MR. GOOCH SEES THINGS AT NIGHT
Horace Gooch was going to bed. He had had a hard day, and it was nine
o’clock. He had a notion he was not likely to sleep very well. The
sheriff of the county had telephoned earlier in the evening—in fact, he
was at supper—that a body had been found in one of the marsh pools. The
news rather took his appetite away. He had a weak and treacherous
stomach to begin with, and the mere thought of going over to Rumley in
the morning to see if he could identify the grewsome object caused him
to suddenly realize that he had a much weaker stomach than he had ever
suspected before. He had, besides, an absurd notion that he was going to
be haunted all night long by the ghastly remains of his brother-in-law.
While he always had contended that Oliver Baxter did not have much of a
head to speak of, the fact that it had been split wide open with an ax
or something of the sort was very likely to cause him to see things even
with his eyes closed and the bedroom in pitch darkness. He decided to
leave the light burning in his room, and then, after further
deliberation, concluded, that as long as it had to be lit anyway it
would be a very sensible thing on his part if he were to put in the time
reading instead of wasting electricity.
Mr. Gooch slept in a night-shirt. He didn’t believe in new-fangled
things. He was a plain man. No frills for him.
The windows of his bedroom looked out on to an extensive lawn, formerly
a rather pretentious and well-kept half-acre but now unkempt, weedy and
in a state of dire neglect. Mr. Gooch had cunningly allowed his yard to
fall into a sort of groveling, imploring decrepitude, indicative of
poverty rather than parsimony. He wanted the voters to understand that
he was by no means as rich as the unprincipled opposition said he was.
He regarded it as a very telling piece of political strategy.
Before retiring to the large four-poster bed—which, now that he was a
widower, seemed needlessly commodious and would have been disposed of
long ago but for a thrifty far-sightedness that took into consideration
the possibility that he might get married again—before retiring, he
peeped out between the window curtains to see whether the arc light was
burning at the street corner above. It was, and he experienced a
singular sensation of relief. Then he put on his spectacles and got into
bed. He had a book, a well-worn copy of “David Harum,” but he did not
begin reading at once. He was thinking of the many dark and lonely
nights old Oliver Baxter had spent in Death Swamp. It gave him a creepy
feeling. He tucked the covers a little more tightly under his chin—but
still the creepy feeling persisted.
Just as he was beginning to wish that they had not found his unfortunate
brother-in-law, a pleasant and agreeable alternative presented itself
and he noticed an immediate increase of warmth in his veins. Strange
that he had not thought of it sooner. It was most consoling, after all,
this finding of the corpus delicti. If they hadn’t found it he would
have been obliged to pay all costs arising from the search and
investigation. He had agreed to do so. But now that the “body of the
crime” had been unearthed he would be relieved of this onerous
obligation. The county would have to pay for everything. That was
understood. He smiled a little, turned the covers down from his chin,
and took up his book.
“Hey, Horace!”
He lay perfectly still for a few seconds, his eyes glued to the page. An
icy chill, starting in his abdomen, spread all over him, slowly at
first, then with consuming swiftness. He bit hard on his teeth to keep
them from chattering. The voice sounded as if it were just outside his
chamber window. He waited.
“Hey, Horace!”
A deep groan issued through Mr. Gooch’s stiffening lips. He shrank down
into the bed and pulled the covers up over his head. He was haunted!
There was no other voice in the world like it. He would know it among a
million. Oliver Baxter had come to haunt him! He had a horrifying mental
vision of the unforgettable figure of his brother-in-law floating in the
air just outside—this changed instantly to an even more appalling
spectacle: old Oliver emerging from his grave in the swamp and speeding
through the black night to pay him a visit—with his skull split wide
open—
Some one was knocking at the front door. Even through the thick
bed-covers he could hear the sharp tapping—not the tapping of
flesh-covered knuckles but of bare bones!
Mr. Gooch’s grizzled head popped out from beneath the covers. He
remembered that his bedroom door was unlocked. Anybody—any_thing_ could
walk right in—He climbed out of bed with a spryness that would have
amazed him if he had been able to devote the slightest thought to it.
