The east was glowing dully with approaching dawn when Carmel alighted
from the car at the hotel in Gibeon and hurried through the deserted
office and up the scantily illuminated stairs to her room. She was
weary, not in body alone, but with that sharper, more gnawing weariness
of the spirit. She had failed, and the heaviness of failure sat upon
her.... She could not think. It was only with an effort she was able to
force herself to undress and to crawl into her bed.... Then, because
she was young and healthy, because she had not yet reached an age and
experience at which troubles of the mind can stay the recuperative urge
of the body, she slept.
It was nine o’clock when she awakened, and with a feeling of guilt
she dressed hurriedly, snatched a cup of coffee, and hastened to the
office. She dreaded to meet Evan Pell, to confess her inadequacy....
There was another reason, deeper than this, instinctive, why she
hesitated to meet him. It was a sort of embarrassment, an excited
desire to see him fighting with reluctance. She did not analyze it....
But she was spared the ordeal. Evan Pell was not in his place.
There was petty business to attend to, and an hour passed. Such hours
may pass even when one is in the midst of such affairs as surround
Carmel.... Her last night’s adventure seemed unreal, dreamlike. Gibeon,
going about its concerns outside her window, seemed very real.... She
looked out at Gibeon and her mind refused to admit the fact that it
could continue normally to plod and buy and sell and gossip as she saw
it doing, if there were anything beneath its surface. Crime, plotting,
trickery, sinister threat--these could not exist while Gibeon looked
and labored as it looked and labored this morning. The town should
have lagged and whispered; apprehension should have slowed its steps
and stilled its voice; a shadow of impending catastrophe should have
darkened the streets.... But the streets were bright with sunlight.
She saw women marketing with baskets on their arms; she saw farmers
passing in automobiles and wagons; she heard children shouting and
laughing.... It was Gibeon--a normal, unexcited, placid Gibeon. And
yet, murder, or worse than murder, poised over the village on its black
wings, poisoning the air its people breathed!... The whole thing was
absurd.
“Where is Mr. Pell?” she asked Simmy, who came in to lay a galley proof
on her desk.
“Hain’t been in this mornin’,” Simmy told her. “Say, George Bogardus’s
been in twict to see you.”
Carmel smiled. She knew why George had called. It was the
Handsomest-Man contest.... She considered that farce, for it was a
farce--a makeshift to gain circulation, a trick played by herself with
her tongue in her cheek.... It had quickened the interest of Gibeon,
however. Gibeon could be made excited over an absurd voting to decide
upon its handsomest man! It could discuss the thing, gossip about it,
lay small wagers. More than one wife, feeling bound by self-esteem,
had entered her husband and deposited votes in his name. This, Carmel
judged, was an effort on the part of these women to vindicate their own
judgment; to elevate themselves in their own esteem; to cry up their
own possessions. Some there were, of course, who laughed, who saw the
absurdity of it, but more remained to take it with utmost sincerity,
and of these George Bogardus, undertaker _de luxe_, was perhaps the
most sincere. George neglected his business to pursue votes. But
then, so did Lancelot Bangs!... Single men both, the mainstay of
local haberdashers! The contest had now arrived at a point where even
admiring wives were discouraged and hoped only to have a husband who
ran third--for Bogardus and Bangs seemed sure to outdistance the field.
Not only did these young men vie with each other in the pursuit of
votes, but in the purchase of apparel. If Bogardus imported a yellow
silk necktie made more beautiful by inch-broad polka dots of green,
Bangs answered the challenge with patent-leather shoes with gray cloth
tops cross-hatched with mauve.... Each spent his substance in riotous
garments, and neither neglected, at the busy hour in the post office,
to take up his station before the door, full in the public eye, to
enable the populace to scrutinize and to admire. It was a campaign
such as no political election ever had brought to Gibeon.
Yesterday, Carmel learned from Tubal, it had come to personal conflict.
As the pair of candidates occupied their stations, each on his side of
the post-office door, Bogardus had spoken in a manner highly derogatory
of a new hat displayed by his rival for the first time. It was a hat
of Leghorn straw, wide and floppy of brim. The under side of this brim
was lined with green cloth, either for decorative purposes or to soften
the light reflected to the eyes. About the crown was folded a scarf,
and the colors in this scarf were such as to detain the eye even as
the sound of an ambulance gong takes possession of the ear. It was a
master stroke. It quite upset Bogardus to the extent that he forgot the
amenities and, _sotto voce_, asked the world to tell him where Lancelot
Bangs got hold of the merry-go-round he was wearing on his head. “All
it needs, by Jove!” said George in his best British manner, “to make
a feller know it’s a merry-go-round is to have Lance’s brain start
playin’ a hurdy-gurdy tune. Eh? What?”
Battle ensued, and spectators estimated that no less than forty
dollars’ worth of haberdashery was destroyed by the fury of it. The
gladiators were torn apart--but not until Gibeon had enjoyed the
spectacle to the full. But the spark was lighted. Rivalry had grown
to jealousy; now jealousy had become hatred. In the hearts of each
of these Beau Brummels burned a fire of malice.... Each was now
determined, in some manner or another, to eliminate his rival.
