CHAPTER XXIV
The mob, grim, silent and determined, advanced upon the house from the upper reaches of the swamp, a swaying, unwieldy mass that surged up the slope and thinned into a compact, snake-like column in the narrow road. Since ten o’clock men by twos and threes and fours had been making their way through back streets and lanes to an appointed spot an eighth of a mile east of the Baxter home, the tree-bordered swale that marked the extreme northern end of the slough. There were no lights, and none spoke save in cautious whispers, nor was there one in all the grim three hundred who did not tremble under the strain of suppressed excitement—as the dog trembles when he is held in leash with the scent of the quarry in his quivering nostrils.
Scouts, creeping up to the house, had witnessed the departure of Oliver’s guests. Like swift, scarcely visible shadows they sped back through the darkness of the swamp road with their report. Whispers swelled into hoarse, guttural mutterings as the mob, headed by its set-faced, scowling leaders, left the swale and started on its deadly march. Followed the shuffle of a multitude of feet through dry grass and over the loose surface of the dirt road; the harsh breathing of hundreds of throats through tense nostrils or open, sag-lipped mouths; the swish and rustle of dead leaves; in all, the hushed thunder of men in motion.
The leaders—two men from the hardware store of Oliver Baxter!—strode out in front, crowded close by the swift-moving horde that from time to time almost overran them in its eagerness to have the dirty business over with. There were guns and axes and sledge-hammers in the hands of men at the head of the column.
Sight of the lighted upstairs windows threw the mob into a frenzy. They had come to kill and their prey was up there behind a thin barricade of glass and parchment-colored linen! And they were near three hundred strong! A few scattered ill-timed shouts, were checked by a mighty, sibilant hiss that swept through the crowd; those who had ignored strict orders fell back into pinched silence.
Quickly the house was surrounded. No avenue of escape was left unguarded. A small, detached group advanced toward the porch, above the roof of which were lights in the windows of what every one knew to be young Oliver Baxter’s bedroom.
A loud voice called out:
“Oliver Baxter!”
The hush of death settled upon the crowd. Even the breathing seemed to have ceased.
A window shade flew up in one of the windows and the figure of a man stood fully revealed. He stooped, his face close to the pane as he peered intently out into the blackness below. Shading his eyes with one hand, he continued his search of the night. He was without coat or vest; his white shirt was open at the throat.
A man in the crowd below took a fresh grip on the rope he carried in his hand.
Again the loud, firm voice:
“Come out! We want to see you, Oliver Baxter.”
Oliver raised the window and leaned out. “Who is it? What do you want?” he demanded.
“We are your father’s friends,” came the reply. “That’s all you need to know. Come out!”
“What have you got down there? A mob? I’ll see you in hell before I’ll come out! If you’re after me, you’ll have to come and get me. But I warn you! I’ve got a gun up here and, so help me God, I’ll shoot to kill. I’m not afraid of you. Wait till to-morrow, men. You will be glad if you do. It is not my father’s body they found. It will be proved to you. Go home, for God’s sake, and don’t attempt to do this thing you are—”
A deep growl rose from a hundred throats, stilled almost instantly as the clear voice of the leader rang out again.
“We will give you one minute to come out. If you are not out here on the porch by that time we’ll smash your damned doors in and we’ll drag you out.”
Oliver glanced over his shoulder. Mrs. Grimes and Lizzie, with blanched faces, had come to his bedroom door.
“Telephone for the police, Lizzie,” he cried out sharply. “No! Wait! Get out of the house yourselves. Don’t think of me. You mustn’t be here if that mob breaks in and—”
He did not finish the sentence. In the middle of it he uttered a shout of alarm and sprang toward the bureau on the opposite side of the room. There was a rush of footsteps in the hall, then the two women were flung aside and into the room leaped three, four, half a dozen men. As Lizzie fell back against the wall, she shrieked:
“The back door! I forgot to—”
Oliver knocked the first man sprawling, but the others were upon him like an avalanche.... As they led him, now unresisting, from the room his wild, beaten gaze fell upon the huddled form of Serepta Grimes lying inert in the hall.
“For God’s sake, be decent enough to look after her,” he panted. “Don’t leave her lying—”
The crash of splintering blows upon the outer door, the jangle of shattered glass, the suddenly released howls of human hounds—pandemonium so devilish that Oliver’s fearless heart quailed and he began to cry for mercy.
“Don’t kill me like this! Don’t! Don’t! Give me a chance! Let me speak! Oh, my God!” Then rage succeeded terror. “Let go of me, you dirty dogs! Let go of me, Charlie! Steve! God damn your souls to hell—give me a chance!”
They dragged him down the stairs. The front door gave way as they neared the bottom and over the wreckage stumbled men with sledges, grunting, snarling men whose teeth showed between stretched, drawn lips, and who stopped short at sight of those descending.
“We’ve got him,” shouted one of his captors. “Make way! Let us through!”
There was no light in the hall, only that from the open bedroom door above. Some one below flashed an electric torch on the face of the captive. It was ghastly white.
“It’s him, all right,” cried several voices. “Open up! We’ve got him! Make way out there!”
