The trouble at Pinelands A detective story
spent the day perfecting our plans, such as they were.
“For we don’t know what we’ll find up there,” explained Somers. “The
best we can do is to get in touch with Rutledge in some way, avoid
suspicion if we can, and trust to luck for the rest. Maybe he’ll talk;
maybe we can get him out alone, hold him up and take him down the
mountains, at pistol’s point. I’ll be a ‘lunger,’ I guess; I look the
part.” He surveyed his lean face, hollow chest, and extraordinarily thin
limbs in my mirror. “Yes, I’m a consumptive, ordered up into the
mountains to live. You’re my uncle, Uhlman, and Peter--oh, he can be the
builder who’s going to put up a cabin for me. We’re up in the hills
looking for a site, so I can have a house there, live alone in the balmy
pine woods, and strive to recapture my lost health--and all that rot.
How about it?”
He grinned and went on humorously. “You know, dear ones and kind old
things both, I fancy my health is in considerable danger, at that! If I
should meet Satterfield in the dark somewhere, Old Man Trouble and I
would meet just about the same time. What?”
And he spoke even more truly than he knew. For at dusk that night, as
the train pulled out of Pinelands, Somers sat beside me in the smoking
car, his lean, bold profile clearly outlined against the lighted window.
From the dark without it must have made an excellent mark.
No one had loitered about my house that day; no one, as far as I could
see, had watched us climbing into the “shoo-fly” train.
But, as we panted out of the village and began to labor up a steep grade
between high embankments, gathering speed slowly, a round hole sprang
suddenly into being in the window, just beside Somers’ head, and a
bullet sang past my nose, like an angry wasp, bit through the window
opposite, and whined away into the night.
“Humph!” said Somers calmly, brushing bits of glass from his lap. He
looked at the window, where a star of cracks radiated from that sinister
hole. “Humph! A couple of inches this way, and one of the best little
old medico-legal experts extant would have ceased abruptly. I told you
we’d be safer outside of Pinelands for a while!”
The brakeman hurried through, stopped to survey his damaged windowpanes,
and scowled blackly.
“Some darn fool gettin’ fresh!” he muttered. “Lettin’ off a rifle gun
that a way an’ never lookin’ to see where th’ bullet’d go. The fool!
They’s too much cawn liquor round Pinelands these days!”
“Quite right, my friend,” replied Somers solemnly.
Some one touched Somers’ shoulder. We both turned to face the man in the
seat behind us, a quiet, unobtrusive person, gray-clad, gray-haired,
with a very keen gray eye.
“Did you know that bullet was meant for you?” he asked casually.
The physician nodded. “Oh, yes, certainly!” He was as cool, as detached
of manner, as the stranger, and those keen eyes gave him an admiring
glance.
“I happened to get a good look at the fellow,” the other went on. “He
showed up against the sky line, there on top of the embankment, and he
had a fine bead on you.”
Somers nodded equably. “Thanks, old man!”
“Broad-brimmed felt hat,” continued the other; “big, bushy mustache;
looked like a pirate. Know him?”
My companion nodded again, but showed no disposition to satisfy the gray
man’s curiosity further.
As the crow flies, Asheville is not much over forty miles from
Pinelands; but to reach it one must go to Raleigh, and there you change
from one line to another, making it a trip of several hundred miles.
Somers’ estimate of time was too sanguine; we could hardly reach
Asheville before morning.
As we disbarked at Raleigh, I saw the man in gray once more. He had
followed us from the train; he stood in whispered talk with another
quiet, inconspicuous person, and I thought that he pointed us out. It
may have been my imagination; no doubt it was. For the other stranger,
after loitering about, while we bought tickets and berths, stepped up to
the window and asked a question, then strolled out of the station, and
we saw him no more.
No doubt it was a mere coincidence, also, that the quiet gray-haired man
entered the Asheville sleeper with us and deposited a modest leather
hand bag in the section across the aisle.
CHAPTER XXVI
ROARING LAFE
We reached the city of Asheville in the early morning and, upon Somers’
direction, entered a taxicab and had ourselves driven to a hotel.
“We’ll breakfast there,” he decided, “and find out a few things. Then
I’ll get a saddle horse and start, and you two will wait for me here.”
“Not much!” said I.
“Nix!” declared Peter. “You can’t lose us; why, man, where’s that
gorgeous idea of being a consumptive, unless we’re along?”
Somers shrugged. “Have it your own way, but it’s taking a long chance,
fellows. This thing is serious; I hardly believed, myself, that they’d
go so far, until that chap shot at me last night. It was Ralph
Satterfield, all right, and no doubt he thought we were on our way to
Raleigh to see the collector. He’ll have hurried over here cross-country
before this, in Conover’s car, no doubt. If we should meet up with him
in the hills we’re as good as dead men.”
I nodded soberly. “And if we give that fellow, Vanbrugh, a free hand, my
nephew is as good as a dead man, too. No, Somers, I’m going along. Peter
can stay here if he likes.”
But Peter did not consider this suggestion worthy even to be scorned.
“After breakfast, what, chief?” he asked.
“We hunt up a revenue agent.”
Wondering if our leader would report the activities of Satterfield and
Rutledge after all, we went to see the revenue agent. When we were shown
into the quiet, businesslike office of the department of internal
revenue, Somers merely asked for information as to one Lafe Rutledge.
“I’m told he killed a revenue agent some years ago,” he explained. “Was
he tried for that?”
