sheriff, was jingling his keys in the hallway as a polite intimation
to the solitary occupant of the court room that it was time to lock
up. Mr. Tutt pushed his books and papers into a muddled heap and put
on his stovepipe hat. He did not need to study his notes. There was
only one point in the case--and it had got by him! There was only one
hope--no more tangible than the half-suspected presence of a star in
the obscurity of a foggy night.
“Good night, Mr. Tutt!” said Sam amiably as the lawyer walked out with
leaden steps.
“Good night, Mr. Bellows!” responded the old man. Then he paused. “By
the way,” he asked. “Do you know where the witness Charles Emerson
lives?”
Mr. Bellows leaned against the wall and scratched his head politely.
“Well,” he opined, “bein’ he ain’t a married man, he ain’t got no
reg’lar place of residence. Most allus--when it’s goin’--he sleeps
over to the steam sawmill.”
“Well, I’d like very much to see him. Do you know where he may be
found?”
Sam tilted his hat to the back of his thatched skull and then by an
automatic return movement pushed it forward again over his forehead.
“He’s gone off.”
“Gone!” exclaimed Mr. Tutt, his heart sinking. “Where?”
“Well, after you gentlemen said you didn’t need him no more yisterday
an’ the jedge said he could go, I hearn him say he was goin’ to take a
job up Orient way. So he beat it--took the train up there last
evenin’.”
“How far is it?” demanded Mr. Tutt desperately.
“’Bout seventy miles.”
“Is there a train to-night?”
“It leaves at four o’clock--when it’s on time. It’s gone!”
Mr. Tutt nervously bit off the end of a stogy.
“Do you know the name of the man for whom he went to work?”
“Nope,” answered Sam--adding more hopefully, “but it’s durn desolate
country an’ there ain’t but one lumber mill anywhere near Orient that
I ever hearn tell of.”
“Thanks!” answered Mr. Tutt shortly. “Where can I hire an automobile?”
Sam pondered deeply. Here was a matter of real moment. Pottsville
boasted no renting garage or jitney, but it would be a catastrophe to
permit a piece of real business to go to Somerset Corners by default,
when the sheriff possessed an “official” motor.
“There ain’t no public motor, but--I reckon the sheriff might
accommodate ye,” ventured Sam eagerly.
“Where is he?”
“Over to the Phoenix House.”
“Would you mind stopping over there and asking him to speak to me?”
Mr. Tutt tendered a handful of stogies to the deputy who thrust one in
his mouth, lit it with a single hand-sweep from the seat of his
abundant being to his hardly less abundant face; waddled across the
street, and almost immediately returned with Mr. Higgins.
“Good evening, sheriff,” said the lawyer. “I want to take a little
trip up to Orient Mills this evening--can you run me up there? Of
course I expect to pay you for it.”
Sheriff Higgins ruminated. He had no right to use the county’s flivver
except on official business, but, in a way, assisting a member of the
bar was official business, and nobody except Sam need ever know.
“I’d like to oblige ye,” he drawled, “but it’s a durn long way--near
seventy-five miles.”
“That’s not so far!” urged Mr. Tutt.
“An’ I couldn’t take money!” added the sheriff. “My motor is an
official motor--paid for by the county.”
“Your time is your own, isn’t it?” argued the lawyer. “Suppose I pay
you fifty dollars for your time?”
A hundred tiny beads upon the sheriff’s bulging forehead testified to
his struggle with temptation.
“We-ell,” he hesitated, “if you promise me not to mention it to
anybody I guess I kin arrange to take ye. Suppose you meet me in
fifteen minutes over behind the railroad station?”
“Anywhere you choose,” agreed Mr. Tutt. “We ought to make it by nine
o’clock.”
“You go out the door first!” cautioned the sheriff. “We might meet
somebody.”
So Mr. Tutt obligingly descended first as requested, followed at a
discreet interval by the two officers of the law. But all this
maneuvering accomplished nothing for the reason that at that very
moment Squire Mason, who had been searching for Higgins, appeared in
the offing of the Phoenix House stable yard and bore swiftly down upon
them. Seeing the two together his worst suspicions were confirmed!
“Hey, sheriff!” he called sharply. “I was lookin’ for you! I want you
to come over to my house this evenin’ and go over the case with me.”
Upon Sheriff Higgins’ cadaverous visage descended an expression of
defiance.
“Huh!” he replied. “I can’t.”
“What’s the matter?” demanded the Squire. “Why can’t you? You ain’t
got nuthin’ of importance to do. Sam can guard the jury, can’t he?”
“Sam kin guard the jury,” answered the sheriff. “But I’ve got a
personal engagement.”
“You ain’t got no personal engagement you’ve a right to let interfere
with your official duties,” retorted Mason. “An’ I need you.”
“Well, I ain’t comin’!” replied Mr. Higgins defiantly. “I guess I have
some right to live, myself!”
“Where you goin’?” snapped the squire.
“I don’t knows that’s any partic’lar part of your business, is it?”
snorted the sheriff bristling.
Mr. Tutt had purposely lingered within earshot. It was conceivable
that in a state of ebullition the doughty Squire might betray some
small but none the less useful trifle of information.
“I’ll find out all right!” asserted the district attorney.
That the Squire could, and would, “find out” was so obvious that the
sheriff perceived that, if he wished to acquire the promised fifty
dollars, it might be wise to pursue a policy of conciliation.
“Look here, Squire,” he said. “There ain’t no sense in gettin’ all het
up about nothin’. Fact is, I’m goin’ to take Mr. Tutt out for a little
run.”
At once Mr. Mason became all suspicion.
“What’s that for?” he queried. “Where you goin’?”
“Up Orient way.”
Instantly Mason sensed treachery. The sheriff was openly selling him
out--working against him! It had been Higgins--he was positive--who
had kept him out of the Sacred Camels. There was some secret bond
between him and Mr. Tutt--some nefarious, corrupt bargain and sale on
foot between them. He knew that Emerson had gone to Orient, but he had
supposed that he alone was cognizant of his witness’ whereabouts.
Evidently the sheriff had tipped off Tutt and purposed going with him
to find Emerson and persuade him to alter or add to his testimony.
This did not suit his book at all. It would never do to have Tutt
interview Emerson--for a variety of reasons. It must be prevented at
any cost and at all hazards. Also, it would be much better if Mr.
Emerson, having given his testimony with due regard to all the
requirements of the rules of evidence, should not return again.
“What car are you proposin’ to use?” demanded the squire.
“One I allus use,” answered Higgins shortly.
“The one you use belongs to the State of New York!” retorted Mason.
“You ain’t got any right to use it except for official business.”
“Well,” replied the sheriff, “what’s the matter with this bein’
official business?”
“What business is it?” roared the Squire. “You dassent tell me and you
know it! If you use that car for joy-ridin’ I’ll complain on ye!”
“You’re a great feller to talk about joy-ridin’!” shouted the sheriff.
“How about that time you borrered it to take you and your missus up to
Utiky?”
“Utiky!” blustered the prosecutor. “I never took any joy-ride to
Utiky! I only----”
And the altercation devolved into a technical dispute carried on with
much acrimony and no less refinement of argument into the delicate
question of whether, if there be a witness residing in a distant place
who may, if interviewed, possibly prove to have information of value
to the People’s side of a case, the official prosecutor may properly
make use of the official automobile ostensibly for the purpose of
holding official converse with said witness while at the same time
seizing the opportunity _en passant_ of purchasing an outfit of spring
clothes, visiting the county fair and going to the circus. This issue,
having been under discussion for several minutes, was still undecided
when Mr. Tutt unexpectedly made his appearance from the direction of
the hotel with a paper in his hand, which he exhibited to the sheriff.
“Excuse me, Squire, for interrupting your conversation,” he
apologized, “but here is a subpena for the witness Emerson which has
just been issued by the court and endorsed by Judge Tompkins,
requiring his attendance to-morrow morning.” He waited a moment.
“There are no trains this evening and if you expect to serve this
process you will be obliged to make use of a motor. Here is fifty
dollars to cover your mileage and expenses. You may return the balance
to me at your convenience.”
Squire Mason, his obstructionary tactics being thus neatly blocked,
could not restrain his impatience. There was only one course for him
to pursue.
“Then,” he exploded, “I’ll go with you!”
“Not much!” answered the sheriff dryly. “I’d be afeard I might be
doin’ somethin’ illegal if I give you a free ride. No, sir! The
county’s ottermobile ain’t goin’ to be used fer no more junkettin’.”
“Then you’ll have to go alone!” remarked the squire malignantly.
“What’s sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander.”
The prosecutor looked triumphantly from Mr. Tutt to the sheriff and
back again. He had ’em there, all right!
“Squire Mason,” said Mr. Tutt, “there is no occasion for our carrying
the warfare of the court room into our personal relations outside. I
have nothing to conceal regarding my desire to recall Mr. Emerson as a
witness. I forgot to ask him an important question; and I am
sufficiently interested in having him found and properly subpenaed to
be anxious to assist in the search. In short, I wish to be informed as
fully as possible about his movements. If you, also, are interested in
the witness and wish to safeguard him from any improper approach on my
part, I suggest that we should both accompany Sheriff Higgins. It is
a fine clear night and I have a pocket full of cigars--of a sort.”
“That’s fair!” nodded the sheriff.
As there did not seem any answer to this proposition, and as Mr. Tutt
had spoken in the friendliest possible manner Squire Mason became
somewhat mollified. He realized that his adversary could hire any one
of several motors at Somerset Corners and, since he possessed
Emerson’s address, could, if he chose, get into touch with him
independently of the sheriff. Emerson might be tricked into saying
something or, worse, blurt out the whole truth! Acquiescence in the
lawyer’s invitation would mean an opportunity to keep track of him and
stop any tampering with the witness at the expense of Mr. Tutt
himself, whose scheme--if that was his scheme--to corrupt the sheriff
and inveigle him into camp at a cost of fifty dollars--as a
preliminary step to debauching the chief witness for the
prosecution--would thus be rendered abortive. Squire Mason began to be
rather pleased not only with the situation but with himself. It was,
as Mr. Tutt said, a fine, clear evening and he was going to have a
free ride and plenty of free smokes. Incidentally, in the tail pocket
of his blue broadcloth cutaway was a small flat flask containing an
amber-colored liquid which might prove valuable as neutralizing the
miasmic vapors of the night.
Accordingly, after a hasty supper at the Phoenix House the three
seated themselves in the official flivver and started merrily off
up-country for Orient Mills. Both prosecutor and sheriff were now
restored to comparative good humor--the former for the reason that he
had Mr. Tutt under his eye and the latter because he had fifty
perfectly good dollars in his pocket and purposed to keep the change
therefrom. Mr. Tutt produced stogies; Mr. Mason produced the flask
aforesaid; Mr. Higgins warmed to reminiscence. The first forty miles,
which they covered quite easily in an hour and a half, was through
level farming country on what is described by the blue book as
“macadam alternating with stretches of dirt in good condition.” But
just as darkness began to gather the highway vanished and gave place
to a narrow rutty road which Mr. Tutt could dimly descry ascending in
tortuous curves indefinitely before them.
“This here is Chick Hill,” announced the sheriff. “Road goes clear
over the shoulder--thirteen hundred feet; but it saves nine miles, an’
Lizzie is good for it.”
“Lizzie” was good for it, although at times it was necessary for her
passengers to relieve her difficulties by getting out, and when at
last the crest was attained she was steaming and gurgling like an
oversized hot-water kettle. Night had fallen; but the dusty road
showed dimly white in the starlight. Then the sheriff shut off the
ignition, put her in low gear, and they plunged down the opposite side
of the incline using the engine as a brake. Mr. Tutt, his knees braced
against the back of the seat in front of him, thought they were never
going to reach level. Even at only ten miles an hour a four-mile coast
at night gives an impression of a rapid descent into a bottomless pit.