Again the voice, but this time reassuringly remote from his window-sill.
He stopped irresolute half way to the door. If he waited long enough, he
reasoned, the ghost would go away thinking he was not at home. There was
not the slightest doubt that it was farther away now than when it spoke
the first time. Besides there was something more or less human in this
last cry from the night. It wasn’t at all spookish. It seemed to express
wrath.
“All right! You can go to Jericho.”
Mr. Gooch went to the window. He was still shivering and he had a queer,
unpleasant notion that his hair was wilting—a most astonishing
sensation. He hesitated a moment, then boldly drew the curtains apart.
The light from the arc light at the corner, fairly well-spent after
traversing a couple of hundred feet, was of sufficient strength to flood
the lawn with a dim radiance. A shadowy object half way down to the gate
resolved itself into the figure of a man as Mr. Gooch gazed upon it with
bewildered, incredulous eyes.
“Hello, Horace,” came wafting up to Mr. Gooch—apparently from this
shadowy object. “That you? Say, open up and let me in.”
Mr. Gooch grasped the window frame for support.
“Good God!” he gulped, but in a voice so strange and hollow that he did
not recognize it as his own. In a sudden panic he threw up the window
and screeched—in an entirely different voice but equally as
unrecognizable:
“Go away! Leave me alone!”
“Say, don’t you know who it is? It’s me.”
The figure drew nearer the house. At the same time Mr. Gooch stuck his
head out of the window and bawled:
“Help! For God’s sake, somebody come and chase it away! Help!”
“What’s the matter with you, you darned old fool!” barked the indistinct
visitor. “You’ll wake the dead, yelling like that.”
“Wake the dead!” repeated Mr. Gooch in a low, sepulchral voice.
“I’m Ollie Baxter. For goodness’ sake, Horace, don’t tell me you’ve
forgotten your only brother-in-law. I—”
“Go away! You’re dead. I don’t want any dead people coming around here
to—”
A shrill, lively cackle came up from the murk. Mr. Gooch clapped his
hand to his forehead.
“Oh, Lord! Oh, Lord!” he groaned.
“Ain’t you going to let me in? I’m not going to ask you again, you
darned old skinflint. I hate you anyhow, and always did—but I thought
maybe after me being away for more than a year you’d be hospitable
enough to—”
“Stop talking!” commanded Mr. Gooch. “You always did talk too much. Now,
listen to me. Are you really alive?”
“Course I am. What ails you?”
“I don’t believe it. They found your body this afternoon.”
“You don’t say so!” gasped the object under the window.
“Horribly decayed,” added Mr. Gooch sternly.
“Well, I’ll be danged!”
“So you simply _can’t_ be alive. Go away!”
“This is mighty queer. Are they positive it’s me?”
“Hey?”
“I mean are they sure it’s my body?”
“There’s no evidence to the contrary. Seems to be absolutely no doubt
about it.”
“Well, well! Where did they find me?”
“You know as well as I do.”
“I don’t know anything of the kind. It’s news to me, Horace.”
“See here, Oliver, what’s the sense of lying to me? You know you’re dead
and—”
“Well, suppose I am,” broke in the other irascibly; “that’s no reason
why you should stick your head out of a window and tell the whole town
of Hopkinsville about it. You come down here and let me in. I’ll derned
soon show you I’m not dead. What’s more, I never have been dead. So they
couldn’t have found my body.”
Mr. Gooch was now convinced. It was Oliver Baxter and he was very much
alive.
“Well, what do you want?”
“I want to come in and spend the night with you, that’s what I want.”
“There’s a good hotel up on Jackson Street,” began Mr. Gooch, but
curiosity getting the better of him he abruptly called out for Oliver to
wait till he had put on his pants and he would come down and let him in.
As he hurriedly started to slip on his trousers he heard his
brother-in-law whistling a strange and jaunty melody out in the yard. He
never had heard anything like it before.
