The Double Barrelled Detective Story | Page 7

his health, possibly kill him."
She took three or four more typewritten forms from the drawer--

duplicates--and read one:
. . . . . . . . . . , . . . . . . . . . . , 18. . . . To Jacob Fuller:
You have . . . . . . days in which to settle your affairs. You will not be
disturbed during that limit, which will expire at . . . . . . M., on
the . . . . . . of . . . . . . . You must then MOVE ON. If you are still in the
place after the named hour, I will placard you on all the dead walls,
detailing your crime once more, and adding the date, also the scene of it,
with all names concerned, including your own. Have no fear of bodily
injury --it will in no circumstances ever be inflicted upon you. You
brought misery upon an old man, and ruined his life and broke his heart.
What he suffered, you are to suffer.
"You will add no signature. He must receive this before he learns of the
reward placard--before he rises in the morning--lest he lose his head
and fly the place penniless."
"I shall not forget."
"You will need to use these forms only in the beginning--once may he
enough. Afterward, when you are ready for him to vanish out of a place,
see that he gets a copy of this form, which merely says:
"MOVE ON. You have . . . . . . days."
"He will obey. That is sure."

III
Extracts from letters to the mother:
DENVER, April 3, 1897 I have now been living several days in the
same hotel with Jacob Fuller. I have his scent; I could track him
through ten divisions of infantry and find him. I have often been near
him and heard him talk. He owns a good mine, and has a fair income
from it; but he is not rich. He learned mining in a good way--by

working at it for wages. He is a cheerful creature, and his forty-three
years sit lightly upon him; he could pass for a younger man--say
thirty-six or thirty-seven. He has never married again--passes himself
off for a widower. He stands well, is liked, is popular, and has many
friends. Even I feel a drawing toward him--the paternal blood in me
making its claim. How blind and unreasoning and arbitrary are some of
the laws of nature--the most of them, in fact! My task is become hard
now--you realize it? you comprehend, and make allowances?--and the
fire of it has cooled, more than I like to confess to myself, But I will
carry it out. Even with the pleasure paled, the duty remains, and I will
not spare him.
And for my help, a sharp resentment rises in me when I reflect that he
who committed that odious crime is the only one who has not suffered
by it. The lesson of it has manifestly reformed his character, and in the
change he is happy. He, the guilty party, is absolved from all suffering;
you, the innocent, are borne down with it. But be comforted-- he shall
harvest his share.
SILVER GULCH, May 19 I placarded Form No. 1 at midnight of April
3; an hour later I slipped Form No. 2 under his chamber door, notifying
him to leave Denver at or before 11.50 the night of the 14th.
Some late bird of a reporter stole one of my placards, then hunted the
town over and found the other one, and stole that. In this manner he
accomplished what the profession call a "scoop"--that is, he got a
valuable item, and saw to it that no other paper got it. And so his
paper--the principal one in the town--had it in glaring type on the
editorial page in the morning, followed by a Vesuvian opinion of our
wretch a column long, which wound up by adding a thousand dollars to
our reward on the paper's account! The journals out here know how to
do the noble thing--when there's business in it.
At breakfast I occupied my usual seat--selected because it afforded a
view of papa Fuller's face, and was near enough for me to hear the talk
that went on at his table. Seventy-five or a hundred people were in the
room, and all discussing that item, and saying they hoped the seeker
would find that rascal and remove the pollution of his presence from

the town--with a rail, or a bullet, or something.
When Fuller came in he had the Notice to Leave--folded up--in one
hand, and the newspaper in the other; and it gave me more than half a
pang to see him.