CHAPTER XI
Shortly before three o’clock on the afternoon of June 23rd; old Oliver Baxter stepped into the bank at the corner of Clay and Pershing streets and drew out thirty-five hundred dollars in currency. He gave no reason to the teller or to the cashier for the withdrawal of so large an amount in cash. He asked for a thousand in twenty dollar bills, the balance in fifties and hundreds. Receiving and pocketing the money, he strode out of the bank and turned his steps homeward.
His balance at the bank was a fairly large one. Moreover, he owned considerable stock in the institution. The Baxter Hardware Company was no longer an insignificant concern dealing in tools, tinware, nails; it was an “establishment.” You could buy plows there; reapers, binders and mowers; furnaces and boilers, ice boxes and washing-machines; pots, kettles and cauldrons; stoves, ranges and brass-headed tacks; cutlery, crockery and stout hemp rope; step-ladders, wheel-barrows and glass door-knobs; log-chains, dog-chains and fly-wheel belts; coffee-mills, pepper-pots and bathroom scales; currycombs, skillets and housemaid’s mops.
The staff consisted of three clerks and a book-keeper, and, now that farm machinery was included in the stock, an “annex” in the shape of a long corrugated-iron shed reached out from the rear of the store and took up all the available space between the Baxter Block and Stufflebean’s Laundry on the north. People were right when they said that young Oliver would fall into a very snug little fortune—and a thriving, well-established business besides—when his father died.
Oliver October, ten or fifteen minutes late for supper that evening, found his father in a surprisingly amiable frame of mind. He was quite jovial, more like himself than he had been at any time since his son’s arrival. He joked about old Silas and Joseph, teased Oliver about the extremely pretty Indianapolis girl who had come the week before to visit the Lansings, and exchanged pleasant jibes with Mrs. Grimes at the supper table, but said nothing about the money he had withdrawn from the bank.
It was a hot, still night, and there was a moon. On the front porch after supper he brought up the subject of draining the swamp. He said that he had given the matter a great deal of thought and was more or less convinced that Oliver’s plan was a good one. Mrs. Grimes triumphantly reminded Oliver that she had said, three weeks ago, that all he had to do was to give the family mule plenty of rope and he would quit balking in time—and hadn’t it turned out just as she said it would? She left father and son seated on the porch and went off to spend the night with an old friend whose husband was not expected to live till morning.
Mr. Baxter’s good humor did not endure. He revived a dispute they had had in the store earlier in the day—a one-sided quarrel, by the way, which his son had terminated by rushing out of the place with the words “Oh, hell!” flung back over his shoulder. The old man had that day offered him an interest in the business if he would remain in Rumley and take full charge of the store. Oliver was grateful, he was touched, but he declined the offer, saying he had a profession in which he wanted to make good; staying in Rumley would mean the end of all his hopes and ambitions. Mr. Baxter flew into a rage and his son, white with mortification, left the store, with that single, unguarded exclamation his only outward sign of revolt.
Mr. Baxter’s reversion to the subject came when Oliver, looking at his watch, announced that he must be running along, as he was due over at the Sages to say good-by to Jane and her father.
“Well, I’ll walk part of the way with you,” said his father crossly. “I want to talk to you about the drainage scheme and—and, Oliver, I’d like to see if I can’t coax you to change your mind about coming into the store. If you don’t mind, we’ll take the lower road along the swamp. It’s a short-cut for you—saves you a quarter of a mile or more. I’ve been over the road several times lately, looking the land over, and I want to get your idea fixed in my mind. It’s as bright as day almost. This may be the last night we’ll ever spend together, so I—”
“Don’t say anything like that, dad!”
“Never can tell. You may be sent off to some out-of-the-way place in the West—in case you get a job, which I doubt very much—and God knows whether I’ll be here when you come back. Got to look these things in the face, you know. I’m seventy-five. If I do say it myself, a pretty good little man for my age—wiry as a piece of steel—but, as I say, you never can tell.”
A few minutes before nine o’clock, Oliver October appeared at the home of the Reverend Mr. Sage, somewhat out of breath and visibly agitated.
“I’m awfully sorry to be so late,” he apologized. “Father and I had a long and trying confab and I—I couldn’t get away. He gave it to me hot and heavy to-night, Uncle Herbert. The worst yet. God knows I hate to say it, but I’m glad I’m going to-morrow, and the way I feel now, I hope I’ll never see the place again.”
“No, you shouldn’t say it, Oliver,” said Mr. Sage. “Poor man, he is really not responsible these days. I wish you could see your way clear to remain here.”
“You don’t believe he is—unbalanced, do you? I mean out of his mind?”
“By no means. He is as sound as a dollar, mentally. But his nerves, my boy—his nerves are shattered. He thinks of nothing but the fate he believes to be in store for you. Every day is an age to him. You will not be thirty until a year from next October. Do you know how long that seems to him? Endless! You see, Oliver, for nearly thirty years he has lived in dread of—well, of the absurd thing that gypsy woman said. He tries to laugh it off, but I know it has never been out of his thoughts. Once you have passed your thirtieth birthday, he will be another man. He sleeps on thorns now. It is no wonder that he is cross and irritable and unreasonable. He is not deceived by the recent change of front on the part of Joe Sikes and Silas Link, both of whom now loudly profess not to believe a word of the fortune. He knows they are trying to cheer him up.”
