“Their son murdered?” he asked. “Tell me about it. All you know.”
“That’s just it––nobody knows anything. They know he was murdered, because he disappeared completely. The young man was called Peter Junior, after his father, of course––and he was the one that was murdered. They found every evidence of it. It was there on the bluff, above the wildest part of the river, where the current is so strong no man could live a minute in it. He would be dashed to death in the flood, even if he were not killed in the fall from the brink, and that young man was pushed over right there.”
“How did they know he was pushed over?”
“They knew he was. They found his hat there, and it was bloody, as if he had been struck first, and a club there, also bloody,––and it is believed he was killed first and then pushed over, for there is the place yet, after three years, where the earth gave way with the weight of something shoved over the edge. Well, would you believe it––that old man has kept the knowledge of it from his wife all this time. She thinks her son quarreled with his father and went off, and that he will surely return some day.”
“And no one in the village ever told her?”
“All the town have helped the old Elder to keep it from her. You’d think such a thing impossible, wouldn’t you? But it’s the truth. The old man bribed the Mercury to keep it out, and, by jiminy, it was done! Here, in a town of this size where every one knows all about every one else’s affairs––it was done! It seems people took an especial interest in keeping it from her, yet every one was talking about it, and so I heard all there was to hear. Hallo! What are you doing here?”
This last remark was addressed to Nels Nelson, who 369 appeared just below them and stood peering up at them through the veranda railing.
“I yust vaiting for Meestair Stiles. He tol’ me vait for heem here.”
“Mr. Stiles? Who’s he?”