Chapter IX: A Conflagration

The jury’s deliberations were cruelly short. They conferred in whispers, while we waited in agony. Beside me, Dorothy gripped my hand so tightly that my old, rheumatic fingers ached for an hour after, though at the time I was scarcely conscious of her touch. Beyond her Lewis sat in frozen hopelessness, still numbed by the shock of this sudden, dreadful catastrophe which had overwhelmed us. At my other side, staunch little Peter sat bold upright, chewing his mustache and muttering to himself.

Then the jurymen all nodded, and the foreman rose and turned toward Doctor Burgess. The coroner sighed, stroking his beard. His fat, kindly face looked worried.

“Have you made up your minds, gentlemen?”

“Uh-huh,” said the foreman. “We find that Doc Gaskell come t’ his death f’om a shotgun full o’ bird shot at th’ hands o’ Doc Parker, yonder; an’ we riccomend holdin’ him f’r th’ superior court!”

Doctor Burgess sighed and cast an ugly look at the district attorney. “Your doings, Vanbrugh!” he said in an undertone. Then aloud: “I’ll have to hold you for the action of the July grand jury, Parker. I’m sorry. Court’s dismissed.”

Behind us, the sheriff rose and tapped Lewis on the shoulder. “Come on, boy; gotta take ye back. I sure am sorry, ma’am”--he looked at Dorothy--“but it ain’t f’r long. You don’t need to pay no attention t’ Vanbrugh’s foolishness.”

“Oh,” exclaimed Dorothy, “and day after to-morrow is my wedding day!”

Sheriff Redden shuffled his feet awkwardly, flinching at the sound of her quiet weeping. “Aw, too bad!” he said.

With Lewis at his elbow, he began pushing through the crowded, noisy room. It was full of gabbling, excited groups, which gave way reluctantly, and we received many an ugly look.

“A dirty murderer!” muttered some one. A storm of hisses and groans arose, as the crowd began to push closer, still inflamed by Vanbrugh’s insinuations.

“Shut up, boys!” said the sheriff amiably. “Git back! Cain’t yuh see th’ lady’s tryin’ to git out?”

It was enough. With instinctive courtesy the throng separated, leaving a wide lane. Dorothy passed through it unhindered, with Lewis at one side and me at the other. Her face was very white, and her eyes were downcast. Her pathetic beauty changed the crowd’s humor completely and evoked a little, pitying murmur.

So we went out and parted almost without a word. Like a man in a dream, Lewis climbed into the sheriff’s battered car and rode away to jail, without once looking back. Dorothy leaned heavily on my shoulder, straining her eyes after him until he was out of sight. Then she stepped forward falteringly.

“T-take me home, Peter--Uncle George. No, I won’t faint! I _won’t_! I can w-walk all by my own self!”

And so she did, upheld by a pathetic pride, until we were back at Fort House. Then she collapsed, and Peter and I carried her to her own room and called for the nurse. Then we two men walked downstairs together and turned into the living room, to stand there aimlessly.

“Well,” I asked at last, “what next?”

Peter jerked back his head, straightening his slim shoulders with a characteristic movement. “Whew! That was a cropper! I never dreamed they’d hold him. I say, that chap Vanbrugh is a bounder, isn’t he?”

He stroked his little mustache, lit a cigarette, and was himself again--energetic, active, efficient. “We’ll run right out to the jail,” he decided, “and chat with old Lewis. Have to lay our plans, you know--get a good lawyer and all that. I say, that was a cropper! But a lawyer’ll know what to do--get the old boy out in jig time!”

I was less optimistic; though, when one viewed the matter dispassionately, there seemed scant grounds for a charge of murder. Yet this Vanbrugh was fiendishly apt. Directly we got out Lewis’ flivver, which Peter drove well enough, and went to the courthouse. We found Lewis in the jail office, sitting in an easy-chair beside the cold fireplace, while the sheriff, from behind the official desk, strove to cheer him up. Both men were in their shirt sleeves, for it had turned very hot.

