CHAPTER XXXIII.—THE SHERIFF ASSISTS.
While Isabel sat over the stove in the cold, austere parlor of the Warren house, with its ancient furniture, the never failing photograph album, and those huge pink shells on the mantle-shelf without which no rural home used to be complete—waiting for she scarcely knew what—strange things were going forward in the home of the Fairchilds.
On the forenoon of this same day, Thursday, there had been a gathering in the office of the Thessaly Banner of Liberty. It was the publication day of the paper, but for once it went to press without enlisting even the most careless scrutiny, let alone the solicitude, of its editor-proprietor. He had more serious business on hand. Closeted with him in the little editorial room, whose limited space had rarely before been so taxed, were Beekman, Ansdell, the District Attorney, the Sheriff, and the younger of the dead man’s two New York partners, a shrewd, silent, long-faced man. Seth had desired to be of the party but his brother had sent him off, to return after dinner.
These men gravely discussed some subjects with which our readers are familiar, and some now first brought to light. John had a letter from Annie, sent by hand the previous evening, detailing the strange things Milton had said to her about the black mare. Ansdell and Mr. Hubbard, the partner, recited how they had discovered that Albert Fairchild, on the preceding Monday, sold $16,000 worth of government bonds, and the abortive effort he made to so arrange the transfer that it would not be traced. Beekman recalled how the black mare had balked on the edge of the gulf the day after the murder—for they all thus characterized it now. Later, the Coroner came in by appointment, and in the presence of the dreaded District Attorney was meekness itself. He even heard that two physicians were to go out with the party, and make an examination, without taking offence.
After the noon-day dinner the gathering was reinforced by the two doctors and by Seth, the latter devoured by curiosity and vexed at being kept so long in the dark. Soon after, all of the party save the Sheriff made their way to the Fairchild house, driving by twos or threes, and at intervals, to avoid exciting suspicion. It was after the arrival of the last division that Ansdell met Isabel, and advised her to stay away from the house for a time.
The two surgeons and the Coroner went silently into the parlor, and closed the door behind them. In the living-room Ansdell, Hubbard, John, and the District Attorney took chairs around the stove, having given word that Milton, who was off on the other side of the hill, arranging the sale of some apples, should be sent in to them when he arrived, which could not be very long now. In the kitchen, opening back from the living-room as this in turn did from the parlor, Seth and Beekman sat with the three women of the household.
These latter had been told that something was going on, or rather had inferred it from being forbidden to leave the room, and were agog with puzzled excitement. They had no clue, save a vague understanding that important personages were in the front portions of the house, but Alvira and Melissa stole unhappy glances toward Seth, in uneasy fear that the worst suspicions born of Samantha’s recital were to be realized in fact. Aunt Sabrina, sitting with her shawl wrapped about her gaunt shoulders, and with her feet on a piece of wood in the oven, did not know of this story which gave point to the other women’s anxiety, but was in misery between a deep yearning to learn what had happened, and a pessimistic conviction that it must be another addition to the Fairchilds’ load of calamities.
They heard Milton drive up presently, and hail Dana with instructions to put the horse out, and a query concerning the several strange vehicles under the shed. Then he came into the kitchen, stamping his feet with the cold, and walking straight to the stove to warm his hands. It was growing dark in the low room, and he did not recognize Beekman.
Seth delivered his errand, saying that his brother John wished to see Milton, as soon as he returned, in the living-room. The hired man gave the speaker a curious glance, and, after a moment or two of hand warming, went in to learn what was wanted.
Almost as he closed the door behind him, the Sheriff entered the kitchen from the outside, and after an interrogative glance toward Beekman, which the latter answered by a nod, drew up a chair leisurely by the stove.
“Who’d a thought it ’d a turned out so cold, ‘fore the moon changed?” he asked of the company collectively. “Hev yeh got any cider abaout handy? ’N’ a daoughnut, tew, ef yeh don’t mine.”
While Melissa was in the cellar, the Sheriff, who was a Spartacus man and a stranger to both Seth and the females, asked of Beekman: “What did yeh agree on fer a sign?”
“Th’ shakin’ of th’ stove.”
Seth had been annoyed all day at the pains taken by John to keep the facts of the enterprise now in hand from him, and he displayed so much of this pique in the glance he now cast from the Sheriff to Beekman, that the latter felt impelled to speak:
“P’raps you disremember my askin’ yeh ’t’ other day ’baout whether yer brother had much money on him that night. Well, we’ve settled thet point. He did hev’—’n’ ’twas a considerable sum tew—‘baout sixteen thaousan’ dollars.”
“No!” Seth’s exclamation was of incredulous surprise.
“Yes, sixteen thaousan’. We knaow it.”
