The Oakdale Affair

As Bridge groped toward the spot where the boy had fallen his eyes, now become accustomed to the dark-ness of the room, saw that the youth was sitting up.  “Well?” he asked.  “Feeling better?”

“Where is it?  Oh, God!  Where is it?” cried the boy.  “It will come in here and kill us as it killed that—­that—­ down stairs.”

“It can’t get in,” Bridge assured him.  “I’ve locked the door and pushed the bed in front of it.  Gad!  I feel like an old maid looking under the bed for burglars.”

From the hall came a sudden clanking of the chain accompanied by a loud pounding upon the bare floor.  With a scream the youth leaped to his feet and almost threw himself upon Bridge.  His arms were about the man’s neck, his face buried in his shoulder.

“Oh, don’t—­don’t let it get me!” he cried.

“Brace up, son,” Bridge admonished him.  “Didn’t I tell you that it can’t get in?”

“How do you know it can’t get in?” whimpered the youth.  “It’s the thing that murdered the man down stairs —­it’s the thing that murdered the Squibbs—­right here in this room.  It got in to them—­what is to prevent its get-ting in to us.  What are doors to such a thing?”

“Come! come! now,” Bridge tried to soothe him.  “You have a case of nerves.  Lie down here on this bed and try to sleep.  Nothing shall harm you, and when you wake up it will be morning and you’ll laugh at your fears.”

“Lie on that bed!” The voice was almost a shriek.  “That is the bed the Squibbs were murdered in—­the old man and his wife.  No one would have it, and so it has remained here all these years.  I would rather die than touch the thing.  Their blood is still upon it.”

“I wish,” said Bridge a trifle sternly, “that you would try to control yourself a bit.  Hysteria won’t help us any.  Here we are, and we’ve to make the best of it.  Besides we must look after this young woman—­she may be dy-ing, and we haven’t done a thing to help her.”

The boy, evidently shamed, released his hold upon Bridge and moved away.  “I am sorry,” he said.  “I’ll try to do better; but, Oh!  I was so frightened.  You can-not imagine how frightened I was.”

“I had imagined,” said Bridge, “from what I had heard of him that it would be a rather difficult thing to frighten The Oskaloosa Kid—­you have, you know, rather a reputation for fearlessness.”

The darkness hid the scarlet flush which mantled The Kid’s face.  There was a moment’s silence as Bridge crossed to where the young woman still lay upon the floor where he had deposited her.  Then The Kid spoke.  “I’m sorry,” he said, “that I made a fool of myself.  You have been so brave, and I have not helped at all.  I shall do better now.”

“Good,” said Bridge, and stooped to raise the young woman in his arms and deposit her upon the bed.  Then he struck another match and leaned close to ex-amine her.  The flare of the sulphur illuminated the room and shot two rectangles of light against the outer black-ness where the unglazed windows stared vacantly upon the road beyond, bringing to a sudden halt a little com-pany of muddy and bedraggled men who slipped, curs-ing, along the slimy way.

Bridge felt the youth close beside him as he bent above the girl upon the bed.

“Is she dead?” the lad whispered.

“No,” replied Bridge, “and I doubt if she’s badly hurt.”  His hands ran quickly over her limbs, bending and twisting them gently; he unbuttoned her waist, getting the boy to strike and hold another match while he ex-amined the victim for signs of a bullet wound.

“I can’t find a scratch on her,” he said at last.  “She’s suffering from shock alone, as far as I can judge.  Say, she’s pretty, isn’t she?”

The youth drew himself rather stiffly erect.  “Her fea-tures are rather coarse, I think,” he replied.  There was a peculiar quality to the tone which caused Bridge to turn a quick look at the boy’s face, just as the match flick-ered and went out.  The darkness hid the expression upon Bridge’s face, but his conviction that the girl was pretty was unaltered.  The light of the match had re-vealed an oval face surrounded by dark, dishevelled tresses, red, full lips, and large, dark eyes.