On and on they ground at first speed, rousing the innocent sleeping
denizens of the forest with buzzing, groans, whirs and clankings, like
a drunken alarm clock set off in a tin boiler. Mr. Tutt’s excellent
teeth were nearly shaken from his gums, and all three passengers found
themselves violently rubbing their noses to counteract the effect of
the vibration. Then after an unusually steep pitch, during which both
prosecutor and lawyer for the defense clung desperately to each other,
the sheriff suddenly released the clutch and Lizzie shot forward in
silent ecstasy for a hundred yards or so, at the end of which burst
she slowly came to a stop and died.
“Well, we’re down!” ejaculated Sheriff Higgins with evident relief.
“Gosh! Some hill!”
“I think you might officially designate it as a mountain!” replied Mr.
Tutt grimly. “I’ve felt exactly as if I were hanging face down across
a rail fence for the last half hour.”
“I think,” mused Squire Mason, “there’s still somethin’ left at the
bottom of the bottle.”
The sheriff instantly struck a match. There was something at the
bottom of the bottle. Then each lit a stogy and Higgins got out in the
blackness to crank the car. They were in a narrow, heavily-timbered
valley between hills, a sort of natural protected pocket, sheltered
from the wind, cut off from the rest of the world. The tall spruces on
either side of the road raked the stars. Save for the puffing of the
sheriff no sound was audible save the rasping, insistent call of a
whip-poor-will. The chill mist from a near-by swamp or unseen pond
nipped their wrists and cheeks. The sheriff grabbed Lizzie’s handle
firmly and gave it an energetic twist, but the engine answered neither
pish nor tush.
“That’s funny!” remarked the sheriff, giving her another. “Userly she
cranks easy! Maybe she’s cold!”
“Don’t blame her,” shivered the Squire. “Everybody else is!”
The sheriff bent over once more. His gyrations were not visible to the
passengers in the car, but the sounds that he gave forth indicated
extreme violence, followed by utter exhaustion, disgust and profanity.
“Fush-ush-ush!” said Lizzie and then relapsed into a discreet and
mortifying silence.
“Well, I’ll be gol-binged!” panted the sheriff. “I dunno _what’s_ the
matter with her. Acts as if she was sick.”
“She was goin’ all right top of the hill,” encouraged the Squire.
A penetrating odor of gasoline made itself noticeable. In the silence
could be heard the unmistakable sound of something dripping.
“Gee whiz!” gasped the sheriff. “I hope she ain’t sprung a leak!”
He opened the hood and peered vaguely within.
“Hell!” he cried suddenly. “Most burnt my thumb off!”
“What’s the matter with her?” inquired Mr. Mason.
“That’s what I’d like you to tell me!” snapped the sheriff. “All I
know is that her innards seem to be all leakin’ away. I’m standin’
near knee high in a pool of gasoline!”
“Keerful how you light a match,” cautioned the prosecutor. “What are
we goin’ to do?”
“How do I know!” retorted Higgins. “I ain’t no mechanic. I can’t stop
it, ’cause I ain’t got no idee where it is.”
“Can’t you feel for it?” hazarded the squire plaintively.
“She’s bleedin’ to death,” moaned the sheriff. “And no way to stop
her!”
There was a prolonged and painful silence broken only by a determined
trickle from the interior of the hood.
“How far are we from Orient Mills?” asked the Squire.
“Fifteen miles,” replied the sheriff. “I guess you kin walk it in
about five hours.”
Mr. Tutt choked down a chuckle. One thing was certain, that the trial
could not proceed without them. He had nothing to worry about on that
score, and he had plenty of stogies. The attorney gathered his long
limbs together and shrouded his form as best he could with the horse
blanket which he shared with the squire. The sheriff had apparently
surrendered to the inevitable and was poking about aimlessly by the
roadside.
“What you goin’ to do?” demanded the Squire peevishly. “We can’t sit
here all night!”
“Guess you’ll have to wait until someone comes along who can tell
what’s the matter with her,” answered the sheriff. “I’m near froze!”
So were they all. Presently at a safe distance from the car the
sheriff started a tiny blaze which he gradually encouraged with broken
boughs and a couple of fence rails until he had a respectable fire.
“Feels good, don’t it?” he declared, rubbing his hands. “I reckon we
kin pass a comfortable night here.”
“Don’t you know anything about an automobile?” snapped the Squire.
“Seems to me with all the runnin’ around you do you ought to be able
to stop a little leak.”
“Look here!” suddenly roared the sheriff. “It’s all right for you to
stand there and chatter! Go find it yourself! Nobody ast you to come
along, anyhow. Nobody wanted you! You jest butted in!”
“Well, I warn’t goin’ to let you put anythin’ over on me!” shouted
Mason. “I can smell a rat when I see one,” he added significantly,
badly mixing his metaphors in his excitement.
The rest of the colloquy was lost upon Mr. Tutt. For in the distance
he had seen the flicker of a lantern, indubitably coming towards them.
His companions engrossed in their altercation being wholly oblivious,
Mr. Tutt climbed out of the car and strode silently down the road. The
movement of the light, which seemingly was actuated by influences even
more obscurely conflicting than those propounded by Prof. Einstein,
was erratic and puzzling. At times it would remain stationary, then
jump up and down, then swing in a half circle, or occasionally dodge
sideways and, for a moment or so, disappear entirely.
Now, Mr. Tutt was anxious to reach Orient Mills at the earliest moment
possible and he much preferred to arrive there unencumbered by the
presence of Squire Mason. If this light evidenced the presence of any
vehicle of locomotion he purposed to annex, cabbage, corrall, grab,
secure and appropriate it unto himself. Therefore Mr. Tutt having
placed fifty yards between him and the fire, broke into a run. The
light suddenly became distinct and luminous. Yes, it was a
lantern--swinging between wheels of some sort; and while its gyrations
continued he was now able to distinguish furtive movements. Muffled
expletives reached him--a confusion of miscellaneous
noises--stertorous breathing, strainings, the scuffle of irregular
hoof beats.
“Hello, there!” called Mr. Tutt.
The lantern stopped, swaying.
“Hello!” returned a voice. “Hi there, you! Stand still!”
Mr. Tutt hurried towards the lantern, and as he did so it darted
towards the road side.
“Look out!” came the voice in warning. “This here colt ain’t never
been in harness before.”
“Then you better not go any further down the road,” advised Mr. Tutt
approaching the driver who sat upon the minute seat of a wire racing
buggy with his legs thrust along the shafts on either side of the
colt. “Because there’s an automobile right in the middle of it.”
The colt, meanwhile, was frantically side-stepping upon its hind legs.
“Guess I’ll have to turn round--if I kin!” answered the driver
maneuvering with the reins. “He pretty near run away with me up there
a piece.”
“Live far from here?”
“’Bout half a mile.”
“Do you want to earn twenty dollars?”
“I reckon I do--how?”
Mr. Tutt stepped as near the colt as seemed consistent with safety.
“You drive me to Orient Mills--and I’ll give you twenty dollars,” said
he.
The owner of the colt had at last induced him momentarily to stand
still.
“I darsn’t risk it,” he replied with obvious regret. “He ain’t never
been hitched before an’ ’twould be too much for him anyways. Stand
still, you!”
“I’ll give you fifty dollars,” continued Mr. Tutt.
“Where’d you sit?” asked the owner of the colt who was gradually
pulling the animal around.
“On the seat with you.”
Now it is doubtful whether, if Mr. Tutt had realized in advance the
anatomical difficulties presented by his suggestion, he would have
essayed the ride, but he was unfamiliar with racing buggies or their
peculiarities. Accordingly he leaped in where an angel would have
discreetly refused to go. The driver having turned the buggy around
looked over his shoulder.
“Y’ got to hop up mighty spry!” he warned him. “Get yer right upper
leg over the seat and along the shaft and then sort o’ twine yer lower
leg around them wire braces, and grab holt anywheres you can, quick!”
To this day Mr. Tutt is unable to give a coherent explanation either
of how he did as directed or how he stayed put when he got there. He
merely recalls climbing up on the axle of the buggy, grasping the
driver firmly around the waist and sitting sideways on the outer edge
of what seemed like a small frying pan, with one leg along the colt’s
flank and the other twisted between the wire braces beneath the
shafts. He is also firmly convinced that he sat implanted upon the
colt’s tail. But the real miracle is that he retained his stovepipe
hat and triumphantly wore it back to Pottsville. Who shall predicate
what is impossible?
Disregarding the vital consequences to James Hawkins involved, there
was an element of humor in the manner in which Mr. Tutt so blithely
ascended the racing buggy and calmly abandoned the sheriff and the
squire in the very middle of their controversy. He had no intention,
however, of being obliged to share his seat on the frying pan with a
third party.
His equine experiences had been limited; for being of that generation
when the elite of New York belonged to volunteer fire companies and
themselves dragged their diminutive hand pumps and hose wagons through
the streets of the metropolis amid the admiring cheers of the common
herd--when the wild goat browsed undisturbed by the hunter in the
hinterland of Central Park, and bobtailed horse cars at irregular
intervals tinkled from river to river--belonging, we say, to a
generation long since passed away, to wit of Adelina Patti and Jennie
Lind, of Booth and Forrest and Mrs. Vincent, of “Maud S.” and the
“Mary Powell,” of Tweed, Henry Ward Beecher and Barnum’s Trained
Seal--Mr. Tutt, being an urbanite, knew little of the “friend of man”
beyond Shank’s mare. He was ignorant of the character and ways of
colts and of wire buggies, but being a stoic and accustomed to take
things as they came, and the colt and buggy having presented
themselves, he had quite naturally availed himself of them as a matter
of course.
Innocent of the possible consequences, as the gentle Redskin who first
partook of the white men’s beverage, he had accepted the invitation to
share the frying pan without a moment’s hesitation and in that single
instant had passed from the safety of terra firma into the utmost
jeopardy of his life. For he had no sooner entangled his anatomy in
the intricacies of the buggy’s architecture than the colt stood up
straight upon its hind legs and endeavored to paw Cassiopeia from the
zenith. In a twinkling Mr. Tutt found himself with his body horizontal
and his legs pointing skyward like a telescope, at an angle of ninety
degrees. The colt strenuously objected to his presence. Then having
kicked Leda to pieces with his right hoof and trampled upon Orion with
his left the festive animal put his foot through the middle of the
Dipper, swallowed the North Star, turned a half dozen somersaults amid
the constellations, and then by suddenly dropping stiffly to earth
with his four feet close together, shot Mr. Tutt swiftly upward into
the ether adjacent to the Milky Way. For an interminable period of
time the old lawyer hurtled through space, clutching at the nearest
planets and fixed stars, and then, without warning, found himself
projected violently against the rear portions of the colt’s body from
which he rebounded smeared with lather like a billiard ball from a
side cushion, thus receiving a convincing demonstration of Newton’s
Great Law that action and reaction are equal and opposite in
direction.
While profanity would have been inadequate it would have relieved Mr.
Tutt to have indulged in it, but profanity requires breath and he had
none left in his lungs. And then, the colt having decided to abandon
its tests of the Laws of Relativity settled down into a long, leggy
trot that nearly tore Mr. Tutt’s old bones from their sockets, and
plunged forward into the darkness of the abyss.
“But finding soon a smoother road
Beneath his well shod feet,
The snorting beast began to trot
Which gall’d him in his seat!”
Occasionally the colt would take exception to a shadow and shy
violently into the bushes and, at intervals, it would stop short
without warning with the result that Mr. Tutt’s stovepipe, driver,
buggy, lantern, legs and all the rest of the affair would climb up and
around its posterior, the animate and inanimate becoming inextricably
confused. Then, with a jerk, it would leap forward again and they
would all fall backwards in imminent danger of being dashed against
the road behind them.
