Chapter III: Part 3

It was true that Mr. Tutt had not scored heavily since he had failed in his most important attempt--that is, to corroborate through the sheriff’s testimony the general accuracy of the hermit’s timepiece, but he had at least secured an official recommendation for Skinny’s character and he had got Squire Mason quarreling with one of his principal witnesses. That was a good deal. Incidentally, although it got by him at the moment, he had gained something else, the importance of which did not appear until later. Still, nothing made any real difference, one way or another, so long as he had a perfect alibi for Skinny safely tucked away in his sleeve. In the feeling of confidence engendered by this knowledge--and in the delight of having set the prosecutor at logger heads with the sheriff--Mr. Tutt’s spirits rose to such a degree that he became positively playful--as light-hearted as a colt loosed in a clover-field. Alas that legal pride is so often doomed to fall! That the happiness of one moment in the court room is so often the despair of the next! Alas for the colt who feels his oats--for he is sure to kick himself into some sort of a tangle!

Mr. Tutt pleased as Punch with the case, chatted gaily with the jury and assured Skinny that he would have him out and walking the street in forty-eight hours--a free man. So elated was he that he gave only perfunctory attention to the prosecution’s other witnesses, until the boots worn by the defendant when arrested were put in evidence and Mr. Pennypacker was called to identify his photographic enlargement of the footprints in the hermit’s vegetable patch. No, there wasn’t the shadow of a doubt about it--they were Skinny’s footprints! Yet, however interesting that fact might seem to the jury, Mr. Tutt rested secure in the knowledge that his client must have been far away from there when the hermit had been killed.

Mr. Pennypacker seemed a pleasant sort of person and Mr. Tutt having nothing better to do proceeded to engage him in agreeable conversation. What time had he taken the photographs? About six o’clock. Rather dark? Not particularly, but of course he had had to make a time exposure. How long? Thirty seconds. How many exposures did he make? Four. How many plates had he brought with him? A dozen. Did he use the other plates for anything?

Mr. Pennypacker nodded.

“I photographed the interior of the shanty.”

“Ah!” exclaimed Mr. Tutt eagerly.

No photograph could harm him. Nothing could hurt him now! Why had not Mason put them in evidence?

“Have you the prints with you?”

Mr. Pennypacker affably leaned over and produced them from a package beside him, and Mr. Tutt saw a chance for one of those grand-stand plays so dear to the heart of the trial lawyer.

“I offer them in evidence,” said he with a glance at the jury. “I don’t know why Squire Mason didn’t put them in, but--whatever his reasons may have been--_I’ll_ put them in--and we’ll see what we can find! Now”--as the stenographer finished marking the prints--“you say you took these pictures within two hours of the murder, do you?”

“Yes,” answered Mr. Pennypacker. “But I had to give them a ten minute exposure!”

Mr. Tutt picked one of them up and glanced at it. Then he suddenly turned faint. What an everlasting fool he had been! With the utmost difficulty he controlled himself.

“Thank you very much, Mr. Pennypacker!” he said with a forced smile. “Thank you very much! They are most excellent and artistic photographs! That is all!”

Mr. Tutt sank back and gazed dreamily out of the court room window through which he could see the weather-cock on the Baptist steeple. Just as he looked at it some draught of air caused it to veer suddenly. He had a queer feeling in the pit of his stomach. Those photographs held no interest for him--far from it! Curse them and the man who had taken them!

For the photographs--although taken at the hour of six--all showed the hands of the clock as still pointing to four! Either it had been out of order or had run down before the homicide and hence as evidence of the hour of the murder was no value whatsoever. Mr. Tutt by putting the photographs in evidence had destroyed the alibi that his original question had so unexpectedly established!

One hope only remained. The jury had not yet seen the photographs. Was it humanly possible that Squire Mason had not noticed the hands of the clock at all?

Just then Judge Tompkins said pleasantly:

“I think, gentlemen, that this is a good time to adjourn court until to-morrow morning.”

III

“So like an arrow swift he flew
Shot by an archer strong,
So did he fly--which brings me to
The middle of my song!”
--John Gilpin.

Somewhere there is a story of terror--done after the manner of Edgar Allan Poe--in which the hero during a deadly plague from which none who are stricken ever survive discovers to his horror that in the night the fatal mark has appeared under his arm, and that he is among the doomed. His terror and despair are shared by the reader, as well as his ecstatic relief and joy when he awakes to find that he has been dreaming. Then for the mere idle satisfaction of disabusing himself of what are no longer his fears he looks beneath his arm only to find that the deadly mark is in fact there! The agony of this discovery is doubly intensified by reason of its following immediately upon a state of rapturous exaltation.

Highly similar to those of the Spanish victim in the tale in question were those of Mr. Tutt in discovering that just as, by violating the canons of experience, he had asked a question by virtue of which he had created an unforeseen but conclusive alibi for his client, he had now, by asking another, rendered that alibi of no avail. Never in his experience had he suffered so staggering a blow. Why had he asked that fatal question? What imp of Hades had whispered to him that there was something in those photographs which Mason desired to conceal? It had been all a trick, a clever “springe to catch a woodcock,” a nicely baited trap into which he had innocently hopped like an unsuspecting rabbit. In setting it Mason had not taken a single chance, for, if Mr. Tutt had not seen fit to offer the photograph in evidence when he did, the prosecutor, having waited until the conclusion of the defendant’s case and until Mr. Tutt had attempted to establish his alibi by proving that Skinny was in Pottsville at four o’clock, would have then handed them to the jury and shown that in effect the clock by which Emerson had fixed the hour of the shooting as likewise four was in effect not a clock at all--and knocked that alibi higher than the Baptist weathercock. What a fool! What a confounded, inexcusable ass, idiot and nincompoop he had been! Poor old Mr. Tutt’s theories were all annihilated at once. This wretched murder case was putting every principle of tactics upon the everlasting blink. You ought to cross-examine; you ought not to cross-examine; you ought not to leave well enough alone; you ought to leave well enough alone. The only guide left in the legal firmament was that fixed but not particularly useful pole star of “You never can tell!”