Out of the house and down into the yard they hurried him. There they paused long enough to tie his hands securely behind his back. An awed silence had fallen upon the crowd—the shouts ceased, curses died on men’s lips. They had him! Tragedy was at hand. More than one heart quaked in the presence of it, and more than one stomach turned in revolt. It was grim business that lay ahead of them and they were good citizens!
“No lights!” shouted a loud-voiced man. “Come on! Hustle up! Let’s get it over with.”
Oliver strained at his bonds. His chest heaved, his throat swelled.
“In Christ’s name, men—what are you going to do with me?” he cried out in a strange, piercing voice.
“Shut up!”
“You are making a horrible mistake,” cried the captive, as he stumbled along between the men who held his arms. “You are committing the most horrible—”
Something fell upon his head, scraped down over his face. He stifled a scream. He felt the slack noose tighten about his bare throat.
“Damn you all to hell,” he raged, sinking his heels in the earth and holding back with all his might. “You beasts! You damned fools! Let go of me! Let me speak! Isn’t there a sensible man among you? Are you all—”
He was shoved forward, protesting shrilly, impatiently.
They had picked the spot: the place where father and son parted on that distant night. And the tree: the sturdy old oak whose limbs overhung the road. They had picked the limb.
There was no delay.... The stout rope was thrown over the limb, the noose was drawn close about his neck by cold, nervous fingers.... A prayer was strangled on his writhing lips. Strong hands hauled at the rope. He swung in the air....
A great white flare of light burst upon the grewsome spectacle—the roar of a charging monster—the din of shrieking klaxons—and then the piercing scream of a woman.
The dense mob in the road broke, fighting frantically to get out of the path of Lansing’s car. Some were struck and hurled screaming aside—and on came the car, forging its way slowly but relentlessly through the struggling mass.
A man standing up in the tonneau was crying in a stentorian, far-reaching voice:
“Fools! Accursed fools! Ye know not what ye do! Stop this hideous outrage! God forgive you if we are too late! God forgive—”
Again the woman’s scream.
“He is hanging! Hanging! Oh, God!”
Up to the swaying, wriggling form shot the car, a force irresistible guided by a man who thought not of the human beings he might crush to death in his desire to reach the one he sought to save.
“Let go of that rope!” yelled this man.
Behind him came another car. Panic seized the mob. The compact mass broke and scattered. Like sheep, men plunged down the slope—now a frightened, safety-seeking horde of cowards.
A writhing, tortured figure lay in the middle of the road, a loose rope swinging free from the limb. The bewildered, startled men who had held it in their hands fell back—uncertain, bewildered.
Lansing, unafraid, sprang from the car and rushed to the prostrate form. In a second he was tugging at the noose, cursing frightfully. No one opposed him. The mob seemed suddenly to have become paralyzed, afflicted by the stupor of indecision. Many were already fleeing madly from the scene—down the road, across the slough—yellow-hearted deserters whose only thought was to escape the consequences of recognition. A few score, falling back a little in stubborn disorder, stood glowering and blinking outside the shafts of light. Men with guns and pistols and axes they were, but cowed by the swift realization that they dared not use them.
The tall, gaunt figure in the tonneau was praying, his hands uplifted. By his side stood a woman.
Now a woman flung herself down beside the man with the rope around his neck, sobbing, moaning, her arms straining to lift his shoulders from the ground.
A baffled roar went up from the mob. Men surged forward and hands were laid upon the rope—too late. The noose was off—and Sammy Parr standing over the doctor and the distracted girl, had a revolver in his hand.
“Come on!” he yelled. “Come on, you dirty cowards! You swine! You damned Huns! Come on and get a man-sized pill!”
From all sides boomed the shouts and curses of a quickly revived purpose.
“Rush ’em!”
“Kill the—”
“Beat their heads off!”
“Get him! Get him!”
“String him up!”
Suddenly a strange voice rose above the clamor. A voice that seemed to come from nowhere and yet was everywhere—the like of which no man there had ever heard before. Rich, full, vibrant, it fell upon puzzled ears and once again there was pause. The keyless chorus of execrations ceased abruptly, as if a mighty hand were clapped upon a hundred mouths.
All eyes were upon the owner of this wondrous, clarion voice. A startling figure she was, standing erect upon the front seat of Lansing’s car. Magically tall and mysterious as she towered above and out of the path of light thrown by the car behind.
“Men of Rumley! Hold! Hold, I command you! Is there one among you who has not heard of the gypsy’s prophecy of thirty years ago? Let him speak who will, and let him speak for all.”
A score of voices answered.
“Aye!” she went on. “You all have heard it. It is as familiar to you, old and young, as the story of the Crucifixion. There are old men among you. Men who were here when that truthful prophecy was uttered thirty years ago. You old men heard of the gypsy’s prophecy within twenty-four hours after it was spoken in the house you have ravished to-night. You heard it word for word, faithfully repeated by men and women who were present and who have never forgotten what she said. I ask one of you—any one of you—to stand forth and tell the rest of this craven mob what the gypsy fortune-teller said on that wild and stormy night.”
Two or three men stepped forward as if fascinated.
“She said the baby son of Oliver Baxter would be hung for murder before he was thirty years old,” bawled one of them.
