The Oakdale Affair

But recently the first real sorrow had been thrust into
her young life since the half-forgotten mother had been
taken from her.  The second Mrs. Prim had decided that
it was her ‘duty’ to see that Abigail, having finished
school and college, was properly married.  As a match-
maker the second Mrs. Prim was as a Texas steer in a
ten cent store.  It was nothing to her that Abigail did
not wish to marry anyone, or that the man of Mrs.
Prim’s choice, had he been the sole surviving male in
the Universe, would have still been as far from Abigail’s
choice as though he had been an inhabitant of one of
Orion’s most distant planets.

As a matter of fact Abigail Prim detested Samuel
Benham because he represented to her everything in
life which she shrank from—­age, avoirdupois, infirmity,
baldness, stupidity, and matrimony.  He was a prosaic
old bachelor who had amassed a fortune by the simple
means of inheriting three farms upon which an indus-
trial city subsequently had been built.  Necessity rather
than foresight had compelled him to hold on to his prop-
erty; and six weeks of typhoid, arriving and departing,
had saved him from selling out at a low figure.  The first
time he found himself able to be out and attend to busi-
ness he likewise found himself a wealthy man, and ever
since he had been growing wealthier without personal
effort.

All of which is to render evident just how impossible a
matrimonial proposition was Samuel Benham to a bright,
a beautiful, a gay, an imaginative, young, and a witty
girl such as Abigail Prim, who cared less for money than
for almost any other desirable thing in the world.

Nagged, scolded, reproached, pestered, threatened,
Abigail had at last given a seeming assent to her step-
mother’s ambition; and had forthwith been packed off
on a two weeks visit to the sister of the bride-groom
elect.  After which Mr. Benham was to visit Oakdale as
a guest of the Prims, and at a dinner for which cards al-
ready had been issued—­so sure was Mrs. Jonas Prim of
her position of dictator of the Prim menage—­the engage-
ment was to be announced.

It was some time after dinner on the night of Abigail’s
departure that Mrs. Prim, following a habit achieved by
years of housekeeping, set forth upon her rounds to see
that doors and windows were properly secured for the
night.  A French window and its screen opening upon
the verandah from the library she found open.  “The
house will be full of mosquitoes!” she ejaculated men-
tally as she closed them both with a bang and made them
fast.  “I should just like to know who left them open. 
Upon my word, I don’t know what would become of
this place if it wasn’t for me.  Of all the shiftlessness!”
and she turned and flounced upstairs.  In Abigail’s room
she flashed on the center dome light from force of habit,
although she knew that the room had been left in proper
condition after the girl’s departure earlier in the day. 
The first thing amiss that her eagle eye noted was the
candlestick lying on the floor beside the dressing table. 
As she stooped to pick it up she saw the open drawer
from which the small automatic had been removed, and
then, suspicions, suddenly aroused, as suddenly became
fear; and Mrs. Prim almost dove across the room to the
hidden wall safe.  A moment’s investigation revealed the
startling fact that the safe was unlocked and practically
empty.  It was then that Mrs. Jonas Prim screamed.

Her scream brought Jonas and several servants upon
the scene.  A careful inspection of the room disclosed the
fact that while much of value had been ignored the bur-
glar had taken the easily concealed contents of the wall
safe which represented fully ninety percentum of the
value of the personal property in Abigail Prim’s apart-
ments.

Mrs. Prim scowled suspiciously upon the servants. 
Who else, indeed, could have possessed the intimate
knowledge which the thief had displayed.  Mrs. Prim
saw it all.  The open library window had been but a
clever blind to hide the fact that the thief had worked
from the inside and was now doubtless in the house at
that very moment.

“Jonas,” she directed, “call the police at once, and see
that no one, absolutely no one, leaves this house until
they have been here and made a full investigation.”

“Shucks, Pudgy!” exclaimed Mr. Prim.  “You don’t think
the thief is waiting around here for the police, do you?”

