Oliver October

by George Barr McCutcheon

MR. GOOCH SEES THINGS AT NIGHT

Horace Gooch was going to bed. He had had a hard day, and it was nine o’clock. He had a notion he was not likely to sleep very well. The sheriff of the county had telephoned earlier in the evening—in fact, he was at supper—that a body had been found in one of the marsh pools. The news rather took his appetite away. He had a weak and treacherous stomach to begin with, and the mere thought of going over to Rumley in the morning to see if he could identify the grewsome object caused him to suddenly realize that he had a much weaker stomach than he had ever suspected before. He had, besides, an absurd notion that he was going to be haunted all night long by the ghastly remains of his brother-in-law.

While he always had contended that Oliver Baxter did not have much of a head to speak of, the fact that it had been split wide open with an ax or something of the sort was very likely to cause him to see things even with his eyes closed and the bedroom in pitch darkness. He decided to leave the light burning in his room, and then, after further deliberation, concluded, that as long as it had to be lit anyway it would be a very sensible thing on his part if he were to put in the time reading instead of wasting electricity.

Mr. Gooch slept in a night-shirt. He didn’t believe in new-fangled things. He was a plain man. No frills for him.

The windows of his bedroom looked out on to an extensive lawn, formerly a rather pretentious and well-kept half-acre but now unkempt, weedy and in a state of dire neglect. Mr. Gooch had cunningly allowed his yard to fall into a sort of groveling, imploring decrepitude, indicative of poverty rather than parsimony. He wanted the voters to understand that he was by no means as rich as the unprincipled opposition said he was. He regarded it as a very telling piece of political strategy.

Before retiring to the large four-poster bed—which, now that he was a widower, seemed needlessly commodious and would have been disposed of long ago but for a thrifty far-sightedness that took into consideration the possibility that he might get married again—before retiring, he peeped out between the window curtains to see whether the arc light was burning at the street corner above. It was, and he experienced a singular sensation of relief. Then he put on his spectacles and got into bed. He had a book, a well-worn copy of “David Harum,” but he did not begin reading at once. He was thinking of the many dark and lonely nights old Oliver Baxter had spent in Death Swamp. It gave him a creepy feeling. He tucked the covers a little more tightly under his chin—but still the creepy feeling persisted.

Just as he was beginning to wish that they had not found his unfortunate brother-in-law, a pleasant and agreeable alternative presented itself and he noticed an immediate increase of warmth in his veins. Strange that he had not thought of it sooner. It was most consoling, after all, this finding of the corpus delicti. If they hadn’t found it he would have been obliged to pay all costs arising from the search and investigation. He had agreed to do so. But now that the “body of the crime” had been unearthed he would be relieved of this onerous obligation. The county would have to pay for everything. That was understood. He smiled a little, turned the covers down from his chin, and took up his book.

“Hey, Horace!”

He lay perfectly still for a few seconds, his eyes glued to the page. An icy chill, starting in his abdomen, spread all over him, slowly at first, then with consuming swiftness. He bit hard on his teeth to keep them from chattering. The voice sounded as if it were just outside his chamber window. He waited.

“Hey, Horace!”

A deep groan issued through Mr. Gooch’s stiffening lips. He shrank down into the bed and pulled the covers up over his head. He was haunted! There was no other voice in the world like it. He would know it among a million. Oliver Baxter had come to haunt him! He had a horrifying mental vision of the unforgettable figure of his brother-in-law floating in the air just outside—this changed instantly to an even more appalling spectacle: old Oliver emerging from his grave in the swamp and speeding through the black night to pay him a visit—with his skull split wide open—

Some one was knocking at the front door. Even through the thick bed-covers he could hear the sharp tapping—not the tapping of flesh-covered knuckles but of bare bones!

Mr. Gooch’s grizzled head popped out from beneath the covers. He remembered that his bedroom door was unlocked. Anybody—anything could walk right in—He climbed out of bed with a spryness that would have amazed him if he had been able to devote the slightest thought to it.

Again the voice, but this time reassuringly remote from his window-sill. He stopped irresolute half way to the door. If he waited long enough, he reasoned, the ghost would go away thinking he was not at home. There was not the slightest doubt that it was farther away now than when it spoke the first time. Besides there was something more or less human in this last cry from the night. It wasn’t at all spookish. It seemed to express wrath.

“All right! You can go to Jericho.”

Mr. Gooch went to the window. He was still shivering and he had a queer, unpleasant notion that his hair was wilting—a most astonishing sensation. He hesitated a moment, then boldly drew the curtains apart. The light from the arc light at the corner, fairly well-spent after traversing a couple of hundred feet, was of sufficient strength to flood the lawn with a dim radiance. A shadowy object half way down to the gate resolved itself into the figure of a man as Mr. Gooch gazed upon it with bewildered, incredulous eyes.