“He killed his father. He ought to be hung. The gypsy was right,” shouted another.
“And what else did she say?” rang out the voice of Josephine Judge.
“Oh, a lot of things that don’t matter now,” yelled a man back in the crowd. “Get busy, boys. We can’t—”
“Stop! Wait, and I will tell you what she said. She said one thing that all of you old men ought to remember. It was the most important thing of all, the most horrible. I was there. This man of God, my husband, was there. Other honest people, friends of yours, were there. They heard her words and they repeated them to you the next day. Silence! Listen to me, varlets! You believe she spoke the truth when she uttered that prophecy? Answer!”
“Yes!” came from a hundred throats.
“Then, in God’s name,why are you murdering oliver october baxter?”
“We gave him a fair trial,” answered one of the leaders. “We know all the facts. He is guilty of killing his father. We don’t need any more proof—”
“Are you one of the men who heard the story thirty years ago?”
“Yes, I am—and I heard it straight.”
“Then you must know that this poor boy was adjudged innocent of this crime on the day he was born,” fell slowly, distinctly from the lips of Josephine. “I will repeat the words of the gypsy woman. She said: ‘He will not commit a murder. He will be hanged for a crime he did not commit.’ Speak! Are not those the words of the gypsy?”
Absolute silence ensued. It was as if the crowd had turned to stone.
“And so,” she cried, leveling her finger at the men in the front rank, “you have done your part toward making the prophecy come true. You have hung Oliver October Baxter in spite of the fact that you were told thirty years ago that he would be innocent. It has all come out as the fortune-teller said it would. She read his future in the stars. She read it all from his own star—and, look ye, fools of Rumley, in yonder black dome a single star is shining. See! With your own blind eyes—see!”
She lifted a hand and pointed majestically. Every eye followed the direction indicated by that dramatic forefinger. A star gleamed brightly in the southern sky, a single star in a desert of black.
“That is the star of Oliver October Baxter. He was born under that star and, God help us all, I fear he has died beneath it. Out of all the great and endless firmament, that one star reveals itself to-night. Slink home, assassins! Murderers all! May the curse of that shining star fall upon ye—now, henceforth and forever! May ye never escape from the light of that great accusing eye, looking down upon you from Heaven! Slink home to your wives and children and tell them what ye have done this night!”
But the mob stood rooted to the ground. A sudden shout went up from those in the front rank—a strange shout of relief.
Oliver October was struggling to his feet, assisted by Jane and Lansing. His arms, released from their bonds, were thrown across their shoulders, his chin was high, he was coughing violently.
“He’s all right!” yelled a man, and started eagerly forward only to fall back as Jane Sage held up her hand and screamed:
“Keep away! You will have to kill me before you can touch him again, you beasts!”
“Aw, I only want to help get him into the car—”
“Stand back!” commanded Lansing. “We don’t need your help.”
Three or four eager voices cried out shakily and in unison:
“Take him to a doctor’s!”
Then a tenser silence than before fell over the scene, for Jane was crying:
“Are you all right, Oliver? Can you speak? What is it, dearest? What are you trying to say?”
“Don’t try to speak yet, Baxter,” cautioned Lansing. “Plenty of time. You’re all right. You’ll be yourself in a few minutes. Thank God, we got here when we did.”
“Keep quiet!” ordered a voice in the mob. “He wants to say something. He’s alive, and he wants to say something. Sh!”
“Drop that rope!” roared Sammy as one of the crowd left the circle and hastily reached for the rope. The fellow leaped back as if stung.
“I was only meanin’ to take it back to Ollie’s store,” he whined. “It belongs to him.”
“Take him to a doctor’s!” roared a dozen anxious men.
“Clear the road!” roared others.
“Slink back into the foul fastnesses of yon accursed swamp,” rang out the voice of the great Josephine Judge. They got Oliver into the forward car, where he huddled down between Jane and her mother. They heard him whisper hoarsely, jerkily:
“Never mind about me—I’m—all right. They won’t try—it again. Look after Aunt—Serepta first. She’s hurt. They left her—lying up—”
“Don’t worry, old top,” cried Sammy eagerly. “I’ll go back and look out for her. You go along with Doc. He’ll fix you up. All you need is a good stiff—”
“Clear the road!” roared a score of voices as Lansing’s car moved slowly forward, and off the sides, down the slope and up the bank, slunk the obedient lynchers. Down through the lane of men who carefully shielded their faces from the glare of the head-lights, Lansing’s car advanced. It picked up speed and soon the little red tail-light was lost to sight. Having watched it until it disappeared, the mob, as one man, turned its anxious eyes heavenward—not in supplication but for a somewhat surreptitious look at Oliver’s shining star. They stared open-mouthed. A miracle had happened. The sky was full of merry, twinkling little stars—and more, like fairies, came out to play and dance even as the watchers below gazed up in wonder.
Two men slouched side-by-side behind all the others as the once bloodthirsty horde bore off swiftly, apprehensively, but still dubiously through the night which now seemed to mock them with its silence. One of these men said to the other:
“I’ve worked in that store for twenty-two years. Where the dickens do you suppose I’ll find another job at my age?”