“He really is afraid that I am going to be hanged before I’m thirty?”
“I fear that is the case, Oliver.”
“And that is why he wants me to stay here, so that he can watch over and protect me?”
“Exactly. Only he can not force himself to come out flatly and say so. He is ashamed to say it to you, Oliver.”
“If I really believed that to be the case, Uncle Herbert, I—I would stay.”
“It is the case, my lad,” said the minister earnestly.
“I’ll—I’ll think it over to-night,” said Oliver. “To-morrow I will put it up to him squarely. If he says he wants me to stayfor that reason, I will chuck everything and—and go into the store.”
“A year or so out of your life, Oliver, is a very small matter. But a year out of his is a great one, especially as it will seem like a hundred to him. Yes, my boy, think it over. And think of him more than of yourself while you are about it.”
“I guess maybe I deserve that slap, Mr. Sage. It touched the quick, but—I guess I deserve it.”
He ran his fingers through his moist, disheveled hair—and then looked at them curiously. With his other hand he fanned himself with his straw hat.
Jane, who had been silent during the brief colloquy between her father and Oliver, was studying the young man’s face intently. She was puzzled by his manner and by his expression. He spoke jerkily, as if under a strain, and his lips twitched. She noticed that his shoes were very muddy.
“I came over by the back road, along the swamp,” he explained, catching her in the act of staring at his feet. “Father walked part of the way with me. He was pleasant enough to start off with, and I thought everything was all right between us, but when I told him I couldn’t reconsider—he went up in the air—and—Gee, what a panning he gave me! It was terrible, Mr. Sage. I saw red. I felt like taking him by the throat and choking him, just to make him stop abusing me. I—I had to run—I couldn’t stand it. God, how miserable I am!”
He put his hands over his eyes and his shoulders shook convulsively. Jane and her father looked on, speechless. After a few moments, Mr. Sage arose and, with a sign to his daughter, entered the house, leaving her alone with Oliver.
“Poor, poor Oliver,” she whispered, moving over close beside him on the step. “It is all so strange and unreal. He loves you. You are everything in the world to him. I can’t understand why he treats you like this. I—I wonder if he isn’t just a little bit unbalanced. He must be. He—”
“I don’t think he is,” groaned Oliver, lifting his head. “If I thought it was that, I’d put up with anything—I’d overlook everything. But your father is right. He’s as clear-minded as he ever was. He’s got it in for me for some reason and he—”
“If I were you, Oliver, I should tell him to-morrow that you intend to stay here and go into the store.”
“I don’t know that even that would help matters.”
“Try it, Oliver,” she said gently.
The clock on the town-hall struck twelve before Oliver reluctantly bade Jane good night and started homeward. Looking over his shoulder from the bottom of the lawn, he saw her standing on the steps in the glow of the porch light. He waved his hand and blew a kiss to her. There were lights in Mr. Sage’s study windows upstairs.
On his way home, through the heart of the town, he passed the rather pretentious house in which the Lansings lived. There were people on the broad veranda. He recognized Sammy Parr’s boisterous laugh. He longed for the companionship of friends—merry friends. His heart was heavy. He was lonely. He turned in at the stone gate and walked swiftly up to the house.
“Hello, Ollie,” called out Sammy. “Just in time to say good night.”
Young Lansing came to the top of the steps to greet him.
“I’ve been up saying good-by to Mr. Sage and Jane. And the funny part of it is that I may not go away to-morrow after all,” said Oliver.
Lansing started and gave him a keen, startled look.
“Has Jane persuaded you to stay?” he asked, after a slight hesitation.
“Not for the reason you may have in mind, old chap,” replied Baxter, laying his hand on the young doctor’s shoulder. “The Sages think I ought not to leave my father.” He spoke in lowered tones, for Lansing’s ear alone.
“I quite agree with them,” said the other stiffly. “Jane has been talking to me about it. She said she intended asking you to change your plans.”
“Mr. Sage opened my eyes to one or two things I haven’t been able to see till now,” said Oliver simply. “My place is here in Rumley, Lansing. For a year or two, at any rate.”
They joined the group at the darkened end of the veranda. Sammy and his bride—a fluffy little giggler—were there; Miss Johnson, the girl from Indianapolis, and two other young men.
“No, thanks, Doctor; I won’t sit down,” said Baxter. “Just ran in to see if Sammy was behaving himself. And to tell you all that you will probably have me on your hands for a while longer.”
“Good boy,” cried Sammy.
“Lovely—perfectly lovely,” shrieked the bride.
“If you had told me this morning, Mr. Baxter,” said Miss Johnson coyly, “I shouldn’t have telegraphed mother I’d be home day after to-morrow.”
“Have a highball, Baxter?” asked Lansing suddenly.
“Not to-night, thanks. I’ve got to be running along. Father may be waiting up for me. Night, everybody.”
And he was off. The group watched him stride swiftly down the cement walk. Sammy was the first to speak.
“Well, I call that sociability, don’t you? What the dickens is the matter with him? First time I’ve ever seen Ollie Baxter with a grouch. A grouch, that’s what it was.”
“I don’t think it was very nice of him to come up here with a grouch,” complained the bride.
“I guess the crowd was too thick for him,” said one of the young men solemnly, and then winked at the girl from Indianapolis.