“Hello, Horace,” came wafting up to Mr. Gooch—apparently from this shadowy object. “That you? Say, open up and let me in.”

Mr. Gooch grasped the window frame for support.

“Good God!” he gulped, but in a voice so strange and hollow that he did not recognize it as his own. In a sudden panic he threw up the window and screeched—in an entirely different voice but equally as unrecognizable:

“Go away! Leave me alone!”

“Say, don’t you know who it is? It’s me.”

The figure drew nearer the house. At the same time Mr. Gooch stuck his head out of the window and bawled:

“Help! For God’s sake, somebody come and chase it away! Help!”

“What’s the matter with you, you darned old fool!” barked the indistinct visitor. “You’ll wake the dead, yelling like that.”

“Wake the dead!” repeated Mr. Gooch in a low, sepulchral voice.

“I’m Ollie Baxter. For goodness’ sake, Horace, don’t tell me you’ve forgotten your only brother-in-law. I—”

“Go away! You’re dead. I don’t want any dead people coming around here to—”

A shrill, lively cackle came up from the murk. Mr. Gooch clapped his hand to his forehead.

“Oh, Lord! Oh, Lord!” he groaned.

“Ain’t you going to let me in? I’m not going to ask you again, you darned old skinflint. I hate you anyhow, and always did—but I thought maybe after me being away for more than a year you’d be hospitable enough to—”

“Stop talking!” commanded Mr. Gooch. “You always did talk too much. Now, listen to me. Are you really alive?”

“Course I am. What ails you?”

“I don’t believe it. They found your body this afternoon.”

“You don’t say so!” gasped the object under the window.

“Horribly decayed,” added Mr. Gooch sternly.

“Well, I’ll be danged!”

“So you simply can’t be alive. Go away!”

“This is mighty queer. Are they positive it’s me?”

“Hey?”

“I mean are they sure it’s my body?”

“There’s no evidence to the contrary. Seems to be absolutely no doubt about it.”

“Well, well! Where did they find me?”

“You know as well as I do.”

“I don’t know anything of the kind. It’s news to me, Horace.”

“See here, Oliver, what’s the sense of lying to me? You know you’re dead and—”

“Well, suppose I am,” broke in the other irascibly; “that’s no reason why you should stick your head out of a window and tell the whole town of Hopkinsville about it. You come down here and let me in. I’ll derned soon show you I’m not dead. What’s more, I never have been dead. So they couldn’t have found my body.”

Mr. Gooch was now convinced. It was Oliver Baxter and he was very much alive.

“Well, what do you want?”

“I want to come in and spend the night with you, that’s what I want.”

“There’s a good hotel up on Jackson Street,” began Mr. Gooch, but curiosity getting the better of him he abruptly called out for Oliver to wait till he had put on his pants and he would come down and let him in.

As he hurriedly started to slip on his trousers he heard his brother-in-law whistling a strange and jaunty melody out in the yard. He never had heard anything like it before.

A sudden, desolating thought struck him as he sat on the edge of the bed. His trousers were but half on when the shock came. He knew not how long he sat there, powerless and inactive, staring at nothing. A shout from outside aroused him. He groaned and then slipped the other leg into his trousers.

Calamity! His cake was dough! The return of Oliver Baxter meant his political doom. Young Oliver, vindicated, would be carried into office by an unprecedented majority, riding serene and triumphant on a wave of popularity that would sweep all opposition before it. Somewhere back in his mind lurked a very distasteful phrase that ended with “cocked hat,” although he could not quite remember the rest of it. He could and did remember young Oliver’s campaign boast, for it was very recent and distinct and unnecessarily public. “Skin him alive” was the heathenish slogan.

As he descended the stairs he tried to think of some means to avert the calamity. He thought of locking his brother-in-law in the cellar and keeping him there until after election day. He wondered if he could persuade the old man—for a substantial cash consideration—to remain in seclusion or wander off again or—But, no; he had sunk too much money already, and there was still an additional thousand or two to be paid out for the search and—

He stopped suddenly, reeling as from a blow. The lighted candle, held almost directly in front of his face, witnessed a most astonishing transformation. Mr. Gooch’s harassed visage slowly lighted up; it became almost radiant. He hurried to the door and unbolted it quickly, for he was now afraid that old Oliver might have taken it into his head to disappear again!

