Greater Love Hath No Man/Chapter 4
CHAPTER IV
LOOSE THREADS
BERLEY FALLS awoke that morning in stunned and awe-stricken gloom. Men gathered in little knots on the street corners, in the square, in their various places of business, and talked in hushed, subdued tones. It was as though to each had come, as indeed it really had, a personal and intimate bereavement, for none but had known and loved old Doctor Merton almost from their births. And yet as they talked, and deep as were their feelings, there was a marked absence of either execration or invective against the self-confessed author of the brutal, cowardly crime.
Varge, the Doctor's man, had confessed and given himself up! Incongruously enough, where then there should be no mystery this very thing brought mystery into the affair—and they shook their heads in amazed incredulity. As they had known Doctor Merton, so, too, if not for so many years, they had known Varge. They had watched him grow from childhood amongst them, and had come to respect and esteem him for the kindly, modest nature, the fine consideration of others that was his; for his calm-tempered disposition; for his personality itself, retiring, unobtrusive, that yet seemed always to exude an intangible sense of latent breadth and power—but most of all they had come to hold him in high regard for the manifest gratitude and loyalty he bore toward the two who had brought him up and given him a home. That Varge should have struck down and killed his benefactor seemed beyond credence—impossible.
"But he confessed to it himself," protested, in a puzzled, self-argumentative tone, one of the group gathered in the blacksmith's shop.
Joe Malloch, the smith, drew a glowing piece of iron from the forge and laid it viciously upon the anvil.
"S'posin' he did," he said gruffly; "I don't believe it for all that—nor none of you don't neither. There's something behind it, you mark my words. He's got some reason for sayin' it was him. Why, dang it, what's the use of talkin'! Don't you know Varge? Ain't he stuck to the old Doc all these years just out of gratitude, when he could have been anything about he liked if he'd only been willin' to leave the old couple an' strike out for himself? He's got a head on him, Varge has. Look what he's done with what he's had to do with. He's studied, he has; and I'll bet if he had college papers, or whatever it is, to let him practise, he'd show he was as good as the old Doctor himself. D'ye think a man that's done as he has an' acted the way he has would do a thing like this?"
"It don't look likely, that's a fact," agreed the first speaker.
"No; it don't—an' it ain't!" grunted Malloch. "But, anyway, there's one consolation—a man's just sayin' he did a thing ain't enough to fit a noose around his neck in these days."
"No," admitted another of the group; "but it goes a long way toward it, just the same."
The smith's arm came down with a sudden swing and a shower of sparks flew from the hammer blow.
"We'll see what we'll see when they get to the trial," he asserted. "And what we'll see 'll be that Varge's story won't hold water, an' what's behind it 'll come out. Why, gol-blame it to blazes, look at the town! There ain't one of us but 'd give our right hand to have the old Doc back, but who's sayin' a word against Varge? An' ordinarily we'd be for lynchin' the man that done it if we could get our hands on him! Now if it was that sanctimonious-faced Harold, son of the Doc though he is, I wouldn't say a word—but Varge! No, siree! An' he'll have the dog-gonest job makin' any jury in these parts believe it, either."
Another view, though utterly at variance with that of the brawny blacksmith and Berley Falls in general, was expressed that morning by Miss Amelia Higgins, the president of the Berley Falls Ladies' Hermeneutic and Historical Society. It is worthy of mention because, later on, in the absence of any competing theory, it gained some acceptance, faute de mieux.
"I believe," announced Miss Higgins, shaking her grey ringlets at the executive committee, who were engaged in the preparation of a somewhat ambitious program for the society's next meeting, "I believe, and I believe firmly, and I always have believed in heredity. I spoke to poor dear Mrs. Merton about it years ago when she first adopted that boy, and I warned her then. To adopt a child without the slightest inkling of who his parents were is simply tempting Providence. What is bred in the bone will come out. I always knew something would happen."
"Gracious goodness!" said the executive committee, in sudden dismay. "We never thought of that."
"Yes," said Miss Higgins, with a sigh; "there is so much in the accident of birth—it should broaden our sympathies." Miss Higgins adjusted her spectacles with precision on her sharp, literary nose, and turned to the lady on her right. "But I have mentioned this only in passing. I think, Mrs. Ambrose, you proposed a paper on Sophocles by Miss Farrington. Does any member of the committee desire to discuss the proposal?"
As the hours went by that morning, the tension and suspense in the little town rose steadily. Doctor Merton had been murdered; Varge had confessed to the deed—that was all anybody seemed to know.
But in the district attorney's office in the county courthouse a more intimate scene in connection with the crime had been taking place. For an hour Sheriff Marston had been closeted with the prosecuting officer. And now he was pacing up and down the room, stopping every once in a while to lay a fat forefinger in emphasis on the edge of the other's desk; while Lee, the district attorney, bent forward a little in his chair, tapped thoughtfully with a paper cutter on the desk-pad as he listened.
