The figure swooped downward briskly, and two fingers of the hand which
gripped the forearm of the gun caught in the looped handles of the black
bag and brought it up dangling and heavy laden.
And now the custodian of these delectable spoils was backing toward the
door, but still with weapon poised and ready.
“Stay right where you are for five minutes,” was the final warning from
behind the cambric mask. “Five minutes, remember! Anybody who tries to
come down those steps before that five minutes is up is going to get
shot.”
The door slammed. Through the closed door the crap-shooters, each in his
place and all listening as intently as devout worshippers in a church,
heard the swift footsteps dying away. Josh Herron brought down his arms
and took two steps forward.
“Wait, Josh, the time limit ain't up yit,” counselled a well-wisher.
“Oh, I ain't goin' nowheres jest yit--I'm very comfortable here,” said
Josh. He stooped and seemed to pick up some small object from the bare
planks.
Five minutes later--or perhaps six--a procession moving cautiously,
silently and in single file passed down the creaky stairs. It was
noted--and commented upon--that the owner of the raided place, heaviest
loser and chief mourner though he was, tagged away back at the tail of
the line. Only Babe Givens was behind him, and Babe was well behind
him too. At the foot of the stairs the frontmost man projected his head
forth into the night, an inch at a time, ready to jerk it back again.
But to his inquiring vision Franklin Street under its gas lamps yawned
as empty as a new made grave.
For some unuttered and indefinable reason practically all of the present
company felt in a mood promptly to betake themselves home. On his
homeward way Josh Herron travelled in the company of a sorely shaken
grocery clerk, and between them they, going up the street, discussed the
startling episode in which they had just figured.
“Lookin' down that pair of barrels certainly made a true believer out of
old Highpockets, didn't it?” said the grocer's clerk, when the event had
been gone over verbally from its beginning to its end. “Did you happen
to see, Josh, how slow he poked his old head out past them doorjambs
even after Jasper Waller told him the coast was clear? Put me in mind of
one of these here old snappin'-turtles comin' out of his shell after
a skeer. Well, I had a little touch of the buck-ager myself,” he
confessed.
“It was sorter up to our long-laiged friend to be a little bit careful,”
said Josh Herron. “Coupled up the way he is, one buckshot would be
liable to go through his gizzard and his lights at the same time.”
A little later the grocery clerk spoke, in reference to a certain quite
natural curiosity which seemingly lay at the top of his thoughts, since
he had voiced it at least three times within the short space of one city
block:
“I wonder who that there runty hold-up could 'a' been?”
“Yes, I wonder?” repeated Josh Herron in a peculiar voice.
“He certainly took a long chance, whoever he was--doin' the whole job
single handed,” continued the grocery clerk. “Well, I ain't begrudgin'
him the eight dollars of mine that he packed off with him, seein' as how
he stripped old Highpockets as clean as a whistle. And he couldn't 'a'
been nothin' but a half-grown boy neither, judgin' from his build.”
“Boy--hell! Say, Oscar, are you as blind as the rest of that crowd?”'
asked Josh Herron, coming to a halt beneath a corner gas lamp. “Was you
so skeered, too, you couldn't see a thing that was right there before
your eyes as plain as day?”
“What you talkin' about?” demanded the other. “If it wasn't a boy, what
was it--a dwarf?”
“Oscar, kin you keep a secret?” asked Josh Herron, grinning happily.
“Yes? Then look here.”
He opened his right hand. Across the palm of it lay a bent wire hairpin.
It is possible that Oscar, the grocer's clerk, did know how to keep a
secret. As to that I would not presume to speak. Conceding that he did,
it is equally certain that some persons did not possess the same gift of
reticence. By noon of the following day, practically all who had ears to
hear with had heard in one guise or another the story of those midnight
proceedings upstairs over the Blue Jug. It was inevitable that the
editor of the _Daily Evening News_ should hear it, too, which he
did--from a dozen different sources and by a dozen differing versions.
For publication at least the distressed Highpockets had nothing to say.
All things being considered, this was but natural, as you will concede.
Naturally, also, none might be found in all the width and breadth of
the municipality who would confess to having been an eye witness to the
despoiling operations, because if you admitted so much it followed in
the same breath you convicted yourself of being a frequenter of gaming
establishments, and, moreover, of being one of a considerable number
of large, strong men who had suffered themselves to be coerced by one
diminutive bandit. So, lacking authoritative facts to go upon, and names
of individuals with which to buttress his statements, Editor Tompkins,
employing his best humorous vein, wrote and caused to be printed an
account veiled and vague, but not so very heavily veiled at that and not
so vague but that one who knew a thing or two might guess out the riddle
of his tale.
