The Man of Last Resort/Once in Jeopardy/Chapter 4
IV
IT was the first Monday of July, and the grand inquisitors of the county of McDowell were in laborious session. It was hot in Welch,—so hot that the sheriff had purchased a linen coat and departed for Atlantic City on a ten-dollar excursion, leaving the deputy, Salathiel Jenkins, to swelter with the grand jury. So hot that J. E. B. Huron, prosecuting attorney by selection of the Commonwealth, resorted to expressions not quite profane but nipping close to the border. So hot that the foreman from Charity Fork made continual odious reference to that historic locality over which Lazarus passed in the bosom of Abraham.
The grand jury was a body mightily out of harmony with its inquisitorial affairs, especially on this sweltering Monday when the mercury was mounting heavenward. The members of the grand jury had removed their coats, they had unbuttoned their shirts, they had rolled up their sleeves to the limit over their great brown arms. It was hot—this grand jury. But it was jovial and good-natured, sixteen freeholders of the bailiwick turning aside for a day to bolster up the peace and dignity of the State. The characteristic apparel of the farmer, the hunter, and the miner was on this grand jury, but there were no collars; not even the “biled shirt” of notorious report. If one had spoken of a haberdasher or essayed to enumerate his wares in the land south of Tug River, he would have been regarded as a purveyor of “green furrin jabber,” or been pitied as a hopeless victim of idiot mutterings.
Thus do men hoot the customs of their fellows when in conflict with their own. One looking at this grand jury as an exhibit would have gone away regretting that the chief fad of Delilah had not been handed down in the county of McDowell, just as the jury would have wondered why the funny little man divided his hair in the middle like a woman and wore a tight band around his neck and a stiff breastplate of cloth and starch over his ribs, when he could dress like a Christian, and be comfortable.
At two o'clock the sage body had concluded its inquisition, and was resting ponderously while the foreman. Abe Collister, of Charity Fork, was slowly and with infinite pain affixing his signature to the indictments. It was no small labor for one whose fingers were thick and broad and accustomed to implements little slighter in proportion than the handle of an axe or the stock of a Winchester.
The facial contortions of this good freeholder as he strove in a clerical capacity would have won for him applause and fortune and wide repute in the cast of a comedy. It was Fate's way, better than genius could imitate, but no audience to see.
It is the function of bodies of this sort to be severe, and it is their way to be most amiable. The prosecuting attorney, it was maintained, ought to know what he wanted. He was paid to know. It was his business. If he thought it wise to send in witnesses charging one with a crime, then the charge should be found. This conclusion was a splendid working hypothesis, pregnant with expedition, but not quite in accord with the ideal jus.
So the grand jury rested as the afternoon grew apace, while the scripturian from Charity Fork toiled, and the prosecuting attorney went down to his office in order to “see if there was anything else he wanted.” It was at this hour of lull, that a nervous little man hurried into the office presided over by the industrious daughter of the house of McFadden, and inquired for Mr. Huron. The red genius replied that he was busy. According to this oracle, young Mr. Huron was always busy. His continual status was one of tireless toil,—as continuous as a mortgage, and as tireless as a gas meter.
Just then the prosecuting attorney came out on his way to the grand jury room. The little man rushed up and demanded an immediate audience. The two returned to the private office and closed the door. Here the little man looked at his watch and announced that things would have to be rushed, and launched into the subject. He explained with almost breathless rapidity that he was a detective from New York, representing Loomey's Agency. As he talked, he threw back his coat revealing a badge which Mr. Huron did not stop to examine. He said that he had been working on the case of Brown Hirst; that he had finally discovered that Hirst had been murdered, foully murdered by one Robert Gilmore, president of the Octagon Coal Company; that he had the case tightened around Gilmore beyond the remotest shadow of probability; that Gilmore, it seemed, had by some means learned of the damning evidence gathering against him, and was attempting to fly from the country; that he had left Philadelphia disguised as a cattle drover, and would pass through Charleston, West Virginia, at midnight on the Chesapeake and Ohio Railroad, and if he was not then arrested, he would probably escape entirely, or, at the least, subject his trailer to the expense and the tedium of an extradition; hence the detective had hurried to Welch in order to secure an indictment at once and return to Charleston in a position to arrest the man and hold him under a legal warrant that would be valid and unquestioned.
