"Olga! Blood on his hands!"
Mrs. Brenner jumped. "You old screech-owl!" she cried. She wiped her
hand quickly on her dirty apron and held it up again to see the cut.
But there was no cut on her hand! Where had that blood come from?
From Tobey's shoes?
And who was it that had screamed on the hill? She felt herself
enwrapped in a mist of puzzling doubts.
She snatched up the shoes, searching them with agonized eyes. But
the wet and pulpy mass had no stain. Only the wet sands and the
slimy water-weeds of the beach clung to them.
Then where had the blood come from? It was at this instant that she
became conscious of shouts on the hillside. She limped to the door
and held it open a crack. Very faintly she could see the bobbing
lights of torches. A voice carried down to her.
"Here's where I found his hat. That's why I turned off back of these
trees. And right there I found his body!"
"Are you sure he's dead?" quavered another voice.
"Stone-dead!'"
Olga Brenner shut the door. But she did not leave it immediately.
She stood leaning against it, clutching the wet shoes, her staring
eyes glazing.
Tobey was strong. He had flown into childish rages sometimes and had
hurt her with his undisciplined strength. Where was Mart? Tobey had
seen him. Perhaps they had fought. Her mind refused to go further.
But little subtle undercurrents pressed in on her. Tobey hated and
feared his father. And Mart was always enraged at the sight of his
half-witted son. What _had_ happened? And yet no matter what had
occurred, Tobey had not been on the hill. His shoes bore mute
testimony to that. And the scream had been on the slope. She frowned.
Her body more bent than ever, she hobbled slowly over to the stove
and laid the shoes on the big shelf above it, spreading them out to
the rising heat. She had barely arranged them when there was again
the sound of approaching footsteps. These feet, however, did not
stumble. They were heavy and certain. Mrs. Brenner snatched at the
shoes, gathered them up, and turned to run. But one of the lacings
caught on a nail on the shelf. She jerked desperately at the nail,
and the jerking loosened her hold of both the shoes. With a clatter
they fell at her feet.
In that moment Mart Brenner stood in the doorway. Poverty, avarice,
and evil passions had minted Mart Brenner like a devil's coin. His
shaggy head lowered in his powerful shoulders. His long arms, apelike,
hung almost to his knees. Behind him the fog pressed in, and his
rough, bristly hair was beaded with diamonds of moisture.
"Well?" he snapped. A sardonic smile twisted his face. "Caught you,
didn't I?"
He strode forward. His wife shrank back, but even in her shivering
terror she noticed, as one notices small details in a time of peril,
that his shoes were caked with red mud and that his every step left
a wet track on the rough floor.
"He didn't do 'em no harm," she babbled. "They're just wet. Please,
Mart, they ain't harmed a mite. Just wet. That's all. Tobey went on
the beach with 'em. It won't take but a little spell to dry 'em."
Her husband stooped and snatched up the shoes. She shrank into
herself, waiting the inevitable torrent of his passion and the
probable blow. Instead, as he stood up he was smiling. Bewildered,
she stared at him in a dull silence.
"No harm done," he said, almost amiably. Shaking with relief, she
stretched out her hand.
"I'll dry 'em," she said. "Give me your shoes and I'll get the mud
off."
Her husband shook his head. He was still smiling.
"Don't need to dry 'em. I'll put 'em away," he replied, and, still
tracking his wet mud, he went into Tobey's room.
Her fear flowed into another channel. She dreaded her husband in his
black rages, but she feared him more now in his unusual amiability.
Perhaps he would strike Tobey when he saw him. She strained her ears
to listen.
A long silence followed his exit. But there was no outcry from Tobey,
no muttering nor blows. After a few moments, moving quickly, her
husband came out. She raised her heavy eyes to stare at him. He
stopped and looked intently at his own muddy tracks.
"I'll get a rag and wipe up the mud right off."
As she started toward the nail where the rag hung, her husband put
out a long arm and detained her. "Leave it be," he said. He smiled
again.