Judge Tompkins arose, bowed and left the bench. Sheriff Higgins let down the bar of the jury box and the twelve good and true men gathered up their newspapers and hats and filed after him like a straggling flock of sheep, down the steps and across Main Street to the Phoenix House, their temporary place of sojourn while the guests of the People of the State of New York. Many were the envious glances cast upon their disappearing backs as the less fortunate agriculturalists prepared to return to their distant farm houses. Gol ding it! Those cusses not only had reserved seats for the whole blame show but were gettin’ paid three dollars a day into the bargain! Gosh darn it all! Some fellers did hev the luck! Hist back thar, Dobbin, and get yer tail off’n that shaft!

Then the sheriff returned for Skinny and led him away to the calaboose, and the crowd which had lingered to observe and comment upon the defendant’s appearance and demeanor slowly dispersed, leaving Mr. Tutt alone in the otherwise empty courtroom. Old enough before, he had aged considerably during the last three minutes of the trial. Mr. Tutt was suffering from fear--abject fear--of what now seemed the inevitable fate of his client. In the face of the evidence against him his mere denial that he had not killed the hermit would go for nothing. His salvation seemed impossible save through the rehabilitation of his alibi and, as only one person had heard the shot, it was only through that person that the time of the homicide could be established. It now appeared that that same witness who had testified to Mr. Tutt’s indescribable joy that the hour was four o’clock, had been looking at the motionless face of a piece of dead mechanism that might not have been moving for months! Bitterly he reproached himself that he had not combed Emerson’s recollection until no item remained undisclosed, for it was possible--just conceivable--that the witness might have had some other data upon which to predicate the hour of the crime. If so, it must of necessity be corroborative of the clock, since Emerson had expressed himself positively as to the hour. Thus, as Mr. Tutt now perceived--but which had escaped him at the moment in his excitement over establishing his alibi--he would have had nothing to lose by pursuing his interrogation of the witness indefinitely, since he was safe as to the element of time, and there was nothing else in his testimony which under cross-examination could be made any more damaging to the defendant than it already was. Was it too late to recall Emerson to the stand in the desperate hope that in some other way he might still substantiate the hour as four o’clock? Perhaps he had looked at his watch. Perhaps there had been another clock in the shanty. “You never could tell!” At any rate he must be found and the court’s permission obtained to recall him to the stand and re-examine him. But it was at best a long, long chance--a hundred--a thousand!--to-one shot.

It was already a quarter after five and Sam Bellows, the stout under sheriff, was jingling his keys in the hallway as a polite intimation to the solitary occupant of the court room that it was time to lock up. Mr. Tutt pushed his books and papers into a muddled heap and put on his stovepipe hat. He did not need to study his notes. There was only one point in the case--and it had got by him! There was only one hope--no more tangible than the half-suspected presence of a star in the obscurity of a foggy night.

“Good night, Mr. Tutt!” said Sam amiably as the lawyer walked out with leaden steps.

“Good night, Mr. Bellows!” responded the old man. Then he paused. “By the way,” he asked. “Do you know where the witness Charles Emerson lives?”

Mr. Bellows leaned against the wall and scratched his head politely.

“Well,” he opined, “bein’ he ain’t a married man, he ain’t got no reg’lar place of residence. Most allus--when it’s goin’--he sleeps over to the steam sawmill.”

“Well, I’d like very much to see him. Do you know where he may be found?”

Sam tilted his hat to the back of his thatched skull and then by an automatic return movement pushed it forward again over his forehead.

“He’s gone off.”

“Gone!” exclaimed Mr. Tutt, his heart sinking. “Where?”

“Well, after you gentlemen said you didn’t need him no more yisterday an’ the jedge said he could go, I hearn him say he was goin’ to take a job up Orient way. So he beat it--took the train up there last evenin’.”

“How far is it?” demanded Mr. Tutt desperately.

“’Bout seventy miles.”

“Is there a train to-night?”

“It leaves at four o’clock--when it’s on time. It’s gone!”

Mr. Tutt nervously bit off the end of a stogy.

“Do you know the name of the man for whom he went to work?”

“Nope,” answered Sam--adding more hopefully, “but it’s durn desolate country an’ there ain’t but one lumber mill anywhere near Orient that I ever hearn tell of.”

“Thanks!” answered Mr. Tutt shortly. “Where can I hire an automobile?”

Sam pondered deeply. Here was a matter of real moment. Pottsville boasted no renting garage or jitney, but it would be a catastrophe to permit a piece of real business to go to Somerset Corners by default, when the sheriff possessed an “official” motor.

“There ain’t no public motor, but--I reckon the sheriff might accommodate ye,” ventured Sam eagerly.

“Where is he?”

“Over to the Phoenix House.”

“Would you mind stopping over there and asking him to speak to me?”

Mr. Tutt tendered a handful of stogies to the deputy who thrust one in his mouth, lit it with a single hand-sweep from the seat of his abundant being to his hardly less abundant face; waddled across the street, and almost immediately returned with Mr. Higgins.

“Good evening, sheriff,” said the lawyer. “I want to take a little trip up to Orient Mills this evening--can you run me up there? Of course I expect to pay you for it.”

Sheriff Higgins ruminated. He had no right to use the county’s flivver except on official business, but, in a way, assisting a member of the bar was official business, and nobody except Sam need ever know.

“I’d like to oblige ye,” he drawled, “but it’s a durn long way--near seventy-five miles.”

