Flynn’s Weekly Detective Fiction. Vol. 27, No. 1, September 17, 1927
- Автор: Valentine, Corley H. W.
- Год: 1927
- Язык: английский
- Год: The Red Star News Company
- Жанр: Другие детективы
Электронная книга - «Flynn’s Weekly Detective Fiction. Vol. 27, No. 1, September 17, 1927». Краткое содержание книги:
While he had been speaking he had been tearing the warrant to bits. As he spat out his final words he threw these torn pieces of paper into the prosecuting attorney’s face.
II
With lightning swiftness two forty-fives jumped from nowhere into the prosecuting attorney’s hands.
“Come out of here with me or I’ll drop you where you stand,” said he who held the guns.
Big Bill Wacker’s eyes, suddenly sick, kept staring at the blue steel barrels. But if it was his desperate hope that some of his friends would intervene, that hope was doomed to death. For his friends, knowing as well as he did, that Knot-Headed Barrett was as sure of aim as he was quick of draw, remained silent, interested, and motionless.
More resourceful than his friends was Bill Wacker himself. With a return of his old hearty friendliness — or, at least, with very good imitation of it — he said to the grim-faced young man who was covering him with the Colts:
“Jack, I’m sorry I blew up like that. It was the damn injustice of th’ thing that made me. Down in your heart you must know I didn’t kill Alvarado any more than you did. Somebody’s been imposin’ on you. If you’ll let me show you right now how the thing happened, I’ll bet you anything you want to bet you’ll see I didn’ have nuthin’ to do with it.”
There was a pause before the prosecuting attorney replied: “It is my duty to warn you that anything you may say can be used against you.” Those words were formal, but in the tone in which they were spoken there was a hint that the speaker was willing, even if not especially anxious, to listen to what his prisoner had to say.
As a matter of fact, he was more than willing he was anxious. And for this concealed eagerness of his there were two reasons. One was his curiosity to learn, in the presence of witnesses, how Bill Wacker intended to describe the crime, at the commission of which, or, so he had maintained only a moment before, he had not been present.
The other reason was that in the group of men, now surrounding Bill Wacker and himself, was the red-faced, blue-eyed Duke Emmett, who not only was Bill Wacker’s faro-dealer, but also was the prosecuting attorney’s best witness against Bill Wacker.
No sign of recognition had passed between the prosecuting attorney and the professional gambler, and none passed between them now while they stood eye-to-eye and heard Bill Wacker, with a large gesture, say: “Now, Jack, if you’ll take your guns off me. I’ll show you just how it all happened.”
“Not carrying any iron yourself, are you?” insinuated the unsmiling prosecutor.
Bill Wacker, whose sense of the dramatic — to which much of his political success was due — never deserted him, and whose composure had wholly returned, raised both hands above his head.
“Search me,” he said simply, “every man, woman, an’ child in Merida County knows I never carry a gun.”
“Your word’s good enough for me,” Barrett told him, slipping the two forty-fives back under his coat.
“No reason why these gentlemen shouldn’t go back to their pastimes?” hinted the bluff, hearty owner of the Bella Union Hotel, barroom and gambling hall inclusive.
Barrett had a very good reason why at least one of the gentlemen should stay with him and Bill Wacker, but he dared not state it; he could not tell Bill Wacker he wanted Duke Emmett, the faro-dealer, to linger, so that later a double first-hand check could be made on Bill Wacker’s version.
“What do I care?” he replied, his voice unconsciously edged with the irritation he felt at being balked in his first hope that all of these possible witnesses would hear Bill Wacker’s recital.
No sooner had he snapped out the words than he realized he had made a mistake.
The adroit Bill Wacker was quick to take advantage of it. “New brooms always sweep clean, boys,” he beamed upon the crowd. “I ain’t th’ boss here, right now. If I was, I’d choke off that pianner.”
Barrett was further chagrined by the chuckles of amusement and the looks of sympathy for Bill Wacker which this smiling rebuke evoked. For, at that moment, the tinny mechanical “pianner” was giving forth the familiar strains of “Dear Old Pal.”
Not a man in the room but knew of the long friendship between the genial politician and the stern young prosecutor; not a man but knew that without Wacker’s influence Jack Barrett would not be in office; not a man but knew that on the range and in cow towns the blackest of sins is ingratitude.
Sensing the deepening hostility to himself, Jack Barrett stiffened. His hands sliding to his holsters, he said to the complacent prisoner: “I reckon I better take you down to the jail, pronto.”
“Men, you see this young feller won’t gimme a chance to tell him th’ truth,” Bill Wacker pointed out.
The response made the beset prosecuting attorney tighten his grip on his guns. It was the low, sullen growl of a crowd preparing to go into action. Through it cut the resolute voice of some unseen henchman in the rear.
“We’ll make him, Bill,” said the voice. “We’ll see you get fair play.”
The young prosecuting attorney caught his breath in a sigh of relief. The crowd would hear Bill Wacker’s cooked-up story, after all.
Successfully hiding whatever disappointment he may have felt because thirty or forty good customers were to prolong their absence from his bar and his gambling tables, Bill Wacker, his bearing now that of a long-suffering apostle of righteousness whose patience has almost reached the breaking point, led the way into the big room adjoining the office.
At his right was the anxiously alert young prosecuting attorney; at his left the impassive faro dealer, the prosecutor’s undercover eyewitness of the crime. Close upon the heels of the three followed the crowd.
“It was three o’clock las’ Friday afternoon, slowest hour in th’ day,” began Bill Wacker, stopping at the end of the long golden-oak bar, “that’s when I come in through the back way. I’d been out visitin’ a feller’s that’s sick.
“Soon’s as I come in, that fly-by-night bartender I had workin’ for me — the coke fiend that left th’ country that same night after robbin’ th’ till — rushes up, an’ says: ‘Oh, Mr. Wacker, Mr. Wacker, you’re jus’ in time to help ketch ’em.’ ‘Ketch who?’ I says. ‘Ketch them two drunken cowboys who done this,’ he says, an’ he pulled me from behin’ th’ bar an’ showed me poor Alvarado lyin’ right here where I’m standin’ — dead, an’ blood all over him frum th’ bullet that killed him.
“Mebbe, I suppose, I should have chased right out after ’em, but they was nobody here but th’ bartender an’ me, an’ he was all hopped up, an’ excited, an’ useless, an’ I wasn’t sure then this poor feller was dead, so I got some water an’ a towel an’ worked over him, but couldn’t do nuthin’.
“Soon’s as I foun’ out for sure he was dead, I give th’ alarm an’ some o’ th’ boys took out after them cow-punchers, like you all know about, but they’d got too much start.
“An’ why I should be drug into this is sure more than I see.”
A murmur of sympathy for the teller of this straightforward tale ran through his hearers, but in this murmur young Barrett did not join.
The red-faced, blue-eyed faro dealer, Duke Emmett, did, though he, as well as Barrett, had heard Bill Wacker instinctively shy away from the one word in the entire narrative upon which Barrett depended to send Bill Wacker to the gallows.
That one word was towel. To Barrett and the faro dealer, there was a world of significance in the fact that Bill Wacker had said: “I got some water an’ a towel, I got some water,” because only they knew that it was of a towel that, if justice were done in this case, would be fashioned a halter.