Ellis Parker Butler

The Mystery Man

IN the entire annals of detective science, from the beginning of the world until now, there probably never has been another detective like Shagbark Jones, the Mystery Man. He never used a disguise; he never shadowed or trailed a criminal; he never so much as looked like a detective. But in spite of this, he won a reputation that extended up and down the Mississippi Valley from St. Louis to St. Paul. Many who read this will recognize the portrait of the quaint old river-tramp, philosopher and medicine-faker, and agree with me that he combined—or combines, for he is still at work—the most remarkable qualities of simplicity and shrewdness, intelligence and ignorance.

He is known as Shagbark Jones, and you will find the name painted on the sides of his big shanty-boat Euripides—Shagbark pronounced it “You’re a Pie Dees”—which to-day is floating somewhere on the Mississippi:

SHAGBARK JONES

THE WORLD’S GREATEST HEALER

Shagbark Life Oil!

Shagbark Liniment for Man and Beast!!

Teeth Pulled Without Pain.

THE MAN OF MYSTERY

Astrologist—Phrenologist.

7th Son of a 7th Son.

Direct Descendant of Pharaoh.

Grand Musical Entertainment and

Anatomical Lecture, 3 and 7 P.M.

On the dingy white of the shanty-boat this is painted in red and blue, and wherever a few feet of plain surface remains, are daubed such legends as “Shagbark Life Oil, $1.00” and “Shagbark Liniment, 25 Cents.”

Three miles above the village of White Clay the boat came to rest in a willow-sheltered cove, and Black Pete, the glossy brown negro crew, made her fast to a clump of willows, clambered aboard again, pushed the narrow lauding-plank ashore and put his head in at the door of the cabin.

“Miss Allie, we done landed,” he said.

Shagbark’s daughter was putting small, paper-wrapped cakes of Infallible Grease-Remover into a worn-valise.

“All right, Pete,” she answered, and the big negro flopped himself down on the forward deck, turned on his stomach in the strip of shade close to the cabin and instantly began to snore.

In the cabin Shagbark Jones lay flat on his back on a threadbare, caved-in sofa, smoking a corncob pipe. His feet were bare and browned, and he wore trousers, and a blue cotton shirt. The shirt was open at the throat, but this could not be seen, because of his brown beard. His head hair was brown and coarse, matted and tangled, and fell into his eyes across his bristly eyebrows. His bare arms, ankles and the backs of his hands were hairy. He was the hairiest man in the Mississippi Valley, and the laziest and the shrewdest and one of the best-natured. He raised his head and brushed the ashes from his beard.

“I guess I wont be back afore dark, Dad,” Allie said, snapping the clasp of her valise. “Maybe I’ll have to stay all night somewheres. If I don’t get back to-morrow, you have Orlando cut up some more Infallible and wrap it. There aint nothing else you want to say afore I go?”

The girl, perhaps eighteen years old, was so small and slender she seemed younger. She wore a faded cotton gown, white “sneakers” that were now clay-stained to a brown, a cheap straw hat and coarse cotton stockings. More than once she had attracted the attention of some Society or Something or Other that believed Shagbark—cruel parent—sent her forth to sell the Infallible Grease-Remover and beat her when she returned with insufficient sales. Allie rather encouraged the notion. People instinctively pitied her, when they found her standing at their doors with her turned-up nose, her big, appealing eyes, her blotchy freckles, her tan and her ragged dress. When she smiled they liked her. No one could help liking her when she smiled, and her father and Orlando and Black Pete adored her.

Already Shagbark knew of the murder at White Clay. News of tragedies travels by water as rapidly as by land. It passes from mouth to mouth, and Shagbark, no matter where he might hide the Euripides, inevitably heard those things that might interest him. From one source and another—from a passing towboat and from the farmer at whose riverside farm the shanty-boat had stopped for milk—he had learned most of the details. As the boat floated down the river, Shagbark, flat on his back on the caved-in sofa, had mulled the matter in his mind. Allie was going out now to look over the ground. She was his legs and his eyes; he was the solving brain.

