The Oakdale Affair

In a clump of willows beside the little stream which winds through the town of Payson a party of four halted on the outskirts of the town.  There were two men, two young women and a huge brown bear.  The men and women were, obviously, Gypsies.  Their clothing, their head-dress, their barbaric ornamentation proclaimed the fact to whoever might pass; but no one passed.

“I think,” said Bridge, “that we will just stay where we are until after dark.  We haven’t passed or seen a human being since we left the cabin.  No one can know that we are here and if we stay here until late to-night we should be able to pass around Payson unseen and reach the wood to the south of town.  If we do meet anyone to-night we’ll stop them and inquire the way to Oakdale —­that’ll throw them off the track.”

The others acquiesced in his suggestion; but there were queries about food to be answered.  It seemed that all were hungry and that the bear was ravenous.

“What does he eat?” Bridge asked of Giova.

“Mos’ anything,” replied the girl.  “He like garbage fine.  Often I take him into towns late, ver’ late at night an’ he eat swill.  I do that to-night.  Beppo, he got to be fed or he eat Giova.  I go feed Beppo, you go get food for us; then we all meet at edge of wood just other side town near old mill.”

During the remainder of the afternoon and well after dark the party remained hidden in the willows.  Then Giova started out with Beppo in search of garbage cans, Bridge bent his steps toward a small store upon the outskirts of town where food could be purchased, The Oskaloosa Kid having donated a ten dollar bill for the stocking of the commissariat, and the youth and the girl made their way around the south end of the town toward the meeting place beside the old mill.

As Bridge moved through the quiet road at the out-skirts of the little town he let his mind revert to the events of the past twenty four hours and as he pon-dered each happening since he met the youth in the dark of the storm the preceding night he asked him-self why he had cast his lot with these strangers.  In his years of vagabondage Bridge had never crossed that in-visible line which separates honest men from thieves and murderers and which, once crossed, may never be re-crossed.  Chance and necessity had thrown him often among such men and women; but never had he been of them.  The police of more than one city knew Bridge—­ they knew him, though, as a character and not as a criminal.  A dozen times he had been arraigned upon suspicion; but as many times had he been released with a clean bill of morals until of late Bridge had become al-most immune from arrest.  The police who knew him knew that he was straight and they knew, too, that he would give no information against another man.  For this they admired him as did the majority of the crim-inals with whom he had come in contact during his rovings.

The present crisis, however, appeared most unprom-ising to Bridge.  Grave crimes had been committed in Oakdale, and here was Bridge conniving in the escape of at least two people who might readily be under po-lice suspicion.  It was difficult for the man to bring him-self to believe that either the youth or the girl was in any way actually responsible for either of the murders; yet it appeared that the latter had been present when a murder was committed and now by attempting to elude the police had become an accessory after the fact, since she possessed knowledge of the identity of the actual murderer; while the boy, by his own admission, had committed a burglary.

Bridge shook his head wearily.  Was he not himself an accessory after the fact in the matter of two crimes at least?  These new friends, it seemed, were about to topple him into the abyss which he had studiously avoided for so long a time.  But why should he permit it?  What were they to him?

A freight train was puffing into the siding at the Pay-son station.  Bridge could hear the complaining brakes a mile away.  It would be easy to leave the town and his dangerous companions far behind him; but even as the thought forced its way into his mind another obtruded itself to shoulder aside the first.  It was recollection of the boy’s words:  “Oh, Bridge, I don’t want to leave you—­ ever.”

“I couldn’t do it,” mused Bridge.  “I don’t know just why; but I couldn’t.  That kid has certainly got me.  The first thing someone knows I’ll be starting a foundlings’ home.  There is no question but that I am the soft mark, and I wonder why it is—­why a kid I never saw before last night has a strangle hold on my heart that I can’t shake loose—­and don’t want to.  Now if it was a girl I could understand it.”  Bridge stopped suddenly in the middle of the road.  From his attitude he might have been startled either by a surprising noise or by a surpris-ing thought.  For a minute he stood motionless; then he shook his head again and proceeded along his way to-ward the little store; evidently if he had heard anything he was assured that it constituted no menace.

