ONE WAY OF LOOKING AT IT
Notwithstanding the almost universal belief that poor old Oliver Baxter
was buried in the black mire of the Swamp—there were some who said he
was still _sinking_—a state-wide search was at once instituted by his
distracted son, who, for one, did not believe that the missing man had
gone to his death in the loathesome tract. Before the sun had set on
that bleak though sunlit day, telephone and telegraph wires carried the
news to all nearby towns, villages and farms. Railway trains and
interurban cars were searched; the woods and the fields for miles around
were combed and the highways watched.
The bank’s prompt announcement that Mr. Baxter had withdrawn thirty-five
hundred dollars convinced Oliver October and a few sound-headed
individuals that he had deliberately planned his departure from Rumley,
although they were totally in the dark as to his reason for leaving—if,
indeed, a reason existed in his disordered mind.
No one could be found who saw him after he took leave of his son on the
swamp road. Oliver October related all that transpired between them on
that moonlit by-way. He did not spare himself in the recital. No one
blamed him, however. Much to his distress, Serepta Grimes came forward
with truthful descriptions of scenes in and about the Baxter home; she
told of old Oliver’s inexplicable conduct, of violent fits of anger that
grew out of nothing and died away in melancholy regret over the things
he had said to his beloved son. And she described Oliver October as an
angel possessing the patience of Job for having endured these outrageous
“tantrums.”
While neither Serepta nor young Oliver could be positive, they were of
the opinion that Mr. Baxter wore his every-day business suit on the
evening of his disappearance. Of this, however, they could not be sure.
An inspection of his closet the following morning led to a puzzling
discovery. A comparatively new suit of a dark gray material—rather too
heavy for summer wear—was missing, while the wrinkled, well-worn
garments that he wore daily at the store were found hanging in the
closet alongside his venerable “Prince Albert.” Mrs. Grimes was
confident that he had on his old clothes at supper time; Oliver October
had not noticed what he was wearing. In the event that Mrs. Grimes was
right—and she couldn’t take oath on it—Mr. Baxter must have returned
to the house and changed his clothes after parting from his son. There
was no one at home. Lizzie, the most recent maid-of-all-work, was at the
“movies,” and Mrs. Grimes was “sitting up” with Abel Conroy.
The excitement in Rumley was intense. The Baxter home became a magnet
that drew practically the entire population of the town to that section,
and there was not an hour of the day that did not see scores of people
trudging through the safer portions of the swamp or tramping along the
uplands that bordered it. Small children, accompanied by their parents,
stared wide-eyed and frightened across the loathesome tract, and
listened to solemn warnings which generally began with “poor old Mr.
Baxter wandered out there and that was the last of him.” Venturesome
young men approached a few of the “holes,” sounded them with poles and
saplings, and came away shaking their heads.
Three or four days passed before towns far and near began to report that
old men answering the description sent out by the Chief of Police in
Rumley were being detained or kept under surveillance, pending the
arrival of some one who could identify them as Mr. Baxter. Oliver
October, Sammy Parr and other citizens sped in haste to these towns,
only to meet with disappointment. Finally the tenth day came and the
nine days of wonder were over. People began to think and talk about
something besides the Baxter mystery. Detectives from Chicago, brought
down by Oliver October, agreed with the young man that his father had
“skipped out,” to use the rather undignified expression of Mr. Michael
O’Rourke. It was Mr. O’Rourke who advanced the theory that the old man
had taken this amazing means of forcing his son to remain in Rumley.
“Why,” said he, “it’s as plain as the nose on your face. He is dead set
on having you stick to this town. He chews it over with you for weeks.
You say ‘nix.’ Nothing doing. Well, what’s the smartest thing he can do?
What’s the surest way for him to bring you to time? He’s as slick as
grease, your father is. Out of his head? Not on your life. He’s an old
fox. Do you get me? The only way to make you stay in this town is for
him to leave it.
“He draws a wad of money, puts on his best clothes, and—fare thee well!
He sneaks off without letting anybody know where he’s going. Why does he
do that? Simple as A B C. If you or anybody else knew where he was or
where he was even likely to be, you’d have him back here in no time, and
all his trouble for nothing. He thought it all out beforehand. Knew
exactly where he was going and how to get there without being headed
off. And that’s where he is right now, leaving you to hold the bag. He’s
had his own way. You’ve got to stay here until he gets good and ready to
come back. See what I mean? Somebody’s got to be in charge of his
affairs. The store and everything. There is a chance, of course, that he
wandered out in the swamp, as most of these people think, but I don’t
believe it. He wouldn’t draw out thirty-five hundred dollars if he had
any preconceived notion of doing away with himself. And he wouldn’t come
home and put on his best suit of clothes, either. It’s possible, to be
sure, that he was slugged by somebody who knew he had all that money and
his body chucked into the mire. It’s up to you, Mr. Baxter. If you want
us to go ahead and rake the country for him, we’ll do it. I don’t say
we’ll find him. We’re an honest concern. We don’t believe in robbing our
clients. It will cost you a lot of money to find him, Mr. Baxter.
Besides, there’s always the chance that he’ll lose his nerve and come
back home. Or he may get sick and send for you. We’ve had hundreds of
these mysterious disappearance cases and more than four-fifths of ’em
don’t amount to anything.”
“I want to find him,” said Oliver firmly. “You may be right in your
surmise—I hope you are. But just the same I don’t intend to leave a
stone unturned, Mr. O’Rourke. As long as I’ve got a cent of my own, I’ll
keep up the search, and when my money runs out, I will use his. Good
God, when I think that he may have wandered off only to fall into the
hands of thieves and cutthroats, I—I—No, we must find him, do you
understand? Find him!”
