Anderson Crow, Detective Part 48

Ten minutes later, Marshal Crow strode solemnly out of the _Banner_ office, and debouched upon the crowd in front of Hawkins's. Several erstwhile admirers snickered. He paid not the slightest attention to them. Instead he inquired in a loud, authoritative voice if any one had seen Alf Reesling.

"I'm standin' right in front of you," said Alf.

"I deputize you to act as guard during the day over the remains of Orlando Camp. You are to see to it that no one trespa.s.ses within fifty feet of it without an order from me,--or the Governor of New York. You will--"

"What the devil are you talkin' about?" demanded Alf. "There ain't no remains around here named Camp."

The marshal smiled, but there was more pity than mirth in the effort.

"All you got to do is to do what I deputize you to do," he said quietly.

"Is Bill Kepsal here?"

"Present," said the iron-armed blacksmith, with a series of winks that almost sufficed to take in the whole a.s.semblage.

"I deputize you, William Kepsal, and--" (he craned his neck slightly)--"and you, Newton Spratt, out there on the edge of the crowd, to act as guards durin' the night, until relieved by Deputy Reesling at seven A. M. tomorrow mornin'. You will permit no one to approach or remove the body of Moses Briscoe from its present place of confinement until further orders. And now, feller citizens, I must request you one and all to disperse and not to congregate again in this locality, under penalty of the law. Disperse at once, move on, everybody."

The crowd didn't move an inch.

"He's gone plumb crazy," said Rush Applegate to Uncle Dad Simms, and he made such a special effort that Uncle Dad heard him quite distinctly.

"He always _wuz_," agreed Uncle Dad. "What's he crazy about this time?"

"Come on home, Anderson," said Alf Reesling, gently. "Maybe if you took a dose of--"

"Lemme talk to him," interrupted Elmer K. Pratt, the photographer. "I had an uncle once that _died_ in an asylum, and I used to keep him quiet before he got hopeless by lettin' on that he really _was_ George Washington. Now, look here, Anderson,--"

Marshal Crow held up his hand. There was no sign of resentment in his voice or manner as he addressed the grinning crowd.

"I don't blame you for thinkin' that man in there is Jake Miller. I thought so myself until a couple o' days ago. That's when I first begin to suspect that he was the very man he now turns out to be. Gentlemen, if the individual that you knew as Jake Miller hadn't took his own life last night, I would have had him behind the bars today, sure as all get out. He wasn't no more Jake Miller than I am. Jake Miller was one of his alibis. He had--"

"You mean aliases," interrupted Professor Rank, of the high school.

"Or nom de plumes," added Willie Spence, the chief clerk at the Grand View Hotel, one of the most inveterate readers in town. To Willie the name of any author was a nom de plume; it didn't make any difference whether it was his real name or not.

"He had a lot of names besides Jake Miller," explained Anderson loftily.

"And he didn't have to go to high school to get 'em," he added as an afterthought, favouring Professor Rank with a withering look. "Now, disperse,--all of you. Go on now, Willie,--disperse. Everybody disperse except Alf Reesling. You stay here an' keep watch till I come back."

With that, he took the easiest and most expeditious way of dispersing the crowd by walking briskly off in the direction of Main Street. The crowd followed,--or more strictly speaking, accompanied him. He was the centre of a drove of eager inquirers. Having successfully dispersed the crowd in front of Hawkins's Emporium, he stopped in front of the post office and addressed it once more.

"All you got to do," he announced, taking a seat on the porch, "is to wait till the _Banner_ comes out, and then you'll get all the news. I just been in there to tell Harry Squires about my discoveries, and he is workin' his head off now gettin' it all in shape for the subscribers to the paper. And that reminds me. He asked me to do him a favour. He says there are quite a number of cheap skates in this town that ain't regular subscribers to the _Banner_. That's why Ebenezer January's barber shop is so crowded on Thursday mornings that Ebenezer is threatenin' to stop _his_ subscription. Ebenezer says there's so many customers in his place waitin' to be next with the paper that he ain't hardly got room to hone up his razors after Wednesday's work. I promised Harry I'd suggest that you all go around and subscribe today, because he says he's engaged Ebenezer to whitewash the press-room tomorrow and the barber shop won't be open at all. He says it's an outrage that--"

He stopped short to glare in speechless amazement at a familiar figure almost under his nose.