“You won’t need one,” said the other gloomily, “if my prophecy comes true.”
“Your prophecy? What are you talking about?”
“I prophesy we’ll all be in jail for this night’s work.”
A long silence. “Well,” said the other, “old man Sikes and Silas Link can rest in peace from now on. He’s been hung.”
“Yep. He’s out of all his troubles and ours are just beginning. I guess it must have been a lucky star he was born under.”
An hour later Sammy Parr expressed himself somewhat irrelevantly in the parsonage sitting-room.
“Say, Miss Judge, you were great. I never heard anything like that speech of yours. And your voice—why, it gave me the queerest kind of shivers.”
Josephine was pacing the floor, her fine brow knitted in thought. She was muttering to herself. Oliver, lying on a couch, smiled up into Jane’s lovely eyes. She sat beside him, holding his hand in both of hers. Serepta Grimes, having stubbornly refused to go to bed, sat in a morris chair across the room and, perhaps for the first time in her long life, was being forced to accept her own medicine at the hands of a suddenly important Samaritan in the person of Lizzie Meggs, who, without rime or reason, had been plying her with aromatic spirits of ammonia for the better part of an hour, reserving to herself the diminishing contents of a silver hip-flask produced by the efficient Mr. Parr. The Reverend Mr. Sage stood apart with Dr. Lansing, deep in a low-voiced argument as to whether God or man, Providence or science, had saved the life of Oliver October. In the crook of the parson’s arm snuggled Henry the Eighth, who, between intermittent fits of dozing, licked the hand that had spanked devotion into him.
Miss Judge paused.
“It was rather good, wasn’t it?” she observed. “I am trying to fix that speech in my mind. I shall have a play written around it. I know the very man who can do it. He has been eager to write a play for me. I shall telegraph him to-morrow to come to Rumley at once. In my mind’s eye I can visualize that remarkable scene, I can—”
“Josephine!” cried Mr. Sage, aghast. “You are not thinking of going back—going back—”
She held up her hand. “Not to London, old thing—not to London. It is possible I may consent to make a farewell tour of America. Sarah Bernhardt, Ellen Terry—why not I? My own company—”
At this juncture, Oliver sat up and claimed the audience.
“Sammy,” he cried out thickly but with the ring of enthusiasm in his voice, “do me a favor, will you?”
“Sure,” cried Sammy, springing to his feet.
“Stand up with me. I’m going to be married. I’ve been best man for you twice—”
“Great!” cried Sammy. “I’ll not only stand up with you, old boy, but I’ll let you lean on me.”
“Now?” gasped Serepta Grimes, in great agitation.
“At once,” declared Oliver, struggling to his feet. “I came near to losing her to-night. I’ll take no more chances.”
“Yes—now!” cried Jane softly, and for the first time that night the color came back to her cheeks.
CHAPTER XXV
Horace Gooch was going to bed. He had had a hard day, and it was nine o’clock. He had a notion he was not likely to sleep very well. The sheriff of the county had telephoned earlier in the evening—in fact, he was at supper—that a body had been found in one of the marsh pools. The news rather took his appetite away. He had a weak and treacherous stomach to begin with, and the mere thought of going over to Rumley in the morning to see if he could identify the grewsome object caused him to suddenly realize that he had a much weaker stomach than he had ever suspected before. He had, besides, an absurd notion that he was going to be haunted all night long by the ghastly remains of his brother-in-law.
While he always had contended that Oliver Baxter did not have much of a head to speak of, the fact that it had been split wide open with an ax or something of the sort was very likely to cause him to see things even with his eyes closed and the bedroom in pitch darkness. He decided to leave the light burning in his room, and then, after further deliberation, concluded, that as long as it had to be lit anyway it would be a very sensible thing on his part if he were to put in the time reading instead of wasting electricity.
Mr. Gooch slept in a night-shirt. He didn’t believe in new-fangled things. He was a plain man. No frills for him.
The windows of his bedroom looked out on to an extensive lawn, formerly a rather pretentious and well-kept half-acre but now unkempt, weedy and in a state of dire neglect. Mr. Gooch had cunningly allowed his yard to fall into a sort of groveling, imploring decrepitude, indicative of poverty rather than parsimony. He wanted the voters to understand that he was by no means as rich as the unprincipled opposition said he was. He regarded it as a very telling piece of political strategy.
Before retiring to the large four-poster bed—which, now that he was a widower, seemed needlessly commodious and would have been disposed of long ago but for a thrifty far-sightedness that took into consideration the possibility that he might get married again—before retiring, he peeped out between the window curtains to see whether the arc light was burning at the street corner above. It was, and he experienced a singular sensation of relief. Then he put on his spectacles and got into bed. He had a book, a well-worn copy of “David Harum,” but he did not begin reading at once. He was thinking of the many dark and lonely nights old Oliver Baxter had spent in Death Swamp. It gave him a creepy feeling. He tucked the covers a little more tightly under his chin—but still the creepy feeling persisted.