As he entered the store to make his purchases a fox-eyed man saw him and stepped quickly behind the huge stove which had not as yet been taken down for the summer.  Bridge made his purchases, the volume of which required a large gunny-sack for transportation, and while he was thus occupied the fox-eyed man clung to his coign of vantage, himself unnoticed by the pur-chaser.  When Bridge departed the other followed him, keeping in the shadow of the trees which bordered the street.  Around the edge of town and down a road which led southward the two went until Bridge passed through a broken fence and halted beside an abandoned mill.  The watcher saw his quarry set down his burden, seat himself beside it and proceed to roll a cigaret; then he faded away in the darkness and Bridge was alone.

Five or ten minutes later two slender figures ap-peared dimly out of the north.  They approached timidly, stopping often and looking first this way and then that and always listening.  When they arrived opposite the mill Bridge saw them and gave a low whistle.  Immedi-ately the two passed through the fence and approached him.

“My!” exclaimed one, “I thought we never would get here; but we didn’t see a soul on the road.  Where is Giova?”

“She hadn’t come yet,” replied Bridge, “and she may not.  I don’t see how a girl can browse around a town like this with a big bear at night and not be seen, and if she is seen she’ll be followed—­it would be too much of a treat for the rubes ever to be passed up—­and if she’s followed she won’t come here.  At least I hope she won’t.”

“What’s that?” exclaimed The Oskaloosa Kid.  Each stood in silence, listening.

The girl shuddered.  “Even now that I know what it is it makes me creep,” she whispered, as the faint clank-ing of a distant chain came to their ears.

“We ought to be used to it by this time, Miss Prim,” said Bridge.  “We heard it all last night and a good part of to-day.”

The girl made no comment upon the use of the name which he had applied to her, and in the darkness he could not see her features, nor did he see the odd ex-pression upon the boy’s face as he heard the name addressed to her.  Was he thinking of the nocturnal raid he so recently had made upon the boudoir of Miss Abigail Prim?  Was he pondering the fact that his pock-ets bulged to the stolen belongings of that young lady?  But whatever was passing in his mind he permitted none of it to pass his lips.

As the three stood waiting in silence Giova came pres-ently among them, the beast Beppo lumbering awk-wardly at her side.

“Did he find anything to eat?” asked the man.

“Oh, yes,” exclaimed Giova.  “He fill up now.  That mak him better nature.  Beppo not so ugly now.”

“Well, I’m glad of that,” said Bridge.  “I haven’t been looking forward much to his company through the woods to-night—­especially while he was hungry!”

Giova laughed a low, musical little laugh.  “I don’ think he no hurt you anyway,” she said.  “Now he know you my frien’.”

“I hope you are quite correct in your surmise,” re-plied Bridge.  “But even so I’m not taking any chances.”

o o o

Willie Case had been taken to Payson to testify be-fore the coroner’s jury investigating the death of Giova’s father, and with the dollar which The Oskaloosa Kid had given him in the morning burning in his pocket had proceeded to indulge in an orgy of dissipation the mo-ment that he had been freed from the inquest.  Ice cream, red pop, peanuts, candy, and soda water may have diminished his appetite but not his pride and self-satisfaction as he sat alone and by night for the first time in a public eating place.  Willie was now a man of the world, a bon vivant, as he ordered ham and eggs from the pretty waitress of The Elite Restaurant on Broadway; but at heart he was not happy for never be-fore had he realized what a great proportion of his anat-omy was made up of hands and feet.  As he glanced fearfully at the former, silhouetted against the white of the table cloth, he flushed scarlet, assured as he was that the waitress who had just turned away toward the kitchen with his order was convulsed with laughter and that every other eye in the establishment was glued upon him.  To assume an air of nonchalance and thereby impress and disarm his critics Willie reached for a tooth-pick in the little glass holder near the center of the ta-ble and upset the sugar bowl.  Immediately Willie snatched back the offending hand and glared ferociously at the ceiling.  He could feel the roots of his hair being consumed in the heat of his skin.  A quick side glance that required all his will power to consummate showed him that no one appeared to have noticed his faux pas and Willie was again slowly returning to normal when the proprietor of the restaurant came up from behind and asked him to remove his hat.

