One phrase made Colby descend alive into hell, where he remained for
seven days and nights: “I--uh--I think I know Grahame.”
In seven days he aged five years, and all the time he spent desperately
in an effort to seem exactly as usual. The phrase might mean anything or
nothing. Nesbit might know everything, or nothing at all, or he might
merely be suspicious. It depended on the colored boys, perhaps; but
mostly it depended on how well he knew Grahame.
Colby was seeing him now and then, and he was waving abstracted,
meaningless greetings and disappearing amid the tinny rumblings of his
ancient car.
Colby tried to assure himself that he was safe. There was no evidence
anywhere to prove him a murderer. If the colored boys had had a tale to
tell--and most likely they had not--there might be suspicion of him, but
he could never be convicted. After he had burned the boots worn the day
of the murder, even footprints from the stream edge cast in plaster
would not incriminate him. Nesbit could not find proof that he was a
murderer. There was no proof!
He lay awake at night, staring at the moonlit rectangle of his window,
going over and over his plan in search of a flaw in it; but he found
none. There was no flaw in his plan.
Then he remembered Nesbit’s heavy, dull-witted patience, and how he had
hanged Jud Harris two years after his first wife’s murder. It had taken
him two years to solve that crime, but he had done it. If he believed
Colby had murdered Grahame, he would keep on working until he had an
air-tight case, if it took him ten years.
In the meantime all that Colby could do was to behave in a perfectly
natural fashion. Nesbit might know nothing. He had said that he thought
he knew Grahame. He might have meant just that. It might have been pure
coincidence. He was acting exactly as any man would act who had known a
fellow townsman vaguely for years, and one day had picked him up in a
car and talked to him for half an hour or so. His nod of recognition
would change to a wave of the hand thereafter. That was all. That was
how Nesbit was acting; but that was also how he would act if he were
suspicious.
Colby watched the moonlight wax nightly to full brightness and begin to
wane again, lying awake in the darkness while the curtains at his
window flapped idly in and out of the window sill according to the
vagaries of the chilly night breezes.
He would have given one of--no, he would give half of the thousand-dollar
bills set in behind the horrible chromo above his washstand, if he could
find out what Nesbit meant by saying that he thought he knew Grahame
when he saw him with Colby.
That one thing made Colby’s nerves grow taut and jangling. For seven
nights he lay awake and stared at the idiotically garnished rectangle
that let in the moonlight. For seven nights that one phrase fretted at
his nerves. During the day he went about his business under the
horrible, the overwhelming strain of acting exactly as usual, and at
night the problem banished sleep.
If Nesbit had known Grahame as a bootleg operator, he would have watched
the man closely. Going hunting with Colby, it would have occurred to him
that something else was in the wind. He might have cranked up his car to
find out. He might have thought of Grahame as intending to make a cache
of liquor near Culpeper. He might have gone out on the concrete road
just to look about, to see if there were signs of heavy trucks turning
off on the dirt side roads.
If he was out scouting around on Grahame’s account, he would know that
Grahame did not leave Culpeper in the car of an acquaintance. He might
have known from the beginning that Colby lied. That possibility put dark
circles under Colby’s eyes, and hollowed his cheeks a little, and after
a few days made his hands the least bit clumsy. One of his customers--a
motherly, meddling person--commented sympathetically that he did not look
well. Colby cursed her frantically in his heart, while he was beaming at
her and assuring her that there was nothing wrong except too much Sunday
dinner.
But he looked carefully in his mirror that night, and told himself to
stop worrying. There was no sign of anything wrong. Nesbit had shown no
suspicion. Colby and Grahame together had probably faded entirely from
his mind.
That same night, however, Colby lay awake despairingly in his bed with
the cold night air in his nostrils, watching the weaker rays of the
waning moon strike through his window upon the elaborately figured wall
paper, move slowly across to the washstand, reflect upward from the
china basin, and make wavy lines of feeble light upon the atrocious
chromo behind which he had hidden his booty. He had taken off the paper
backing of that picture and had gummed the bank notes beneath it.
It was near dawn, then, and he had not slept at all.
