OLIVER COMPLAINS
Three days later, the Sheriff of the County served papers on Oliver October. The prosecuting attorney had refused to lay the matter before the grand jury, as requested by Horace Gooch, but had grudgingly acceded to his demand that an official investigation be instituted and carried to a definite conclusion by the authorities.
“I want you to understand, Oliver,” explained the Sheriff, “that this is none of my doing. Gooch has obtained an order from the court, calling for a search of the swamp and your premises, basing his affidavit on the suspicion that his brother-in-law came to his death by foul means and—er—so on. He doesn’t charge anybody with the crime, as you will see by reading a copy of the order. I guess it won’t amount to much. You will have to submit to an examination, answer a lot of questions, and refrain from any interference whatsoever with the search that is to be conducted. In plain English, the order means that you are to have no voice in the matter and that you are to take no part in the search. It’s in the hands of the law now. I am authorized to begin the investigation at once and not to stop until old Gooch is thoroughly satisfied that a crime has not been committed. As I was saying a few minutes ago, he agrees to pay all the costs arising from this investigation in case nothing comes of it. On the other hand, if your father’s body is found and there is any evidence of foul play, the county naturally is to assume all the costs. The court made him sign a bond to that effect—a regular indemnifying bond. The old man has hired two detectives from Chicago to come down here and take active charge of the work. I hope you won’t have any hard feelings toward me, Baxter. I am only doing my duty as ordered by the court.”
“Not the slightest feeling in the world, Sheriff,” said Oliver warmly. “I wish you would do me a favor, however. The next time you see my uncle, please remind him that my offer to give him five thousand dollars if he finds my poor father—dead or alive—still holds. You can start digging whenever you are ready, Sheriff. You are at liberty to ransack the house and outbuildings, dig up the cellars, pull up the floors, drain the cistern and well—do anything you like, sir; I sha’n’t interfere. If any damage is done to the property, however, I shall be obliged to compel my uncle to pay for it. Don’t forget to tell him that, will you?”
The sheriff grinned. “I wonder if this old bird knows how many votes he’s going to lose by this sort of thing.”
Oliver frowned. “His scheme is to throw suspicion on me, Sheriff. That’s what he is after. It is possible that a good many people will hesitate about voting for a man who is suspected of killing his own father.”
“Don’t you worry, Baxter,” cried the sheriff, slapping the young man on the back. “My wife was talking to a prominent county official this morning—a good Democrat and a candidate for reëlection—and she made him promise not to vote for old Horace Gooch next November. She made him swear on his sacred word of honor not to do it. He went even further and swore he would vote for you, and it will be the first time he has ever voted for a Republican. Well, so long. Here’s a reporter for the Evening Tribune waiting to interview you. He came down with me. He’s a nice feller and he’ll give you a square deal in spite of the fact his paper is opposed to you politically. Of course, he’ll have to play this business up, so don’t get sore if you see your name in the headlines to-night.”
“I sha’n’t,” said Oliver, but more soberly than before. “I suppose there won’t be a day from now on that there isn’t something in the papers about the sensational Baxter case. I tell you, Sheriff, it hurts. I may act as if it doesn’t hurt—but it does.”
“I know it does, Baxter,” said the sheriff sympathetically. “I’m sorry—mighty sorry.”
Fully a week passed before a move was made by the authorities. The newspapers devoted considerable first page space to the new angle in the unsolved Baxter mystery, but not one of them took the matter up editorially. The principal Democratic organ, The Tribune, hinted at a possible disclosure, but went no farther; the Republican sheets withheld their fire until the time seemed ripe to open up on old man Gooch.
Notwithstanding the reticence of the press, the news spread like wildfire that Horace Gooch was actually charging his nephew with the murder of his father. The town of Rumley went wild with anger and indignation. A few hotheads talked of tar and feathers for old man Gooch.
And yet deep down in the soul of every one who cried out against Horace Gooch’s malevolence lurked a strange uneasiness that could not be shaken off. The excitement over the return of Mrs. Sage was short-lived on account of the new and startling turn in the Baxter mystery. Acute interest in the pastor’s wife dwindled into a mild, almost innocuous form of curiosity. At best, she was a three days’ wonder. If she had lived up to expectations by appearing on the streets in startling gowns and hats, or if she had behaved in public as actresses are supposed to behave, she might have held her own against the odds; but she did none of these. She wore what the women of the town called very unstylish clothes; she behaved with sickening propriety; she was a real disappointment. People began to wonder what on earth all those trunks contained that Joe O’Brien had hauled up to the parsonage. If they contained clothes, where was she keeping them and why didn’t she put them on once in a while?