“I think that if you get the police here at once, Jonas,
we shall find both the thief and the loot under our very
roof,” she replied, not without asperity.

“You don’t mean—­” he hesitated.  “Why, Pudgy, you
don’t mean you suspect one of the servants?”

“Who else could have known?” asked Mrs. Prim.  The
servants present looked uncomfortable and cast sheep-
ish eyes of suspicion at one another.

“It’s all tommy rot!” ejaculated Mr. Prim; “but I’ll call
the police, because I got to report the theft.  It’s some
slick outsider, that’s who it is,” and he started down
stairs toward the telephone.  Before he reached it the bell
rang, and when he had hung up the receiver after the
conversation the theft seemed a trivial matter.  In fact
he had almost forgotten it, for the message had been
from the local telegraph office relaying a wire they had
just received from Mr. Samuel Benham.

“I say, Pudgy,” he cried, as he took the steps two at
a time for the second floor, “here’s a wire from Benham
saying Gail didn’t come on that train and asking when
he’s to expect her.”

“Impossible!” ejaculated Mrs. Prim.  “I certainly saw
her aboard the train myself.  Impossible!”

Jonas Prim was a man of action.  Within half an hour
he had set in motion such wheels as money and influence
may cause to revolve in search of some clew to the
whereabouts of the missing Abigail, and at the same
time had reported the theft of jewels and money from
his home; but in doing this he had learned that other
happenings no less remarkable in their way had taken
place in Oakdale that very night.

The following morning all Oakdale was thrilled as its
fascinated eves devoured the front page of Oakdale’s or-
dinarily dull daily.  Never had Oakdale experienced a
plethora of home-grown thrills; but it came as near to
it that morning, doubtless, as it ever had or ever will. 
Not since the cashier of The Merchants and Farmers
Bank committed suicide three years past had Oakdale
been so wrought up, and now that historic and classical
event paled into insignificance in the glaring brilliancy
of a series of crimes and mysteries of a single night such
as not even the most sanguine of Oakdale’s thrill lovers
could have hoped for.

There was, first, the mysterious disappearance of Abi-
gail Prim, the only daughter of Oakdale’s wealthiest cit-
izen; there was the equally mysterious robbery of the
Prim home.  Either one of these would have been suffi-
cient to have set Oakdale’s multitudinous tongues wag-
ging for days; but they were not all.  Old John Baggs, the
city’s best known miser, had suffered a murderous as-
sault in his little cottage upon the outskirts of town,
and was even now lying at the point of death in The
Samaritan Hospital.  That robbery had been the motive
was amply indicated by the topsy-turvy condition of the contents of the three rooms which Baggs called home.  As the victim still was unconscious no details of the crime were obtainable.  Yet even this atrocious deed had been capped by one yet more hideous.

Reginald Paynter had for years been looked upon half askance and yet with a certain secret pride by Oak-dale.  He was her sole bon vivant in the true sense of the word, whatever that may be.  He was always spoken of in the columns of The Oakdale Tribune as ’that well known man-about-town,’ or ’one of Oakdale’s most prom-inent clubmen.’  Reginald Paynter had been, if not the only, at all events the best dressed man in town.  His clothes were made in New York.  This in itself had been sufficient to have set him apart from all the other males of Oakdale.  He was widely travelled, had an indepen-dent fortune, and was far from unhandsome.  For years he had been the hope and despair of every Oakdale mother with marriageable daughters.  The Oakdale fathers, however, had not been so keen about Reginald.  Men usually know more about the morals of men than do women.  There were those who, if pressed, would have conceded that Reginald had no morals.

But what place has an obituary in a truthful tale of adventure and mystery!  Reginald Paynter was dead.  His body had been found beside the road just outside the city limits at mid-night by a party of automobilists re-turning from a fishing trip.  The skull was crushed back of the left ear.  The position of the body as well as the marks in the road beside it indicated that the man had been hurled from a rapidly moving automobile.  The fact that his pockets had been rifled led to the assumption that he had been killed and robbed before being dumped upon the road.