Further discussion of the young woman was discour-aged by a repetition of the clanking of the chain with-out.  Now it was receding along the hallway toward the stairs and presently, to the infinite relief of The Os-kaloosa Kid, the two heard it descending to the lower floor.

“What was it, do you think?” asked the boy, his voice still trembling upon the verge of hysteria.

“I don’t know,” replied Bridge.  “I’ve never been a be-liever in ghosts and I’m not now; but I’ll admit that it takes a whole lot of—­”

He did not finish the sentence for a moan from the bed diverted his attention to the injured girl, toward whom he now turned.  As they listened for a repetition of the sound there came another—­that of the creaking of the old bed slats as the girl moved upon the mildewed mattress.  Dimly, through the darkness, Bridge saw that the victim of the recent murderous assault was attempt-ing to sit up.  He moved closer and leaned above her.

“I wouldn’t exert myself,” he said.  “You’ve just suf-fered an accident, and it’s better that you remain quiet.”

“Who are you?” asked the girl, a note of suppressed terror in her voice.  “You are not—?”

“I am no one you know,” replied Bridge.  “My friend and I chanced to be near when you fell from the car—­” with that innate refinement which always belied his vo-cation and his rags Bridge chose not to embarrass the girl by a too intimate knowledge of the thing which had befallen her, preferring to leave to her own volition the making of any explanation she saw fit, or of none —­“and we carried you in here out of the storm.”

The girl was silent for a moment.  “Where is ’here’?” she asked presently.  “They drove so fast and it was so dark that I had no idea where we were, though I know that we left the turnpike.”

“We are at the old Squibbs place,” replied the man.  He could see that the girl was running one hand gin-gerly over her head and face, so that her next question did not surprise him.

“Am I badly wounded?” she asked.  “Do you think that I am going to die?” The tremor in her voice was pathetic —­it was the voice of a frightened and wondering child.  Bridge heard the boy behind him move impulsively for-ward and saw him kneel on the bed beside the girl.

“You are not badly hurt,” volunteered The Oskaloosa Kid.  “Bridge couldn’t find a mark on you—­the bullet must have missed you.”

“He was holding me over the edge of the car when he fired.”  The girl’s voice reflected the physical shudder which ran through her frame at the recollection.  “Then he threw me out almost simultaneously.  I suppose he thought that he could not miss at such close range.”  For a time she was silent again, sitting stiffly erect.  Bridge could feel rather than see wide, tense eyes star-ing out through the darkness upon scenes, horrible per-haps, that were invisible to him and the Kid.

Suddenly the girl turned and threw herself face down-ward upon the bed.  “O, God!” she moaned.  “Father!  Father!  It will kill you—­no one will believe me—­they will think that I am bad.  I didn’t do it!  I didn’t do it!  I’ve been a silly little fool; but I have never been a bad girl—­and—–­and—­I had nothing to do with that awful thing that happened to-night.”

Bridge and the boy realized that she was not talking to them—­that for the moment she had lost sight of their presence—­she was talking to that father whose heart would be breaking with the breaking of the new day, trying to convince him that his little girl had done no wrong.

Again she sat up, and when she spoke there was no tremor in her voice.

“I may die,” she said.  “I want to die.  I do not see how I can go on living after last night; but if I do die I want my father to know that I had nothing to do with it and that they tried to kill me because I wouldn’t promise to keep still.  It was the little one who murdered him—­the one they called ‘Jimmie’ and ‘The Oskaloosa Kid.’  The big one drove the car—­his name was ‘Terry.’  After they killed him I tried to jump out—­I had been sitting in front with Terry—­and then they dragged me over into the tonneau and later—­the Oskaloosa Kid tried to kill me too, and threw me out.”

Bridge heard the boy at his side gulp.  The girl went on.