A sudden, desolating thought struck him as he sat on the edge of the
bed. His trousers were but half on when the shock came. He knew not how
long he sat there, powerless and inactive, staring at nothing. A shout
from outside aroused him. He groaned and then slipped the other leg into
his trousers.
Calamity! His cake was dough! The return of Oliver Baxter meant his
political doom. Young Oliver, vindicated, would be carried into office
by an unprecedented majority, riding serene and triumphant on a wave of
popularity that would sweep all opposition before it. Somewhere back in
his mind lurked a very distasteful phrase that ended with “cocked hat,”
although he could not quite remember the rest of it. He could and did
remember young Oliver’s campaign boast, for it was very recent and
distinct and unnecessarily public. “Skin him alive” was the heathenish
slogan.
As he descended the stairs he tried to think of some means to avert the
calamity. He thought of locking his brother-in-law in the cellar and
keeping him there until after election day. He wondered if he could
persuade the old man—for a substantial cash consideration—to remain in
seclusion or wander off again or—But, no; he had sunk too much money
already, and there was still an additional thousand or two to be paid
out for the search and—
He stopped suddenly, reeling as from a blow. The lighted candle, held
almost directly in front of his face, witnessed a most astonishing
transformation. Mr. Gooch’s harassed visage slowly lighted up; it became
almost radiant. He hurried to the door and unbolted it quickly, for he
was now afraid that old Oliver might have taken it into his head to
disappear again!
He had just remembered Oliver October’s promise to pay him five thousand
dollars in cash if he produced his father, dead or alive! He was
actually smirking as he pressed the electric light button. The wind blew
the candle out as he threw the door open.
“Come right in, Oliver,” he cried, quite heartily but still with a trace
of apprehension. He had not recovered from his scare and half-expected
Mr. Baxter to float past him into the hall.
A bent, disreputable-looking figure shuffled in, thumping his cane on
the floor.
“Well, well!” exclaimed Mr. Gooch, holding the doorknob in one hand and
the candle-stick in the other—making it obviously impossible for him to
shake hands with what might after all turn out to be a cadaver.
“You—you certainly gave me quite a scare.”
He peered narrowly, intently at the weather-beaten face of his wife’s
brother. Old Oliver was looking around the hall as if inspecting a most
unfamiliar place. Mr. Gooch, closing the door, risked a timid slap on
the other’s shoulder, and was greatly relieved to find that it was
solid. Mr. Baxter did not take kindly to this demonstration. He winced.
“Say, don’t do that,” he said. “I’ve got rheumatism in that shoulder.
Comes from sleeping out in the open air a good bit of the time this
fall.”
Mr. Gooch stepped back, the better to survey his brother-in-law’s
person. There was every indication that Mr. Baxter had taken the
precaution to sleep in his clothes pretty steadily all fall. They were
wrinkled and dusty and hung limply, crookedly on his graceless frame.
The coat collar was turned up and held tight to his throat by a thick
red muffler. He wore a sad-looking green Homberg hat with a perky red
feather sticking up from the band.
“Take off your muffler,” said Horace, desiring indisputable evidence.
“Oh, it’s there all right,” divined Mr. Baxter. “You can feel it if you
don’t believe me. It’s just as well you didn’t offer to shake hands with
me, Horace. I swore I’d never shake hands with you.”
“Come out to the kitchen,” said Gooch, scowling. “It’s warm there, and
besides you might like a cup of hot coffee.”
“All I want is a bed to sleep in. I haven’t slept in a regular bed for
the Lord knows how long. Thank God, I’ll be sleeping in my own to-morrow
night.”
He followed the puzzled Mr. Gooch to the kitchen and at once drew a
chair up to the stove.
“Where have you been all this time?” murmured Horace, generously
replenishing the fire.
“Oh—traveling,” said Mr. Baxter casually. He removed his hat and placed
it on the floor beside the chair.
Mr. Gooch leaned over and scrutinized the top of his guest’s head. Then
he deliberately felt of it.
“What are you doing?” demanded Mr. Baxter sharply.