“No, I guess I’ve said all I’ve got to say,” Shagbark told her. “Find out all you can and get me a mind-picture of things and folks, Allie. Take good keer of yourself.”

He dropped his head back on the sofa again and crossed his bare feet comfortably. The girl stepped over Black Pete, ran down the plank, pushed aside the willows and disappeared. The Infallible Grease-Remover she carried in her satchel was but a blind. It was nothing but common brown soap cut into cubes and wrapped in a printed slip that proclaimed its ability to remove grease-spots from the coarsest wool or the finest silk. The price of this was one dime; from a five-cent cake of soap Orlando could cut forty of the pieces, and the wrappers cost forty cents a thousand. As Orlando’s time was worth just about nothing per week, the profit on the Infallible was excellent, but Allie cared little whether she sold any or not. She used the Infallible as a means of opening doors and beginning conversations.

When Allie was younger, the three lazy adults had already settled into a regular life of medicine-faking. “Shagbark’s boat” was already known up and down the River. When it reached a landing, the musical entertainment was given. Orlando, the cook, became the “world-famous guitarist, Orlando J. Beethoven, nephew of the music-writer of that name”; and Black Pete, the crew, played his banjo and caroled a few songs. Shagbark lectured on anatomy—of which he knew nothing—and sold Shagbark Oil and Shagbark Liniment. These two remedies were guaranteed to cure every ill of the flesh; what one could not cure the other did. In these affairs Allie sang a song or two in her thin, childish voice.

When she was ten, Shagbark had gained possession of a set of soiled, creased and ragged phrenological and astrological charts and added to his role of medicine faker that of seer and fortuneteller. The shrewd child saw greater possibilities. She invented the Infallible and went ahead of the boat, selling it and worming information out of those who were most likely to patronize Shagbark. For a while she did this investigating on the quiet. She slipped out of the boat at night and returned under the cover of dark, bringing Shagbark news of old ladies’ pains and aches, bits of past life-history and odd-fact remnants he could work into his “Life readings, $1.00 each.”

It was thus that Shagbark had built his first reputation as a mysterious man. He diagnosed cases at a glance. “Don’t tell me what ails you; I’ll tell you,” he would say, and then he would tell Mrs. Murphy what her ache was, where it was located, how much she had slept during the past month and so on, until she sat with mouth agape. Or he would tell Mrs. Huggins of things that had happened in the past and add detail to detail until her eyes bulged. With his soiled charts and a hashed-up rigmarole and a red-cotton dressing-gown on which moons, stars and comets were painted, he astounded and fooled those who had come to him wishing to be fooled and astounded. It brought in good money.

Shagbark loved it. His eyes twinkled behind their curtains of hair.

Soon Alice discovered that it made little difference whether she was known to be connected with the Mystery Man or not. If Mrs. Murphy remembered that she had told Alice yesterday of the symptoms Shagbark revealed to-day and knew Alice was Shagbark’s helper, it did not affect Mrs. Murphy’s faith in the mystery. She wanted to be humbugged.

The arrival of the Euripides was always an event. Crowds flocked to hear the Musical Entertainment and the Lecture on Anatomy. Shagbark Oil and Shagbark Liniment sold by the gross.

“Well, friends and feller-sufferers of humanity,” Shagbark would declaim from his platform, “the subject of my lecture is on anatomy. If it wasn’t for anatomy, we wouldn’t ever be sick, for anatomy is the map of the human body, and science tells us it is divided into seven parts, the head, the lungs and ribs, the innards, two arms and two legs, and we’ve all got them. We will first consider the head and all what is therein—”

One day, when Alice had been working a town with Infallible Grease-Remover and her more infallible memory, she had stumbled over a real mystery. Detectives had worked on it and had failed. A year had passed since the crime had been committed, and Time himself had not solved the mystery. Alice told Shagbark of it when she returned to the boat. That night Shagbark did not sleep. He lay on the caved-in sofa, combing his beard with his fingers, staring at the smoked roof of the boat and going over the puzzle again and again, arranging and rearranging the pieces. For the first time in his life he had found something that interested him. Before morning he knew which of the men under suspicion were the real criminals.