“That’s not so far!” urged Mr. Tutt.

“An’ I couldn’t take money!” added the sheriff. “My motor is an official motor--paid for by the county.”

“Your time is your own, isn’t it?” argued the lawyer. “Suppose I pay you fifty dollars for your time?”

A hundred tiny beads upon the sheriff’s bulging forehead testified to his struggle with temptation.

“We-ell,” he hesitated, “if you promise me not to mention it to anybody I guess I kin arrange to take ye. Suppose you meet me in fifteen minutes over behind the railroad station?”

“Anywhere you choose,” agreed Mr. Tutt. “We ought to make it by nine o’clock.”

“You go out the door first!” cautioned the sheriff. “We might meet somebody.”

So Mr. Tutt obligingly descended first as requested, followed at a discreet interval by the two officers of the law. But all this maneuvering accomplished nothing for the reason that at that very moment Squire Mason, who had been searching for Higgins, appeared in the offing of the Phoenix House stable yard and bore swiftly down upon them. Seeing the two together his worst suspicions were confirmed!

“Hey, sheriff!” he called sharply. “I was lookin’ for you! I want you to come over to my house this evenin’ and go over the case with me.”

Upon Sheriff Higgins’ cadaverous visage descended an expression of defiance.

“Huh!” he replied. “I can’t.”

“What’s the matter?” demanded the Squire. “Why can’t you? You ain’t got nuthin’ of importance to do. Sam can guard the jury, can’t he?”

“Sam kin guard the jury,” answered the sheriff. “But I’ve got a personal engagement.”

“You ain’t got no personal engagement you’ve a right to let interfere with your official duties,” retorted Mason. “An’ I need you.”

“Well, I ain’t comin’!” replied Mr. Higgins defiantly. “I guess I have some right to live, myself!”

“Where you goin’?” snapped the squire.

“I don’t knows that’s any partic’lar part of your business, is it?” snorted the sheriff bristling.

Mr. Tutt had purposely lingered within earshot. It was conceivable that in a state of ebullition the doughty Squire might betray some small but none the less useful trifle of information.

“I’ll find out all right!” asserted the district attorney.

That the Squire could, and would, “find out” was so obvious that the sheriff perceived that, if he wished to acquire the promised fifty dollars, it might be wise to pursue a policy of conciliation.

“Look here, Squire,” he said. “There ain’t no sense in gettin’ all het up about nothin’. Fact is, I’m goin’ to take Mr. Tutt out for a little run.”

At once Mr. Mason became all suspicion.

“What’s that for?” he queried. “Where you goin’?”

“Up Orient way.”

Instantly Mason sensed treachery. The sheriff was openly selling him out--working against him! It had been Higgins--he was positive--who had kept him out of the Sacred Camels. There was some secret bond between him and Mr. Tutt--some nefarious, corrupt bargain and sale on foot between them. He knew that Emerson had gone to Orient, but he had supposed that he alone was cognizant of his witness’ whereabouts. Evidently the sheriff had tipped off Tutt and purposed going with him to find Emerson and persuade him to alter or add to his testimony. This did not suit his book at all. It would never do to have Tutt interview Emerson--for a variety of reasons. It must be prevented at any cost and at all hazards. Also, it would be much better if Mr. Emerson, having given his testimony with due regard to all the requirements of the rules of evidence, should not return again.

“What car are you proposin’ to use?” demanded the squire.

“One I allus use,” answered Higgins shortly.

“The one you use belongs to the State of New York!” retorted Mason. “You ain’t got any right to use it except for official business.”

“Well,” replied the sheriff, “what’s the matter with this bein’ official business?”

“What business is it?” roared the Squire. “You dassent tell me and you know it! If you use that car for joy-ridin’ I’ll complain on ye!”

“You’re a great feller to talk about joy-ridin’!” shouted the sheriff. “How about that time you borrered it to take you and your missus up to Utiky?”

“Utiky!” blustered the prosecutor. “I never took any joy-ride to Utiky! I only----”

And the altercation devolved into a technical dispute carried on with much acrimony and no less refinement of argument into the delicate question of whether, if there be a witness residing in a distant place who may, if interviewed, possibly prove to have information of value to the People’s side of a case, the official prosecutor may properly make use of the official automobile ostensibly for the purpose of holding official converse with said witness while at the same time seizing the opportunity _en passant_ of purchasing an outfit of spring clothes, visiting the county fair and going to the circus. This issue, having been under discussion for several minutes, was still undecided when Mr. Tutt unexpectedly made his appearance from the direction of the hotel with a paper in his hand, which he exhibited to the sheriff.

“Excuse me, Squire, for interrupting your conversation,” he apologized, “but here is a subpena for the witness Emerson which has just been issued by the court and endorsed by Judge Tompkins, requiring his attendance to-morrow morning.” He waited a moment. “There are no trains this evening and if you expect to serve this process you will be obliged to make use of a motor. Here is fifty dollars to cover your mileage and expenses. You may return the balance to me at your convenience.”

Squire Mason, his obstructionary tactics being thus neatly blocked, could not restrain his impatience. There was only one course for him to pursue.

“Then,” he exploded, “I’ll go with you!”

“Not much!” answered the sheriff dryly. “I’d be afeard I might be doin’ somethin’ illegal if I give you a free ride. No, sir! The county’s ottermobile ain’t goin’ to be used fer no more junkettin’.”

“Then you’ll have to go alone!” remarked the squire malignantly. “What’s sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander.”

The prosecutor looked triumphantly from Mr. Tutt to the sheriff and back again. He had ’em there, all right!