“Oh! I remember now,” said Seth, searching his impressions of the night. “I remember that when I said he might fail to be nominated, he slapped his breast two or three times as if he had something in the pocket. By George! I wonder——”
“Yeh needn’t waste no more time wond’rin’. Thet was it! ’N’ d’yeh knaow what he was goin’ to dew with thet money? No, yeh daon’t! He was agoin’ to buy me! I wouldn’t say this afore aoutsiders; I dunnao’s I’d say it to yeou ef your paper wa’n’t so dum fond o’ pitchin’ into me fer a boss, ’n’ a machine man ez yeh call it, ’n’ thet kine o’ thing. Yer brother hed th’ same idee o’ me thet your paper’s got. He was wrong. They tell me ther air’ some country caounties in th’ State where money makes th’ mare gao. But Jay ain’t one of ’em. Yer brother wanted to git into Congress. Ther was nao chance fer him in New York City. He come up here ’n’ he worked things pooty fine, I’m baoun’ to say, but he slipped up on me. Bribes may dew in yer big cities, but they won’t go daown in Jay. I don’t b’lieve they’s ez much of it done anywhere ez folks think, nuther.”
“But this money, then, was——”
“Lemme go on! P’raps this ’d never be’n faound aout, ef yer brother hadn’t made mistake number tew in pickin’ aout the wust ’n’ meanest cuss in th’ caounty to be his gao-between. I kin tell mean cusses when I see ’em, ’n’ this feller he had was jest the dirtiest scalawag I ever did see. I kin stan’ a scoundrel in a way ef he’s bright abaout it, but this was a reg’lar, natchul born fool. Somehaow in th’ kentry, these men don’t seem to hev no sense. Ef they’re goin’ to rob a man, or set his barns afire, or kill him, they dew it in the darnedest, clumsiest saort o’ way, so they’re sure to git faound aout the minute anybody looks an inch beyond his nose into th’ thing. It makes a man ashamed to be a kentry-man to see th’ foolish way these here blockheads git caught, ev’ry time.”
The women had been listening intently to this monologue. They looked at one another now, with the light of a strange new suspicion in their eyes.
“Who is this man? Who are you talking about?” Seth asked eagerly.
At that moment the sound of a stove being shaken vigorously came from the living-room. The Sheriff rose to his feet, and strode toward the door of this room.
“I’ll shaow him to yeh in th’ jerk of a lamb’s tail,” he said.
The conversation in the living-room, after Milton entered, had been trivial for a time, then all at once very interesting. He had been disagreeably surprised at finding three men with John, but had taken a seat, his big hands hanging awkwardly over his knees, and had been reassured somewhat by the explanation that Mr. Hubbard, the dead man’s partner, was anxious to hear all he could about the sad occurrence. The District Attorney he did not know by sight, and he did not recognize Ansdell, who stood looking out of the window, softly drumming on the panes.
Milton told a lot of details, about Albert’s return, about hitching up the grays for him, about how the news was received at the Convention and the like, all recited with verbose indirectness, and at great length. Once he stopped, his attention being directed to a slight sound in the parlor, and looked inquiry. John promptly explained that it was the undertaker, and the hired man went on.
At last the District Attorney, who had hitherto been silent, asked quietly:
“You went back to the stable—to your own room—after Mr. Fairchild drove away?”
“Yes, ’n’ went to bed.”
“Did you hear any one enter the stables afterward?”
“No, nary a soul.”
“There is a black mare in the stables, used under the saddle. Was she taken out that night?”
“Not thet I knaow of. Why?”
“Well, there seems to be a pretty positive story that she was. She was seen on the road, in fact, late that night, coming from the ravine. The rider was not recognized, but the mare was. How do you account for that?”
“Tain’t none o’ my business to ’caount for it.” Milton did not like the tendency of the conversation.
“No, I know that, but we are interested in finding out. I don’t think you know me—I am the District Attorney—and I shall take particular pains to find out.”
A gulf suddenly yawned before Milton’s feet, and he made a prompt, bold attempt to leap it. “I didn’t like to say nothin’ ’baout it, bein’ as it’s in th’ fam’ly”—he cast an uneasy glance at John here—“but Seth Fairchild rides th’ mare a good deal. I did hear somebody saddlin’ th’ mare, but I took it fer granted it was him, ’n’ sao I didn’t git up. It’d be jes like him, I said to myself, to go ridin’ in th’ moonshine. He’s thet sort of a feller, naow ain’t he, John?”
The sound of his own voice frightened Milton as he went on, and his closing appeal to the brother for corroboration carried the nervous accent of fear. John did not answer, but rose and walked over to join Ansdell at the window.
“Of caourse,” Milton began, in a lower voice, to which he sought to give a confidential tone, “I don’t wan’ to say nothin’ agin Seth. Of caourse, he’s John’s brother, ‘n’——”
The words were cut short by the rolling back of one of the parlor doors, and the entrance of the three doctors. The Coroner, who came last, pulled the door shut again. The older of the other two came to the District Attorney and said, with deliberate distinctness:
“We are both prepared to swear that Mr. Fairchild’s death was caused by a gunshot wound in the head.”