He explained that he must leave at three o'clock in order to reach the Chesapeake and Ohio Railroad in time, and requested that he be permitted to go at once before the grand-jury, which he had learned was now in session.
The prosecuting attorney listened in astonishment, but he was a man familiar with the startling surprises of criminal investigation, and he set himself to act with the expedition which the matter required. He went at once to the grand jury with the detective, and explained that he had just received information tending to the conclusion that Brown Hirst had been murdered; that the witness with him was John Bartlett, a detective from New York, who had worked up the case and would give full information concerning the facts of the crime. He then added that as Mr. Bartlett would be compelled to leave within the hour, he would return to his office and prepare an indictment for murder. In the meantime the grand jury could determine whether the information was sufficient to sustain the charge, and, if so, the indictment would be ready and Mr. Bartlett could return to Charleston without unnecessary delay.
Then he withdrew, and the grand jury of McDowell, braced by the gust of sudden sensation, straightway forgot how very warm it was and began to put itself into a state of ponderous bovine expectancy.
The witness Bartlett sat down by the table, took out his watch, looked at it anxiously, then snapped the case and returned it to his pocket.
The foreman put down his pen very carefully, mopped his wet face with a great red cotton cloth, and strove to assume the gravity of his position.
“Your name's Bartlett, stranger?” said the scripturian, feeling that it was becoming for him to set the wheels of judicial investigation in motion, but not quite certain of the method. “You are a detective man: and I 'low you know all about this here little trouble?”
The latter part of the query was a stock question with the foreman. All day long, every crime, from homicide to assault and battery, had been dubbed by this arch inquisitor as “this here little trouble.” If there was any big trouble south of Tug River, it was not deemed to be within the purlieus of the lex scripta or the lex non scripta of the county of McDowell.
The detective saw the open opportunity to thrust in his testimony as a narrative, and seized it. He leaned over on the table, assured himself of the attention of the jury, and began to talk.
He told how he had trailed this matter down; how the Octagon Coal Company was financially on the verge of ruin, and it was his theory that Gilmore, as president, had been stealing largely from the company; that Hirst had finally suspected this theft and had summoned Gilmore to McDowell; how the dangerous man had obeyed the summons, had quarrelled with Hirst in the office, finally killed him, and in order to cover the crime had carried the body to the bridge and thrown it over, arranging the evidence to appear like a suicide. He painted in lurid colors the desperate character of this man Gilmore; he pointed out how fearful of arrest the murderer of Hirst was, at that very hour hurrying westward in order, as he believed, to put himself beyond the reach of the law.
The witness talked on glib and shrewdly, and while he talked, the jury, unfamiliar with the rules of evidence, grew indignant and bitter, and fired with a sense of the gigantic outrage.
Presently the door opened and the prosecuting attorney entered with the indictment.
“Are you ready to vote on the matter, gentlemen?” he asked.
The foreman nodded slowly. “I guess we are, Jeb,” he answered.
“Then,” responded the prosecuting attorney, “Mr. Bartlett and myself will withdraw.”
The witness arose and followed Mr Huron out of the jury room.
When the door had closed, the chief inquisitor from Charity Fork picked up the indictment, turned it over curiously in his ponderous hand, and then laid it down on the table with the back up. Then he took up his pen and jabbed it down into the ink pot.
“Boys,” he observed, cheerily, “the Good Book says, 'None shall escape, no not one.' What about this here one?”
“I reckon,” drawled Uriah Coburn, sage and philosopher, and most venerable member from Injun Run, “I reckon the Good Book air right. I reckon we better flop him.”
“Flop” was an accurate idiom in McDowell, and, being translated, meant, “to throw heavily.”
To this the grand jury agreed with many and various methods of assent. So the member from Charity Fork took a new grip on his pen, thrust his tongue out of the corner of his mouth, and slowly and with great labor inscribed on the back of the indictment this legend, big with the injured dignity of the Commonwealth: “A True Bill. Abraham Collister, Foreman.”