CHAPTER XVIIILON DISCUSSES CROOKED THINKING
Perhaps you have had the trying and distressing experience of discovering, of a sudden and without warning, that what you devoutly had hoped was a closely guarded secret appeared to be no secret at all. If you have suffered such a shock, you will understand Sam’s sensations. The unfortunate affair of Marlow woods was by no means ancient history, but gossip about it had dwindled, and he had come to believe that the town had set it down as one of those mysteries which never are solved. Yet here was Lon, referring to it as nonchalantly as if it were matter of common knowledge!
For a moment Sam stared, wide eyed and open mouthed, at his ally. Mentally and physically he was overcome. Speech failed him, and he sank weakly upon a feed-box, beside which he had been standing.
There was a touch of sympathy in Lon’smanner. “Sorry if I’ve rubbed your fur the wrong way, Sam. Course, though, when you asked me——”
Sam found tongue. “How did you know? Who told you?”
“Lot o’ folks.”
“A lot!” gasped Sam.
“Yep; a lot. Bill Marlow, and your father, and Maggie, and the Major, and you——”
“Me!” In his amazement Sam was careless of grammar. “Me? Why, I never breathed a syllable!”
Lon grinned. “Wal, you wa’n’t exactly chatty; that’s a fact. But I guess ’twas the things you didn’t say that told me most. Same way with your father. Didn’t know, did you, that I saw him one mornin’ swabbin’ out that gun of his? And he hadn’t been huntin’, and he wasn’t goin’ huntin’. Then there was Maggie. One day we was discussin’ your life and public services, and I sorter gloomed about you, and she flew at me like a hen protectin’ her last chick from a hawk; and then I knew well enough you’d been in some particular big scrape, and she knew, orguessed, more or less what ’twas. Then there was the Major——”
“The Major!”
“Sure! ’Nother case of what you might call eloquent silence. When he turned Peter Groche loose, what more did he do? Nothin’! What more did he say? Nothin’! And the Major ain’t the party to let somebody put a few buckshot into him and grin and bear it uncomplainin’. He’d ’a’ railroaded Peter Groche to jail with all the pleasure in life, and he’d ’a’ done the same thing to any other man that played he was an old buck. But the Major’s a good sport, after all; he hates to fuss with anybody that ain’t his size. See where the argyment’s leadin’, don’t you? So, when you ’fessed up——”
“When I ’fessed up!” Sam seemed to be capable of nothing but repetitions.
Lon chuckled a bit complacently. “Wal, Sam, that’s where I’m on dead reckonin’. But when I’d chewed it all over a few times, it struck me that you was jest the kind of a feller to own up when you saw somebody else was in trouble for what you’d done; and that the Major was jest the old hardshell to betickled by your givin’ a square deal to that miserable critter, Groche. Course, I’ve kept my eyes and ears open, and I’ve been down town nights, and I’ve talked with folks, and I’ve picked up little things here and there that fitted together. And so I got four, not by puttin’ two with two, but by addin’ an eighth, and three-sixteenths, and a half, and three-quarters, and so on and so on. And—wal, that’s about all of that chapter.”
“Lon, you’re a wonder!”
“Pretty nigh right, wa’n’t I?”
“Nearer than that.”
“Wal, you see, I knew one Sam Parker like a book. And when something happened one mornin’, and he dodged talkin’ about where he was jest then or what he was doin’—wal, I had a mighty good start on Shylock Holmesin’.”
“Sherlock Holmesing,” Sam corrected mechanically.
“Same family, anyhow.”
There was a pause. Then said Sam:
“Lon, I didn’t wish to keep the truth from you especially. If I’d talked about the affair, there’s nobody who’d have heard more aboutit than you would. But I was advised not to confide in anybody.”
Lon nodded. “Right enough! And I wouldn’t have yipped if, somehow, things hadn’t worked around as they have. And I jest had to let the cat out o’ the bag if I was goin’ to point out the dog I believe has been snappin’ at us. You want to find out who ’tis I suspect, don’t you?”
“Most certainly!”
“Peter Groche!” said Lon emphatically.
“Peter—Peter Groche?” Astonishment again possessed Sam. “Why—why should he have a grudge against me? Didn’t I save him? Didn’t I keep him out of jail? Didn’t they have what seemed to be a complete case against him?”
“Like enough.”
“Then, too,” urged Sam, “he could have had no notion that I was mixed up in the case. The Major didn’t tell him; nobody else told him. But if he had known, he ought to have been grateful. Either way the thing isn’t reasonable.”
“Huh! Peter ain’t, neither!” grunted Lon.
“But what’s that got to do with——”
“HOLD HARD, THERE!”
“HOLD HARD, THERE!”
“HOLD HARD, THERE!”
Lon loved an argument.“Hold hard, there!” said he. “To get at things you’ve got to start right. And it ain’t startin’ right to talk about Peter Groche and reasonable things in the same breath. Look here, now!” Lon picked up an empty liniment bottle, and stood it on its neck; whereupon the bottle fell over on its side. “See what’s happened, don’t you?”
“But it was upside down.”
