Manly Wade Wellman - Judge Pursuivant 01 (5 page)

 
          
 
"Don't neither of you
go into that room where the body is,"
O'Bryant warned them.
"Mr Wills, get your coat and hat."

 
          
 
I did so, and we left the house. The snow was
inches deep and still falling. O'Bryant led me across the street and knocked on
the door of a peak-roofed house. A swarthy little man opened to us.

 
          
 
"There's been a murder, Jim," said
O'Bryant importantly. "Over at Gird's. You're deputized - go and keep
watch. Better take the missus along, to look after Susan. She's bad cut up
about it."

 
          
 
We left the new deputy in charge and walked
down the street, then turned into the square. Two or three men standing in
front of the "Pharmacy" stared curiously,
then
whispered as we passed. Another figure paused to give me a searching glance. I
was not too stunned to be irritated.

 
          
 
"Who are those?" I asked the constable.

 
          
 
"Town fellows," he informed me.
"They're mighty interested to see what a killer looks like."

 
          
 
"How do they know about the case?" I
almost groaned.

 
          
 
He achieved his short, hard laugh.

 
          
 
"Didn't I say that news travels fast in a
town like this? Half the folks are talking about the killing this minute."

 
          
 
"YouMl find you made a mistake," I
assured him.

 
          
 
"If I have, ril beg your pardon handsome.
Meanwhile,
Til
do my duty."

 
          
 
We were at the red brick town hall by now. At
0*Bryant's side I mounted the granite steps and waited while he unlocked the
big double door with a key the size of a can-opener.

 
          
 
"We're a kind of small town," he
observed, half apologetically, "but there's a cell upstairs for you. Take
off your hat and overcoat - you're staying inside till further notice."

           
 
''They want to take the law into their own
hands"

 
          
 
The cell was an upper room of the town hall,
with a heavy wooden door and a single tiny window. The walls were of bare,
unplastered brick, the floor of concrete and the ceiling of whitewashed planks.
An oil lamp burned in a bracket. The only furniture was an iron bunk hinged to
the wall just below the window, a wire-bound straight chair and an unpainted
table.
On top of this last stood a bowl and pitcher, with playing-cards
scattered around them.

 
          
 
Constable O'Bryant locked me in and peered
through a small grating in the door. He was all nose and eyes and wide lips,
like a sardonic Punchinello.

 
          
 
"Look here," I addressed him
suddenly, for the first time controlling my frayed nerves; "I want a
lawyer."

 
          
 
"There ain't
no
lawyer in town," he boomed sourly.

 
          
 
"Isn't there a Judge Pursuivant in the
neighborhood?" I asked, remembering something that Susan had told me.

 
          
 
"He
don't
practise law," O'Bryant grumbled, and his beaked face slid out of sight.

 
          
 
I turned to the table, idly gathered up the
cards into a pack and shuffled them. To steady my still shaky fingers, I
produced a few simple sleight-of-hand effects, palming of aces, making a king
rise to the top, and springing the pack accordion-wise from one hand to the
other.

 
          
 
"I'd sure hate to play poker with
you," volunteered O'Bryant, who had come again to gaze at me.

 
          
 
I crossed to the grating and looked through at
him. "You've got the wrong man," I said once more. "Even if I
were guilty, you couldn't keep me from talking to a lawyer."

 
          
 
"Well, I'm doing it, ain't I?" he
taunted me. "You wait until tomorrow and we'll go to the county seat. The
sheriff can do whatever he wants to about a lawyer for you."

 
          
 
He ceased talking and listened. I heard the
sound, too - a hoarse, dull murmur as of coal in a chute, or a distant, lowing
herd of troubled cattle.

 
          
 
"What's that?" I asked him.

 
          
 
O'Bryant, better able to hear in the corridor,
cocked his lean head for a moment. Then he cleared his throat. "Sounds
like a lot of people talking, out in the square," he repHed. "I
wonder
- "

 
          
 
He broke off quickly and walked away. The
murmur was growing. I, pressing close to the grating to follow the constable
with my eyes, saw that his shoulders were squared and his hanging fists
doubled, as though he were suddenly aware of a lurking danger.

 
          
 
He reached the head of the stairs and clumped
down, out of my sight. I turned back to the cell, walked to the bunk and,
stepping upon it, raised the window. To the outside of the wooden frame two
flat straps of iron had been securely bolted to act as bars. To these I clung
as I peered out.

 
          
 
I was looking from the rear of the hall toward
the center of the square, with the war memorial and the far line of shops and
houses seen dimly through a thick curtain of falling snow. Something dark moved
closer to the wall beneath, and I heard a cry, as if of menace.

 
          
 
"I see his head in the window!"
bawled a voice, and more cries greeted this statement. A moment later a heavy
missile hit the wall close to the frame.

 
          
 
I dropped back from the window and went once
more to the grating of the door. Through it I saw O'Bryant coming back,
accompanied by several men. They came close and peered through at me.

 
          
 
"Let me out," I urged. "That's
a mob out there."

 
          
 
O'Bryant nodded dolefully. "Nothing like
this ever happened here before," he said, as if he were responsible for
the town's whole history of violence. "They act like they want to take the
law into their own hands."

 
          
 
A short, fat man spoke at his elbow.
"We're members of the town council, Mr Wills. We heard that some of the
citizens were getting ugly. We came here to look after you. We promise full
protection."

 
          
 
"Amen," intoned a thinner specimen,
whom I guessed to be the preacher.

 
          
 
"There are only half a dozen of
you," I pointed out. "Is that enough to guard me from a violent
mob?"

 
          
 
As if to lend significance to my question,
from below and in front of the building came a great shout, compounded of many
voices. Then a loud pounding echoed through the corridor, like a bludgeon on
stout panels.