Just as he was beginning to wish that they had not found his unfortunate brother-in-law, a pleasant and agreeable alternative presented itself and he noticed an immediate increase of warmth in his veins. Strange that he had not thought of it sooner. It was most consoling, after all, this finding of the corpus delicti. If they hadn’t found it he would have been obliged to pay all costs arising from the search and investigation. He had agreed to do so. But now that the “body of the crime” had been unearthed he would be relieved of this onerous obligation. The county would have to pay for everything. That was understood. He smiled a little, turned the covers down from his chin, and took up his book.
“Hey, Horace!”
He lay perfectly still for a few seconds, his eyes glued to the page. An icy chill, starting in his abdomen, spread all over him, slowly at first, then with consuming swiftness. He bit hard on his teeth to keep them from chattering. The voice sounded as if it were just outside his chamber window. He waited.
“Hey, Horace!”
A deep groan issued through Mr. Gooch’s stiffening lips. He shrank down into the bed and pulled the covers up over his head. He was haunted! There was no other voice in the world like it. He would know it among a million. Oliver Baxter had come to haunt him! He had a horrifying mental vision of the unforgettable figure of his brother-in-law floating in the air just outside—this changed instantly to an even more appalling spectacle: old Oliver emerging from his grave in the swamp and speeding through the black night to pay him a visit—with his skull split wide open—
Some one was knocking at the front door. Even through the thick bed-covers he could hear the sharp tapping—not the tapping of flesh-covered knuckles but of bare bones!
Mr. Gooch’s grizzled head popped out from beneath the covers. He remembered that his bedroom door was unlocked. Anybody—anythingcould walk right in—He climbed out of bed with a spryness that would have amazed him if he had been able to devote the slightest thought to it.
Again the voice, but this time reassuringly remote from his window-sill. He stopped irresolute half way to the door. If he waited long enough, he reasoned, the ghost would go away thinking he was not at home. There was not the slightest doubt that it was farther away now than when it spoke the first time. Besides there was something more or less human in this last cry from the night. It wasn’t at all spookish. It seemed to express wrath.
“All right! You can go to Jericho.”
Mr. Gooch went to the window. He was still shivering and he had a queer, unpleasant notion that his hair was wilting—a most astonishing sensation. He hesitated a moment, then boldly drew the curtains apart. The light from the arc light at the corner, fairly well-spent after traversing a couple of hundred feet, was of sufficient strength to flood the lawn with a dim radiance. A shadowy object half way down to the gate resolved itself into the figure of a man as Mr. Gooch gazed upon it with bewildered, incredulous eyes.
“Hello, Horace,” came wafting up to Mr. Gooch—apparently from this shadowy object. “That you? Say, open up and let me in.”
Mr. Gooch grasped the window frame for support.
“Good God!” he gulped, but in a voice so strange and hollow that he did not recognize it as his own. In a sudden panic he threw up the window and screeched—in an entirely different voice but equally as unrecognizable:
“Go away! Leave me alone!”
“Say, don’t you know who it is? It’s me.”
The figure drew nearer the house. At the same time Mr. Gooch stuck his head out of the window and bawled:
“Help! For God’s sake, somebody come and chase it away! Help!”
“What’s the matter with you, you darned old fool!” barked the indistinct visitor. “You’ll wake the dead, yelling like that.”
“Wake the dead!” repeated Mr. Gooch in a low, sepulchral voice.
“I’m Ollie Baxter. For goodness’ sake, Horace, don’t tell me you’ve forgotten your only brother-in-law. I—”
“Go away! You’re dead. I don’t want any dead people coming around here to—”
A shrill, lively cackle came up from the murk. Mr. Gooch clapped his hand to his forehead.
“Oh, Lord! Oh, Lord!” he groaned.
“Ain’t you going to let me in? I’m not going to ask you again, you darned old skinflint. I hate you anyhow, and always did—but I thought maybe after me being away for more than a year you’d be hospitable enough to—”
“Stop talking!” commanded Mr. Gooch. “You always did talk too much. Now, listen to me. Are you really alive?”
“Course I am. What ails you?”
“I don’t believe it. They found your body this afternoon.”
“You don’t say so!” gasped the object under the window.
“Horribly decayed,” added Mr. Gooch sternly.
“Well, I’ll be danged!”
“So you simplycan’tbe alive. Go away!”
“This is mighty queer. Are they positive it’s me?”
“Hey?”
“I mean are they sure it’s my body?”
“There’s no evidence to the contrary. Seems to be absolutely no doubt about it.”
“Well, well! Where did they find me?”
“You know as well as I do.”
“I don’t know anything of the kind. It’s news to me, Horace.”
“See here, Oliver, what’s the sense of lying to me? You know you’re dead and—”
“Well, suppose I am,” broke in the other irascibly; “that’s no reason why you should stick your head out of a window and tell the whole town of Hopkinsville about it. You come down here and let me in. I’ll derned soon show you I’m not dead. What’s more, I never have been dead. So they couldn’t have found my body.”
Mr. Gooch was now convinced. It was Oliver Baxter and he was very much alive.
“Well, what do you want?”
“I want to come in and spend the night with you, that’s what I want.”
“There’s a good hotel up on Jackson Street,” began Mr. Gooch, but curiosity getting the better of him he abruptly called out for Oliver to wait till he had put on his pants and he would come down and let him in.