“Oh—I was just wondering if—But never mind. Now, Ollie, tell me all
about yourself. We’ve been hunting for you all over the—”
Oliver’s cackle interrupted him.
“Like chasing a flea, wasn’t it?” he chuckled. “Before we go any
farther,” he went on seriously, “tell me about my boy Oliver. How is he?
Hasn’t been hung yet, has he?”
“Not yet,” said Mr. Gooch sententiously. He placed a chair on the
opposite side of the stove and sat down.
“Well, he’s in no danger now,” said Mr. Baxter. “And what’s more, he
never was in any danger of being hung. That gypsy woman lied.”
“That’s what I said at the time. Didn’t I tell you what a darned fool
you were?”
“How’s my boy, and where is he? I telephoned him three times to-night
but the doggoned system’s always out of order. Couldn’t get any answer.”
“He’s over in Rumley,” said Mr. Gooch shortly. “I guess he’s all right.
Leastwise he was up to this evening.”
“That’s good. By glory, I’ll be glad to see him. I’ve got some great
news for him. Took me over a year to get it and cost me a lot of money,
but it was worth it. My mind is at rest. Say, do you know I’ve been from
one end of this country to the other? On the go every minute of the
time. It wasn’t till about a month ago that I run across the right
band.”
“Band?”
“Yep. Band. Struck ’em over in eastern Ohio. I guess I must have tracked
down seventy-five or a hundred bands before I got the right one.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Gypsies,” said Mr. Baxter briefly, holding his gnarled red hands out to
the fire. “You said something about coffee, Horace.”
Mr. Gooch eyed him fearfully for a few moments.
“Crazy as a loon,” he muttered.
“Who? Me?”
“No, no!” cried Mr. Gooch hastily. “Don’t get excited now, Ollie. Keep
calm. I’ll put the coffee pot on right away. Just you keep quiet—”
“Is that what you were feeling my head for?” demanded Mr. Baxter
shrewdly.
“Not at all, not at all, just—affection, Ollie.”
“Umph! Well, I’m not crazy—not on your life. Hurry up with that coffee.
Mind if I light my pipe?”
“Certainly not. Go ahead,” urged Mr. Gooch, whose antipathy to tobacco
was so pronounced that no one ever thought of smoking in his house.
Mr. Baxter stretched out his wrinkled legs, and filled his pipe and lit
it, all the while keeping his keen little eyes on his brother-in-law.
Mr. Gooch splashed considerable water upon the hot stove as he filled
the coffee pot. The visitor seemed to find pleasure in exhaling great
clouds of rank-smelling smoke.
“Yes, sir,” he began presently; “I hunted this country over before I
found her. She remembered everything. She even remembered you, Horace.”
He cackled. “I’d hate to tell you what she said about you.”
Mr. Gooch was silent.
“It took me nearly two weeks to get her to admit that she lied,” went on
Mr. Baxter. “And I guess she wouldn’t have done it then if I hadn’t
offered her a hundred dollars to tell the truth. You see, Horace, it was
this way. As my boy Oliver grew up to be a man I realized that she had
lied dreadfully about one thing, so that set me to thinking that she
must have lied about others. She said he would grow up to be the living
image of his father. Well, he didn’t. He’s a hundred per cent better
looking than I am or ever was. That’s a fact, ain’t it?”
“Are you talking about the gypsy who told his fortune?” inquired Mr.
Gooch, comprehending at last.
“Yes. Queen Marguerite. Mrs. Tobias Spink in private. One of the most
interesting queens I’ve ever met, and, by gosh, I’ve met a lot of ’em in
my travels. As I was saying, I got it into my head that if she could be
wrong about Oliver looking like me she could have been wrong about
everything else. So I made up my mind to find her and—”
“So _that’s_ what you’ve been up to, you blamed old idiot!” exclaimed
Mr. Gooch. “Sneaking away and leaving everybody to wonder what had
become of you. You ought to be cow-hided, Oliver Baxter. All the trouble
and anxiety and worry you’ve caused me and your son and everybody else!