“Squire Mason,” said Mr. Tutt, “there is no occasion for our carrying the warfare of the court room into our personal relations outside. I have nothing to conceal regarding my desire to recall Mr. Emerson as a witness. I forgot to ask him an important question; and I am sufficiently interested in having him found and properly subpenaed to be anxious to assist in the search. In short, I wish to be informed as fully as possible about his movements. If you, also, are interested in the witness and wish to safeguard him from any improper approach on my part, I suggest that we should both accompany Sheriff Higgins. It is a fine clear night and I have a pocket full of cigars--of a sort.”

“That’s fair!” nodded the sheriff.

As there did not seem any answer to this proposition, and as Mr. Tutt had spoken in the friendliest possible manner Squire Mason became somewhat mollified. He realized that his adversary could hire any one of several motors at Somerset Corners and, since he possessed Emerson’s address, could, if he chose, get into touch with him independently of the sheriff. Emerson might be tricked into saying something or, worse, blurt out the whole truth! Acquiescence in the lawyer’s invitation would mean an opportunity to keep track of him and stop any tampering with the witness at the expense of Mr. Tutt himself, whose scheme--if that was his scheme--to corrupt the sheriff and inveigle him into camp at a cost of fifty dollars--as a preliminary step to debauching the chief witness for the prosecution--would thus be rendered abortive. Squire Mason began to be rather pleased not only with the situation but with himself. It was, as Mr. Tutt said, a fine, clear evening and he was going to have a free ride and plenty of free smokes. Incidentally, in the tail pocket of his blue broadcloth cutaway was a small flat flask containing an amber-colored liquid which might prove valuable as neutralizing the miasmic vapors of the night.

Accordingly, after a hasty supper at the Phoenix House the three seated themselves in the official flivver and started merrily off up-country for Orient Mills. Both prosecutor and sheriff were now restored to comparative good humor--the former for the reason that he had Mr. Tutt under his eye and the latter because he had fifty perfectly good dollars in his pocket and purposed to keep the change therefrom. Mr. Tutt produced stogies; Mr. Mason produced the flask aforesaid; Mr. Higgins warmed to reminiscence. The first forty miles, which they covered quite easily in an hour and a half, was through level farming country on what is described by the blue book as “macadam alternating with stretches of dirt in good condition.” But just as darkness began to gather the highway vanished and gave place to a narrow rutty road which Mr. Tutt could dimly descry ascending in tortuous curves indefinitely before them.

“This here is Chick Hill,” announced the sheriff. “Road goes clear over the shoulder--thirteen hundred feet; but it saves nine miles, an’ Lizzie is good for it.”

“Lizzie” was good for it, although at times it was necessary for her passengers to relieve her difficulties by getting out, and when at last the crest was attained she was steaming and gurgling like an oversized hot-water kettle. Night had fallen; but the dusty road showed dimly white in the starlight. Then the sheriff shut off the ignition, put her in low gear, and they plunged down the opposite side of the incline using the engine as a brake. Mr. Tutt, his knees braced against the back of the seat in front of him, thought they were never going to reach level. Even at only ten miles an hour a four-mile coast at night gives an impression of a rapid descent into a bottomless pit.

On and on they ground at first speed, rousing the innocent sleeping denizens of the forest with buzzing, groans, whirs and clankings, like a drunken alarm clock set off in a tin boiler. Mr. Tutt’s excellent teeth were nearly shaken from his gums, and all three passengers found themselves violently rubbing their noses to counteract the effect of the vibration. Then after an unusually steep pitch, during which both prosecutor and lawyer for the defense clung desperately to each other, the sheriff suddenly released the clutch and Lizzie shot forward in silent ecstasy for a hundred yards or so, at the end of which burst she slowly came to a stop and died.

“Well, we’re down!” ejaculated Sheriff Higgins with evident relief. “Gosh! Some hill!”

“I think you might officially designate it as a mountain!” replied Mr. Tutt grimly. “I’ve felt exactly as if I were hanging face down across a rail fence for the last half hour.”

“I think,” mused Squire Mason, “there’s still somethin’ left at the bottom of the bottle.”

The sheriff instantly struck a match. There was something at the bottom of the bottle. Then each lit a stogy and Higgins got out in the blackness to crank the car. They were in a narrow, heavily-timbered valley between hills, a sort of natural protected pocket, sheltered from the wind, cut off from the rest of the world. The tall spruces on either side of the road raked the stars. Save for the puffing of the sheriff no sound was audible save the rasping, insistent call of a whip-poor-will. The chill mist from a near-by swamp or unseen pond nipped their wrists and cheeks. The sheriff grabbed Lizzie’s handle firmly and gave it an energetic twist, but the engine answered neither pish nor tush.

“That’s funny!” remarked the sheriff, giving her another. “Userly she cranks easy! Maybe she’s cold!”

“Don’t blame her,” shivered the Squire. “Everybody else is!”

The sheriff bent over once more. His gyrations were not visible to the passengers in the car, but the sounds that he gave forth indicated extreme violence, followed by utter exhaustion, disgust and profanity.

“Fush-ush-ush!” said Lizzie and then relapsed into a discreet and mortifying silence.

“Well, I’ll be gol-binged!” panted the sheriff. “I dunno _what’s_ the matter with her. Acts as if she was sick.”

“She was goin’ all right top of the hill,” encouraged the Squire.

A penetrating odor of gasoline made itself noticeable. In the silence could be heard the unmistakable sound of something dripping.

“Gee whiz!” gasped the sheriff. “I hope she ain’t sprung a leak!”

He opened the hood and peered vaguely within.

“Hell!” he cried suddenly. “Most burnt my thumb off!”

“What’s the matter with her?” inquired Mr. Mason.

“That’s what I’d like you to tell me!” snapped the sheriff. “All I know is that her innards seem to be all leakin’ away. I’m standin’ near knee high in a pool of gasoline!”

“Keerful how you light a match,” cautioned the prosecutor. “What are we goin’ to do?”