When next he learned of a crime-mystery, he went up into the town himself. He could do nothing. The things he saw and the things he heard became a clotted, indigestible mass in his brain. He was muddled and fuddled; his mind went blind and sick with its load of facts and clues, and refused to work. He moped for three days, and then sent Alice into the town. She returned and told him nothing new, but told him the things he already knew and had himself seen. In an hour he announced the solution. It was correct. For success Shagbark required Alice’s eyes and memory and tongue. She was the fact-gatherer, he the more than clever brain. Each required the other. Half an hour after Alice left the houseboat, a shocking odor began making itself apparent in the boat. Orlando, in the small kitchen at the rear of the boat, was cooking up a new mess of Shagbark Oil, the work in which he took the greatest pride. Shagbark required the Oil to be strong in every detail. He argued that those who bought Shagbark Oil wanted to know it was medicine—real medicine. They could get ordinarily obnoxious drugs at a store—castor oil, quinine, ipecac and so on—but when they took Shagbark Oil, they wanted to know they were taking something. Shagbark sniffed the air and raised his head.

“How’s she taste, Orlando?” he drawled. “She smells dodgallux fine, don’t she?”

“She tastes like Samuel J. Hades, that’s how she tastes,” piped the thin voice of Orlando from the kitchen exultantly. “She never tasted so Etur-nu-el J. Rotten since I been makin’ her. She’s a dandy this time, Shagbark, a Dan-u-el J. Dandy! She tastes meaner than anything I ever tasted in all my Born-u-el J. Days.”

“Dod-gallux if she don’t smell so,” said Shagbark, “You got to get her grippy this time, Orlando. She aint been grippy lately. She aint been right down grippy!”

“She’s grippy!” crowed Orlando. “She’s a regular Sting-u-el J. Gripper.”

“She” was in an iron kettle on the small stove, bubbling and boiling. Even Pete on the foredeck, sound asleep, catching a whiff, gasped and buried his flat nose in the crook of his arm.

“Lemme see you test her,” ordered Shagbark.

Orlando, coming to the cabin-door, bore a full spoon in his hand, blowing its contents to cool it. He was a thin, dried little man, his hair like wisps of tow, and his face wrinkled and small like that of a world-weary monkey. Like Shagbark’s, his horny feet were bare, and he too wore a pair of nondescript trousers; but although the temperature of the kitchen—it was July—must have been 130, he also wore a suit of the thickest, stiffest red flannel underwear. He had an abiding faith in red wool. He wore it winter and summer for his rheumatism.

“Now look how she tastes,” he piped eagerly. “Aint my face calm? Aint she as calm and quiet as a slab?”

“She couldn’t be no calmer, Orlando,” agreed Shagbark.

“And I’m tryin’ to keep her calm.” said Orlando. “I’m usin’ all my Etur-nu-el J. Will-power to keep her calm and peaceful. And now look at her!”

He emptied the spoon into his mouth. Instantly his face was convulsed. He gagged, put his hand to his mouth, turned as red as fire, choked and sputtered. Tears flowed from his eyes. A look of intense disgust and nausea turned his mouth yellow.

“And—and I’m tryin’ to keep her calm!” he gasped, “I’m bustin’ myself to keep her calm!”

He was trying, but it was impossible. His face screwed into a million wrinkles. He clapped his free hand over his mouth again and made a dash for the rear deck. He scooped up a pail of the tepid river water and rinsed his mouth, breathing in and out hastily. He took a drink and returned, his face beaming.

“Aint she a gripper?” he crowed triumphantly. “Didn’t she claw my face up, Shagbark? Aint she a Jim-u-el J. Gripper this time?”

“I guess maybe we’ve got to make her do,” said Shagbark.

“She shook me like a cat shakes a rat, didn’t she?” said Orlando proudly. “She grips, don’t she?”

“She grips, Orlando,” acknowledged Shagbark. “Bottle her up and label her. We’ll try to make her do.”