She noticed, then, that he had removed his muddy shoes and wore the
wet ones. He had fully laced them, and she had almost a
compassionate moment as she thought how wet and
cold his feet must be.
"You can put your feet in the oven, Mart, to dry 'em."
Close on her words she heard the sound of footsteps and a sharp
knock followed on the sagging door. Mart Brenner sat down on a chair
close to the stove and lifted one foot into the oven. "See who's
there!" he ordered.
She opened the door and peered out. A group of men stood on the step,
the faint light of the room picking out face after face that she
recognized--Sheriff Munn; Jim Barker, who kept the grocery in the
village; Cottrell Hampstead, who lived in the next house below them;
young Dick Roamer, Munn's deputy; and several strangers.
"Well?" she asked ungraciously.
"We want to see Brenner!" one of them said.
She stepped back. "Come in," she told them. They came in, pulling
off their caps, and stood huddled in a group in the centre of the
room.
Her husband reluctantly stood up.
"Evening!" he said, with his unusual smile. "Bad out, ain't it?"
"Yep!" Munn replied. "Heavy fog. We're soaked."
Olga Brenner's pitiful instinct of hospitality rose in her breast.
"I got some hot soup on the stove. Set a spell and I'll dish you some,"
she urged.
The men looked at each other in some uncertainty. After a moment
Munn said, "All right, if it ain't too much bother, Mrs. Brenner."
"Not a bit," she cried eagerly. She bustled about, searching her
meagre stock of chinaware for uncracked bowls.
"Set down?" suggested Mart.
Munn sat down with a sign, and his companions followed his example.
Mart resumed his position before the stove, lifting one foot into
the capacious black maw of the oven.
"Must 'a' got your feet wet, Brenner?" the sheriff said with heavy
jocularity.
Brenner nodded, "You bet I did," he replied. "Been down on the beach
all afternoon."
"Didn't happen to hear any unusual noise down there, did you?" Munn
spoke with his eyes on Mrs. Brenner, at her task of ladling out the
thick soup. She paused as though transfixed, her ladle poised in the
air.
Munn's eyes dropped from her face to the floor. There they became
fixed on the tracks of red clay.
"No, nothin' but the sea. It must be rough outside tonight, for the
bay was whinin' like a sick cat," said Mart calmly.
"Didn't hear a scream, or nothing like that, I suppose?" Munn
persisted.
"Couldn't hear a thing but the water. Why?"
"Oh--nothing," said Munn.
Mrs. Brenner finished pouring out the soup and set the bowls on the
table.
Chairs clattered, and soon the men were eating. Mart finished
his soup before the others and sat back smacking his lips. As
Munn finished the last spoonful in his bowl he pulled out a
wicked-looking black pipe, crammed it full of tobacco and lighted it.
Blowing out a big blue breath of the pleasant smoke, he inquired,
"Been any strangers around to-day?"
Mart scratched his head. "Yeah. A man come by early this afternoon.
He was aiming to climb the hill. I told him he'd better wait till
the sun come out. I don't know whether he did or not."
"See anybody later--say about half an hour ago?"
Mart shook his head. "No. I come up from the beach and I didn't pass
nobody."
The sheriff pulled on his pipe for a moment. "That boy of yours
still catching butterflies?" he asked presently.
Mart scowled. He swung out a long arm toward the walls with their
floods of butterflies. But he did not answer.
"Uh-huh!" said Munn, following the gesture with his quiet eyes. He
puffed several times before he spoke again.
"What time did you come in, Brenner, from the beach?"
Mrs. Brenner closed her hands tightly, the interlaced ringers
locking themselves.
"Oh, about forty minutes ago, I guess it was. Wasn't it, Olga?" Mart
said carelessly.
"Yes." Her voice was a breath.
"Was your boy out to-day?"
Mart looked at his wife. "I dunno."
Munn's glance came to the wife.
"Yes."
"How long ago did he come in?"
"About an hour ago." Her voice was flat and lifeless.
