry’s.”

  They dismissed Lang.

  The witnesses were not allowed to be present at the pronouncing of the verdict, but through the door the voice of the foreman was plainly heard declaring that in the estimation of twelve citizens of that jury, Beatrice Wilton was guilty of murder by shooting Oliver Wilton with Exhibit A, which was the girl’s own revolver, displayed upon a table in front of the coroner, together with the cast-off clothes of Fennel, and other items of interest in the case. She would be held in the Clayrock jail for trial.

  But, the verdict having been given, the prisoner surrendered to the sheriff, Sherry and Lang were admitted to the room again. They found all the men in the room wearing long faces, unwilling to look at one another, with the exception of the sheriff, whose expression never varied, it seemed. A cheerful quiet always possessed his eye, and he looked as brightly and calmly upon Sherry and Lang and the girl as upon any of the jurors.

  The latter were anxious to leave, but the sheriff would not let them go at once.

  In the meantime, Beatrice Wilton sat by the window, utterly different from what she had been before. Sherry had dreaded facing her; he had expected that the strain would have broken down her nerve strength entirely and left her a wreck, but, instead, she appeared perfectly calm and self-possessed. She and the sheriff alone had themselves under perfect control, while Layman went up to her, with Sherry and Lang as a sort of rear guard.

  Layman sat down beside her and took her hand. “Beatrice,” he said, “it’s going to be a long, hard fight.”

  She looked at him without an answering word or gesture, and her quiet manner staggered Sherry. If she had strength enough for this, she had strength enough for anything, he told himself—strength enough, say, for the slaying of a man. And once more the overwhelming surety of her guilt possessed his mind.

  But there were compensating facts, if only they could be known, and he would know them, if there were strength in him, and wit in Lang, to unravel the skein of mystery.

  Layman went on: “We’ll need every penny we can put our hands on.”

  “You can sell some stock for me, Eustace,” she replied.

  “As soon as you give me power of attorney, and full rights to act for you, of course.”

  “Yes, naturally.”

  “But in the first place, I intend to close the house and discharge the servants, Beatrice.”

  “Of course.”

  “And these good fellows who have wanted so much to help you, dear.” He nodded to Sherry and Lang.

  “Yes, naturally,” she said again.

  But here Lang put in: “We ain’t hired men, ma’am, but we’re volunteers. If we could have a chance to look through that house when we want to, it might be that we could turn up some things that would be useful to you.”

  “My dear Lang,” said the doctor blankly, “what on earth could you discover in the house?”

  “Enough, maybe, to save Miss Wilton,” replied the cowpuncher.

  “Lang,” began the doctor, “of course I know that you have the best will in the world, but . . .”

  Beatrice Wilton leaned forward a little and raised a hand to silence Layman. “You already know something,” she said. “I’m sure that you know something that the coroner hasn’t heard, Pete?”

  She let that familiar name fall with such a gentle intonation that Sherry saw his hardy friend start a little, and he smiled in dour understanding.

  But to this question Layman interposed: “My dear Beatrice, don’t you see that it’s going to make everything more difficult for me if I have to divide my time between the house and . . .”

  “And the jail?” she finished for him, undisturbed.

  Even Layman, cool as ice ordinarily, now flushed a little. “I can’t very well be in two places at once,” he complained.

  “Of course you can’t. So let Lew Sherry and Pete Lang stay in the house.”

  “There’s every reason against it,” urged Layman. “These are known men, Beatrice.”

  “Known?” she echoed, raising her brows a little.

  “I don’t want to insult them. It’s no insult to say that they’re known to have come here as guards to your uncle.”

  “But what has that to do with me?”

  “Don’t you see? You’d have them up on the hill like a sort of standing army, ready to rush down and smash the jail open, say, in case the trial went against you. Isn’t that obvious? People know Sherry, particularly. He has a long and . . . efficient . . . record behind him. You understand, Beatrice, that from the very first, you must try to win public opinion to your side of the case. And you can’t do that when you have two aces up your sleeve . . . and everybody knows about them. It’s really very important. You ought to see that, dear.”

  “I didn’t dream that it could mean so much,” she said. “Of course, if that’s the way of it, we’ll just have to close the house.”

  “Naturally,” said Layman. “Great Scott, what a blunder to have posted them up there like a pair of trained eagles on a crag. If you win, you win . . . if you lose the case, the pair of them come and split open the jail and take you out.”

  Sherry could see the point of this argument clearly enough, but Lang persisted with much solemnity. He leaned a little closer to the girl and said slowly: “I think that I might turn up something worthwhile at the house. Serious and sober, ma’am, I’d like to try.”