On the stove a second and smaller kettle containing the Liniment bubbled, but this was a more simple matter. The Liniment was in reality a salve, put up in small tin boxes, and as it was for outward application only, it needed but to look mean and raise more or less of a blister. Its composition was simple: cooking lard melted until liquid, five drops of carbolic acid to give a “healthy” odor, one pound of raw ground mustard and enough common bluing to turn the mess a sickly green.

It was late that night when Alice returned to the Euripides. She threw her valise into a corner and dropped into a chair.

“Orlando, get me something to eat I’m hungry. Pete, get a pan of cool water and wash my feet; they’re all bruised up. Listen, Dad! it’s a big mystery they’ve got at White Clay, and some folks there are praying you’ll be along soon. Set up and listen!”

Shagbark raised himself to a sitting position on the sofa; and then, while the giant negro knelt and bathed the girl’s feet with all the tenderness of a woman, Orlando set food on the table. As Alice ate, she talked.

“Here’s a photo’ of the feller they arrested, Dad; and I’ll bet your boots he never killed a man. I stole it off his ma’s mantel. She is a nice woman but the tired kind. She’s sort of loony just now over him being taken away. Her husband drinks.”

Shagbark studied the photograph.

“Do they know who the dead man is yet?” he asked.

“No they don’t. He’s a mystery—nobody ever saw him before. They found him dead in a deserted pottery-kiln, a hole shot in his chest with a shotgun. The shotgun belonged to Jim Dunham, the feller I gave you the photo’ of.”

“No papers or nothing on the lead man?” asked Shagbark.

“Nothing like that,” said Allie. “Well, I went to town and looked around and sold two or three cakes, of Infallible, and then I went to this Jim Dunham’s house and got his mother to talking. I said to her: ‘Shucks! your boy wouldn’t kill nobody! You wait until Shagbark comes along, and he’ll prove it, I bet.’ So she broke loose talking and crying. I pumped her dry.”

“Everybody thinks Jim Dunham killed the feller?” asked Shagbark.

“Seems so. His dad does—or lets on he does. His name is Mike. Now let me tell it my own way. You know what White Clay is like—a scraggly place under the big bluff, with thirty or forty houses and two stores and a saloon. All the houses are on the side of the road toward the bluff, and on the other side, between the river and the road, are the pottery kilns.”

Quickly and concisely she gave a word-sketch of the village. The houses were in need of paint; some of the kilns were being “fired;” some were “cold”; and others were deserted and “dead.” For the rest the town consisted of broken jugs and crocks, a small railway-station, one short “spur” known locally as the “switch,” pile after pile of cordwood, and the rough sheds in which the potters shaped and dried their product. There was no school, the nearest being on the bluff, up which a wood-road ran. Everybody looked tired and disheartened. They said the pottery business was no good; a man couldn’t live decent at it.

She described the deserted kiln in which the dead man had been found. It was like a brick beehive daubed with clay, with an opening so low a man would have to stoop down to enter it. On the floor were shards of pottery and the ashes and charred remnants of the last fire. Under these the body of the dead man had been hidden.

“Who found him?” asked Shagbark.

“A man by name of Mike Mullarky,” said Alice. “It was his kiln. He happened to go into it and found the dead man.”

She continued her story. Mike Dunham, the father of Jim, was himself the owner of a kiln, turning the pots and crocks and jugs, and burning them with the assistance of the young fellow, his son. Dunham had never “got on” and never would. He was one of the rum-sodden sort of drinkers; he was always hard up; the night of the murder he had been in the saloon most of the time and did not come home until late.

The Dunhams lived in a small house at the down-river end of the village, and below it was nothing but weedy flats, except the deserted Mullarky kiln on the opposite side of the road, a quarter of a mile down-river. Half a mile or so below this, the river formed a pond, weedy and grass-grown, with an inlet a hundred feet wide.

She had not seen Jim Dunham, because he had already been taken to the county seat under arrest. The case against him, while circumstantial, appeared complete. At first he had only reiterated that he had killed no one and that he did not know who had killed the stranger; later he had refused to talk at all.

