The Hermit of Turkey Hollow (continued 3)

Toggery Bill carefully examined the bills and replied that he could.

“How?”

“I’ve got my mark on each one.”

“Show the jury.”

Mr. Gookin pointed out with pride the words “Pottsville Dry Goods & Tailoring Emporium, May 16, 1920,” printed in small red letters by means of a rubber stamp, on each one.

“Now,” continued Mr. Tutt quietly. “Please tell us when you last saw them?”

“The mornin’ of the murder,” answered “Toggery Bill.” “May seventeenth, nineteen hundred and twenty!”

“Where did you see them?”

“In my store.—I gave ’em to Squire Mason about eleven o’clock and I hold his note for a hundred dollars for the loan.”

The effect of this simple announcement was extraordinary, for while it created complete bewilderment it suggested the weirdest possibilities. Here was a murdered hermit with a hundred dollars in his pocket which, within five hours, had been in the possession of the very man who was now prosecuting the person charged with the homicide. It was all very confusing to the bucolic mind! Some of them even thought for a moment that Mr. Tutt had proved that Squire Mason had committed the murder. Indeed, the Squire was almost as pale as if he had. What was old man Tutt goin’ to try to get on him?—He did not have to wait long to find out.

“Mr. Mason—please take the witness chair!”

With a lump in his gullet of the size and dryness of a golf ball Hezekiah, amid the poorly controlled comments of the spectators which the sheriff for some reason made no effort to suppress, his diaphragm quivering with anxiety as to what all this might mean, climbed up into the public eye and was sworn.

“Mr. Mason—you have heard the testimony of the last witness—Mr. Gookin—is it correct?”

“Yes,” conceded Hezekiah thickly.

“What use did you make of these bills?”

The Hon. Mason snapped his jaws defiantly together. Then he turned to Judge Tompkins.

“I don’t see what that’s got to do with anything, judge,” he complained. “Do I have to answer?”

“It’s perfectly relevant,” returned his honor. “Do you mean to say that you think how that money got into the possession, and upon the person, of the deceased isn’t of importance! Of course it is!—Answer.”

Mason bowed to the inevitable.

“I give it to Skinny—the defendant—in my office at half past eleven,” said he.

A murmur rose from the benches. This was some evidence! The Squire was makin’ himself the chief witness for the prosecution. What was coming next? But nothing came—from Mr. Tutt, who merely bowed.

“Thank you,” said he quietly. “That is all.”

The prosecutor was about to return to his desk before the jury box, when Judge Tompkins took the hand in the matter which Mr. Tutt had anticipated that he would.

“Hold on a minute!” directed his honor with a perplexed air. “I don’t understand. Why did you give the defendant a hundred dollars on the morning of the murder?”

“ ’Cause he asked for it?” returned the squire shortly.

“Did you owe it to him?”

“Why—no,” answered the squire. “That is, not exactly. It weren’t a debt. It was interest due.”

“Due on what?” demanded the judge irritably.

“On his trust fund——” reluctantly admitted Mason. The judge peered at him sharply over his spectacles.

“Who is the trustee of the fund?”

There was a long pause.

“I am,” yielded Mason finally.

“Do you mean that you are the trustee of a fund of which this prisoner, whom you are trying to convict of murder, is the beneficiary?” cried Tompkins, leaning forward.

“I am,” assented Mason faintly.

There was a chorus of mingled hisses and jeers from the benches, but Judge Tompkins took no notice of it.

“This is a most extraordinary situation!” he declared. “However—we will not deal with it now. Proceed with the trial.”

Mason crept back to his seat. It was clear that the judge had it in for him,—but that needn’t affect the outcome of the trial. Then he got another jar—this time an even heavier one.

“Charles Emerson,” murmured Mr. Tutt sweetly, “please take the stand—I have an additional question I wish to put to you in cross-examination.”

There was nothing in Emerson’s recall to excite any special interest among the spectators, since few, if any, of them knew that he had gone away. But there was much in Squire Mason’s demeanor as the witness made his way forward to give pause to those who watched him. Something had happened to him. He had shriveled—nought else. With his eyes shifting uneasily the district attorney sat fumbling with his papers, refusing to meet those of the mill hand. Then he arose and said in a husky voice which held no conviction:

“I object to the recallin’ of this witness. He’s been examined once.”