"And where had he been?" Munn's tone was gentle but insistent.
Her terrified glance sought Mart's face. "He'd been on the beach!"
she said in a defiant tone.
Mart continued to look at her, but there was no expression in his
face. He still wore his peculiar affable smile.
"Where did these tracks come from, on the floor?"
Swift horror fastened itself on Mrs. Brenner.
"What's that to you?" she flared.
She heard her husband's hypocritical and soothing tones. "Now, now,
Olga! That ain't the way to talk to these gentlemen. Tell them who
made these tracks."
"You did!" she cried. All about her she could feel the smoothness of
a falling trap.
Mart smiled still more broadly.
"Look here, Olga, don't get so warm over it. You're nervous now.
Tell the gentlemen who made those tracks."
She turned to Munn desperately. "What do you want to know for?" she
asked him.
The sharpness of her voice roused old Mrs. Brenner, drowsing in her
corner.
"Blood!" she cried suddenly. "Blood on his hands!"
In the silence that followed, the eyes of the men turned curiously
toward the old woman and then sought each other with speculative
stares. Mrs. Brenner, tortured by those long significant glances,
said roughly. "That's Mart's mother. She ain't right! What are you
bothering us for?"
Dick Roamer put out a hand to plead for her, and tapped Munn on the
arm. There was something touching in her frightened old face.
"A man--a stranger was killed up on the hill," Munn told her.
"What's that got to do with us?" she countered.
"Not a thing, Mrs. Brenner, probably, but I've just to make sure
where every man in the village was this afternoon."
Mrs. Brenner's lids flickered. She felt the questioning intentness
of Sheriff Munn's eyes on her stolid face and she felt that he did
not miss the tremor in her eyes.
"Where was your son this afternoon?"
She smiled defiance. "I told you, on the beach."
"Whose room is that?" Munn's forefinger pointed to Tobey's closed
door.
"That's Tobey's room," said his mother.
"The mud tracks go into that room. Did he make those tracks,
Mrs. Brenner?"
"No! Oh, no! No!" she cried desperately. "Mart made those when he
came in. He went into Tobey's room!"
"How about it, Brenner?"
Mart smiled with an indulgent air. "Heard what she said, didn't you?"
"Is it true?"
Mart smiled more broadly. "Olga'll take my hair off if I don't agree
with her," he said.
"Let's see your shoes, Brenner?"
Without hesitation Mart lifted one heavy boot and then the other for
Munn's inspection. The other silent men leaned forward to examine
them.
"Nothing but pieces of seaweed," said Cottrell Hampstead,
Munn eyed them. Then he turned to look at the floor.
"Those are about the size of your tracks, Brenner. But they were
made in red clay. How do you account for that?"
"Tobey wears my shoes,'" said Brenner.
Mrs. Brenner gasped. She advanced to Munn.
"What you asking all these questions for?" she pleaded.
Munn did not answer her. After a moment he asked. "Did you hear a
scream this afternoon?"
"Yes," she answered.
"How long after the screaming did your son come in?"
She hesitated. What was the best answer to make? Bewildered, she
tried to decide. "Ten minutes or so," she said.
"Just so," agreed Munn. "Brenner, when did you come in?"
A trace of Mart's sullenness rose in his face. "I told you that once,"
he said.
"I mean how long after Tobey?"
"I dunno," said Mart.
"How long, Mrs. Brenner?"
She hesitated again. She scented a trap. "Oh, 'bout ten to fifteen
minutes, I guess," she said.
Suddenly she burst out passionately. "What you hounding us for? We
don't know nothing about the man on the hill. You ain't after the
rest of the folks in the village like you are after us. Why you
doing it? We ain't done nothing."
Munn made a slight gesture to Roamer, who rose and went to the door,
and opened it. He reached out into the darkness. Then he turned. He
was holding something in his hand, but Mrs. Brenner could not see
what it was.
"You chop your wood with a short, heavy axe, don't you, Brenner?"
said Munn.