At night, Alice said the big, stodgy buffalo-fish—carplike creatures—often swam into the pond below the village to feed on the grass and weeds, and on the Friday evening when the murder was done, Jim Dunham had taken his shotgun from its rack in the kitchen, saying he was going down to the pond to shoot buffalo-fish. It was a sport sometimes favored by the men and boys of White Clay. This was before dusk. He returned to the house between ten and eleven, his face and hands scratched and bleeding and his rough clothes torn. He was pale and somewhat weak and did not have his gun.

Mrs. Dunham was still up, waiting for her husband, and Jim told her a story no one believed. He said he had gone down to the pond and found the fish had not run in yet; so he had thrown himself on the grass by the road and waited, and waiting, had fallen asleep. He did not know how long he had slept but he had awakened suddenly and found his gun was gone. He had thought some one had picked it up, either in malicious theft or as a joke, and had thought he might overtake the fellow. He had started toward the village on a run. It had been dark, and forgetting that Mullarky had recently strung a barbed-wire around his pottery-field, he had run full into the wire, scratching himself, tearing his clothes; and the wire, rebounding, had thrown him backward so that his head had struck a broken jug. He showed his mother the raw wound in his hair. He said the blow had rendered him unconscious. After he had come to he had returned home.

“While he was telling his ma all this,” Alice said, “Mrs. Mullarky came over from her house next door.

“She had a face-ache and tooth-ache and had run over to see if Mrs. Dunham had any remedy at hand, because Mike Mullarky was in bed and drunk and wouldn’t go down to the saloon for a swig or two of whisky—her favorite remedy in such cases. She heard Jim’s story—Mrs. Dunham made him tell it again, and she helped wash his wound and bandage his head. Then she got the nostrum she wanted and went home. Before noon next day everyone in White Clay knew Jim Dunham had lost his gun and joked him about it. That night Mike Mullarky found the body in the deserted kiln, and with it Jim Dunham’s gun.

“The dead man was an absolute stranger in White Clay, but Jim had often made short visits in Tenersville, the big town up the river, and it was believed he had a girl there. The county sheriff was looking this up and believed jealous rivalry was the motive of the crime.”

When Alice had finished her recital, Shagbark sat looking at the bowl of his pipe, turning it slowly in his hand.

“I got to find out three things, Allie,” he said. “I got to find out who took this Jim Dunham’s gun, and who was the man that was shot, and who shot him. What time was it they found the body?”

“It was eleven o’clock at night—Saturday night. Mike Mullarky found it.”

Shagbark closed his eyes. He rubbed his hand over his face like a man who is wiping away cobwebs. Then he asked:

“What time did this boy’s dad come home Friday night? Was he drunk?”

“Mighty drunk, his wife says. It was nigh to ten o’clock.”

“Nigh to ten o’clock. And that was mighty late,” mused Shagbark. “That was mighty late for White Clay. I reckon the saloon had closed. It is almost ten o’clock now, Allie; was the saloon closed when you came by?”

“Closed tight,” she answered. “You know how towns like White Clay are, Dad. Everybody but the loafers get to bed at eight or nine.”

“Yes, yes!” said Shagbark, rubbing his hand over his face again. “So now we know who killed the man, Allie. We know that now.”

“Do we, Dad?” she asked eagerly.

“Why, dod-whillux it! don’t I say we do?” he cried. “Of course we know! We aint blind, are we? And we know he was killed with Jim Dunham’s gun. And Jim Dunham was down below town when his gun was took. He was down below the kiln. So I reckon the stranger was coming from that direction. The man that killed him was expecting him to come along and went down there to get a first look at him, and he saw Jim Dunham’s gun and just took it along for luck—it might come in handy. Now, why did he tell his wife?”

“Who tell whose wife?” asked Allie.

“Why did the murderer tell his wife? Why did he tell her he had shot a man with Jim Dunham’s gun?”

“Did he tell her that?” asked Allie.

“If he didn’t tell her,” asked Shagbark, “why did she go over to Mrs. Dunham’s when she saw Jim Dunham come home?”

“You mean that Mike Mullarky killed the man?” asked Allie.

