FullReads

“What the devil are you talkin’ about?” demanded Alf. “There ain’t no remains around here named Camp.”

The marshal smiled, but there was more pity than mirth in the effort.

“All you got to do is to do what I deputize you to do,” he said quietly. “Is Bill Kepsal here?”

“Present,” said the iron-armed blacksmith, with a series of winks that almost sufficed to take in the whole assemblage.

“I deputize you, William Kepsal, and–” (he craned his neck slightly)–“and you, Newton Spratt, out there on the edge of the crowd, to act as guards durin’ the night, until relieved by Deputy Reesling at seven A. M. tomorrow mornin’. You will permit no one to approach or remove the body of Moses Briscoe from its present place of confinement until further orders. And now, feller citizens, I must request you one and all to disperse and not to congregate again in this locality, under penalty of the law. Disperse at once, move on, everybody.”

The crowd didn’t move an inch.

“He’s gone plumb crazy,” said Rush Applegate to Uncle Dad Simms, and he made such a special effort that Uncle Dad heard him quite distinctly.

“He always wuz,” agreed Uncle Dad. “What’s he crazy about this time?”

“Come on home, Anderson,” said Alf Reesling, gently. “Maybe if you took a dose of–“

“Lemme talk to him,” interrupted Elmer K. Pratt, the photographer. “I had an uncle once that died in an asylum, and I used to keep him quiet before he got hopeless by lettin’ on that he really was George Washington. Now, look here, Anderson,–“

Marshal Crow held up his hand. There was no sign of resentment in his voice or manner as he addressed the grinning crowd.

“I don’t blame you for thinkin’ that man in there is Jake Miller. I thought so myself until a couple o’ days ago. That’s when I first begin to suspect that he was the very man he now turns out to be. Gentlemen, if the individual that you knew as Jake Miller hadn’t took his own life last night, I would have had him behind the bars today, sure as all get out. He wasn’t no more Jake Miller than I am. Jake Miller was one of his alibis. He had–“

“You mean aliases,” interrupted Professor Rank, of the high school.

“Or nom de plumes,” added Willie Spence, the chief clerk at the Grand View Hotel, one of the most inveterate readers in town. To Willie the name of any author was a nom de plume; it didn’t make any difference whether it was his real name or not.

“He had a lot of names besides Jake Miller,” explained Anderson loftily. “And he didn’t have to go to high school to get ’em,” he added as an afterthought, favouring Professor Rank with a withering look. “Now, disperse,–all of you. Go on now, Willie,–disperse. Everybody disperse except Alf Reesling. You stay here an’ keep watch till I come back.”

With that, he took the easiest and most expeditious way of dispersing the crowd by walking briskly off in the direction of Main Street. The crowd followed,–or more strictly speaking, accompanied him. He was the centre of a drove of eager inquirers. Having successfully dispersed the crowd in front of Hawkins’s Emporium, he stopped in front of the post office and addressed it once more.

“All you got to do,” he announced, taking a seat on the porch, “is to wait till the Banner comes out, and then you’ll get all the news. I just been in there to tell Harry Squires about my discoveries, and he is workin’ his head off now gettin’ it all in shape for the subscribers to the paper. And that reminds me. He asked me to do him a favour. He says there are quite a number of cheap skates in this town that ain’t regular subscribers to the Banner. That’s why Ebenezer January’s barber shop is so crowded on Thursday mornings that Ebenezer is threatenin’ to stop his subscription. Ebenezer says there’s so many customers in his place waitin’ to be next with the paper that he ain’t hardly got room to hone up his razors after Wednesday’s work. I promised Harry I’d suggest that you all go around and subscribe today, because he says he’s engaged Ebenezer to whitewash the press-room tomorrow and the barber shop won’t be open at all. He says it’s an outrage that–“