“To-morrow you will know about the murder—­every-one will know about it; and I will be missed; and there will be people who saw me in the car with them, for someone must have seen me.  Oh, I can’t face it!  I want to die.  I will die!  I come of a good family.  My father is a prominent man.  I can’t go back and stand the dis-grace and see him suffer, as he will suffer, for I was all he had—­his only child.  I can’t bear to tell you my name —­you will know it soon enough—­but please find some way to let my father know all that I have told you—­I swear that it is the truth—­by the memory of my dead mother, I swear it!”

Bridge laid a hand upon the girl’s shoulder.  “If you are telling us the truth,” he said, “you have only a silly escapade with strange men upon your conscience.  You must not talk of dying now—­your duty is to your father.  If you take your own life it will be a tacit admission of guilt and will only serve to double the burden of sorrow and ignominy which your father is bound to feel when this thing becomes public, as it certainly must if a mur-der has been done.  The only way in which you can atone for your error is to go back and face the conse-quences with him—­do not throw it all upon him; that would be cowardly.”

The girl did not reply; but that the man’s words had impressed her seemed evident.  For a while each was occupied with his own thoughts; which were presently disturbed by the sound of footsteps upon the floor be-low—­the muffled scraping of many feet followed a mo-ment later by an exclamation and an oath, the words coming distinctly through the loose and splintered floor-ing.

“Pipe the stiff,” exclaimed a voice which The Oska-loosa Kid recognized immediately as that of Soup Face.

“The Kid musta croaked him,” said another.

A laugh followed this evidently witty sally.

“The guy probably lamped the swag an’ died of heart failure,” suggested another.

The men were still laughing when the sound of a clanking chain echoed dismally from the cellar.  In-stantly silence fell upon the newcomers upon the first floor, followed by a—­“Wotinel’s that?” Two of the men had approached the staircase and started to ascend it.  Slowly the uncanny clanking drew closer to the first floor.  The girl on the bed turned toward Bridge.

“What is it?” she gasped.

“We don’t know,” replied the man.  “It followed us up here, or rather it chased us up; and then went down again just before you regained consciousness.  I imagine we shall hear some interesting developments from be-low.”

“It’s The Sky Pilot and his gang,” whispered The Os-kaloosa Kid.

“It’s The Oskaloosa Kid,” came a voice from below.

“But wot was that light upstairs then?” queried an-other.

“An’ wot croaked this guy here?” asked a third.  “It wasn’t nothin’ nice—­did you get the expression on his mug an’ the red foam on his lips?  I tell youse there’s something in this house beside human bein’s.  I know the joint—­its hanted—­they’s spooks in it.  Gawd! there it is now,” as the clanking rose to the head of the cellar stairs; and those above heard a sudden rush of foot-steps as the men broke for the open air—­all but the two upon the stairway.  They had remained too long and now, their retreat cut off, they scrambled, cursing and screaming, to the second floor.

Along the hallway they rushed to the closed door at the end—­the door of the room in which the three lis-tened breathlessly—­hurling themselves against it in vio-lent effort to gain admission.

“Who are you and what do you want?” cried Bridge.

“Let us in!  Let us in!” screamed two voices.  “Fer God’s sake let us in.  Can’t you hear it?  It’ll be comin’ up here in a minute.”

The sound of the dragging chain could be heard at in-tervals upon the floor below.  It seemed to the tense lis-teners above to pause beside the dead man as though hovering in gloating exultation above its gruesome prey and then it moved again, this time toward the stairway where they all heard it ascending with a creepy slow-ness which wrought more terribly upon tense nerves than would a sudden rush.

“The mills of the Gods grind slowly,” quoted Bridge.

“Oh, don’t!” pleaded The Oskaloosa Kid.

“Let us in,” screamed the men without.  “Fer the luv o’ Mike have a heart!  Don’t leave us out here!  IT’s comin’!  IT’s comin’!”

“Oh, let the poor things in,” pleaded the girl on the bed.  She was, herself, trembling with terror.

“No funny business, now, if I let you in,” commanded Bridge.