“I overrule your objection—Mr. Tutt may interrogate him as fully as he wishes,” retorted Judge Tompkins sharply. He turned to Emerson.

“Where have you been? I understood you had disappeared.”

Emerson smiled sheepishly.

“I’ve been here right along,” he answered, “ ’cept just after I give my testimony. You see, I took a job up to Orient Mills and signed on the next mornin’, but I got thinkin’ about the case an’ I decided to come back.”

“Why?” demanded his honor.

“Well, jedge,” explained Emerson, “y’see I figured out that mebbe my evidence might turn out to be pretty important, for I heard over to the Phoenix House how Skinny was goin’ to try to prove he was in Pottsville at four o’clock. Now I knew the murder was done jest about that time. An’ I testified to it here, but——” and he spoke very slowly and distinctly—“nobody,—neither Squire Mason nor Mr. Tutt,—asked me much about it—and I got thinkin’——”

“I object t’ all this!” again interposed Mason. “This ain’t any proper way for him to testify—tellin’ about what he thought, an’ all.”

“That is quite true,” agreed his honor. “Mr. Tutt, you had better question the witness in the regular way.”

Mr. Tutt bowed. He too had observed that the weather cock had veered.

“Anyhow I come back on the next train,” finished Mr. Emerson, “an’ I’ve been here right along.”

“Mr. Emerson,” Mr. Tutt began, his voice trembling slightly from the excitement under which he labored, “you have testified that when you entered the hermit’s shanty the clock pointed to four o’clock.”

“Yes,” answered the witness, “it did.”

“You have also testified that you returned later on with Mr. Pennypacker, when he took his photograph. Did you notice the clock at that time?”

“I did.”

“At what hour was it pointing?”

“Four o’clock.”

“Was it going at that time?”

Emerson shook his head.

“No,” he replied. “It warn’t.”

Mr. Tutt’s heart gave a flutter, but he kept bravely on without batting a lid.

“But you testified positively that you knew it was four o’clock when you went there the first time.”

“Yep—yes, I mean,” replied the witness firmly. “I know it was four o’clock.”

Mr. Tutt was now on terra firma, for he knew that whatever the answer might be—it was bound to be favorable. He was safely within the conservative rule that you must never ask a question unless you are sure that the answer cannot hurt you. But he did not know what the answer was going to be, had no idea of what fact he might be about to elicit. So that there was a delicious uncertainty about the next inquiry, upon which he fully realized that he staked his whole case.

“How do you know it was four o’clock?” he demanded, with a note of triumph and the air of being now about to disclose something which he had known perfectly well all along but which he had withheld until this, the exact psychological moment. “Tell the jury how you know, Mr. Emerson!”

The jury fully apprised of the fact that upon the answer hung the validity of Skinny’s alibi focused their eyes on the lumberman’s honest face. Even Judge Tompkins could not refrain from turning half way round and pulling his chair towards the witness box so as not to lose a word. By common consent, by instinct, and in fact, this was the apex, the climax, the denouement of the trial of Skinny the Tramp. Would Emerson make good—or wouldn’t he?

“Fer one thing because I kin almost swear I heard the clock tick and saw the hand move,” answered Emerson positively.

The jury looked at one another inquiringly. That was pretty strong testimony! To recall that you heard a clock tick!

“Are you quite sure?” cautioned Judge Tompkins. “Remember that this is a very important bit of evidence.”

“Pretty near!” answered Emerson. “I’m satisfied fer myself that I did, but this bein’ a court o’ law, mebbe I’d oughter be more certain to swear to it. Anyhow that is how I remember it. I testified before how I went into the shanty and saw the hermit lyin’ with his mouth covered with blood and how he died while I held his head in my hand. If you’d been there, you’d ha’ remembered it all right, I reckon. But nobody axed me if I knew the clock was goin’. Wal, it was this way. When I lifted the hermit’s head an’ looked in his face the shanty was all still,—’ceptin’ fer three things.”

He paused, almost as if for effect.

“What were they?” softly demanded Mr. Tutt.

Emerson lowered his voice.