  She looked earnestly at the cowpuncher. Then: “Well, Eustace?” she asked.

  The doctor hesitated. He looked at the girl rather than at Lang. “Lang is a keen fellow,” he said suddenly. “If he has an idea, let him try his best, of course. We can’t afford to turn down any chances, no matter how small.”

  “That’s settled, then, and the two of you will be here?”

  She looked to Sherry and he, in turn, bowed his great, heavy bulk above her chair.

  “You have small chances, anyway,” he said, “a
nd never a better chance than right now.”

  She looked fixedly up at him, not frightened, but thoughtful, considering, and again his judgment said to him—“Guilty!”—and again his heart leaped and reveled in her beauty, and drove him on.

  “What chance?” she asked him.

  “Here are three of us,” he replied. “I can answer for Pete. If Layman hasn’t a gun, I can lend him an extra Colt. The coroner is a fossil. The jury has not more than two fighting men in the whole outfit. We’re not more than six steps from the door. Get up from your chair and walk straight for the door. You’ll be halfway there before anyone challenges you. Then run. We’ll cover your going and pile out behind you . . .”

  “The sheriff?” she said.

  “If Moon draws a gun,” said Sherry through his teeth, “heaven help him.”

  “Eustace,” whispered the girl.

  Layman, his face white, but his eyes very bright, listened, and said not a word. Lang dropped a hand upon the massive shoulder of his friend. It was his silent consent.

  “It’s your one real chance,” said Sherry. “Do you understand me? For life.”

  “Where could we go?”

  “I’ll find a place to take you. Lang and the doctor and I will take care of you.”

  “Sherry and Lang!” called the sheriff.

  “He suspects something. Now is your time,” said Sherry.

  “You mean it?”

  “Yes, yes. But quickly.”

  Suddenly color leaped into her face. “Not one step,” said the girl. “Why . . . it would be ruin for you, all three.”

  “Sherry!” said the sheriff.

  Sherry turned heavily away and Herbert Moon went halfway across the room to meet him.

  “I love a brave man,” said the sheriff, “but, my dear young fellow, even courage shouldn’t attempt to move mountains.”

  XXII

  The town of Clayrock was filled for the trial days before it was due to be called. The town was put on the map, in a way, and the three hotels did big business. Prices for all things rose.

  In the first place, there were the reporters who swarmed in. Newspapers in these days have to have their thrills to give hungry readers, and what is there better for this purpose than the case of a young and beautiful girl accused of murder? To make it better still, suppose the girl to be well raised, well educated, of good family. To cap the climax make the victim a blood relation—her father’s own brother.

  It was all that the newspapers could wish for, and they sent their reporters on long before the trial to work up the ground.

  They found something to work. In the first place, there was the question, still wide open: “Did Fennel perform the murder, or is Beatrice Wilton guilty?”

  Of course, the papers took sides. To some Beatrice Wilton was plainly guilty and the reporters almost said so. The man Fennel was an elusive shadow. He was hardly to be called a man; certainly he had disappeared from Clayrock with as much thoroughness as though the wind had blown him through the town to be dissolved in air. So one faction seemed to doubt that Fennel ever existed. His battered shoes, his ragged overcoat—still whiskey-tainted according to some—and his old hat were in evidence, of course, but they were discounted heavily. He had no motives. His past was unknown. His relations with Oliver Wilton were yet to be established. In the meantime, here was Beatrice Wilton, young and beautiful, to be sure. But when has beauty not meant trouble? And behind her lay the dark background of the Wilton family. Into the dim past, they traced its sources. They listed down upon the account a blockade runner in the Civil War; a pair of brothers who had joined the ’49ers and only one of whom had come home, well-to-do, but streaked with silver scars. They followed the Wiltons into older days still. There was a Wilton-Durham feud in the first part of the nineteenth century. Some said that three had been killed. Some said thirty. There had been duels, too—there was a story of a Wilton who had fought with an enemy across a dining room table, the muzzles of their outstretched pistols overlapping. And in the times of swords, still one found that the Wiltons had been involved in violence.

  Then, what more natural than that this “proud, keen, vigorous, fearless girl” should have taken her affairs into her own hands? She wanted possession of her own fortune. She did not want it to pass into the hands of her uncle even for a moment. That was motive sufficient—for a Wilton.

  So the newspapers of the hostile faction printed photographs of Beatrice that showed her unsmiling, straight-eyed, keen as any man.