“How do I know!” retorted Higgins. “I ain’t no mechanic. I can’t stop it, ’cause I ain’t got no idee where it is.”

“Can’t you feel for it?” hazarded the squire plaintively.

“She’s bleedin’ to death,” moaned the sheriff. “And no way to stop her!”

There was a prolonged and painful silence broken only by a determined trickle from the interior of the hood.

“How far are we from Orient Mills?” asked the Squire.

“Fifteen miles,” replied the sheriff. “I guess you kin walk it in about five hours.”

Mr. Tutt choked down a chuckle. One thing was certain, that the trial could not proceed without them. He had nothing to worry about on that score, and he had plenty of stogies. The attorney gathered his long limbs together and shrouded his form as best he could with the horse blanket which he shared with the squire. The sheriff had apparently surrendered to the inevitable and was poking about aimlessly by the roadside.

“What you goin’ to do?” demanded the Squire peevishly. “We can’t sit here all night!”

“Guess you’ll have to wait until someone comes along who can tell what’s the matter with her,” answered the sheriff. “I’m near froze!”

So were they all. Presently at a safe distance from the car the sheriff started a tiny blaze which he gradually encouraged with broken boughs and a couple of fence rails until he had a respectable fire.

“Feels good, don’t it?” he declared, rubbing his hands. “I reckon we kin pass a comfortable night here.”

“Don’t you know anything about an automobile?” snapped the Squire. “Seems to me with all the runnin’ around you do you ought to be able to stop a little leak.”

“Look here!” suddenly roared the sheriff. “It’s all right for you to stand there and chatter! Go find it yourself! Nobody ast you to come along, anyhow. Nobody wanted you! You jest butted in!”

“Well, I warn’t goin’ to let you put anythin’ over on me!” shouted Mason. “I can smell a rat when I see one,” he added significantly, badly mixing his metaphors in his excitement.

The rest of the colloquy was lost upon Mr. Tutt. For in the distance he had seen the flicker of a lantern, indubitably coming towards them. His companions engrossed in their altercation being wholly oblivious, Mr. Tutt climbed out of the car and strode silently down the road. The movement of the light, which seemingly was actuated by influences even more obscurely conflicting than those propounded by Prof. Einstein, was erratic and puzzling. At times it would remain stationary, then jump up and down, then swing in a half circle, or occasionally dodge sideways and, for a moment or so, disappear entirely.

Now, Mr. Tutt was anxious to reach Orient Mills at the earliest moment possible and he much preferred to arrive there unencumbered by the presence of Squire Mason. If this light evidenced the presence of any vehicle of locomotion he purposed to annex, cabbage, corrall, grab, secure and appropriate it unto himself. Therefore Mr. Tutt having placed fifty yards between him and the fire, broke into a run. The light suddenly became distinct and luminous. Yes, it was a lantern--swinging between wheels of some sort; and while its gyrations continued he was now able to distinguish furtive movements. Muffled expletives reached him--a confusion of miscellaneous noises--stertorous breathing, strainings, the scuffle of irregular hoof beats.

“Hello, there!” called Mr. Tutt.

The lantern stopped, swaying.

“Hello!” returned a voice. “Hi there, you! Stand still!”

Mr. Tutt hurried towards the lantern, and as he did so it darted towards the road side.

“Look out!” came the voice in warning. “This here colt ain’t never been in harness before.”

“Then you better not go any further down the road,” advised Mr. Tutt approaching the driver who sat upon the minute seat of a wire racing buggy with his legs thrust along the shafts on either side of the colt. “Because there’s an automobile right in the middle of it.”

The colt, meanwhile, was frantically side-stepping upon its hind legs.

“Guess I’ll have to turn round--if I kin!” answered the driver maneuvering with the reins. “He pretty near run away with me up there a piece.”

“Live far from here?”

“’Bout half a mile.”

“Do you want to earn twenty dollars?”

“I reckon I do--how?”

Mr. Tutt stepped as near the colt as seemed consistent with safety.

“You drive me to Orient Mills--and I’ll give you twenty dollars,” said he.

The owner of the colt had at last induced him momentarily to stand still.

“I darsn’t risk it,” he replied with obvious regret. “He ain’t never been hitched before an’ ’twould be too much for him anyways. Stand still, you!”

“I’ll give you fifty dollars,” continued Mr. Tutt.

“Where’d you sit?” asked the owner of the colt who was gradually pulling the animal around.

“On the seat with you.”

Now it is doubtful whether, if Mr. Tutt had realized in advance the anatomical difficulties presented by his suggestion, he would have essayed the ride, but he was unfamiliar with racing buggies or their peculiarities. Accordingly he leaped in where an angel would have discreetly refused to go. The driver having turned the buggy around looked over his shoulder.

“Y’ got to hop up mighty spry!” he warned him. “Get yer right upper leg over the seat and along the shaft and then sort o’ twine yer lower leg around them wire braces, and grab holt anywheres you can, quick!”

To this day Mr. Tutt is unable to give a coherent explanation either of how he did as directed or how he stayed put when he got there. He merely recalls climbing up on the axle of the buggy, grasping the driver firmly around the waist and sitting sideways on the outer edge of what seemed like a small frying pan, with one leg along the colt’s flank and the other twisted between the wire braces beneath the shafts. He is also firmly convinced that he sat implanted upon the colt’s tail. But the real miracle is that he retained his stovepipe hat and triumphantly wore it back to Pottsville. Who shall predicate what is impossible?

Disregarding the vital consequences to James Hawkins involved, there was an element of humor in the manner in which Mr. Tutt so blithely ascended the racing buggy and calmly abandoned the sheriff and the squire in the very middle of their controversy. He had no intention, however, of being obliged to share his seat on the frying pan with a third party.

