The trouble at Pinelands A detective story
I took it out, a plain, well-used, double-barreled shotgun. Then I broke
it to make sure it was unloaded.
“There’s a box of shells on the shelf, I think. Come on, let’s leave it
out and go to bed. I’m tired, too.”
She led the way down the back stairs. After making sure that both
barrels were unloaded I set the gun against the angle of the wall on the
back porch, just inside the screen door.
“There! I told Lewis I’d put it there. I’ll just leave the cartridges
beside it, with the cleaning rod and rags, so he can put the gun in
shape when he’s through with it. I hope he gets those miserable quail;
they kept me awake, too.”
“Poor Uncle George! He’s having a hard time, taking care of the McGregor
family, isn’t he?” she stood on tiptoe to kiss the end of my nose, then
she ran in. “I’m going to bed, too,” she called back.
But as I labored up the front stairs--slowly enough, for my joints were
very stiff--she came out of Miss McGregor’s room to call after me.
“Uncle George! Auntie’s nervous about that gun. Come in and tell her
where you left it.”
I turned back. “On the back porch, Miss McGregor, inside the screen
door.”
“Is it loaded?” querulously she asked.
“No, ma’am. I set the box of shells beside it, ready.”
“Like as not we’ll all be murdered in our beds, but I’d run that chance
even to get rid of those quail. Good night!”
“Good night!” I resumed my interrupted climb.
If the Poltergeist paid us a visit that night I did not know it. I could
scarcely keep my eyes open long enough to undress. I was tired out, and
the bed felt grateful enough. I slept sound and dreamlessly, which is
rather unusual for me, until about half past three. Then I half woke, to
hear the matutinal song--screech, rather--of those pestiferous quail. I
grinned sleepily, wondering if Aunt Mary had been awakened, too;
wondering how soon Lewis would be along, and whether he would bag them.
Then I dropped off again, to dream that Lewis was stalking a covey of
sitting quail in my bedroom. They perched on the footboard; I struggled
hopelessly, as one does in dreams, to cry out, to warn him that I was in
his line of fire. I could not make a sound. Presently he raised his gun,
and I saw that it was a cannon, a field piece, with a muzzle as big
around as my head. He pulled the trigger--the thing went off with a most
horrible racket and blew the whole house apart. I seemed to be sailing
straight up into the air, with Lafe Rutledge beside me, his great white
beard fluttering. “There’ll be no wedding now,” I told him. Then Aunt
Mary McGregor came along, wearing roller skates, and explained that she
could get around better that way than in the wheel chair, and so she had
given the latter to Dorothy. And Rosina appeared, eyes rolling as if on
swivels, and said: “Come a-runnin’! Lafe’s eloped with Miss Dor’thy!”
Just then I woke up, laughing aloud at the absurdity of it all. It was
broad daylight; my watch said five o’clock. The quail still whistled
persistently. I got up and went to the window, wondering if Lewis had
come yet; this would be a fine time to flush those birds. I was almost
tempted, in spite of my rheumatic joints, to slip down myself.
The early sun struck through the tall pines and showed a moving figure
among them. Lewis was prompt evidently. He stepped out from the little
grove into the scrub-oak tangle behind it, gun at the ready. Then he
seemed to stumble.
The shotgun came halfway to his shoulder, as if for a snapshot,
steadied, its barrel pointing straight ahead--and flamed! The heavy roar
of black powder reached my ears on the heels of the flash.
“Good boy!” I cried aloud. “Get him?”
Lewis took one step forward, then staggered back, dropping his gun; both
hands went to his face. It was too far to see what had happened; too far
even to shout a query from the open window. I turned away, my heart
throbbing, to hunt for my clothes.
Then a stentorian shout brought me back, gasping, gripped by a
premonition of evil. Surely the boy could not have shot himself! The
muzzle of the gun had pointed well away from him.
“Hey, there!” roared the same minatory voice, now closer. “What you-all
up to? Lay off o’ that there shootin’ in th’ corporation!”
A huge figure threaded its way through the pines, following the path
that led from one street to the other, a favorite short cut for
pedestrians. It was our constable, Rufe Wakefield, a tremendous man,
whose apparent ferocity cloaked a rather timorous heart, so folk
whispered.
He repeated his challenge, and now he was through the grove and beside
Lewis.
“What you up to?” he demanded, and his leonine roar seemed louder than
the recent shot.
Then he leaped back, both hands thrown up; presently he came forward
again and picked up my nephew’s fallen gun. They talked together;
Wakefield was accusing, Lewis apparently protesting; both were much
agitated. At last they turned and came slowly back toward the house.
I could bear it no longer. I leaned far out of the window. “Say!” I
shouted, at the pitch of my lungs. “Hello, down there! What’s wrong?”
Wakefield looked up. “Murder’s wrong!” he called excitedly. “This
feller’s done shot Doc Gaskell. Killed ’im daid!”
CHAPTER VI
UNCERTAINTY
I staggered back. “What, murdered? Doctor Gaskell murdered! What’s that
about Lewis? You wait right there, Rufe, till I get dressed.”
Without waiting to see whether he would obey, I turned from the window
and groped excitedly for my trousers. From the look of him, I fancied
that the constable would be glad of some guidance, even from me; he
seemed as flustered and at sea as poor Lewis himself.
I dragged on my trousers over my pajamas, thrust bare feet into a pair
of slippers, and hurried out into the hall, my coat on my arm.
“Uncle George!”
It was a very shaky, frightened little voice. Dorothy, swathed in a blue
woolen robe, looking like a sleepy schoolgirl, with her black hair in
braids, clutched at my arm.
“Uncle George, what is it? What’s happened? You can’t go out like
that--you’ll catch your death!”