Now there were those in Oakdale, and they were many, who endeavored to connect in some way these several events of horror, mystery, and crime.  In the first place it seemed quite evident that the robbery at the Prim home, the assault upon Old Baggs, and the mur-der of Paynter had been the work of the same man; but how could such a series of frightful happenings be in any way connected with the disappearance of Abigail Prim?  Of course there were many who knew that Abigail and Reginald were old friends; and that the former had, on frequent occasions, ridden abroad in Reginald’s French roadster, that he had escorted her to parties and been, at various times, a caller at her home; but no less had been true of a dozen other perfectly respectable young ladies of Oakdale.  Possibly it was only Abigail’s added misfortune to have disappeared upon the eve of the night of Reginald’s murder.

But later in the day when word came from a nearby town that Reginald had been seen in a strange touring car with two unknown men and a girl, the gossips com-menced to wag their heads.  It was mentioned, casually of course, that this town was a few stations along the very road upon which Abigail had departed the previous afternoon for that destination which she had not reached.  It was likewise remarked that Reginald, the two strange men and the girl had been first noticed after the time of arrival of the Oakdale train!  What more was needed?  Absolutely nothing more.  The tongues ceased wagging in order that they might turn hand-springs.

Find Abigail Prim, whispered some, and the mystery will be solved.  There were others charitable enough to assume that Abigail had been kidnapped by the same men who had murdered Paynter and wrought the other lesser deeds of crime in peaceful Oakdale.  The Oakdale Tribune got out an extra that afternoon giving a resume of such evidence as had appeared in the regular edition and hinting at all the numerous possibilities suggested by such matter as had come to hand since.  Even fear of old Jonas Prim and his millions had not been enough to entirely squelch the newspaper instinct of the Trib-une’s editor.  Never before had he had such an oppor-tunity and he made the best of it, even repeating the vague surmises which had linked the name of Abigail to the murder of Reginald Paynter.

Jonas Prim was too busy and too worried to pay any attention to the Tribune or its editor.  He already had the best operative that the best detective agency in the nearest metropolis could furnish.  The man had come to Oakdale, learned all that was to be learned there, and forthwith departed.

This, then, will be about all concerning Oakdale for the present.  We must leave her to bury her own dead.

The sudden pressure of the knife point against the breast of the Oskaloosa Kid awakened the youth with a startling suddenness which brought him to his feet be-fore a second vicious thrust reached him.  For a time he did not realize how close he had been to death or that he had been saved by the chance location of the auto-matic pistol in his breast pocket—­the very pistol he had taken from the dressing table of Abigail Prim’s boudoir.

The commotion of the attack and escape brought the other sleepers to heavy-eyed wakefulness.  They saw Dopey Charlie advancing upon the Kid, a knife in his hand.  Behind him slunk The General, urging the other on.  The youth was backing toward the doorway.  The tableau persisted but for an instant.  Then the would-be murderer rushed madly upon his victim, the latter’s hand leaped from beneath the breast of his torn coat—­ there was a flash of flame, a staccato report and Dopey Charlie crumpled to the ground, screaming.  In the same instant The Oskaloosa Kid wheeled and vanished into the night.

It had all happened so quickly that the other members of the gang, awakened from deep slumber, had only time to stumble to their feet before it was over.  The Sky Pilot, ignoring the screaming Charlie, thought only of the loot which had vanished with the Oskaloosa Kid.

“Come on!  We gotta get him,” he cried, as he ran from the barn after the fugitive.  The others, all but Dopey Charlie, followed in the wake of their leader.  The wounded man, his audience departed, ceased screaming and, sitting up, fell to examining himself.  To his surprise he discovered that he was not dead.  A fur-ther and more minute examination disclosed the addi-tional fact that he was not even badly wounded.  The bullet of The Kid had merely creased the flesh over the ribs beneath his right arm.  With a grunt that might have been either disgust or relief he stumbled to his feet and joined in the pursuit.

