The Case of Jennie Brice | Page 8

it
will do you good to talk about it. My name's Holcombe, retired
merchant. Apply to First National Bank for references."
"I'm not sure there is anything wrong," I began. "I guess I'm only
nervous, and thinking little things are big ones. There's nothing to tell."
"Nonsense. I come down the street in my boat. A white-faced
gentleman with a cigarette looks out from a window when I stop at the
door, and ducks back when I glance up. I come in and find a pet dog,
obviously overfed at ordinary times, whining with hunger on the stairs.
As I prepare to feed him, a pale woman comes down, trying to put a
right-hand glove on her left hand, and with her jacket wrong side out.
What am I to think?"

I started and looked at my coat. He was right. And when, as I tried to
take it off, he helped me, and even patted me on the shoulder--what
with his kindness, and the long morning alone, worrying, and the
sleepless night, I began to cry. He had a clean handkerchief in my hand
before I had time to think of one.
"That's it," he said. "It will do you good, only don't make a noise about
it. If it's a husband on the annual flood spree, don't worry, madam.
They always come around in time to whitewash the cellars."
"It isn't a husband," I sniffled.
"Tell me about it," he said. There was something so kindly in his face,
and it was so long since I had had a bit of human sympathy, that I
almost broke down again.
I sat there, with a crowd of children paddling on a raft outside the
window, and Molly Maguire, next door, hauling the morning's milk up
in a pail fastened to a rope, her doorway being too narrow to admit the
milkman's boat, and I told him the whole story.
"Humph!" he exclaimed, when I had finished. "It's curious, but--you
can't prove a murder unless you can produce a body."
"When the river goes down, we'll find the body," I said, shivering. "It's
in the parlor."
"Then why doesn't he try to get away?"
"He is ready to go now. He only went back when your boat came in."
Mr. Holcombe ran to the door, and flinging it open, peered into the
lower hall. He was too late. His boat was gone, tub of liver, pile of
wooden platters and all!
We hurried to the room the Ladleys had occupied. It was empty. From
the window, as we looked out, we could see the boat, almost a square
away. It had stopped where, the street being higher, a door-step rose

above the flood. On the step was sitting a forlorn yellow puppy. As we
stared, Mr. Ladley stopped the boat, looked back at us, bent over,
placed a piece of liver on a platter, and reached it over to the dog. Then,
rising in the boat, he bowed, with his hat over his heart, in our direction,
sat down calmly, and rowed around the corner out of sight.
Mr. Holcombe was in a frenzy of rage. He jumped up and down,
shaking his fist out the window after the retreating boat. He ran down
the staircase, only to come back and look out the window again. The
police boat was not in sight, but the Maguire children had worked their
raft around to the street and were under the window. He leaned out and
called to them.
"A quarter each, boys," he said, "if you'll take me on that raft to the
nearest pavement."
"Money first," said the oldest boy, holding his cap.
But Mr. Holcombe did not wait. He swung out over the window-sill,
holding by his hands, and lit fairly in the center of the raft.
"Don't touch anything in that room until I come back," he called to me,
and jerking the pole from one of the boys, propelled the raft with
amazing speed down the street.
The liver on the stove was burning. There was a smell of scorching
through the rooms and a sort of bluish haze of smoke. I hurried back
and took it off. By the time I had cleaned the pan, Mr. Holcombe was
back again, in his own boat. He had found it at the end of the next street,
where the flood ceased, but no sign of Ladley anywhere. He had not
seen the police boat.
"Perhaps that is just as well," he said philosophically. "We can't go to
the police with a wet slipper and a blood-stained rope and accuse a man
of murder. We have to have a body."
"He killed her," I said obstinately. "She told me yesterday he was a
fiend. He killed her and threw the body