Brenner nodded.
"It's marked with your name, isn't it?"
Brenner nodded again.
"_Is this the axe_?"
Mrs. Brenner gave a short, sharp scream. Red and clotted, even the
handle marked with bloody spots, the axe was theirs.
Brenner started to his feet. "God!" he yelped, "that's where that
axe went! Tobey took it!" More calmly he proceeded, "This afternoon
before I went down on the beach I thought I'd chop some wood on the
hill. But the axe was gone. So after I'd looked sharp for it and
couldn't find it, I gave it up."
"Tobey didn't do it!" Mrs. Brenner cried thinly. "He's as harmless
as a baby! He didn't do it! He didn't do it!"
"How about those clay tracks, Mrs. Brenner? There is red clay on the
hill where the man was killed. There is red clay on your floor."
Munn spoke kindly.
"Mart tracked in that clay. He changed shoes with Tobey. I tell you
that's the truth." She was past caring for any harm that might
befall her.
Brenner smiled with a wide tolerance. "It's likely, ain't it, that
I'd change into shoes as wet as these?"
"Those tracks are Mart's!" Olga reiterated hysterically.
"They lead into your son's room, Mrs. Brenner. And we find your axe
not far from your door, just where the path starts for the hill."
Munn's eyes were grave.
The old woman in the corner began to whimper, "Blood and trouble!
Blood and trouble all my days! Red on his hands! Dripping! Olga!
Blood!"
"But the road to the beach begins there too," Mrs. Brenner cried,
above the cracked voice, "and Tobey saw his pa before he came home.
He said he did. I tell you, Mart was on the hill. He put on Tobey's
shoes. Before God I'm telling you the truth."
Dick Roamer spoke hesitatingly, "Mebbe the old woman's right, Munn.
Mebbe those tracks are Brenner's."
Mrs. Brenner turned to him in wild gratitude.
"You believe me, don't you?" she cried. The tears dribbled down her
face. She saw the balance turning on a hair. A moment more and it
might swing back. She turned and hobbled swiftly to the shelf. Proof!
More proof! She must bring more proof of Tobey's innocence!
She snatched up his box of butterflies and came back to Munn.
"This is what Tobey was doin' this afternoon!" she cried in triumph.
"He was catchin' butterflies! That ain't murder, is it?"
"Nobody catches butterflies in a fog," said Munn.
"Well, Tobey did. Here they are," Mrs. Brenner held out the box.
Munn took it from her shaking hand. He looked at it. After a moment
he turned it over. His eyes narrowed. Mrs. Brenner turned sick. The
room went swimming around before her in a bluish haze. She had
forgotten the blood on her hand that she had wiped off before Mart
came home. Suppose the blood had been on the box.
The sheriff opened the box. A bruised butterfly, big, golden,
fluttered up out of it. Very quietly the sheriff closed the box, and
turned to Mrs. Brenner.
"Call your son," he said.
"What do you want of him? Tobey ain't done nothing. What you tryin'
to do to him?"
"There is blood on this box, Mrs. Brenner."
"Mebbe he cut himself." Mrs. Brenner was fighting. Her face was
chalky white.
"In the box, Mrs. Brenner, _is a gold watch and chain_. The man who
was killed, Mrs. Brenner, had a piece of gold chain to match this in
his buttonhole. _The rest of it had been torn off_"
Olga made no sound. Her burning eyes turned toward Mart. In them was
all of a heart's anguish and despair.
"Tell 'em, Mart! Tell 'em he didn't do it!" she finally pleaded.
Mart's face was inscrutable.
Munn rose. The other men got to their feet.
"Will you get the boy or shall I?" the sheriff said directly to
Mrs. Brenner.
With a rush Mrs. Brenner was on her knees before Munn, clutching him
about the legs with twining arms. Tears of agony dripped over her
seamed face.
"He didn't do it! Don't take him! He's my baby! He never harmed
anybody! He's my baby!" Then with a shriek, as Munn unclasped her
arms, "Oh, my God! My God!"