"I thought I told you to stand guard back there, Alf Reesling," he roared.

"Aw, thunder, he can't run away," protested Alf. "An' n.o.body's goin' to _steal_ him, so what's the sense--"

"I'll give you just fifteen minutes to get back there to Hawkins's,"

declared the marshal firmly. "If you're not back there by that time, I'll arrest you for contempt."

"That suits me," said Alf promptly.

"Yes, sir," said Anderson, addressing the crowd, "I would have nabbed him today if he hadn't gone an' hung himself like this. He must have got onto the fact that I had him dead to rights. He knowed there wasn't any escape for him,--no chance in the world. Wait a second! Don't all talk at once,--and don't ask questions! An' say, Abner, it won't do you any good to go round to the _Banner_ office, because I swore Harry Squires to secrecy. So stay where you are. Harry won't tell you a thing, even if your father-in-law is a regular subscriber. What time is it, Lum?"

On being informed by Lum Gillespie that it was later than he thought, Marshal Crow looked at his own watch and arose in some haste.

"By ginger, I got to get busy. I still got to see if I can find that letter Jake received yesterday afternoon. I wouldn't be surprised if the contents of that letter had a good deal to do with his hurryin' up this hangin' business. Like as not it was a warnin' from some confederate of his'n, lettin' him know I was gettin' purty hot on his trail. It's mighty hard to keep these things from leakin' out, 'specially when you're workin' at long range as I've been fer some time. My investigations have been carried on from one end of the country to the other. I finally got 'em narrowed down to a place out west called Sandusky, Ohio, an' I was just on the point of telegraphin' to the police out there that I had their man when this thing happens."

He was a.s.sisted in his search for the letter by a volunteer organization of about one hundred men and boys. The search was a most diligent one.

Much to the disgust of Ed Higgins, the floor of Jake's sleeping apartment was yanked up by willing, excited citizens; the hay-mow was ransacked from one end to the other; the grain bins were turned inside out, and there was some talk of ripping off a section of the roof. At half past twelve o'clock, the marshal went home to his midday meal, leaving the work in charge of Lum Gillespie, the garage owner, whose love for Mr. Higgins was governed entirely by the fact that the liveryman's business interfered considerably with his own prosperity.

Secure in the seclusion of his own woodshed, Marshal Crow slyly withdrew Jake's letter from an inside pocket and reread it with great care. Later on, having fortified himself with a substantial dinner, he returned to the hunt. Advising the toilers that he was going to do a little private searching, based on a "deduction" that had come to him while he was at home, he ambled off in the direction of Power House Gulley. Half an hour later he reappeared and instructed the crowd to knock off work. He had found the letter just where he figured he would find it!

"I don't see why in thunder you didn't figure it out at breakfast instead of at dinner," growled Ed Higgins, moodily surveying the wreckage. "I've a notion to sue you for damages. Look at that box-stall!

Look at that--"

"Never mind, Ed; I'll have Lum an' the rest of 'em put everything back in order, jest as they found it. Now, you fellers get to work and put things in shape around here. I'm goin' to take this letter over an' show it to Harry Squires. It proves everything,--absolutely everything. See here, Alf,--what in thunder are you doin' here? Why ain't you guardin'

them remains as I told you to do?"

"I _am_ guardin' 'em," said Alf. "I c'n guard 'em just as well from a distance as I can close up, an' you know it. All I got to do is to walk to the corner there an' I c'n see Hawkins's place as plain as anything.

I could see it from right here if it wasn't fer Lamson's store an' the Grand View Hotel."

The marshal gave him a look of bitter scorn, and strode away. The crowd straggled along behind. Anderson stopped at the _Banner_ office door and, exposing the dirty envelope to the eager gaze of the crowd, advised every one present to step in and take out a year's subscription to the paper. Then he disappeared. The crowd surged forward, filling the outer office with something like sardine compactness. The door to Mr.