Ladies of the congregation, after a dignified season of hesitation, called on her—that is to say, after forty-eight hours—and were told by the servant that Miss Judge was not at home. She would be at home only on Thursdays from three to six. Some little confusion was caused by the name, but this was satisfactorily straightened out by the servant who explained that Miss Judge and Mrs. Sage were one and the same person, and that she was married all right and proper except, as you might say, in name. Mrs. Serepta Grimes, being an old friend, was one of the first to call. And this is what she said to Oliver October that same evening:
“You ask me, did I see her? I did. I saw her sitting at a window upstairs as I came up the walk. She didn’t try to hide. She just sat there reading a book. I told the hired girl to say who it was and that I’d just as soon come upstairs as not if she didn’t feel like coming down. The girl said she wasn’t home—and wouldn’t be till Thursday. So I says, ‘You go up and tell her it’s me.’ In a minute or two she came back and told me the bare-facedest lie I ever heard. She knew she was lying, because I never saw a human being turn as red in the face as she did. She said Mrs. Sage wasn’t at home. She said Mrs. Sage asked her to say would I please come on Thursday next and have tea with her. She said Thursday was her day. Well, do you know what I did, Oliver? I just said ‘pooh’ and walked right up the stairs and into her room. She got right up and kissed me five or six times and—well, that’s about all, except I stayed so long I was afraid I’d be late for supper. She’s a caution, isn’t she? I declare I don’t know when I’ve had a better time. She didn’t talk of anything else but you, Oliver. She thinks you’re the finest—”
“Did you see Jane?” broke in Oliver.
“Certainly. Don’t you want to hear what Josephine said about you?”
“No, I can’t say that I do. By the way, Aunt Serepta, there is something I’ve been wanting to ask you for quite awhile. Do you think Jane is pretty?”
Mrs. Grimes pondered. “Well,” she said judicially, “it depends on what you mean by pretty. Do you mean, is she beautiful?”
“I suppose that’s what I mean.”
“What do you want to know for?”
“Eh?”
“I mean, what’s the sense of asking me that question? You wouldn’t believe me if I said she wasn’t pretty, would you?”
“Well, I’d just like to know whether you agree with me or not.”
“Yes, sir,” said she, fixing him with an accusing eye; “I do agree with you—absolutely.”
“The strange thing about it,” he pursued defensively, “is that I never thought of her as being especially good-looking until recently. Funny, isn’t it?”
“There are a lot of things we don’t notice,” said she, “until some one else pinches us. Then we open our eyes. I guess some one must have pinched you. It hurts more when a man pinches you—’specially a big strong fellow like Doc Lansing.”
A pained expression came into Oliver’s eyes. “The trouble is, I’ve always looked upon her as a—well, as a sort of sister or something like that. We grew up just like brother and sister. How was I to know that she was pretty? A fellow never thinks of his sister as being pretty, does he?”
“I suppose not. But, on the other hand, he never loses his appetite and mopes and has the blues if his sister happens to take a fancy to a man who isn’t her brother. That’s what you’ve been doing for two or three weeks. If you had the least bit of gumption you’d up and tell her you can’t stand being a brother to her any longer and you’d like to be something else—if it isn’t too late.”
“Gee!” exclaimed he, ruefully. “But suppose she was to say it is too late?”
“That’s a nice way for a soldier to talk,” said Mrs. Grimes scathingly.
He saw very little of Jane during the days that followed Mrs. Sage’s return. Her mother demanded much of her; she was constantly in attendance upon the pampered lady. Oliver chafed. He complained to Jane on one of the rare occasions when they were alone together.
“Why, you’re nothing but a lady’s maid, Jane. You’ve been home five days and I haven’t had a chance to say ten words to you. Now, don’t misunderstand me. I’m fond of Aunt Josephine. She’s great fun, but, hang it all, she’s right smack in the center of the stage all the time. It isn’t fair, Jane. You can’t go on being a slave to her. She—”
“She has always had some one to wait on her, Oliver,” said Jane. “I don’t mind. I am really very fond of her. And she is just beginning to care for me. At first, I think she was a little afraid of me. She couldn’t believe that I was real. The other day—in Chicago—she suddenly reached out and touched my arm and said: ‘It doesn’t seem possible that you ever squalled and made the night hideous for me and your poor father. I can’t believe that you are the same little baby I used to fondle and spank when I wasn’t any older than you are now.’ Besides, Oliver, I like doing things for her. It makes father happy.”