Had Mr. Tutt needed to “reduce” he would have become a “reductio ad
absurdum” in the first twenty minutes. Up hill and down they rushed,
gyrating in wide semicircles, the rubber stuttering in agony, deluged
in puddles, pounded by ruts and unseen cavities, numbed and cramped by
their frenzied clinging to the rigid iron.
Several times they flashed by lighted farmhouses where Mr. Tutt would
have stopped--if he could. But the colt having decided to go to Orient
Mills would entertain no other suggestion. It had clearly made up its
mind to cover the fifteen miles in record time and take along Mr. Tutt
with it--willy-nilly.
“Now let us sing, Long Live the King!
And Gilpin, Long live he!
And when he next doth ride abroad,
May I be there to see!”
As they tore through the night there persisted in Mr. Tutt’s
perfervid, but fast fading, consciousness the vision of a monkey he
had once seen in a circus race clinging in terror to the buckling back
of a leaping greyhound. And like himself it had worn a hat!
Suddenly the colt sprang forward with a burst of speed that made their
former rate seem, by comparison, an amble. From behind them came a
faint palpitation; and a shaft of light shot by over their heads. With
a sensation almost akin to relief Mr. Tutt realized that Lizzie had
come to life.
“Hr-rr-k! H-rr-k! H-rr-rr-rr-k!”
The colt hurled itself into the traces resolved to be overtaken by no
mere flivver. In desperation Mr. Tutt grasped the animal’s tail with
both hands firmly near the root, thus reducing the radius of the
circle through which he was gyrating by virtue of centrifugal force.
At times--when the road ascended--Lizzie dropped momentarily behind
and the light of her eyes dimmed; but at others--notably, down
hill--she pressed hard upon their heels to the imminent danger of Mr.
Tutt’s coat tails. Since the colt would neither stop nor allow Lizzie
to pass, they continued thus in company without slackening speed until
the road emerged from the woods into the open and, racing into the
village neck and neck, they came to a stop in front of the post office
at Orient Center.
“Well,” remarked the colt’s owner shortly. “Here y’ are!”
Mr. Tutt, however, was not sure whether he--all of him, at any
rate--was there or not, for from his waist down he had lost all power
of sensation. With the sheriff’s assistance he untied his legs and
ruefully rubbed the small of his back.
“Thought y’d leave us, did ye?” taunted the Squire.
“This gentleman offered me a lift and I accepted his invitation,”
explained the lawyer, as he counted out fifty dollars by the light of
the lantern. “How did you manage to repair the automobile?”
“Oh, she come-to finally,” replied the sheriff blandly. “Y’ see
coastin’ so long down hill thetaway flooded her carburetor and she
kep’ on leakin’ until she was empty and then she jest naturally dried
up and when the Squire gave her a crank she started right up.”
Mr. Tutt examined his timepiece and discovered to his astonishment
that it was only half after eleven. It seemed to him as if he had been
traveling all night. The owner of the colt having pocketed his money
wheeled the buggy and drove off.
“Everybody’s asleep in this hick town,” announced the sheriff. “Guess
we’d better run over to the mill.”
So they climbed back into the car and drove on to Orient Mills. Here
all was dark but, by pounding on the door of the house nearest the
office, they roused a time-keeper who said that Charlie Emerson had
gone to work the day before; he thought he was lodging at a house
about a quarter of a mile below the dam on a side road--they would
know it by a white birch. Lizzie having somewhat reluctantly consented
to proceed, they passed another half hour trying to find Mr. Emerson’s
place of abode. But every house below the dam proved to have a white
birch in its immediate vicinity and, as he had no other guide, the
sheriff aroused the irate occupants of each in turn until he
eventually discovered the particular tree in question--which on
examination proved to be a beech. It made no difference to Mr. Tutt
what kind of a tree it was. He had accomplished his purpose. He had
found his witness, and he would be in a position to rectify and atone
for any mistake he might have made. All his weariness passed from him,
his bones ached no longer, he heard no more the rushing of the wind
past his ears nor smelt the aroma of his flying steed! His
experience--agonizing as it had been--had been a small price to pay
for the result attained.
The moon had set and the small white house stood silent and ghostly as
a tomb against the blackness of the grove behind it. The sheriff
climbed out once more and descended to the side door, which he kicked
violently. Since this elicited no response he then walked around to
the front and thumped loudly upon the front windows. At length a
candle flickered somewhere and a head emerged from the second story.
“Hello there!” called up the sheriff. “Does Charlie Emerson live
here?”
There followed a moment during which the head appeared to be adjusting
itself to the idea so irrelevantly interjected into it. Then a deep
voice--whether masculine or feminine none of them could
determine--said:
“You mean the feller that come here from Pottsville? If ye do, he was
here yesterday and hired a room but he went away agin and he ain’t
never come back! I ain’t got no idee where he is.”
Then Mr. Tutt lifted up his voice and called down the punishment of
Heaven upon the missing witness and upon himself as nothing less than
a poor old fool! Mason could scarce conceal his glee, even in the
darkness. Now, of a surety, Hawkins would go to the electric chair!
Mr. Tutt began to suspect that Mason had surreptitiously telephoned up
to the mills and arranged to have Emerson enticed away. But he
dismissed that possibility; for Mason had not had time for anything
like that. Moreover it would have come pretty close to being a
crime--and, while Mason might be a shyster he certainly would not be
guilty of anything so unprofessional as that! No, it was fate!
“Well,” said the Squire pleasantly, “what shall we do now?”
“It’s two o’clock!” warned the sheriff. “If you want to get back to
breakfast we’d better be gettin’ along. I ain’t goin’ over Chick Hill
agin’ to-night. I’m goin’ round by Humphrey Falls.”
“When is the next train?” asked Mr. Tutt.
“One o’clock to-morrow afternoon,” said the sheriff. “I told you this
was a hick town!”
Mr. Tutt without further discussion opened the door and re-entered the
car. The jig was up. He could do no more. There was only one course to
pursue; leave the subpena to Orient and go on with the trial, meantime
keeping in touch with the manager of the mills. If Emerson returned to
work in the morning he could be subpenaed and delivered upon the one
o’clock train for Pottsville. If he did not turn up Mr. Tutt could
wait until the last minute, lay the whole matter before the court and
appeal to its mercy for a sufficiently long adjournment to enable
Emerson to be found.
Dawn had flushed the hill summits along the Mohawk Valley before a
bucking and recalcitrant Lizzie, driven by an exhausted sheriff and
carrying two cramped figures representing both sides of the bar in the
great case of People vs. Hawkins, slithered into Pottsville. The only
light visible gleamed from the kitchen window of the Phoenix House
where “Ma” Best, like the virtuous woman of Holy Writ, was preparing
breakfast for twelve slumbering jurors and the other transient
participants in the proceeding. Higgins ran Lizzie up to the back
door, climbed down and shook Mr. Tutt by the shoulder.
“Hi!” he grunted. “Here we be back again!”
“Yes, your honor!” muttered Mr. Tutt who had been dreaming of special
demurrers and cross-interrogatories. “Exactly so!”
“Wake up!” ordered the sheriff. “This ain’t no Pullman!”
Mr. Tutt slowly came to himself and the pains of Hell got hold upon
him. His hands and feet were without feeling, but otherwise every bone
in his body, every muscle, every tendon shrieked with agony.
Simultaneously the Squire regained a similarly painful consciousness.
“Squire,” remarked Mr. Tutt with a grin, “we have at least comported
ourselves as lawyers, gentlemen and sportsmen.”
“So far as the sport goes,” returned the squire ruefully, “I could ha’
got ’long without it.”
Mrs. Best, startled by this untoward matutinal disturbance, now
appeared in the doorway, the light streaming from behind her, and
giving her somewhat the effect of a stout angel descending in a burst
of glory from a culinary heaven.
“Why Squire Mason!” she exclaimed, “and Mr. Tutt! What on earth are
you two doin’ up at his hour of the mornin’?”
Indeed an angel she seemed to the three spent and weary men.
“Where you been? Don’t you want a cup of coffee?”
“Madam,” replied Mr. Tutt, with a bow of his old stovepipe which swept
the ground, “sweeter words ne’er fell on mortal ear!”
Squire Mason had hurried inside to the more grateful atmosphere
surrounding the kitchen stove. The stars were blinking feebly above
the rival steeples of the local Methodists and Baptists, and the
chimney of the Phoenix House cook-shed glowed with a grayish,
unearthly pink.
“Well, Mr. Tutt,” whispered the sheriff as he made sure the prosecutor
had closed the door after him. “I did the best I could for ye! I give
ye the best chance I could--but ’twarn’t no use!”
“How’s that?” inquired Mr. Tutt, fully coming to life for the first
time. “What do you mean?”
“I mean,” explained the officer of the law, “that I know’s well as you
do that there’s suthin’ phony ’bout this feller Emerson. Squire’s
never let me say a word to him--ax him a single question! So to-night
when we got to the top of Chick Hill an’ I seen a light on the road
ahead I made up my mind to give you a chance to go on alone and have
a talk with Emerson all by yourself.”
“Eh!” murmured the astounded lawyer.
“So I pulled out the choke pin and flooded the carburetor and she
stopped sure enough--and Mason would ha’ been there yet, if the durned
cuss hadn’t gone over all by himself when I wasn’t lookin’ and give
her a yank and she started up.”
In the half light of the coming dawn the bony hand of Mr. Tutt sought
the icy one of Sheriff Higgins.
“Thank you!” said he. “It’s too bad! I’m afraid this means Hawkins
will be convicted.”
“I’m feared it does! If you can’t find Emerson,” returned the sheriff
solemnly. “--an’ I ain’t sure findin’ him will do any good either! But
I kinder have a feelin’ that if you’d ha’ gone after him in
cross-examination you’d ha’ got suthin’ more’n ye did. You _got_ to
find him!”
“Why do you say that?” asked Mr. Tutt curiously, for, so far, his
alibi stood a good one. “Didn’t I prove by him that the murder took
place at four o’clock, when everybody knows that Skinny was in
Pottsville at that hour?”
“Yes,” assented Higgins. “But y’see just between ourselves I happen to
know that the clock he told the time by was stopped. I seen it myself
when I went into the shanty that afternoon.”
“Then why do you think it would do me any good to find Emerson?” Mr.
Tutt pressed him.
The sheriff hesitated. A couple of long antennæ had shot up from
behind the hills surrounding Turkey Hollow and were gilding the
weather cock on the Baptist steeple.
“’Cause,” he replied with conviction, “I believe he knows more’n he’s
been asked. I can’t tell you why I think so, but I do. Mebbe I’m all
wrong. But”--and he put his lips close to the lid of Mr. Tutt’s
stovepipe hat--“I don’t believe--no matter how strong the evidence is
agin’ him--that Skinny ever killed the hermit. He ain’t that kind. An’
what’s more I believe the Squire knows it.”
“That’s a pretty strong accusation to make against the district
attorney of your county!” exclaimed Mr. Tutt with feigned severity.
“I know it,” admitted the sheriff. “That don’t make no difference.
He’s a bad actor! But Skinny ain’t no murderer! You kin bet on it!”
“Have you observed anything in the evidence that tends to support your
opinion?” returned Mr. Tutt.
“Well,” answered the sheriff. “It’s a gol-durned funny thing that
Skinny had exactly one hundred dollars in gold when I arrested him and
the hermit had five new twenty-dollar bills--just the same amount--on
his body.”
“That,” exclaimed Mr. Tutt, “is a coincidence which had entirely
escaped my attention!”
“But your only chance to get him off is by findin’ Emerson!” asserted
Higgins with emphasis.
“But how can I do it?” demanded Mr. Tutt.
The sheriff shook his head and spat with precision at a dandelion.
“Durn if I know!” he answered helplessly. “And I’m a camel, at that!”
he added with seeming irrelevance.
