“Be quiet, May,” said Matlin. “You’ll upset her. Of course nobody will hurt her.”
“Yes, it is dangerous, Mrs. Matlin,” said Russell quietly. “That’s why I came over.”
Matlin goggled. “What? What’s this?”
“Could I possibly persuade you, sir, to spend the night away from this neighborhood... and depart noisily?”
“No,” said Matlin, raring up, his ego bristling, “no, you cannot! I will under no circumstances be driven away from my own home.” His voice rose. “Furthermore, I certainly will not leave my wife and step-daughter.”
“We could manage, dear,” said Mrs. Matlin anxiously.
Russell told them about the talk under the oak, the B.B. gun.
“Devils,” said May Matlin, “absolutely...”
“Oh, Earl,” trembled Mrs. Matlin, “maybe we had all better go away.”
Matlin, red-necked, furious, said, “We own this property. We pay our taxes. We have our rights. Let them! Let them try something like that! Then, I think the law would have something to say. This is outrageous! I did not harm that animal. Therefore, I defy...” He looked solemn and silly, as the Judge had said, with his face crimson, his weak eyes rolling.
Russell rose. “I thought I ought to make the suggestion,” he said mildly, “because it would be the safest thing to do. But don’t worry, Mrs. Matlin, because I...”
“A B.B. gun can blind...” she said tensely.
“Or even worse,” Mike agreed. “But I am thinking of the...”
“Just a minute,” Matlin roared. “You can’t come in here and terrify my wife! She is not strong. You have no right.” He drew himself up with his feet at a right angle, his pudgy arm extended, his plump jowls quivering. “Get out,” he cried. He looked ridiculous.
Whether the young man and the bewildered woman in the chair might have understood each other was not to be known. Russell, of course, got out. May Matlin hobbled to the door and as Russell went through it, she said, “Well, you warned us, anyhow.” And her lips came together, sharply.
Russell plodded across the pavement again. Long enchanting shadows from the lowering sun struck aslant through the golden air and all the old houses were gilded and softened in their green setting. He moved toward the big oak. He hunkered down. The sun struck its golden shafts deep under the boughs. “How’s it going?” he asked.
Freddy Titus looked frozen and still. “O.K.,” said Phil Bourchard with elaborate ease. Light on his owlish glasses hid the eyes.
Mike opened his lips, hesitated. Supper time struck on the neighborhood clock. Calls, like chimes, were sounding.
“...’s my Mom,” said Ernie Allen. “See you after.”
“See you after, Freddy.”
“O.K.”
“O.K.”
Mrs. Somers’ hoot had chimed with the rest and now Freddy got up, stiffly.
“O.K.?” said Mike Russell. The useful syllables that take any meaning at all in American mouths asked, “Are you feeling less bitter, boy? Are you any easier?”
“O.K.,” said Freddy. The same syllables shut the man out.
Mike opened his lips. Closed them. Freddy went across the lawn to his kitchen door. There was a brown crockery bowl on the back stoop. His sneaker, rigid on the ankle, stepped over it. Mike Russell watched, and then, with a movement of his arms, almost as if he would wring his hands, he went up the Judge’s steps.
“Well?” The Judge opened his door. “Did you talk to the boy?”
Russell didn’t answer. He sat down.
The Judge stood over him. “The boy... The enormity of this whole idea must be explained to him.”
“I can’t explain,” Mike said. “I open my mouth. Nothing comes out.”
“Perhaps I had better...”
“What are you going to say, sir?”
“Why, give him the facts,” the Judge cried.
“The facts are... the dog is dead.”
“There are no facts that point to Matlin.”
“There are no facts that point to a tramp, either. That’s too sloppy, sir.”
“What are you driving at?”
“Judge, the boy is more rightfully suspicious than we are.”
“Nonsense,” said the Judge. “The girl saw the dog’s body before Matlin came...”
“There is no alibi for poison,” Mike said sadly.
“Are you saying the man is a liar?”
“Liars,” sighed Mike. “Truth and lies. How are those kids going to understand, sir? To that Mrs. Page, to the lot of them, Truth is only a subjective intention. ‘I am no liar,’ sez she, sez he. ‘I intend to be truthful. So do not insult me.’ Lord, when will we begin? It’s what we were talking about at lunch, sir. What you and I believe. What the race has been told and told in such agony, in a million years of bitter lesson. Error, we were saying. Error is the enemy.”
He flung out of the chair. “We know that to tell the truth is not merely a good intention. It’s a damned difficult thing to do. It’s a skill, to be practiced. It’s a technique. It’s an effort. It takes brains. It takes watching. It takes humility and self-examination. It’s a science and an art...
“Why don’t we tell the kids these things? Why is everyone locked up in anger, shouting liar at the other side? Why don’t they automatically know how easy it is to be, not wicked, but mistaken? Why is there this notion of violence? Because Freddy doesn’t think to himself, ‘Wait a minute. I might be wrong.’ The habit isn’t there. Instead, there are the heroes — the big-muscled, noble-hearted, gun-toting heroes, blind in a righteousness totally arranged by the author. Excuse me, sir.”
“All that may be,” said the Judge grimly, “and I agree. But the police know the lesson. They...”
“They don’t care.”
“What?”
“Don’t care enough, sir. None of us cares enough — about the dog.”
“I see,” said the Judge. “Yes, I see. We haven’t the least idea what happened to the dog.” He touched his pince-nez.
Mike rubbed his head wearily. “Don’t know what to do except sit under his window the night through. Hardly seems good enough.”
The Judge said, simply, “Why don’t you find out what happened to the dog?”
The young man’s face changed. “What we need, sir,” said Mike slowly, “is to teach Freddy how to ask for it. Just to ask for it. Just to want it.” The old man and the young man looked at each other. Past and future telescoped. “Now” Mike said. “Before dark.”
Supper time, for the kids, was only twenty minutes long. When the girl in the brown dress with the bare blonde head got out of the shabby coupe, the gang was gathered again in its hollow under the oak. She went to them and sank down on the ground. “Ah, Freddy, was it Bones? Your dear little dog you wrote about in the essay?”
“Yes, Miss Dana.” Freddy’s voice was shrill and hostile. I wont be touched! it cried to her. So she said no more, but sat there on the ground, and presently she began to cry. There was contagion. The simplest thing in the world. First, one of the smaller ones, whimpering. Finally, Freddy Titus, bending over. Her arm guided his head, and then he lay weeping in her lap.
Russell, up in the summer house, closed his eyes and praised the Lord. In a little while he swung his legs over the railing and slid down the bank. “How do? I’m Mike Russell.”
“I’m Lillian Dana.” She was quick and intelligent, and her tears were real.
“Fellows,” said Mike briskly, “you know what’s got to be done, don’t you? We’ve got to solve this case.”
They turned their woeful faces.
He said, deliberately, “It’s just the same as a murder. It is a murder.”