As he hurriedly started to slip on his trousers he heard his brother-in-law whistling a strange and jaunty melody out in the yard. He never had heard anything like it before.
A sudden, desolating thought struck him as he sat on the edge of the bed. His trousers were but half on when the shock came. He knew not how long he sat there, powerless and inactive, staring at nothing. A shout from outside aroused him. He groaned and then slipped the other leg into his trousers.
Calamity! His cake was dough! The return of Oliver Baxter meant his political doom. Young Oliver, vindicated, would be carried into office by an unprecedented majority, riding serene and triumphant on a wave of popularity that would sweep all opposition before it. Somewhere back in his mind lurked a very distasteful phrase that ended with “cocked hat,” although he could not quite remember the rest of it. He could and did remember young Oliver’s campaign boast, for it was very recent and distinct and unnecessarily public. “Skin him alive” was the heathenish slogan.
As he descended the stairs he tried to think of some means to avert the calamity. He thought of locking his brother-in-law in the cellar and keeping him there until after election day. He wondered if he could persuade the old man—for a substantial cash consideration—to remain in seclusion or wander off again or—But, no; he had sunk too much money already, and there was still an additional thousand or two to be paid out for the search and—
He stopped suddenly, reeling as from a blow. The lighted candle, held almost directly in front of his face, witnessed a most astonishing transformation. Mr. Gooch’s harassed visage slowly lighted up; it became almost radiant. He hurried to the door and unbolted it quickly, for he was now afraid that old Oliver might have taken it into his head to disappear again!
He had just remembered Oliver October’s promise to pay him five thousand dollars in cash if he produced his father, dead or alive! He was actually smirking as he pressed the electric light button. The wind blew the candle out as he threw the door open.
“Come right in, Oliver,” he cried, quite heartily but still with a trace of apprehension. He had not recovered from his scare and half-expected Mr. Baxter to float past him into the hall.
A bent, disreputable-looking figure shuffled in, thumping his cane on the floor.
“Well, well!” exclaimed Mr. Gooch, holding the doorknob in one hand and the candle-stick in the other—making it obviously impossible for him to shake hands with what might after all turn out to be a cadaver. “You—you certainly gave me quite a scare.”
He peered narrowly, intently at the weather-beaten face of his wife’s brother. Old Oliver was looking around the hall as if inspecting a most unfamiliar place. Mr. Gooch, closing the door, risked a timid slap on the other’s shoulder, and was greatly relieved to find that it was solid. Mr. Baxter did not take kindly to this demonstration. He winced.
“Say, don’t do that,” he said. “I’ve got rheumatism in that shoulder. Comes from sleeping out in the open air a good bit of the time this fall.”
Mr. Gooch stepped back, the better to survey his brother-in-law’s person. There was every indication that Mr. Baxter had taken the precaution to sleep in his clothes pretty steadily all fall. They were wrinkled and dusty and hung limply, crookedly on his graceless frame. The coat collar was turned up and held tight to his throat by a thick red muffler. He wore a sad-looking green Homberg hat with a perky red feather sticking up from the band.
“Take off your muffler,” said Horace, desiring indisputable evidence.
“Oh, it’s there all right,” divined Mr. Baxter. “You can feel it if you don’t believe me. It’s just as well you didn’t offer to shake hands with me, Horace. I swore I’d never shake hands with you.”
“Come out to the kitchen,” said Gooch, scowling. “It’s warm there, and besides you might like a cup of hot coffee.”
“All I want is a bed to sleep in. I haven’t slept in a regular bed for the Lord knows how long. Thank God, I’ll be sleeping in my own to-morrow night.”
He followed the puzzled Mr. Gooch to the kitchen and at once drew a chair up to the stove.
“Where have you been all this time?” murmured Horace, generously replenishing the fire.
“Oh—traveling,” said Mr. Baxter casually. He removed his hat and placed it on the floor beside the chair.
Mr. Gooch leaned over and scrutinized the top of his guest’s head. Then he deliberately felt of it.
“What are you doing?” demanded Mr. Baxter sharply.
“Oh—I was just wondering if—But never mind. Now, Ollie, tell me all about yourself. We’ve been hunting for you all over the—”
Oliver’s cackle interrupted him.
“Like chasing a flea, wasn’t it?” he chuckled. “Before we go any farther,” he went on seriously, “tell me about my boy Oliver. How is he? Hasn’t been hung yet, has he?”
“Not yet,” said Mr. Gooch sententiously. He placed a chair on the opposite side of the stove and sat down.
“Well, he’s in no danger now,” said Mr. Baxter. “And what’s more, he never was in any danger of being hung. That gypsy woman lied.”
“That’s what I said at the time. Didn’t I tell you what a darned fool you were?”
“How’s my boy, and where is he? I telephoned him three times to-night but the doggoned system’s always out of order. Couldn’t get any answer.”
“He’s over in Rumley,” said Mr. Gooch shortly. “I guess he’s all right. Leastwise he was up to this evening.”
“That’s good. By glory, I’ll be glad to see him. I’ve got some great news for him. Took me over a year to get it and cost me a lot of money, but it was worth it. My mind is at rest. Say, do you know I’ve been from one end of this country to the other? On the go every minute of the time. It wasn’t till about a month ago that I run across the right band.”