His equine experiences had been limited; for being of that generation when the elite of New York belonged to volunteer fire companies and themselves dragged their diminutive hand pumps and hose wagons through the streets of the metropolis amid the admiring cheers of the common herd--when the wild goat browsed undisturbed by the hunter in the hinterland of Central Park, and bobtailed horse cars at irregular intervals tinkled from river to river--belonging, we say, to a generation long since passed away, to wit of Adelina Patti and Jennie Lind, of Booth and Forrest and Mrs. Vincent, of “Maud S.” and the “Mary Powell,” of Tweed, Henry Ward Beecher and Barnum’s Trained Seal--Mr. Tutt, being an urbanite, knew little of the “friend of man” beyond Shank’s mare. He was ignorant of the character and ways of colts and of wire buggies, but being a stoic and accustomed to take things as they came, and the colt and buggy having presented themselves, he had quite naturally availed himself of them as a matter of course.

Innocent of the possible consequences, as the gentle Redskin who first partook of the white men’s beverage, he had accepted the invitation to share the frying pan without a moment’s hesitation and in that single instant had passed from the safety of terra firma into the utmost jeopardy of his life. For he had no sooner entangled his anatomy in the intricacies of the buggy’s architecture than the colt stood up straight upon its hind legs and endeavored to paw Cassiopeia from the zenith. In a twinkling Mr. Tutt found himself with his body horizontal and his legs pointing skyward like a telescope, at an angle of ninety degrees. The colt strenuously objected to his presence. Then having kicked Leda to pieces with his right hoof and trampled upon Orion with his left the festive animal put his foot through the middle of the Dipper, swallowed the North Star, turned a half dozen somersaults amid the constellations, and then by suddenly dropping stiffly to earth with his four feet close together, shot Mr. Tutt swiftly upward into the ether adjacent to the Milky Way. For an interminable period of time the old lawyer hurtled through space, clutching at the nearest planets and fixed stars, and then, without warning, found himself projected violently against the rear portions of the colt’s body from which he rebounded smeared with lather like a billiard ball from a side cushion, thus receiving a convincing demonstration of Newton’s Great Law that action and reaction are equal and opposite in direction.

While profanity would have been inadequate it would have relieved Mr. Tutt to have indulged in it, but profanity requires breath and he had none left in his lungs. And then, the colt having decided to abandon its tests of the Laws of Relativity settled down into a long, leggy trot that nearly tore Mr. Tutt’s old bones from their sockets, and plunged forward into the darkness of the abyss.

“But finding soon a smoother road
Beneath his well shod feet,
The snorting beast began to trot
Which gall’d him in his seat!”

Occasionally the colt would take exception to a shadow and shy violently into the bushes and, at intervals, it would stop short without warning with the result that Mr. Tutt’s stovepipe, driver, buggy, lantern, legs and all the rest of the affair would climb up and around its posterior, the animate and inanimate becoming inextricably confused. Then, with a jerk, it would leap forward again and they would all fall backwards in imminent danger of being dashed against the road behind them.

Had Mr. Tutt needed to “reduce” he would have become a “reductio ad absurdum” in the first twenty minutes. Up hill and down they rushed, gyrating in wide semicircles, the rubber stuttering in agony, deluged in puddles, pounded by ruts and unseen cavities, numbed and cramped by their frenzied clinging to the rigid iron.

Several times they flashed by lighted farmhouses where Mr. Tutt would have stopped--if he could. But the colt having decided to go to Orient Mills would entertain no other suggestion. It had clearly made up its mind to cover the fifteen miles in record time and take along Mr. Tutt with it--willy-nilly.

“Now let us sing, Long Live the King!
And Gilpin, Long live he!
And when he next doth ride abroad,
May I be there to see!”

As they tore through the night there persisted in Mr. Tutt’s perfervid, but fast fading, consciousness the vision of a monkey he had once seen in a circus race clinging in terror to the buckling back of a leaping greyhound. And like himself it had worn a hat!

Suddenly the colt sprang forward with a burst of speed that made their former rate seem, by comparison, an amble. From behind them came a faint palpitation; and a shaft of light shot by over their heads. With a sensation almost akin to relief Mr. Tutt realized that Lizzie had come to life.

“Hr-rr-k! H-rr-k! H-rr-rr-rr-k!”

The colt hurled itself into the traces resolved to be overtaken by no mere flivver. In desperation Mr. Tutt grasped the animal’s tail with both hands firmly near the root, thus reducing the radius of the circle through which he was gyrating by virtue of centrifugal force.

At times--when the road ascended--Lizzie dropped momentarily behind and the light of her eyes dimmed; but at others--notably, down hill--she pressed hard upon their heels to the imminent danger of Mr. Tutt’s coat tails. Since the colt would neither stop nor allow Lizzie to pass, they continued thus in company without slackening speed until the road emerged from the woods into the open and, racing into the village neck and neck, they came to a stop in front of the post office at Orient Center.

“Well,” remarked the colt’s owner shortly. “Here y’ are!”

Mr. Tutt, however, was not sure whether he--all of him, at any rate--was there or not, for from his waist down he had lost all power of sensation. With the sheriff’s assistance he untied his legs and ruefully rubbed the small of his back.

“Thought y’d leave us, did ye?” taunted the Squire.

“This gentleman offered me a lift and I accepted his invitation,” explained the lawyer, as he counted out fifty dollars by the light of the lantern. “How did you manage to repair the automobile?”

“Oh, she come-to finally,” replied the sheriff blandly. “Y’ see coastin’ so long down hill thetaway flooded her carburetor and she kep’ on leakin’ until she was empty and then she jest naturally dried up and when the Squire gave her a crank she started right up.”