“The first was the kind of cluckin’ sound the hermit’s breath made goin’ in and out through his mouth on account of the blood. His eyes was half open but they didn’t see none. He was just passin’ out. It was so quiet I felt real creepy—all alone with him dyin’. But what skeered me most was an enormous great moth—the biggest I ever see—that went flap-flap-flap agin’ the winder tryin’ to git out. It flapped and flapped and I thought it would stun itself agin’ the glass. An’ ez I knelt thar holdin’ the hermit’s head, listenin, to his breathing and to that big gray moth flappin’ over at the window, I kin most swear I heard the clock tick—an’ saw the minute hand slip to four o’clock—and then all of a suddint the whole shanty went still. The hermit didn’t breathe no more, the moth flew out the door,—an’——”

“Well?” whispered Mr. Tutt.

“An’ the clock stopped!”

In the silence that followed there was no one in the court room that did not mark the ticking of the clock upon the rear wall. Each listener told himself that if necessary he could swear to it until his dying day. Then Mr. Tutt said, almost with unconcern:

“And did you tell Squire Mason all this?”

“Sure!” replied Emerson, looking the prosecutor full in the face. “I told him all about it that very afternoon!”

Judge Tompkins fixed the wretched prosecutor with a beetling eye.

“How do you reconcile the withholding of this very vital evidence from the jury?” he inquired in icy tones.

Mason, ivory white, attempted to rise, but collapsed weakly into his chair.

“I didn’t believe it!” he answered faintly. “It ain’t any part o’ my duty to have a witness tell fairy stories to the jury.”

“But in calling the witness you vouched for his credibility!” retorted Judge Tompkins with contempt.

“Only in so far as I brought out his testimony myself,” replied the Squire feebly. “I believed he was tellin’ the truth about findin’ the hermit still alive—and mebbe about the moth—but I didn’t believe—an’ I don’t believe now—an’ what’s more I don’t believe anybody else believes—that that partic’lar clock up an’ stopped the very moment the hermit died.”

He pressed his lips together resolutely.

Judge Tompkins turned a scornful shoulder to the now groveling Hezekiah.

“Mr. Emerson,” said he. “You have contributed materially by your testimony, given this afternoon, to our knowledge of the case. Have you any other means of knowing whether at the time you think you saw the hand of the hermit’s clock move to four o’clock it was then pointing to the correct time?”

“Yes, jedge, I have,” answered the witness without hesitation. “For just as the silence come in the shanty—when the hermit had died, and the big moth had flown out, and—the clock had stopped, the whistle over to Sawyer’s Steam Lumber Mill blew four o’clock.”

“I guess that settles that!” remarked the foreman, leaning back and wagging a confirmatory chin whisker.

“Did you tell that to Squire Mason?” inquired his honor scathingly.

“No,” answered Emerson. “I tole him it was four o’clock and how the clock stopped, an’ as he didn’t seem partic’larly interested ’bout the hour, I let it go at that.”

Those of our readers who perchance should happen to find themselves for a night in Pottsville or in any of the adjacent towns should not fail to elicit from the oldest accessible inhabitant the great story of the ripping up of Squire Mason by Lawyer Tutt in the latter’s closing address to the jury, and how the governor, upon the recommendation of Judge Tompkins, promptly removed him from office, thus blasting a promising political career. For Mr. Tutt, by one of those freaks of fortune which do occasionally occur, found himself in a position to make good on every one of the charges—both direct and indirect—which he had made against the prosecutor and to prove him in fact to be every one of all the varieties of crook, rascal and rapscallion that he had called him. And he somehow managed in addition to convince everybody—except possibly shrewd Judge Tompkins—that he had known all about everything from the beginning of the trial and that the whole Emerson business had been just a grandstand play carefully staged to give a proper theatrical effect to the final coup. Anyhow, according to general account, there wasn’t a thing left of Squire Mason when Mr. Tutt got through with him. He was flayed, disemboweled, torn limb from limb, drawn and quartered, and his various physical members, with their connective tissues, scattered broadside over Somerset County—to the great joy of the inhabitants thereof. And, what was of vastly more importance, Skinny the Tramp’s alibi was definitely, finally and impregnably established; so that when Judge Tompkins concluded his charge to the jury at a quarter past three o’clock on Friday afternoon everybody said it was all over but the shouting and most of them didn’t wait to hear the verdict.