“Exactly! But that’s the way with Peter Groche—with his brains, I mean. Your mistake is tryin’ to figure on him as a reasonable bein’. But Groche, for years and years, has been like that bottle—all upside down. He’s been carousin’, and loafin’, and stealin’. All his thinkin’ has got warped, and twisted, and crooked.”
“Then he’s crazy!”
“Not quite that. But he ain’t what folks call normal. Oh, I know the breed!”
Sam racked his memory. “You mean he’s a—a degenerate?” he queried.
“That’s the ticket! He’s like pizen ivy: he began by bein’ no good, and he’s got wussand more of a nuisance the more he spreads out.”
Sam shook his head doubtfully. “All the same, I don’t follow your argument, Lon. If there’s anything to it, we’d have to figure that Peter had some cause to suppose I was in the scrape; for we might as well drop the notion that, all of a sudden, he’d begin to persecute me, unless he had some tip. But I’ve told you I’m sure nobody gave him one. And as I didn’t see him in the woods, he wouldn’t have seen me there.”
“You can’t prove that,” Lon declared. “He’s an old hand at deer huntin’, out o’ season as well as in; and he keeps his eyes peeled mighty sharp. It’s ten to one he had a peek at you, and knew within five rods where you were, when the Major was hit. So it was an easy guess for him, when he was arrested, that you’d figgered in the combination.”
“But——” Sam began.
Lon interrupted him. “You listen, son! I’ll bet you he not only saw you, but believed you saw him. And he was keepin’ tabs on you and on the Major, too—’tain’t a bad idea,at that, for anybody in the woods in the deer season to watch his neighbors and what they’re about. Wal, then, we have Peter, as keen as a weasel, and full as vicious—we have him, I say, with his eyes and ears busy. Bang! goes your gun. Peter hears it. He waits for what’ll happen—always a chance that if you’ve really sighted a buck, the critter may come his way. Wal, again, in a minute or two, something does come, but it ain’t nothin’ on four legs. It’s the Major, and the Major’s fightin’ mad. Somebody’s winged him, and he thinks it’s Peter; but Peter don’t need no map to show where you come in.”
“But I——”
“Let me finish! Peter, bein’ Peter, acts accordin’. He jumps to a conclusion—and that’s that you’ve done what he’d do himself, if he was in your shoes. He figgers you’ve blazed away, and run up to find a dead deer, and come on the Major, dazed and ragin’, and grabbed the chance to put the blame off on somebody else. He credits you with knowin’ the reputation of the Groche fam’ly hereabouts, and with settin’ the Major on a false trail that leads straight to one Peter o’ that name. Then,havin’ set the Major goin’, you vamoose—and that’s what Peter Groche would ’a’ done himself, if he’d been in your fix. What say to that, Sam?”
“I—I don’t know what to say. Only, when the sheriff arrested him, why didn’t he deny——”
Once more Lon stopped the boy in mid-sentence. “There you go again—forgettin’ Peter ain’t like most folks! It’s where the crooked thinkin’—and the crooked livin’—comes in. The Major’s in a passion, and Peter has jawed back till he’s ’bout as mad himself. Most likely the sheriff can’t make head nor tail o’ what he’s growlin’. And Peter’s got his reputation, and everybody knows he’s made threats against the Major, and one barrel of his gun has been fired. So the sheriff thinks it’s a pretty clear case, and loads Peter in his wagon, and hauls him to the lock-up. By that time Peter, mebbe, has been workin’ his crooked wits. He sees well enough nobody’d believe him just then if he said he didn’t do it, so he doesn’t waste his breath that way. And mebbe, too, he gets a notion the case against him won’t be so all-firedconvincin’ when it comes to a trial, the evidence bein’ circumstantial, you see. Perhaps he’s schemin’ for damages for false arrest—and then, all of a sudden, they turn him loose. And so he skulks off, with a grudge against everybody, but a particular one against Sam Parker, Esq., who, he believes, lied about him to save himself. Sense, ain’t it—Peter’s kind o’ sense, that is?”
Sam pondered. “Why—why—perhaps.”
Lon wagged his head sagely. “Wal, I’m tellin’ you, Sam, a grudge is jest the one thing in this life Peter’ll live up to. He means to take it out o’ your hide. Now, when things went wrong about the place, and kept on goin’ wrong, and I saw they weren’t due to your footlessness, I had half a notion some kid might be at the bottom of the trouble. But then I began to miss things from the barn—a spare bit, then a wrench, then a new sponge; and I’ll admit that did sort o’ suggest Groche’s manners. And weren’t you tellin’ me a while ago that one of your crowd figgered it out that no boy could have chucked that boulder through your club-house window? Wal, Groche could ’a’ done it. He’s as strongas an ox, confound him! Come now! Piece it all together, and own up it makes quite a case!”
“Perhaps it does,” Sam admitted.
“But I don’t convince you completely?”
Sam hesitated. “Why—why, I don’t know, Lon. I’ve had a lot of jolts to-day, and I’ve got to do some thinking before I can be sure of anybody.... Or of anything!” he added, after an instant’s pause.