John Talks
“If you mean me, dad,” John spoke right up, and I’d given a pretty
penny to have had him say something else, for, of course, Sam had not
meant him, “I’m not worried. They don’t hang innocent men in Nevada,
no matter how much rope their friends present them with.”
“As a matter of fact,” Hubert Hand said, “I guess they don’t hang any
men in Nevada, now, do they? Lethal chamber, isn’t it?”
Sam growled at him to shut up; and told John that it was his turn to
talk, and to go ahead and to try to talk sense, if possible.
“I don’t know where to begin,” John said. “I’ve got nothing to talk
about.”
“Begin at the beginning. What did Gaby say to you, after dinner, that
made you decide, right off, to go to Rattail?”
“I’ve told you that already. I’ve got no changes to make in it. Gaby
told me, after dinner, that Danny’s headache was getting worse. She
said that Danny had sent to Salt Lake for a certain kind of headache
medicine, the only kind that ever did her any good. She said it should
have come in the morning’s mail. She said that Danny would be peeved
at her for telling me about it—asking me to go, that is. So, if I
didn’t want a fuss, and wanted to be allowed to go, I’d better make a
sneak of it, with no explanations. I did. Here is something I haven’t
told, though, for Danny just told me, when we came in here at three.
She hadn’t sent for any headache medicine to Salt Lake, nor anywhere.
That certainly looks as if Gaby wanted to get either me, or the sedan,
off the job and out of the way, yesterday afternoon. She must have had
some reason for sending me on a fool’s errand like that.”
“Well, well, go on, son,” Sam said, after we had all sat in dead
silence for about a minute.
“Go on where?” John asked. “I’ve got nothing more to say. Hand’s told
the rest of it, hasn’t he?”
“Answer him, you fool,” Sam roared. “You’ve got answers, haven’t you?
Use ’em. Sitting there like a dummy! Did anyone see you towing Saule
to his place?”
“Not that I know of. I towed him all right; but I can’t prove it. Hand
was right when he said he could be bought for a half dollar. He might
come cheaper. I’d try him with a quarter, first, Hand.”
“Good God!” Sam shouted. “What are you trying to do? Pry your way into
the lethal chamber? Can you give a reason for driving to the back
door, instead of leaving the car in the garage?”
“Only two hundred-pound sacks of rock salt. They’d dumped them on the
platform for us this morning from Eighteen. I could give a reason for
bringing them up, instead of leaving them there until we went down
with the truck. Sure, I’m full of reasons. Got a good reason for
taking half an hour to bathe and dress. It would be hard to find a guy
with more reasons than I can produce for everything—all, but murdering
the twin sister of the girl I love.”
“Son,” Sam said, “I don’t blame you a damn bit for being sore clear to
the bone. But, come to that, we haven’t any right to blame Hand, here,
either; not if he is honest in his suspicions, and, maybe, he is. I
forced them out of him. Can’t you swallow your pride, for a while,
and——”
“I’ve swallowed it already,” John said, “if that’s what you want.
Swallowed it till I’m choked with it.”
“I know, I know. But it is like this, John—and this goes for all you
folks, too—a person can’t get to the bottom of anything without going
down. In this case, it looks like we were going to have to go pretty
low down—a trip to hell for most of us, I reckon. But it will be a
round trip. Most of us will come up clean, to a clean Desert Moon.
Can’t we go down, then, like a lot of reasonable human beings, and not
like a kennel of yapping dogs?”
“It won’t hold, dad,” John answered. “Not this round trip to hell
stuff, as human beings. If I hadn’t stopped being a human being; that
is, a man, I wouldn’t have sat still here and let Hand have his say
out. And I wouldn’t have done it, not to save my own neck. But I know
how you feel about the ranch. I’ve gone through with it for that
reason, and—for Danny, though I know that all of this is a rotten
mistake on your part. I know that; but it is no use telling you, now
that you’ve started. I’ll go on with it, the best I can. I guess the
others will, too. But none of us will come up clean, as you say. Don’t
look for that—not after this muck. All right. Hop to it, dad. What’s
your next question?”
I was relieved when Sam asked, “Do you suspect, with reason, anyone in
this room?” I had thought, following right along with Hubert Hand’s
accusations, as Sam had been doing, that his next question would be
about what was troubling and bothering John when he came in. Why he
had acted so queerly that he had had to explain it by saying he was
loco from the sun.
