TO GEORGE WILLIAMS went the distinction of being the first to suggest making Sam Billings the new town treasurer. The moment he made the nomination at the annual town meeting there was an enthusiastic chorus of approval that resulted in the first unanimous election in the history of Androscoggin. During the last of the meeting everybody was asking himself why no one had ever thought of Sam Billings before.
The election of Sam to the office of town treasurer pleased everybody. He was a good businessman and he was honest. Furthermore, the summer-hotel property that he owned and operated on the east shore of Androscoggin Lake paid about a tenth of the town’s total tax assessment, and during the season he gave employment to eighty or ninety people whose homes were in the town. After he was elected everybody wondered why they had been giving the office to crooks and scoundrels for the past twenty years or more when the public money could have been safe and secure with Sam Billings. The retiring treasurer was still unable to account to everybody’s satisfaction for about eighteen hundred dollars of the town’s money, and the one before him had allowed his books to get into such a tangled condition that it cost the town two hundred and fifty dollars to hire an accountant to make them balance.
Clyde Ballard, one of the selectmen, took George aside to talk to him when the meeting was over. Clyde ran one of the general stores in the village.
“You did the town a real service today,” he told George. “Sam Billings is the man who should have been treasurer all the time. How did you come to think of him?”
“Well,” George said, “Sam Billings was one of my dark horses. The next time we need a good selectman I’ll trot another one of them out.”
“George, there’s nothing wrong with me as a selectman, is there?” Clyde asked anxiously.
“Well, I’m not saying there is, and I’m not saying there’s not. I’m not ready to make up my mind yet. I’ll wait and see if the town builds me a passable road over my way. I may want to buy me an automobile one of these days and if I do I’ll want a lot of road work done between my place and the village.”
Clyde nodded his head understandingly. He had heard that George Williams was kicking about his road and saying that the selectmen had better make the road commissioners take more interest in it. He shook hands with George and drove back to the village.
The summer-hotel-season closed after the first week in September and the guests usually went home to Boston and New York Tuesday or Wednesday after Labor Day. Sam Billings kept his hotel open until the first of October because there were many men who came down over the week-ends to play golf. In October he boarded up the windows and doors and took a good rest after working hard all summer. It was two or three weeks after that before he could find out what his season’s profits were, because he took in a lot of money during July and August.
That autumn, for the first time in two or three decades, there was no one who spoke uneasily concerning the treasurer or the town’s money. Sam Billings was known to be an honest man, and because he was a good businessman everybody knew that he would keep the books accurately. All the money collected was given to Sam. The receipt of the money was promptly acknowledged, and all bills were paid when presented. It would have been almost impossible to find a complaint to make against the new treasurer.
It was not until the first real snow of the winter, which fell for three days during the first week in January, that anything was said about the new town treasurer. Then overnight there was in general circulation the news that Sam Billings had gone to Florida.
George Williams drove to the village the same afternoon the news reached him over on the back road. He happened to be listening to a conversation on the party line when something was said about Sam Billings having gone to Florida, otherwise George might possibly have waited a week or longer before somebody came by his place and told him.
He drove his horse to the village in a hurry and went into Clyde Ballard’s store. They were talking about Sam Billings when George walked in.
George threw off his heavy coat and sat down in a chair to warm his feet against the stove.
“Have you heard about it yet, George?” Clyde asked him.
“Sure I have, and God never made a bigger scoundrel than Sam Billings,” he answered. “I wouldn’t trust him with a half-dollar piece of my money any farther than I can toss a steer by the tail.”
“I heard you was one of Sam’s principal backers,” one of the men said from the other side of the stove. “You shouldn’t talk like that about your prime candidate, George.”
Clyde came up to the stove to warm his hands and light a cigar.
“George,” he said, winking at the other men around the fire, “you told me that Sam Billings was your dark-horse candidate — you must have meant to say horse-thief.”
Everybody shouted and clapped his knees and waited for George to say something.
“I used to swear that Sam was an honest man,” George began seriously, “but I didn’t think then that he would turn around and run off to Florida with all the town’s money in his pants. At the next election I’m going to vote to tie the town’s money around my old black cow’s neck. I’d never again trust an animal that walks standing up on its hind legs.”
“Well, George,” Clyde said, “you ain’t heard it all, about Sam yet. Can you stand a little more?”
“What else did he do?” George stood up to hear better.
“He took Jenny Russell with him. You know Jenny Russell —Arthur Russell’s oldest girl. I guess he’s having plenty of good times with her and the town’s money down in Florida. I used to think that I had good times when I was younger but Sam Billings’s got me beat a mile when it comes to anything like that.”
George sat down again. He filled his pipe and struck a match.
“So he made off with a woman too, did he? Well, that’s what they all do when they get their hands on some money that don’t belong to them. Those two things go hand in hand — stolen money and women.”
“He picked a good-looker while he was about it,” another of the men said. “He’d have to travel a far piece to find a better-looker than Jenny Russell. And if he don’t have a good time with her he ought to step aside for a younger man.”
George grunted contemptuously and sucked the flame into the bowl of his pipe. He remembered the time when he had had an eye on Jenny Russell himself.
