It might be supposed that—in light of the hostility that existed between Crockett and myself—his ignominious defeat under such highly public circumstances would have infused me with the keenest satisfaction. But such was not the case. So inwardly certain had I been of Crockett’s inevitable triumph that the sight of his wounded but still-ambulatory opponent struck me with the shock of a galvanic battery. My brain reeled. Dizziness overcame me. My hands, grasping the box-lid on either side of my body, began to tremble. Only the reflexive tightening of my fingers, which convulsively clutched at the raised wooden edge of the crate, prevented me from tumbling off my perch.
To be sure, the intense agitation I experienced at my first glimpse of Neuendorf was due in no small degree to the disquieting, indeed horrific, appearance of this singular being. Even from a distance, I was struck by the sheer, the overpowering ferocity of the man. He was not tall—certainly not more than five feet six inches high. But his limbs were of the most unsettling mold. His hands, especially, were so excessively thick, broad, and overgrown with coarse, matted hair as hardly to retain a human shape. His exceptionally long arms—as well as his strong, if somewhat stubby, legs—were bowed to the point of deformity, endowing him with a distinctly simian quality. His head was equally grotesque, being of enormous size and entirely bald.
Add to these inherently repulsive features the disfiguring effects of his violent confrontation with Crockett—his torn and bloody clothing—his bruised and swollen face—his partially detached left ear, which dangled by a ribbon of flesh from the side of his head—and it will readily be discerned why the sight of this appalling individual smote upon my soul with such unnerving force.
Nor was I the only person there to be thus affected. Standing in close proximity to the doorway of the shack, Crockett’s cohorts—Captain Russell and Sergeant Donegan—appeared to have been reduced to a state of stupefied paralysis by the outcome of the contest. As Neuendorf took another halting step in their direction, the two police officers finally roused themselves from their daze and reached for the handles of the wooden “billy clubs” that protruded from their thick leather belts.
The weapons, however, proved to be superfluous. Even before the two law men could extract the “billies” from their belts, Neuendorf staggered to a halt, raised both hands to the sky, and—letting out a roar of agonized protest not unlike the death-bellow of a mortally wounded bull moose—collapsed face forward onto the ground!
At this wholly unanticipated turn, the crowd emitted a single, protracted gasp of the utmost wonderment and confusion. In the hush that ensued, a sound like the heavy tread of boot soles upon floor-boards issued from the shack. Then the sound grew more pronounced—a looming figure filled the door-way—and out into the wan and pallid daylight stepped Crockett himself, looking (apart from a blood-stained perforation on the upper part of his left shirt-sleeve) hardly the worse for wear!
Gazing about at the sea of astonished faces that confronted him, Crockett—whose own countenance wore a look of consummate satisfaction—expelled a laugh compounded equally of amusement and surprise.
“Well, I’ll be shot, kilt, and shoved into the ground without benefit of clargy!” he exclaimed. “You folks didn’t reckon that ol’ Davy Crockett had got whupped by the likes o’ this no-account critter?” And here, he motioned with his chin toward the insensible form that lay outstretched at his feet.
“We did indeed,” cried Captain Russell. “That conclusion—though nearly impossible to credit—seemed unavoidable when you failed to emerge from Neuendorf’s lair.”
“Why, shucks,” answered Crockett. “My duds got a trifle disarranged while I was subduin’ that varmint, and I just tarried inside for a spell to tidy myself up.”
At that instant, a low quavering moan escaped from the throat of Neuendorf, who stirred slightly on the ground.
Drawing back one booted foot, Crockett delivered a ferocious kick to the right temple of his prostrate adversary, who gave a fluttering groan and subsided again into oblivion. Stooping, Crockett reached for Neuendorf’s massive right hand, which continued to clutch the long-bladed knife. Prying open the latter’s fingers and removing the weapon, Crockett straightened up again and ceremoniously presented the savage-looking implement to the police official.