Indeed, so confident was public opinion of an immediate acquittal that the sheriff didn’t even take Skinny back to the calaboose, but allowed him to smoke one of Mr. Tutt’s stogies right in the court room, while Judge Tompkins and the old lawyer strolled across Main Street to sit on the Phoenix House piazza until the jury should come in.

“Well, Mr. Tutt,” said his honor, as he politely declined one of the famous Wheeling corona-coronas, “I must congratulate you on a most adroit and effective piece of court room strategy. The way you held back and finally brought out the story of the clock was really masterly!”

Mr. Tutt smiled enigmatically.

“I took several chances in that case!” he admitted with a great deal more truth than his listener was aware of.

“However,” replied Judge Tompkins, “you didn’t take anywhere near as many as our friend the district attorney. Unofficially—not for publication, and in the language of the metropolis from which you come,—in my opinion, he’s some crook.”

“Unofficially and confidentially,” returned Mr. Tutt, “I entirely agree with you. Speaking mildly, he’s got by long odds the most perverted sense of fair play that I have ever come across.”

“That’s all the good it will do him,” said his honor. “If I’m not mistaken that jury will acquit inside of fifteen minutes.”

“You never can tell,” murmured Mr. Tutt. “It’s fourteen minutes since they went out already.”

“Anyhow it’s only a question of a very short time—your alibi was conclusively established.”

“Yes,” assented Mr. Tutt, “but very likely there’s some rube on that jury that doesn’t know yet what the word means.”

As if in curious confirmation of Mr. Tutt’s cynical opinion of the cerebral equipment of his fellow human beings the sheriff at this moment appeared from the direction of the court house.

“Jedge,” said he, “the jury allow ez how they’d like to have some supper. Shall I bring ’em over or hold ’em awhile?”

“What do you think, Mr. Tutt?” inquired his honor.

“When a jury wants its supper,” answered the old lawyer, “always give it to ’em—and send ’em in a box of cigars besides.”

Judge Tompkins laughed.

“All right, sheriff,” said he, “give them their supper, by all means. Strange,” he added. “I thought surely they’d agree almost immediately!”

“They were doin’ a powerful lot of talkin’ the last time I went into the jury room,” remarked the sheriff. “You could hear ’em holler way acrost the road.”

He vanished into the court house and presently returned leading the jury like an ancient bell weather down the steps and towards the hotel. The judge and Mr. Tutt eyed them intently for the purpose of deciphering if possible the thoughts concealed behind their inscrutability. But no more expressionless set of men ever ascended the piazza steps of the Phoenix House than the jury to whose keeping had been entrusted the life of Skinny the Tramp.

“Hanged if I can tell a thing from looking at ’em,” admitted Judge Tompkins.

“I can,” countered Mr. Tutt. “They’re hungry.”

It appeared in due course that this particular jury was more than ordinarily hungry, for its members not only consumed the entire official menu but insisted on eating three plates apiece of “Ma” Best’s griddle cakes; after which they sat on the piazza for an entire hour in replete silence while digestion took its course; and it was eight o’clock and after repeated urgings on the part of the sheriff before they reluctantly consented to return to the court house.

“It’s only a matter of form,” opined Judge Tompkins to Mr. Tutt. “They’ll agree now in no time.”

“H’m! You never can tell!” answered Mr. Tutt, as he excused himself and went upstairs to refill his pockets with stogies.

Indeed, Judge Tompkins guessed wholly wrong. The jury—so far as could be ascertained by any proper legal means—had no immediate intention of agreeing at all. Nine o’clock came,—and nine-thirty,—with still no word from them. At ten or thereabouts a vigorous rapping on the door of the jury room caused the hearts of those spectators who still lingered in the court house to thump loudly,—but it was only a call for ice water. At ten-thirty the sheriff reported absolute silence—evidently a deadlock. At eleven all was still quiet along the Potomac. The judge, surprised and impatient at what seemed to indicate the possibility of a miscarriage of justice, directed Sheriff Higgins to inquire if there was a likelihood of an agreement, to which the foreman merely returned the laconic answer that as yet they had not reached a verdict. Five hours had now elapsed since the twelve good and true men had received their instructions and retired to deliberate.

