The Session
When I went down to the living-room, at five minutes before three,
Danny, John, Mrs. Ricker and Martha were all there. Danny and John
were sitting at the far end of the room. Mrs. Ricker was in a chair
near the window, tatting. Martha was on the biggest davenport, playing
with the monkey charm. I went and sat beside her.
“I feel sleepy,” she answered my question. “But I am happy, now. I am
very happy.”
“That’s nice,” I told her. “But, if I were you, I wouldn’t talk much
about being happy; that is, not to-day.”
“I don’t care. Gaby was hateful and mean, even if she did give me the
monkey. She was good, then; but she wasn’t good long enough for me to
like her. I’m sorry because Chad died, though. I was awfully sorry,
until I happened to remember about heaven. He is happy there now. When
I die, I’ll go to heaven and be happy, too. He’ll love me then, won’t
he? I know he will.”
“Of course, Martha,” I said. “And he loved you here, too.”
“Only like a little girl. I wanted him to love me like a lady. He
would have, I guess, if he hadn’t shot himself. I am sorry he did
that. But I’m happy, anyway, ’cause we are going to have the fireworks
to-night.”
“Tut, tut,” I said. “We won’t be having any fireworks to-night.”
Her lower lip curled out. “Daddy promised,” she whimpered. “Yesterday,
when it looked like rain, he said never to mind, that we’d have them
the very first night it didn’t rain. To-night is the first night.
Daddy promised.”
To my shame, I never, in all the years, had gotten used to Martha. She
looked like a big, healthy, strapping girl. And when, as now, I
realized that a smart five-year-old child would have had a better
mind, it shocked me all over.
Sam and Hubert Hand came into the room together. Sam looked around,
counting noses.
“All here,” he said, and locked the door he and Hubert had come
through, and dropped the key in his pocket. He went all around the
room, closing and locking the doors and windows. He moved a chair to
the foot of the stairway, pulled a small table over beside it, took
his six-gun out of his back pocket, put it on the table, and sat down
in the chair.
No one had moved nor had said a word. I know that I was frightened. I
was not afraid of Sam, and I was not afraid of that six-gun. It did
not make me a mite more uneasy than a bouquet of flowers would have;
that is, if Sam had carried the bouquet in and put it on the table
with the same manner with which he had carried and placed the gun.
Mostly, I guess, I was afraid of being made afraid; partly, I was
afraid of myself.
Hubert Hand spoke first. “Cannon, ugh?” he sneered.
“That’s all right, Hand,” Sam answered. “This is here, mostly I think,
for ornamental purposes.”
“Daddy,” Martha piped up, “aren’t we going to have the fireworks
to-night?”
Sam frowned at her. “Not to-night, daughter.”
She opened her mouth and began making those dreadful noises she always
made whenever she was crossed in anything.
Sam rapped on the table, “Shut that up, here and now,” he said. “Not
another whimper out of you. Hear me, Martha?”
She closed her mouth with a snap. I thought those immense eyes of hers
would pop out of her head. I am sure that the others of us all felt
the way she looked. In all the years we had lived together on the
Desert Moon, it was the first time any one of us had ever heard Sam
speak impatiently to Martha. As for scolding her, being stern with
her, up to this minute it had never been in the book.
“John,” Sam said, “you and Danny come out of that corner, up here
nearer the rest of us, and where it is light.”
I tell you they came, straight, and sat on the small davenport beside
Hubert Hand.
“I reckon,” Sam began, “that all of you in here know that anyone could
walk up to any man or woman in here and call him or her a murderer,
and that not one of us could give him the lie, right now.
“I reckon that you know, too, as everyone in the country knows that,
at this hour, the Desert Moon Ranch is rotten with the muck of crime
and suspicion. Maybe you don’t know that it is not going to stay that
way for many more hours.