"That's the whole story summed up the way he told it to me," said Marston at last. "I didn't believe him last night, but there was nothing to do except lock him up and notify the coroner. I went up to the house and spent the rest of the night looking things over, and I'll admit they bore out what he said—the way he had run from the house at first to make his escape, I could tell that by the stride in the snow; then the bit trampled down in the woods; and then his tracks back across the fields to the road—he walked that, just as he said he had. This bears out Harold Merton's statement that when he discovered his father dead Varge had disappeared. Varge certainly must have been gone then, it would seem, to have done what there is plain evidence in the snow he did do, and yet get to town and give himself up before we started back; for, of course, if all this is true, Robson's discovery of Harold Merton bending over the Doctor was coincident with Harold Merton's discovery of his father's death. Now then, inside the house it was just the same—his story fits. The coroner says Doctor Merton was undoubtedly killed with that bar. The bar was bent, evidently in prying the cupboard door open, though the door must have held pretty solid for it's a right stout bar, and it fits into the marks and indents on the cupboard door and jamb. Well, that's about all. Every little point, as I say, seems to bear out his story, and yet"—the big sheriff's genial face was troubled, as he halted abruptly and leaned far over the desk toward the district attorney—"and yet I don't believe it now, Lee"—impulsively "we've both known him for years; what is there about that man that there isn't about you or me, or any other man we've ever met? You've only to look at him, and something in your soul tells you he's white, white clean through—and innocent. What is it, Lee?"
Lee tossed the paper cutter on the desk and his hand rumpled through his greyish hair.
"I don't know," he answered gravely. "I'm willing to admit a good deal of what you say—but I don't know. Anyway, we can't let sentiment carry us off our feet, Marston."
Marston walked to the window, stared out for a moment and came back to the desk.
"It isn't all sentiment," he said slowly. "Putting all that aside, there's something else—there's the motive. It isn't big enough or strong enough—and that's flat. Leaving out the kind of man altogether, providing, of course, he wasn't a fly-by-night, hairbrained crook, which we're not considering, it isn't likely any ordinary man would do that suddenly after all these years, is it?"
"Go on, Marston," prompted the district attorney, glancing shrewdly at the other as the sheriff paused. "What's the answer?"
"It's this," said Marston, his eyes holding the district attorney's steadily. "I can't get Robson's story out of my mind. It's natural enough for young Merton to have found his father as he says he did, and for Robson to have happened along just then, but—well, I talked to Robson again. I took him back with me as far as the Merton's house last night on his way home. Mind you, I know as well as you do that Robson wasn't dealt with any too generously when the brains were handed out, and I wouldn't be the first to subscribe for a large enough block of stock in what he says ordinarily to head the shareholders' list, but for once I'd lay a good deal he wasn't drawing any on his imagination—I could see young Merton's face the way he saw it—and it got me."
The pivot on Lee's swivel chair squeaked a grating, drawn-out note, as he swung slowly around to face the sheriff more directly.
"You mean?" he demanded bluntly.
Marston smiled grimly.
"I don't mean anything, do I?" he returned. "But I'd like to try an experiment."
Lee's scraggy eyebrows lifted ever so slightly, and into the keen grey eyes crept a whimsical light.
"Don't you know, Marston," he said, "that the popular conception of the attitude of a district attorney is to railroad any man that falls into his clutches—quite regardless of guilt or innocence, of course—to the noose or pen, as the case may be, with the utmost expediency? Surely, you don't expect me to aid and abet you in establishing the possible innocence of a self-confessed murderer, and take any chance of his slipping through my fingers! I'm surprised at you, Marston! What's the experiment?"
Marston placed his hand on the other's shoulder.
"Just this," he said impressively. "I want to bring Varge and Harold Merton face to face suddenly in the room where Doctor Merton was murdered—and I want to do it now while the iron's hot."
Lee whistled a low note under his breath, as he reached again for the paper cutter. He dropped this after a second or two, and looked at his watch.
"It's eleven o'clock," he said abruptly. "The coroner's inquest is at two. I'm not sure it's quite regular, but if it isn't we'll stretch a point. Get a sleigh, Marston, and we'll go out there now."
"The sleigh's been waiting at the jail door for the last hour," said Marston quietly.
"Oh!" remarked Lee with a low laugh, as he swung to his feet.
Marston started for the door.
"I'll get Varge in, and pick you up here by the time you get your coat on."
"Wait!" said Lee suddenly, and his voice had lost its laugh, "Just a minute, Marston. Let's be sure there isn't any mistake about where we stand. I'll go the limit to see that he gets a square deal, but if he's guilty there'll be no let up and I'll see that he gets his."
"He'll deserve it," said Marston gruffly, as he went out.