Presently George Bogardus peered through the office door and, seeing
Carmel, entered, bringing with him a sartorial effulgence overpowering.
He rested his malacca cane against the rail, pulled down his lavender
waistcoat, straightened his tie, lifted his hat, and bowed from the
waist.
“Miss Lee,” he said, “aw--I say, now--d’you mind if I have a bit of a
word with you. Eh? What?”
“Certainly, Mr. Bogardus. What can I do for you?”
“It’s private. I--aw--fawncy you wouldn’t wish to be overheard. Not by
a darn sight you wouldn’t.”
“Come in, then, and sit here. No one will overhear us.”
He passed the gate and took the indicated chair, leaning his elbow on
Carmel’s desk and pointing the tip of his long and almost prehensile
nose at her most convenient ear.
“Nothin’ was said in the rules of this here contest,” said he,
“aw--about the character of the--aw--contestants.”
“No.”
“But suthin’ must ’a’ been intended. You wouldn’t want no crim’nal, nor
no wife-beater, nor no--aw--person addicted to intoxicants to enter,
now would you. Eh?... What?”
“Naturally not.”
“If a contestant was sich, what would happen?”
“It would be necessary to eliminate him.”
“Cheerio! What price the elimination!”
“What do you mean, Mr. Bogardus?”
“I mean,” said he, “there’s a feller goin’ to be eliminated doggone
quick. An’ mebby go to jail to boot.”
“This is rather a serious thing to say.”
“Meant serious. Nobody kin claw me and git away with it. Nobody kin set
up to be better dressed ’n I be, by Jove!--aw--and git away with it. I
been watchin’, I have, and what I suspected I found out. And I’ll swear
to it. Eh? What say? Now what, Lancelot, old dear?”
“You are talking about Mr. Bangs!”
“Lancelot Bangs--that’s him.”
“What has he done?”
“Him? What ho! Oh, I say! Blime if the bloody blighter hain’t a
bootlegger!” Here George became a trifle confused in his British, but
what does Gibeon know of distinctions between Whitechapel and the Hotel
Cecil?
Carmel was alert at once. This touched the business in hand. “A
bootlegger. You mean he is selling whisky?”
“Is and has been.... Hain’t bothered much with photographs for a long
spell back. Makes his livin’ that way. It’s how he can afford them
handsome cravats from the city.”
“You’re sure?”
“Take my oath to it in court. I’ve heard and saw. I’ve tasted out of a
bottle.”
Here was something tangible at last, a hand on a minor tentacle of the
affair, but, if clung to and followed diligently, it must lead sometime
to the octopus head.
“Where does he get it?” Carmel asked.
Bogardus shook his head. “That’s all I know. He gits it and sells it.
Makes him a criminal, don’t it? Eh? What?”
“It would seem to....”
“Disqualifies him, don’t it?”
“If I can verify what you have told me.”
“Calc’late I kin fetch you proof,” said George.
“Very well. Do that and he shall be disqualified.”
George arose, bowed, took his cane, and moved with stateliness to the
door. There he paused, turned, and smirked.
“Cheerio!” he said.
Here was something tangible, a commencement, a man who had seen and
heard and would take his oath! It had not come in an admirable way, but
it had come--had come as a direct result of the things she had printed
in the paper. The end of a thread which would pass through many snarls
before she could arrive at the spool, but it would arrive.... If George
Bogardus knew so much, other people knew more. In Gibeon were men
willing to talk if she could attract them to her. But this was slow.
She felt time would not be given her laboriously to follow clues. She
must overleap spaces; must arrive at something bigger then a petty
bootlegger. Already, as she knew, Gibeon was aware that Deputy Jenney
was deputy no longer, but sheriff, full fledged and unassailable....
She must act, and act quickly--or action would be made impossible for
her.
Bogardus would fetch her proof. She would not wait for Bogardus....
Impulse sat in the driver’s seat again. Lancelot Bangs was no strong
man; he would not be difficult to handle. Impulse urged her to the
attack. She did not stop to reason, for when one feels something must
be done, it is so easy to seize upon the first matter which offers
action. She was on her feet.
“I’ll be back in an hour,” she called to Tubal, and stepped out upon
the street.
Her heart beat a trifle more quickly as she climbed the stairs
to Lancelot Bangs’ photographic parlors--and as she climbed, she
remembered that other visit, that mysterious conversation in the back
room, overheard by her but not comprehended.... She comprehended it now.
As she opened the door a bell rang somewhere in the mysterious depths
of those rooms where Lancelot carried on the rites of photography, and
the young man appeared, a wet print in his fingers.
“Ah, Miss Lee,” he said, and preened himself. It is difficult to preen
oneself with a black alpaca apron on which reaches from chest to knees,
but Lancelot was conscious his shoes and necktie were visible. It gave
him assurance.
“I want to talk to you, Mr. Bangs,” she said.
“Certainly! Certainly! Time’s your’n. Hain’t many visitors like you
comes here.... Hain’t never had the pleasure of makin’ your portrait.”
“I didn’t come,” said Carmel, with that disconcerting directness of
which she was mistress, “to talk about photographs. I came to talk
about whisky.”