Now one of Mr. Tutt’s axioms of conduct was always to act on
impulse--and to trust instinct rather than reason; for he held impulse
to be the voice of conscience and instinct that of inherited
subconscious experience. He was wont to claim that the observation of
the human race concentrated in legends, maxims, saws and proverbs was
just as likely to be correct as the deductions of modern science,--and
that he for one, until the contrary was demonstrated to his
satisfaction, purposed to go on believing that the moon was made of
green cheese. Hence Higgins’ voluntary statement to the effect that he
felt--although he could not tell why--that there was a nigger in the
legal woodpile somewhere and that Emerson was Skinny’s only hope,
induced a new resolution on Mr. Tutt’s part to find him, if it were
humanly possible; and so before court opened he sent to New York a
hurry call for help in the shape of a telegram as follows:
“Samuel Tutt, Esq.,
“c/o Tutt & Tutt,
“Attorneys-at-Law,
“61 Broadway, New York.
“Case going badly. Need assistance. Come at once, bring Bonnie Doon
and four detectives--real ones.--Regards.
“E. Tutt.”
In addition to which he pondered long upon the curious fact that a man
who presumably had been murdered for his money should have a hundred
dollars in new bills in his pocket--the precise sum, only in another
form of specie, represented by the loot taken from his alleged slayer.
IV
“Is not the winding up of witnesses,
And nicking, more than half the business?
For witnesses, like watches, go
Just as they’re set, too fast or slow;
And where in conscience, they’re strait-lac’d,
’Tis ten to one that side is cast.”
Butler. Hudibras Pt. II. Canto I, 1.51
Just as the scientist reconstructs the dinosaur from a fragment of
bone, so Ephraim Tutt,--ex pede Herculem, as it were,--by virtue of
the coincidence of the hundred dollars found upon the hermit’s body
and the equivalent amount of gold discovered upon Skinny the Tramp,
built up something which, while not exactly a defense, was at least a
bomb to hurl into his enemy’s camp. Defense, alas! there apparently
was none worth making. The case hung upon the question of whether
Emerson, if found, could shed any additional light upon the hour of
the murder. If he could not be found, then Skinny would go to the
chair. If he did appear--well, there was merely a possibility of
escape--that was all.
Ten o’clock came, once more the gong rang, and the gladiators stumbled
from their respective corners into the legal ring for the final round.
Mr. Tutt, fully cognizant of his desperate plight, nerved himself for
the encounter, and wary, resourceful and suave, although he had lost
all hope of acquitting Skinny on his alibi, exhibited all his
customary confidence. Neither did Squire Mason show any loss of
vitality or aplomb as a result of his trip to Orient Mills the night
before. Indeed, both came into court none the worse for wear and
wholly ready for the fray.
At the very opening of the day’s proceedings, a question of tactics
presented itself. The photographs of the interior of the shanty, while
in evidence, had not as yet been shown to the jury. There wasn’t the
slightest doubt but that, of course, Squire Mason was aware of the
simple mechanical fact that the hermit’s clock had run down. He might
even have it hidden somewhere in an ante-room ready to produce at the
proper psychological moment, to prove that the clock was broken
or--horrible thought!--that it had no works at all! It might be merely
a face!
The foxy old hayseed was probably going to wait until the defense had
called all its witnesses to establish Hawkins’ presence at Colson’s
Grocery at four o’clock, and then blandly trot out the clock itself
for the inspection of the jury, who would thus be enabled to see with
their own eyes that it was entirely useless as evidence. Adopting a
military simile, he was evidently intending to permit his enemy to
capture a redoubt and then press an electric button and blow the
redoubt and the enemy both to atoms. That was obviously what he ought
to do as a matter of tactics, what any skilful prosecutor would do,
what Mr. Tutt would have done in his place. It could therefore be
pretty safely assumed that he would do it.
Now then, would it be better for Mr. Tutt boldly to hand the
photograph to the jury and bring out the fact that the clock was a
stopped clock himself, as if it were so obvious as to be really of no
importance and--trust to luck? Or would it be better--assuming that he
had correctly diagnosed Squire Mason’s intentions--to keep the thing
out of the jury’s hands as long as possible and delay the discovery
until there was no longer any hope of a change in the strategical
situation. The photograph was bound to be a bombshell some time or
other, and the longer it was held back the worse would be the
explosion. Still--! Mr. Tutt had been taught several painful lessons
during the last few days. Why bring out an unfavorable fact before it
was necessary,--simply to reduce its ultimate dramatic effect if
eventually proved? Why explode a mine under one’s own works, so long
as there was the remotest chance--even one in a million--that the
works might be held? After all, you never could tell!
These somewhat confused ratiocinations flashed through Mr. Tutt’s
brain while the roll of the jury was being called, and by the time the
twelfth had answered to his name, the lawyer had made up his mind to
leave what was--for the time being--well enough alone, and to hold
back the photograph as long as possible, to trust in his star and in
his genius for the unexpected and improbable.
The clerk sat down and the sheriff rapped for order.
“Proceed, gentlemen!” directed Judge Tompkins.
“Your honor,” announced Squire Mason with the air of a Stephen A.
Douglas, “I have studied carefully the facts evidenced by The People’s
witnesses and I have decided to close my case. We have proven the
corpus delicti, the presence of the defendant at the scene of the
crime, and the proceeds of it upon his person, thus showing his
motive, and by many other conclusive items of circumstantial evidence,
have established beyond peradventure that he is the murderer. There is
no need to pile Ossa upon Helion. As the saying is, ‘Enough is
enough.’--The People rest!--Let us hear what the defense has to say!”
Squire Mason looked pointedly at the foreman, who nodded slightly as
if in approval of the prosecutor’s sentiments. Quite right. Enough was
enough, and there was more than enough here. Anybody who had any doubt
as to who had killed the hermit must be a blamed fool! All eyes turned
irresistibly to Mr. Tutt, as the old lawyer, accepting the gage of
battle, elevated himself by easy stages ceilingward like a retarded
Jack in the Box.
“I move,” said he, “that your honor direct a verdict of acquittal upon
the ground that there is no evidence sufficient to connect the
defendant with the crime charged. Surely no court would permit a jury
to take away a man’s life on circumstantial evidence of such an
inconclusive character as has been introduced here!”
Judge Tompkins shook his head.
“I shall deny your motion, Mr. Tutt. There is, to my mind, abundant
evidence, which if uncontradicted or unexplained, would warrant the
jury in finding a verdict of guilty. Circumstantial evidence is often
the most convincing evidence.”
The old lawyer bowed.
“I most respectfully and with the greatest deference to your honor’s
judgment, except to your honor’s ruling.--Will your honor kindly
instruct the jury that in denying my motion you do not indicate any
personal opinion on your own part as to the defendant’s guilt or
innocence and that your ruling is merely to the effect that there is
enough evidence to put us on our defense?”
“That is so, gentlemen.--Proceed, Mr. Tutt.”
Judge Tompkins settled back in his chair expectantly. It was, so far
as he could now see, a conclusive case of circumstantial evidence and
he was anxious to learn how Mr. Tutt proposed to rebut it. He liked
the old lawyer and watched him almost affectionately as the latter
smilingly glanced over the rows of uplifted faces before him.
Now, Mr. Tutt always proceeded upon the theory that though a man might
be down he was never out--at any rate until the verdict was rendered
and the highest court in the state had sustained it; and following his
usual tactics, instead of supinely awaiting his enemy’s attack, he
boldly assumed the offensive and crashed through the hostile
earthworks and entanglements without regard to the fact that he was
leaving himself open to the danger of being cut off in the rear. In
other words, although he knew that the most superficial examination of
the photographs of the shanty’s interior would show that the hermit’s
clock had stopped and that consequently his claim that the murder had
occurred at four o’clock when Skinny was a full mile distant was
baseless, he nevertheless plunged right ahead as if the fact of the
clock having stopped was never going to be discovered at all.
Furthermore, he had the audacity to attack the Squire’s good faith and
general honesty and so pave a way for the possible future suggestion
that maybe the old fox had fixed the clock himself when he had gone to
the hermit’s shanty on the afternoon of the homicide,--for the very
purpose of destroying Skinny’s perfectly good alibi! And he did this
all on the basis of the hundred dollars in bills found in the hermit’s
vest pocket!
First, said he, his client was known to be one of the most gentle and
peaceable of human beings.
Second, he had an absolutely good alibi--as he was far away from
Turkey Hollow at four o’clock when, as the jury already knew, the
murder had taken place.
Third, the prosecution was not brought in good faith since this had
been perfectly well known to Squire Mason from the beginning. This was
the first time the defendant had ever heard the evidence against him.
He had never been given any opportunity whatever to show--as he could
have done with the utmost ease--that he could not possibly be the
person who committed the homicide. Had Squire Mason called before the
Grand Jury the witnesses whom he, Mr. Tutt, was about to call before
them this indictment would never have been found, for they would have
demonstrated with mathematical certainty that at the precise hour this
unfortunate man met his death James Hawkins was a mile away.
At this several members of the jury looked inquiringly towards Squire
Mason, who sniffed contemptuously and glowered at Mr. Tutt with hardly
concealed malevolence. An alibi, pointed out the lawyer, was the best
possible defense, because it was the only defense that proved
conclusively that the defendant must be absolutely innocent--for
nobody could be in two places at the same time. Now, while it might be
true that Hawkins at some time or another had had on a pair of boots
with soles like the prints in the potato patch, (1) it had not been
shown when in fact the prints had been made, whereas (2) he--Mr.
Tutt--would clearly, absolutely, irrefutably, legally, morally and in
every other way, prove, demonstrate, and substantiate that, even if
Hawkins had been near the shanty that afternoon, he must have left
there long enough before the murder to walk from Turkey Hollow to
Pottsville and arrive there at four o’clock. All this Mr. Tutt got off
exultantly, triumphantly, grandiloquently, in his best “whoop-la”
manner, keeping one eye meanwhile upon his antagonist to see how he
would take it.
“Why?” he demanded in tones like those of Amfortas in the Chapel Scene
of Parsifal, “why _had_ Squire Mason concealed from the Grand
Jury--and, he might add, from his listeners themselves--this all
important and controlling fact? Was it not the duty of the public
prosecutor to conserve the rights of every accused? Was not, in fact,
a district attorney who deliberately withheld vital information--which
in truth would conclusively establish a prisoner’s innocence--from the
public tribunal of which he was the adviser, and sought to secure the
prisoner’s conviction of crime--knowing him to be blameless--was not
such a man guilty of malfeasance in office--if not of worse things?
Was he not a thief, liar, poltroon, rascal, knave, rogue, scoundrel,
scamp, scalawag, miscreant, villain, crook, cad, shyster, trickster,
renegade, caitiff, rapscallion,--no better than a murderer himself?
Eh, what? Wasn’t he? Let them answer to their own souls!” And as
Squire Mason took all this dose with only a feeble “I protest--I
object!” turning white meanwhile, it dawned upon Mr. Tutt that
possibly what he said was true, and that not only Mason _was_ a scamp,
etc., etc., but that mayhap, after all, the alibi _was_ a good
one,--if only it could be proved to be so! Look at him! Pale,
shrinking, guilt pictured in every feature!
“Bang!” went Judge Tompkins’ gavel.
“Mr. Tutt!” interrupted his honor with severity. “Your language is
highly unbecoming. Your attack upon the prosecutor of this
county--made in your opening without the slightest evidence to support
your accusations--is most improper. At the right time I shall instruct
the jury how to deal with it. You will kindly confine yourself to what
you intend to prove----”
“But I do intend to prove it!” replied Mr. Tutt in a voice trembling
with carefully simulated resentment and indignation, now fully
satisfied not only that he had got Mason’s number but that the alibi
was really good. “I intend to prove it! And that this man Mason is
what I have stigmatized him as being.”