All the money your son spent looking for you—to say nothing of what
I’ve spent myself lately. Why, you old—”
“Keep your shirt on, Horace,” advised Oliver blandly. “Don’t get
excited. I just had to do it. I couldn’t stand it any longer. I would
have lost my mind long before Oliver was thirty if I had sat around
waiting for a year and more to see if he was really going to be hung.
Besides, it’s none of your business anyhow. You say Oliver spent a lot
of money trying to find me?” He put the question eagerly, wistfully.
“And so did I,” snapped Mr. Gooch. “I’m not saying Oliver spent his own
money. He probably—”
“I don’t care whose money he spent,” cried Mr. Baxter joyously. “I’ll
pay back all that you spent, so don’t you worry, you derned old
skinflint. Every nickel of it.”
“You will?” cried Mr. Gooch. “Is that a promise?”
“Certainly. And my word is as good as my bond,” said Mr. Baxter proudly.
“I’ve always said you were an absolutely honest man, Oliver,” said Mr.
Gooch ingratiatingly. “Never knew you to go back on your word. If you
say you’ll pay, I know you will.”
“Figure it up and let me know,” said Mr. Baxter. “I guess my business is
still prospering. I had a kind of notion Oliver October would step in
and take hold of it in my place after I went away, so—But never mind
about that. Yes, sir, I finally got the queen to confess that
_everything_ she said that night was false. She wanted two hundred, but
I wouldn’t give it. Said she was ruining herself by confessing, and all
that. Oliver ain’t going to be hung any more than you or I. All spite
work, she says. Got mad at all of us. He’s not even going to be a
general in the army, or a great and successful business man, or enter
the halls of state, or—”
“What’s that?” demanded Mr. Gooch quickly, hopefully.
“—or look exactly like me,” concluded Mr. Baxter. “She’s going to make
an affidavit to it soon as we get to Rumley to-morrow.”
Mr. Gooch started, casting an anxious look toward the kitchen door.
“Say, you—you don’t mean to tell me you’ve got her with you,” he
rasped. “If that’s so, I want to tell you right now, Ollie Baxter, I
won’t have you bringing any strange women into my house. My house is a
respectable—”
“She’s out at the camp,” interrupted Mr. Baxter. “We’ve camped just
south of town. I’ve been sleeping with her father for nearly a month—on
rainy nights, I mean, when we had to get into the caravan. His name is
Wattles. Eighty years old and still the best horsetrader in the tribe.”
Mr. Gooch groaned.
“I’ll fix up the sofa in the parlor for you to sleep on, Ollie,” he said
after a long and thoughtful pause. “The bed in the spare room isn’t made
up. In fact, it’s down altogether—being repaired,” he went on lamely.
“You’ve got a double bed in your room, haven’t you?” said Mr. Baxter.
“Well, it’s boiling at last,” evaded Mr. Gooch. “Now, we’ll have some
nice hot coffee. Like it pretty strong?”
“Middling,” said Mr. Baxter reproachfully. “I was counting on sleeping
in a nice, warm, soft bed to-night, Horace.”
His host pondered. “I was just thinking that maybe I could bring down a
mattress from the attic, Ollie, and fix you up in the hall just outside
my bedroom door. I’ll leave the door open. Plenty of blankets and—”
“All right, all right,” broke in Mr. Baxter, and gulped down some of the
hot coffee. “I want to get an early start to-morrow morning, so you
don’t need to mind about giving me a breakfast. We figure on getting
away a little after sunrise.”
His host remonstrated. “I won’t listen to it,” he said. “You will go
over to Rumley with me in my car just as soon as we’ve had breakfast.
Your friends—I mean the gypsies—can follow along later. Not another
word, old boy. I insist on it. You will want to see your son as soon as
possible. I have to go to Rumley in the morning anyway.” He hesitated a
moment, eyeing his guest keenly, and then proceeded: “Although I guess
it won’t be necessary for me to look at that—Ahem! Ah—er—I was just
wondering whose body it is, since it can’t possibly be yours. The one
they found in the swamp yesterday, I mean.”
