“I hope so,” Uncle Gavin said.
“You hope so?”
“Yes. That something went wrong in what has already happened, rather than what has already happened is not finished yet.”
“How not finished yet?” the sheriff said. “How can he finish whatever it is he aims to finish? Aint he already locked up in jail, with the only man in the county who might make bond to free him being the father of the woman he as good as confessed he murdered?”
“It looks that way,” Uncle Gavin said. “Was there an insurance policy?”
“I don’t know,” the sheriff said. “I’ll find that out tomorrow. But that aint what I want to know. I want to know why he wanted to be locked up in jail. Because I tell you he wasn’t afraid, then nor at any other time. You already guessed who it was out there that was afraid.”
But we were not to learn that answer yet. And there was an insurance policy. But by the time we learned about that, something else had happened which sent everything else temporarily out of mind. At daylight the next morning, when the jailer went and looked into Flint’s cell, it was empty. He had not broken out. He had walked out, out of the cell, out of the jail, out of the town and apparently out of the country — no trace, no sign, no man who had seen him or seen anyone who might have been him. It was not yet sunup when I let the sheriff in at the side study door; Uncle Gavin was already sitting up in bed when we reached his bedroom.
“Old Man Pritchel!” Uncle Gavin said. “Only we are already too late.”
“What’s the matter with you?” the sheriff said. “I told you last night he was already too late the second he pulled that wrong trigger. Besides, just to be in position to ease your mind, I’ve already telephoned out there. Been a dozen folks in the house all night, sitting up with the — with Mrs. Flint, and old Pritchel’s still locked in his room and all right too. They heard him bumping and blundering around in there just before daylight, and so somebody knocked on the door and kept on knocking and calling him until he finally opened the door wide enough to give them all a good cussing and order them again to get out of his house and stay out. Then he locked the door again. Old fellow’s been hit pretty hard, I reckon. He must have seen it when it happened, and at his age, and having already druv the whole human race away from his house except that half-wit girl, until at last even she up and left him, even at any cost. I reckon it ain’t any wonder she married even a man like Flint. What is it the Book says? ‘Who lives by the sword, so shall he die.’? — the sword in old Pritchel’s case being whatever it was he decided he preferred in place of human beings, while he was still young and hale and strong and didn’t need them. But to keep your mind easy, I sent Bryan Ewell out there thirty minutes ago and told him not to let that locked door — or old Pritchel himself, if he comes out of it — out of his sight until I told him to, and I sent Ben Berry and some others out to Flint’s house and told Ben to telephone me. And I’ll call you when I hear anything. Which won’t be anything, because that fellow’s gone. He got caught yesterday because he made a mistake, and the fellow that can walk out of that jail like he did aint going to make two mistakes within five hundred miles of Jefferson or Mississippi either.”
“Mistake?” Uncle Gavin said. “He just told us this morning why he wanted to be put in jail.”
“And why was that?”
“So he could escape from it.”
“And why get out again, when he was already out and could have stayed out by just running instead of telephoning me he had committed a murder?”
“I don’t know,” Uncle Gavin said. “Are you sure Old Man Pritchel—”
“Didn’t I just tell you folks saw and talked to him through that half-opened door this morning? And Bryan Ewell probably sitting in a chair tilted against that door right this minute — or he better be. I’ll telephone you if I hear anything. But I’ve already told you that too — that it won’t be nothing.”
He telephoned an hour later. He had just talked to the deputy who had searched Flint’s house, reporting only that Flint had been there sometime in the night — the back door open, an oil lamp shattered on the floor where Flint had apparently knocked it while fumbling in the dark, since the deputy found, behind a big, open, hurriedly ransacked trunk, a twisted spill of paper which Flint had obviously used to light his search of the trunk — a scrap of paper torn from a billboard—
“A what?” Uncle Gavin said.
“That’s what I said,” the sheriff said. “And Ben says, ‘All right, then send somebody else out here, if my reading ain’t good enough to suit you. It was a scrap of paper which was evidently tore from the corner of a billboard because it says on the scrap in English that even I can read—’ and I says, ‘Tell me exactly what it is you’re holding in your hand.’ And he did. It’s a page, from a magazine or a small paper named Billboard or maybe The Billboard. There’s some more printing on it but Ben can’t read it because he lost his spectacles back in the woods while he was surrounding the house to catch Flint doing whatever it was he expected to catch him doing — cooking breakfast, maybe. Do you know what it is?”
“Yes,” Uncle Gavin said.
“Do you know what it means, what it was doing there?”
“Yes,” Uncle Gavin said. “But why?”
“Well, I can’t tell you. And he never will. Because he’s gone, Gavin. Oh, we’ll catch him — somebody will, I mean, someday, somewhere. But it won’t be here, and it won’t be for this. It’s like that poor, harmless, half-witted girl wasn’t important enough for even that justice you claim you prefer above truth, to avenge her.”
And that did seem to be all of it. Mrs. Flint was buried that afternoon. The old man was still locked in his room during the funeral, and even after they departed with the coffin for the churchyard, leaving in the house only the deputy in his tilted chair outside the locked door, and two neighbor women who remained to cook a hot meal for old Pritchel, finally prevailing on him to open the door long enough to take the tray from them. And he thanked them for it, clumsily and gruffly, thanking them for their kindness during all the last twenty-four hours. One of the women was moved enough to offer to return tomorrow and cook another meal for him, whereupon his old-time acerbity and choler returned and the kind-hearted woman was even regretting that she had made the offer at all when the harsh, cracked old voice from inside the half-closed door added: “I don’t need no help. I aint had no darter nohow in two years,” and the door slammed in their faces and the bolt shot home.
Then the two women left, and there was only the deputy sitting in his tilted chair beside the door. He was back in town the next morning, telling how the old man had snatched the door suddenly open and kicked the chair out from beneath the dozing deputy before he could move and ordered him off the place with violent curses, and how as he (the deputy) peered at the house from around the corner of the barn a short time later, the shotgun blared from the kitchen window and the charge of squirrel shot slammed into the stable wall not a yard above his head. The sheriff telephoned that to Uncle Gavin too:
“So he’s out there alone again. And since that’s what he seems to want, it’s all right with me. Sure I feel sorry for him. I feel sorry for anybody that has to live with a disposition like his. Old and alone, to have all this happen to him. It’s like being snatched up by a tornado and whirled and slung and then slammed right back down where you started from, without even the benefit and pleasure of having taken a trip. What was it I said yesterday about living by the sword?”