“We have called the law in, as was right and proper. And the law has
been real polite, and blinked its eyes, and departed. ‘Folded its
tents like the Arabs, and silently stole away.’ Well, that’s all
right. I didn’t much care about having those fellows mix into my
private business; anyway, not until I had found out that I couldn’t
attend to it myself. I am not going to find that out. I can attend to
it. I am going to, right here and now. Later on, when we need the law
again, we’ll call on it. The innocent in this room will have their
names cleared. The Desert Moon will be a fit place for a white man to
live on.
“Now this gun here may look like I felt violent or something. I don’t.
And I’m not going to act violent. This gun is here for just one
purpose, and I’m dead certain it won’t be used for that. A word to the
wise, though. No person, barring none and including the ladies, is to
leave this room until I give the word. No innocent person in here will
try to leave. Any guilty person in here—and, before God, there is a
guilty person here; guilty, at least, of aiding and abetting—is going
to have too much sense to try to make a break. That is why I won’t
need the gun. Not, I mean, until we find the guilty person. When we
have found him, it may be of some use until the sheriff can get here.
That is all of that. Except that we are going to stay here, one and
all, right here in this room, until we are ready to ’phone for the
sheriff.
“If everyone does as I am going to tell them to do, we should be
through with this session by supper time. But, if we don’t get through
until midnight, or until next week, we’ll stay here until we do. All
I’m asking, of everybody here, is that you all tell the truth. You’ll
have to, sooner or later. Better make it sooner.”
During this speech my dander had been rising. It had got up pretty
good and high by this time. “Sam Stanley,” I spoke out, “you ought to
know that you can’t force truth out of anybody at the point of a gun,
nor by keeping them locked up. We’ll get hungry. We’ll get thirsty.
And when we do we’ll eat and drink and go about our affairs. At least
I will—unless you shoot me. I’m not fixed to put up with this kind of
foolishness.”
“Mary,” Sam roared at me. “That’s enough out of you. You be quiet. You
are going to do as you are told. So are the others.”
Sam had never spoken like that to me before. It left me limp as a
drained jelly bag. Before I could get my breath for an answer, Hubert
Hand was talking.
“Changed your mind since morning, haven’t you, Sam? You were dead sure
this morning that no one on the place had had anything to do with the
murder; that Mary had locked the attic door herself, earlier in the
day, and, absent-mindedly, dropped the key in her pocket.”
“Never mind about my morning’s opinions, Hand. You are right. Dead
right. I’ve changed my mind. Now, since you are already going pretty
good, I’ll begin with you and work around the room, taking each one in
turn. I want you to tell everything you know, and everything you
suspect concerning the murder.”
“Sorry,” Hubert Hand said, “but I don’t know a damn thing except that,
apparently, she was strangled to death sometime between four o’clock
yesterday afternoon and eight o’clock yesterday evening. We saw her
alive at four. We found her dead at eight. That’s the extent of my
knowledge.”
“All right. Now go ahead with what you suspect.”
“I can’t see,” Hubert Hand objected, “that suspicions have any place
here. Beyond stirring up a rumpus and hard feelings, they wouldn’t get
any of us any place.”
“That is for me to decide,” Sam said. “You were mighty busy for a
while this morning, throwing out hints and slurs. If this session
doesn’t do anything else, it can anyway clear out all this whispering
that is going around. Just now, everybody here is busy suspecting
everybody else here. Suspicions usually have some reasoning behind
them. ‘Where there’s smoke there’s fire.’ It is only fair to give
everyone here a chance to examine everyone else’s suspicions, and
disprove them, if they can. If you think that I did the killing, I
want to know it. I want a chance to prove you wrong. Come on now,
Hand. Come clean.”
“Suppose I refuse?”
“That is up to you,” Sam drawled. “As the sheriffs say, everything you
say will be used against you. But, as they don’t say, everything you
don’t say will be used against you, a sight harder. If I knew you had
no suspicions, I wouldn’t try to force you to invent some, just to be
sociable. But you were pretty free with your hints this morning. All
right. Talk.”
Hubert lowered his Roman nose and pulled at his moustache for a
minute. It was easy to see he was busy with a decision of some sort.
He settled back in his chair more comfortably and, still pulling at
his moustache, he began.