“He’s got something on his mind,” announced young Lansing, professionally.
“The old man, I guess,” said Sammy. “If my father behaved like old man Baxter does, I’d take him across my knee and spank him.”
Early the next morning, Serepta Grimes called Joseph Sikes on the telephone.
“Did Oliver Baxter stay all night with you?” she inquired. “I mean old Oliver.”
“No.”
“Have you seen anything of him this morning?”
“No. What’s the matter, Serepty?”
“Well, he didn’t sleep here last night, and there ain’t a sign of him around the place. I—I guess maybe you’d better come up, Joe.”
Old Oliver was gone.
“Off his base,” groaned Mr. Sikes, fifteen minutes after Serepta’s agitated call. He and Silas Link had hurried up to the Baxter home, where they found Mrs. Grimes waiting for them on the front porch. “I knew it would come. Off his base completely.”
“Wandered off somewheres,” groaned Mr. Link, very pale and shaky. “Maybe down into the swamp. My God!”
“Oliver October’s down there now,” said Serepta. “I got him out of bed a little after seven. He didn’t wait to put on anything except his pants and shoes. All I could get out of him was that the last he saw of his father was down on the swamp road about nine o’clock last night. Old Ollie walked a piece with him. Last Oliver saw of him, he was standing down there in the middle of the road.”
“Sure as shootin’!” gulped Mr. Sikes, sitting down heavily on the arm of a chair. “Out of his head. Wandering around. In circles. Dead, maybe. My God, Silas!”
“My God!” echoed Mr. Link, wiping the moisture from his forehead with a palsied hand.
Both of them looked helplessly at Mrs. Grimes. She too was pale but she was not helpless.
“Well, for goodness’ sake, don’t sit there like a couple of corpses,” she cried. “Do something. Get busy. Go look for him. Start—”
“Sure he’s not around the house or barn anywhere?” broke in Mr. Link, struggling to his feet.
“Maybe he fell down the cellar,” exclaimed Mr. Sikes, hopefully. “Or the cistern, or—”
“I’ve looked everywhere. He ain’t in the cellar or the cistern or the barn. I got here just about seven. Lizzie Meggs was getting breakfast. She was singing, happy as a lark. Did I tell you that Abel Conroy is still alive? Well, he is. I sat up with Kate Conroy all night, looking for him to die any minute. He—”
“Think he’ll pull through the day?” inquired Mr. Link, suddenly becoming an undertaker.
“Wouldn’t surprise me if he got well.”
“Good deal depends on how his heart holds out. Doc’ Williams was saying—”
“Oh, for the Lord’s sake!” boomed Mr. Sikes.
“As I was saying,” resumed Mrs. Grimes, “Lizzie was getting breakfast. I said I thought I’d go upstairs and lie down for an hour or two, and she says I’d better knock on Mr. Baxter’s door, ’cause she hadn’t heard him moving ’round, and his breakfast would be cold if he didn’t get a move on him. So I rapped on his door as I went by. Not a sound. I rapped again, and then I tried the door. Then I went in. He wasn’t there. His bed hadn’t been slept in. So I called Oliver October. It’s half-past eight now, and the boy’s been down at the swamp for nearly an hour. Do something! Go out and help him look—”
“I’ll take a look in the barn first. He may have gone up to the haymow to sleep,” said Sikes, and shuffled off, followed a moment later by Silas Link, who had stayed behind long enough to instruct Mrs. Grimes to telephone to the police and to the railway station.
The long and the short of it was, Oliver Baxter had vanished as completely as if swallowed by the earth—and it was the general opinion that that was exactly what happened to him. There was not the slightest doubt in the minds of his horrified friends that he had wandered out upon the swamp and had met a ghastly fate in one of the countless pits of mire whose depths no man knew or cared to fathom even in speculation.
These soft, oozy, slimy holes were located at the lower end of the swamp, nearly a mile from the Baxter home. The upper end had long been looked upon as reclaimable through drainage, but that portion surrounding the pond was a hopeless morass. Scientific men advanced the opinion that ages ago a vast lake had existed in this region, covering miles of territory. Death Swamp was all that was left of it; the rest had dried up through the processes of nature. Tradition had it that the pond was without bottom, but science in the shape of an adventurous surveyor demonstrated that the water was not more than a few feet deep at any point. However, this same surveyor was authority for the statement that the mud at the bottom of the pond was so soft and unresisting that he could not reach solid ground with the twenty-foot fishing pole with which he was equipped.
There were the usual stories, some verified, of horses and other animals straying into the swamp and sinking out of sight before the eyes of their owners—disappearing swiftly in what appeared to be a patch of firm, reed-covered earth.
CHAPTER XII
Notwithstanding the almost universal belief that poor old Oliver Baxter was buried in the black mire of the Swamp—there were some who said he was stillsinking—a state-wide search was at once instituted by his distracted son, who, for one, did not believe that the missing man had gone to his death in the loathesome tract. Before the sun had set on that bleak though sunlit day, telephone and telegraph wires carried the news to all nearby towns, villages and farms. Railway trains and interurban cars were searched; the woods and the fields for miles around were combed and the highways watched.
The bank’s prompt announcement that Mr. Baxter had withdrawn thirty-five hundred dollars convinced Oliver October and a few sound-headed individuals that he had deliberately planned his departure from Rumley, although they were totally in the dark as to his reason for leaving—if, indeed, a reason existed in his disordered mind.