Never had Willie Case spent so frightful a half hour as that within the brilliant interior of The Elite Restau-rant.  Twenty-three minutes of this eternity was con-sumed in waiting for his order to be served and seven minutes in disposing of the meal and paying his check.  Willie’s method of eating was in itself a sermon on efficiency—­there was no lost motion—­no waste of time.  He placed his mouth within two inches of his plate after cutting his ham and eggs into pieces of a size that would permit each mouthful to enter without wedging; then he mixed his mashed potatoes in with the result and working his knife and fork alternately with bewild-ering rapidity shot a continuous stream of food into his gaping maw.

In addition to the meat and potatoes there was one vegetable in a side-dish and as dessert four prunes.  The meat course gone Willie placed the vegetable dish on the empty plate, seized a spoon in lieu of knife and fork and—­presto! the side-dish was empty.  Whereupon the prune dish was set in the empty side-dish—­four deft motions and there were no prunes—­in the dish.  The en-tire feat had been accomplished in 6:34 1/2, setting a new world’s record for red-headed farmer boys with one splay foot.

In the remaining twenty five and one half seconds Willie walked what seemed to him a mile from his seat to the cashier’s desk and at the last instant bumped into a waitress with a trayful of dishes.  Clutched tightly in Willie’s hand was thirty five cents and his check with a like amount written upon it.  Amid the crash of crockery which followed the collision Willie slammed check and money upon the cashier’s desk and fled.  Nor did he pause until in the reassuring seclusion of a dark side-street.  There Willie sank upon the curb alternately cold with fear and hot with shame, weak and panting, and into his heart entered the iron of class hatred, searing it to the core.

Fortunately for youth it recuperates rapidly from mor-tal blows, and so it was that another half hour found Willie wandering up and down Broadway but at the far end of the street from The Elite Restaurant.  A mo-tion picture theater arrested his attention; and pres-ently, parting with one of his two remaining dimes, he entered.  The feature of the bill was a detective melo-drama.  Nothing in the world could have better suited Willie’s psychic needs.  It recalled his earlier feats of the day, in which he took pardonable pride, and raised him once again to a self-confidence he had not felt since be entered the ever to be hated Elite Restaurant.

The show over Willie set forth afoot for home.  A long walk lay ahead of him.  This in itself was bad enough; but what lay at the end of the long walk was infinitely worse, as Willie’s father had warned him to return immediately after the inquest, in time for milk-ing, preferably.  Before he had gone two blocks from the theater Willie had concocted at least three tales to ac-count for his tardiness, either one of which would have done credit to the imaginative powers of a Rider Hag-gard or a Jules Verne; but at the end of the third block he caught a glimpse of something which drove all thoughts of home from his mind and came but barely short of driving his mind out too.  He was ap-proaching the entrance to an alley.  Old trees grew in the parkway at his side.  At the street corner a half block away a high flung arc swung gently from its support-ing cables, casting a fair light upon the alley’s mouth, and just emerging from behind the nearer fence Willie Case saw the huge bulk of a bear.  Terrified, Willie jumped behind a tree; and then, fearful lest the animal might have caught sight or scent of him he poked his head cautiously around the side of the bole just in time to see the figure of a girl come out of the alley be-hind the bear.  Willie recognized her at the first glance—­ she was the very girl he had seen burying the dead man in the Squibbs woods.  Instantly Willie Case was trans-formed again into the shrewd and death defying sleuth.  At a safe distance he followed the girl and the bear through one alley after another until they came out upon the road which leads south from Payson.  He was across the road when she joined Bridge and his companions.  When they turned toward the old mill he followed them, listening close to the rotting clapboards for any chance remark which might indicate their future plans.  He heard them debating the wisdom of remaining where they were for the night or moving on to another loca-tion which they had evidently decided upon but no clew to which they dropped.

“The objection to remaining here,” said Bridge, “is that we can’t make a fire to cook by—­it would be too plainly visible from the road.”

“But I can no fin’ road by dark,” explained Giova.  “It bad road by day, ver’ much worse by night.  Beppo no come ’cross swamp by night.  No, we got stay here til morning.”

“All right,” replied Bridge, “we can eat some of this canned stuff and have our ham and coffee after we reach camp tomorrow morning, eh?”

“And now that we’ve gotten through Payson safely,” suggested The Oskaloosa Kid, “let’s change back into our own clothes.  This disguise makes me feel too con-spicuous.”

Willie Case had heard enough.  His quarry would re-main where it was over night, and a moment later Willie was racing toward Payson and a telephone as fast as his legs would carry him.