  To the other reporters—and theirs was the larger faction—it appeared that she would make better copy as the beautiful and tragic form involved in mysterious danger, innocent, but entangled. They loved to print pictures of Beatrice Wilton in her softer humors, to show the exquisite delicacy of her profile, to show her smile, and the large eyes looking down. They combed her past and found it fragrant. Scandal never had touched her. They hunted down her schoolfellows and interviewed them, and learned from them all that was kind and good about their old school companion. They picked up little anecdotes. They printed columns and columns. They stole from one another. They invented, refurbished, borrowed, re-dyed, trimmed, decorated, and gilded these tales of Beatrice Wilton. They loaded the telegraph lines with the tidings of her. They photographed her house, her room, her garden—particularly that dark spot where her uncle had been found dead—her horse, her dog, her saddle. Nothing was too minute to deserve attention if it had once belonged to Beatrice Wilton. If she had but looked on a thing, it became of value.

  That was not all. They could not very well stop short with Beatrice, but they went on to all the other figures in the case, and made them interesting enough. There was the story of Everett Wilton, of course, rich, happy, young—as men of affairs go—and yet a suicide. Perhaps a suicide because of the blow that had fallen upon his fortune when the Princess Marie sank. Could it be that in the mind of Beatrice Wilton there had been some motive of sheer revenge for the same reason? At least, it helped to make one side of the case stronger.

  Furthermore, they could take up Dr. Layman, the betrothed of the girl. He was a great help to her. The hostile sheets made little of him, and refused to give him much space, but the friendly journals dwelt at length upon his steadfast devotion. The hours he spent near the jail. His constant visits to the prisoner. His hours of consultation with the lawyer. And, above all, his calm, aloof, aristocratic manner. He was the soul of honor; his straight, steady eyes told what this man was. And could it be dreamed that he would cling to a murderess? Stuff and nonsense! A gentleman of breeding and of position has better taste and better fortune, let us hope. So they spread the doctor at large across their sheets. He made an excellent figure for the photographers. His lean face and pronounced, handsome features always reproduced well, and he was the more desired because he had courteously and firmly requested the reporters to take and print no more pictures of him. Of course, that made the shutters click far more busily than ever.

  Then there was the quiet sheriff, he who was known to be the force behind the arrest and the prosecution of the girl. He had collected terrible, deadly facts. He was a man of flawless repute. He could not be accused of partisanship. And yet he stood indubitably against Beatrice Wilton, a vast weight upon the side of her guilt. He no longer even pretended that he was hunting the trail of Fennel—which was mute proof that he believed the girl was the criminal.

  Pete Lang, also, came in for his share of notoriety. First of all, he was a rough fellow of the range, and, secondly, he had been the first at the side of the murdered man. Some newspapers even suggested that, since he had been the first at the dead body—since no one had seen the dead man fall—why might not Peter Lang be the guilty man?

  Consider, for instance, that he was a marksman of skill, and that the bullet had been planted squarely, fairly between the eyes of Wilton. As for motive? Well, motives are rarely known until they are confessed, and, being employed by Wilton, it might well be that a testy word had been enough t
o bring the cowpuncher’s revolver out of his pocket. And then he had caught the fancy of the reporters by saying bluntly: “I hope I’m nearer to guilty than she is.”

  But not even the fine form of Peter Lang, or the murdered man, or Layman, or the famous sheriff, or the mysterious Fennel, or even Beatrice Wilton herself, so seized upon the imagination of the public press as did another, unaccused figure. And that was Lewis Sherry.

  As for photographs, they flooded the papers with pictures of him. They showed him mounting and dismounting. “He makes every horse look small.” They showed him walking down the street, towering above Pete Lang. “And yet Lang is nearly six feet tall.” They gave the dimensions of his shoulders, the span of his hand, and his weight. He became in a few days as physically well known as the person of the world’s champion pugilist, and his handsome head was nearly always included on the same page with Beatrice Wilton. They made both a harmony and a contrast—lion and panther, as some reporter suggested.

  And when they came to delving into the past of this man of the range, the reporters found enough to glut their typewriters and crowd the telegraph wires. He was the hero of many fights; he was the hero of many deaths. And every fight was set down in detail, and every wound was recounted.

  He, too, they said, was a hearty advocate of the girl’s. And was he not more than that? And, suppose that she were condemned, would not the giant strike in her behalf, even if it brought about his own ruin?

  To big Lew Sherry they could apply all the pet terms of Western literature. He was the “desperado,” the “gunfighter,” the “killer,” this “brave and reckless man,” this “outlaw.” And they went on and coined other terms of their own.

  Sherry tried not to notice these things, but he could not help it. Clayrock was simply littered with copies of Eastern newspapers containing these accounts, and the home journals also began to boom the issue with all their might. The Bugle was on the side of Beatrice Wilton, and therefore Lew Sherry was a gentle hero. The Morning Blast was against the girl, and therefore to it Lew Sherry was a probable villain.