“Band?”
“Yep. Band. Struck ’em over in eastern Ohio. I guess I must have tracked down seventy-five or a hundred bands before I got the right one.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Gypsies,” said Mr. Baxter briefly, holding his gnarled red hands out to the fire. “You said something about coffee, Horace.”
Mr. Gooch eyed him fearfully for a few moments.
“Crazy as a loon,” he muttered.
“Who? Me?”
“No, no!” cried Mr. Gooch hastily. “Don’t get excited now, Ollie. Keep calm. I’ll put the coffee pot on right away. Just you keep quiet—”
“Is that what you were feeling my head for?” demanded Mr. Baxter shrewdly.
“Not at all, not at all, just—affection, Ollie.”
“Umph! Well, I’m not crazy—not on your life. Hurry up with that coffee. Mind if I light my pipe?”
“Certainly not. Go ahead,” urged Mr. Gooch, whose antipathy to tobacco was so pronounced that no one ever thought of smoking in his house.
Mr. Baxter stretched out his wrinkled legs, and filled his pipe and lit it, all the while keeping his keen little eyes on his brother-in-law. Mr. Gooch splashed considerable water upon the hot stove as he filled the coffee pot. The visitor seemed to find pleasure in exhaling great clouds of rank-smelling smoke.
“Yes, sir,” he began presently; “I hunted this country over before I found her. She remembered everything. She even remembered you, Horace.” He cackled. “I’d hate to tell you what she said about you.”
Mr. Gooch was silent.
“It took me nearly two weeks to get her to admit that she lied,” went on Mr. Baxter. “And I guess she wouldn’t have done it then if I hadn’t offered her a hundred dollars to tell the truth. You see, Horace, it was this way. As my boy Oliver grew up to be a man I realized that she had lied dreadfully about one thing, so that set me to thinking that she must have lied about others. She said he would grow up to be the living image of his father. Well, he didn’t. He’s a hundred per cent better looking than I am or ever was. That’s a fact, ain’t it?”
“Are you talking about the gypsy who told his fortune?” inquired Mr. Gooch, comprehending at last.
“Yes. Queen Marguerite. Mrs. Tobias Spink in private. One of the most interesting queens I’ve ever met, and, by gosh, I’ve met a lot of ’em in my travels. As I was saying, I got it into my head that if she could be wrong about Oliver looking like me she could have been wrong about everything else. So I made up my mind to find her and—”
“Sothat’swhat you’ve been up to, you blamed old idiot!” exclaimed Mr. Gooch. “Sneaking away and leaving everybody to wonder what had become of you. You ought to be cow-hided, Oliver Baxter. All the trouble and anxiety and worry you’ve caused me and your son and everybody else! All the money your son spent looking for you—to say nothing of what I’ve spent myself lately. Why, you old—”
“Keep your shirt on, Horace,” advised Oliver blandly. “Don’t get excited. I just had to do it. I couldn’t stand it any longer. I would have lost my mind long before Oliver was thirty if I had sat around waiting for a year and more to see if he was really going to be hung. Besides, it’s none of your business anyhow. You say Oliver spent a lot of money trying to find me?” He put the question eagerly, wistfully.
“And so did I,” snapped Mr. Gooch. “I’m not saying Oliver spent his own money. He probably—”
“I don’t care whose money he spent,” cried Mr. Baxter joyously. “I’ll pay back all that you spent, so don’t you worry, you derned old skinflint. Every nickel of it.”
“You will?” cried Mr. Gooch. “Is that a promise?”
“Certainly. And my word is as good as my bond,” said Mr. Baxter proudly.
“I’ve always said you were an absolutely honest man, Oliver,” said Mr. Gooch ingratiatingly. “Never knew you to go back on your word. If you say you’ll pay, I know you will.”
“Figure it up and let me know,” said Mr. Baxter. “I guess my business is still prospering. I had a kind of notion Oliver October would step in and take hold of it in my place after I went away, so—But never mind about that. Yes, sir, I finally got the queen to confess thateverythingshe said that night was false. She wanted two hundred, but I wouldn’t give it. Said she was ruining herself by confessing, and all that. Oliver ain’t going to be hung any more than you or I. All spite work, she says. Got mad at all of us. He’s not even going to be a general in the army, or a great and successful business man, or enter the halls of state, or—”
“What’s that?” demanded Mr. Gooch quickly, hopefully.
“—or look exactly like me,” concluded Mr. Baxter. “She’s going to make an affidavit to it soon as we get to Rumley to-morrow.”
Mr. Gooch started, casting an anxious look toward the kitchen door.
“Say, you—you don’t mean to tell me you’ve got her with you,” he rasped. “If that’s so, I want to tell you right now, Ollie Baxter, I won’t have you bringing any strange women into my house. My house is a respectable—”
“She’s out at the camp,” interrupted Mr. Baxter. “We’ve camped just south of town. I’ve been sleeping with her father for nearly a month—on rainy nights, I mean, when we had to get into the caravan. His name is Wattles. Eighty years old and still the best horsetrader in the tribe.”