He had just remembered Oliver October’s promise to pay him five thousand dollars in cash if he produced his father, dead or alive! He was actually smirking as he pressed the electric light button. The wind blew the candle out as he threw the door open.

“Come right in, Oliver,” he cried, quite heartily but still with a trace of apprehension. He had not recovered from his scare and half-expected Mr. Baxter to float past him into the hall.

A bent, disreputable-looking figure shuffled in, thumping his cane on the floor.

“Well, well!” exclaimed Mr. Gooch, holding the doorknob in one hand and the candle-stick in the other—making it obviously impossible for him to shake hands with what might after all turn out to be a cadaver. “You—you certainly gave me quite a scare.”

He peered narrowly, intently at the weather-beaten face of his wife’s brother. Old Oliver was looking around the hall as if inspecting a most unfamiliar place. Mr. Gooch, closing the door, risked a timid slap on the other’s shoulder, and was greatly relieved to find that it was solid. Mr. Baxter did not take kindly to this demonstration. He winced.

“Say, don’t do that,” he said. “I’ve got rheumatism in that shoulder. Comes from sleeping out in the open air a good bit of the time this fall.”

Mr. Gooch stepped back, the better to survey his brother-in-law’s person. There was every indication that Mr. Baxter had taken the precaution to sleep in his clothes pretty steadily all fall. They were wrinkled and dusty and hung limply, crookedly on his graceless frame. The coat collar was turned up and held tight to his throat by a thick red muffler. He wore a sad-looking green Homberg hat with a perky red feather sticking up from the band.

“Take off your muffler,” said Horace, desiring indisputable evidence.

“Oh, it’s there all right,” divined Mr. Baxter. “You can feel it if you don’t believe me. It’s just as well you didn’t offer to shake hands with me, Horace. I swore I’d never shake hands with you.”

“Come out to the kitchen,” said Gooch, scowling. “It’s warm there, and besides you might like a cup of hot coffee.”

“All I want is a bed to sleep in. I haven’t slept in a regular bed for the Lord knows how long. Thank God, I’ll be sleeping in my own to-morrow night.”

He followed the puzzled Mr. Gooch to the kitchen and at once drew a chair up to the stove.

“Where have you been all this time?” murmured Horace, generously replenishing the fire.

“Oh—traveling,” said Mr. Baxter casually. He removed his hat and placed it on the floor beside the chair.

Mr. Gooch leaned over and scrutinized the top of his guest’s head. Then he deliberately felt of it.

“What are you doing?” demanded Mr. Baxter sharply.

“Oh—I was just wondering if—But never mind. Now, Ollie, tell me all about yourself. We’ve been hunting for you all over the—”

Oliver’s cackle interrupted him.

“Like chasing a flea, wasn’t it?” he chuckled. “Before we go any farther,” he went on seriously, “tell me about my boy Oliver. How is he? Hasn’t been hung yet, has he?”

“Not yet,” said Mr. Gooch sententiously. He placed a chair on the opposite side of the stove and sat down.

“Well, he’s in no danger now,” said Mr. Baxter. “And what’s more, he never was in any danger of being hung. That gypsy woman lied.”

“That’s what I said at the time. Didn’t I tell you what a darned fool you were?”

“How’s my boy, and where is he? I telephoned him three times to-night but the doggoned system’s always out of order. Couldn’t get any answer.”

“He’s over in Rumley,” said Mr. Gooch shortly. “I guess he’s all right. Leastwise he was up to this evening.”

“That’s good. By glory, I’ll be glad to see him. I’ve got some great news for him. Took me over a year to get it and cost me a lot of money, but it was worth it. My mind is at rest. Say, do you know I’ve been from one end of this country to the other? On the go every minute of the time. It wasn’t till about a month ago that I run across the right band.”

“Band?”

“Yep. Band. Struck ’em over in eastern Ohio. I guess I must have tracked down seventy-five or a hundred bands before I got the right one.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Gypsies,” said Mr. Baxter briefly, holding his gnarled red hands out to the fire. “You said something about coffee, Horace.”

Mr. Gooch eyed him fearfully for a few moments.

“Crazy as a loon,” he muttered.

“Who? Me?”

“No, no!” cried Mr. Gooch hastily. “Don’t get excited now, Ollie. Keep calm. I’ll put the coffee pot on right away. Just you keep quiet—”

“Is that what you were feeling my head for?” demanded Mr. Baxter shrewdly.

“Not at all, not at all, just—affection, Ollie.”

“Umph! Well, I’m not crazy—not on your life. Hurry up with that coffee. Mind if I light my pipe?”

“Certainly not. Go ahead,” urged Mr. Gooch, whose antipathy to tobacco was so pronounced that no one ever thought of smoking in his house.

