The Skipper and the Skipped Part 46

and pounded on behind, reiterating the cry vociferously. At first he had the pursuit all to himself, for bystanders merely ducked to one side. But earnest repet.i.tion compels attention, and attention arouses interest, and interest provokes zeal. In a little while a dozen men were chasing the Colonel, and when that gentleman went las.h.i.+ng around the corner into Congress Street he--by an entirely natural order of events--ran into a policeman, for the policeman was running in the opposite direction to discover what all that approaching hullabaloo was about.

Cap'n Sproul, prudently on the outskirts of the gathering crowd, noted with rising hope that the policeman and the Colonel were rolling over each other on the ground, and that even when officious hands had separated them the facial contortions of the voiceless tyrant of Smyrna were not making any favorable impression on the offended bluecoat.

Cap'n Sproul started away for the bank at a trot. But he began to walk when he heard the policeman shout: "Aw, there's enough of ye'r moonkey faces at me. Yez will coome along to th' station, and talk it on yer fingers to th' marshal!"

At the bank door the Cap'n halted, wiped his face, composed his features, set on his cap at an entirely self-possessed angle, and then marched in to the wicket.

"Will you have this transferred to your account, Captain Sproul?"

inquired the teller, with the deference due to a good customer.

The Cap'n anxiously bent a stubbed finger around a bar of the grating.

Sudden anxiety as to leaving the money there beset him. After his perils and his toils he wanted to feel that cash--to realize that he had actually cashed in that hateful check.

"I'll take the real plasters," he said, huskily; "big ones as you've got. I--I want to pay for some vessel property!" He reflected that the few hundreds that the loss of the ancient _Dobson_ called for lifted this statement out of the cheap level of prevarication.

When he hurried out of the bank with various thick packets stowed about his person, he headed a straight course for the police-station.

In the marshal's office he found Colonel Gideon Ward, voiceless, frantic, trembling--licking at the point of a stubby lead-pencil that had been shoved into his grasp, and trying to compose his soul sufficiently to write out some of the information about himself, with which he was bursting.

"There ain't no call for this man to write out the story of his life,"

declared Cap'n Sproul, with an authority in his tones and positiveness in his manner that did not fail to impress the marshal.

"He is my brother-in-law, he is Colonel Gideon Ward, of Smyrna, a man with more'n a hundred thousand dollars, and any one that accuses him of bein' a thief is a liar, and I stand here to prove it."

And to think there was no one present except the Colonel to appreciate the cryptic humor of that remark!

The Cap'n avoided the demoniacal gaze that Ward bent on him and disregarded the workings of that speechless mouth. Sproul shoved his hand deep into his trousers pocket and pulled out a roll of bills on which the teller's tape had not been broken. At this sight the Colonel staggered to his feet.

"Here!" cried the Cap'n, shoving money into the hand of the officer who had made the arrest. "There's something to pay for your muddy clothes. Now you'd better go out and find the man that started all this touse about a leadin' citizen. I'll sue this city as a relative of his if you don't let him go this minute."

And they let him go, with an apology that Colonel Ward treated with perfectly insulting contempt.

Cap'n Sproul faced him on the street outside the prison, standing prudently at guard, for he perfectly realized that just at that moment Colonel Gideon Ward had all the attributes of a lunatic.

"You can see it bulgin' all over me," said the Cap'n, "all tied up in bundles. I don't say my way was the best way to get it. But I've got it. I suppose I might have gone to law to get it, but that ain't my way. Of course you can go to law to get it back; but for reasons that you know just as well as I, I'd advise you not to--and that advice don't cost you a cent."

For a full minute Colonel Ward stood before him and writhed his gaunt form and twisted his blue lips and waggled his bony jaws. But not a sound could he utter. Then he whirled and signalled a trolley-car and climbed on board. With intense satisfaction the Cap'n noted that the car was marked "Union Station."

"Well, home is the best place for him," muttered the Cap'n; "home and a flaxseed poultice on his chist and complete rest of mind and body. Now I'll settle for that schooner, hunt up Hime Look and that pertickler and admirin' friend of his, that infernal elephant, and then I reckon I'll--eraow-w-w!" he yawned. "I'll go home and rest up a little, too."

That repose was not disturbed by Colonel Gideon Ward. The Colonel had decided that affairs in his timber tracts needed his attention during that autumn.

XXV

Events do bunch themselves strangely, sometimes.

They bunched in Smyrna as follows:

1. The new monument arrived for Batson Reeves's graveyard lot in which was interred the first Mrs. Reeves; monument a belated arrival.

2. The announcement was made that Batson Reeves had at last caught a new wife in the person of Widow Delora Crymble, wedding set for Tuesday week.

