On the afternoon of the following day Mr. Shackford was duly
buried. The funeral, under the direction of Mr. Richard Shackford,
who acted as chief mourner and was sole mourner by right of kinship,
took place in profound silence. The carpenters, who had lost a day on
Bishop's new stables, intermitted their sawing and hammering while
the services were in progress; the steam was shut off in the
iron-mills, and no clinking of the chisel was heard in the marble
yard for an hour, during which many of the shops had their shutters
up. Then, when all was over, the imprisoned fiend in the boilers gave
a piercing shriek; the leather bands slipped on the revolving drums,
the spindles leaped into life again, and the old order of things was
reinstated,--outwardly, but not in effect.
In general, when the grave closes over a man his career is ended.
But Mr. Shackford was never so much alive as after they had buried
him. Never before had he filled so large a place in the public eye.
Though invisible, he sat at every fireside. Until the manner of his
death had been made clear, his ubiquitous presence was not to be
exorcised. On the morning of the memorable day a reward of one
hundred dollars--afterwards increased to five hundred, at the
insistence of Mr. Shackford's cousin--had been offered by the board
of selectmen for the arrest and conviction of the guilty party.
Beyond this and the unsatisfactory inquest, the authorities had done
nothing, and were plainly not equal to the situation.
When it was stated, the night of the funeral, that a professional
person was coming to Stillwater to look into the case, the
announcement was received with a breath of relief.
The person thus vaguely described appeared on the spot the next
morning. To mention the name of Edward Taggett is to mention a name
well known to the detective force of the great city lying sixty miles
southwest of Stillwater. Mr. Taggett's arrival sent such a thrill of
expectancy through the village that Mr. Leonard Tappleton, whose
obsequies occurred this day, made his exit nearly unobserved. Yet
there was little in Mr. Taggett's physical aspect calculated to stir
either expectation or enthusiasm: a slender man of about twenty-six,
but not looking it, with overhanging brown mustache, sparse
side-whiskers, eyes of no definite color, and faintly accentuated
eyebrows. He spoke precisely, and with a certain unembarrassed
hesitation, as persons do who have two thoughts to one word,--if
there are such persons. You might have taken him for a physician, or
a journalist, or the secretary of an insurance company; but you would
never have supposed him the man who had disentangled the complicated
threads of the great Barnabee Bank defalcation.
Stillwater's confidence, which had risen into the nineties, fell
to zero at sight of him. "Is _that_ Taggett?" they asked. That
was Taggett; and presently his influence began to be felt like a
sea-turn. The three Dogberrys of the watch were dispatched on secret
missions, and within an hour it was ferreted out that a man in a cart
had been seen driving furiously up the turnpike the morning after the
murder. This was an agricultural district, the road led to a market
town, and teams going by in the early dawn were the rule and not the
exception; but on that especial morning a furiously driven cart was
significant. Jonathan Beers, who farmed the Jenks land, had heard the
wheels and caught an indistinct glimpse of the vehicle as he was
feeding the cattle, but with a reticence purely rustic had not been
moved to mention the circumstance before.
"Taggett has got a clew," said Stillwater under its breath.
By noon Taggett had got the man, cart and all. But it was only
Blufton's son Tom, of South Millville, who had started in hot haste
that particular morning to secure medical service for his wife, of
which she had sorely stood in need, as two tiny girls in a willow
cradle in South Millville now bore testimony.
"I haven't been cutting down the population _much,"_ said
Blufton, with his wholesome laugh.
Thomas Blufton was well known and esteemed in Stillwater, but if
the crime had fastened itself upon him it would have given something
like popular satisfaction.
In the course of the ensuing forty-eight hours four or five tramps
were overhauled as having been in the neighborhood at the time of the
tragedy; but they each had a clean story, and were let go. Then one
Durgin, a workman at Slocum's Yard, was called upon to explain some
half-washed-out red stains on his overalls, which he did. He had
tightened the hoops on a salt-pork barrel for Mr. Shackford several
days previous; the red paint on the head of the barrel was fresh, and
had come off on his clothes. Dr. Weld examined the spots under a
microscope, and pronounced them paint. It was manifest that Mr.
Taggett meant to go to the bottom of things.