“I heard it said this morning that Sam was going to have his hotel property fired so he could collect the insurance on it,” Clyde said from behind the counter where he was waiting on a customer. “If he does that, the whole town assessment will have to be changed so we will be able to collect enough tax money to keep the roads repaired and the schools running.”
Nobody said anything for several minutes. George glared at each man around the stove. The raising of the tax rate stared everybody full in the face.
Clyde came over to the stove again and stood beside it, warming his hands.
“My wife heard it said over the party line last night —” He paused and looked from face to face. Everybody in the store leaned forward to hear what Clyde was going to say. “She heard that Sam Billings murdered one of those rich men from New York in his hotel last summer. I guess he killed him to get his money. He wouldn’t stop at anything now.”
“Well, I always said that Sam Billings was the biggest crook that ever lived in the town of Androscoggin,” George said disgustedly. “The last time I saw Sam I thought to myself, ‘Now, how in hell is Sam Billings going to keep the town’s money from getting mixed up with his own?’ I know now that I was right in thinking that. We ought to catch him and have him sent to the Federal prison for the rest of his life.”
“He’ll be a slick eel to catch,” Clyde said. “Men like Sam Billings figure out their getaway months beforehand. He’s probably laughing at us up here now, too. That’s the way they all do.”
“The Federal government knows how to catch men like Sam Billings,” George said. “They can catch him if they start after him. But I don’t suppose they would bother with him. We can send him to the State prison, though.”
The men around the stove agreed with George. They said that if they ever got their hands on Sam they would do their best to have him sent to prison for as long a time as the law would allow.
A few days later George saw another of the selectmen and asked him about Sam Billings. George’s plan of action was to get the Florida police to locate him and then have the sheriff send a deputy down to bring him back for trial. The selectman was in favor of getting Arthur Russell to have the Federal government go after Sam on the charge of taking his daughter Jenny out of the state. In that case, he explained to George, they could get Sam back without it costing the town any of its own money.
George was in favor of any plan just so long as Sam Billings was brought back and tried for stealing the money.
Later in the winter somebody told George that Sam had taken Jenny Russell and gone to Cuba with her. After that was generally known, there was nobody in the whole town who would take up for Sam or speak a word in his behalf. He had taken the town’s money and made off with it. That was all there was to it.
“I never did take any stock in that Billings,” George said in Clyde’s store in the village. “He made so much money out of his hotel he couldn’t be satisfied with what he had of his own, but had to go and take the town’s money too. And if I was Arthur Russell I’d get the Federal law after him for taking Jenny off like he did. If she was my daughter and Sam Billings took her off to Florida for a good time, or wherever it was he went to, I’d get him arrested so quick it would scare the hide off his back.”
“We made a big mistake when we trusted all the town’s money to him,” Clyde admitted. “It will take us ten years to wipe out that loss. He had almost a thousand dollars when he left.”
“You were one of the fools that voted for him,” George said. “It’s a pity the voters ain’t got more sense than they have about such things.”
“If I remember correctly,” Clyde retorted, “you nominated Sam Billings for town treasurer.”
George went outside and unhitched his horse. He drove home without answering Clyde Ballard.
Nothing further was heard either directly or indirectly from Sam during the remainder of the winter. There were no bills that had to be paid right away though, and the town was not yet suffering because the funds were in Sam’s possession.
Early that spring, when Sam usually began getting his hotel into shape for the season that opened in June everybody in town heard one day that he was back home. Sam Billings had been seen in the village early one morning hiring a crew of carpenters and laborers. He had always made repairs on his hotel property at the same time each year.
And Jenny Russell was back home too, and everybody knew about it the same day.
There was a crew of twenty men at work around the hotel Monday morning, getting it ready for the coming season. The boards were removed from the windows and doors, and a new boathouse was being built beside the landing float in front of the hotel. All the unemployed men in town went to the hotel and applied for jobs, because everybody knew that Sam Billings paid good wages and settled promptly ever Saturday night. Sam went about his business just as he had always done each spring. No one told him of the things that had been said about him during the past winter, and he knew nothing about the charges that Clyde Ballard and George Williams and practically everybody else in town had talked about all winter.
George went to the village the first of the week and heard that Sam was back in town for the summer. He went into Clyde’s store and sat down on the counter.
“Well, I guess the town’s money is safe enough,” he told Clyde. “Sam Billings is back home, and I hear that Jenny Russell is too.”
“I heard over the party line last night that Sam bought a big hotel down in Florida last autumn,” Clyde said. “He hired Jenny Russell to go down there with him to see that the chambermaids kept it clean and orderly. Jenny Russell is a good worker, and I guess Sam figured that she was a better supervisor than he could get anywhere else. She keeps his hotel here clean and orderly all the time.”
“Sure, Jenny is a good supervisor,” said George. “There’s no better worker anywhere than Jenny Russell. I used to think I’d hire her for my housekeeper, and maybe marry her some day. Sure, she is a fine supervisor. Sam Billings is a good businessman and he knows the kind of help he needs for his two high-class hotels.”
“There’s no sense in worrying about the town’s money,” Clyde said. “Sam Billings is an honest man.”
“Sure, Sam is. There never was a more honest man alive than Sam Billings. I’ve known Sam all my life. The town’s money is just as safe with him as it would be in my own hands. Sam Billings is an honest man, Clyde.”
(First published in American Earth)