Mr. Baxter stretched out his wrinkled legs, and filled his pipe and lit it, all the while keeping his keen little eyes on his brother-in-law. Mr. Gooch splashed considerable water upon the hot stove as he filled the coffee pot. The visitor seemed to find pleasure in exhaling great clouds of rank-smelling smoke.

“Yes, sir,” he began presently; “I hunted this country over before I found her. She remembered everything. She even remembered you, Horace.” He cackled. “I’d hate to tell you what she said about you.”

Mr. Gooch was silent.

“It took me nearly two weeks to get her to admit that she lied,” went on Mr. Baxter. “And I guess she wouldn’t have done it then if I hadn’t offered her a hundred dollars to tell the truth. You see, Horace, it was this way. As my boy Oliver grew up to be a man I realized that she had lied dreadfully about one thing, so that set me to thinking that she must have lied about others. She said he would grow up to be the living image of his father. Well, he didn’t. He’s a hundred per cent better looking than I am or ever was. That’s a fact, ain’t it?”

“Are you talking about the gypsy who told his fortune?” inquired Mr. Gooch, comprehending at last.

“Yes. Queen Marguerite. Mrs. Tobias Spink in private. One of the most interesting queens I’ve ever met, and, by gosh, I’ve met a lot of ’em in my travels. As I was saying, I got it into my head that if she could be wrong about Oliver looking like me she could have been wrong about everything else. So I made up my mind to find her and—”

“So that’s what you’ve been up to, you blamed old idiot!” exclaimed Mr. Gooch. “Sneaking away and leaving everybody to wonder what had become of you. You ought to be cow-hided, Oliver Baxter. All the trouble and anxiety and worry you’ve caused me and your son and everybody else! All the money your son spent looking for you—to say nothing of what I’ve spent myself lately. Why, you old—”

“Keep your shirt on, Horace,” advised Oliver blandly. “Don’t get excited. I just had to do it. I couldn’t stand it any longer. I would have lost my mind long before Oliver was thirty if I had sat around waiting for a year and more to see if he was really going to be hung. Besides, it’s none of your business anyhow. You say Oliver spent a lot of money trying to find me?” He put the question eagerly, wistfully.

“And so did I,” snapped Mr. Gooch. “I’m not saying Oliver spent his own money. He probably—”

“I don’t care whose money he spent,” cried Mr. Baxter joyously. “I’ll pay back all that you spent, so don’t you worry, you derned old skinflint. Every nickel of it.”

“You will?” cried Mr. Gooch. “Is that a promise?”

“Certainly. And my word is as good as my bond,” said Mr. Baxter proudly.

“I’ve always said you were an absolutely honest man, Oliver,” said Mr. Gooch ingratiatingly. “Never knew you to go back on your word. If you say you’ll pay, I know you will.”

“Figure it up and let me know,” said Mr. Baxter. “I guess my business is still prospering. I had a kind of notion Oliver October would step in and take hold of it in my place after I went away, so—But never mind about that. Yes, sir, I finally got the queen to confess that everything she said that night was false. She wanted two hundred, but I wouldn’t give it. Said she was ruining herself by confessing, and all that. Oliver ain’t going to be hung any more than you or I. All spite work, she says. Got mad at all of us. He’s not even going to be a general in the army, or a great and successful business man, or enter the halls of state, or—”

“What’s that?” demanded Mr. Gooch quickly, hopefully.

“—or look exactly like me,” concluded Mr. Baxter. “She’s going to make an affidavit to it soon as we get to Rumley to-morrow.”

Mr. Gooch started, casting an anxious look toward the kitchen door.

“Say, you—you don’t mean to tell me you’ve got her with you,” he rasped. “If that’s so, I want to tell you right now, Ollie Baxter, I won’t have you bringing any strange women into my house. My house is a respectable—”

“She’s out at the camp,” interrupted Mr. Baxter. “We’ve camped just south of town. I’ve been sleeping with her father for nearly a month—on rainy nights, I mean, when we had to get into the caravan. His name is Wattles. Eighty years old and still the best horsetrader in the tribe.”

Mr. Gooch groaned.

“I’ll fix up the sofa in the parlor for you to sleep on, Ollie,” he said after a long and thoughtful pause. “The bed in the spare room isn’t made up. In fact, it’s down altogether—being repaired,” he went on lamely.

“You’ve got a double bed in your room, haven’t you?” said Mr. Baxter.

“Well, it’s boiling at last,” evaded Mr. Gooch. “Now, we’ll have some nice hot coffee. Like it pretty strong?”