The bar-room of the Stillwater hotel was a center of interest
these nights; not only the bar-room proper, but the adjoining
apartment, where the more exclusive guests took their seltzer-water
and looked over the metropolitan newspapers. Twice a week a social
club met here, having among its members Mr. Craggie, the postmaster,
who was supposed to have a great political future, Mr. Pinkham,
Lawyer Perkins, Mr. Whidden, and other respectable persons. The room
was at all times in some sense private, with a separate entrance from
the street, though another door, which usually stood open, connected
it with the main salon. In this was a long mahogany counter, one
section of which was covered with a sheet of zinc perforated like a
sieve, and kept constantly bright by restless caravans of lager-beer
glasses. Directly behind that end of the counter stood a Gothic
brass-mounted beer-pump, at whose faucets Mr. Snelling, the landlord,
flooded you five or six mugs in the twinkling of an eye, and raised
the vague expectation that he was about to grind out some popular
operatic air. At the left of the pump stretched a narrow mirror,
reflecting he gaily-colored wine-glasses and decanters which stood on
each other's shoulders, and held up lemons, and performed various
acrobatic feats on a shelf in front of it.
The fourth night after the funeral of Mr. Shackford, a dismal
southeast storm caused an unusual influx of idlers in both rooms.
With the rain splashing against the casements and the wind slamming
the blinds, the respective groups sat discussing in a desultory way
the only topic which could be discussed at present. There had been a
general strike among the workmen a fortnight before; but even that
had grown cold as a topic.
"That was hard on Tom Blufton," said Stevens, emptying the ashes
out of his long-stemmed clay pipe, and refilling the bowl with cut
cavendish from a jar on a shelf over his head.
Michael Hennessey sat down his beer-mug with an air of
argumentative disgust, and drew one sleeve across his glistening
beard.
"Stevens, you've as many minds as a weather-cock, jist! Didn't ye
say yerself it looked mighty black for the lad when he was took?"
"I might have said something of the sort," Stevens admitted
reluctantly, after a pause. "His driving round at daybreak with an
empty cart did have an ugly look at first."
"Indade, then."
"Not to anybody who knew Tom Blufton," interrupted Samuel Piggott,
Blufton's brother-in-law. "The boy hasn't a bad streak in him. It was
an outrage. Might as well have suspected Parson Langly or Father
O'Meara."
"If this kind of thing goes on," remarked a man in the corner with
a patch over one eye, "both of them reverend gents will be hauled up,
I shouldn't wonder."
"That's so, Mr. Peters," responded Durgin. "If my respectability
didn't save me, who's safe?"
"Durgin is talking about his respectability! He's joking."
"Look here, Dexter," said Durgin, turning quickly on the speaker,
"when I want to joke, I talk about your intelligence."
"What kind of man is Taggett, anyhow?" asked Piggott. "You saw
him, Durgin."
"I believe he was at Justice Beemis's office the day Blufton and I
was there; but I didn't make him out in the crowd. Shouldn't know him
from Adam."
"Stillwater's a healthy place for tramps jest about this time,"
suggested somebody. "Three on 'em snaked in to-day."
"I think, gentlemen, that Mr. Taggett is on the right track
there," observed Mr. Snelling, in the act of mixing another Old
Holland for Mr. Peters. "Not too sweet, you said? I feel it in my
bones that it was a tramp, and that Mr. Taggett will bring him yet."
"He won't find him on the highway yonder," said a tall, swarthy
man named Torrini, an Italian. Nationalities clash in Stillwater.
"That tramp is a thousand miles from here."
"So he is if he has any brains under his hat," returned Snelling.
"But they're on the lookout for him. The minute he pawns anything,
he's gone."
"Can't put up greenbacks or gold, can he? He didn't take nothing
else," interposed Bishop, the veterinary surgeon.
"Now jewelry nor nothing?"
"There wasn't none, as I understand it," said Bishop, "except a
silver watch. That was all snug under the old man's piller."
"Wanter know!" ejaculated Jonathan Beers.
"I opine, Mr. Craggie," said the school-master, standing in the
inner room with a rolled-up file of the Daily Advertiser in his hand,
"that the person who--who removed our worthy townsman will never be
discovered."
"I shouldn't like to go quite so far as that, sir," answered Mr.
Craggie, with that diplomatic suavity which leads to postmasterships
and seats in the General Court, and has even been known to oil a dull
fellow's way into Congress. "I cannot take quite so hopeless a view
of it. There are difficulties, but they must be overcome, Mr.
Pinkham, and I think they will be."
"Indeed, I hope so," returned the school-master. "But there are
cases--are there not?--in which the--the problem, if I may so
designate it, has never been elucidated, and the persons who
undertook it have been obliged to go to the foot, so to speak."
"Ah, yes, there are such cases, certainly. There was the Burdell
mystery in New York, and, later, the Nathan affair--By the way, I've
satisfactory theories of my own touching both. The police were
baffled, and remain so. But, my _dear_ sir, observe for a moment
the difference."