No one could be found who saw him after he took leave of his son on the swamp road. Oliver October related all that transpired between them on that moonlit by-way. He did not spare himself in the recital. No one blamed him, however. Much to his distress, Serepta Grimes came forward with truthful descriptions of scenes in and about the Baxter home; she told of old Oliver’s inexplicable conduct, of violent fits of anger that grew out of nothing and died away in melancholy regret over the things he had said to his beloved son. And she described Oliver October as an angel possessing the patience of Job for having endured these outrageous “tantrums.”
While neither Serepta nor young Oliver could be positive, they were of the opinion that Mr. Baxter wore his every-day business suit on the evening of his disappearance. Of this, however, they could not be sure. An inspection of his closet the following morning led to a puzzling discovery. A comparatively new suit of a dark gray material—rather too heavy for summer wear—was missing, while the wrinkled, well-worn garments that he wore daily at the store were found hanging in the closet alongside his venerable “Prince Albert.” Mrs. Grimes was confident that he had on his old clothes at supper time; Oliver October had not noticed what he was wearing. In the event that Mrs. Grimes was right—and she couldn’t take oath on it—Mr. Baxter must have returned to the house and changed his clothes after parting from his son. There was no one at home. Lizzie, the most recent maid-of-all-work, was at the “movies,” and Mrs. Grimes was “sitting up” with Abel Conroy.
The excitement in Rumley was intense. The Baxter home became a magnet that drew practically the entire population of the town to that section, and there was not an hour of the day that did not see scores of people trudging through the safer portions of the swamp or tramping along the uplands that bordered it. Small children, accompanied by their parents, stared wide-eyed and frightened across the loathesome tract, and listened to solemn warnings which generally began with “poor old Mr. Baxter wandered out there and that was the last of him.” Venturesome young men approached a few of the “holes,” sounded them with poles and saplings, and came away shaking their heads.
Three or four days passed before towns far and near began to report that old men answering the description sent out by the Chief of Police in Rumley were being detained or kept under surveillance, pending the arrival of some one who could identify them as Mr. Baxter. Oliver October, Sammy Parr and other citizens sped in haste to these towns, only to meet with disappointment. Finally the tenth day came and the nine days of wonder were over. People began to think and talk about something besides the Baxter mystery. Detectives from Chicago, brought down by Oliver October, agreed with the young man that his father had “skipped out,” to use the rather undignified expression of Mr. Michael O’Rourke. It was Mr. O’Rourke who advanced the theory that the old man had taken this amazing means of forcing his son to remain in Rumley.
“Why,” said he, “it’s as plain as the nose on your face. He is dead set on having you stick to this town. He chews it over with you for weeks. You say ‘nix.’ Nothing doing. Well, what’s the smartest thing he can do? What’s the surest way for him to bring you to time? He’s as slick as grease, your father is. Out of his head? Not on your life. He’s an old fox. Do you get me? The only way to make you stay in this town is for him to leave it.
“He draws a wad of money, puts on his best clothes, and—fare thee well! He sneaks off without letting anybody know where he’s going. Why does he do that? Simple as A B C. If you or anybody else knew where he was or where he was even likely to be, you’d have him back here in no time, and all his trouble for nothing. He thought it all out beforehand. Knew exactly where he was going and how to get there without being headed off. And that’s where he is right now, leaving you to hold the bag. He’s had his own way. You’ve got to stay here until he gets good and ready to come back. See what I mean? Somebody’s got to be in charge of his affairs. The store and everything. There is a chance, of course, that he wandered out in the swamp, as most of these people think, but I don’t believe it. He wouldn’t draw out thirty-five hundred dollars if he had any preconceived notion of doing away with himself. And he wouldn’t come home and put on his best suit of clothes, either. It’s possible, to be sure, that he was slugged by somebody who knew he had all that money and his body chucked into the mire. It’s up to you, Mr. Baxter. If you want us to go ahead and rake the country for him, we’ll do it. I don’t say we’ll find him. We’re an honest concern. We don’t believe in robbing our clients. It will cost you a lot of money to find him, Mr. Baxter. Besides, there’s always the chance that he’ll lose his nerve and come back home. Or he may get sick and send for you. We’ve had hundreds of these mysterious disappearance cases and more than four-fifths of ’em don’t amount to anything.”
“I want to find him,” said Oliver firmly. “You may be right in your surmise—I hope you are. But just the same I don’t intend to leave a stone unturned, Mr. O’Rourke. As long as I’ve got a cent of my own, I’ll keep up the search, and when my money runs out, I will use his. Good God, when I think that he may have wandered off only to fall into the hands of thieves and cutthroats, I—I—No, we must find him, do you understand? Find him!”
“He’s all right as long as he don’t let some guy sell him the Field Museum or the Woolworth Building,” said the detective easily. “All right, sir. We’ll get on the job at once. Hold yourself in readiness in case we need you in a hurry. I suppose we can always get in touch with you here, Mr. Baxter?”
Oliver nodded. “Yes. You can always find me here in Rumley.”
