The trouble at Pinelands A detective story
gentleman known to all in this community, loved by all for his unselfish
devotion to his healing work, for the many, many, unobtrusive acts of
charity, of loving kindness, to which scores in this very room, aye,
hundreds in this town, can testify--and would so testify, though they
must walk barefooted over sharp stones to tell of Doctor Gaskell’s noble
nature, and to confound his cowardly slayer----”
The coroner rapped sharply. “I will ask you to remember, Mr. Vanbrugh,
that you’re supposed to be questioning this witness, not to be making a
stump speech!”
“I beg the court’s pardon if my affection for this poor gentleman, so
foully done to death, overcame me for the moment. Surely no praise of
one, whom we all loved, is out of place here, beside his dead body! But
I will refrain.” He wiped his eyes ostentatiously. “Now, Mr. Uhlman, is
it not true that your nephew, the prisoner, made threats against Doctor
Gaskell at Miss McGregor’s house, even before his outbreak at Olsen’s
store Saturday?”
And I had to admit it, cursing Rosina’s loose tongue to myself; for I
could guess whence Vanbrugh’s knowledge of the quarrel over Aunt Mary’s
health had come.
“And do you believe, sir, remembering that you are upon your oath, do
you ask this jury to believe that your nephew, this prisoner, went out
into the dawn, armed with a deadly weapon, without knowledge or
suspicion of the murdered man’s whereabouts? Do you not know that he had
expressed a deadly animosity against my poor, dead friend, that----”
Playing skillfully upon the sectional prejudices of the audience, for my
nephew and I had come down from the North, Vanbrugh rolled out a fervid
eulogium of the dead man, like Marc Antony beside the bier of Cæsar.
Evidently he was enjoying himself thoroughly.
He kept sneering at Lewis, and he continually referred to him as my
nephew, doing his best to make it appear that I was suppressing a guilty
knowledge because of our relationship. In every way he exercised the
arts of an unscrupulous demagogue until I became confused and incoherent
and stuttered with wrath, thereby making the case against Lewis blacker
than ever.
But I will not repeat all he said. Even now the memory turns me furious.
I will only say that when the coroner at last cut him off and turned the
case over to the jury the verdict was a foregone conclusion.
Lewis leaned over to me. From the moment he left the stand he had been
deathly white; there were dark, bruised rings under his eyes; his
features twitched, his hands shook pitiably. “And the worst of it is,
unk,” he whispered tragically, “that I really did shoot the poor chap!
Oh, I’m sure of it now.” He tugged at his disordered black hair. “And,
unk, that fiend Vanbrugh has almost made me think I did it on purpose!”
CHAPTER IX
A CONFLAGRATION
The jury’s deliberations were cruelly short. They conferred in whispers,
while we waited in agony. Beside me, Dorothy gripped my hand so tightly
that my old, rheumatic fingers ached for an hour after, though at the
time I was scarcely conscious of her touch. Beyond her Lewis sat in
frozen hopelessness, still numbed by the shock of this sudden, dreadful
catastrophe which had overwhelmed us. At my other side, staunch little
Peter sat bold upright, chewing his mustache and muttering to himself.
Then the jurymen all nodded, and the foreman rose and turned toward
Doctor Burgess. The coroner sighed, stroking his beard. His fat, kindly
face looked worried.
“Have you made up your minds, gentlemen?”
“Uh-huh,” said the foreman. “We find that Doc Gaskell come t’ his death
f’om a shotgun full o’ bird shot at th’ hands o’ Doc Parker, yonder; an’
we riccomend holdin’ him f’r th’ superior court!”
Doctor Burgess sighed and cast an ugly look at the district attorney.
“Your doings, Vanbrugh!” he said in an undertone. Then aloud: “I’ll have
to hold you for the action of the July grand jury, Parker. I’m sorry.
Court’s dismissed.”
Behind us, the sheriff rose and tapped Lewis on the shoulder. “Come on,
boy; gotta take ye back. I sure am sorry, ma’am”--he looked at
Dorothy--“but it ain’t f’r long. You don’t need to pay no attention t’
Vanbrugh’s foolishness.”
“Oh,” exclaimed Dorothy, “and day after to-morrow is my wedding day!”
Sheriff Redden shuffled his feet awkwardly, flinching at the sound of
her quiet weeping. “Aw, too bad!” he said.
With Lewis at his elbow, he began pushing through the crowded, noisy
room. It was full of gabbling, excited groups, which gave way
reluctantly, and we received many an ugly look.
“A dirty murderer!” muttered some one. A storm of hisses and groans
arose, as the crowd began to push closer, still inflamed by Vanbrugh’s
insinuations.
“Shut up, boys!” said the sheriff amiably. “Git back! Cain’t yuh see th’
lady’s tryin’ to git out?”
It was enough. With instinctive courtesy the throng separated, leaving a
wide lane. Dorothy passed through it unhindered, with Lewis at one side
and me at the other. Her face was very white, and her eyes were
downcast. Her pathetic beauty changed the crowd’s humor completely and
evoked a little, pitying murmur.
So we went out and parted almost without a word. Like a man in a dream,
Lewis climbed into the sheriff’s battered car and rode away to jail,
without once looking back. Dorothy leaned heavily on my shoulder,
straining her eyes after him until he was out of sight. Then she stepped
forward falteringly.
“T-take me home, Peter--Uncle George. No, I won’t faint! I _won’t_! I
can w-walk all by my own self!”
And so she did, upheld by a pathetic pride, until we were back at Fort
House. Then she collapsed, and Peter and I carried her to her own room
and called for the nurse. Then we two men walked downstairs together and
turned into the living room, to stand there aimlessly.
“Well,” I asked at last, “what next?”