Coincidentally, certain other things happened which might or might not
bear a relationship to the main event. Old Mrs. Postelwaite received by
mail, in an unmarked envelope and from an unknown donor, three hundred
and odd dollars--no great fortune in itself, but a sum amply sufficient
to pay off the mortgage on her small birdbox of a dwelling, and so save
the place which she called home from foreclosure at the instigation of
the Building & Loan Company. Since little Mrs. Shetler, who lived out
on Wheelis Street, had no present source of income other than what she
derived by taking subscription orders for literary works which nobody
cared to read and few, except through a spirit of compassion for
Mrs. Shetler, cared to buy, it seemed fair to assume that from like
mysterious agencies she acquired the exact amount of her husband's
shortage, then owing to Kattersmith Brothers, his recent employers.
This amount being duly turned over to that firm the fugitive was enabled
to return from his hiding and, rehabilitated, to assume his former place
in the community. For the first time in months little Mrs. Shetler wore
a smile upon her face and carried her head erect when she went abroad.
Seeing that smile you would have said yourself that it was worth every
cent of the money.
The Widow Norfleet, seamstress, squared up her indebtedness with divers
neighbourhood tradesmen, and paid up her back house rent, and after
doing all this still had enough ready cash left to provide winter
time garments for herself and a new suit for her threadbare son Eddie.
Finally, Mrs. Matilda Weeks, who constituted in herself an unofficial
but highly efficient local charity organisation, discovered on a certain
morning when she awoke that, during the night, some kindly soul had
shoved under her front door a plain Manila wrapper, containing merely a
line of writing on a sheet of cheap, blue-ruled notepaper: “For the poor
people,” and nearly three hundred dollars in bills--merely that, and
nothing more. It was exactly in keeping with Mrs. Weeks' own peculiar
mode of philanthropy that she should accept this anonymous gift and make
use of it without asking any questions whatsoever.
“I think, by all accounts, it must be tainted money,” said Mrs. Weeks,
“but I don't know any better way of making dirty money clean than by
doing a little good with it.”
So she kept the donation intact against the coming of the Christmas, and
then she devoted it to filling many Christmas dinner baskets and many
Christmas stockings for the families of shanty-boaters, whose floating
domiciles clustered like a flock of very disreputable water fowl down
by the willows, below town, these shiftless river gypsies being included
among Mrs. Weeks' favourite wards.
Meanwhile, for upward of a week after the hold-up no steps of whatsoever
nature were taken by the members of the police force. For the matter
of that, no steps which might be called authoritative or in strict
accordance with the statutes made and provided were ever taken by them
or any one of them. But one evening the acting head of the department
went forth upon a private mission. Our regular chief, Gabe Henley, was
laid up that fall, bedfast with inflammatory rheumatism, and the fact
of his being for the time an invalid may possibly help to explain a good
deal, seeing that Gabe had the name for both honesty and earnestness in
the discharge of his duties, even if he did fall some degrees short of
the mental stature of an intellectual giant.
So it was the acting chief--he resigned shortly thereafter, as I
recall--who took it upon himself to pay a sort of domiciliary visit to
the three-room cottage where the Widow Norfleet lived with her son Eddie
and took in sewing. He bore no warrant qualifying him for violent entry,
search of the premises or seizure of the person, and perhaps that was
why he made no effort to force his way within the little house; or maybe
he desired only to put a few pointed questions to the head of the house.
So while he stood at the locked front door, knocking until his knuckles
stung him and his patience had become quite utterly exhausted, a woman
let herself out at the back of the house and ran bareheaded through an
alley which opened into Clay Street, Clay Street being the next street
to the west. When she returned home again at the end of perhaps half an
hour a peep through a hooded and shuttered front window revealed to her
that the brass-buttoned caller had departed.
It was the next morning, to follow with chronological exactitude the
sequence of this narrative, that our efficient young commonwealth's
attorney, Jerome G. Flournoy, let himself into the chambers of the
circuit judge. Mr. Flournoy wore between his brows a little V of
perplexity. But Judge Priest, whom he found sitting by a grate fire
stoking away at his cob pipe, appeared to have not a single care
concealed anywhere about his person. Certainly his forehead was free of
those wrinkles which are presumed to denote troublesomeness of thought
on the inside.