And so the days ran into weeks and the weeks into months, with the mystery no nearer solution than in the beginning—no word, no sign from the old man who had vanished, no clue that led to anything save disappointment. There was something grim, uncanny about the silence of old man Baxter—it was indeed the silence of the dead. “He might as well be dead,” was a remark that became common in Rumley whenever his case was discussed. Strangely enough, no one now believed him to be dead. Everybody agreed with the detective that the cantankerous old man had “skipped out” with the sole idea of frustrating his son’s plan to return to Chicago.
“What gets me,” said Joseph Sikes, “is the underhanded way he went about it. Leaving Oliver and all the rest of us to worry ourselves sick and him just calmly settling down somewheres in peace and comfort and maybe snickerin’ to himself over the way he put it over on us. It wasn’t like him, either. I never knew a more upright man, or anybody as square and above-board as Ollie Baxter.”
Not once but a dozen times a day Mr. Sikes held forth in some such manner as this, ignoring Mr. Link’s contention that poor old Ollie may not have been responsible for his act, “owing,” said he, “to a sudden mental aberration.” Young Dr. Lansing spoke of it as “aphasia,” which was doubted with scornful determination until the word was reduced to “loss of memory” by several family doctors who stood well in the community.
Oliver October took charge of the store and, as self-appointed manager, conducted the business to the best of his ability. He deferred to the older clerks and the book-keeper in matters of policy, an attitude which not only surprised but pleased them. Charlie Keep, the senior clerk—a man who had been in the store for twenty years—was so inspired and relieved by this self-effacement that he speedily proclaimed Oliver October to be a better business man than his father.
There was nothing in the young man’s manner to indicate that he rebelled against the turn in his affairs. On the contrary, he took hold with an enthusiasm that left nothing to be desired by those who at first shook their heads dubiously over the situation.
“I am to blame for all this,” he protested firmly. “If my father is dead, I am accountable for his death. Whatever his present condition may be, I am responsible for it. Don’t put all the blame on that gypsy fortune-teller. I should have realized the state of mind he was in and I should have given up everything else in the world to help him weather the next year or so of doubt and distress. I laughed at his fears. I did not understand how real they were to him. He wanted me here where he could watch over me. Mr. Sage believes he has buried himself in some out-of-the-way place where he can’t even hear what happens to me between now and my thirtieth birthday. Uncle Joe Sikes says he got cold feet—couldn’t stand the gaff. That’s another way of looking at it. In either case, I honestly believe he will come back in his own good time. And when he does come home he must find me here, carrying on the business as well as I know how. I will do more than that. I’ll drain part of our bally old swamp and make it worth fifty dollars an acre to him instead of the dreary waste he bought for a song. And I sha’n’t stop looking for him—not for a single minute. It’s all right to be optimistic, it’s all right to assume that he is safe and well somewhere, that he knows what he is about, and all that. The reverse may be the case—so I mean to find him if it is humanly possible to do so.”
Joseph Sikes and Silas Link lamented and at the same time excoriated old Oliver Baxter. For a while the latter spoke of his old friend as “the deceased,” being in no doubt at all as to his fate, but, as time went on and the “remains” continued to elude the most diligent of searchers, he was forced to admit that perhaps everybody else was right and he was wrong.
Accepting the increased burden of responsibility resulting from old Oliver’s defection, the two “guardians” devoted themselves, without a murmur of complaint, to the supervision of Oliver October’s private and personal affairs. It was a duty that could not be shirked—a charge bequeathed to them, so to speak, by the figuratively demised Mr. Baxter. They had little or no support from Mr. Sage; and when they complained to Serepta Grimes about the minister’s lack of interest in the young man, that excellent manager shocked them by declaring that if they bothered her with any more of that nonsense she would give them a piece of her mind and a kettle full of boiling water besides.
They turned to Jane Sage for comfort, and while that young lady smilingly called them a couple of “dear old geese” it was so much more poetic than Mrs. Grimes’s “idiotic old jackasses” that they forthwith accepted her as an ally and from that time on went to her with all their troubles—dubiously and shamefacedly at first, to be sure, but with a confidence that soon developed into arrogant assurance. She confided to Oliver October that they nearly bothered the life out of her, and begged him, for her sake, to smile more frequently than he did—(Mr. Sikes dwelt mournfully upon what he called Oliver’s “hang-dog” expression)—and to stop haranguing the members of the common council about the defects in the city drainage system—(Mr. Link said that it wasn’t right, the way he lost his temper when discussing the conditions, and besides nobody else had ever found any fault with the sewers in Rumley); and never to so far forget himself as to again threaten to sue George Henley if he didn’t settle his account of four years’ standing; and by all means to refrain from arguing politics with Justice of the Peace Winterbottom, because neither Mr. Sikes nor Mr. Link slept very well after listening to these heated debates.
“Poor old Janie,” Oliver would say, with his always engaging grin. “I’ll bet you wish I was safely past thirty.”
“I do that,” she would always respond, very much as Biddy McGuire, the Irish washwoman, might have said it.
CHAPTER XIII
The winter wore away, spring came and quickly melted into summer; the first anniversary of the unexplained disappearance of Oliver Baxter passed. Three months remained of the last year allotted to Oliver October by the gypsy “queen” on that wild, shrieking night in ’ninety. He was still alive and thriving, and the shadow of the scaffold was as invisible as on the day the prophecy was uttered.
But by this time practically everybody in Rumley was counting the days and jokingly reminding Oliver that his chances got better every day!