Mr. Pinkham rested one finger on the edge of a little round table,
and leaned forward in a respectful attitude to observe the
difference.
"Those crimes were committed in a vast metropolis affording a
thousand chances for escape, as well as offering a thousand
temptations to the lawless. But we are a limited community. We have
no professional murderers among us. The deed which has stirred
society to its utmost depths was plainly done by some wayfaring
amateur. Remorse has already arrived upon him, if the police haven't.
For the time being he escapes; but he is bound to betray himself
sooner or later. If the right steps are taken,--and I have myself the
greatest confidence in Mr. Taggett,--the guilty party can scarcely
fail to be brought to the bar of justice, if he doesn't bring himself
there."
"Indeed, indeed, I hope so," repeated Mr. Pinkham.
"The investigation is being carried on very closely."
"Too closely," suggested the school-master.
"Oh dear, no," murmured Mr. Craggie. "The strictest secrecy is
necessary in affairs of this delicate nature. If Tom, Dick, and Harry
were taken behind the scenes," he added, with the air of one wishing
to say too much, "the bottom would drop out of everything."
Mr. Pinkham shrunk from commenting on a disaster like that, and
relapsed into silence. Mr. Craggie, with his thumbs in the arm-holes
of his waistcoat, and his legs crossed in an easy, senatorial
fashion, leaned back in the chair and smiled blandly.
"I don't suppose there's nothing new, boys!" exclaimed a fat,
florid man, bustling in good-naturedly at the public entrance, and
leaving a straight wet trail on the sanded floor from the threshold
to the polished mahogany counter. Mr. Wilson was a local humorist of
the Falstaffian stripe, though not so much witty in himself as the
cause of wit in others.
"No, Jimmy, there isn't anything new," responded Dexter.
"I suppose you didn't hear that the ole man done somethin'
handsome for me in his last will and testyment."
"No, Jemmy, I don't think he has made any provision whatever for
an almshouse."
"Sorry to hear that, Dexter," said Willson, absorbedly chasing a
bit of lemon peel in his glass with the spoon handle, "for there
isn't room for us all up at the town-farm. How's your grandmother?
Finds it tol'rably comfortable?"
They are a primitive, candid people in their hours of unlaced
social intercourse in Stillwater. This delicate _tu quoque_ was
so far from wounding Dexter that he replied carelessly,--
"Well, only so so. The old woman complains of too much
chicken-sallid, and hot-house grapes all the year round."
"Mr. Shackford must have left a large property," observed Mr.
Ward, of the firm of Ward & Lock, glancing up from the columns of the
Stillwater Gazette. The remark was addressed to Lawyer Perkins, who
had just joined the group in the reading-room.
"Fairly large," replied that gentleman crisply.
"Any public bequests?"
"None to speak of."
Mr. Craggie smiled vaguely.
"You see," said Lawyer Perkins, "there's a will and no will,--that
is to say, the fragments of what is supposed to be a will were found,
and we are trying to put the pieces together. It is doubtful if we
can do it; it is doubtful if we can decipher it after we have done
it; and if we decipher it it is a question whether the document is
valid or not."
"That is a masterly exposition of the dilemma, Mr. Perkins," said
the school-master warmly.
Mr. Perkins had spoken in his court-room tone of voice, with one
hand thrust into his frilled shirt-bosom. He removed this hand for a
second, as he gravely bowed to Mr. Pinkham.
"Nothing could be clearer," said Mr. Ward. "In case the paper is
worthless, what then? I am not asking you in your professional
capacity," he added hastily; for Lawyer Perkins had been known to
send in a bill on as slight a provocation as Mr. Ward's.
"That's a point. The next of kin has his claims."
"My friend Shackford, of course," broke in Mr. Craggie. "Admirable
young man!--one of my warmest supporters."
"He is the only heir at law so far as we know," said Mr. Perkins.
"Oh," said Mr. Craggie, reflecting. "The late Mr. Shackford might
have had a family in Timbuctoo or the Sandwich Islands."
"That's another point."
"The fact would be a deuced unpleasant point for young Shackford
to run against," said Mr. Ward.
"Exactly."
"If Mr. Lemuel Shackford," remarked Coroner Whidden, softly
joining the conversation to which he had been listening in his
timorous, apologetic manner, "had chanced, in the course of his early
sea-faring days, to form any ties of an unhappy complexion"--
"Complexion is good," murmured Mr. Craggie. "Some Hawaiian lady!"
--"perhaps that would be a branch of the case worth investigating
in connection with the homicide. A discarded wife, or a disowned son,
burning with a sense of wrong"--
"Really, Mr. Whidden!" interrupted Lawyer Perkins witheringly, "it
is bad enough for my client to lose his life, without having his
reputation filched away from him."
