The Stillwater Tragedy | Page 9

hit by it."
"Come, boys, don't crowd a feller," said Mr. Peters, getting restive. "I
don't take the contract to explain the thing. But it does seem some way
droll that the old schooner should be wrecked so soon after what has
happened to the old skipper. If you don't see it, or sense it, I don't insist.
What's yours, Denyven?"
The person addressed as Denyven promptly replied, with a fine
sonorous English accent, "a mug of 'alf an' 'alf,--with a head on it,
Snelling."
At the same moment Mr. Craggie, in the inner room was saying to the
school-master,--
"I must really take issue with you there, Mr. Pinkham. I admit there's a
good deal in spiritualism which we haven't got at yet; the science is in
its infancy; it is still attached to the bosom of speculation. It is a
beautiful science, that of psychological phenomena, and the spiritualists
will yet become an influential class of"--Mr. Craggie was going to say
voters, but glided over it--"persons. I believe in clairvoyance myself to
a large extent. Before my appointment to the post-office I had it very
strong. I've no doubt that in the far future this mysterious factor will be
made great use of in criminal cases; but at present I should resort to it
only in the last extremity,--the very last extremity, Mr. Pinkham!"
"Oh, of course," said the school-master deprecatingly. "I threw it out
only as the merest suggestion. I shouldn't think of--of--you understand
me?"
"Is it beyond the dreams of probability," said Mr. Craggie, appealing to
Lawyer Perkins, "that clairvoyants may eventually be introduced into
cases in our courts?"
"They are now," said Mr. Perkins, with a snort,--"the police bring 'em
it."
Mr. Craggie finished the remainder of his glass of sherry in silence, and
presently rose to go. Coroner Whidden and Mr. Ward had already gone.
The guests in the public room were thinning out; a gloom, indefinable
and shapeless like the night, seemed to have fallen upon the few that
lingered. At a somewhat earlier hour tdhan usual the gas was shut off in
the Stillwater hotel.

In the lonely house in Welch's Court a light was still burning.

IV

A sorely perplexed man sat there, bending over his papers by the
lamp-light. Mr. Taggett had established himself at the Shackford house
on his arrival, preferring it to the hotel, where he would have been
subjected to the curiosity of the guests and to endless annoyances. Up
to this moment, perhaps not a dozen persons in the place had had more
than a passing glimpse of him. He was a very busy man, working at his
desk from morning until night, and then taking only a brief walk, for
exercise in some unfrequented street. His meals were sent in from the
hotel to the Shackford house, where the constables reported to him, and
where he held protracted conferences with Justice Beemis, Coroner
Whidden, Lawyer Perkins, and a few others, and declined to be
interviewed by the local editor.
To the outside eye that weather-stained, faded old house appeared a
throbbing seat of esoteric intelligence. It was as if a hundred invisible
magnetic threads converged to a focus under that roof and incessantly
clicked ouit the most startling information,--information which was
never by any chance allowed to pass beyond the charmed circle. The
pile of letters which the mail brought to Mr. Taggett every
morning--chiefly anonymous suggestions, and offers of assistance from
lunatics in remote cities--was enough in itself to expasperate a
community.
Covertly at first, and then openly, Stillwater began seriously to question
Mr. Taggett's method of working up the case. The Gazette, in a
double-leaded leader, went so far as to compare him to a bird with fine
feathers and no song, and to suggest that perhaps the bird might have
sung if the inducement offered had been more substantial. A singer of
Mr. Taggett's plumage was not to be taught by such chaff as five
hundred dollars. Having killed his man, the editor proceeded to remark
that he would suspend judgment until next week.
As if to make perfect the bird comparison, Mr. Taggett, after keeping
the public in suspense for six days and nights, abruptly flew away, with
all the little shreds and straws of evidence he had picked up, to build
his speculative nest elsewhere.

The defection of Mr. Taggett caused a mild panic among a certain
portion of the inhabitants, who were not reassured by the statement in
the Gazette that the case would now be placed in the proper hands,--the
hand so the county constabulary. "Within a few days," said the editor in
conclusion, "the matter will undoubtedly be cleared up. At present we
cannot say more;" and it would have puzzled him very much to do so.