Munn helped her to her feet. "Now, now, Mrs. Brenner, don't take on
so," he said awkwardly. "There ain't going to be no harm come to
your boy. It's to keep him from getting into harm that I'm taking him.
The village is a mite worked up over this murder and they might get
kind of upset if they thought Tobey was still loose. Better go and
get him, Mrs. Brenner."
As she stood unheeding, he went on, "Now, don't be afraid.
Nothing'll happen to him. No jedge would sentence him like a regular
criminal. The most that'll happen will be to put him some safe place
where he can't do himself nor no one else any more harm."
But still Mrs. Brenner's set expression did not change.
After a moment she shook off his aiding arm and moved slowly to
Tobey's door. She paused there a moment, resting her hand on the
latch, her eyes searching the faces of the men in the room. With a
gesture of dreary resignation she opened the door and entered,
closing it behind her.
Tobey lay in his bed, asleep. His rumpled hair was still damp from
the fog. His mother stroked it softly while her slow tears dropped
down on his face with its expression of peaceful childhood.
"Tobey!" she called. Her voice broke in her throat. The tears fell
faster.
"Huh!" He sat up, blinking at her.
"Get into your clothes, now! Right away!" she said.
He stared at her tears. A dismal sort of foreboding seemed to seize
upon him. His face began to pucker. But he crawled out of his bed
and began to dress himself in his awkward fashion, casting wistful
and wondering glances in her direction.
She watched him, her heart growing heavier and heavier. There was no
one to protect Tobey. She could not make those strangers believe
that Mart had changed shoes with Tobey. Neither could she account
for the blood-stained box and the watch with its length of broken
chain. But if Tobey had been on the beach he had not been on the hill,
and if he hadn't been on the hill he couldn't have killed the man
they claimed he had killed. Mart had been on the hill. Her head
whirled. Some place fate, destiny, something had blundered. She
wrung her knotted hands together.
Presently Tobey was dressed. She took him by the hand. Her own hand
was shaking, and very cold and clammy. Her knees were weak as she
led him toward the door. She could feel them trembling so that every
step was an effort. And her hand on the knob had barely strength to
turn it. But turn it she did and opened the door.
"Here he is!" she cried chokingly. She freed her hand and laid it on
his shoulder.
"Look at him," she moaned. "He couldn't 'a' done it. He's--he's just
a boy!"
Sheriff Munn rose. His men rose with him.
"I'm sorry, Mrs. Brenner," he said. "Terrible sorry. But you can see
how it is. Things look pretty black for him."
He paused, looked around, hesitated for a moment. Finally he said,
"Well, I guess we'd better be getting along."
Mrs. Brenner's hand closed with convulsive force on Tobey's shoulder.
"Tobey!" she screamed desperately, "where was you this afternoon?
All afternoon?"
"On the beach," mumbled Tobey, shrinking into himself.
"Tobey! Tobey! Where'd you get blood on the box?"
He looked around. His cloudy eyes rested on her face helplessly.
"I dunno," he said.
Her teeth were chattering now; she laid her hand on his other
shoulder.
"Try to remember, Tobey. Try to remember. Where'd you get the watch,
the pretty watch that was in your box?"
He blinked at her.
"The pretty bright thing? Where did you get it?"
His eyes brightened. His lips trembled into a smile.
"I found it some place," he said. Eagerness to please her shone on
his face.
"But where? What place?" The tears again made rivulets on her cheeks.
He shook his head. "I dunno."
Mrs. Brenner would not give up.
"You saw your pa this afternoon, Tobey?" she coached him softly.
He nodded.
"Where'd you see him?" she breathed.
He frowned. "I--saw pa----" he began, straining to pierce the cloud
that covered him.
"Blood! Blood!" shrieked old Mrs. Brenner. She half rose, her head
thrust forward on her shrivelled neck.
Tobey paused, confused. "I dunno," he said.