“Evening, folks!” said Redden. “Set down an’ rest yore face an’ hands. I ain’t goin’ t’ lock Parker up ontil night. He’ll have t’ go into a cell then, but they’s no use of bein’ too hard on th’ boy. You-all can talk right here, gentlemen; I got business over to th’ office, anyways.”

Catching up his wide felt hat he shambled out, leaving us alone. “I better lock th’ front door,” he apologized, “just in case anybody sh’d drop by.”

He disappeared, and I saw him through the window, waddling bow-legged toward the courthouse. A very kindly, courteous gentleman, the high sheriff of Carabas County; I only wished the prosecuting attorney were as gracious.

I turned back to Lewis. “My boy, we seem to be in a fix,” I told him. “Confound Mary McGregor, the knots in her neck, and the bobwhites that kept her awake!” For my heart was hot in me with mingled fear and anger, and my head ached, and my old, rheumatic joints; and I could not forget that this whole horror had come from Aunt Mary’s querulousness.

“Sit down and take it quiet, unk,” said Peter coolly. I had not been long in Pinelands, as I have said; but to Peter I was “Uncle George,” or, more casually, “unk,” as to Dorothy and, for that matter, to half the youth of the town.

“Be easy! The old girl’s a bit of a bunker to all of us, I know, but we’ll have Lewis out of this all right. And now, old son, we’ll have to be getting you a lawyer right away. Anybody to suggest? Some friend of your long-past youth, perhaps, and all that rot?” His assumption of bluff, care-free gayety was well done, but it did not deceive me. I knew that Peter, too, was worried.

My nephew sighed, staring straight before him. His shoulders drooped; his eyes were dull and heavy. He seemed in a daze; I could scarcely recognize in him the impetuous, high-spirited youth who had been as a son to me all these years.

“I--I don’t know,” he answered dully. “I can’t seem to think. All I can see is Gaskell in front of me--dead. I keep telling myself I couldn’t have done it, and yet I know I did.” Then he lapsed into silence once more, still with that vague, spiritless stare.

Peter and I looked at each other queerly. “I don’t believe you did do it, old top!” Lewis straightened at once, a hint of hope in his eye. Peter had hit unerringly upon the best of tonics; I saw that.

“I’m sure you didn’t, Lewis,” the boy went on, emboldened by my nephew’s interest. “It isn’t reasonable. Suppose we sent for some doctor that’s a law sharp, too? Burgess is all right, of course, but maybe some medico-legal expert could find out something to prove Gaskell was dead when you got there.”

Lewis sprang up, a faint color in his cheeks. “Why, of course! What a fool I was not to think of it before. There’s Somers, old Floyd Somers! Why, he’ll be here to-night. Just the man, Somers is. Why, he’ll take hold of this thing and straighten it out in a day; he just eats this sort of thing. He’ll prove I couldn’t have killed Gaskell--unless”--and his shoulders drooped again--“unless I really did.”

That was the boy’s only show of interest. Almost at once he sunk again into apathy, brooding, I could see, upon the thought that he had killed a man, however innocently. That was what weighed upon him, not any fears for the future. He waved away all our suggestions. Lawyers? No, what difference did it make? Get any lawyer--anybody! Better still, let Somers see to that. He’d know what to do when he came. Then he lapsed into silence again, chin on hands, only to burst forth:

“And I was really angry--that’s the worst of it. For a moment, there in Olsen’s, I was mad enough to have shot him. And then to think I did shoot him, after that! Why, it makes it as bad as murder, even though I didn’t know he was there. Perhaps I ought to plead guilty and take my medicine.”

We cried out upon him. “Don’t be a fool, Lewis,” I said, fairly shaking him in my anxiety. “Wake up! Pull yourself together; act like a man! You’re not yourself. What shall we do, Peter?”

