"What did they say about her, down here?" he asked jealously.
"Oh, there were rumors. They didn't reach her father."
"No: tell me," he persisted. "I gotta know."
Because Mr. Hines had already impressed himself upon me as one with whom
straight talk would serve best, I acceded.
"Bartholomew Storrs said that her feet took hold on hell."
Mr. Hines's face remained impassive. Only his hands worked slightly,
perhaps kneading an imaginary throat. I perceived him to be a person of
considerable and perhaps formidable self-control.
"Not that she hadn't her friends. The Bonnie Lassie would have stood by
her if she had come back, and little Mrs. Morse, and our Dr. Smith, and
MacLachan, who thought he had lost his own girl the same way, and--and
others, plenty."
"And you, Dominie," said the hard, pink Mr. Hines.
"My dear sir, old men cannot afford harsh judgments. They are too near
their own time."
"Yeh?" said Mr. Hines absently. "I guess that's right." But his mind was
plainly elsewhere. "When would you say would be the best time to do
business with old Funeral-Clothes?" he asked after a thoughtful pause.
"You want to see Bartholomew Storrs?" I interpreted.
"Sure. I gotta deliver the death certificate to him if he runs the
graveyard, haven't I?"
"Such is the procedure, I believe."
"Besides," he added with a leer, "I want to get some of that weepy
poetry of his."
"Well; he'll sell it to you readily."
"I'll say he'll sell it to me," returned Mr. Hines with a grimness which
I failed to comprehend.
"Now is as good a time as any to catch him in his office." I pointed to
a sign at the farther end of the yard.
Mr. Hines seemed in no hurry to go. With his elegantly lacquered cane,
he picked at the sod, undecidedly. His chill, veiled eyes roved about
the open space. He lifted his pearl-gray derby, and, for lack of a
handkerchief, wiped his forehead with the back of his hand. Although the
May day was cool and brisk with wind, his knuckles glistened when they
descended. I began to suspect that, despite his stony self-command, Mr.
Hines's nerves were not all that they should be.
"Perhaps you'd like me to introduce you to Mr. Storrs," I hazarded.
The cold and filmy eyes gleamed with an instant's dim warmth. "Dominie,
you're a good guy," responded Mr. Hines. "If a dead cinch at ten to one,
all fruited up for next week, the kind of thing you don't hand on to
your own brother, would be any use to you--No? I'm off again," he
apologized. "Well--let's go."
We went. At the doorstep of Bartholomew Storrs's office he paused.
"This sexton-guy," he said anxiously, "he don't play the ponies, ever, I
wouldn't suppose?"
"No more often than he commits murder or goes to sleep in church," I
smiled.
"Yeh?" he answered, disheartened. "I gotta get to him some other way. On
the poetry--and that's out of my line."
"I don't quite see what your difficulty is."
"By what you tell me, it's easier to break into a swell Fifth Avenue
Club than into this place."
"Except for those having the vested right, as your wife has."
"And this sexton-guy handles the concession for--he's got the say-so,"
he corrected himself hastily--"on who goes in and who stays out. Is
that right?"
"Substantially."
"And he'd rather keep 'em out than let 'em in?"
"Bartholomew," I explained, "considers that the honor of God's Acre is
in his keeping. He has a fierce sort of jealousy about it, as if he had
a proprietary interest in the place."
"I get you!" Mr. Hines's corded throat worked painfully. "You don't
suppose the old goat would slip Min a blackball?" he gulped.
"How can he? As an 'Inalienable'--"
"Yeh; I know. But wasn't there something about a clean record? I'll tell
_you_, Dominie"--Mr. Hines's husky but assured voice trailed away into
a miserable, thick whisper--"as to what he said--about her feet taking
hold on hell--I guess there was a time--I guess about one more slip--I
guess I didn't run across her any too quick. But there never was a
straighter, truer girl than Min was with me. I gotta get her planted
_right_, Dominie. I gotta do it," he concluded with pathetic
earnestness.
"I see no difficulty," I assured him. "The charter specifies '_died_ in
honorable estate.' Matrimony is an honorable estate. How she lived
before that is between her and a gentler Judge than Bartholomew Storrs."
"Give her a straight course and a fair judge and I'll back Min to the
limit," said Mr. Hines so simply and loyally that no suggestion of
irreverence could attach to him.