"Did he give you the pretty bright thing? And did he give you the
axe--" she paused and repeated the word loudly--"the axe to bring
home?"
Tobey caught at the word. "The axe?" he cried. "The axe! Ugh! It
was all sticky!" He shuddered.
"Did pa give you the axe?"
But the cloud had settled. Tobey shook his head. "I dunno," he
repeated his feeble denial.
Munn advanced. "No use, Mrs. Brenner, you see. Tobey, you'll have to
come along with us."
Even to Tobey's brain some of the strain in the atmosphere must have
penetrated, for he drew back. "Naw," he protested sulkily, "I don't
want to."
Dick Roamer stepped to his side. He laid his hand on Tobey's arm.
"Come along," he urged.
Mrs. Brenner gave a smothered gasp. Tobey woke to terror. He turned
to run. In an instant the men surrounded him. Trapped, he stood still,
his head lowered in his shoulders.
"Ma!" he screamed suddenly. "Ma! I don't want to go! Ma!"
He fell on his knees. Heavy childish sobs racked him. Deserted,
terrified, he called upon the only friend he knew.
"Ma! Please, Ma!"
Munn lifted him up. Dick Roamer helped him, and between them they
drew him to the door, his heart-broken calls and cries piercing
every corner of the room.
They whisked him out of Mrs. Brenner's sight as quickly as they could.
The other men piled out of the door, blocking the last vision of her
son, but his bleating cries came shrilling back on the foggy air.
Mart closed the door. Mrs. Brenner stood where she had been when
Tobey had first felt the closing of the trap and had started to run.
She looked as though she might have been carved there. Her light
breath seemed to do little more than lift her flat chest.
Mart turned from the door. His eyes glittered. He advanced upon her
hungrily like a huge cat upon an enchanted mouse.
"So you thought you'd yelp on me, did you?" he snarled, licking his
lips. "Thought you'd put me away, didn't you? Get me behind the bars,
eh?"
"Blood!" moaned the old woman in the corner. "Blood!"
Mart strode to the table, pulling out from the bosom of his shirt a
lumpy package wrapped in his handkerchief. He threw it down on the
table. It fell heavily with a sharp ringing of coins.
"But I fooled you this time! Mart wasn't so dull this time, eh?" He
turned toward her again.
Between them, disturbed in his resting-place on the table, the big
bruised yellow butterfly raised himself on his sweeping wings.
Mart drew back a little. The butterfly flew toward Olga and brushed
her face with a velvety softness.
Then Brenner lurched toward her, his face black with fury, his arm
upraised. She stood still, looking at him with wide eyes in which a
gleam of light showed.
"You devil!" she said, in a whispering voice. "You killed that man!
You gave Tobey the watch and the axe! You changed shoes with him!
You devil! You devil!"
He drew back for a blow. She did not move. Instead she mocked him,
trying to smile.
"You whelp!" she taunted him. "Go on and hit me! I ain't running!
And if you don't break me to bits I'm going to the sheriff and I'll
tell him what you said to me just now. And he'll wonder how you got
all that money in your pockets. He knows we're as poor as church mice.
How you going to explain what you got?"
"I ain't going to be such a fool as to keep it on me!" Mart crowed
with venomous mirth. "You nor the sheriff nor any one won't find it
where I'm going to put it!"
The broken woman leaned forward, baiting him. The strange look of
exaltation and sacrifice burned in her faded eyes. "I've got you,
Mart!" she jeered. "You're going to swing yet! I'll even up with you
for Tobey! You didn't think I could do it, did you? I'll show you!
You're trapped, I tell you! And I done it!"
She watched Mart swing around to search the room and the blank
window with apprehensive eyes. She sensed his eerie dread of the
unseen. He couldn't see any one. He couldn't hear a sound. She saw
that he was wet with the cold perspiration of fear. It would enrage
him. She counted on that. He turned back to his wife in a white fury.
She leaned toward him, inviting his blows as martyrs welcome the
torch that will make their pile of fagots a blazing bier.