“We are not trying Squire Mason!” retorted his honor hotly. “Any more
than we are trying you. Proceed and confine yourself to the facts
which you expect to establish.”
Now, Mr. Tutt had “felt his way along,” as he would have said, and,
having felt it a certain distance, he had gradually become convinced
that he had inadvertently stumbled upon a great truth. There was
nothing to account for this except whatever significance might be
attached to the squire’s demeanor. As the diplomats say, the situation
had not changed. Nevertheless, into the old lawyer’s veins there oozed
a celestial ichor which put him all aglow,--made him the same old
“battling Tutt” of his police court days fifty years before. It may
have been only a subtle sensitiveness telling him that, if the Squire
were agitated, to that extent at least should he himself be confident,
if the Squire were depressed by so much should he be elated, but it
was probably something deeper than that and akin to the instinct of
the sailor who in the midst of the tempest knows that the storm is
nearly over,--a lightening of the spiritual barometer, a consciousness
of the stealthy approach of dawn when the night seems darkest.
So Mr. Tutt, having charged the Squire with being every kind of a
crook set forth as a synonym for the word rascal in the Century
Dictionary, Roget’s Thesaurus, and all the other handbooks used by
sterile authors, boldly alleged that at the proper time he would show
him fully up, have him disbarred and mayhap cast into prison, and,
having described exactly what he purposed proving and what he knew he
could prove, decided to take a chance and guess a little as to what he
was not by any means so sure of.
He had, he declared, proven by his cross-examination of the witness
Emerson that the murder was committed at exactly four o’clock,--a fact
which Squire Mason had deliberately attempted to conceal from them.
Now why had the wily and unscrupulous prosecutor sought to leave the
hour of the crime in doubt? Obviously because he knew that only by so
doing could he hope to convict the defendant. And then Mr. Tutt--borne
along on the wings of a divine afflatus coming whence he knew not--and
for no reason save that he felt “full of beans”--decided to try to
throw a scare into the district attorney on the chance of his really
having something on his conscience.
If, he threatened, after he. Tutt, should have established to their
satisfaction that Hawkins was in Pottsville at four o’clock the
prosecutor should then in desperation turn about and for the purpose
of invalidating the alibi seek to attack his own witness’ testimony to
the effect that four o’clock was the hour of the murder, then, oh
then! he would a tale unfold that would harrow up their souls, freeze
their adolescent blood, and make their hair stand on end, etc.;--for
Mr. Tutt, emboldened by the angel who at times whispered in his right
ear or the little devil that at others murmured in his left had in the
twinkling of an eye formed the sudden and definite resolution to
accuse Squire Higgins,--if necessary,--of having deliberately stopped
and turned back the hands of the hermit’s clock himself. Of course, if
one stopped to think it over, it was a ridiculous supposition, but Mr.
Tutt knew that no argument is too absurd to advance before a jury with
some hope of success; and this wasn’t even an argument, it was merely
an excuse for an accusation. He might get away with it,--“You never
could tell!”
So Mr. Tutt, having concluded his address with an encomium upon the
virtues of Skinny the Tramp in which he ranked him well up among the
heroes of Plutarch and the Fathers of the Republic, proceeded to
summon to the stand eight worthy inhabitants of Pottsville, each and
every one of whom swore positively and convincingly that on the
afternoon of the murder Skinny had entered the door of Colson’s
grocery store almost exactly at four o’clock, and that their reason
for knowing this to be so was that just as Skinny came in, the
barber,--someone having called attention to the fact that it was time
for him to open up,--had got up and gone out. All were accordingly
able to swear positively to the time and to give a natural and
convincing reason for their ability to do so.
But the calling of these witnesses to the stand gave Squire Mason the
opportunity to drive in on cross-examination all the most damning
facts about Skinny’s appearance and admissions at the time.
Hadn’t the tramp’s hands when he came in, he shouted, been smeared
with blood? Wasn’t he panting, exhausted, excited? Didn’t he try to
run away as soon as the news of the murder reached the town? Didn’t
they find his pockets full of gold pieces--of the same date as the one
in the dead hermit’s hand? Didn’t they recognize his pipe that he had
left on the shanty table? With one accord they all admitted it.
Then Squire Mason went a step further and to everybody’s astonishment
demonstrated that he possessed a very ingenious fancy. For he
developed a romantic theory about a rainbow and a crock of gold which
came nearer to being true than he had any idea of.
They’d all known Skinny the Tramp quite some time, hadn’t they? Ever
since he was a young feller? Sure--you bet! Ever notice anythin’ he
said partic’ly--what he meant was, did Skinny seem to have any
partic’lar idee he was always harpin’ on. Well,--if they didn’t
understand what he was drivin’ at--did Skinny ever say anythin’ in
their hearin’ about rainbows? Oh, sure! He was always--ever sence he
was a boy--talkin’ about tryin’ to find a pot of gold at the foot of a
rainbow.--Sure! He was always talkin’ about that! They hadn’t grasped
the purport of the Squire’s question. Why, there was one time Skinny
had harangued a big crowd on that subject for over half an hour down
to Somerset Corners--night of a lodge meetin’.
Then Squire Mason, lowering his voice to an intense tremulo, would ask
each witness whether he had not noticed on the afternoon of the
murder, just after the shower, a rainbow, one of whose arches rested
in Turkey Hollow! And when any one of them confessed that he had done
so--as did in fact several--the prosecutor looked hard at Skinny--and
the audience sucked in its breath and felt a delicious creepy
sensation around the small of its back. Gosh! The Squire was a shrewd
feller! It took brains to think of an argyment like that. And eye met
eye significantly, and chin whisker wagged at chin whisker with deep
appreciation of the squire’s subtlety.
There was no doubt but that the prosecutor, in spite of his personal
unpopularity, had in the opinion of those in the court room scored a
very neat point. It was all very well for Mr. Tutt by his redirect to
call attention to the absurdity and unlikelihood of a murderer
immediately after the homicide strolling unconcernedly into a grocery
store where he was well known, bearing upon his person all the
evidences of his crime. It might be kind o’ foolish, but then--Skinny
the Tramp was kind o’ foolish. The rainbow theory of motive more than
counterbalanced the obvious recklessness of such a performance. If
Skinny, guided to the scene of his crime by the rainbow, had murdered
the hermit in order to get his gold, it was quite in character that he
should have done afterwards what obviously he had done. You might as
well ask--as Mr. Tutt did ask--why he hadn’t changed his boots? To
which Squire Mason had replied that he hadn’t changed them for the
simple reason that they were all he had,--and if murderers never did
anythin’ but what was wise and prudent you’d never ketch any of ’em.
And at this retort the chin whiskers on the front of the jury wagged
again. No, on the face of it--except for the alibi--things looked very
bad for Skinny the Tramp; and Mr. Tutt knew that his alibi, as it
stood, wasn’t worth a tinker’s damn! Squire Mason had only to hand the
photograph to the jury and call its attention to the fact that the
clock had stopped and all would be over. Yet Mr. Tutt, buoyed up by a
mysterious confidence, which had its basis in the prosecutor’s
uneasiness, bore himself bravely in the face of all his difficulties.
The last witness to the alibi gave his stammering testimony, was
cross-examined, redirected, recrossed and excused. The court room
clock pointed to half after twelve. The crucial moment of the trial
had been reached. Skinny’s alibi stood--swaying to be sure--but still
in the perpendicular. If the case should be closed then and there it
would remain erect and Skinny would doubtless go free, but if the
squire so much as pulled out a single brick, gave it the tiniest push,
by calling the jury’s attention to the fact that the hermit’s clock
was not going at the time of the murder the alibi would fall with a
crash and Skinny would pay with his life. What was the squire going to
do?
“Well, gentlemen,” remarked Judge Tompkins. “What are your desires?
Does the defense rest?”
Mr. Tutt hesitated. His only possible remaining witness was the
defendant himself. He would, of course, gladly rest his case if the
prosecutor would do the same thing. But Squire Mason gave no
indication of what his intentions in that regard might be.
“If your honor please,” he said, “the usual hour of adjournment is
nearly at hand. May I suggest that we take a recess until one-thirty
in order that I may have time to review the evidence? It is my present
intention to rest my case upon the alibi which has been so clearly
established and to call no further witnesses, but I should like an
hour’s time to consider the matter.”
“That seems reasonable,” agreed Judge Tompkins. “Is that satisfactory
to you, Mr. District Attorney?”
The squire half arose from his chair. But before he could make reply
the legal earthquake--of which Mr. Tutt had remained in deadly fear
ever since Mr. Pennypacker had given his testimony--occurred. The
alibi shivered at its top like a tree under the woodsman’s ax, hung
for a moment in trembling equilibrium and crashed to the ground.
“Before we adjourn fer dinner,” remarked the foreman, “I’d like to
take a look at that picter o’ the inside o’ the shanty. I want to see
suthin’.”
Mr. Tutt turned sick. Forcing his features into a distorted smile he
said with an assumption of impulsive eagerness:
“By all means!--Squire Mason, will you kindly hand Exhibit F to Mr.
Sawyer?”
And then the wily squire, having patiently awaited this exact moment
for three whole days, bent over and lifted a package from beneath his
desk--precisely as Mr. Tutt had anticipated--announcing dramatically:
“I suttinly will. An’ as I regard Exhibit F as the most important
piece of evidence in the case I’ve had fifteen copies made of it,--one
for the judge, one for each juryman, one for the defense and one for
myself. Here they be!”
There was a ruffle of excitement as the jury scrambled for their
photographs--destined in the succeeding years to decorate twelve
parlor walls in as many Mohawk farmhouses--along with the stand of wax
flowers purchased by Aunt Hetty at the Centennial Exhibition in 1876,
the picture of Niagara Falls done in real cork, and the sampler worked
by Grandma Harrington when she was a little girl. Each juror grabbed
his photograph and hunched back in his seat to see what he could see.
Then the foreman remarked with the air of a Sherlock Holmes addressing
his dear Watson:
“Accordin’ to the evidence this here picter was took at six o’clock in
the afternoon and the plate was exposed ten minutes. Now if the clock
in the shanty had been goin’ you’d natcherly expec’ the picter to show
the hour hand pointin’ at six and the minute hand blurred. But both
hands is perfectly distinct and pints to four o’clock. Now it ’pears
to me as if this clock must ha’ stopped--no one knows when,--an’, if
it wasn’t goin’, of course Emerson couldn’t say when it was that he
went into the shanty, and nobody knows when the hermit was kilt. Ain’t
thet so, jedge?”
In the silence which followed this entirely logical and demolishing
argument the only sound to be heard was the ticking of the official
timepiece on the court room wall, until Judge Tompkins said in a
constrained tone and with a glance full of meaning at Mr. Tutt.
“The foreman has pointed out a fact of considerable significance. But
of course the matter will be one for discussion in the jury room, if
the case goes to the jury. At all events we will now take the
customary adjournment until half past one o’clock.”
The ax had fallen. The jig was up. The defense was doomed. The knell
had sounded for Skinny the Tramp. The poor old alibi was dead, ready
to be carried out and buried. And so, almost was Mr. Tutt, who sat
head in hands alone in the stifling court room, gloomily pondering
upon the manifold changes and chances of this mortal life. He was up
against it. Without Emerson there was no possibility of eliciting any
new fact,--if any there were. Even with Emerson there was only a
conjectural conceivability of so doing. Further examination might or
might not benefit the defense,--the probabilities being decidedly
against it. And Emerson had utterly disappeared; Mr. Tutt’s hourly
telephone messages to Orient Mills only elicited the invariable reply
that he had not returned to work, that nobody had the remotest idea
where he was and that the subpena was there waiting for him all ready
to be served when he turned up, if ever he should.