I must have presented an odd figure: bare-ankled, suspenders hanging
about my hips, a lavender pajama coat much in evidence. But I was too
upset to laugh at myself.
“Let me go, child; there’s something wrong outside.”
I had some vague thought of shielding her but her big eyes widened, as
she grew very white.
“Oh!” she exclaimed. “Lewis! Lewis is hurt--Lewis is killed, and you’re
afraid to tell me!”
“No, no! It’s Gaskell--Doctor Gaskell’s been hurt. I don’t know what has
happened, but I’m going to find out. Let me go, child. Lewis is all
right, I tell you. Look out of the window, and you can see him.”
Then I broke away, to limp and stumble down the stairs at top speed,
hoping I had pacified her; hoping she might go back to bed; hoping I
could settle this thing, get Wakefield away from the window before
Dorothy could hear that her fiancé was accused of murder.
I plunged out of the door and raced around to the east side of the
house. Here I found Lewis and the constable, side by side, staring
silently at nothing. They turned to me helplessly.
“Well!” I began impatiently. “What is it? What’s happened? Don’t stand
there staring like dummies--tell me!”
Their befuddlement angered me; though, indeed, what with excitement,
rheumatic twinges, and the breathless hurry of my coming, I fear I was
in little better case myself.
My nephew sighed heavily, as if awakened from an evil dream. “Come
along, unk,” he invited.
“Yeah,” said the gigantic constable, “c’m’ on, an’ see what he done!”
I followed them along the little winding path, through the pines and
into the tangle of scrub oaks; there I stopped, gasping. Before me,
supine, inert, lay the body of Doctor Gaskell. His face was deadly
white, his features sharpened curiously. He was fully dressed, and one
hand still clutched a small black bag. He lay on his back among the
thick bushes, his feet still in the little path. In the very center of
his body, just above the belt, was a horrid, gaping wound, about which
his white shirt was all tattered and stained.
Needlessly I knelt and put my hand over his heart. It was quite still;
and his skin was cold already. I rose stiffly.
“Good heavens,” I said. “Lewis----”
“Yeah, Lewis! I sh’d think so,” declared the constable. “George, ain’t
this terrible?” He gripped the boy’s shoulder. “What’d ye do it f’r,
huh?”
Lewis shook off his hand. “I--I didn’t,” he said thickly. His lips were
stiff, and his tongue seemed unmanageable. “I didn’t--or, anyway, I
didn’t know.” He groaned aloud. “I don’t know what happened. I thought I
saw a quail, and I cocked the gun and started to raise it, and then I
stumbled, and it went off. He must have been coming through the bushes;
I never saw him, or heard him--or anything. He never made a sound! I
supposed I was all alone out here until I heard Rufe yell; then I jumped
and looked round, and there he was--dead! You believe me, don’t you,
unk?”
“Huh?” asked Wakefield. “Sounds kinda fishy t’ me.” He pointed down at
the body accusingly. “Hit plumb center,” he pronounced. “With a shotgun,
too; anybody c’d see that. An’ right close up! See th’ powder marks?
Musta seed him!”
“He didn’t, either!” I put in. “I was watching from that window up
there; I saw Lewis raise his gun and trip, just like he said. Gaskell
wasn’t in sight, or anybody else!”
“Huh!” asked the constable again. “We-ell, it’s kinda queer, anyways;
’specially after th’ way Doc Parker here was talkin’ in to Olsen’s
yestiddy. Yeah”--as I shrunk from the memory of the boy’s careless
threats--“I was there and heerd ’im m’self, making threats agin’ Doc
Gaskell. I reckon you’ll have a right smart o’ explainin’ t’ do,
Parker!”
“Well,” I said, “don’t let’s argue about it now. We’ll have to look
after the body, and--whatever it is they do when anybody’s found dead
this way.”
I looked questioningly at the constable, and he stared blankly back. The
habitual fierceness of his huge face was marred somewhat by a shifting,
uncertain eye. He fingered his chin irresolutely, and gazed about as for
inspiration.
I scratched my head. Plainly there was no help in him. “I suppose,” I
began doubtfully, “I suppose the coroner ought to be notified and the
sheriff----”
Wakefield brightened. Here was a chance to shift unwanted
responsibility. “Th’ sheriff? Yeah!” he said. “Sure! I’ll go phone ’im
right away.”
He started off, then paused and turned back. “I--I s’pose I’d oughta
’rest ’im, hadn’t I?” he asked, looking at me as for advice on the
matter. “I’d oughta ’rest ’im an’ take ’im to th’ lockup first, mebbe.”
For all the gravity of the situation, I had to laugh. He was so
ludicrously inept, this huge, ferocious-looking constable.
“Nonsense!” said I. “Lewis won’t run away. I’ll be responsible for him.
We’ll come along while you phone; that’ll be the best way. And, when
Redden comes, you can turn my nephew right over to him.”
“We-ell. If you think that’s th’ best way.” Then the constable started
toward Fort House.
“No, not in there,” I said. “It would upset Miss McGregor terribly.
She’s an invalid, you know.” Really, it was Dorothy whom I wished to
spare. “We’d better go across to Gaskell’s house.”
That started a new doubt in Mr. Wakefield’s slow mind. He stopped again.
“I don’t know as we’d oughta leave th’ body there all alone,” he
declared. “Mebbe we better go back an’----”
“Nonsense!” I exclaimed. “We can go back and wait there as soon as
you’ve notified Sheriff Redden. Come along, now!” Then I dragged him on
by main force.
Fortunately, Mrs. Gaskell was away, so we had not to break the dreadful
news to her. A frightened colored maid, just opening the back door, for