“You mean Mudge Pond. Yes, another road goes to Mudge Pond and then it splits so you can go down either side of it.”
“That sounds very exciting. Let’s go there.”
So we did, stopping only once or twice because we knew Mrs. McRae would be in a hurry for her dress, and when we got to the beginning of Mudge Pond where you can see the cat-tails growing in the water we could hear a funny noise like “Whack! Whack!”
I says, “Annabell, that sounds like a gun to me.”
She says, “Nonsense. I deduct that is a redheaded woodpecker.”
“A redheaded woodpecker because you are one too?”
“No, because they make a noise like that.”
I says, “What’s the bet?” and when she says O.K., if I win she will let me show her some of the parking places on her first night off, I drive along the right bank of Mudge Pond with the “Whack! Whack!” getting louder every minute.
There are not any cottages there, only a couple of tumble down shanties with nobody living in them, and the “Whack! Whack!” so loud that I says, “Annabell, wouldn’t you like to call that bet off and compromise on fifteen minutes right now because I don’t know where we will get a car on your night off?” but she says, “Pete, I’m a good sport and when I lose I pay up.”
I says, “I will remind you of those words,” and then we drive past a clump of bushes, and there is a clearing, and we can see the slaughterhouse employee who is in his shirt sleeves and he has got a target pinned up on an old elm and he is plunking pistol bullets in the target which is a piece of paper just as fast as he can shoot.
Annabell says, “Oh my!” and the slaughterhouse employee sees us just as we see him.
He comes right up to the car, slouching, with that pistol in his hand, and he looks just as dangerous as a rattlesnake on legs until he sees who it is.
Annabell says, “Hello, mister. Shooting?”
That is a foolish question because anybody could see he wasn’t playing the violin with that pistol, but he only says, “Yep.”
“Are you good at it?”
He says, “Yep.”
“O.K. if we get out and watch you?”
He sticks his face right up near, so I can see that red groove under his jaw plainer than ever, but he says, “Yep.”
Well, he wasn’t kidding when he said he was good. He fixed up a new target by putting his thumb in his mouth and rubbing it in the middle of a piece of paper so there was a round black mark in the middle, and he loaded the pistol, and he slammed seven or eight shots in the black just as neat as you please. I says, “Gee, when you were a slaughterhouse employee they must have had you shoot the bull!”
That is meant to be humerus but he only says, “Yep.”
Annabell says, “Mister, I don’t know your name, but I’d like to see if Pete here can shoot as good as you. Pete is a trained detective like I told you.”
He says, “Yep.”
He puts up a new target, fixing it the same way which is easy because his hands are so dirty, and he puts just one cartridge in the gun because it is an automatic and they are tricky, and I point it at the tree and it goes off before I am ready.
Annabell jumps and says, “What do you think of that?”
He just says, “Yep,” because I hit the bull smack in the center, and I was so surprised I didn’t know what to say so I didn’t say anything.
“I’d like for him to shoot again.”
He says, “Yep,” and this time it is another bull’s eye, right where the dirt is blackest, and I guess I have been wasting my time driving cars for all these years if I can shoot like that which I did not know until this minute.
Annabell says, “Hey, mister,” and the two of them walk off together, and I observe they are argueing because he is pounding the palm of his right hand which is open with his left hand which is a fist and he keeps looking back at me and Annabell is holding on to his arm and shaking her head and every now and then I can hear her saying, “Not now. Don’t spoil everything. Not now,” and I understand what she means because they are the very same words she said to me when I stopped the car with her in it and tried to steal a couple of kisses and she would not let me do it. She cannot talk good English but that is because she was brought up in Poughkeepsie, but you cannot get fresh with her unless you are one of her good friends and certainly not the first or second time.
Well, I am all alone and she can take care of herself, so I take aim again and I pull the trigger, but this time nothing happens because the slaughterhouse employee forgot to give me more cartridges though I would have hit the bull’s eye like before being practicly a dead shot which you will see for yourself when you look at the target which I am putting in this envelope with two holes in it right in the center. I took it down and I started to walk to the shanty, and then, next to the shanty, on the side where you could not sec it from the road, I observed a sporty roadster with Illonois license plates and I deducted that car was a long way from home.
I deducted Annabell was in the shanty with the slaughterhouse employee because the sun was getting low and I could see shadows moving around, and I sneaked up to the shanty without making a sound. You remember how Annabell said “When I lose I pay up,” and I did not want her to pay up to the wrong man even if he was a fast worker.
Well, I looked in through a window which did not have any glass, and it was just one room with a stove and a chair and a broken down sofa and a table in it, and on the table I observed—
Well, this is going to be a big surprise to you, so I won’t tell you what I observed on the table till I come to the P. S. part of this letter, and then I will make you sit up and take notice.
Well, they were argueing more but they were acting proper, so I walked away thirty or fifty feet, and then I started whistling, careless like, because I was so happy, and the slaughterhouse employee came out and Annabell came out also, and she says, “What’s the matter, Pete? Tired of shooting?”
I says, “I am a dead shot with any weapon but I cannot shoot without bullets,” and she says, “That is so. Ha! Ha!” and he says, “Yep.”
Annabell says, “I forgot to interduce you. Pete, this is Hubert Honeywell. Hubert, this is Peter Moran.”
I says, “Pleased to meet you.”
He says, “Yep.”
We shake hands, and I observe that his right forefinger is thick and calloused from snapping off the thread just like Dr. Wm. E. Presbrey says in the long quotation, and I squeeze hard but he squeezes harder and he has got a grip like a Stillson wrench and I am lucky I don’t get some bones broken.
Annabell laughs. “What are you boys doing? Playing Indian wrestling?”
By this time Hubert has let go of my hand and I count the fingers and there are not any missing though I guess I can wear a smaller glove for a while, so I take the words right out of his mouth and I says, “Yep.”
Annabell laughs some more. “Pete, I been telling Hubert about the dance Sunday night. How many people would you say was going to be there?”
“We expect one hundred and ten.”
“See, Hubert? Just like it said in the paper. Will the Grimshaws be there?”
Mr. Grimshaw is a bank president and him and the boss are like that. “Oh, sure.”
“And the Cutlers?”
“All four of them: mister and missus and Miss Betty and Miss Jane.”
“And the Auchinclosses?”
“They always come to our parties.”
“Will there be many young men?”
“Not this year. They’re all in the Army.”
“See, Hubert? Just like I told you.”
“There will be what the missus calls a shortage of stags. If your boy friend here has a dress suit, Annabell, maybe he can crash the gate.”