“But it doesn’t make me happy,” he grumbled. Then his face brightened. “Wasn’t she great last night when she got started on Uncle Horace and—and all this hullabaloo he’s stirring up?”
The fourth day after his wife’s return to Rumley, Mr. Sage blurted out the question that had lain captive in his mind for weeks.
“If it is a fair question, my dear, would you mind telling me just why you came back to me?”
She leaned back in her chair and studied the ceiling for a few minutes before answering.
“I may as well be honest about it, Herby,” she said, changing her position to meet his perplexed gaze with one that was absolutely free from guile. “I came back because they were through with me over there. I was getting passé—in fact, I was quite passé. They were beginning to cast me for old women and character parts. Two or three years ago they started my funeral services by seeing what I could do with Shakespeare. I played Rosalind and Viola with considerable success. The next season they had me do Lady Macbeth, and last season there was talk of reviving Camille with me in the title rôle. I was through. My musical comedy days were over. The stage was crowded with young women who could dance without wheezing like a horse with the heaves and whose voices didn’t crack in the middle register. People didn’t want to see me in musical comedy any longer and they wouldn’t see me in anything else. I’m fifty-three, Herbert—between you and me, mind you—and just the right age to be a preacher’s wife. So I made up my mind to retire. I used to have a hundred pounds a week. Good pay over there. I was offered twenty pounds a week for this season to tour the provinces in a revival of Peter Pan—and that was the last straw. Peter Pan! When an actress gets so old that she can’t stand on one leg without expecting people to applaud her for a feat of daring, they send her out into the woods to revive poor Peter, the boy who isn’t allowed to grow old. You notice, Herby, I didn’t cable to ask if I could come home—I cabled that I was on the way. Now, you know the secret of my home-coming. The time has come when I must submit to being buried alive, and I’d sooner be buried alive in Rumley than in London. It’s greener here. Besides you are a human Rock of Ages, Herby. I’m going to cling to you like a barnacle. I haven’t forgotten what lovers and sweethearts we were in the old days. I’ve been faithful to you, old dear. If I hadn’t been faithful to you I would never have come back. By the way, I’ve put by a little money—quite a sum, in fact—so you mustn’t regard me as a charity patient. We’ll pool our resources. And when the time comes for you to step down and out of the pulpit for the same reason that I chucked the stage—you see, Herby, audiences and congregations are a good deal alike—why, we’ll have enough to live on for the rest of our days. You won’t have to write sermons and preach ’em, and I sha’n’t have to listen to them. It’s an awful thing to say, but we’ll both have to mend our ways if we want our grandchildren to love us.”
He laid his arm over her shoulder and gently caressed her cheek.
“You are still pretty much of a pagan, Jo,” was all that he said, but he was smiling.
“But you are jolly well pleased to have me back, aren’t you?”
“More overjoyed than I can tell you.”
“No doubts, no misgivings, no uneasiness over what I may do or say to shock the worshipers?”
“I have confidence in your ability as an actress, Josephine,” he said. “I am sure you can play the part of a lady as well as anything else.”
She flushed. “Score one,” she said. Then she sprang to her feet, the old light of mischief in her wonderful eyes. “But, my God, Herby, what’s going to happen when I spring all my spangles on the innocent public?”
“I shudder when I think of it,” said he, lifting his eyes heavenward.
“I saved every respectable costume I’ve worn in the last ten years—and some that are shocking. Twelve trunks full of them. I’ll knock their eyes out when I come on as the Princess Jalinka—last act glorification—and as for the gold and turquoise gown that caused old London to blink its weary eyes and catch its jaded breath—my word, Herby, old thing, they’ll have me up for wholesale murder. They’ll die all over the place.”
“I really ought to caution you, Josephine—”
“Never mind, old dear. I sha’n’t disgrace you. I’ve got a few costumes I will put on in private for you—and I wouldn’t feel safe in putting ’em on privately for any one except a preacher in whom I had the most unusual confidence. Bless your heart, Herby, don’t look so horrified. I’ve still got my marriage certificate—though God only knows where it is.”
He cleared his throat. “I’ve got it, my dear. You neglected to take it away with you when you left.”
She smiled. “Well, I daresay it was safer with you than it would have been with me.”