In an old brick structure a hundred yards below the mill where the lighting machinery of Payson had been installed before the days of the great central power-plant a hundred miles away four men were smoking as they lay stretched upon the floor.

“I tell you I seen him,” asserted one of the party.  “I follered this Bridge guy from town to the mill.  He was got up like a Gyp; but I knew him all right, all right.  This scenery of his made me tink there was something phoney doin’, or I wouldn’t have trailed him, an’ its a good ting I done it, fer he hadn’t ben there five min-utes before along comes The Kid an’ a skirt and pretty soon a nudder chicken wid a calf on a string, er mebbie it was a sheep—­it was pretty husky lookin’ fer a sheep though.  An’ I sticks aroun’ a minute until I hears this here Bridge guy call the first skirt ‘Miss Prim.’”

He ceased speaking to note the effect of his words on his hearers.  They were electrical.  The Sky Pilot sat up straight and slapped his thigh.  Soup Face opened his mouth, letting his pipe fall out into his lap, setting fire to his ragged trousers.  Dirty Eddie voiced a characteris-tic obscenity.

“So you sees,” went on Columbus Blackie, “we got a chanct to get both the dame and The Kid.  Two of us can take her to Oakdale an’ claim the reward her old man’s offerin’ an’ de odder two can frisk de Kid, an’—­ an’—.”

“An’ wot?” queried The Sky Pilot.

“Dere’s de swamp handy,” suggested Soup Face.

“I was tinkin’ of de swamp,” said Columbus Blackie.

“Eddie and I will return Miss Prim to her bereaved parents,” interrupted The Sky Pilot.  “You, Blackie, and Soup Face can arrange matters with The Oskaloosa Kid.  I don’t care for details.  We will all meet in Toledo as soon as possible and split the swag.  We ought to make a cleaning on this job, boes.”

“You split a mout’ful then,” said Columbus Blackie.

They fell to discussing way and means.

“We’d better wait until they’re asleep,” counseled The Sky Pilot.  “Two of us can tackle this Bridge and hand him the k.o. quick.  Eddie and Soup Face had better attend to that.  Blackie can nab The Kid an’ I’ll annex Miss Abigail Prim.  The lady with the calf we don’t want.  We’ll tell her we’re officers of the law an’ that she’d better duck with her live stock an’ keep her trap shut if she don’t want to get mixed up with a mur-der trial.”

o o o

Detective Burton was at the county jail in Oakdale administering the third degree to Dopey Charlie and The General when there came a long distance telephone call for him.

“Hello!” said the voice at the other end of the line; “I’m Willie Case, an’ I’ve found Miss Abigail Prim.”

“Again?” queried Burton.

“Really,” asserted Willie.  “I know where she’s goin’ to be all night.  I heard ’em say so.  The Oskaloosie Kid’s with her an’ annuder guy an’ the girl I seen with the dead man in Squibbs’ woods an’ they got a bear!” It was almost a shriek.  “You’d better come right away an’ bring Mr. Prim.  I’ll meet you on the ol’ Toledo road right south of Payson, an’ say, do I get the whole re-ward?”

“You’ll get whatever’s coming to you, son,” replied Burton.  “You say there are two men and two women—­ are you sure that is all?”

“And the bear,” corrected Willie.

“All right, keep quiet and wait for me,” cautioned Burton.  “You’ll know me by the spot light on my car—­ I’ll have it pointed straight up into the air.  When you see it coming get into the middle of the road and wave your hands to stop us.  Do you understand?”

“Yes,” said Willie.

“And don’t talk to anyone,” Burton again cautioned him.

A few minutes later Burton left Oakdale with his two lieutenants and a couple of the local policemen, the car turning south toward Payson and moving at ever ac-celerating speed as it left the town streets behind it and swung smoothly onto the country road.

o o o

It was after midnight when four men cautiously ap-proached the old mill.  There was no light nor any sign of life within as they crept silently through the doorless doorway.  Columbus Blackie was in the lead.  He flashed a quick light around the interior revealing four forms stretched upon the floor, deep in slumber.  Into the blacker shadows of the far end of the room the man failed to shine his light for the first flash had shown him those whom he sought.  Picking out their quarry the intruders made a sudden rush upon the sleepers.