Down the road toward the south ran The Oskaloosa Kid with all the fleetness of youth spurred on by terror.  In five minutes he had so far outdistanced his pursuers that The Sky Pilot leaped to the conclusion that the quarry had left the road to hide in an adjoining field.  The resultant halt and search upon either side of the road delayed the chase to a sufficient extent to award the fugitive a mile lead by the time the band resumed the hunt along the main highway.  The men were de-termined to overhaul the youth not alone because of the loot upon his person but through an abiding suspi-cion that he might indeed be what some of them feared he was—­an amateur detective—­and there were at least two among them who had reason to be especially fear-ful of any sort of detective from Oakdale.

They no longer ran; but puffed arduously along the smooth road, searching with troubled and angry eyes to right and left and ahead of them as they went.

The Oskaloosa Kid puffed, too; but he puffed a mile away from the searchers and he walked more rapidly than they, for his muscles were younger and his wind unimpaired by dissipation.  For a time he carried the small automatic in his hand; but later, hearing no evi-dence of pursuit, he returned it to the pocket in his coat where it had lain when it had saved him from death be-neath the blade of the degenerate Charlie.

For an hour he continued walking rapidly along the winding country road.  He was very tired; but he dared not pause to rest.  Always behind him he expected the sudden onslaught of the bearded, blear-eyed followers of The Sky Pilot.  Terror goaded him to supreme physical effort.  Recollection of the screaming man sinking to the earthen floor of the hay barn haunted him.  He was a murderer!  He had slain a fellow man.  He winced and shuddered, increasing his gait until again he almost ran —­ran from the ghost pursuing him through the black night in greater terror than he felt for the flesh and blood pursuers upon his heels.

And Nature drew upon her sinister forces to add to the fear which the youth already felt.  Black clouds ob-scured the moon blotting out the soft kindliness of the greening fields and transforming the budding branches of the trees to menacing and gloomy arms which ap-peared to hover with clawlike talons above the dark and forbidding road.  The wind soughed with gloomy and in-creasing menace, a sudden light flared across the south-ern sky followed by the reverberation of distant thunder.

Presently a great rain drop was blown against the youth’s face; the vividness of the lightning had increased; the rumbling of the thunder had grown to the propor-tions of a titanic bombardment; but he dared not pause to seek shelter.

Another flash of lightning revealed a fork in the road immediately ahead—­to the left ran the broad, smooth highway, to the right a dirt road, overarched by trees, led away into the impenetrable dark.

The fugitive paused, undecided.  Which way should he turn?  The better travelled highway seemed less mys-terious and awesome, yet would his pursuers not natur-ally assume that he had followed it?  Then, of course, the right hand road was the road for him.  Yet still he hesitated, for the right hand road was black and forbid-ding; suggesting the entrance to a pit of unknown hor-rors.

As he stood there with the rain and the wind, the thunder and the lightning, horror of the past and terror of the future his only companions there broke suddenly through the storm the voice of a man just ahead and evidently approaching along the highway.

The youth turned to flee; but the thought of the men tracking him from that direction brought him to a sud-den halt.  There was only the road to the right, then, after all.  Cautiously he moved toward it, and at the same time the words of the voice came clearly through the night: 

   “’. . . as, swinging heel and toe,

’We tramped the road to Anywhere, the magic road

      to Anywhere,

’The tragic road to Anywhere, such dear, dim years

      ago.’”

The voice seemed reassuring—­its quality and the an-nunciation of the words bespoke for its owner consider-able claim to refinement.  The youth had halted again, but he now crouched to one side fearing to reveal his presence because of the bloody crime he thought he had committed; yet how he yearned to throw himself upon the compassion of this fine voiced stranger!  How his every fibre cried out for companionship in this night of his greatest terror; but he would have let the invisible minstrel pass had not Fate ordained to light the scene at that particular instant with a prolonged flare of sheet lightning, revealing the two wayfarers to one an-other.