“Now, Allie!” complained Shagbark. “I can’t make out why a daughter of mine is so stupid. I got to talk to you like I was reading out of a primer. What was Mike Mullarky doin’ in a deserted kiln at eleven at night when he found a dead man there? You’ve got a town that is all abed by ten o’clock, even the saloon is closed, and a deserted kiln that nobody would want to go into anyhow; and a man whose wife went next door to find out if Jim Dunham knew who took his gun goes into that kiln and finds a dead man! He goes there at an hour of night when nobody ever goes anywhere, let alone into a deserted kiln. Now, who did he kill and what did he kill him for?”

He raised his eyes to the cheap alarm-clock that ticked on a bare pine shelf.

“Allie,” he said, “do you reckon they thought you was from the You’re a pie, Dees and was snoopin’ round for the Mystery Man?”

“I know they did,” the girl answered.

“Well, we got time yet,” said Shagbark, “It aint eleven yet, and they wont dare go to the kiln before midnight for fear somebody might happen to be up, sick or something. But go they will. Soon as they knowed Shagbark was comin’, they started to get uneasy. They tried to remember if everything was safe in the kiln. They’re gettin’ more anxious and worried about it every minute, and along about midnight they wont be able to stand it any longer. So you got to go to the kiln, Allie. Orlando can go with you if you want him.”

“I don’t, Dad,” the girl answered, beginning to draw on her stockings. “What’ll they do and what shall I do?”

“Which way does the door of the kiln face?” asked Shagbark.

“Toward the town.”

“Then they wont strike a light, lest somebody in town sees it,” said Shagbark. “You’ll hide in the dark in the kiln, Allie. Pretty soon they’ll come along and come into the kiln. They’ll go over things. If they run onto you, just groan—groan like a sick man. They wont stay there. They’ll scoot!”

The girl hurried her preparations.

“To-morrow morning,” said Shagbark, “you’ll go back and say that Shagbark Jones, the Mystery Man, is coming to town and he wants the dead man dug up. You’ll say he’s goin’ to ask the dead man who killed him, and that the dead man will answer back and tell the truth.”

The girl slipped out into the dark. Shagbark stretched himself out on the caved-in sofa and slept. Orlando and Black Pete sought their bunks and slept.

Through the deserted kilns and the kilns not deserted, Alice dodged her way. She was not in the least afraid. She stopped at the entrance of Mullarky’s kiln, went inside and crouched low in the dark far from the entrance. Suddenly the thought came to her that within touch of her hand, almost, the dead man had reposed, and her flesh arose in goose-pimples; her hair crept at the roots; she began to tremble.

She did not tremble long.

She heard a noise, the sound of feet cautiously treading the shards outside, and a black form darkened the kiln entrance—a man; she knew it was a man by the black bars his legs made against the dim light. She saw him stoop and enter, and immediately the entrance was darkened again. She heard the soft whisper of a hand feeling along the bricks of the inside of the kiln. The sound came from over the man’s head—he was evidently feeling among the bricks high up.

“Is it there, Mike?” she heard a woman whisper.

“Yes.”

“It’s safe and all?”

“Yes.”

“Come on, then, and let it be.”

The woman went out of the kiln and the man followed her. Alice waited until their steps had died in the distance. She heaped a few bricks on the floor and stood on them, feeling where the man had felt. Some of the bricks were loose, and she moved them until her hand touched something soft and flat—a leather wallet. She went back to her corner and struck a match; the wallet was filled with money. She did not count it, but it seemed to be several hundred dollars. In the other side of the wallet she found a folded paper, a letter. Lighting one match after another, she read:

To whoever you are—I found yure stuff in my kill and Ive took it away and hid it. If you want it back you can fetch me four hunderd dollars Friday nite to the kill or Ile turn it over to the constabal. Its wurth a lot moar thin four hunderd.

MIKE MULLARKY

The girl slipped the letter back into the wallet. For a moment she hesitated; then she placed the wallet under the charred wood in the center of the floor and glided out of the kiln. Except for a barking dog or two, the village was as if dead. When she reached the boat, her father was sleeping so heavily he did not awaken, and she stole into the little cabin set aside for her and threw herself on the bed. She slept instantly.