“Mr. Tutt,” said Judge Tompkins, “I will wait here until eleven-thirty and, if there is no word from the jury by that time, I shall return to the Phoenix House and go to bed.”

But at eleven-thirty no word had come and the sheriff reported that there was no sound whatever inside the jury room. All argument had ceased. He couldn’t hear a durn thing. He reckoned they’d gone to sleep for the night.

“It’s incredible!” declared his honor. “A perfectly plain case! What do you suppose is making the trouble?”

“You kin search me, jedge!” said the sheriff. “Now you just go acrost to bed and if anything happens I’ll hustle right over.”

A couple of dozen hangers-on still remained after the judge had left the court room, whose electric brilliants were only slightly dimmed by the incense from as many virulent cigars. Betting was now even on the result, with the odds three to two on an ultimate disagreement. Evidently for some unknown reason the alibi had gone bad. Mr. Tutt, sitting on the topmost step of the court house entrance felt a surreptitious poke in the back and perceived that the sheriff was beckoning mysteriously to him. Arising with ostentatious indifference the lawyer followed the official to the rear of the building, where after making sure that they were unobserved Higgins unlocked a small door opening upon a flight of back stairs.

“Got suthin’ I want to show ye!” he muttered with an elaborate facial contortion designed to register mischievous humor. Mr. Tutt responded with a similar grimace and the two cautiously tiptoed up the stairs to the topmost landing where the sheriff unlocked another door, and after lighting a candle tip produced from his trousers pocket conducted the lawyer into the blackness of what was evidently the court house attic.

“Duck yer head!” he warned, “if ye don’t want to crack yer skull!”

“Where are you going?” asked Mr. Tutt, although he did not in the least care.

“Never you mind!” retorted his guide.

Then after he had felt his way sixty feet or so across the timbers the sheriff stopped and blew out the candle.

“We’re right over the jury room,” he whispered.

The attic was hot, dusty, close, and full of cobwebs, suggestive of man-eating spiders, but enthused with the spirit of adventure Mr. Tutt stood motionless over the crack of light which showed them to be in the right place. Below, all was silence, penetrated by an occasional hiss and punctuated now and then with a snore. What had occurred? Was there in fact a deadlock? Would Skinny the Tramp have to face another trial for his life? After what seemed an incredible period of time a chair scraped and a voice was heard:

“What time is it now, Bill?”

There was a momentary hiatus during which a watch was evidently consulted and then the foreman made reply:

“Ten minutes to twelve.”

Again the cloak of silence descended upon the so-called deliberations of the jury. Then Mr. Tutt was startled by the voice of Sawyer, the foreman, who evidently sat just beneath them.

“Well, boys,” he exclaimed in a voice full of relief, “it’s five minutes after midnight—Saturday mornin’—an’ I guess we’re safe to claim another day’s pay. After all, three dollars is real money—wuth gettin’!—All up! Seventh inning!”

There was a tremendous scuffling of feet below,—intermingled with loud yawns.

“Well,” said the foreman again, “we’re all agreed, ain’t we? It’s an acquittal, ain’t it?”

“Yep!—You betcher!—Sure!” came from eleven husky throats.

The foreman pounded sharply upon the door of the jury room and the sheriff scrambled hastily towards the attic door.

“An’ the next thing—after we git outer here,” continued the foreman drily, “is to decide what we’re goin’ to do with Squire Mason!”

* * * * * *

The crowd surged about Skinny, caught him up on its shoulders and bore him struggling and feebly protesting out of the court room, down the steps, and over to the Phoenix House. “Ma” Barrows was waiting for them, and when they dumped Skinny down on the piazza she threw her arms about him and with the tears streaming down her cheeks cried:

“You poor, poor boy! Come right in and let me give you some nice hot supper and after that a soft clean bed!”

But Skinny shook his head.

“The supper’s all right,” he said. “But I guess I’d rather sleep outdoors!”

In the court room Sheriff Higgins approached Mr. Tutt, who was gathering up his papers.

“Well,” he said, taking a fat envelope out of his breast pocket and glancing into it, “Here’s your fee—Two hundred and fifty dollars!—Wisht I could earn money that easy!”

Mr. Tutt waved the envelope away with a careless gesture.