Mr. Tutt examined his timepiece and discovered to his astonishment that it was only half after eleven. It seemed to him as if he had been traveling all night. The owner of the colt having pocketed his money wheeled the buggy and drove off.

“Everybody’s asleep in this hick town,” announced the sheriff. “Guess we’d better run over to the mill.”

So they climbed back into the car and drove on to Orient Mills. Here all was dark but, by pounding on the door of the house nearest the office, they roused a time-keeper who said that Charlie Emerson had gone to work the day before; he thought he was lodging at a house about a quarter of a mile below the dam on a side road--they would know it by a white birch. Lizzie having somewhat reluctantly consented to proceed, they passed another half hour trying to find Mr. Emerson’s place of abode. But every house below the dam proved to have a white birch in its immediate vicinity and, as he had no other guide, the sheriff aroused the irate occupants of each in turn until he eventually discovered the particular tree in question--which on examination proved to be a beech. It made no difference to Mr. Tutt what kind of a tree it was. He had accomplished his purpose. He had found his witness, and he would be in a position to rectify and atone for any mistake he might have made. All his weariness passed from him, his bones ached no longer, he heard no more the rushing of the wind past his ears nor smelt the aroma of his flying steed! His experience--agonizing as it had been--had been a small price to pay for the result attained.

The moon had set and the small white house stood silent and ghostly as a tomb against the blackness of the grove behind it. The sheriff climbed out once more and descended to the side door, which he kicked violently. Since this elicited no response he then walked around to the front and thumped loudly upon the front windows. At length a candle flickered somewhere and a head emerged from the second story.

“Hello there!” called up the sheriff. “Does Charlie Emerson live here?”

There followed a moment during which the head appeared to be adjusting itself to the idea so irrelevantly interjected into it. Then a deep voice--whether masculine or feminine none of them could determine--said:

“You mean the feller that come here from Pottsville? If ye do, he was here yesterday and hired a room but he went away agin and he ain’t never come back! I ain’t got no idee where he is.”

Then Mr. Tutt lifted up his voice and called down the punishment of Heaven upon the missing witness and upon himself as nothing less than a poor old fool! Mason could scarce conceal his glee, even in the darkness. Now, of a surety, Hawkins would go to the electric chair! Mr. Tutt began to suspect that Mason had surreptitiously telephoned up to the mills and arranged to have Emerson enticed away. But he dismissed that possibility; for Mason had not had time for anything like that. Moreover it would have come pretty close to being a crime--and, while Mason might be a shyster he certainly would not be guilty of anything so unprofessional as that! No, it was fate!

“Well,” said the Squire pleasantly, “what shall we do now?”

“It’s two o’clock!” warned the sheriff. “If you want to get back to breakfast we’d better be gettin’ along. I ain’t goin’ over Chick Hill agin’ to-night. I’m goin’ round by Humphrey Falls.”

“When is the next train?” asked Mr. Tutt.

“One o’clock to-morrow afternoon,” said the sheriff. “I told you this was a hick town!”

Mr. Tutt without further discussion opened the door and re-entered the car. The jig was up. He could do no more. There was only one course to pursue; leave the subpena to Orient and go on with the trial, meantime keeping in touch with the manager of the mills. If Emerson returned to work in the morning he could be subpenaed and delivered upon the one o’clock train for Pottsville. If he did not turn up Mr. Tutt could wait until the last minute, lay the whole matter before the court and appeal to its mercy for a sufficiently long adjournment to enable Emerson to be found.

Dawn had flushed the hill summits along the Mohawk Valley before a bucking and recalcitrant Lizzie, driven by an exhausted sheriff and carrying two cramped figures representing both sides of the bar in the great case of People vs. Hawkins, slithered into Pottsville. The only light visible gleamed from the kitchen window of the Phoenix House where “Ma” Best, like the virtuous woman of Holy Writ, was preparing breakfast for twelve slumbering jurors and the other transient participants in the proceeding. Higgins ran Lizzie up to the back door, climbed down and shook Mr. Tutt by the shoulder.

“Hi!” he grunted. “Here we be back again!”

“Yes, your honor!” muttered Mr. Tutt who had been dreaming of special demurrers and cross-interrogatories. “Exactly so!”

“Wake up!” ordered the sheriff. “This ain’t no Pullman!”

Mr. Tutt slowly came to himself and the pains of Hell got hold upon him. His hands and feet were without feeling, but otherwise every bone in his body, every muscle, every tendon shrieked with agony. Simultaneously the Squire regained a similarly painful consciousness.

“Squire,” remarked Mr. Tutt with a grin, “we have at least comported ourselves as lawyers, gentlemen and sportsmen.”

“So far as the sport goes,” returned the squire ruefully, “I could ha’ got ’long without it.”

Mrs. Best, startled by this untoward matutinal disturbance, now appeared in the doorway, the light streaming from behind her, and giving her somewhat the effect of a stout angel descending in a burst of glory from a culinary heaven.

“Why Squire Mason!” she exclaimed, “and Mr. Tutt! What on earth are you two doin’ up at his hour of the mornin’?”

Indeed an angel she seemed to the three spent and weary men.

“Where you been? Don’t you want a cup of coffee?”

“Madam,” replied Mr. Tutt, with a bow of his old stovepipe which swept the ground, “sweeter words ne’er fell on mortal ear!”

Squire Mason had hurried inside to the more grateful atmosphere surrounding the kitchen stove. The stars were blinking feebly above the rival steeples of the local Methodists and Baptists, and the chimney of the Phoenix House cook-shed glowed with a grayish, unearthly pink.

“Well, Mr. Tutt,” whispered the sheriff as he made sure the prosecutor had closed the door after him. “I did the best I could for ye! I give ye the best chance I could--but ’twarn’t no use!”

“How’s that?” inquired Mr. Tutt, fully coming to life for the first time. “What do you mean?”