“On the square,” came the quick and earnest reply.

The thing had reached the head of the stairs when Bridge dragged the bed aside and drew the bolt.  In-stantly two figures hurled themselves into the room but turned immediately to help Bridge resecure the door-way.

Just as it had done before, when Bridge and The Oskaloosa Kid had taken refuge there with the girl, the thing moved down the hallway to the closed door.  The dragging chain marked each foot of its advance.  If it made other sounds they were drowned by the clanking of the links over the time roughened flooring.

Within the room the five were frozen into utter si-lence, and beyond the door an equal quiet prevailed for a long minute; then a great force made the door creak and a weird scratching sounded high up upon the old fashioned panelling.  Bridge heard a smothered gasp from the boy beside him, followed instantly by a flash of flame and the crack of a small caliber automatic; The Oskaloosa Kid had fired through the door.

Bridge seized the boy’s arm and wrenched the weapon from him.  “Be careful!” he cried.  “You’ll hurt someone.  You didn’t miss the girl much that time—­she’s on the bed right in front of the door.”

The Oskaloosa Kid pressed closer to the man as though he sought protection from the unknown men-ace without.  The girl sprang from the bed and crossed to the opposite side of the room.  A flash of lightning illumi-nated the chamber for an instant and the roof of the ve-randah without.  The girl noted the latter and the open window.

“Look!” she cried.  “Suppose it went out of another window upon this porch.  It could get us so easily that way!”

“Shut up, you fool!” whispered one of the two new-comers.  “It might hear you.”  The girl subsided into si-lence.

There was no sound from the hallway.

“I reckon you croaked it,” suggested the second new-comer, hopefully; but, as though the thing without had heard and understood, the clanking of the chain recommenced at once; but now it was retreating along the hallway, and soon they heard it descending the stairs.

Sighs of relief escaped more than a single pair of lips.  “It didn’t hear me,” whispered the girl.

Bridge laughed.  “We’re a nice lot of babies seeing things at night,” he scoffed.

“If you’re so nervy why don’t you go down an’ see wot it is?” asked one of the late arrivals.

“I believe I shall,” replied Bridge and pulled the bed away from the door.

Instantly a chorus of protests arose, the girl and The Oskaloosa Kid being most insistent.  What was the use?  What good could he accomplish?  It might be nothing; yet on the other hand what had brought death so hor-ribly to the cold clay on the floor below?  At last their pleas prevailed and Bridge replaced the bed before the door.

For two hours the five sat about the room waiting for daylight.  There could be no sleep for any of them.  Occa-sionally they spoke, usually advancing and refuting sug-gestions as to the identity of the nocturnal prowler be-low-stairs.  The thing seemed to have retreated again to the cellar, leaving the upper floor to the five strangely assorted prisoners and the first floor to the dead man.

During the brief intervals of conversation the girl re-peated snatches of her story and once she mentioned The Oskaloosa Kid as the murderer of the unnamed vic-tim.  The two men who had come last pricked up their ears at this and Bridge felt the boy’s hand just touch his arm as though in mute appeal for belief and protection.  The man half smiled.

“We seen The Oskaloosa Kid this evenin’” volun-teered one of the newcomers.

“You did?” exclaimed the girl.  “Where?”

“He’d just pulled off a job in Oakdale an’ had his pockets bulgin’ wid sparklers an’ kale.  We was follerin’ him an’ when we seen your light up here we t’ought it was him.”

The Oskaloosa Kid shrank closer to Bridge.  At last he recognized the voice of the speaker.  While he had known that the two were of The Sky Pilot’s band he had not been sure of the identity of either; but now it was borne in upon him that at least one of them was the last per-son on earth he cared to be cooped up in a small, un-lighted room with, and a moment later when one of the two rolled a ‘smoke’ and lighted it he saw in the flare of the flame the features of both Dopey Charlie and The General.  The Oskaloosa Kid gasped once more for the thousandth time that night.