If Nesbit knew that he had lied, and knew Grahame, the detective might
have made inquiries in Richmond. He might have learned that Grahame was
not to be found. He would know, of course, that a man in Grahame’s
business makes his deals with cold cash, and carries it on him. He might
couple that fact with Grahame’s disappearance, and have a case to work
on in his clumsy, patient fashion. If so, his patience would lead him to
devise a trap for Colby.
The trap appeared on the eighth morning. No one but Colby would have
recognized it as a trap. It was the most innocent-appearing of
envelopes, bearing no return card, and mailed in Richmond the day
before. It was addressed to Grahame, in care of Colby.
Colby took it from the mail rack in the front hall as he came down
for his breakfast. He felt the blood draining from his face as he
stared at it. His knees shook horribly as he retreated to his room in
panic-stricken haste.
There he sat on his bed and gazed unseeingly at nothing, while the blood
drummed in his ears. After a long time he realized that he was staring
at the hopelessly inartistic picture which hid his booty--“Playmates,”
it was called, showing an impossibly benevolent St. Bernard dog with a
little girl in an impossibly starched pink dress.
Colby swallowed nothing whatever, and tried to fight down utter terror.
Nobody knew that Grahame was coming to Culpeper. Nobody would have
dreamed of writing to Grahame in his care, except Nesbit. It was a trap
of Nesbit’s. No doubt he had asked that a watch be kept in the post
office, to see what Colby did with the letter--to see if he remailed it
or destroyed it--to see what effect it had.
With a feeling of panic, Colby realized that he was already showing an
effect. His face was ashen. His hands were shaking. If he arrived late
at his business, Nesbit would assuredly notice that.
He rubbed his face desperately with a rough towel until the color came
back to it. He went down the stairs, savagely making his knees serve
him. He went out and set off briskly toward the store. If he acted
naturally in every way, Nesbit would think he was mistaken. Nesbit was
only suspicious. He couldn’t be more than suspicious.
He had gone three blocks when Nesbit passed him amid the tinny
thunderings of his decrepit car. He turned heavy, indifferent eyes upon
Colby, abstractedly waved a meaningless salute, and went on.
But Colby was ashen white and utterly limp behind him, and he could not
but believe that Nesbit had noticed.
That day was torture. Three people remarked that he didn’t look well.
Black blasphemy yammered in his heart as he assured them that it was a
touch of indigestion, nothing more. He lived all day in deepest hell,
and that night he cursed himself because he had not kept Grahame’s
notebook. There would be addresses in it, to one of which he could
forward the letter. Nesbit’s suspicions would follow whoever kept the
letter; but Colby knew no one who would accept the mail.
Of course he knew better than to go to the stream bank and dig down for
the notebook. Nesbit would have somebody watching there, night and day.
Colby’s terror was the deeper because he did not know what to do. He
dared not destroy the letter, for that would confirm Nesbit’s belief. He
did not dare open it, because that would be detected when Nesbit had it
again. He did not dare hold it. The frenzied helplessness that he felt
racked his already tortured nerves unbearably.
On the ninth morning after the murder he made his first panic-stricken
move. To make Nesbit doubtful, to get rid of the letter, which he knew
to be a trap, to gain time--anything!--he scribbled an address on the
envelope and crossed out his own. The address was meaningless, written
at random. He mailed the letter openly, so that he would be seen.
At noontime he saw Nesbit go into the post office, where he remained for
a long time. Colby had a nervous chill.
He had made a mistake. He should have burned the letter, written
another, and put it into a precisely similar envelope. It would not
matter to whom his own letter was addressed. He should have gone to
Richmond and mailed it in the central post office, at the busiest
possible instant, when it could hardly be picked out for Nesbit. It
would be assumed that he had remailed the trap letter to a proper
address for Grahame. Nesbit’s trap would have been useless.
This story, as you see, is instructive. That is the proper thing to do
with embarrassing letters--burn them.
Colby had made a mistake; and four days later his hands were shaking
uncontrollably as he stared down at a little white envelope in his
fingers. It was the letter addressed to Grahame. A rubber-stamped
notation with a penciled correction on the envelope showed that some
postal clerk had been zealous in the effort to keep a piece of mail with
no return card out of the dead letter office.
The notation read, in rubber-stamped characters, “Return”--in pencil,
“to previous addressee”--and in rubber-stamped letters again, “For
Better Address.”