It was then that John sprang to the stove, and shook its grate vehemently.
At sight of the Sheriff, who advanced upon him with a directness which left no ambiguity as to his purpose, Milton rose excitedly from his chair, cast a swift scared glance around the company, and then, while the handcuffs were being snapped upon his wrists, began to whimper.
“I didn’t do it! It’s a put-up job! It’s them brothers o’ his thet allus hankered after his money, ’n’ naow they got it they’re tryin’ to put the thing on me. ’N’ his wife, tew, thet stuck-up city gal, she——”
“Come naow, yeou better shut up,” said the Sheriff sententiously. “Th’ more yeh say th’ wuss it’ll be fer yeh.”
Most of the men present averted their gaze during the brief period of alternate threats and cringing, of rough curses and frenzied fawning on the Sheriff, the District Attorney, and even the Coroner, which ensued; but Mr. Hubbard watched it all carefully with evident interest.
“That is a very curious type of criminal,” he said, as the Sheriff and his prisoner left the room; “very curious indeed! I never saw a murderer before who had so little nerve, and funked so absolutely when he was confronted with detection. Why, I’ve seen men, guilty as guilty could be, who would deceive even their own lawyers. But such a simpleton as that—he’s not worth his rope.”
“That is because you are a city man,” explained the District Attorney. “You don’t know the kind of murderers we raise here in the country. The chances are that your city assassin would be tortured by remorse, if he escaped discovery, and that he committed the deed in a moment of passion. But the rural murderer (I am speaking of native Americans, now) plans the thing in cold blood, and goes at it systematically, with nerves like steel. He generally even mutilates the body, or does some other horrible thing, which it makes everybody’s blood boil to think of. And so long as he isn’t found out, he never dreams of remorse. He has no more moral perspective than a woodchuck. But when detection does come, it knocks him all in a heap. He blubbers, and tries to lay it on somebody else, and altogether acts like a cur—just as this fellow ’s doing now, for instance.”
A hubbub of shrieks and sobs rose from the kitchen as he finished this sentence, and they with one accord moved toward the door.
The Sheriff, with an eye to his promise to the two men in the kitchen, had led the livid and slinking wretch out to the centre of the room, where the dim candles had now been lighted, and, forcing him to hold up his hands so that the manacles might be fully visible, said to Seth:
“Here yeh air! I said I’d shaow him to yeh! Here is the whelp thet did th’ mischief. Look at him!”
There was a second of dead silence, as the several listeners took in the significance of his words, and of the spectacle.
The silence was broken by an inarticulate, indescribable cry from Aunt Sabrina. Then came with startling swiftness a confusion of moving bodies, of screams, and the rattling of the handcuffs’ chain, which no one could follow. When the intervention of the Sheriff and Beekman had restored quiet, it was discovered that the old lady, with an agility of which none could have supposed her capable, had snatched a potato knife from the table, and made a savage attempt to wreak the family’s vengeance upon Milton. She had not succeeded in inflicting any injury, save a slight cut on one of his pinioned hands, and Seth now with some difficulty persuaded her to leave the room.
It fell to Alvira’s lot to bind up the bleeding hand—for Melissa, undertaking the task, was too nervous and trembling to perform it.
A little dialogue, in hushed whispers, which only imperfectly reached even the sentinel Sheriff, ensued:
“Sao this is what yeh’ve come tew!”
“It’s all a lie!”
“Oh, don’t tell me! Ef you’d be’n contented with yer lot in life, ’n’ hadn’t tried to swell yerself up like a toad in a puddle, this wouldn’t a happen’d. But nao, yeh poor fewl, yeh must set yerself up to be somebody! ’N’ naow where air yeh?”
Words with which to answer rose to Milton’s bloodless lips, but he could not give them utterance. He could not even look at her, but in a dazed way stared at the hand, which he held so that she could wind the bandage in spite of the gyves.
“I didn’t use to think yeh was aout-’n-aout bad,” she continued, more slowly; “they was a time when yeh might a made a decent man o’ yerself—ef yeh’d kep’ yer word to me.”
This time he did not make an effort to answer.
The task of sustaining the talk alone was too great for her. The tears came into her eyes, and blinded the last touches to the bandage. As it was completed, the Sheriff put his hand roughly on the prisoner’s shoulder. The meaning of this movement spread over her mind, and appalled her. With a gesture of decision she stood on tiptoe, lifted her face up to Milton’s, and kissed him. Then, as he was led away, she turned to the onlookers, and said defiantly, between incipient sobs:
“I daon’t keer! Ef t’ was th’ last thing I ever done in my life, I’d dew it. We was—engaged—once’t on a time!”