“He’s all right as long as he don’t let some guy sell him the Field
Museum or the Woolworth Building,” said the detective easily. “All
right, sir. We’ll get on the job at once. Hold yourself in readiness in
case we need you in a hurry. I suppose we can always get in touch with
you here, Mr. Baxter?”
Oliver nodded. “Yes. You can always find me here in Rumley.”
And so the days ran into weeks and the weeks into months, with the
mystery no nearer solution than in the beginning—no word, no sign from
the old man who had vanished, no clue that led to anything save
disappointment. There was something grim, uncanny about the silence of
old man Baxter—it was indeed the silence of the dead. “He might as well
be dead,” was a remark that became common in Rumley whenever his case
was discussed. Strangely enough, no one now believed him to be dead.
Everybody agreed with the detective that the cantankerous old man had
“skipped out” with the sole idea of frustrating his son’s plan to return
to Chicago.
“What gets me,” said Joseph Sikes, “is the underhanded way he went about
it. Leaving Oliver and all the rest of us to worry ourselves sick and
him just calmly settling down somewheres in peace and comfort and maybe
snickerin’ to himself over the way he put it over on us. It wasn’t like
him, either. I never knew a more upright man, or anybody as square and
above-board as Ollie Baxter.”
Not once but a dozen times a day Mr. Sikes held forth in some such
manner as this, ignoring Mr. Link’s contention that poor old Ollie may
not have been responsible for his act, “owing,” said he, “to a sudden
mental aberration.” Young Dr. Lansing spoke of it as “aphasia,” which
was doubted with scornful determination until the word was reduced to
“loss of memory” by several family doctors who stood well in the
community.
Oliver October took charge of the store and, as self-appointed manager,
conducted the business to the best of his ability. He deferred to the
older clerks and the book-keeper in matters of policy, an attitude which
not only surprised but pleased them. Charlie Keep, the senior clerk—a
man who had been in the store for twenty years—was so inspired and
relieved by this self-effacement that he speedily proclaimed Oliver
October to be a better business man than his father.
There was nothing in the young man’s manner to indicate that he rebelled
against the turn in his affairs. On the contrary, he took hold with an
enthusiasm that left nothing to be desired by those who at first shook
their heads dubiously over the situation.
“I am to blame for all this,” he protested firmly. “If my father is
dead, I am accountable for his death. Whatever his present condition may
be, I am responsible for it. Don’t put all the blame on that gypsy
fortune-teller. I should have realized the state of mind he was in and I
should have given up everything else in the world to help him weather
the next year or so of doubt and distress. I laughed at his fears. I did
not understand how real they were to him. He wanted me here where he
could watch over me. Mr. Sage believes he has buried himself in some
out-of-the-way place where he can’t even hear what happens to me between
now and my thirtieth birthday. Uncle Joe Sikes says he got cold
feet—couldn’t stand the gaff. That’s another way of looking at it. In
either case, I honestly believe he will come back in his own good time.
And when he does come home he must find me here, carrying on the
business as well as I know how. I will do more than that. I’ll drain
part of our bally old swamp and make it worth fifty dollars an acre to
him instead of the dreary waste he bought for a song. And I sha’n’t stop
looking for him—not for a single minute. It’s all right to be
optimistic, it’s all right to assume that he is safe and well somewhere,
that he knows what he is about, and all that. The reverse may be the
case—so I mean to find him if it is humanly possible to do so.”
Joseph Sikes and Silas Link lamented and at the same time excoriated old
Oliver Baxter. For a while the latter spoke of his old friend as “the
deceased,” being in no doubt at all as to his fate, but, as time went on
and the “remains” continued to elude the most diligent of searchers, he
was forced to admit that perhaps everybody else was right and he was
wrong.
Accepting the increased burden of responsibility resulting from old
Oliver’s defection, the two “guardians” devoted themselves, without a
murmur of complaint, to the supervision of Oliver October’s private and
personal affairs. It was a duty that could not be shirked—a charge
bequeathed to them, so to speak, by the figuratively demised Mr. Baxter.
They had little or no support from Mr. Sage; and when they complained to
Serepta Grimes about the minister’s lack of interest in the young man,
that excellent manager shocked them by declaring that if they bothered
her with any more of that nonsense she would give them a piece of her
mind and a kettle full of boiling water besides.
They turned to Jane Sage for comfort, and while that young lady
smilingly called them a couple of “dear old geese” it was so much more
poetic than Mrs. Grimes’s “idiotic old jackasses” that they forthwith
accepted her as an ally and from that time on went to her with all their
troubles—dubiously and shamefacedly at first, to be sure, but with a
confidence that soon developed into arrogant assurance. She confided to
Oliver October that they nearly bothered the life out of her, and begged
him, for her sake, to smile more frequently than he did—(Mr. Sikes
dwelt mournfully upon what he called Oliver’s “hang-dog”
expression)—and to stop haranguing the members of the common council
about the defects in the city drainage system—(Mr. Link said that it
wasn’t right, the way he lost his temper when discussing the conditions,
and besides nobody else had ever found any fault with the sewers in
Rumley); and never to so far forget himself as to again threaten to sue
George Henley if he didn’t settle his account of four years’ standing;
and by all means to refrain from arguing politics with Justice of the
Peace Winterbottom, because neither Mr. Sikes nor Mr. Link slept very
well after listening to these heated debates.
“Poor old Janie,” Oliver would say, with his always engaging grin. “I’ll
bet you wish I was safely past thirty.”
“I do that,” she would always respond, very much as Biddy McGuire, the
Irish washwoman, might have said it.