Lancelot reared back upon his heels and his Adam’s apple took a mighty
heave upward.
“Whisky?”
“Exactly. I am going to print in the _Free Press_ the story of how you
sell whisky in your back room. I shall tell whom you have sold whisky
to, how much you have sold, give the dates.” Carmel was pretending to
more knowledge than she possessed, which, of course, is the first rule
in the game.
“I--You--’Tain’t so. I never sold a drop. Mebby I give a friend a
drink--jest sociable like. But I hain’t sold.”
“Don’t lie to me, Mr. Bangs. I know.” She allowed her voice to become
less cold. “I don’t want to be hard on you, but it looks as if I would
have to.... There’s just one way you can save yourself from going to
jail.” She dropped that and let it lay while he looked it over.
“Jail!” he said, feebly.
“Exactly.... If you will make a clean breast of the whole thing to me,
tell me where you get the liquor, who smuggles it in, all about it, I
will give you forty-eight hours to get away.... I’m not after you, Mr.
Bangs--but I may have to take you--if you aren’t reasonable.”
“I tell you I never----”
Carmel stood up and turned to the door. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I’ve
given you your chance.... Good-by.”
He clutched her arm. “Hey!--wait! Where you going?”
“To lay my information before the authorities.”
“They--they said the authorities was fixed.”
Carmel laughed. “That’s better,” she said. “Who said the authorities
were fixed?”
“I--I didn’t say that--I didn’t----” He sank on a red-plush sofa and
covered his face.
“Now, Mr. Bangs, just tell what you know. You don’t want to go to jail.
In forty-eight hours you can be a long ways from here--and nobody will
bother about you--if they get hold of somebody more important.... It’s
your last chance. Will you talk or not?” Her hand was on the doorknob
again.
“I--I----”
“Yes?”
“They’ll kill me.”
“Like they did Sheriff Churchill,” she said.
He stared at her goggle-eyed. “Did they do that?” he asked, in sudden
terror. “They didn’t do that. I didn’t know nothin’ about it. I thought
he run off. I----”
“They won’t kill you if you get away,” she said. “Now tell me what
you know. Quickly!” she snapped out the last word of command as a
school-teacher might speak to a refractory child.
“I--I been sellin’.... Not much. Jest a few cases--once in a
while--when I could git it.”
“How much?”
“I--I don’t know exactly. Sometimes I’d git a dozen cases. Sometimes
less.”
“Made quite a nice living for you?”
“I didn’t git it all. I jest got my commission.... I had to pay back
most of the profit.”
“How did you get the whisky?”
“A feller would come and tell me the’ was a shipment comin’. Then I’d
git in my car and go out to git what was assigned to me.”
“Who would tell you?”
“Sometimes one man, sometimes another.”
“Who?” her voice was inexorable.
“Peewee--mostly.”
“Peewee Bangs--your cousin, is he?”
“That’s him.”
“So he would tell you, and you would go to get it? Where?”
“Out to his place.”
“The Lakeside Hotel?”
“Yes.”
“That was headquarters?”
“Yes.”
“Other folks went there to get whisky?”
“I calc’late so. There’d be a lot of cases. I’d run my car into the
shed, and go in, and when I come back she’d be packed.”
“What others went there?”
“Different ones. Folks buyin’ private. Peewee he’d telephone folks
he knowed was buyin’ and they’d drive out and leave their cars
a-standin’. When they come ag’in, there’d be the whisky. They wouldn’t
never see who put it there.”
“Who did you sell to?”
“I don’t want to tell.”
“You’ve got to tell.”
He moaned, and then, surrendering utterly, gave her a list of his
customers.
“Who did you pay money to?” she asked.
“Peewee.”
“Anybody else?”
“Jest him.”
“Who else did you see at the Lakeside Hotel when you went to get
whisky--who else was selling besides Peewee?”
“I never saw anybody.”
“Did you ever see Deputy Jenney there?”
Lancelot’s face turned more ashen. “I never see him. I dunno nothin’
about him.”
“You’ve heard he was in it?”
“Jest whispers. But nothin’ I can say.”
“When was the last time you got whisky?”
He gave her the date, which coincided with her finding of the _cache_
in the woods.
“When do you expect to go again?”
He hesitated. “I---- A feller come to-day. Said I could run out
to-night. Said the’ was a special-sized shipment comin’....”
“To-night?”
“To-night.”
“Is that all you know?”
“Every last thing.”
“Very well, then. Come with me.”
“Where?... You promised----”
“I’ll keep my promise. Just to my office. Please hurry.”
He followed her with docility, sat by while she put his confession into
type, signed it, and accompanied her to a notary, where he took his
oath to the truth of the statements therein contained.
“Now,” said Carmel, “I guess you’d better be moving along toward the
distance.”
Lancelot, in abject terror, started for the door, but Carmel arrested
him. “Wait,” she said, and from its hiding place in her desk she took
the match box made from a brass shell which she had found beside the
whisky _cache_. She held it before Lancelot’s eyes.
“Whose is this?” she asked.
“B’longs to Deputy Jenney,” he said. “Ol’ Slim Toomey made it fer him
out of a shell.”