The moment, the next morning, that Alice left the boat, Black Pete pushed it out into the stream. The girl walked to White Clay and through the village until she came to the Dunham house. Mrs. Dunham welcomed her.

“I seen Shagbark last night,” Alice said. “He’s coming downriver to-day and he says he’ll stop here. I told him about your Jim and all. He seemed sort of curious about it.”

“Did he think Jim done it?” queried the woman tensely.

“He wont say,” Alice answered. “He says: ‘Why don’t the passel of fools find out, if they want to? Why don’t they ask the dead man? What they come pesterin’ me for? I don’t know—the dead man knows.’”

“What did he mean?”

“He meant that if he wanted to find out, he’d have to ask the dead man, and he didn’t see why you folks couldn’t do it if you wanted to know so bad. I got him to say he’d do it.”

“Do what?” asked Mrs. Dunham, trembling.

“Ask the dead man,” said Alice. “I got him to say he’d do it, but somebody has to dig the dead man up for him. You’d better get your husband and somebody to do it.”

“I’ll got him dug up!” cried Mrs. Dunham. “I’ll get him dug up if I have to do it myself!” And she rushed from the house. In fifteen minutes all White Clay knew that the Mystery Man was coming and that he had promised to make the dead stranger speak. As soon as the Euripides came into sight, men, women and children crowded to the levee.

When the boat touched the levee, Mrs. Dunham was in the front rank, her drink-sodden husband close behind her. Black Pete, as the boat grounded, leaped ashore and cast a rope around the post that represented the town wharfage.

“Where’s Shagbark?” Mrs. Dunham asked, grasping the negro by the arm. Alice pushed to her side.

“He aint woke up yet,” said Pete. “He sot up’most all night readin’ the horoscopes in the stars, and I reckon be wont open his eyes till’long about noon when he gits hongry. He’s gettin’ his beauty sleep.”

“Aw! go wake him up!” some one cried. “We got a murder here. Can’t you see this woman’s’most crazy?”

“Orlando, reckon we durst wake him up?” asked Pete.

“He’ll be the most Eturn-u-el J. Madman you ever see in your life if you do,” squeaked Orlando. “I wouldn’t wake Shagbark up for all the money in the Epluribus J. Unum—no, sir!”

“I will call him,” said Alice.

She climbed onto the small foredeck and went inside. Black Pete and Orlando followed her.

“They jes’ plumb crazy fo’ you, boss,” said Black Pete to Shagbark. “I never see a gang so up an’ comin’ as what they is. Wont nothin’ do but you come out.”

“They’re primed, Dad,” said Alice. “I’ll sell’em twenty bottles—shall I?”

“Yup! Get the oil, Orlando,” drawled Shagbark.

Alice went outside. She stood on the edge of the deck.

“You know Shagbark don’t care for this mystery business, folks,” she said. “He hates it, it tires him out so. His business is sellin’ Shagbark Oil. But he says he’ll see what the dead man has to say if it don’t interfere with business. If he can sell somewhere around twenty bottles of oil, dollar a bottle or six bottles for five dollars—”

Shagbark ambled out upon the deck, with Orlando following. Orlando carried the box of oil.

“Now, folks—” Shagbark began. He reached into the box and held up a bottle. “Now, folks, this here Shagbark Oil—”

Forty hands reached for the bottle. As rapidly as Orlando could hand them to him, Shagbark exchanged the bottles of the vile concoction for silver dollars. In five minutes the box was empty.

“Seems like you fellers ought to tend to your own troubles and let me get my sleep out,” he drawled. “You’re too plumb lazy; that’s what ails you. Where is this dead man you’re makin’ such a fuss about?”

“Come on; we’ll show you!” they cried.

Shagbark waved his hand at Orlando, and the cook went inside. He returned with an astrological chart (for effect) and the dirty, red-cotton gown covered with stars and moons. Black Pete slipped this over Shagbark’s head and drew it down. He slid the landing-plank ashore, and Shagbark walked down it in state. Mrs. Dunham crowded close beside him and led the way. It led through the village and up the wood-road to the top of the bluff. The Mystery Man mumbled to himself. Now and then he stopped and listened and then went on again. As the crowd turned from the levee into the village, he passed a pile of common red bricks, and he stopped and lifted four from the pile and gave them to Orlando. When they reached the Mullarky house, Shagbark stopped suddenly.