Peter shook his head. “Wait for Somers, as he says. That’s all I can see.” He paused, sniffing. “I say, unk, what’s that? Seems to me I smell smoke.”

So did I. Suddenly I noticed that a thin, blue wreath was creeping in beneath the door, which Sheriff Redden had closed upon us. My eyes smarted. The door was locked; I ran to a window to yell at a couple of loafers on the courthouse steps.

“Hey! You over there! Call the sheriff!”

They stirred, stared at the jail idly for a moment, then leaped to their feet.

“My gosh!” said one. “Th’ jail’s afire. Hey, Hank! Hey, Redden! Redden! Come a-runnin’, th’ jail’s on fire!”

The sheriff appeared, at his heels half a dozen clerks and county officials in shirt sleeves. They all ran toward us, bawling aloud:

“Fire! Fire! Fi--re! Send in an alarm t’ Smyrna--no, to Pinelands! Better call ’em both! Hustle up, sheriff, turn them pris’ners loose!”

They pelted up the steps; a key sounded in the door, and presently Lewis, Peter, and I were outside, taking great breaths of the fresh air. The clerk of the superior court stood at my elbow, a fat, red-faced man in a shiny black alpaca coat. He wiped his moist face.

“Carabas County’s goin’ to build another new jail, I reckon,” he drawled resignedly.

The building itself was of brick, but floors, doors, and interior trim were all pine, and they burned merrily. All the prisoners must be loosed; Sheriff Redden and his deputy herded them out and rounded them up in two groups, white and colored, while county officials organized a volunteer guard.

As I have said, the county buildings were equidistant from Smyrna and Pinelands; before the fire department of either town could answer the alarm the fire had a fine start. Then both engines arrived at once, and the sheriff was put to it to prevent a fight between the rival fire companies for prior rights to a hydrant. At last the blaze was subdued, and by sundown the two engines pumped water upon an empty brick shell, whose furniture and woodwork were destroyed. Some of the cells, of steel and concrete, were undamaged; but even these were too hot for occupancy.

Sheriff Redden stopped beside me to stroke his absurd wisp of mustache. “Quite a clearance,” he observed mildly. “Started over on th’ colored side; George Willett’s colored boy, Jim, he done set fire t’ another boy’s mattress ‘f’r a joke,’ he claims. I aim t’ make that fellow realize it wa’n’t no joke. Uh-huh! But we cain’t keep nobody out here to-night, nohow. Lucky I ain’t got more’n nine pris’ners, an’ most o’ them c’n go right to Smyrna to th’ lockup there. An’ Doc Parker here,” turning to Lewis, “w’y, doc, I reckon I better send you back t’ Pinelands. They got a reel comf’table lockup there, an’ Rufe Wakefield, he’ll look after you good. Ain’t got no backbone, Rufe ain’t, but he’s got a reel good heart, an’ his ol’ woman cooks splendid. Yessuh! Be kinda better f’r yuh, anyways, mebbe, right clost to yore folks that a way.”

Thus it was arranged, and presently Peter and Lewis and I, with a taciturn, tobacco-chewing deputy sheriff, squeezed into the flivver and drove back to Pinelands.

We routed out Wakefield, the constable, and he took us all to the village lockup, a small brick building, rather like a magnified shoebox, directly behind the business section of Pinelands. Its interior proved rather better than I had feared; though hardly palatial, it was comfortable enough.

“Reel nice room!” Wakefield pointed it out with pardonable pride. “Spring bed and ever’thing. Colored side’s beyond that brick wall there. Mister Uhlman c’n fetch ye sheets, ’f he wants t’, or anything else. An’ th’ woman’ll cook ye up some supper directly.”

We left, promising to return shortly with sheets, a feather pillow and a clean mattress, an armchair, and what comforts we could manage. Lewis dropped on the edge of the bunk, chin in hands, and let us go without a word.