“Give it to Skinny,” he said. “He needs it!”

Then with a rush the crowd came piling into the court room again.

“Where’s Mason?” they demanded angrily. “Where’s the old son of a——!”

But the Squire, being wise in his generation, had taken his departure.

* * * * * *

On a hillside overlooking the fertile valley of the Sacramento, Skinny the Tramp lay amid a clump of giant redwoods and watched the sun drawing water through the rain clouds gathered a thousand feet below him. Resting upon a thick bed of pine needles, he leaned luxuriously against a rock, while at his feet, propped over a small fire, a tomato can bubbled cheerily and gave forth a sweet-smelling savor. It was six months after the trial and two months since One-eyed Pedro, heir-apparent of the Zingara Gipsies, had confessed in the deathhouse at Sing Sing, where he was awaiting execution for the murder of his father, that he had killed Drake, the Hermit of Turkey Hollow.

This was the first real opportunity that Skinny had had a chance to sit as he loved with the world at his feet—and think——! With his eyes half closed and the gray smoke from his cigarette coiling and uncoiling in the shaft of sunlight that shot through the branches above his head, Skinny recalled the events leading up to his trial. It had been very much the same sort of an afternoon that the hermit was killed; there had been the same softness in the air, the same flooding sunlight shining gold-red on the trees and fields against the blue-gray of the rainclouds. He had been lying just that same way on the hillside above Turkey Hollow,—dreaming as usual of pots of gold. Then the storm had burst and for half an hour it had poured, as it was raining now at the other end of the valley, and the rainbow had come out against the leaden sky with one end of it on the hermit’s hut.

He recalled vividly how he had rushed down through the drenched woods, passing the lumberman Emerson, whose greeting in his hurry he had neglected to return, and peeked in through the hermit’s window to find him counting his gold. What a thrill the sight had given him! His faith had at last been justified! Just as he’d always known it sometime would be; rainbow—pot of gold! The fact that the gold belonged to someone else didn’t really affect the soundness of the theory one way or the other, and when the hermit had good-naturedly agreed to exchange twenty of the smaller pieces for a hundred dollars in bills he had been almost as well pleased as if he had found the gold hidden in the earth. Then he had strode on through the woods to the village.

That was all there had been to it. It had taken him twenty minutes to walk the mile—he knew it, because the hermit’s clock had pointed to twenty minutes to four when he left the shanty. Suddenly the blood in the tramp’s jugular leaped violently. Yes, the clock had certainly pointed to twenty minutes to four—and if so—it must have—must have stopped—run down or something—at the very moment the old man died!—And he, Skinny, was the only person alive who knew it,—for he was the only person who knew positively that it had been going just before the murder. Funny!—a prickly feeling spread over his back—like a needle bath, only he had never had one. It was funny! And then there was that enormous gray moth that Emerson said had been trying to get out the window. Hadn’t he warned the hermit that some day those bugs would wriggle off their pins and go for him! Sure! And the clock had stopped!—The tune of the old song floated through his mind and unconsciously he hummed the words over to himself:

It had,—too! He was the only one who knew it—or the whole story about the moth! How the hermit had jokingly said that some day maybe he’d go flappin’ off like a big gray moth.—Now he was in that other world—that world that was right along beside us!

Skinny looked around apprehensively but there was no moth in sight. Had it grown chilly? He shivered and noticed that his cigarette had gone out. He lighted it again on his knees at the fire and as he did so the sweet savor of the soup rose to his nostrils. It was nearly done! He forgot all about the murder in the anticipation of soup.

Back through the whole being of Skinny the Tramp surged a warm delirious joy—merely at being alive. Kneeling there he looked like the votary of some forest god, as he rubbed his lean hands over the blaze and stretched his arms outward and upward towards the sky. He yawned deliciously. Then he observed with interest that a rainbow had appeared on the opposite side of the valley—a wonderful, gleaming arch, whose blending colors seemed to singe the clouds. One end of it descended directly upon a field hard by a yellow farmhouse. Pots of gold again!

Skinny watched, as it momentarily grew brighter, beckoning him to wealth and possible adventure; then forgetful of the soup he scrambled to his feet.

The next instant he had plunged down the hillside towards the valley—after the rainbow!

[The End]