He grinned and suggested that the town ought to put up a stupendous calendar in front of the city hall and check off each succeeding day, so that the public could keep count with the least possible tax on the mind.
“I feel like a freak in a dime museum,” he said to Jane one evening. “What you ought to do at the lawn fête next week, Jane, is to put me in a little tent and charge ten cents admission to see the man that the hangman is after. You’d raise enough money to wipe out the entire church debt. Think it over.”
He had just returned from a hurried trip to Nashville, Tennessee, where an old man was being held—a queer old tramp with a prodigious Adam’s apple, who refused to give any account of himself. This was but one of the fruitless journeys he had taken during the twelve-month.
“I see by the paper this evening that your Uncle Horace has announced himself as a candidate for State senator,” said Mr. Sage, who was enjoying his customary half-hour on the porch with them.
“Well, I know one vote he will not get,” said Oliver, “even if he is my uncle.”
“I know of another,” said the minister dryly.
“The nomination is equivalent to an election,” said Oliver. “There hasn’t been a Republican elected in this county since the Civil War, they say. If the old boy can buy the nomination he won’t have to spend a dollar getting elected.”
“It is not my habit to speak unkindly of my fellow man,” said Mr. Sage, “but I find it quite a pleasure to say that I look upon Horace Gooch as the meanest white man in all—er—I was on the point of saying Christendom, but I will say Hopkinsville instead.”
“Why, Daddy, I am really beginning to take quite a fancy to you,” cried Jane delightedly. “Only last week you said he ought to be tarred and feathered for turning those two old women out of their house over at Pleasant Ridge.”
“But he didn’t turn them out,” said Oliver quickly. “Somebody came along at the last minute and lent them the money to redeem their little house and farm. They’re as safe as bugs in a rug and as happy as clams.”
“You don’t really mean it, Oliver?” cried Mr. Sage. “That is good news—splendid news. It seemed such a heartless perversion of the law that those poor, frail, old women—both over seventy, by the way—should lose their all simply because they had to let their property go at tax sale. Horace Gooch has become rich off of just such delinquent tax-payers as these unfortunate old women. I am not saying it is illegitimate business—but he has acquired quite a lot of good real estate in this way. I rejoice to hear that some one has come to the rescue of Mrs. Bannester and her sister. I suppose they had to give their benefactor a mortgage on the property, however,—and that may ultimately afford some one else a chance to squeeze them out of their own.”
“I understand it was a loan for something like twenty years, without interest,” said Oliver.
“Bless my soul! Practically a gift, in that case. It is unlikely that they will live to be ninety.”
“I wonder how Uncle Horace felt when they popped up the other day, just as he thought he had the tax deed in his hand, and redeemed the property,” mused Oliver, chuckling. “I’ll bet it hurt like sin. Even a shark can suffer pain if you stick him in the right place. He had his heart set on that property, Uncle Herbert. The Interurban line is figuring on putting up an amusement park out that way, and I happen to know they’ve had an eye on the Bannester place, with its big oak trees and a wonderful place for an artificial lake. He could have cleaned up a lot of money on it.”
“I hate that old man,” cried Jane.
“My dear child, you must not—”
“When I think of how he behaved after Mr. Baxter went away, and the things he said to Oliver when Oliver refused to help pay for the monument his uncle had erected on his own cemetery lot up at Hopkinsville, because Mr. Baxter’s sister was buried there—his own wife, if you please, Daddy—well, when I think of it I nearly choke. I won’t allow you to say I sha’n’t hate him. I just adore hating him and I—”
“My dear, I had no intention of saying you shouldn’t hate Mr. Gooch,” broke in her father. “I was merely trying to say that you must not speak so loud. Some one outside the family circle is likely to hear you.”
“I’ve always said you were a corking preacher, Uncle Herbert,” announced Oliver.
“Thank you,” with the lift of an eyebrow. “No doubt I have improved somewhat with age.”
“I’d give a lot to know just what you said to old Gooch, Oliver, when he came to see you about the monument last fall,” said Jane, invitingly.
“I was mighty careful, I remember, to see that there were no ladies present at the time,” chuckled Oliver. “And besides, I’ve been trying ever since to forget what I said to him. But it’s absolutely impossible, with Uncle Joe dropping in every day or so to remind me of it.”
“I hope Mr. Gooch hasn’t been allowed to forget it.”
“Jane, my dear, you really are becoming quite a vixen,” remonstrated her father.
An automobile came to a sudden stop in front of the house, and an agile young man leaped out, leaving his engine running. He came up the walk with long strides.
“Say, Oliver, you old skate, I’ve been looking all over town for you,” shouted Sammy Parr. “This isn’t your night to call on Jane—don’t you know that? You’re supposed to be either at the Scotts’, billing with Amy Scott, or at the Ridges’, cooing with that new girl from Boston, and listening to her talk about Harvard all the time. Say, I’ve been over to Pleasant Ridge this afternoon—good evening, Jane—to see Mrs. Bannester and her sister about some fire insurance—Evening, Mr. Sage. Nice evening—And, say, they told me all about you, you blamed old skate—I mean Ollie, not you, Mr. Sage. Gee whiz, Ollie, you certainly did throw the hooks into Uncle Horace this time, didn’t you? You certainly—”
“Shut up!” growled Oliver, scowling fiercely at the excited Sammy.