“Captain,” Crockett announced. “If this here pig-sticker ain’t the same knife that kilt poor ol’ Mrs. Macready, I wish I may be kicked to death by grasshoppers!”
Then, turning toward the crowd, he placed his hands on his hips and spoke thusly: “Ladies and gentlemen! You kin head on home now and rest easy, knowin’ that—thanks to the brave efforts of yore local constables, along with some humble assistance from yourn truly—the fair city of Baltimore has got nothin’ more to fear from this-here low-down, yeller-bellied reptile, whose days of goin’ around slaughterin’ helpless widders in their beds is plumb over!”
This pronouncement achieved the effect which the canny frontiersman had no doubt intended. A jubilant roar erupted from the crowd, a dozen hats were hurled high into the air, and Crockett found himself besieged by admirers, several of whom proceeded to hoist the visibly delighted champion upon their shoulders.
Not every member of the assemblage, however, shared in the general mood of exultation. As I swiftly descended from my post atop the packing crates, a number of the less savory-looking spectators turned and began to depart from the harbor. Among them were the two ill-mannered wretches I had encountered upon my arrival, whose faces wore a look of the deepest disappointment, and who muttered dark imprecations against Crockett as they skulked from the scene.
In consequence of the shifting movement—as well as the partial dispersal—of the crowd, I was now able to make my way toward my objective. Within moments, I found myself standing in close proximity to Crockett, who had been set back down upon his feet and was presently basking in the attention of an attractive young female, arrayed in a richly embroidered muslin dress that did little to obscure the outlines of her womanly physique. From the revealing, if not flagrant, cut of this garment—as well as from her unashamed frankness of manner—I was forced to conclude that, in spite of her evident youthfulness, she was already a thoroughgoing adept in the devious arts of the coquette.
“My gracious,” she exclaimed in a soft, breathless voice as she laid a plump white hand upon Crockett’s rent and bloodied shirt-sleeve. “Your poor arm! Why, that nasty creature has inflicted the most grievous wound upon you, Colonel Crockett!”
“This li’l ol’ scratch?” the frontiersman guffawed. “Why, I’ve received skeeter bites that galled me worse. Though I do confess it riles me a mite to have my best shirt tore up so egrejisly.” And here, a look of genuine regret crossed his face as he contemplated the badly frayed hole which Neueundorf’s blade had produced in the fabric of his garment,
“Why, if you aren’t the bravest, strongest man I ever did see,” sighed the young woman, clasping her hands beneath her chin and gazing up into Crockett’s face with undisguised adoration. “The way you just stormed right in there, so fearless and bold« But however did you manage to defeat that awful brute? I’ll just perish with disappointment unless I hear every last, itty-bitty detail!”
Such a fervent appeal, emanating from the lips of so seductive a creature, would have proven difficult to resist, even for a being less susceptible of flattery than Crockett. Before he could comply with this request, however, and embark on a lengthy—if not exhaustive—disquisition, I took a step forward and planted myself squarely within his line of vision.
“Why, I’ll be jiggered!” he exclaimed. “Here’s the feller what sniffed out the varmint in the first place!” Taking a stride in my direction, he encircled my shoulders with one muscular arm and drew me several feet apart from the duster of admirers who had pressed in upon him in anticipation of his impending recitation. Though by nature discomfited, if not actively repulsed, by such gestures of close physical intimacy—particularly from one who was little more than a stranger—I had no choice but to submit to the frontiersman’s familiarities.
“Cricket,” said he, placing his face only inches away from my left ear and lowering his normally stentorian voice to a volume scarcely louder than a whisper. “When word o’ this li’l set-to gets into the newspapers and the public hears about how Davy Crockett single-handedly whupped that nifarious scoundrel, why, my enemies back in Washington City will be fit to be tied! You done me a service, Cricket—there ain’t no two ways about it. So I’m all fer callin’ it quits atween us. What d’ye say?”