 
          
 
"You locked the door, Constable?"
asked the short man.

 
          
 
"Sure I did," nodded O'Bryant.

 
          
 
A perfect rain of buffets sounded from below,
then a heavy impact upon the front door of the hall. I could hear the hinges
creak.

 
          
 
"They're trying to break the door
down," whispered one of the council.

 
          
 
The short man turned resolutely on his heel.
"There's a window at the landing of the stairs," he said. "Let's
go and try to talk to them from that."

 
          
 
The whole party followed him away, and I could
hear their feet on the stairs, then the lifting of a heavy window-sash. A loud
and prolonged yelling came to my ears, as if the gathering outside had sighted
and recognized a line of heads on the sill above them.

 
          
 
"Fellow citizens!" called the stout
man's voice, but before he could go on a chorus of cries and hoots drowned him
out. I could hear more thumps and surging shoves at the creaking door.

 
          
 
Escape I must. I whipped around and fairly ran
to the bunk, mounting it second time for a peep from my window. Nobody was
visible below; apparently those I had seen previously had run to the front of
the hall, there to hear the bellowings of the officials and take a hand in
forcing the door.

 
          
 
Once again I dropped to the floor and began to
tug at the fastenings of the bunk. It was an open oblong of metal, a stout
frame of rods strung with springy wire netting. It could be folded upward
against the wall and held with a catch, or dropped down with two lengths of
chain to keep it horizontal. I dragged the mattress and blankets from it, then
began a close examination of the chains. They were stoutly made, but the
screw-plates that held them to the brick wall might be loosened. Clutching one
chain with both my hands, I tugged with all my might, a foot braced against the
wall. A straining
heave,
and it came loose.

 
          
 
At the same moment an explosion echoed through
the corridor at my back, and more shouts rang through the air. Either O'Bryant
or the mob had begun to shoot. Then a rending crash shook the building, and I
heard one of the councilmen shouting: "Another like that and the door will
be down!"

 
          
 
His words inspired additional speed within me.
I took the loose end of the chain in my hand. Its links were of twisted iron,
and the final one had been sawed through to admit the loop of the screw-plate,
then
clamped tight again. But my frantic tugging had widened
this narrow cut once more, and quickly I freed it from the dangling plate.
Then, folding the bunk against the wall, I drew the chain upward. It would just
reach to the window - that open link would hook around one of the flat bars.

 
          
 
The noise of breakage rang louder in the front
of the building. Once more I heard the voice of the short councilman: "I
command you all to go home, before Constable O'Bryant fires on you again!"

 
          
 
"We got guns, too!" came back a
defiant shriek, and in proof of this statement came a rattle of shots. I heard
an agonized moan, and the voice of the minister: "Are you hit?"

 
          
 
"In the shoulder," was O'Bryant's
deep, savage reply.

 
          
 
My chain fast to the bar, I pulled back and
down on the edge of the bunk. It gave some leverage, but not enough - the bar
was fastened too solidly. Desperate, I clambered up>on the iron framework.
Gaining the sill, I moved sidewise, then turned and braced my back against the
wall. With my feet against the edge of the bunk, I thrust it away with all the
strength in both my legs. A creak and a ripping
sound,
and the bar pulled slowly out from its bolts.

 
          
 
But a roar and thunder of feet told me that
the throng outside had gained entrance to the hall at last.

 
          
 
I heard a last futile flurry of protesting
cries from the councilmen as the steps echoed with the charge of many heavy
boots. I waited no longer, but swung myself to the sill and wriggled through
the narrow space where the bar had come out. A lapel of my jacket tore against
the frame, but I made it. Clinging by the other bar, I made out at my side a
narrow band of perpendicular darkness against the wall, and clutched at it. It
was a tin drainpipe, by the feel of it.

 
          
 
An attack was being made upon the door of the
cell. The wood splintered before a torrent of blows, and I heard people pushing
in.

 
          
 
"He's gone!" yelled a rough voice,
and, a moment later: "Hey, look at the window!"

 
          
 
I had hold of the drainpipe, and gave it my
entire weight. Next instant it had torn loose from its flimsy supports and bent
sickeningly outward. Yet it did not let me down at once, acting rather as a
slender sapling to the top of which an adventuresome boy has sprung. Still
holding to it, I fell sprawling in the snow twenty feet beneath the window I
had quitted. Somebody shouted from above and a gun spoke.

 
          
 
"Get him!" screamed many voices.
"Get him, you down below!"

 
          
 
But I was up and running for my life. The
snow-hlled square seemed to whip away beneath my feet. Dodging around the war
memorial, I came face to face with somebody in a bearskin coat. He shouted for
me to halt, in the reedy voice of an ungrown lad, and the fierce-set face that
shoved at me had surely never felt a razor. But I, who dared not be
merciful
even to so untried an enemy, struck with both fists
even as I hurtled against him. He whimpered and dropped, and I, springing over
his falling body, dashed on.

 
          
 
A wind was rising, and it bore to me the howls
of my pursuers from the direction of the hall. Two or three more guns went off,
and one bullet whickered over my head. By then I had reached the far side of
the square, hurried across the street and up an alley. The snow, still falling
densely, served to baflle the men who ran shouting in my wake. Too, nearly
everyone who had been on the streets had gone to the front of the hall, and
except for the boy at the memorial none offered to turn me back.

 
          
 
I came out upon a street beyond the square,
quiet and ill-lit. Along this way, I remembered, I could approach the Gird
home, where my automobile was parked. Once at the wheel, I could drive to the
county seat and demand protection from the sheriff. But, as I came cautiously
near the place and could see through the blizzard the outline of the car, I
heard loud voices. A part of the mob had divined my intent and had branched off
to meet me.