“Judge,” began Mr. Flournoy, without any prolonged preliminaries, “I'm
afraid I'm going to have to take up that Blue Jug affair. And I do hate
mightily to do it, seeing what the consequences are liable to be. So I
thought I'd talk it over with you first, if you don't mind.”
“Son,” whined Judge Priest, and to Mr. Flournoy it seemed that the
phantom shadow of a wink rested for the twentieth part of a second on
the old judge's left eyelid, “speakin' officially, it's barely possible
that I don't know whut case you have reference to.”
“Well, unofficially then, you're bound to have heard the talk that's
going round town,” said Mr. Flournoy. “Nobody's talked of anything else
much this past week, so far as I've been able to notice. Just between
you and me, Judge, I made up my mind, right from the first, that unless
it was crowded on me I wasn't going to take cognisance of the thing at
all. That's the principal reason why I haven't mentioned the subject in
your presence before now. As a private citizen, it struck me that that
short-waisted crook got exactly what was coming to him, especially as
I never heard of bad money being put to better purposes. But aside from
what he lost in cash--and I reckon he doesn't think any more of a silver
dollar than you do of both your legs--it made him the laughing stock
of twenty thousand people, and more particularly after the true inside
facts began to circulate.”
“Now that you mention it, son,” remarked Judge Priest blandly, “it
strikes me that I did ketch the distant sound of gigglin' here and there
durin' the past few days.”
“That's just it--the giggling must've got under the scoundrel's hide
finally. I gather that at the beginning Magee made up his mind to keep
his mouth shut and just take his medicine. But I figure him for the kind
that can't stand being laughed at very long--and his own gang have just
naturally been laughing him to death all week. Anyhow, he came to
my house today right after breakfast, and called on me as the
commonwealth's attorney to put the facts before the Grand Jury when it
convenes next Monday for the fall term. He's even willing to testify
himself, he says. And he says he can prove what went with the money that
he lost that night--or most of it--and what became of the rest of it.
“That's not all, Judge, either. Right on top of that, when I got down
to my office I found a letter from Mrs. Hetty Norfleet, saying she had
nothing to conceal from the duly sworn officers of the law, and that she
was perfectly willing to answer any charges that might be made against
her, and that she would come to me and make a full statement any time I
wanted her to come. Or substantially that,” amended Mr. Flournoy, with
the lawyer's instinct.
“Is that possible?” quoth the judge in tones of a mild surprise. With
his thumb he tamped down the smoulder in his pipe. The job appeared to
require care; certainly it required full half a minute of time. When
next he spoke he had entirely departed from the main line of the topic
in hand.
“I reckin, son, you never knowed little Gil Nickolas, did you? No,
'taint in reason that you would. He died long before your time. Let's
see--he must've died way back yonder about eighteen-sixty-nine, or
maybe 'twas eighteen-seventy? He got hisself purty badly shot up at
Chickamauga and never did entirely git over it. Well, sir, that there
little Gil Nickolas wasn't much bigger than a cake of lye soap after a
hard day'; washin', but let me tell you, he was a mighty gallant soldier
of the late Southern Confederacy. I know he was because we both served
together in old Company B--the first company that went out of this town
after the fussin' started. Yes, suh, he shorely was a spunky little
raskil. |I reckin he belonged to a spunky outfit--I never knowed one
of his breed yit that didn't have more sand, when it come right down to
cases, than you could load onto a hoss and waggin.” Again he paused to
minister to the spark of life in his pipe bowl. “I recall one time, the
first year of the war, me and Gil was out on a kind of a foragin' trip
together and----”
“I beg your pardon, Judge Priest,” broke in Mr. Flournoy a trifle
stiffly, “but I was speaking of the trouble Mrs. Hetty Norfleet's gotten
herself into.”
“I know you was,” assented Judge Priest, “and that's whut put me in mind
of little Gil Nickolas. He was her paw. I ain't seen much of her here of
recent years, but I reckin she's had a purty toler'ble hard time of it.
Her husband wasn't much account ez I remember him in his lifetime.”
“She has had a hard time of it---mighty hard,” assented Mr. Flournoy,
“and that's one of the things that makes my job all the harder for me.”