“Hey?” he queried, and he took one of the bricks from Orlando and held it to his ear, listening. He placed the brick carefully upright before the gate of the Mullarky place and went on. Twice more he harkened to the bricks and placed one before the deserted kiln and one on the spot where Jim Dunham had slept beside the pond. Each time Mrs. Mullarky, following behind, crossed herself and cast a horrified glance at her husband. The fourth brick Orlando carried until they reached the side of the opened grave.

Shagbark looked down into the grave. He gave an involuntary start of surprise. The lid of the coffin had been removed, and the face he saw there was known to him, for one river-rat knows another, and more than once Shagbark had met this man. The Mystery Man seated himself cross-legged on the edge of the grave. He held out his hand for the fourth brick and set it on end at the edge of the grave. In an easy, conversational tone he addressed the dead man.

“Good mornin’, Henry,” he said. “Sorry to bother you when you wasn’t expectin’ to be disturbed, but these folks aint got gumption to ask you what they want to know. Did Jim Dunham kill you, Henry?”

There was not a sound. The hairy impostor listened, and the crowd held its breath.

“He says he don’t know no Jim Dunham,” drawled Shagbark. “He says Jim Dunham never done nothin’ to him. Henry, what fetched you to White Clay, anyhow?”

The same silence.

“He says,” drawled Shagbark, “he’d been doin’ some houserobbin’ up to Tenersville and hid the stuff in a dead kiln whilst waitin’ for the thing to quiet down. He says he hid it there and some feller come and took it away and left a note tellin’ him to fetch some money or he couldn’t have the stuff back, so he come to fetch the money. He says that when he come, the feller was in the dark in the kiln and when he come inside, the feller shot him dead, so he could have the money and the stuff too.—What say, Henry? I didn’t catch that.”

He listened and spoke again.

“The kiln where I sot up the brick? That was the kiln, he says. That was where he was killed. I guess we know that, Henry; you was found dead here. Now, Henry, where is the money you was killed for?”

Mike Mullarky moved forward in the crowd. His wife clutched him by the arm, but he shook her off.

“He says,” Shagbark drawled, “Henry says it is in a wallet under the charred wood on the floor of the kiln. Right under the burnt wood and all, Henry? That’s a funny place—”

Mike Mullarky pushed forward.

“Say,” he said, “what’s the use listenin’ to this nonsense? You all know it aint so. Twenty of us an’ the sheriff himself scraped that floor with our finger-nails, almost, and there was nothin’ there. I tell ye—”

“Shut up, Mike!” shouted some one.

“Mike, be still!” cried his wife. She was white with fear. She grasped her husband’s arm and tried to draw him away. He pushed her aside, and his foot struck the upright brick. It fell. It went hurtling over and over and struck the coffin, giving out a hollow sound. Mrs. Mullarky shrieked and clapped her hands over her eyes. She sank to the ground at the grave-edge.

“What say, Henry?” drawled Shagbark without emotion. “You think this here Mullarky is a mean cuss? Why, Henry?”

Mullarky pushed two men aside and turned to go.

“Henry says,” drawled the Mystery Man, “that any feller is a mean cuss who would kill a man and then throw a brick at him.”

The leap through the crowd that Mullarky made, only to be grasped by twenty hands, was proof enough that the Mystery Man had solved another mystery. Shagbark arose. He held his hand high for silence. Every eye was on him.

“This I say,” he cried: “the guilty shall be found out! Remember that! Remember it, and, ladies and gents, remember that the Grand Musical Entertainment and Anatomical Lecture will take place on the levee each afternoon and evening, at three and seven P.M., until further notice.”

The next moment the crowd was rushing pell-mell down the wood-road to find the indisputable evidence of Mike Mullarky’s guilt under the charred wood on the floor of the deserted kiln.