And with that he took a step back and thrust out his right hand in the time-honored gesture of manly reconciliation.
For a moment, I stood paralyzed with irresolution. To withhold from Crockett the intelligence I had come to transmit, no matter how unwelcome it would inevitably prove to the hearer, represented a violation of my own lifelong commitment to the sacred cause of absolute truth. But at the same time, I could not help but believe that my tidings would have little immediate effect beyond antagonizing the frontiersman, who would undoubtedly perceive my intervention as a deliberate, if not willfully malicious, attempt to detract from his moment of glory. My brain spun with confusion as I desperately sought a means of resolving this agonizing—this intolerable—this seemingly insurmountable quandary!
At that instant, I grew cognizant of a flurry of motion occurring at the very margin of my sight, several yards to the left of where I stood. Casting a rapid glance in the direction of the disturbance, I saw that Neuendorf had regained consciousness and—having pulled himself to his knees—was contending with Captain Russell and Sergeant Donegan, who were attempting to draw his arms behind his back and secure them with a pair of iron manacles. So prodigious was Neuendorf’s strength that, under ordinary circumstances, he might have easily resisted this manoeuvre. But—still groggy from the punishment he had received at Crockett’s hands—he proved, in the end, unequal to the combined exertions of the two officers; who, after a brief, violent struggle, finally succeeded in affixing the shackles to his wrists.
Dragging Neuendorf to his feet, the policemen prepared to escort their captive to the city jail, while, all around, the gathered onlookers—their visages contorted into furious masks of indignation and scorn—assailed the prisoner with catcalls of “Beast!”—“Monster!”—“Murderous reprobate!”
My course became instantly dear. “Colonel Crockett,” I declared, redirecting my gaze at the frontiersman, “I accept your gesture in the propitiatory spirit in which it is offered, having no wish to prolong the unhappy state of affairs that has existed between us ever since your abrupt and audacious intrusion into the holy precincts of my domicile. Let me only add that, in view of your dearly demonstrated propensity for impetuous behavior—as well as the nature of the mission upon which I am presently embarked—I pray that circumstances will not once again propel us into so strained, so inimical a relationship.”
With that, I extended my own right hand, which Crockett immediately enveloped in a firm, not to say bone-crushing, grasp. “Cricket,” he said with a soft, chuckling laugh in whose rippling undercurrent I could not help but detect a note of amused condescension. “If you ain’t a world-champeen gumbeater, I’ll be skinned alive with the blunt edge of a Bowie knife. Take ol’ Davy Crockett’s word fer it—you’ve plumb missed yer callin’. Why, with your amazin’ talent for highfalutin’ palaver, you should be runnin’ for Congress!”
Then, favoring me with a hearty wink and a companionable slap on the shoulder that—owing entirely to the unexpectedness of the gesture—sent me staggering a few steps, he spun on his heels and returned to his auditors, who were waiting in a veritable agony of impatience for Crockett to regale them with the facts of his most recent triumph.
Recovering my balance with the sure-footed agility typically associated with the species Felis domestica, I quickly made my way to the side of Captain Russell, who, positioned directly behind Neuendorf, was employing his “billy club” in the manner of a prod. The scowling captive, however, could not be budged.
At the sight of my person, the captain momentarily suspended his efforts and gave me an acknowledging nod. “Ah, Mr. Poe,” he exclaimed. “I am pleased that you have arrived in time to witness the arrest of this scoundrel”—and here, he administered a vicious poke with the tip of his “billy” to the area of the prisoner’s dorso-lumbar vertebrae. “Without your help, his identity might yet be unknown to us.”
At these words, Neuendorf swivelled his massive head in my direction and fixed me with a baleful stare. It was a look of such pure, such overpowering malice that my entire frame shuddered with dread.