Mr. Tutt’s brain was working as it had rarely worked before. It fairly
seethed as he considered every possibility of escape, no matter how
remote. Should he put Hawkins upon the stand? With the alibi destroyed
a conviction seemed inevitable unless the defendant made some sort of
an explanation of the evidence against him. But Skinny’s was so lame
as to be almost worse than no defense at all, and on cross-examination
the squire would certainly make mince meat of him.
Not that what Skinny had told him might not be true, but nobody would
believe it. It was so extremely simple as to be childish--merely that
he had not done it! No one better than Mr. Tutt himself knew the
immense disadvantage under which even an innocent defendant labors
under cross-examination. It is merely a bull baiting. Ignorant,
stupid, uneducated, the ordinary accused in a criminal case is no
match even for a tyro of a prosecutor. Often he does not even
understand the meanings of the questions put to him. And he must
answer categorically--yes or no. With an unscrupulous district
attorney the prisoner on the witness chair can only deny the
accusations, often unfounded, that are hurled against him one after
the other and which the jury accept as unqualifiedly true. Better for
him the ancient law that as an interested party he could not testify
in his own behalf. Yet to-day a defendant must testify or the jury
will assume him guilty as a matter of course. No, if Skinny took the
stand they would eat him alive. He would be a gone coon. And if he
didn’t take the stand he would be a gone coon. He was a gone coon
either way,--damned if he did and damned if he didn’t.
As to Emerson, no judge in his senses, least of all a wise old bird
like Tompkins, J., was going to adjourn a murder trial--right in the
middle of it--in order to let one side chase up a witness who had been
fully examined and told he could go away--simply because one of the
lawyers thought he’d like to ask him another question. It wasn’t done.
If it were done, trials would never come to an end,--and half the
murderers would get off.
Beside him Skinny Hawkins, his client, was quietly eating his lunch,
consisting of a couple of sandwiches and a big doughnut, sent over
from the Phoenix House by “Ma” Best. It was a safe bet that at that
time to-morrow he would be awaiting the sentence of death. Did he
appreciate the situation? Was he cognizant of his peril? Certainly he
gave no indication of it. Unexpectedly Skinny raised his faded blue
eyes to those of the old lawyer and asked:
“Mr. Tutt, do you believe anythin’ ever dies?”
Mr. Tutt pulled himself together sharply.
“Of course not!” he replied confidently. “Of course not!”
“Then it’s all right--anyway!” said Skinny the Tramp.
We have sometimes felt constrained to write an essay, to be entitled
“The Menace of the Probable,” the thesis of which will be that it is
the improbable which usually happens, and explain why. The axiom that
“fact is stranger than fiction” is based upon this truism. All of life
is centered around a struggle to make ourselves and everything about
us exceptions to the general rule. We are all striving for the
unusual, the extraordinary. The probable is the very last thing that
we want; its menace is our Nemesis. So we don’t look for it; our minds
jump to the unlikely. This is the more natural since the “element of
uncertainty” in human affairs makes the improbable quite probable, if
you see what we mean. As Aristotle says: “Better a probable
impossibility than an impossible probability.” Thus the
improbable--and hence the probable--thing with regard to the vanished
Emerson was that he had unexpectedly received word that he had been
made the legatee of a million taels by a Chinese nobleman or something
like that. This was the reason that Mr. Tutt had sent his telegram to
New York--so that his detectives could search all the unlikely places
in Northern New York, Canada, and eventually, Alaska, at twelve
dollars fifty per day and expenses. He knew nothing would come of
it--even if he secured a six months’ adjournment. He had never yet got
anything from a detective agency except a bill. The probabilities were
that some improbability had happened--just as it always did and does
that Emerson had joined a traveling circus,--run away with a
minister’s wife, gone into the movies, or been murdered himself. Under
these circumstances the detectives would detect--perhaps. That was
their line--the probable improbability; not the improbable
probability. To foresee or deduce that requires genius. None of which
paradoxical and specious reasoning of Mr. Tutt’s at all helped the
situation, the gist of which was that Skinny was going to be hung.
Mr. Tutt, having reassured the tramp with regard to the future of his
immortal soul, took up his hat and started for the Phoenix House. If
he was going to die he purposed to die game; to die game a man must
live; to live one must eat; hence, the better one ate the better one
died. For this reason he purposed to do execution in the best possible
manner upon one of “Ma” Best’s dollar dinners. That is, he had
intended to do so until turning the corner of the court house he
walked into Mr. Charles Emerson, who was nonchalantly sitting on an
empty lemon crate smoking a cigar.
Mr. Tutt punched himself violently in the ribs. Was it possible?
Emerson, seeing the distinguished attorney regarding him with eyes
starting from their sockets, slowly arose.
“Don’t move!” shouted Mr. Tutt. “As you were!--
‘Be thou a spirit of health or goblin damned,
Bring with thee airs from heaven or blasts from hell,
Be thy intents wicked or charitable----’
don’t you dare to stir until I get the sheriff and clap a subpena on
you! We’ve been hunting all over Somerset County for you!”
“Well, I’ve been here ever since yesterday afternoon,” answered
Emerson blandly.
“Sit still!” warned the lawyer. “Don’t budge! If you do I won’t answer
for the consequences!”
Then, seeing Sheriff Higgins about to enter the drug store, Mr. Tutt
hurried down the street, summoned him forth, and conducting him around
the corner, said:
“Sheriff, Mr. Emerson is with us again.”
“Ye don’t say now!” ejaculated Higgins.
“Yes,” asserted Mr. Tutt. “But being a witness for the prosecution it
would not be quite proper for me to talk to him. Do you think it would
be possible for you to casually ascertain from him a little more fully
what he knows about the hour of the murder?”
“Well----” hesitated the sheriff.
“But you’re a sacred camel,” urged Mr. Tutt.
* * * * * *
The fact that Emerson also was a camel and that all camels are
proverbially thirsty animals may have accounted for Squire Mason’s
failure to learn of the lost witness’ reappearance before court
opened. While the worthy Hezekiah during the progress of the trial had
at times felt momentary twinges of apprehension--not, of
conscience--but lest his motives and conduct of the prosecution should
be impugned, he now felt secure. The only person in the world--as he
thought--whose testimony could possibly subject him to censure had
providentially absented himself. It made no difference whether Skinny
took the stand or stayed off it. His denial wouldn’t affect the
strength of the case in any way,--would amount to nothing in view of
the blood on his hands, the marks of his shoes, the pipe, the twenty
five-dollar gold pieces and the fact that Emerson had trailed him
straight to Pottsville within fifteen minutes.
So the Squire felt pretty fine and the dome on the Capitol at Albany
shone brightly and near at hand. He had old Tutt down and out! Even
the New York papers would probably carry a big story about the
conviction. In the background of his crafty mind lurked, as well, the
realization that in case of a conviction there would be no one to
demand the payment of Skinny’s semiannual interest. So the Hon.
Hezekiah strolled back into the court room, picking his teeth with a
good deal of satisfaction.
It was jammed as usual,--the audience breathlessly awaiting the last
act of the great free show. There sat the jury looking like mutes at a
funeral, there sat Skinny, his eyes wandering vaguely around the room,
there sat Mr. Tutt, calm, alert, stern, tense. Hezekiah didn’t like
the way he looked. Anyhow, he’d beaten him to a standstill,--a
frazzle! Then the clerk having called the roll of the jury, the judge
directed that the trial proceed and Mr. Tutt arose--with just the
least shade of melodrama.
Through the high windows Skinny the Tramp looked past Mr. Tutt’s tall,
lank figure out into the world of freedom, where the great elms gently
swayed in the sunlight, and the white spire of the Baptist meeting
house tapered towards the blue zenith. He, the helpless victim, had
less knowledge of what was going on than any of them. After all, he
perhaps had less to lose than any of them. Then a gust stronger than
the others bowed the rustling top of the elm nearest the court house
and--slowly the cock upon the steeple veered round and pointed in the
opposite direction!
“Mr. William Gookin--please take the witness chair!” said Mr. Tutt.
“Toggery Bill,” Pottsville’s merchant prince, arose from one of the
nearer benches and ascended the rostrum with an air of importance. Mr.
Tutt handed him the five twenty-dollar bills found in the hermit’s
waistcoat pocket.
“Mr. Gookin,” he remarked. “I show you People’s Exhibits numbered
Seventeen to Twenty-one, inclusive, and ask if you can identify them?”
Toggery Bill carefully examined the bills and replied that he could.
“How?”
“I’ve got my mark on each one.”
“Show the jury.”
Mr. Gookin pointed out with pride the words “Pottsville Dry Goods &
Tailoring Emporium, May 16, 1920,” printed in small red letters by
means of a rubber stamp, on each one.
“Now,” continued Mr. Tutt quietly. “Please tell us when you last saw
them?”
“The mornin’ of the murder,” answered “Toggery Bill.” “May
seventeenth, nineteen hundred and twenty!”
“Where did you see them?”
“In my store.--I gave ’em to Squire Mason about eleven o’clock and I
hold his note for a hundred dollars for the loan.”
The effect of this simple announcement was extraordinary, for while it
created complete bewilderment it suggested the weirdest possibilities.
Here was a murdered hermit with a hundred dollars in his pocket which,
within five hours, had been in the possession of the very man who was
now prosecuting the person charged with the homicide. It was all very
confusing to the bucolic mind! Some of them even thought for a moment
that Mr. Tutt had proved that Squire Mason had committed the murder.
Indeed, the Squire was almost as pale as if he had. What was old man
Tutt goin’ to try to get on him?--He did not have to wait long to find
out.
“Mr. Mason--please take the witness chair!”
With a lump in his gullet of the size and dryness of a golf ball
Hezekiah, amid the poorly controlled comments of the spectators which
the sheriff for some reason made no effort to suppress, his diaphragm
quivering with anxiety as to what all this might mean, climbed up into
the public eye and was sworn.
“Mr. Mason--you have heard the testimony of the last witness--Mr.
Gookin--is it correct?”
“Yes,” conceded Hezekiah thickly.
“What use did you make of these bills?”
The Hon. Mason snapped his jaws defiantly together. Then he turned to
Judge Tompkins.
“I don’t see what that’s got to do with anything, judge,” he
complained. “Do I have to answer?”
“It’s perfectly relevant,” returned his honor. “Do you mean to say
that you think how that money got into the possession, and upon the
person, of the deceased isn’t of importance! Of course it
is!--Answer.”
Mason bowed to the inevitable.
“I give it to Skinny--the defendant--in my office at half past
eleven,” said he.
A murmur rose from the benches. This was some evidence! The Squire was
makin’ himself the chief witness for the prosecution. What was coming
next? But nothing came--from Mr. Tutt, who merely bowed.
“Thank you,” said he quietly. “That is all.”
The prosecutor was about to return to his desk before the jury box,
when Judge Tompkins took the hand in the matter which Mr. Tutt had
anticipated that he would.
“Hold on a minute!” directed his honor with a perplexed air. “I don’t
understand. Why did you give the defendant a hundred dollars on the
morning of the murder?”
“’Cause he asked for it?” returned the squire shortly.
“Did you owe it to him?”
“Why--no,” answered the squire. “That is, not exactly. It weren’t a
debt. It was interest due.”
“Due on what?” demanded the judge irritably.
“On his trust fund----” reluctantly admitted Mason. The judge peered
at him sharply over his spectacles.
“Who is the trustee of the fund?”
There was a long pause.
“I am,” yielded Mason finally.
“Do you mean that you are the trustee of a fund of which this
prisoner, whom you are trying to convict of murder, is the
beneficiary?” cried Tompkins, leaning forward.
“I am,” assented Mason faintly.
There was a chorus of mingled hisses and jeers from the benches, but
Judge Tompkins took no notice of it.
“This is a most extraordinary situation!” he declared. “However--we
will not deal with it now. Proceed with the trial.”
