This is a very instructive story. It deals with the value of a
reputation, the best way to commit murder, what to do with embarrassing
letters, and where stolen thousand-dollar bills may be exchanged or
spent with the minimum discount--all of which information is useful; but
mostly it deals with the value of a reputation.
Colby had thought about reputations rather carefully, but the sound of
the shot with which he killed Grahame had not quite died away before he
remembered the reputation of Detective Sergeant Nesbit. Then cold sweat
came out on his forehead.
He stood stock-still for a matter of seconds, with a horrible sick
feeling coming all over him. Grahame, of course, caused none of that
feeling of nausea. Grahame had acted according to schedule. The load of
buckshot went into his skull just where the spinal column entered it.
While the thunderous crash of the gun still echoed among the nearer tree
trunks, his arms went stiffly out in an aimless gesture and he fell with
a slight splashing sound in the leaf-littered mud underfoot. Colby
stood still, with thinning smoke coming out of the gun barrel, while the
echoes died away to a dimming murmur among the trees, until even that
sound was lost in the noise of the breeze in the bare branches overhead
and the dry rustling of lingering brown leaves.
It was very peaceful, here among the trees. The brown clothing of the
crumpled figure on the earth blended in color with the carpet of leaves.
Any living creatures that might have been within hearing had been
startled into immobility and silence by the shot. Colby had not yet
moved even his feet after pulling the trigger. There was no sound at
all, except a faint trickling noise from a little stream some twenty
yards to the right.
Colby pulled out his handkerchief and wiped his forehead--not at all the
conventional thing for a murderer to do, of course; but he was not
thinking of the dead man at his feet. He was thinking of Nesbit.
He stood with his handkerchief held rather absurdly before him,
listening to the stillness. Then he moved to put the handkerchief away.
His gun interfered irritatingly. Somehow his hands fumbled. Eventually
he shifted the gun to his left hand and stuffed the thing into his coat
pocket.
The silence continued. All the world seemed full of a vast immobility, a
vast quietude, which was only emphasized by the faint whispering of dry
branches and drier leaves overhead. The stillness was reassuring. Nesbit
would never know of this! Colby’s plan was too well worked out for him
ever to find out anything.
The murderer bent over the huddled mass at his feet. Grahame would have
ten thousand dollars on him. Colby searched for it industriously; but it
is a curiously unhandy business to go through another man’s clothes.
One’s hand catches, the linings follow one’s fingers out of the
pockets, one spills things messily--especially if the other man happens
to be dead.
Colby went into one pocket after another. A little trace of panic came
over him. He found a cigarette case, a lighter, a handkerchief, a
notebook, twenty or thirty dollars loose in a vest pocket. Then he
remembered--it would be in a money belt, of course.
He unbuttoned Grahame’s vest clumsily and fumbled with the buttons of
his shirt. It was unpleasant to have to search like this. Colby felt
hideously ashamed--not of the murder, of course, or even of the fact
that he was a thief; but searching like this, searching a dead man’s
clothing, made him feel unclean.
No, there was no money belt. Colby swore, a trifle shaken. Grahame must
have the money on him! He was a free-lance bootleg operator. He had come
down to make a deal for two thousand gallons of corn whisky. Colby told
him that he had been running a still for three months, and wanted to
sell all his product in a lump, avoiding constant dealings and
mysterious trucks and cars, and so eliminating the probability of
suspicion. Grahame must surely have brought the money; but where was it?
Colby felt sick with disappointment before he had finished hunting.
Every pocket contained its appropriate objects--a knife, a watch, a luck
piece, scraps of paper with undecipherable notations on them, a
newspaper clipping in an envelope.
Pure despair filled him the instant before he thrust his hand into
Grahame’s inside breast pocket. But the wallet was there, and the shock
of finding it brought back confidence. He should have known! Dealing as
Grahame did, the man knew all the tricks of the trade. An inside breast
pocket is the one place that a dip will never touch. It is the safest
possible receptacle for any valuable.
Colby opened the wallet. Four twenties, six hundreds, and ten, twelve,
thirteen other bills--thousand-dollar bills. Colby’s breath whistled in
his nostrils. Much better than he had expected! He had never seen a
thousand-dollar bill before.
He folded them and thrust them into his own breast pocket with a strong
sense of satisfaction. He felt a sort of professional gratification at
remembering why one should use a breast pocket. Now there remained only
the business of getting rid of Grahame and going back to town and making
his proper report. He had everything worked out. Nesbit would never even
hear of this affair. He was safe!
He rubbed his handkerchief carefully over every article that he replaced
in Grahame’s pockets, to remove possible finger-prints. The woods
remained very quiet. To be sure, as the effect of the single shot wore
away, there were little sounds near by. An old dog squirrel barked
reassuringly, and his wife and relations came out of their holes and
went about their businesses. A partridge that had frozen into stillness
at the sound of the shotgun came to life and darted to a more promising
spot. Colby heard it scratching and rustling among the fallen leaves.
It whirred off into nowhere when he picked Grahame up, however, and the
squirrels lapsed abruptly into utter silence when his feet crackled on
leaves and small branches as he staggered toward the stream with his
burden.
Twenty yards, no more. He had seen the glitter of the stream curving
toward the footpath before he shot Grahame. It was an unimportant little
watercourse, nowhere more than half a dozen paces across, and it
murmured and sang pleasantly to itself over its gravelly bed.
Colby went painstakingly down to its margin. He knew exactly where he
was and what he was going to do. After a heavy rain the stream ran with
a strong current. It was always carving at its banks or making minor
changes in them, and at one spot it had undermined the six-foot clay
wall which confined it so that a hollow of considerable depth was roofed
over only by tree roots and the earth on top of them. Sooner or later
that roof would cave in.
It was easy to push the dead body into the hollow, where it was well
hidden. Few people ever came near this place, anyhow. No one would ever
dream of creeping in there and risking a cave-in for no purpose. With
one single rain of any size, the roof would probably collapse and bury
Grahame securely. No one would ever think of looking for a missing man
under a cave-in of that sort.
Colby climbed up the bank and tested the roof with his foot. It quivered
promisingly. He stamped. He stamped harder. With a sticky thumping of
rain-softened earth, it gave way. Small rootlets snapped, falling earth
cascaded, and Grahame was safely buried under three feet of soil.
There was absolutely no suspicious sign above. The cave-in looked
perfectly natural. No searching party would ever dream of anything
hidden under there. No searching party would ever look for Grahame,
anyhow. He had come up from Richmond by train, and had ostensibly gone
out to hunt with Colby. Colby would explain that as they walked back
along the concrete road toward town, a car had come by, headed for
Richmond, and in it was an acquaintance of Grahame’s. The man had hailed
Grahame and offered a lift, which the latter had taken.
There would be no inquiry, no investigation. There was no need for
anything of the sort. It was unlikely that any one in Richmond knew
where Grahame had gone.
After Colby had spent twenty minutes clearing away tracks and had
carefully dropped one or two blood-spattered leaves into the hollow of a
double-trunked poplar, there was absolutely no evidence of a murder
anywhere except under that collapsed bank. There was the money in
Colby’s pocket, of course, but nobody would know anything about that for
a long time--not even Nesbit.
Colby had done his murder in an absolutely perfect way. As you see, this
story is instructive.