“Of course, there was very little doubt in the minds of the majority that Jones was guilty, but there was a fairly strong following who insisted that Jones was a course and brutal man, and perhaps weak in the head — yes — but not a murderer. They pointed to the children and declared that children could never lie, and these kids, when asked, said the murder had been committed by a man with red hair, large white teeth, and white hands. I myself had a number of interviews with the children, and I was amazed at the convincing power of their little story. Shining in the depths of the limpid up-turned eyes, one could fairly see tiny mirrored images of men with red hair, big white teeth, and white hands.
“Now, I’ll tell you how it happened — how I imagine it was done. Some time after burying his wife in the woods Jones strolled back into the house. Seeing nobody, he called out in the familiar fashion ‘Mother!’ Then the kids came out whimpering. ‘Where is your mother?’ said Jones. The children looked at him blankly. ‘Why, pa,’ said Freddy, ‘you came in here, and hit ma with the axe; and then you sent us to bed.’ ‘Me?’ cried Jones. ‘I haven’t been near the house since breakfast-time.’
“The children did not know how to reply. Their meager little sense informed them that their father had been the man with the axe, but he denied it, and to their minds everything was a mere great puzzle with no meaning whatever, save that it was mysteriously sad and made them cry.
“ ‘What kind of a looking man was it?’ said Jones.
“Freddy hesitated. ‘Now — he looked a good deal like you, pa.’
“ ‘Like me?’ said Jones. ‘Why, I thought you said he had red hair?’
“ ‘No, I didn’t,’ replied Freddy. ‘I thought he had grey hair, like yours.’
“Well,’ said Jones. ‘I saw a man with kind of red hair going along the road up yonder, and I thought maybe that might have been him.’
“Little Lucy, the second child, here piped up with intense conviction. ‘His hair was a little teeny bit red. I saw it.’
“ ‘No,’ said Jones. ‘The man I saw had very red hair. And what did his teeth look like? Were they big and white?’
“ ‘Yes,’ answered Lucy, ‘they were.’
“Even Freddy seemed to incline to think it. ‘His teeth may have been big and white.’
“Jones said little more at that time. Later he intimated to the children that their mother had gone off on a visit, and although they were full of wonder, and sometimes wept because of the oppression of an incomprehensible feeling in the air, they said nothing. Jones did his chores. Everything was smooth.
“The morning after the day of the murder, Jones and his children had a breakfast of hominy and milk.
“ ‘Well, this man with red hair and big white teeth, Lucy,’ said Jones. ‘Did you notice anything else about him?’
“Lucy straightened in her chair, and showed the childish desire to come out with brilliant information which would gain her father’s approval. ‘He had white hands — hands all white—’
“ ‘How about you, Freddy?’
“ ‘I didn’t look at them much, but I think they were white,’ answered the boy.
“ ‘And what did little Martha notice?’ cried the tender parent. ‘Did she see the big bad man?’
“Martha, aged four, replied solemnly, ‘His hair was all red, and his hand was white — all white.’
“ ‘That’s the man I saw up the road,’ said Jones to Freddy.
“ ‘Yes, sir, it seems like it must have been him,’ said the boy, his brain now completely muddled.
“Again Jones allowed the subject of his wife’s murder to lapse. The children did not know that it was a murder, of course. Adults were always performing in a way to make children’s heads swim. For instance, what could be more incomprehensible than that a man with two horses, dragging a queer thing, should walk all day, making the grass turn down and the earth turn up? And why did they cut the long grass and put it in a barn? And what was a cow for? Did the water in the well like to be there? All these actions and things were grand, because they were associated with the high estate of grown-up people, but they were deeply mysterious. If, then, a man with red hair, big white teeth, and white hands should hit their mother on the nape of the neck with an axe, it was merely a phenomenon of grown-up life. Little Henry, the baby, when he had a want, howled and pounded the table with a spoon. That was all of life to him. He was not concerned with the fact that his mother had been murdered.
“One day Jones said to his children suddenly, ‘Look here: I wonder if you could have made a mistake. Are you absolutely sure that the man you saw had red hair, big white teeth, and white hands?’
“The children were indignant with their father. ‘Why, of course, pa, we ain’t made no mistake. We saw him as plain as day.’
“Later young Freddy’s mind began to work like ketchup. His nights were haunted with terrible memories of the man with the red hair, big white teeth, and white hands, and the prolonged absence of his mother made him wonder and wonder. Presently he quite gratuitously developed the theory that his mother was dead. He knew about death. He had once seen a dead dog; also dead chickens, rabbits, and mice. One day he asked his father, ‘Pa, is ma ever coming back?’
“Jones said: ‘Well, no; I don’t think she is.’ This answer confirmed the boy in his theory. He knew that dead people did not come back.
“The attitude of Jones toward this descriptive legend of the man with the axe was very peculiar. He came to be in opposition to it. He protested against the convictions of the children, but could not move them. It was the one thing in their lives of which they were stonily and absolutely positive.
“ ‘Now that really ends the story. But I will continue for your amusement. The jury hung Jones as high as they could, and they were quite right: because Jones confessed before he died. Freddy is now a highly respected driver of a grocery wagon in Ogdensburg. When I was up there a good many years afterwards people told me that when he ever spoke of the tragedy at all he was certain to denounce the alleged confession as a lie. He considered his father a victim to the stupidity of juries, and some day he hopes to meet the man with the red hair, big white teeth, and white hands, whose image still remains so distinct in his memory that he could pick him out in a crowd of ten thousand.”
85
Gentlemen’s Agreement
Lawrence Block
The burglar, a slender and clean-cut chap just past thirty, was rifling a drawer in the bedside table when Archer Trebizond slipped into the bedroom. Trebizond’s approach was as catfooted as if he himself were the burglar, a situation which was manifestly not the case. The burglar never did hear Trebizond. absorbed as he was in his perusal of the drawer’s contents, and at length he sensed the other man’s presence as a jungle beast senses the presence of a predator.
The analogy, let it be said, is scarcely accidental.
When the burglar turned his eyes on Archer Trebizond his heart fluttered and fluttered again, first at the mere fact of discovery, then at his own discovery of the gleaming revolver in Trebizond’s hand. The revolver was pointed in his direction, and this the burglar found upsetting.