3. Dependence Crymble, deceased husband of Delora, reappeared on earth. This latter event to be further elaborated.

Cap'n Aaron Sproul, first selectman of Smyrna, on his way from his home to the town office, found several men leaning on the graveyard fence, gazing over into the hallowed precincts of the dead with entire lack of that solemnity that is supposed to be attached to graveyards. It was on the morning following the last stroke of work on the Reeves monument.

The Reeves monument, a wholly unique affair, consisted of a life-sized granite figure of Mr. Reeves standing on a granite pedestal in the conventional att.i.tude of a man having his photograph taken. His head was set back stiffly, the right foot was well advanced, and he held a round-topped hat in the hook of his elbow.

On the pedestal was carved:

ERECTED TO THE MEMORY OF LOANTHA REEVES, WIFE OF BATSON REEVES, ACCORDING TO HER LAST REQUEST.

It may be said in pa.s.sing that Mrs. Reeves, having entertained a very exalted opinion of Mr. Reeves during life, left a portion of her own estate in the hands of trustees in order that this sentinel figure should stand guard above her in the suns.h.i.+ne and the rain. The idea was poetic. But Cap'n Sproul, joining the hilarious group at the graveyard fence, noted that some gruesome village humorist had seriously interfered with the poetic idea. Painted on a planed board set up against the monument was this:

I'm Watching Here Both Night and Day, So Number One Can't Get Away.

"That's kind o' pat, Cap'n, considerin' he's goin' to get married to Number Two next week," suggested one of the loungers.

Cap'n Sproul scowled into the grin that the other turned on him.

"I ain't got any regard for a human dogfish like Bat Reeves," he grunted, his heart full of righteous bitterness against a proclaimed enemy, "but as first selectman of this town I don't stand for makin'

a comic joke-book out of this cemetery." He climbed over the fence, secured the offending board and split it across his broad toe. Then with the pieces under his arm he trudged on toward the town office, having it in his mind to use the board for kindling in the barrel stove.

One strip he whittled savagely into shavings and the other he broke into f.a.gots, and when the fire was snapping merrily in the rusty stove he resumed a labor upon which he had been intent for several days.

Predecessors in office had called it "writing the town report." Cap'n Sproul called it "loggin' the year's run."

A pen never did hang easy in the old s.h.i.+pmaster's stiff fingers. The mental travail of this unwonted literary effort wrung his brain. An epic poet struggling with his masterpiece could not have been more rapt. And his nerves were correspondingly touchy. Constable Zeburee Nute, emerging at a brisk trot from the town office, had a warning word of counsel for all those intending to venture upon the first selectman's privacy. He delivered it at Broadway's store.

"Talk about your r'yal Peeruvian tigers with eighteen rings on their tails! He's settin' there with his hair standin' straight up and ink on his nose and clear to his elbows, and he didn't let me even get started in conversation. He up and throwed three ledger-books and five sticks of wood at me, and--so I come away," added Mr. Nute, resignedly. "I don't advise n.o.body to go in there."

However, the warning delivered at Broadway's store did not reach a certain tall, thin man; for the tall, thin man stalked straight through the village and up to the door inscribed "Selectman's Office." In his hand he carried a little valise about as large as a loaf of yeast bread. The shrewish December wind snapped trousers about legs like broom-handles. Black pads were hugged to his ears by a steel strip that curved behind his head, and he wore a hard hat that seemed merely to perch insecurely on his caput instead of fit.

Constable Nute, getting a glimpse of him through the store-window, remarked that with five minutes and a razor-strop he could put a shaving edge on the stranger's visage, but added promptly when he saw him disappear into the town office that some one could probably get a job within the next five minutes honing the nicks out of that edge.

Cap'n Sproul was just then absorbed in a task that he hated even worse than literary composition. He was adding figures. They were the items for road bills, and there were at least two yards of them on sheets of paper pasted together, for nearly every voter in town was represented. The Cap'n was half-way up one of the columns, and was exercising all his mental grip to hold on to the slowly increasing total on which he was laboriously piling units.

"I am always glad to meet a man who loves figgers," remarked the stranger, solemnly. He set his valise on the table and leaned over the Cap'n's shoulder. "I have wonderful faculty for figgers. Give me a number and I'll tell you the cube of it instantly, in the snap of a finger."

Cap'n Sproul merely ground his teeth and shoved his nose closer to the paper. He did not dare to look up. His whole soul was centred in effort to "walk the crack" of that column.

"I could do it when I was fifteen--and that was fifty years ago,"

went on the thin man.

The enunciation of those figures nearly put the Cap'n out of commission, but with a gulp and after a mental stagger he marched on.

"Now give me figgers--tens or hundreds," pleaded the stranger. "I'll give you the cube in one second--the snap of a finger. Since I see you hesitate, we'll take sixteen--a very simple factor. Cube it!"

He clacked a bony finger into an osseous palm and cried: "Four thousand and ninety-six!"