Doing my best to ignore the glowering captive, I addressed the police captain thusly: “It is precisely the question of the killer’s identity that has brought me here, Captain Russell. I have something urgent to impart that may shed vital new light on the case.”
Frowning in perplexity, Russell replied: “Needless to say, I am most curious to hear this information of yours, Mr. Poe. But our conference must be postponed until my prisoner is conveyed safely to jail.”
No sooner had he uttered these words than a gruff, deep-voiced command—“Stand aside, if you please!”—emanated from the midst of the remaining onlookers. An instant later, the crowd split in two and a half-dozen police officers, led by a sturdy fellow with ruddy-hued cheeks, emerged—or rather burst—into view.
“Captain Russell,” he exclaimed somewhat breathlessly as he drew to a halt directly before his superior. “We came hurrying just as soon as we received news of the appalling crime.” He cast a contemptuous look at Neuendorf. “I see that you have already managed to apprehend the perpetrator.”
“Thanks to none other than Colonel Davy Crockett,” replied Captain Russell, indicating the frontiersman, who was holding forth in the most animated fashion to his throng of wide-eyed admirers. Situated several yards away, I could clearly overhear Crockett’s intensely vivid recitation: “… That’s when the murderin’ divvil grabbed hold of my hair,” he declaimed, accompanying his tale with a variety of histrionic gestures. “He yanked me towards him, then give me a butt in the head that near blinded me, for the varmint’s skull is as hard as an iron pot. But I managed to pull loose from his infarnal grip and give him a real sock-dolager straight to the snout. That riled him so bad that he run his fingers right up my nostrils. So we wrassled and jerked and clawed for a while, ’til I made a lunge and caught hold of his ear with my teeth….”
In the meanwhile, Russell continued to confer with the new arrival. After a final word, the captain turned aside and faced me again, while the ruddy-faced officer and his cohorts formed a circle around Neuendorf. Then, grabbing the latter by his pinioned arms, the policemen half-led, half-dragged the captive from the scene, while the remaining spectators pelted him with a final barrage of invective.
“Well, Mr. Poe,” said Captain Russell when the contingent of officers, with the prisoner in their midst, had disappeared from view. “Now that I have placed Neuendorf in the custody of my men, I am at liberty to hear these mysterious tidings of yours. Pray tell me what is so urgent. I confess that my curiosity has been piqued.”
Apart from Crockett’s rapt circle of auditors, most of the crowd had dispersed by this point. A handful of loiterers, however, continued to mill about the scene, casting curious looks at the captain and myself.
“Perhaps it were best,” I suggested, with a meaningful glance at these bystanders, “if our interview took place in a somewhat more secluded location. The information I possess is intended solely for your ears.”
Acknowledging the validity of my concern, Captain Russell led me in a circuit to the rear of Neuendorf’s shanty and, from thence, out onto the dock. We stopped at a point halfway along the length of the pier, sufficiently far from the shore to ensure our privacy—our only audience being a dark-winged seagull perched upon one of the massive wooden piles that rose at intervals from the dark depths of the water.
“Well, Mr. Poe …?” inquired the officer with an anticipatory look.
Shivering slightly in the chill breeze that wafted from the bay, I cleared my throat and announced, “Captain Russell, I have compelling reason to believe that the man you have placed under arrest may not, in truth, be the culprit.”
The captain raised his eyebrows. “You surprise me, sir!” he exclaimed. “Having observed the brute at close hand, how can you question his incorrigible nature? Or,” he added, patting his side with one hand, “his fearsome facility with this?”
Glancing down, I saw that the knife which Crockett had confiscated from Neuendorf and presented to Captain Russell was thrust through the latter’s wide leather belt. It was, in truth, a ferocious-looking implement, with a carved, stag-horn handle and long, serrated blade.
“Of Neuendorf’s violent capacities I have not the slightest doubt,” I replied. “My conclusion, however, is based, not on his potential for homicidal behavior, but on the incontrovertible facts of pure, empirical evidence!”