Nevertheless, doubt was mingled with determination in his florid face as
he rang the bell. Bartholomew Storrs opened to us, himself. When he saw
me, he hastily pocketed a Rhyming Dictionary. I introduced my companion,
stating, by way of a favorable opening, that he was interested in
memorial poetry.
"Very pleased," said Bartholomew Storrs in his deep, lugubrious tones.
"Bereaved husband?"
Mr. Hines nodded.
"Here's a tasty thing I just completed," continued the poet, and,
extending a benignant hand toward the visitor he intoned nasally:
"Together we have lived our life
Till thou hast gone on high.
But I will come to thee, dear Wife,
In the sweet bye-and-bye."
"That style five dollars," he said.
"You're on," barked Mr. Hines. "I'll take it."
"To be published, I suppose, on the first anniversary of death. Shall I
look after the insertion in the papers?" queried the obliging poet, who
split an advertising agent's percentage on memorial notices placed
by him.
"Sure. Got any more? I'd spend a hundred to do this right."
With a smile of astounded gratification, Bartholomew accepted the roll
of bills, fresh and crisp as the visitor himself. To do him justice, I
believe that his pleasure was due as much to the recognition of his
genius as to the stipend it had earned.
"Perhaps you'd like a special elegy to be read at the grave," he rumbled
eagerly. "When and where did the interment take place?"
The other glared at him in stony surprise. "It ain't taken place. It's
to-morrow. Ain't you on? I'm Hines."
A frown darkened the sexton's heavy features. He shook a reprehensive
head. "An unfortunate case," he boomed; "most unfortunate. I will not
conceal from you, Mr. Hines, that I have consulted our attorneys upon
this case, and unhappily--unhappily, I say--they hold that there is no
basis for exclusion provided the certificate is in form. You have it
with you?"
Impassive and inscrutable, Mr. Hines tapped his breast-pocket.
The conscience of a responsible sexton being assuaged, Bartholomew's
expression mollified into that of the flattered poet.
"Such being the case," he pursued, "there can be no objection to the
reading of an elegy as part of the service. Who is to officiate?"
"The Reverend Doctor Hackett."
"He has retired these two years," said the sexton doubtfully. "He is
very old. His mind sometimes wanders."
"She wouldn't have any one else," asserted the hard, pink Mr. Hines.
"She was as particular about that as about being buried yonder." He
jerked his head toward the window.
"Very well. I will be at the grave. I always am. Trust me to guide the
reverend gentleman over any breach in his memory. Excuse me for a moment
while I look up my elegies."
"Say," said Mr. Hines in his hoarse, confidential croak, as the
poet-sexton retired, "this is dead easy. Why, the guy's on the make. For
sale. He'll stand for anything. Passing out this stuff for other folks
to sign! He's a crook!"
"Make no such mistake," I advised. "Bartholomew is as honest a man as
lives, in his own belief."
"Very likely. That's the worst kind," pronounced the expert Mr. Hines.
Further commentary was cut off by the return of the sexton-poet. "If you
will kindly give me the death certificate of the late lamented,"
said he.
"What becomes of it after I deliver it?" asked Mr. Hines.
"Read, attested, and filed officially."
"Any one else but you see it?"
"Not necessarily."
"That's all right, then."
Hardly had Bartholomew Storrs glanced at the document received from Mr.
Hines than he lifted a stiffening face.
"What is this?" he challenged.
"What's what?"
The official tapped the paper with a gaunt finger. "'Minna Merivale,
aged twenty-five,'" he read.
"That's the name she went by."
"_Unmarried_" read Bartholomew Storrs in a voice of doom.
"Well?"
In the sexton's eyes gleamed an unholy savagery of satisfaction. "Take
her away."
"_What_?"
"Bury her somewhere else. Do not think that you can pollute the
ground--"
"Bartholomew!" I broke in, stepping hastily in front of Mr. Hines, for I
had seen all the pink ebb out of his face, leaving it a dreadful sort of
gray; and I had no desire to be witness of a murder, however much I
might deem it justified.
"I'll handle him," said Mr. Hines steadily. "Now; you! You got my
hundred in your jeans, ain't you!"
"Bribery!" boomed the sexton. He drew out the roll of bills and let it
fall from his contaminated fingers.
"Sure! Bribery," railed the other. "What'd you think? Ain't it enough
for what I'm asking?" The two men glared at each other.