“How so?” inquired Judge Priest. “Because,” expounded Mr. Flournoy,
“now, I suppose, I've got to put her under arrest and bring her to
trial. In a way of speaking Magee has got the law on his side. Certainly
he's got the right to call on me to act. On the surface of things the
police are keeping out of it--I reckon we both know why--and so it's
being put up to me. Magee points out, very truly, that it's a felony
charge anyhow, and that even if his dear friend, the acting chief,
should start the ball rolling, in the long run, sooner or later, the
case would be bound to land in circuit court.”
“And whut then?” asked Judge Priest.
“Oh, nothing much,” said Mr. Flournoy bitterly, “nothing much, except
that if that poor little woman confesses--and I judge by the tone of her
letter she's ready to do just that--anyway, everybody in town knows by
now that she was the one that held up that joint of Magee's at the point
of a shotgun--why the jurors, under their oaths, are bound to bring in
a verdict of guilty, no matter how they may feel about it personally.
Magee has about reached the point where he'd risk a jail term for
himself to see her sentenced to the penitentiary. Judge Priest, I'd
almost rather resign my office than be the means of seeing that poor,
little, plucky woman convicted for doing the thing she has done.”
“Wait a minute, son! Hold your hosses and wait a minute!” put in the
judge. “Mebbe it won't be absolutely necessary fur you to up and resign
so abrupt. Your valuable services are needed round this courthouse.”
“What's that you say, Judge?” asked the young prosecutor, straightening
his body out of the despondent curve into which he had looped it.
“I says, wait a minute and don't be so proneful to jump at conclusions,”
repeated and amplified the older man. “You go and jump at a conclusion
that-away and you're liable to skeer the poor thing half to death. I've
been lettin' you purceed ahead because I wanted to git your views on
this little matter before I stuck my own paddle into the kittle. But
now let's you and me see ef there ain't another side to this here
proposition.”
“I'm listening, your Honour,” said Flournoy, mystified but somehow
cheered.
“Well, then!” The judge raised his right arm ready to emphasise each
point he made with a wide swing of the hand which held the pipe. “Under
the laws of this state gamblin' in whatsoever form ain't permitted,
recognised, countenanced nor suffered. That's so, ain't it, son? To
be shore, the laws as they read at present sometimes seem insufficient
somehow to prevent the same, and I hope to see them corrected in that
reguard, but the intent is plain enough that, in the eye of the law,
public gamblin' es sech does not go on anywhere within the confines of
this commonwealth. You agree with me there, don't you?”
“May it please the court, I agree with you there,” said Flournoy
happily, beginning, he thought, to see the light breaking through.
“All right then--so fur so good. Now then, sech bein' the situation,
we may safely assume, I reckin, that within the purview and the written
meanin' of the statute, gamblin'--common gamblin'--don't exist a-tall.
It jest natchally ain't.
“Understand me, I'm speaking accordin' to a strict legal construction of
the issue. And so, ef gamblin' don't exist there couldn't 'a' been no
gamblin' goin' on upstairs over the Blue Jug saloon and restaurant on the
night in question. In fact, ef you carry the point out to its logical
endin' there couldn't 'a' been no night in question neither. In any
event, ef the person Magee could by any chance prove he was there, in
the said place, on the said date, at the said time, it would appear that
he was present fur the purpose of evadin' and defyin' the law, and so
ef somebody ostensibly and apparently seemed to happen along and did by
threat and duress deprive him of somethin' of seemin' value, he still
wouldn't have no standin' in court because he couldn't come with clean
hands hisse'f to press the charge.
“But there ain't no need to go into that phase and aspect of the
proposition because we know now that, legally, he wasn't even there.
Not bein' there, of course he wasn't engaged in carryin' on a game of
chance. Not bein' so engaged, it stands to reason he didn't lose nothin'
of value. Ef he states otherwise we are bound to believe him to be a
victim of a diseased and an overwrought mind. And so there, I take it,
is the way it stands, so fur ez you are concerned, Mister Flournoy. You
can't ask a Grand Jury to return an indictment ag'inst a figment of the
imagination, kin you? Why, boy, they'd laugh at you.”
“I certainly can't, Judge,” agreed the young man blithely. “I don't know
how the venerable gentlemen composing the court of last resort in this
state would look upon the issue if it were carried up to them on appeal,
but for my purposes you've stated the law beautifully.” He was grinning
broadly as he stood up and reached for his hat and his gloves. “I'm
going now to break the blow to our long-legged friend.”