“Evidence?” echoed the captain, his brow furrowing.
“I refer to the bloody message on the wall above the bed of the unfortunate victim.”
“But you, Mr. Poe, were the one who so ingeniously perceived the villain’s name in the gruesome inscription which I and my associates mistook for nothing more than a stain!”
Here, I held up one finger. “Not precisely. As you may recall, I was able to identify five of the letters without difficulty. Four of them, however—or nearly half—were applied in such a slovenly manner as to be, at the very least, ambiguous, if not wholly indecipherable.”
Frowning, Captain Russell tugged on one end of his luxuriant moustache. “Do you mean to suggest,” he inquired after a momentary pause, “that the dying woman inscribed a different name on the wall?”
I fixed him with a look of the greatest intensity. “I mean to suggest something whose implications are even more startling.”
“And what exactly is that, Mr. Poe?”
“That the mysterious word—or, more precisely, graffito—was not written by Mrs. Macready at all!”
The look on Captain Russell’s face in response to my pronouncement resembled nothing so much as the stunned expression of a steer that, preliminary to its slaughter, has just been dealt a hammer-blow to the skull. His eyes gaped—his jaw dropped—and he appeared to have lost the power of speech. A long moment passed before he finally exclaimed, “And what is the basis for this extraordinary assertion?”
“As in all matters pertaining to deductive reasoning,” I replied with a smile, “my conclusion is based on a close observation of the physical evidence, coupled with a forceful exertion of the analytical faculties.”
As the captain continued to regard me with a look of awed incomprehension, I proceeded thusly: “Assume, for the sake of our discussion, that the dying landlady, in spite of the appalling severity of her wounds, had somehow managed to drag herself into an upright position and inscribe, with her blood-dabbled fingers, the identity of her slayer on the wall above her bed. Since no apparent injuries had been inflicted on either of her arms, it is only natural to assume that, in performing this act, she would have relied on the hand she customarily employed for writing.
“Now, following your departure from the boarding house in the company of Colonel Crockett, I continued to examine the sanguinary markings which I had detected on the wall. I observed that each of the letters slanted distinctly to the right—a circumstance that could only occur if the landlady herself were right-handed. Gazing more closely at her hands, I noticed the very remarkable fact that—though her palms, wrists, and forearms had been bedabbled with the gushings from her neck wound—her fingers themselves were entirely free of blood. This, in itself, strongly suggested that the landlady was not the source of the mysterious message, which had unmistakably been applied with the unknown author’s fingertips. To confirm my inference, I sought out a bystander intimately acquainted with Mrs. Macready. In response to my query, this young woman informed me that, in the exercise of every manipulative skill—from sewing and needlepoint to writing—Mrs. Macready was left-handed!”
I waited for a moment to let the import of my discovery sink in. Following a protracted pause during which his expression underwent a most striking change, from utter bafflement to burgeoning doubt to unmitigated skepticism, Captain Russell shook his head and declared, “Well, Mr. Poe, this is most intriguing, indeed. I must confess, however, that your so-called empirical evidence seems excessively slight when measured against the overwhelming proof of Neuendorf’s savage nature. I refer not merely to the man’s intimidating—nay, terrifying—demeanor, but also to the vicious threats he is reported to have made against Mrs. Macready. To say nothing of the furious resistance he offered when confronted with the prospect of arrest.”
“I concede that Neuendorf is a being of singularly unprepossessing aspect,” I replied. “But surely we cannot judge the man’s culpability by his grim, even ghastly, appearance. As for his threats, while unquestionably deplorable, they scarcely constitute ‘overwhelming proof’ of his guilt. Nor does his fierce opposition to Colonel Crockett, which may, indeed, be interpreted in the very opposite light—to wit, as the indignant defiance of an innocent man.”