Mason crept back to his seat. It was clear that the judge had it in
for him,--but that needn’t affect the outcome of the trial. Then he
got another jar--this time an even heavier one.
“Charles Emerson,” murmured Mr. Tutt sweetly, “please take the
stand--I have an additional question I wish to put to you in
cross-examination.”
There was nothing in Emerson’s recall to excite any special interest
among the spectators, since few, if any, of them knew that he had gone
away. But there was much in Squire Mason’s demeanor as the witness
made his way forward to give pause to those who watched him. Something
had happened to him. He had shriveled--nought else. With his eyes
shifting uneasily the district attorney sat fumbling with his papers,
refusing to meet those of the mill hand. Then he arose and said in a
husky voice which held no conviction:
“I object to the recallin’ of this witness. He’s been examined once.”
“I overrule your objection--Mr. Tutt may interrogate him as fully as
he wishes,” retorted Judge Tompkins sharply. He turned to Emerson.
“Where have you been? I understood you had disappeared.”
Emerson smiled sheepishly.
“I’ve been here right along,” he answered, “’cept just after I give my
testimony. You see, I took a job up to Orient Mills and signed on the
next mornin’, but I got thinkin’ about the case an’ I decided to come
back.”
“Why?” demanded his honor.
“Well, jedge,” explained Emerson, “y’see I figured out that mebbe my
evidence might turn out to be pretty important, for I heard over to
the Phoenix House how Skinny was goin’ to try to prove he was in
Pottsville at four o’clock. Now I knew the murder was done jest about
that time. An’ I testified to it here, but----” and he spoke very
slowly and distinctly--“nobody,--neither Squire Mason nor Mr.
Tutt,--asked me much about it--and I got thinkin’----”
“I object t’ all this!” again interposed Mason. “This ain’t any proper
way for him to testify--tellin’ about what he thought, an’ all.”
“That is quite true,” agreed his honor. “Mr. Tutt, you had better
question the witness in the regular way.”
Mr. Tutt bowed. He too had observed that the weather cock had veered.
“Anyhow I come back on the next train,” finished Mr. Emerson, “an’
I’ve been here right along.”
“Mr. Emerson,” Mr. Tutt began, his voice trembling slightly from the
excitement under which he labored, “you have testified that when you
entered the hermit’s shanty the clock pointed to four o’clock.”
“Yes,” answered the witness, “it did.”
“You have also testified that you returned later on with Mr.
Pennypacker, when he took his photograph. Did you notice the clock at
that time?”
“I did.”
“At what hour was it pointing?”
“Four o’clock.”
“Was it going at that time?”
Emerson shook his head.
“No,” he replied. “It warn’t.”
Mr. Tutt’s heart gave a flutter, but he kept bravely on without
batting a lid.
“But you testified positively that you knew it was four o’clock when
you went there the first time.”
“Yep--yes, I mean,” replied the witness firmly. “I know it was four
o’clock.”
Mr. Tutt was now on terra firma, for he knew that whatever the answer
might be--it was bound to be favorable. He was safely within the
conservative rule that you must never ask a question unless you are
sure that the answer cannot hurt you. But he did not know what the
answer was going to be, had no idea of what fact he might be about to
elicit. So that there was a delicious uncertainty about the next
inquiry, upon which he fully realized that he staked his whole case.
“How do you know it was four o’clock?” he demanded, with a note of
triumph and the air of being now about to disclose something which he
had known perfectly well all along but which he had withheld until
this, the exact psychological moment. “Tell the jury how you know, Mr.
Emerson!”
The jury fully apprised of the fact that upon the answer hung the
validity of Skinny’s alibi focused their eyes on the lumberman’s
honest face. Even Judge Tompkins could not refrain from turning half
way round and pulling his chair towards the witness box so as not to
lose a word. By common consent, by instinct, and in fact, this was the
apex, the climax, the denouement of the trial of Skinny the Tramp.
Would Emerson make good--or wouldn’t he?
“Fer one thing because I kin almost swear I heard the clock tick and
saw the hand move,” answered Emerson positively.
The jury looked at one another inquiringly. That was pretty strong
testimony! To recall that you heard a clock tick!
“Are you quite sure?” cautioned Judge Tompkins. “Remember that this is
a very important bit of evidence.”
“Pretty near!” answered Emerson. “I’m satisfied fer myself that I did,
but this bein’ a court o’ law, mebbe I’d oughter be more certain to
swear to it. Anyhow that is how I remember it. I testified before how
I went into the shanty and saw the hermit lyin’ with his mouth covered
with blood and how he died while I held his head in my hand. If you’d
been there, you’d ha’ remembered it all right, I reckon. But nobody
axed me if I knew the clock was goin’. Wal, it was this way. When I
lifted the hermit’s head an’ looked in his face the shanty was all
still,--’ceptin’ fer three things.”
He paused, almost as if for effect.
“What were they?” softly demanded Mr. Tutt.
Emerson lowered his voice.
“The first was the kind of cluckin’ sound the hermit’s breath made
goin’ in and out through his mouth on account of the blood. His eyes
was half open but they didn’t see none. He was just passin’ out. It
was so quiet I felt real creepy--all alone with him dyin’. But what
skeered me most was an enormous great moth--the biggest I ever
see--that went flap-flap-flap agin’ the winder tryin’ to git out. It
flapped and flapped and I thought it would stun itself agin’ the
glass. An’ ez I knelt thar holdin’ the hermit’s head, listenin, to his
breathing and to that big gray moth flappin’ over at the window, I kin
most swear I heard the clock tick--an’ saw the minute hand slip to
four o’clock--and then all of a suddint the whole shanty went still.
The hermit didn’t breathe no more, the moth flew out the
door,--an’----”
“Well?” whispered Mr. Tutt.
“An’ the clock stopped!”
In the silence that followed there was no one in the court room that
did not mark the ticking of the clock upon the rear wall. Each
listener told himself that if necessary he could swear to it until his
dying day. Then Mr. Tutt said, almost with unconcern:
“And did you tell Squire Mason all this?”
“Sure!” replied Emerson, looking the prosecutor full in the face. “I
told him all about it that very afternoon!”
Judge Tompkins fixed the wretched prosecutor with a beetling eye.
“How do you reconcile the withholding of this very vital evidence from
the jury?” he inquired in icy tones.
Mason, ivory white, attempted to rise, but collapsed weakly into his
chair.
“I didn’t believe it!” he answered faintly. “It ain’t any part o’ my
duty to have a witness tell fairy stories to the jury.”
“But in calling the witness you vouched for his credibility!” retorted
Judge Tompkins with contempt.
“Only in so far as I brought out his testimony myself,” replied the
Squire feebly. “I believed he was tellin’ the truth about findin’ the
hermit still alive--and mebbe about the moth--but I didn’t
believe--an’ I don’t believe now--an’ what’s more I don’t believe
anybody else believes--that that partic’lar clock up an’ stopped the
very moment the hermit died.”
He pressed his lips together resolutely.
Judge Tompkins turned a scornful shoulder to the now groveling
Hezekiah.
“Mr. Emerson,” said he. “You have contributed materially by your
testimony, given this afternoon, to our knowledge of the case. Have
you any other means of knowing whether at the time you think you saw
the hand of the hermit’s clock move to four o’clock it was then
pointing to the correct time?”
“Yes, jedge, I have,” answered the witness without hesitation. “For
just as the silence come in the shanty--when the hermit had died, and
the big moth had flown out, and--the clock had stopped, the whistle
over to Sawyer’s Steam Lumber Mill blew four o’clock.”
“I guess that settles _that_!” remarked the foreman, leaning back and
wagging a confirmatory chin whisker.
“Did you tell that to Squire Mason?” inquired his honor scathingly.
“No,” answered Emerson. “I tole him it was four o’clock and how the
clock stopped, an’ as he didn’t seem partic’larly interested ’bout the
hour, I let it go at that.”
Those of our readers who perchance should happen to find themselves
for a night in Pottsville or in any of the adjacent towns should not
fail to elicit from the oldest accessible inhabitant the great story
of the ripping up of Squire Mason by Lawyer Tutt in the latter’s
closing address to the jury, and how the governor, upon the
recommendation of Judge Tompkins, promptly removed him from office,
thus blasting a promising political career. For Mr. Tutt, by one of
those freaks of fortune which do occasionally occur, found himself in
a position to make good on every one of the charges--both direct and
indirect--which he had made against the prosecutor and to prove him in
fact to be every one of all the varieties of crook, rascal and
rapscallion that he had called him. And he somehow managed in addition
to convince everybody--except possibly shrewd Judge Tompkins--that he
had known all about everything from the beginning of the trial and
that the whole Emerson business had been just a grandstand play
carefully staged to give a proper theatrical effect to the final coup.
Anyhow, according to general account, there wasn’t a thing left of
Squire Mason when Mr. Tutt got through with him. He was flayed,
disemboweled, torn limb from limb, drawn and quartered, and his
various physical members, with their connective tissues, scattered
broadside over Somerset County--to the great joy of the inhabitants
thereof. And, what was of vastly more importance, Skinny the Tramp’s
alibi was definitely, finally and impregnably established; so that
when Judge Tompkins concluded his charge to the jury at a quarter past
three o’clock on Friday afternoon everybody said it was all over but
the shouting and most of them didn’t wait to hear the verdict.
Indeed, so confident was public opinion of an immediate acquittal that
the sheriff didn’t even take Skinny back to the calaboose, but allowed
him to smoke one of Mr. Tutt’s stogies right in the court room, while
Judge Tompkins and the old lawyer strolled across Main Street to sit
on the Phoenix House piazza until the jury should come in.
“Well, Mr. Tutt,” said his honor, as he politely declined one of the
famous Wheeling corona-coronas, “I must congratulate you on a most
adroit and effective piece of court room strategy. The way you held
back and finally brought out the story of the clock was really
masterly!”
Mr. Tutt smiled enigmatically.
“I took several chances in that case!” he admitted with a great deal
more truth than his listener was aware of.
“However,” replied Judge Tompkins, “you didn’t take anywhere near as
many as our friend the district attorney. Unofficially--not for
publication, and in the language of the metropolis from which you
come,--in my opinion, he’s some crook.”
“Unofficially and confidentially,” returned Mr. Tutt, “I entirely
agree with you. Speaking mildly, he’s got by long odds the most
perverted sense of fair play that I have ever come across.”
“That’s all the good it will do him,” said his honor. “If I’m not
mistaken that jury will acquit inside of fifteen minutes.”
“You never can tell,” murmured Mr. Tutt. “It’s fourteen minutes since
they went out already.”
“Anyhow it’s only a question of a very short time--your alibi was
conclusively established.”
“Yes,” assented Mr. Tutt, “but very likely there’s some rube on that
jury that doesn’t know yet what the word means.”
As if in curious confirmation of Mr. Tutt’s cynical opinion of the
cerebral equipment of his fellow human beings the sheriff at this
moment appeared from the direction of the court house.
“Jedge,” said he, “the jury allow ez how they’d like to have some
supper. Shall I bring ’em over or hold ’em awhile?”
“What do you think, Mr. Tutt?” inquired his honor.
“When a jury wants its supper,” answered the old lawyer, “always give
it to ’em--and send ’em in a box of cigars besides.”
Judge Tompkins laughed.
“All right, sheriff,” said he, “give them their supper, by all means.
Strange,” he added. “I thought surely they’d agree almost
immediately!”
“They were doin’ a powerful lot of talkin’ the last time I went into
the jury room,” remarked the sheriff. “You could hear ’em holler way
acrost the road.”
He vanished into the court house and presently returned leading the
jury like an ancient bell weather down the steps and towards the
hotel. The judge and Mr. Tutt eyed them intently for the purpose of
deciphering if possible the thoughts concealed behind their
inscrutability. But no more expressionless set of men ever ascended
the piazza steps of the Phoenix House than the jury to whose keeping
had been entrusted the life of Skinny the Tramp.