“Shut up? Why should I shut up? Why the hell should I—beg pardon, Mr. Sage—excuse my slippery tongue. My Lord, boy, the boom has already been started. You can’t head it off. I didn’t lose a minute getting over to the County Chairman’s office and telling him the whole story. The boom’s on! He nearly hit the ceiling for joy. My God, if we can only keep all this quiet till after the Democratic convention—and old Gooch is nominated—we’ll spring something—Gee whiz! Listen to me barking loud enough to be heard in Hopkinsville. Fine guy, I am, to talk about keeping it quiet. Say, we’ve got to talk in whispers from now on—whispers, see?”
As he planted himself down on the step, he delivered a mighty, resounding slap upon Oliver’s knee.
“Aw, cut it out—cut it out,” grated Oliver. “Keep your trap closed, can’t you?”
“What on earth are you talking about, Sammy?” cried Jane.
“He’s talking through his hat—”
“Out with it, Sammy, out with it,” counseled Mr. Sage, coming down the steps.
Oliver groaned: “Oh, good Lord, deliver me!”
“Say, what do you think, Mr. Sage—what do you think? Why, this chump here is the guy that lent Mrs. Bannester the money to—”
“See here, Sam—this is my affair,” broke in Oliver gruffly. “It’s nobody’s business but my own. I made ’em swear on a stack of Bibles they’d never tell—”
“Don’t blame them—don’t blame those nice old women,” broke in Sammy sternly. “It was not their fault. I put one over on ’em. I told ’em there was some talk of that check being phony and they’d better—”
“It wasn’t a check,” said Oliver triumphantly. “It was cash—currency.”
“That’s what they came back at me with, but I said I meant counterfeit and not forgery—slip of the tongue and so forth. That got ’em. They up and said they had known Oliver October Baxter since he was knee high to a duck, and—”
“Oh, Oliver!” cried Jane. “Did you really do it? I could squeeze you to death for it. And you never told me—you never breathed a word—”
“It was only about a thousand dollars,” mumbled Oliver. “And a little over,” he added quickly, noting Sammy’s expression. “It was my own money. I could do what I liked with it, couldn’t I? They used to bring eggs and butter and chickens and everything to my mother, and when she was sick they had me out to their farm and made me awfully happy and—But that’s neither here nor there. It was a low-down trick of yours, Sam, to—”
“Sure it was,” agreed Sammy cheerfully. “But right there and then the destiny of the great American nation was shaped along new lines. Right then and there, Mr. Samuel Elias Parr saw a great light. The words were no sooner out of the mouth of old Mrs. Bannester—or maybe it was her sister—it doesn’t matter—when the boom was born! Yes, sir, the boom was hatched and—but, my God, we mustn’t—oh, excuse me, Mr. Sage, I keep forgetting that you—”
“Pardon me, Sammy, but I am really quite curious to know why you apologize to me for your profanity and not to Jane, who, I assure you, is a young lady of considerable refinement and—”
“That’s all right, sir,” Sammy assured him glibly. “I’ve got Jane covered with a sort of blanket apology—something like a blanket policy. Good for any time and any place. But as I was saying, we mustn’t let Joe Sikes and Silas Link get wise to all this. They’d raise Cain—spoil everything gabbing about that gypsy’s warning or whatever it was. Now, if we are foxy, we’ll catch the Democrats napping and, gee whiz! what a jolt we’ll give ’em next November! We’ll run four thousand votes ahead of Harding himself and—”
“Oh, for the Lord’s sake, Sammy, slow down! Put on your brakes! What the dickens are you driving at, anyhow? Boom? What boom?”
“Your boom, you idiot! The boom’s been started for you as Republican candidate for State senator against old man Gooch. It’s under way—nothing can head it off, absolutely nothing but death or an earthquake. The County Chairman hit the ceiling. He told me he’d call a meeting of—”
“Why, you darned chump,” roared Oliver. “I’m not going to run for State senator or anything else. You must be crazy. You’ve got a lot of nerve, you have. What right have you to start a thing like this without consulting me? You’ll just make a monkey of me, that’s all you’ll do—and of yourself, too. I’ll head it off to-morrow. I’ll telephone—”
“Won’t do you a darned bit of good,” cried Sammy exultingly. “They’ll nominate you, anyhow. Why, my Lord, they’ve got to nominatesomebody, haven’t they? They do it every election year, don’t they? Just as a matter of form? But, great Scott, here’s the chance for them toelectsomebody in this county. You don’t suppose they’re going to miss a chance like this, do you? Popular young soldier, medal man, celebrated football player, renowned engineer, youthful philanthropist, successful business man, unsmirched character—why, you’re the only Republican in this county that would stand a ghost of a show, Ollie. And best of all—popular nephew running against Shylock uncle! Gee whiz! Normal Democratic majority of three thousand wiped out—in spite of prohibition—and—Senator Baxter, of Rumley, ladies and gentlemen!”
Even Oliver October laughed.
“By jingo, Sammy, you’re doing your level best to have me put my neck in the noose, aren’t you?” he exclaimed.
“Noose nothing!” exploded Sammy. “I thought about all that. You can’t possibly be elevated to a position in the halls of State or Nation until next November, you chump—and you’ll be thirty in October, won’t you? Well, that settles that. Puts the kibosh on that gypsy dope. Well, so long! I’ve got to be on the jump. I just thought I’d run up and tell you, so’s you’d know what’s what. I’m going down to see Al Wilson at theDespatchoffice. Put him wise and warn him not to let a word of it leak out in the paper till he gets the word. Night, Mr. Sage—so long, Jane.”