“I mean,” explained the officer of the law, “that I know’s well as you do that there’s suthin’ phony ’bout this feller Emerson. Squire’s never let me say a word to him--ax him a single question! So to-night when we got to the top of Chick Hill an’ I seen a light on the road ahead I made up my mind to give you a chance to go on alone and have a talk with Emerson all by yourself.”

“Eh!” murmured the astounded lawyer.

“So I pulled out the choke pin and flooded the carburetor and she stopped sure enough--and Mason would ha’ been there yet, if the durned cuss hadn’t gone over all by himself when I wasn’t lookin’ and give her a yank and she started up.”

In the half light of the coming dawn the bony hand of Mr. Tutt sought the icy one of Sheriff Higgins.

“Thank you!” said he. “It’s too bad! I’m afraid this means Hawkins will be convicted.”

“I’m feared it does! If you can’t find Emerson,” returned the sheriff solemnly. “--an’ I ain’t sure findin’ him will do any good either! But I kinder have a feelin’ that if you’d ha’ gone after him in cross-examination you’d ha’ got suthin’ more’n ye did. You _got_ to find him!”

“Why do you say that?” asked Mr. Tutt curiously, for, so far, his alibi stood a good one. “Didn’t I prove by him that the murder took place at four o’clock, when everybody knows that Skinny was in Pottsville at that hour?”

“Yes,” assented Higgins. “But y’see just between ourselves I happen to know that the clock he told the time by was stopped. I seen it myself when I went into the shanty that afternoon.”

“Then why do you think it would do me any good to find Emerson?” Mr. Tutt pressed him.

The sheriff hesitated. A couple of long antennæ had shot up from behind the hills surrounding Turkey Hollow and were gilding the weather cock on the Baptist steeple.

“’Cause,” he replied with conviction, “I believe he knows more’n he’s been asked. I can’t tell you why I think so, but I do. Mebbe I’m all wrong. But”--and he put his lips close to the lid of Mr. Tutt’s stovepipe hat--“I don’t believe--no matter how strong the evidence is agin’ him--that Skinny ever killed the hermit. He ain’t that kind. An’ what’s more I believe the Squire knows it.”

“That’s a pretty strong accusation to make against the district attorney of your county!” exclaimed Mr. Tutt with feigned severity.

“I know it,” admitted the sheriff. “That don’t make no difference. He’s a bad actor! But Skinny ain’t no murderer! You kin bet on it!”

“Have you observed anything in the evidence that tends to support your opinion?” returned Mr. Tutt.

“Well,” answered the sheriff. “It’s a gol-durned funny thing that Skinny had exactly one hundred dollars in gold when I arrested him and the hermit had five new twenty-dollar bills--just the same amount--on his body.”

“That,” exclaimed Mr. Tutt, “is a coincidence which had entirely escaped my attention!”

“But your only chance to get him off is by findin’ Emerson!” asserted Higgins with emphasis.

“But how can I do it?” demanded Mr. Tutt.

The sheriff shook his head and spat with precision at a dandelion.

“Durn if I know!” he answered helplessly. “And I’m a camel, at that!” he added with seeming irrelevance.

Now one of Mr. Tutt’s axioms of conduct was always to act on impulse--and to trust instinct rather than reason; for he held impulse to be the voice of conscience and instinct that of inherited subconscious experience. He was wont to claim that the observation of the human race concentrated in legends, maxims, saws and proverbs was just as likely to be correct as the deductions of modern science,--and that he for one, until the contrary was demonstrated to his satisfaction, purposed to go on believing that the moon was made of green cheese. Hence Higgins’ voluntary statement to the effect that he felt--although he could not tell why--that there was a nigger in the legal woodpile somewhere and that Emerson was Skinny’s only hope, induced a new resolution on Mr. Tutt’s part to find him, if it were humanly possible; and so before court opened he sent to New York a hurry call for help in the shape of a telegram as follows:

“Samuel Tutt, Esq.,
“c/o Tutt & Tutt,
“Attorneys-at-Law,
“61 Broadway, New York.

“Case going badly. Need assistance. Come at once, bring Bonnie Doon and four detectives--real ones.--Regards.

“E. Tutt.”

In addition to which he pondered long upon the curious fact that a man who presumably had been murdered for his money should have a hundred dollars in new bills in his pocket--the precise sum, only in another form of specie, represented by the loot taken from his alleged slayer.

IV

“Is not the winding up of witnesses, And nicking, more than half the business? For witnesses, like watches, go Just as they’re set, too fast or slow; And where in conscience, they’re strait-lac’d, ’Tis ten to one that side is cast.” Butler. Hudibras Pt. II. Canto I, 1.51

Just as the scientist reconstructs the dinosaur from a fragment of bone, so Ephraim Tutt,--ex pede Herculem, as it were,--by virtue of the coincidence of the hundred dollars found upon the hermit’s body and the equivalent amount of gold discovered upon Skinny the Tramp, built up something which, while not exactly a defense, was at least a bomb to hurl into his enemy’s camp. Defense, alas! there apparently was none worth making. The case hung upon the question of whether Emerson, if found, could shed any additional light upon the hour of the murder. If he could not be found, then Skinny would go to the chair. If he did appear--well, there was merely a possibility of escape--that was all.

Ten o’clock came, once more the gong rang, and the gladiators stumbled from their respective corners into the legal ring for the final round. Mr. Tutt, fully cognizant of his desperate plight, nerved himself for the encounter, and wary, resourceful and suave, although he had lost all hope of acquitting Skinny on his alibi, exhibited all his customary confidence. Neither did Squire Mason show any loss of vitality or aplomb as a result of his trip to Orient Mills the night before. Indeed, both came into court none the worse for wear and wholly ready for the fray.