“Whilst you're about it you mout tell him somethin' else,” stated
his superior. “In fact, you mout let the word seep round sort of
promiscuous-like that I'm aimin' to direct the special attention of the
next Grand Jury to the official conduct of certain members of the
police force of our fair little city. Ez regards the suppressin' and the
punishin' of common gamblers, the law appears to be sort of loopholey
at present; but mebbe ef we investigated the activities, or the lack of
same, on the part of divers of our sworn peace officers, we mout be
able to scotch the snake a little bit even ef we can't kill it outright.
Anyway, I'm willin' to try the experiment. I reckin there's quite a
number would be interested in hearin' them tidin's ef you're a mind to
put 'em into circulation. Personally, I'm impressed with the idea that
our civic atmosphere needs clarifyin' somewhut. All graftin' is hateful
but it seems to me the little cheap graftin' that goes on sometimes in a
small community is about the nastiest kind of graft there is. Don't you
agree with me there?”
“Judge Priest,” stated Mr. Flournoy from the threshold, “I've about made
up my mind that I'm always going to agree with you.” Inside of two hours
the commonwealth's attorney returned from his errand, apparently much
exalted of spirit.
“Say, Judge,” he proclaimed as he came through the door, “I imagine it
won't be necessary for you to take the steps you were mentioning a while
ago.”
“No?”
“No, siree. Once I'd started it I judge the news must've spread pretty
fast. Outside on the Square, as I was on my way back up here from
downtown, Beck Giltner waylaid me to ask me to tell you for him that
he was going to close down his game and try to make a living some
other way. I'm no deep admirer of the life, works and character of Beck
Giltner, but I'll say this much for him--he keeps his promise once he's
made it. I'd take his word before I'd take the word of a lot of people
who wouldn't speak to him on the street.
“And we're going to lose our uncrowned king. Yes, sir, Highpockets the
First is preparing to leave us flat. After hearing what I had to tell
him, he said in a passionate sort of way that a man might as well quit
a community where he can't get justice. I gather that he's figuring on
pulling his freight for some more populous spot where he can enjoy
a wider field of endeavour and escape the vulgar snickers of the
multitude. He spoke of Chicago.”
“Ah, hah!” said Judge Priest; and then after a little pause: “Well,
Jerome, my son, ef I have to give up any member of this here community I
reckin Mister Highpockets Elmer Magee, Esquire, is probably the one I
kin spare the easiest. When is he aimin' to go from us?”
“Right away, I think, from what he said.”
“Well,” went on Judge Priest, “ef so be you should happen to run acros't
him ag'in before he takes his departure from amongst us you mout--in
strict confidence, of course--tell him somethin' else. He mout care to
ponder on it while he is on his way elsewhere. That there old
scattergun, which he looked down the barrels of it the other night,
wasn't loaded.”
“Wasn't loaded? Whee!” chortled Mr. Flournoy. “Well, of all the good
jokes----”
He caught himself: “Say, Judge, how did you know it wasn't loaded?”
“Why, she told me, son--the Widder Norfleet told me so last night. You
see she come runnin' over the back way from her house to my place--I
glean somethin' had happened which made her think the time had arrived
to put herself in touch with sech of the authorities ez she felt she
could trust--and she detailed the whole circumstances to me. 'Twas me
suggested to her that she'd better write you that there letter. In fact,
you mout say I sort of dictated its gin'ral tenor. I told her that you
ez the prosecutor was the one that'd be most interested in hearin' any
formal statement she mout care to make, and so----”
Mr. Flournoy slumped down into a handy chair and ran some fingers
through his hair.
“Then part of the joke is on me too,” he owned.
“I wouldn't go so fur ez to say that,” spake Judge Priest soothingly.
“Frum where I'm settin' it looks to me like the joke is mainly on quite
a number of people.”
“And the shotgun wasn't loaded?” Seemingly Mr. Flournoy found it hard to
credit his own ears.
“It didn't have nary charge in ary barrel,” reaffirmed the old man.
“That little woman had the spunk to go up there all alone by herse'f and
bluff a whole roomful of grown men, but she didn't dare to load up her
old fusee--said she didn't know how, in the first place, and, in the
second place, she was skeered it mout go off and hurt somebody. Jerome,
ain't that fur all the world jest like a woman?”