Squires's private office, however, closed sharply behind Mr. Crow, and for the next fifteen or twenty minutes the young lady bookkeeper was busy taking subscriptions from the disappointed throng. She got sixty-three new subscribers and definite promises from a large number of citizens who were considerably in arrears.

"You'll see it all in your paper tomorrow morning," said Anderson, coming out of the inner office at the end of half an hour's consultation with the editor. "All I can say to you now is that I have captured one of the most desperate criminals in the country. He has been wanted for nearly three years for a diabolical crime. It makes my flesh creep to think of him being loose among our women an' children all this time. Is there any one here who ain't subscribed to the _Banner_?"

Tinkletown slept fitfully that night when it slept at all. The sole citizen enjoying a peaceful night's rest was Jake Miller. A singular circ.u.mstance connected with the broken rest of three-fourths of the people of Tinkletown was the extraordinary unanimity with which Jake became visible to them the instant they did drop off to sleep.

Bright and early the next morning, the _Banner_ appeared with its gruesome story. Jake was in very large type, but not much larger, after all, than Marshal Crow. The whilom Mr. Squires, revelling in generosity, gave Anderson all the credit. He held forth at great length on the achievements of the redoubtable marshal, winding up his account with a recommendation that a movement be inaugurated at once looking to the erection of a memorial statue to the famous "sleuth." The concluding sentence of this bold panegyric was as follows: "Do not wait till he is dead! Do it now!" And appended, in parentheses, the statement that the _Banner_ would head the list of subscribers with a contribution of one hundred dollars!

In the body of his article, Mr. Squires printed in full the contents of the letter received by Jacob Miller on the afternoon before his death,--the letter which had been recovered, after the most diligent and acute search by Marshal Crow, at the bottom of an abandoned well in Power House Gulley,--the letter which so completely vindicated the theories and deductions of Tinkletown's most celebrated son.

Jake's letter was from his brother in Sandusky. It warned him that the authorities had finally located him in Tinkletown and that officers were even then on the way east to "pinch" him. They had run him down at last, despite the various aliases under which he had sought to avoid apprehension; brotherly love impelled him to advise Jake to "beat it" as "quick as possible." Moreover, he went on to state that if they got him he'd "swing" as sure as h.e.l.l. Brotherly interest no doubt was also responsible for the frank admission that the "family" had done all it could for him, and that if he had had a grain of sense, or had listened to his friends, he wouldn't have married her in the first place. And if he hadn't married her, he wouldn't have been placed in a position where he had to beat her brains out. Not that she didn't deserve to have her brains knocked out, and all that, but "you can't go around doing that sort of thing without getting into trouble about it."

In short, Jake--(by any other name he was just as guilty)--had slain his wife, presumably in cold blood. At any rate, Mr. Squires, sustained by the information received from Marshal Crow, (who had gone deeply into the case), stated in cold type that it had been done in cold blood.

Apparently Jake had decided that he was tired of dodging the inevitable.

It was quite clear that he could not endure the thought of being "swung"

for his diabolical deed.

The account also stated that Marshal Crow had at once advised the Western authorities by telegraph that he had their man, but regretted to state the scoundrel had antic.i.p.ated arrest in the manner now so well known to the readers of the _Banner_, long recognized as the most enterprising newspaper in that part of the State of New York.

A day or two later, after the inquest, an officer arrived from Sandusky.

He was a spectator at the funeral of Jake Miller, whom he readily identified as the slayer of Mrs. Camp, and was afterwards a most interested listener to the recital given on Lamson's porch by Marshal Crow, who, described with considerable zest and surprising fidelity the manifold difficulties he had experienced in "running the criminal to earth,"--one of the most puzzling cases he had ever been called upon to tackle.

The astonished officer walked over to the Grand View Hotel with Harry Squires. From time to time he pa.s.sed his hand over his brow in a thoroughly puzzled manner.