The Stillwater Tragedy | Page 7

in Stillwater. "That tramp
is a thousand miles from here."
"So he is if he has any brains under his hat," returned Snelling. "But
they're on the lookout for him. The minute he pawns anything, he's
gone."
"Can't put up greenbacks or gold, can he? He didn't take nothing else,"
interposed Bishop, the veterinary surgeon.
"Now jewelry nor nothing?"
"There wasn't none, as I understand it," said Bishop, "except a silver
watch. That was all snug under the old man's piller."
"Wanter know!" ejaculated Jonathan Beers.
"I opine, Mr. Craggie," said the school-master, standing in the inner
room with a rolled-up file of the Daily Advertiser in his hand, "that the

person who--who removed our worthy townsman will never be
discovered."
"I shouldn't like to go quite so far as that, sir," answered Mr. Craggie,
with that diplomatic suavity which leads to postmasterships and seats in
the General Court, and has even been known to oil a dull fellow's way
into Congress. "I cannot take quite so hopeless a view of it. There are
difficulties, but they must be overcome, Mr. Pinkham, and I think they
will be."
"Indeed, I hope so," returned the school-master. "But there are
cases--are there not?--in which the--the problem, if I may so designate
it, has never been elucidated, and the persons who undertook it have
been obliged to go to the foot, so to speak."
"Ah, yes, there are such cases, certainly. There was the Burdell mystery
in New York, and, later, the Nathan affair--By the way, I've satisfactory
theories of my own touching both. The police were baffled, and remain
so. But, my dear sir, observe for a moment the difference."
Mr. Pinkham rested one finger on the edge of a little round table, and
leaned forward in a respectful attitude to observe the difference.
"Those crimes were committed in a vast metropolis affording a
thousand chances for escape, as well as offering a thousand temptations
to the lawless. But we are a limited community. We have no
professional murderers among us. The deed which has stirred society to
its utmost depths was plainly done by some wayfaring amateur.
Remorse has already arrived upon him, if the police haven't. For the
time being he escapes; but he is bound to betray himself sooner or later.
If the right steps are taken,--and I have myself the greatest confidence
in Mr. Taggett,--the guilty party can scarcely fail to be brought to the
bar of justice, if he doesn't bring himself there."
"Indeed, indeed, I hope so," repeated Mr. Pinkham.
"The investigation is being carried on very closely."
"Too closely," suggested the school-master.
"Oh dear, no," murmured Mr. Craggie. "The strictest secrecy is
necessary in affairs of this delicate nature. If Tom, Dick, and Harry
were taken behind the scenes," he added, with the air of one wishing to
say too much, "the bottom would drop out of everything."
Mr. Pinkham shrunk from commenting on a disaster like that, and
relapsed into silence. Mr. Craggie, with his thumbs in the arm-holes of

his waistcoat, and his legs crossed in an easy, senatorial fashion, leaned
back in the chair and smiled blandly.
"I don't suppose there's nothing new, boys!" exclaimed a fat, florid man,
bustling in good-naturedly at the public entrance, and leaving a straight
wet trail on the sanded floor from the threshold to the polished
mahogany counter. Mr. Wilson was a local humorist of the Falstaffian
stripe, though not so much witty in himself as the cause of wit in
others.
"No, Jimmy, there isn't anything new," responded Dexter.
"I suppose you didn't hear that the ole man done somethin' handsome
for me in his last will and testyment."
"No, Jemmy, I don't think he has made any provision whatever for an
almshouse."
"Sorry to hear that, Dexter," said Willson, absorbedly chasing a bit of
lemon peel in his glass with the spoon handle, "for there isn't room for
us all up at the town-farm. How's your grandmother? Finds it tol'rably
comfortable?"
They are a primitive, candid people in their hours of unlaced social
intercourse in Stillwater. This delicate tu quoque was so far from
wounding Dexter that he replied carelessly,--
"Well, only so so. The old woman complains of too much
chicken-sallid, and hot-house grapes all the year round."
"Mr. Shackford must have left a large property," observed Mr. Ward, of
the firm of Ward & Lock, glancing up from the columns of the
Stillwater Gazette. The remark was addressed to Lawyer Perkins, who
had just joined the group in the reading-room.
"Fairly large," replied that gentleman crisply.
"Any public bequests?"
"None to speak of."
Mr. Craggie smiled vaguely.
"You see," said Lawyer Perkins, "there's a will and no will,--that is to
say, the fragments of what is supposed to be a will were found, and