Mr. Gooch groaned.
“I’ll fix up the sofa in the parlor for you to sleep on, Ollie,” he said after a long and thoughtful pause. “The bed in the spare room isn’t made up. In fact, it’s down altogether—being repaired,” he went on lamely.
“You’ve got a double bed in your room, haven’t you?” said Mr. Baxter.
“Well, it’s boiling at last,” evaded Mr. Gooch. “Now, we’ll have some nice hot coffee. Like it pretty strong?”
“Middling,” said Mr. Baxter reproachfully. “I was counting on sleeping in a nice, warm, soft bed to-night, Horace.”
His host pondered. “I was just thinking that maybe I could bring down a mattress from the attic, Ollie, and fix you up in the hall just outside my bedroom door. I’ll leave the door open. Plenty of blankets and—”
“All right, all right,” broke in Mr. Baxter, and gulped down some of the hot coffee. “I want to get an early start to-morrow morning, so you don’t need to mind about giving me a breakfast. We figure on getting away a little after sunrise.”
His host remonstrated. “I won’t listen to it,” he said. “You will go over to Rumley with me in my car just as soon as we’ve had breakfast. Your friends—I mean the gypsies—can follow along later. Not another word, old boy. I insist on it. You will want to see your son as soon as possible. I have to go to Rumley in the morning anyway.” He hesitated a moment, eyeing his guest keenly, and then proceeded: “Although I guess it won’t be necessary for me to look at that—Ahem! Ah—er—I was just wondering whose body it is, since it can’t possibly be yours. The one they found in the swamp yesterday, I mean.”
Mr. Baxter checked a yawn to inquire with sudden interest: “In the swamp, eh? Out in one of the pools? Well, by ginger!” He started up from his chair in a state of great excitement. “Why, it must be Tom Sharp’s body. Of all the—”
“Tom Sharp? Who is Tom Sharp? Besides, it isn’t a body. It’s a skeleton, so they say—with its head split open.”
“Tom Sharp,” declared Mr. Baxter with conviction. “Old Wattles told me all about it. Tom Sharp was killed with an ax right out there on the edge of the swamp thirty years ago. Same night the queen came to my house. He—”
“Can’t be,” broke in Mr. Gooch. “The doctors say this fellow has been dead only a year or so.”
“How does anybody know how long a skeleton has been dead?” demanded Mr. Baxter severely. “Of course it’s Tom Sharp. He got smashed over the head with an ax that night by another gypsy whose wife he had run away with. The husband caught up with him at Rumley, after chasing him for months. It’s against the gypsy law for a man to steal another man’s wife. So they never said anything about the killing. Just took Tom Sharp out in the swamp and—er—sort of left him. The fellow that killed him joined the band and went back to living with his wife, who was a girl named Magda. Maybe you recollect her. She was up to my house that night. Her husband died five or six years ago. His widow—Say, Horace, if they think that body is mine, who is supposed to have killed me?”
Mr. Gooch experienced a strange and unsuspected softening of the heart.
“A man that used to work around your place,” said he, after a moment’s hesitation. “He skipped out a few weeks ago,” he added, generously enlarging upon the lie.
Silence fell between them. Mr. Baxter was thinking profoundly, his brow wrinkled, his eyes fixed on one of his bony hands.
“Just so it wasn’t—Oliver,” he said at last, swallowing hard. He had removed the gaudy muffler. His Adam’s apple rose and fell twice convulsively. “I’d hate to have people think he did it.”
“Your pipe’s gone out, Ollie,” said Mr. Gooch brusquely.
“You can’t blame it,” sighed Mr. Baxter, yawning again. “I’m too tired to keep it going.”
Horace busied himself about the stove and at the sink over by the window.
“I guess you won’t mind my asking a question, Ollie,” he said, turning to his brother-in-law. “Seeing that you hate me, what put it into your head to come here to-night and ask for lodging in my house, knowing that I hate you as much as you do me—or more?”
“Well, you see,” began Mr. Baxter, very wistfully and yet shamefacedly, “I’ve been among strangers for so long, Horace, and I’ve been so homesick for some of my own folks that I—well, I sort of felt I’d like to see even you.”
Mr. Gooch pulled at his whiskers for a long time.
“Come to think of it, Ollie,” he said, rather loudly, due to the discovery that the other was having great difficulty in keeping his eyes open, “I guess I’ll have you sleep in that big feather bed in the—er—in my second spare room. How will that suit you? And I’ll let you have a nice, fresh night-shirt. Come along. Better get to bed.”
Mr. Baxter looked at him in a sort of mild, sleepy wonder.
“Why, you’re not half as stingy as I thought you’d be,” said he slowly.
“Anybody that says I am stingy don’t know what he’s talking about,” said Mr. Gooch magnificently.
He escorted his guest up the back stairs and ushered him into the one and only spare room the house afforded.
“Get undressed, Ollie,” said he. “I’ll be back in a minute with the night-shirt.”
He hurried off to his own room. As he opened the door he stopped—aghast.
“Darn my fool hide!” he grated under his breath. “I left that light burning and it’s been going all the time I was downstairs.”
THE END