“Not if it had been dead as long as this one has. Your Adam’s apple ain’t a bone, Joe. It’s a cartilage.”
“A cartridge?”
“I guess we’d better tell Oliver,” said Mrs. Grimes briskly. She had, as usual, risen to the occasion.
CHAPTER XXIII
THE BREWING OF THE STORM
The news spread like wildfire. Before nightfall every one in Rumley knew that the body of old Oliver Baxter had been found and that he had been foully murdered.
With darkness came the inevitable gathering of excited, bewildered people in the downtown streets. Groups of men, conversing in lowered, guttural voices, discussed the astounding and unexpected discovery. Women and children hung about the edges of these groups, or hurried from one to the other, drinking in the varied comments and opinions. They listened to men putting two and two together; they heard them connect seemingly unimportant details and weld them into convincing facts—for on all sides men were recalling once vague impressions and giving them now the value of convictions.
They were talking of Oliver October’s muddy shoes, of his strange behavior on the Lansing porch, of his unwillingness to allow the ditchers to go beyond a certain point in the swamp, of the rumor that Pete Hines had heard the violent quarrel between father and son, of the notebook found in the grass on the slope leading down into the slough, of the broken spade handle (they scowled with the thought of a blow forcible enough to splinter a stout hickory handle) and of the singular and significant fact that the heavy metal portion of the spade had never been found.
Every group had its individual who professed to be able to explain away certain of these “discrepancies.” He had it from persons who were in a position to know, having been present or within hearing distance when, earlier in the evening, Oliver October had accounted to the sheriff and his men (in the presence of his lawyer) for some of the suspicious features of the case. These peregrinating individuals—assuming no responsibility and by no means vouching for Oliver’s veracity—informed their dubious hearers that Oliver remembered stepping into a puddle of mud and water back of Josiah Smith’s house, said puddle having been created by Josiah’s street sprinkling wagon which always occupied the same spot between sunset and daybreak and invariably leaked all over the unpaved alley (a claim substantiated by the town sprinkler, himself, who admitted that he left his wagon out there every night and that it did leak dreadfully up to the time he had it repaired, but who also said he was not to blame if people preferred to walk up an alley instead of on the sidewalk). And Oliver had a very good reason for stopping the ditchers where he did: he had inspected the slough out beyond and was convinced, as an expert, that it could only be reclaimed at a far greater cost than the land was worth or ever would be worth. Moreover, the son of old man Baxter unhesitatingly and emphatically had declared that it wasn’t his father’s body at all, and refused point blank to have anything to do with it. The word passed up and down Clay Street that three doctors, including young Doc Lansing, had examined the corpus delicti and pronounced it to be that of a man in his seventies.
And then came the startling rumor that old man Baxter had gone to his safety deposit box in the vaults of the bank three days before his disappearance and had removed five one thousand dollar Liberty bonds! Rumor, pure and simple, yet accepted as fact by those who roamed the streets. The old man’s life insurance policy was discussed; and there was a story that he had openly threatened to make a new will, disinheriting his son. A grave, unanswered question, too, had to do with the money so lavishly spent by young Oliver—several thousand dollars in cash. Where had it come from? His father had called him a loafer, had charged him with coming back to Rumley to be supported in idleness. If Oliver had come home from the war “dead broke,” how was it that he had acquired several thousand dollars in cash? Thirty-five hundred dollars in banknotes—the whole town knew that the hardware merchant had drawn that amount from the bank—and five Liberty bonds that could be readily turned into money. Eighty-five hundred dollars! Simple as rolling off a log! Ha! There wasn’t much doubt as to where and how Oliver got his ready cash! But to split his own father’s head open with a spade, and throw him into a supposedly bottomless pit, and burn his clothes!