The Stillwater Tragedy | Page 8

in your professional capacity," he added hastily; for Lawyer Perkins had been known to send in a bill on as slight a provocation as Mr. Ward's.
"That's a point. The next of kin has his claims."
"My friend Shackford, of course," broke in Mr. Craggie. "Admirable young man!--one of my warmest supporters."
"He is the only heir at law so far as we know," said Mr. Perkins.
"Oh," said Mr. Craggie, reflecting. "The late Mr. Shackford might have had a family in Timbuctoo or the Sandwich Islands."
"That's another point."
"The fact would be a deuced unpleasant point for young Shackford to run against," said Mr. Ward.
"Exactly."
"If Mr. Lemuel Shackford," remarked Coroner Whidden, softly joining the conversation to which he had been listening in his timorous, apologetic manner, "had chanced, in the course of his early sea-faring days, to form any ties of an unhappy complexion"--
"Complexion is good," murmured Mr. Craggie. "Some Hawaiian lady!"
--"perhaps that would be a branch of the case worth investigating in connection with the homicide. A discarded wife, or a disowned son, burning with a sense of wrong"--
"Really, Mr. Whidden!" interrupted Lawyer Perkins witheringly, "it is bad enough for my client to lose his life, without having his reputation filched away from him."
"I--I will explain! I was merely supposing"--
"The law never supposes, sir!"
This threw Mr. Whidden into great mental confusion. As coroner was he not an integral part of the law, and when, in his official character, he supposed anything was not that a legal supposition? But was he in his official character now, sitting with a glass of lemonade at his elbow in the reading-room of the Stillwater hotel? Was he, or was he not, a coroner all the time? Mr. Whidden stroked an isolated tuft of hair growing low on the middle of his forehead, and glared mildly at Mr. Perkins.
"Young Shackford has gone to New York, I understand," said Mr. Ward, breaking the silence.
Mr. Perkins nodded. "Went this morning to look after the real-estate interests there. It will probably keep him a couple of weeks,--the longer the better. He was of no use here. Lemuel's death was a great shock to him, or rather the manner of it was."
"That shocked every one. They were first cousin's weren't they?" Mr. Ward was a comparatively new resident in Stillwater.
"First cousins," replied Lawyer Perkins; "but they were never very intimate, you know."
"I imagine nobody was ever very intimate with Mr. Shackford."
"My client was somewhat peculiar in his friendships."
This was stating it charitably, for Mr. Perkins knew, and every one present knew, that Lemuel Shackford had not had the shadow of a friend in Stillwater, unless it was his cousin Richard.
A cloud of mist and rain was blown into the bar-room as the street door stood open for a second to admit a dripping figure from the outside darkness.
_"What's_ blowed down?" asked Durgin, turning round on his stool and sending up a ring of smoke which uncurled itself with difficulty in the dense atmosphere.
"It's only some of Jeff Stavers's nonsense."
"No nonsense at all," said the new-comer, as he shook the heavy beads of rain from his felt hat. "I was passing by Welch's Court--it's as black as pitch out, fellows--when slap went something against my shoulder; something like wet wings. Well, I was scared. It's a bat, says I. But the thing didn't fly off; it was still clawing at my shoulder. I put up my hand, and I'll be shot if it wasn't the foremast, jib-sheet and all, of the old weather-cock on the north gable of the Shackford house! Here you are!" and the speaker tossed the broken mast, with the mimic sails dangling from it, into Durgin's lap.
A dead silence followed, for there wa felt to be something weirdly significant in the incident.
"That's kinder omernous," said Mr. Peters, interrogatively.
"Ominous of what?" asked Durgin, lifting the wet mass from his knees and dropping it on the floor.
"Well, sorter queer, then."
"Where does the queer come in?" inquired Stevens, gravelly. "I don't know; but I'm 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