The clerk eyed us dubiously. “I can’t give out any statement,” he told
us. “You can see the chief if you like. What are you, newspaper men?”
Somers handed him a card, and presently we were shown into an inner
office. Facing us from behind a flat-topped desk sat the same quiet,
gray-haired man who had sat behind us on the train.
“What do you want to know about the man Rutledge?” he asked, looking at
Somers’ card. Then: “Hel-lo! You’re the chap Satterfield was potting at
last night!”
“So you knew the man’s name all the time?” asked Somers, a bit taken
aback.
The other nodded. “This office is deeply interested in Mr. Ralph
Satterfield,” he said grimly, “also in the gentleman after whom you are
inquiring this morning. Suppose we have a showdown, doctor? I’m not the
local chief; I’m on special duty here, but I can tell you all this
department knows about Roaring Lafe. What’s your interest in him?”
Our leader sat down. “Perhaps you know who I am, too?”
“Oh, yes; Doctor Floyd Somers. You came from New York to be the best man
at Doctor Parker’s wedding; and this, no doubt, is the doctor’s uncle,
Mr. Uhlman--and Peter McGregor?”
We bowed, wondering.
“We looked you up, doctor,” explained the revenue agent, “because you
were pretty thick with Satterfield for a while. What was the idea?”
Somers leaned forward. “You know about Doctor Gaskell’s murder, and the
arrest of my friend Parker?” he asked.
“Oh, yes! In fact, this investigation was begun upon information
furnished the collector by Gaskell.”
“Well, then!” Somers told him everything frankly, including our
suspicions of Rutledge.
The government man listened with grave interest. “H’m,” said he, when
the tale was done. “Our local men seem to have overlooked a lot. We
didn’t go behind the verdict of the coroner’s court and the grand jury;
took it for granted Parker killed Gaskell because of some personal
quarrel. Coarse work, very! Some one will get a stiff call for this! Of
course Rutledge did it. I should have thought of that myself. Well,
after all, that is merely incidental; it doesn’t affect the main work of
this office, which is to break up the illicit manufacture and sale of
alcoholic liquors. And now, gentlemen, what can I do in return?”
“Tell us about Rutledge. Is he in hiding? Is there any criminal charge
against him? Did he really murder one of your men?”
The agent nodded soberly. “There’s not a doubt of it in my mind, but
we’ve no legal proof. No, gentlemen, there’s no criminal charge out
against Roaring Lafe--as yet. And he’s not in hiding; he’s living openly
in his own house, on Devil’s Branch, back in the hills.”
Somers rose. “I thought this was the safest place to make inquiries,” he
explained. “Thank you, sir.”
“Hold on a minute! This office is indebted to you for your information,
though I may say we knew most of these things before, except your
suspicions about Gaskell’s murder; can’t we help you some way? What are
your plans?”
The physician grinned. “Why, just to find this Roaring Lafe and have a
chat. I’ll tell him Satterfield has admitted that he saw Gaskell shot,
and that Rutledge did it--and see what happens. Then I’ll try to induce
him to come along to jail with us, if I can.”
“You’ll get yourselves killed, the three of you!”
Somers shrugged. “It’s quite possible, but it is my business in life to
extract information from folks who don’t want to give it. After one has
practiced enough at getting statements from lunatics who haven’t spoken
a word for years, it ought not to be so hard to badger an ignorant old
man into confessing murder. I’m game to try, at least.”
“H’m! I think you’re a fool, but go ahead, if you insist. Remember this,
though: That you never saw a lunatic as dangerous as Lafe Rutledge.”
With that pleasing assurance in our ears we left the revenue office and
hired saddle horses for our trip into the hills. It was noon before we
had topped the long slope, which leads up past the “Castle,” and left
the concrete road to strike back along zigzag red clay roads, which led
us into the hinterland. We paused for one look back toward civilization.
“Well,” said I, staring down at the ordered streets, centering in Pack
Square, with its tall granite obelisk, “we may not all of us come back
this way.”
“Cheerful old soul!” replied Peter, shifting in his saddle. “This nag
has a beastly sharp backbone; I can feel it right through the leather.
You might have stopped for lunch, at least, Somers.”
“Have another sandwich,” suggested our leader callously; for he had
vetoed a further stay in the city. “Eat as you ride. We want to get
somewhere before dark, and we’ve twenty miles to go.”
We struck back into the hills. Our patient horses scrambled up
precipitous slopes, panting, sliding in the rough red clay; we slid down
other slopes as steep, where the zigzag paths, that ran back and forth,
seemed sharper than the pitch of a roof, and the hillside itself was
almost straight up and down. The roads grew rougher and stonier and
narrower, until they were mere bridle paths, mere trails, which wound
and separated and forked and joined bewilderingly.
Mile after mile we rode, growing horribly saddle sore in the riding. The
country about us was wild, primeval; tall pines masked the hillsides,
interspersed with spruce and live oak and great, dense growths of that
rhododendron which the mountain folk call “laurel.” Here and there,
huddled upon the steep slopes, a tiny, unpainted shack overhung the
winding road, its cornfield miraculously clinging to the side of a
precipice. Dozens of lop-eared hound dogs regarded our passing with
mournful gravity, or made headlong dashes, boiling out in baying mobs
from beneath forlorn shacks to snap at our horses’ fetlocks. Sometimes a
slatternly woman in a calico dress, roused to languid curiosity by their