Mr. Baxter checked a yawn to inquire with sudden interest: “In the
swamp, eh? Out in one of the pools? Well, by ginger!” He started up from
his chair in a state of great excitement. “Why, it must be Tom Sharp’s
body. Of all the—”
“Tom Sharp? Who is Tom Sharp? Besides, it isn’t a body. It’s a skeleton,
so they say—with its head split open.”
“Tom Sharp,” declared Mr. Baxter with conviction. “Old Wattles told me
all about it. Tom Sharp was killed with an ax right out there on the
edge of the swamp thirty years ago. Same night the queen came to my
house. He—”
“Can’t be,” broke in Mr. Gooch. “The doctors say this fellow has been
dead only a year or so.”
“How does anybody know how long a skeleton has been dead?” demanded Mr.
Baxter severely. “Of course it’s Tom Sharp. He got smashed over the head
with an ax that night by another gypsy whose wife he had run away with.
The husband caught up with him at Rumley, after chasing him for months.
It’s against the gypsy law for a man to steal another man’s wife. So
they never said anything about the killing. Just took Tom Sharp out in
the swamp and—er—sort of left him. The fellow that killed him joined
the band and went back to living with his wife, who was a girl named
Magda. Maybe you recollect her. She was up to my house that night. Her
husband died five or six years ago. His widow—Say, Horace, if they
think that body is mine, who is supposed to have killed me?”
Mr. Gooch experienced a strange and unsuspected softening of the heart.
“A man that used to work around your place,” said he, after a moment’s
hesitation. “He skipped out a few weeks ago,” he added, generously
enlarging upon the lie.
Silence fell between them. Mr. Baxter was thinking profoundly, his brow
wrinkled, his eyes fixed on one of his bony hands.
“Just so it wasn’t—Oliver,” he said at last, swallowing hard. He had
removed the gaudy muffler. His Adam’s apple rose and fell twice
convulsively. “I’d hate to have people think he did it.”
“Your pipe’s gone out, Ollie,” said Mr. Gooch brusquely.
“You can’t blame it,” sighed Mr. Baxter, yawning again. “I’m too tired
to keep it going.”
Horace busied himself about the stove and at the sink over by the
window.
“I guess you won’t mind my asking a question, Ollie,” he said, turning
to his brother-in-law. “Seeing that you hate me, what put it into your
head to come here to-night and ask for lodging in my house, knowing that
I hate you as much as you do me—or more?”
“Well, you see,” began Mr. Baxter, very wistfully and yet shamefacedly,
“I’ve been among strangers for so long, Horace, and I’ve been so
homesick for some of my own folks that I—well, I sort of felt I’d like
to see even you.”
Mr. Gooch pulled at his whiskers for a long time.
“Come to think of it, Ollie,” he said, rather loudly, due to the
discovery that the other was having great difficulty in keeping his eyes
open, “I guess I’ll have you sleep in that big feather bed in
the—er—in my second spare room. How will that suit you? And I’ll let
you have a nice, fresh night-shirt. Come along. Better get to bed.”
Mr. Baxter looked at him in a sort of mild, sleepy wonder.
“Why, you’re not half as stingy as I thought you’d be,” said he slowly.
“Anybody that says I am stingy don’t know what he’s talking about,” said
Mr. Gooch magnificently.
He escorted his guest up the back stairs and ushered him into the one
and only spare room the house afforded.
“Get undressed, Ollie,” said he. “I’ll be back in a minute with the
night-shirt.”
He hurried off to his own room. As he opened the door he
stopped—aghast.
“Darn my fool hide!” he grated under his breath. “I left that light
burning and it’s been going all the time I was downstairs.”
THE END
TRANSCRIBER NOTES
Mis-spelled words and printer errors have been corrected. Where multiple
spellings occur, majority use has been employed.
Inconsistency in hyphenation has been retained.
Inconsistency in accents has been retained.
When nested quoting was encountered, nested double quotes were changed
to single quotes.