“Where’d you get that?” she demanded.
“One of the boys threw it away,” he answered, with a nod in the direction of the prisoners.
“Threw it away, did he?” The girl’s voice quivered indignantly. “The dirty bum! After me payin’ fifty berries for it!”
“That’s tough,” Neale murmured. “You gave it to Halsey?”
“Last week — for his birthday. I... I see myself givin’ that egg another present,” she choked. “The way he’s treated me!”
The blonde began to cry. Neale smiled, turned in time to catch the stricken look on Halsey’s face as the man glanced back.
“Cheer up, sister,” Neale consoled softly, patting her arm. “You won’t be giving him another present. Halsey won’t be having another birthday.”
Murder Will Out
by Charles Somerville
All through the stormy night the murderer’s victim pursued him down the raging flood of the Ohio River.
I
This weird story came out of a great flood in the Ohio River valley more than twenty-five years ago. A reporter covering the event at the time, I included it in my news dispatches, but it has never yet been as fully told as I mean to tell it here.
Knowledge of part of what actually happened is necessarily drawn from deduction in the uncanny tale — the deductions of a shrewd, practical and observant medical officer of the locality. I will call him Dr. Mason, but must frankly admit I cannot now recall his real name nor that of the little town from whence the strange tragedy came. But the circumstances of it, its details, and the grim, dramatic explanation the doctor gave of it remains clearly in memory. It is too powerful a story for any one to forget.
Most persons who have never looked on a flood of the mighty rivers of the Middle West picture the rivers as rushing turbulently along, slashing high waves into white foam. But that is only true of the mountain streams that come tumbling down into the broad valleys. A flood of the mighty Ohio is strangely deceptive in appearance. The waters spread out widely, but the broadened stream appears almost placid. Its surface is quite smooth. It is moving swiftly along to the great Mississippi, but how swiftly, with what enormous force you can only realize when you see entire houses, giant trees, barns, wagons, human bodies, struggling or drowned cattle being borne smoothly along in the quiet but mighty and devastating current.
In a small town not far from Day-ton lived Jed Granger — or so we shall call him. He was nearly eighty years old, and a miser. He had begun as a farmer and cattle raiser, but ended up as a money shark, a usurer. For five years he had been bed-ridden, his old body distorted and made helpless by a form of rheumatism that stiffened his joints so that his hips could not move in their sockets, his knees or his elbows bend. His fingers could only clasp halfway.
When he felt complete helplessness coming upon him he converted all his money into gold and silver dollars and placed it in an old leather satchel. This was stored under the bed from which old Jed could not longer arise. He had a heavy lock on the satchel and a leather strap passing from the handle of it to one of his wrists, around which it was securely buckled and bound. When he slept he drew the strap taut, and as the aged are light sleepers no one could touch that strap or satchel without Jed Granger being instantly aware of it.
He had a daughter who married a handsome, good-natured fellow who was always losing his jobs. They had three children. Old Jed was driven into deliriums of anger in those times when his daughter’s husband was out of work and he had to support the family. The older he grew the more miserly he became. And although he sorely needed the nursing his daughter could give him, in the end he turned her, her husband and the children out of the house to shift for themselves.
This occurred shortly before the big flood of which I am writing. But the old man had to have an attendant of some sort or surrender himself to the hospital at Dayton, where, when the value of the contents of the satchel was discovered — it contained sixty thousand dollars in gold and silver coin — they would, of course, make him pay for his board, nursing and doctoring.
As against an evil it shrivelled his miser’s heart to contemplate, he chose a lesser. He had a nephew come to care for him. This nephew, Pete Granger, was regarded as the most contemptible figure in the small river town. He was a tall, lanky fellow, with red hair as coarse and wiry as that of an Airedale dog. He had small, pink-rimmed, light blue eyes set closely together at the bridge of a long nose. Loose lips and a chin ridiculously small and shapeless, a long skinny neck to match his body, a shambling gait, clothing always shabby and stained completed the picture.
He skulked about sucking at a corncob pipe, taking odd jobs only when stark necessity demanded. He had been caught several times at petty thieveries. Twice he served short terms in prison for petty larceny.
Old Jed Granger knew of this. But he knew also that his lank, chinless nephew was afraid of him. And when Pete received word from Jed’s daughter he’d be wanted at the house to care for his uncle, she didn’t tell him that the last service she had done the hateful old man was to place a loaded shotgun at his right hand, strapped to his arm so that he could lift it, aim it and pull the trigger.
Pete went. It meant anyway a certain roof over his head and some sort of daily provender. He would stand out for an allowance of two dollars a week extra for tobacco and an occasional flask of white mule.
Pete took up his quarters with old Jed and did his best to please him. He began to have dreams of attaining such an ascendancy over the old man as age continued to weaken him that in the end Jed might leave him the dizzy riches that the worn leather satchel under the bed contained.
The waters of the Ohio began to rise and spread. Reports came to the valleys from the mountain regions that the streams there were smashing down the hillsides to the very tree tops, carrying everything before them. Each day the Ohio spread out farther, went up by inches, then by feet.
The good people with houses near the river bank did what they could to brace them against the pressure — the silent, smooth yet mighty pressure of the flood waters — and then retreated back into regions of safety. Tent colonies grew and welded into a small town overnight on territory known by past experiences to be beyond the sweep of the flood.
Pete Granger was obliged to come ashore from his uncle’s house on a rough raft, made of three planks, in order to buy supplies at the general store.
“You’d oughta git the old man out of that house,” the storekeeper said to him, and others there nodded agreement. “This here ain’t no baby flood. That dern old two-story affair ’ll be yanked into it and torn to pieces in no time.”
Pete snickered.
“Ain’t I bin tellin’ him that? But you jest try to git him to leave it! I did, an’ he aimed a shotgun at me. He said he’d shoot to kill any one that tried to take him out of the house. He said the house was strong an’ had stood up ag’in’ other floods without being torn adrift, an’ would weather this one all right.”
“But does he know what an extra sized flood this one is, an’ more yet to come?”
“Ain’t I told him? But it’s all right. Don’t worry none. He’s a mean old cuss and all that, but he’s my blood and I’ll stick to him. I bin workin’ on a raft — you can’t see it from here because it’s on the other side of the house. I got her pretty nearly done — a good big one with a tent shack built on. An’ I found an’ old oil stove. When the flood gits too bad I’ll just take matters in my own hands, I’ll yank that gun away from him and load him and that satchel full o’ money he keeps under his bed — though what the hell good the money does him I don’t know — an’ I’ll drift him down the river to the nearest big town and put him in a hospital proper like he should be.”