II
Walking to a little distance among the trees, Colby found a fallen trunk, and on this he seated himself comfortably. He was supposed to be hunting, and he wanted to kill a suitable amount of time, so he sat there for two hours and smoked the better part of a pack of cigarettes, going over and over his plans. He could find no flaw in them anywhere.
Before he emerged from the woods he dug a tiny hole and buried the cigarette butts, just as an added precaution. The white paper would be conspicuous, and a dozen of them lying in one spot would tell that a man had been waiting there. Buried, and with pine needles strewn over the spot, even that incitement to idle curiosity was removed.
He came out on the concrete road at a moment when there were no cars in sight, and he marched sedately on toward town with his gun over his shoulder. Within fifteen minutes he was passed by at least a dozen cars going in both directions. He found it possible to smile comfortably at the perfection with which things were going.
About a mile from the spot where he came out on the road, he overtook two colored boys dawdling toward Culpeper, with a single antiquated gun between them. They gazed at him fearfully and tried to hide the rabbit that one of them was carrying. Colby passed them with a negligent nod. They dropped behind, and were out of sight before he had gone a mile farther.
Colby had gone over his plans so thoroughly that he felt entirely secure. He felt so secure, in fact, that he began to puzzle a little over his moment of terror immediately after firing the shot.
He had known all about Detective Sergeant Nesbit before he planned this coup. He knew Nesbit personally, as he knew nearly everybody in Culpeper. The man had a reputation altogether out of proportion to the size of his territory. People considered him the equivalent of Nemesis.
For instance, when Jud Harris’s wife was found with her head beaten in, and there was every indication that she had been killed by a casual tramp, Nesbit had gone through the usual motions of investigation and had turned up nothing at all; but a full two years later he got a new story and convicting evidence from Jud Harris’s second wife. He had been working on a bootleg case, and had terrified her into revealing the secret of the nearly forgotten murder. That case was typical of the way he worked.
Nesbit’s reputation, in Colby’s opinion, came from the fact that he never forgot an unsolved case. He might not work out a solution at once. Indeed, it seemed to Colby that he rarely did; but if any evidence turned up, however belatedly, Nesbit was sure to fit it into its place among the innumerable half solved puzzles that he always carried in his brain. His results were slow but dramatic, and his reputation was secure.
Hiking along with his gun over his shoulder, Colby congratulated himself upon his own system. Nesbit would have no chance to come in this time. There would be no mystery for him to mull over in his painful, patient way. Grahame had come to town as Colby’s guest. Nobody knew him. He and Colby had gone out hunting. A car had picked Grahame up and carried him back to Richmond. That was all, absolutely all, except the little wad of currency in Colby’s pocket.