“Hanged if I can tell a thing from looking at ’em,” admitted Judge
Tompkins.
“I can,” countered Mr. Tutt. “They’re hungry.”
It appeared in due course that this particular jury was more than
ordinarily hungry, for its members not only consumed the entire
official menu but insisted on eating three plates apiece of “Ma”
Best’s griddle cakes; after which they sat on the piazza for an entire
hour in replete silence while digestion took its course; and it was
eight o’clock and after repeated urgings on the part of the sheriff
before they reluctantly consented to return to the court house.
“It’s only a matter of form,” opined Judge Tompkins to Mr. Tutt.
“They’ll agree now in no time.”
“H’m! You never can tell!” answered Mr. Tutt, as he excused himself
and went upstairs to refill his pockets with stogies.
Indeed, Judge Tompkins guessed wholly wrong. The jury--so far as could
be ascertained by any proper legal means--had no immediate intention
of agreeing at all. Nine o’clock came,--and nine-thirty,--with still
no word from them. At ten or thereabouts a vigorous rapping on the
door of the jury room caused the hearts of those spectators who still
lingered in the court house to thump loudly,--but it was only a call
for ice water. At ten-thirty the sheriff reported absolute
silence--evidently a deadlock. At eleven all was still quiet along the
Potomac. The judge, surprised and impatient at what seemed to indicate
the possibility of a miscarriage of justice, directed Sheriff Higgins
to inquire if there was a likelihood of an agreement, to which the
foreman merely returned the laconic answer that as yet they had not
reached a verdict. Five hours had now elapsed since the twelve good
and true men had received their instructions and retired to
deliberate.
“Mr. Tutt,” said Judge Tompkins, “I will wait here until eleven-thirty
and, if there is no word from the jury by that time, I shall return to
the Phoenix House and go to bed.”
But at eleven-thirty no word had come and the sheriff reported that
there was no sound whatever inside the jury room. All argument had
ceased. He couldn’t hear a durn thing. He reckoned they’d gone to
sleep for the night.
“It’s incredible!” declared his honor. “A perfectly plain case! What
do you suppose is making the trouble?”
“You kin search me, jedge!” said the sheriff. “Now you just go acrost
to bed and if anything happens I’ll hustle right over.”
A couple of dozen hangers-on still remained after the judge had left
the court room, whose electric brilliants were only slightly dimmed by
the incense from as many virulent cigars. Betting was now even on the
result, with the odds three to two on an ultimate disagreement.
Evidently for some unknown reason the alibi had gone bad. Mr. Tutt,
sitting on the topmost step of the court house entrance felt a
surreptitious poke in the back and perceived that the sheriff was
beckoning mysteriously to him. Arising with ostentatious indifference
the lawyer followed the official to the rear of the building, where
after making sure that they were unobserved Higgins unlocked a small
door opening upon a flight of back stairs.
“Got suthin’ I want to show ye!” he muttered with an elaborate facial
contortion designed to register mischievous humor. Mr. Tutt responded
with a similar grimace and the two cautiously tiptoed up the stairs to
the topmost landing where the sheriff unlocked another door, and after
lighting a candle tip produced from his trousers pocket conducted the
lawyer into the blackness of what was evidently the court house attic.
“Duck yer head!” he warned, “if ye don’t want to crack yer skull!”
“Where are you going?” asked Mr. Tutt, although he did not in the
least care.
“Never you mind!” retorted his guide.
Then after he had felt his way sixty feet or so across the timbers the
sheriff stopped and blew out the candle.
“We’re right over the jury room,” he whispered.
The attic was hot, dusty, close, and full of cobwebs, suggestive of
man-eating spiders, but enthused with the spirit of adventure Mr. Tutt
stood motionless over the crack of light which showed them to be in
the right place. Below, all was silence, penetrated by an occasional
hiss and punctuated now and then with a snore. What had occurred? Was
there in fact a deadlock? Would Skinny the Tramp have to face another
trial for his life? After what seemed an incredible period of time a
chair scraped and a voice was heard:
“What time is it now, Bill?”
There was a momentary hiatus during which a watch was evidently
consulted and then the foreman made reply:
“Ten minutes to twelve.”
Again the cloak of silence descended upon the so-called deliberations
of the jury. Then Mr. Tutt was startled by the voice of Sawyer, the
foreman, who evidently sat just beneath them.
“Well, boys,” he exclaimed in a voice full of relief, “it’s five
minutes after midnight--Saturday mornin’--an’ I guess we’re safe to
claim another day’s pay. After all, three dollars is real money--wuth
gettin’!--All up! Seventh inning!”
There was a tremendous scuffling of feet below,--intermingled with
loud yawns.
“Well,” said the foreman again, “we’re all agreed, ain’t we? It’s an
acquittal, ain’t it?”
“Yep!--You betcher!--Sure!” came from eleven husky throats.
The foreman pounded sharply upon the door of the jury room and the
sheriff scrambled hastily towards the attic door.
“An’ the next thing--after we git outer here,” continued the foreman
drily, “is to decide what we’re goin’ to do with Squire Mason!”
* * * * * *
The crowd surged about Skinny, caught him up on its shoulders and bore
him struggling and feebly protesting out of the court room, down the
steps, and over to the Phoenix House. “Ma” Barrows was waiting for
them, and when they dumped Skinny down on the piazza she threw her
arms about him and with the tears streaming down her cheeks cried:
“You poor, poor boy! Come right in and let me give you some nice hot
supper and after that a soft clean bed!”
But Skinny shook his head.
“The supper’s all right,” he said. “But I guess I’d rather sleep
outdoors!”
In the court room Sheriff Higgins approached Mr. Tutt, who was
gathering up his papers.
“Well,” he said, taking a fat envelope out of his breast pocket and
glancing into it, “Here’s your fee--Two hundred and fifty
dollars!--Wisht I could earn money that easy!”
Mr. Tutt waved the envelope away with a careless gesture.
“Give it to Skinny,” he said. “He needs it!”
Then with a rush the crowd came piling into the court room again.
“Where’s Mason?” they demanded angrily. “Where’s the old son of
a----!”
But the Squire, being wise in his generation, had taken his departure.
* * * * * *
On a hillside overlooking the fertile valley of the Sacramento, Skinny
the Tramp lay amid a clump of giant redwoods and watched the sun
drawing water through the rain clouds gathered a thousand feet below
him. Resting upon a thick bed of pine needles, he leaned luxuriously
against a rock, while at his feet, propped over a small fire, a tomato
can bubbled cheerily and gave forth a sweet-smelling savor. It was six
months after the trial and two months since One-eyed Pedro,
heir-apparent of the Zingara Gipsies, had confessed in the deathhouse
at Sing Sing, where he was awaiting execution for the murder of his
father, that he had killed Drake, the Hermit of Turkey Hollow.
This was the first real opportunity that Skinny had had a chance to
sit as he loved with the world at his feet--and think----! With his
eyes half closed and the gray smoke from his cigarette coiling and
uncoiling in the shaft of sunlight that shot through the branches
above his head, Skinny recalled the events leading up to his trial. It
had been very much the same sort of an afternoon that the hermit was
killed; there had been the same softness in the air, the same flooding
sunlight shining gold-red on the trees and fields against the
blue-gray of the rainclouds. He had been lying just that same way on
the hillside above Turkey Hollow,--dreaming as usual of pots of gold.
Then the storm had burst and for half an hour it had poured, as it was
raining now at the other end of the valley, and the rainbow had come
out against the leaden sky with one end of it on the hermit’s hut.
He recalled vividly how he had rushed down through the drenched woods,
passing the lumberman Emerson, whose greeting in his hurry he had
neglected to return, and peeked in through the hermit’s window to find
him counting his gold. What a thrill the sight had given him! His
faith had at last been justified! Just as he’d always known it
sometime would be; rainbow--pot of gold! The fact that the gold
belonged to someone else didn’t really affect the soundness of the
theory one way or the other, and when the hermit had good-naturedly
agreed to exchange twenty of the smaller pieces for a hundred dollars
in bills he had been almost as well pleased as if he had found the
gold hidden in the earth. Then he had strode on through the woods to
the village.
That was all there had been to it. It had taken him twenty minutes to
walk the mile--he knew it, because the hermit’s clock had pointed to
twenty minutes to four when he left the shanty. Suddenly the blood in
the tramp’s jugular leaped violently. Yes, the clock had certainly
pointed to twenty minutes to four--and if so--it must have--_must_
have stopped--run down or something--at the very moment the old man
died!--And he, Skinny, was the only person alive who knew it,--for he
was the only person who knew positively that it had been going just
before the murder. Funny!--a prickly feeling spread over his
back--like a needle bath, only he had never had one. It _was_ funny!
And then there was that enormous gray moth that Emerson said had been
trying to get out the window. Hadn’t he warned the hermit that some
day those bugs would wriggle off their pins and go for him! Sure! And
the clock had stopped!--The tune of the old song floated through his
mind and unconsciously he hummed the words over to himself:
“O my grandfather’s clock was too high for the shelf,
So it stood ninety years on the floor.
It was taller by half than the old man himself,
Though it weighed not a pennyweight more.
It was bought on the morn of the day that he was born,
And was always his treasure and pride,
But it--stopped--short--never to go again--
When--the old--man--died.”
It had,--too! He was the only one who knew it--or the whole story
about the moth! How the hermit had jokingly said that some day maybe
he’d go flappin’ off like a big gray moth.--Now he was in that other
world--that world that was right along beside us!
Skinny looked around apprehensively but there was no moth in sight.
Had it grown chilly? He shivered and noticed that his cigarette had
gone out. He lighted it again on his knees at the fire and as he did
so the sweet savor of the soup rose to his nostrils. It was nearly
done! He forgot all about the murder in the anticipation of soup.
Back through the whole being of Skinny the Tramp surged a warm
delirious joy--merely at being alive. Kneeling there he looked like
the votary of some forest god, as he rubbed his lean hands over the
blaze and stretched his arms outward and upward towards the sky. He
yawned deliciously. Then he observed with interest that a rainbow had
appeared on the opposite side of the valley--a wonderful, gleaming
arch, whose blending colors seemed to singe the clouds. One end of it
descended directly upon a field hard by a yellow farmhouse. Pots of
gold again!
Skinny watched, as it momentarily grew brighter, beckoning him to
wealth and possible adventure; then forgetful of the soup he scrambled
to his feet.
The next instant he had plunged down the hillside towards the
valley--after the rainbow!
[The End]
Transcriber’s Notes
Minor spelling inconsistencies (e.g. grandstand/grand-stand,
weathercock/weather-cock/weather cock, etc.) have been preserved.
Alterations to the text:
Add ToC.
Abandon the use of drop-caps.
Fix some quotation mark pairings/nestings.
[Chapter I]
Change “some one o’ these days them _bugs ’ll_ wiggle” to _bugs’ll_.
[Chapter II]
“almost at his heels,--_never-the less_, and this is the crux” to
_nevertheless_.
[Chapter III]
(“Keerful how you light a match” cautioned the prosecutor.) add a
comma after _match_.
“I can’t stop it, ’cause I _aint’_ got no idee where it is” to
_ain’t_.
“and endeavored to paw _Cassopeia_ from the zenith” to _Cassiopeia_.
“there persisted in Mr. _Tutts_ perfervid, but fast fading,
consciousness” to _Tutt’s_.
“delivered upon the one o’clock train for _Pottsvile_” to
_Pottsville_.
“Come at once, _bringing_ Bonnie Doon and four detectives” to _bring_.
[Chapter IV]
“who was _nochalantly_ sitting on an empty lemon crate smoking” to
_nonchalantly_.
(“Well?” whispered Mr. Tutt) add a period to the sentence.
[End of text]