|
||||||||
God bless you, Archy, for a true friend! Hurrah for Archy! Go in, boy, and play em a knock-down flush to their two pair n a jack! shouted the house, pride in their home talent and a patriotic sentiment of loyalty to it rising suddenly in the public heart and changing the whole attitude of the situation. Young Stillman waited for the noise to cease; then he said, I will ask Tom Jeffries to stand by that door yonder, and Constable Harris to stand by the other one here, and not let anybody leave the room. Said and done. Go on, old man! The criminal is present, I believe. I will show him to you before long, in case I am right in my guess. Now I will tell you all about the tragedy, from start to finish. The motive wasnt robbery; it was revenge. The murderer wasnt light-witted. He didnt stand 622 feet away. He didnt get hit with a piece of wood. He didnt place the explosive against the cabin. He didnt bring a shot-bag with him, and he wasnt left-handed. With the exception of these errors, the distinguished guests statement of the case is substantially correct. A comfortable laugh rippled over the house; friend nodded to friend, as much as to say, Thats the word, with the bark on it. Good lad, good boy. He aint lowering his flag any! The guests serenity was not disturbed. Stillman resumed: I also have some witnesses; and I will presently tell you where you can find some more. He held up a piece of coarse wire; the crowd craned their necks to see. It has a smooth coating of melted tallow on it. And here is a candle which is burned half-way down. The remaining half of it has marks cut upon it an inch apart. Soon I will tell you where I found these things. I will now put aside reasonings, guesses, the impressive hitchings of odds and ends of clews together, and the other showy theatricals of the detective trade, and tell you in a plain, straight-forward way just how this dismal thing happened. He paused a moment, for effectto allow silence and suspense to intensify and concentrate the houses interest; then he went on: The assassin studied out his plan with a good deal of pains. It was a good plan, very ingenious, and showed an intelligent mind, not a feeble one. It was a plan which was well calculated to ward off all suspicion from its inventor. In the first place, he marked a candle into spaces an inch apart, and lit it and timed it. He found it took three hours to burn four inches of it. I tried it myself for half an hour, awhile ago, upstairs here, while the inquiry into Flint Buckners character and ways was being conducted in this room, and I arrived in that way at the rate of a candles consumption when sheltered from the wind. Having proved his trial-candles rate, he blew it outI have already shown it to youand put his inch- marks on a fresh one. He put the fresh one into a tin candlestick. Then at the five-hour mark he bored a hole through the candle with a red-hot wire. I have already shown you the wire, with a smooth coat of tallow on ittallow that had been melted and had cooled. With laborvery hard labor, I should sayhe struggled up through the stiff chaparral that clothes the steep hillside back of Flint Buckners place, tugging an empty flour-barrel with him. He placed it in that absolutely secure hiding-place, and in the bottom of it he set the candlestick. Then he measured off about thirty-five feet of fusethe barrels distance from the back of the cabin. He bored a hole in the side of the barrelhere is the large gimlet he did it with. He went on and finished his work; and when it was done, one end of the fuse was in Buckners cabin, and the other end, with a notch chipped in it to expose the powder, was in the hole in the candletimed to blow the place up at one oclock this |
||||||||
|
||||||||
|
||||||||
Copyright: All texts on Bibliomania are © Bibliomania.com Ltd, and may not be reproduced in any form without our written permission. See our FAQ for more details. | ||||||||