“Wait a minute!” called out Oliver, springing to his feet as Sammy darted down the walk.
“Nix!” shouted Sammy over his shoulder.
The three of them watched him in silence as he leaped into his car and began his swift, reckless turn in the narrow street.
“Sorry!” he yelled out to them. “Had to take off a little of the turf, but this street needs widening, anyhow.”
“What are you going to do about it?” inquired the minister, the first to speak.
Jane did not give Oliver a chance to reply. Her eyes were blazing with excitement and there was a thrill in her voice that caused Oliver to laugh outright.
“Do about it?” she cried. “Why, he’s going to run against old Gooch and beat the life out of him!”
“Daughter!”
“Oh, my goodness! I’m so excited! Oliver, you’re a darling for helping those old women out—and you never intended to say a word about it! It was heavenly! And you will go to the State Legislature, and then to Congress, and—Goodness knows how high up you may go!”
Oliver’s smile broadened. “And the Gypsy Queen be hanged,” quoth he.
Jane caught her breath. A startled look flashed into her eyes and was gone.
“The Gypsy Queen be hanged!” she echoed stoutly. “Long live the King!”
Oliver was still looking up at her. She stood at the top of the steps, the light from the open door falling athwart her radiant face, half in shadow, half in the warm, soft glow. Suddenly his heart began to pound—heavy, smothering blows against his ribs that had the effect of making him dizzy; as with vertigo. He continued to stare, possessed of a strange wonder, as she turned to her tall, gray-haired parent and laid both hands on his shoulders.
“I wish I could say ‘gee whiz’ as Sammy says it,” she cried. “I feel all over just like one great big ‘gee whiz.’ Don’t you, Daddy?”
The man of God took his daughter’s firm, round chin between his thumb and forefinger and shook it lovingly. “One ‘gee whiz’ in the family is enough,” said he. “I am glad you feel like one, however. You take me back twenty-five years, my dear. Your mother used to say ‘gee whiz’ when she felt like it. It is, after all, a rather harmless way of exploding.”
“I know—but don’t you think it is wonderful?” she cried. “I mean, Oliver going to the Legislature and—”
“Whoa, Jane!” interrupted Oliver, a trifle thickly. He wondered what was the matter with his voice. “Steady! Sammy’s crazy. I wouldn’t any more think of letting ’em put me up for—why, gee whiz! It’s too ridiculous for words.”
Her face fell. “I must say I like ‘gee whiz’ only when it expresses enthusiasm,” she said. “It’s an awful joy-killer, the way you used it just then, Oliver.”
“I don’t want any politics in mine,” he stated, almost sullenly. Then brightly: “If I had to choose between the two, I’d sooner go in for religion.”
Mr. Sage smiled. “If more clean-minded, honest fellows like you, Oliver, were to go into politics, there wouldn’t have to be so many preachers in the land.”
“What chance has an honest man got in politics, I’d like to know?”
“The same chance that he has in the church. The people want honest men in politics, just as they demand honest men in their pulpits.”
“That’s all right, sir, but it’s easier to be good in a church than it is in a barroom—and that’s just about the distinction.”
“You forget we’ve got prohibition now,” said Jane, ironically. “There isn’t a barroom in the whole United States and there isn’t a single drop of intoxicating liquor.” She laughed derisively.
“Not a drop,” he agreed, rolling his eyes heavenward. Then he quoted incorrectly. “ ‘Water, water everywhere, and not a drop to drink.’ That’s what the good and honest men did to politics. They fixed it so that there isn’t anything in the country to drink except booze.”
“Nonsense!” exclaimed Mr. Sage.
“Tell me how you came to go to the assistance of Mrs. Bannester and her sister—tell me everything,” said Jane, resuming her seat on the step.
“There isn’t anything to tell,” said Oliver. “I just went out to see them and—that’s all there is to it.”
“Oh, indeed!” she scoffed. “You just went out there and said ‘howdy-do, ladies; here’s a couple of thousand dollars—and good-by, I must be getting home.’ ”
“I stayed for dinner,” he admitted. “They always have fried chicken and white gravy when I go to see them. And waffles and honey. I’m very fond of honey.”
“Don’t you want to tell me, Oliver?” There was a hurt note in her voice that shamed him.
“Well,” he began awkwardly, “I’d been thinking about it for some time—their troubles, I mean. I couldn’t stand seeing them kicked off their place. I had the money, and I didn’t need it. So I—I made ’em take it. Yep—I justmade’em take it. They were awfully nice about it. If Uncle Horace ever finds out that I lent them the money, he’ll—” He broke off in a chuckle of sheer delight. His eyes were full of mischief. “I’ll never forget the time I let him have it with my marbles. Gee, it was great!”
“Wouldn’t it be glorious if we could always stay young and throw marbles at the people we don’t like?” cried Jane.
“The only drawback is that sometimes you can’t find the marbles again. I lost two of my finest agates that day.”
“You young savages!” exclaimed Mr. Sage, with mock severity. He said good night to Oliver and, murmuring something about next Sunday’s sermon, entered the house. They heard him go slowly up the stairs.