“I do not.” John answered Sam’s question, straight. “But it seems darn
queer to me the way everyone is leaving Chad’s suicide out of this.
Hold on, dad! I’m not saying that I think Chad killed her. I know he
didn’t. But I know just as well that he didn’t walk out and shoot
himself simply because he had loved Gaby. Chad was a queer bird, all
right. I guess none of us understood him very well. He was as
emotional as the deuce, too—I’ll grant that. But he was not, ever, a
damn fool.”
“John!” Danny interrupted. “Do you think that a man who kills himself,
when he finds that the girl he loves has been cruelly murdered, needs
to be a fool?”
“Yes,” John answered. “A man might not care much about living, after
that, but if he killed himself he’d be a fool. I mean—— It is like
this. Regular fellows, and Chad sure was one, don’t walk out and kill
themselves, when they find the girl they love is dead. It takes more
than death to make a real man kill himself. Sounds like a book, I
know; but, loss of honor is a reason, and shame—maybe that’s the same
thing—is another reason. Or, a fellow might kill himself to save the
honor of his girl—or to save a friend’s life, if he owed the friend a
lot——”
Danny interrupted again. “Absolute despair should be a reason——”
“Sure, I know how you mean. But Chad had despaired of Gaby’s love long
ago. Dozens of times I’ve seen her treat him so rottenly that, if he
had been the suicidal sort, he would have killed himself right then.
No sir. I tell you Chad did not shoot himself because Gaby was dead.
Sure, that was a part of it; but not the main part.
“Chad was a darn good guy. Good all the way through. We all know that
he didn’t kill her. We’d know it, if dad didn’t have his alibis for
him. But what I’m getting at is, that, someway or other, and not
meaning to at all, he got himself mixed up in it. When he saw what had
happened, and realized that he had been involved—— There’s your
reason, all right. I think that, if we can find out why Chad shot
himself, we’ll find out most of the other things we want to know. I’m
through, dad. I’ve said all I’ve got to say, and more too.”
Sam hesitated a minute. I was relieved to see him take Chad’s note out
of his pocket. “Chad says that he killed her,” he said, and read the
note aloud. Everyone but me, to whom it was no surprise, and Martha,
who was almost asleep again, squeaked, or gasped, or otherwise showed
their horrified astonishment.
John spoke first. “I’ll bet four dollars he never wrote it.”
Sam passed the paper to him. “It looks like his writing. It
sounds like him too. Soon as I can get track of one of these
what-you-may-call-em’s, handwriting experts, I’m going to send it to
him. I reckon it will match up all right. I wish there was an expert
of some kind that we could send it to, to find out why he wrote it.”
“Uncle Sam,” Danny said, and I could see that the note had upset her
pretty badly, “there is something no one has thought of. We haven’t
had time to think. But, where was Chad during the hour we were hunting
for Gaby? You, and John, and Mary and I were in the sedan. But where
were the others, during that time; between seven and eight o’clock,
wasn’t it?”
“I reckon,” Sam spoke real gently to her, “that we have all had time
to do some tall thinking about that hour, little girl. But there
couldn’t be any doubt that Gaby had been dead a sight longer than an
hour, when we found her.”
“But can you know that, for a certainty?” Danny insisted.
“Just as certain as I know that she was dead, Danny. I—— Well, in the
early days here—— Never mind that, though. I’ve had experience with
deaths, kind of on that order. I know. The coroner and the sheriff
knew. But, she might have been brought into the house during that
hour. Hand let loose on his alibi business a little too early——”
“I’m no fool,” Hubert Hand interrupted. “You admit that she could not
have been murdered during the hour between six and seven. Every one of
us, except John, can account for every minute of our time from four
o’clock, when we saw Gaby alive, up to seven.”
“All right. All right,” Sam said. “Have it your own way. But you’ve
had your say, and plenty of time to say it in. You’ll maybe have
another turn later. Now, keep still. We are going to hear from the
others.
“It is your turn next, Danny, I’m sorry. You understand, we haven’t
any time to lose. Take it easy, though. Do you suspect, with reason,
anyone in this room of being connected with the murder?”