"I--I will explain! I was merely supposing"--
"The law never supposes, sir!"
This threw Mr. Whidden into great mental confusion. As coroner was
he not an integral part of the law, and when, in his official
character, he supposed anything was not that a legal supposition? But
was he in his official character now, sitting with a glass of
lemonade at his elbow in the reading-room of the Stillwater hotel?
Was he, or was he not, a coroner all the time? Mr. Whidden stroked an
isolated tuft of hair growing low on the middle of his forehead, and
glared mildly at Mr. Perkins.
"Young Shackford has gone to New York, I understand," said Mr.
Ward, breaking the silence.
Mr. Perkins nodded. "Went this morning to look after the
real-estate interests there. It will probably keep him a couple of
weeks,--the longer the better. He was of no use here. Lemuel's death
was a great shock to him, or rather the manner of it was."
"That shocked every one. They were first cousin's weren't they?"
Mr. Ward was a comparatively new resident in Stillwater.
"First cousins," replied Lawyer Perkins; "but they were never very
intimate, you know."
"I imagine nobody was ever very intimate with Mr. Shackford."
"My client was somewhat peculiar in his friendships."
This was stating it charitably, for Mr. Perkins knew, and every
one present knew, that Lemuel Shackford had not had the shadow of a
friend in Stillwater, unless it was his cousin Richard.
A cloud of mist and rain was blown into the bar-room as the street
door stood open for a second to admit a dripping figure from the
outside darkness.
_"What's_ blowed down?" asked Durgin, turning round on his
stool and sending up a ring of smoke which uncurled itself with
difficulty in the dense atmosphere.
"It's only some of Jeff Stavers's nonsense."
"No nonsense at all," said the new-comer, as he shook the heavy
beads of rain from his felt hat. "I was passing by Welch's
Court--it's as black as pitch out, fellows--when slap went something
against my shoulder; something like wet wings. Well, I was scared.
It's a bat, says I. But the thing didn't fly off; it was still
clawing at my shoulder. I put up my hand, and I'll be shot if it
wasn't the foremast, jib-sheet and all, of the old weather-cock on
the north gable of the Shackford house! Here you are!" and the
speaker tossed the broken mast, with the mimic sails dangling from
it, into Durgin's lap.
A dead silence followed, for there was felt to be something weirdly
significant in the incident.
"That's kinder omernous," said Mr. Peters, interrogatively.
"Ominous of what?" asked Durgin, lifting the wet mass from his
knees and dropping it on the floor.
"Well, sorter queer, then."
"Where does the queer come in?" inquired Stevens, gravelly. "I
don't know; but I'm hit by it."
"Come, boys, don't crowd a feller," said Mr. Peters, getting
restive. "I don't take the contract to explain the thing. But it does
seem some way droll that the old schooner should be wrecked so soon
after what has happened to the old skipper. If you don't see it, or
sense it, I don't insist. What's yours, Denyven?"
The person addressed as Denyven promptly replied, with a fine
sonorous English accent, "a mug of 'alf an' 'alf,--with a head on it,
Snelling."
At the same moment Mr. Craggie, in the inner room was saying to
the school-master,--
"I must really take issue with you there, Mr. Pinkham. I admit
there's a good deal in spiritualism which we haven't got at yet; the
science is in its infancy; it is still attached to the bosom of
speculation. It is a beautiful science, that of psychological
phenomena, and the spiritualists will yet become an influential class
of"--Mr. Craggie was going to say voters, but glided over
it--"persons. I believe in clairvoyance myself to a large extent.
Before my appointment to the post-office I had it very strong. I've
no doubt that in the far future this mysterious factor will be made
great use of in criminal cases; but at present I should resort to it
only in the last extremity,--the very last extremity, Mr. Pinkham!"
"Oh, of course," said the school-master deprecatingly. "I threw it
out only as the merest suggestion. I shouldn't think of--of--you
understand me?"
"Is it beyond the dreams of probability," said Mr. Craggie,
appealing to Lawyer Perkins, "that clairvoyants may eventually be
introduced into cases in our courts?"
"They are now," said Mr. Perkins, with a snort,--"the police bring
'em it."
Mr. Craggie finished the remainder of his glass of sherry in
silence, and presently rose to go. Coroner Whidden and Mr. Ward had
already gone. The guests in the public room were thinning out; a
gloom, indefinable and shapeless like the night, seemed to have
fallen upon the few that lingered. At a somewhat earlier hour than
usual the gas was shut off in the Stillwater hotel.
In the lonely house in Welch's Court a light was still burning.