“Until that innocence is established beyond the shadow of a doubt,” the captain said stubbornly, “I will persist in regarding him as the most plausible suspect in this case—with all due respect to your ingenious suppositions, Mr. Poe!”
However lamentable, such obstinacy on the part of a mere functionary like Captain Russell was only to be expected. I was in the process of formulating a reply when my attention was distracted by the resounding clump of bootsoles upon the wooden planks of the dock. Gazing in the direction of the noise, I saw Colonel Crockett advancing towards us in long, purposeful strides. At his side, her right arm linked with his left, was the brazen young woman to whose simperings the frontiersman had quite dearly succumbed.
“Why, Cricket,” he called out, “have you drug Captain Russell all the way out onto this-here jutty jest so you kin chaw his ear off?”
This impertinent salutation deserved, at the very least, a stinging riposte. Before I could deliver one, however, the captain let out a chuckle and exclaimed, “Our friend Mr. Poe is not chewing my ears off at all, Colonel Crockett. He is, however, filling them with speculations of a most dubious order.”
“I reckoned as much,” laughed Crockett, coming to a halt directly before us. Draped across his left arm was the jacket he had discarded prior to his battle with Neuendorf. The injury he had received to the upper part of that limb was now bound with an embroidered lace handkerchief whose owner, I surmised, was the personage presently clinging to his opposite arm.
“Captain,” said Crockett, extending his meaty right hand, “I come to bid you good-bye. My friend Miss Mule Lady here—”
“Mullany,” interjected the young woman with a sweet, if somewhat brittle, smile.
“Miss Mullany has kindly offered to show me the sights o’ yore fair city. I’m jest bustin’ to visit Mr. Peale’s museum and see them splendaciously presarved Egyptian mummies I’ve heard tell about!”
After exchanging a hearty handshake with the police officer and bidding the two of us a final farewell, the frontiersman and his escort strolled away. A moment later, Captain Russell—after conveying, once more, his deepest gratitude and appreciation—began to follow in the direction of the receding couple.
Before he had progressed more than a few paces, however, he paused and turned to face me. “One thing more, Mr. Poe,” he said. “If the bloody markings above Mrs. Macready’s bed did not form the name ‘Neuendorf,’ then what, pray tell, did they spell?”
“That, indeed, is a most pertinent question,” I replied. “Unfortunately, I cannot, as of the present moment, answer it with any degree of certitude.”
“I see,” muttered the captain in a vaguely smirking tone, as though to say, “I thought as much.” Then, with a polite tip of his hat, he swivelled on his heels and sauntered away.
I was now left alone on the pier. My feelings, as I stood there contemplating the events of the morning, can scarcely be described—so wildly confused, so intensely contradictory, were the emotions which possessed my soul. That I alone had perceived a deliberate pattern of denotation in the seemingly random markings left upon the wall of the murder scene was, on the one hand, a source of the keenest satisfaction. But my failure to persuade the police captain that the horribly butchered victim could not, under any circumstance, have been the author of this communication filled me with a sense of the bitterest frustration.
All at once, my heart was seized with a far different—and infinitely more unnerving—sensation. I was not, after all, alone on the dock! Someone—or something—was situated directly at my rear, scrutinizing me with an intensity so fierce, so palpable, that I could feel its gaze upon my back.
My heart quailed—an icy chill ran through my frame—a sense of insufferable anxiety oppressed me. Who—or what—was the unseen presence lurking at my back?
Slowly—torturously—I turned to face my unknown observer—then froze and gave a startled gasp at the sight of the great, dark-winged seagull eying me from atop the massive wooden pile!
An instant later—still fixing me with a look of almost preternatural intelligence—it opened wide its beak and emitted a shrill and ominous cry, as though endeavoring to communicate a deliberate meaning. What that meaning might be, I could not begin to conceive. But as I stood upon the windswept dock, staring at the grim, ungainly, ghastly fowl, every fibre of my being was suddenly suffused with a sense of the deepest and most dire foreboding!