Peter jerked back his head, straightening his slim shoulders with a
characteristic movement. “Whew! That was a cropper! I never dreamed
they’d hold him. I say, that chap Vanbrugh is a bounder, isn’t he?”
He stroked his little mustache, lit a cigarette, and was himself
again--energetic, active, efficient. “We’ll run right out to the jail,”
he decided, “and chat with old Lewis. Have to lay our plans, you
know--get a good lawyer and all that. I say, that was a cropper! But a
lawyer’ll know what to do--get the old boy out in jig time!”
I was less optimistic; though, when one viewed the matter
dispassionately, there seemed scant grounds for a charge of murder. Yet
this Vanbrugh was fiendishly apt. Directly we got out Lewis’ flivver,
which Peter drove well enough, and went to the courthouse. We found
Lewis in the jail office, sitting in an easy-chair beside the cold
fireplace, while the sheriff, from behind the official desk, strove to
cheer him up. Both men were in their shirt sleeves, for it had turned
very hot.
“Evening, folks!” said Redden. “Set down an’ rest yore face an’ hands. I
ain’t goin’ t’ lock Parker up ontil night. He’ll have t’ go into a cell
then, but they’s no use of bein’ too hard on th’ boy. You-all can talk
right here, gentlemen; I got business over to th’ office, anyways.”
Catching up his wide felt hat he shambled out, leaving us alone. “I
better lock th’ front door,” he apologized, “just in case anybody sh’d
drop by.”
He disappeared, and I saw him through the window, waddling bow-legged
toward the courthouse. A very kindly, courteous gentleman, the high
sheriff of Carabas County; I only wished the prosecuting attorney were
as gracious.
I turned back to Lewis. “My boy, we seem to be in a fix,” I told him.
“Confound Mary McGregor, the knots in her neck, and the bobwhites that
kept her awake!” For my heart was hot in me with mingled fear and anger,
and my head ached, and my old, rheumatic joints; and I could not forget
that this whole horror had come from Aunt Mary’s querulousness.
“Sit down and take it quiet, unk,” said Peter coolly. I had not been
long in Pinelands, as I have said; but to Peter I was “Uncle George,”
or, more casually, “unk,” as to Dorothy and, for that matter, to half
the youth of the town.
“Be easy! The old girl’s a bit of a bunker to all of us, I know, but
we’ll have Lewis out of this all right. And now, old son, we’ll have to
be getting you a lawyer right away. Anybody to suggest? Some friend of
your long-past youth, perhaps, and all that rot?” His assumption of
bluff, care-free gayety was well done, but it did not deceive me. I knew
that Peter, too, was worried.
My nephew sighed, staring straight before him. His shoulders drooped;
his eyes were dull and heavy. He seemed in a daze; I could scarcely
recognize in him the impetuous, high-spirited youth who had been as a
son to me all these years.
“I--I don’t know,” he answered dully. “I can’t seem to think. All I can
see is Gaskell in front of me--dead. I keep telling myself I couldn’t
have done it, and yet I know I did.” Then he lapsed into silence once
more, still with that vague, spiritless stare.
Peter and I looked at each other queerly. “I don’t believe you did do
it, old top!” Lewis straightened at once, a hint of hope in his eye.
Peter had hit unerringly upon the best of tonics; I saw that.
“I’m sure you didn’t, Lewis,” the boy went on, emboldened by my nephew’s
interest. “It isn’t reasonable. Suppose we sent for some doctor that’s a
law sharp, too? Burgess is all right, of course, but maybe some
medico-legal expert could find out something to prove Gaskell was dead
when you got there.”
Lewis sprang up, a faint color in his cheeks. “Why, of course! What a
fool I was not to think of it before. There’s Somers, old Floyd Somers!
Why, he’ll be here to-night. Just the man, Somers is. Why, he’ll take
hold of this thing and straighten it out in a day; he just eats this
sort of thing. He’ll prove I couldn’t have killed Gaskell--unless”--and
his shoulders drooped again--“unless I really did.”
That was the boy’s only show of interest. Almost at once he sunk again
into apathy, brooding, I could see, upon the thought that he had killed
a man, however innocently. That was what weighed upon him, not any fears
for the future. He waved away all our suggestions. Lawyers? No, what
difference did it make? Get any lawyer--anybody! Better still, let
Somers see to that. He’d know what to do when he came. Then he lapsed
into silence again, chin on hands, only to burst forth:
“And I was really angry--that’s the worst of it. For a moment, there in
Olsen’s, I was mad enough to have shot him. And then to think I did
shoot him, after that! Why, it makes it as bad as murder, even though I
didn’t know he was there. Perhaps I ought to plead guilty and take my
medicine.”
We cried out upon him. “Don’t be a fool, Lewis,” I said, fairly shaking
him in my anxiety. “Wake up! Pull yourself together; act like a man!
You’re not yourself. What shall we do, Peter?”
Peter shook his head. “Wait for Somers, as he says. That’s all I can
see.” He paused, sniffing. “I say, unk, what’s that? Seems to me I smell
smoke.”
So did I. Suddenly I noticed that a thin, blue wreath was creeping in
beneath the door, which Sheriff Redden had closed upon us. My eyes
smarted. The door was locked; I ran to a window to yell at a couple of
loafers on the courthouse steps.
“Hey! You over there! Call the sheriff!”
They stirred, stared at the jail idly for a moment, then leaped to their
feet.
“My gosh!” said one. “Th’ jail’s afire. Hey, Hank! Hey, Redden! Redden!
Come a-runnin’, th’ jail’s on fire!”
The sheriff appeared, at his heels half a dozen clerks and county
officials in shirt sleeves. They all ran toward us, bawling aloud:
“Fire! Fire! Fi--re! Send in an alarm t’ Smyrna--no, to Pinelands!