“Middling,” said Mr. Baxter reproachfully. “I was counting on sleeping in a nice, warm, soft bed to-night, Horace.”

His host pondered. “I was just thinking that maybe I could bring down a mattress from the attic, Ollie, and fix you up in the hall just outside my bedroom door. I’ll leave the door open. Plenty of blankets and—”

“All right, all right,” broke in Mr. Baxter, and gulped down some of the hot coffee. “I want to get an early start to-morrow morning, so you don’t need to mind about giving me a breakfast. We figure on getting away a little after sunrise.”

His host remonstrated. “I won’t listen to it,” he said. “You will go over to Rumley with me in my car just as soon as we’ve had breakfast. Your friends—I mean the gypsies—can follow along later. Not another word, old boy. I insist on it. You will want to see your son as soon as possible. I have to go to Rumley in the morning anyway.” He hesitated a moment, eyeing his guest keenly, and then proceeded: “Although I guess it won’t be necessary for me to look at that—Ahem! Ah—er—I was just wondering whose body it is, since it can’t possibly be yours. The one they found in the swamp yesterday, I mean.”

Mr. Baxter checked a yawn to inquire with sudden interest: “In the swamp, eh? Out in one of the pools? Well, by ginger!” He started up from his chair in a state of great excitement. “Why, it must be Tom Sharp’s body. Of all the—”

“Tom Sharp? Who is Tom Sharp? Besides, it isn’t a body. It’s a skeleton, so they say—with its head split open.”

“Tom Sharp,” declared Mr. Baxter with conviction. “Old Wattles told me all about it. Tom Sharp was killed with an ax right out there on the edge of the swamp thirty years ago. Same night the queen came to my house. He—”

“Can’t be,” broke in Mr. Gooch. “The doctors say this fellow has been dead only a year or so.”

“How does anybody know how long a skeleton has been dead?” demanded Mr. Baxter severely. “Of course it’s Tom Sharp. He got smashed over the head with an ax that night by another gypsy whose wife he had run away with. The husband caught up with him at Rumley, after chasing him for months. It’s against the gypsy law for a man to steal another man’s wife. So they never said anything about the killing. Just took Tom Sharp out in the swamp and—er—sort of left him. The fellow that killed him joined the band and went back to living with his wife, who was a girl named Magda. Maybe you recollect her. She was up to my house that night. Her husband died five or six years ago. His widow—Say, Horace, if they think that body is mine, who is supposed to have killed me?”

Mr. Gooch experienced a strange and unsuspected softening of the heart.

“A man that used to work around your place,” said he, after a moment’s hesitation. “He skipped out a few weeks ago,” he added, generously enlarging upon the lie.

Silence fell between them. Mr. Baxter was thinking profoundly, his brow wrinkled, his eyes fixed on one of his bony hands.

“Just so it wasn’t—Oliver,” he said at last, swallowing hard. He had removed the gaudy muffler. His Adam’s apple rose and fell twice convulsively. “I’d hate to have people think he did it.”

“Your pipe’s gone out, Ollie,” said Mr. Gooch brusquely.

“You can’t blame it,” sighed Mr. Baxter, yawning again. “I’m too tired to keep it going.”

Horace busied himself about the stove and at the sink over by the window.

“I guess you won’t mind my asking a question, Ollie,” he said, turning to his brother-in-law. “Seeing that you hate me, what put it into your head to come here to-night and ask for lodging in my house, knowing that I hate you as much as you do me—or more?”

“Well, you see,” began Mr. Baxter, very wistfully and yet shamefacedly, “I’ve been among strangers for so long, Horace, and I’ve been so homesick for some of my own folks that I—well, I sort of felt I’d like to see even you.”

Mr. Gooch pulled at his whiskers for a long time.

“Come to think of it, Ollie,” he said, rather loudly, due to the discovery that the other was having great difficulty in keeping his eyes open, “I guess I’ll have you sleep in that big feather bed in the—er—in my second spare room. How will that suit you? And I’ll let you have a nice, fresh night-shirt. Come along. Better get to bed.”

Mr. Baxter looked at him in a sort of mild, sleepy wonder.

“Why, you’re not half as stingy as I thought you’d be,” said he slowly.

“Anybody that says I am stingy don’t know what he’s talking about,” said Mr. Gooch magnificently.

He escorted his guest up the back stairs and ushered him into the one and only spare room the house afforded.

“Get undressed, Ollie,” said he. “I’ll be back in a minute with the night-shirt.”

He hurried off to his own room. As he opened the door he stopped—aghast.

“Darn my fool hide!” he grated under his breath. “I left that light burning and it’s been going all the time I was downstairs.”

THE END