NONEXISTENT MEN
As the skeletonized tale ended, one of the teller’s hearers, who sat on a flat boulder at his left, and also facing the marker-stone, spoke—and spoke, moreover, almost the minute the last word had been uttered.
And the latter’s denunciatory words ran:
“The man is lying like hell!—and is ‘Actor’ Hart, I tell you all! And if I hadn’t ruined my plan, awhile back, to give him an alleged ‘identity’ off a fake broadcast—plus a stay of execution off another broadcast, setting forth that the Cooperstown Dam had busted, but that the President of the U.S.A. had played a better card by blowing up the Missivazoo Dam downstream—”
“And a gosh-darned fool play that,” came from a voice directly across the marking stone from the taleteller, “for anybody knows that the effects of a blown-up dam hundreds of miles downstream couldn’t be felt upstream for 24 hours—and besides, there’s another even better reason why that Missivazoo Dam couldn’t be blown up by God Himse—”
“I know—I know,” said the first speaker, “but it was part of my plan. To trap this Mexican-clad crook! And if my plan hadn’t got ruined, I tell you all, by the bits of that broken tube raining out of my pants leg when I walked over here to the marking-stone, he’d have—”
“Yo’re leetle p’formance,” coolly replied a much older voice, directly across the marking-stone from the last speaker, “wan’t sp’iled by no broken glass. Leastways, fur’s I’m consarned. Fur never, at no time, ’uz I fooled. Though I wan’t agin playin’ in with it—as I done—an’ seein’ ’zackly as how var’ous pussens ’round hyar mought take it.” The speaker with the older voice paused. “But that’s water over the hill. The danged useless busted raddio’s out in the river now whar I flung it—and whar it ’longs. And—”
“And we’re discussing, I take it,” said the first speaker, “this lying crook who’s just talked. Well, he wasn’t onto my performance. And again I say, if it hadn’t been for the bits of glass raining out of my pants leg when I walked over here to the marking-stone, he’d have played in on the identity I gave him—seized it—and then, by God, by showing what a fake that broadcast was, I’d—we’d—have had him. But, quick as a flash, and just about to talk, he seized on another identity—and gave the yarn we’ve just heard. And which, let me point out, was spun around the junk he had on him—and hence is backed up by nothing!”
The man who spoke thus doubtlessly had a more than perfect motive to do so—since, in the nature of things on this island, he was the man who must perforce drown—if that story were accepted! He was a man of obviously no more than 31—no more, at very most, than one year greater than the age of 30, which specific age was set forth upon a certain green-jade Public Enemy circular put out by Uncle Sam, and devoted entirely to a criminological subject known as Al—alias “Actor”—Hart, murderer, bank robber, and escaped convict. The objector, unlike the taleteller with the latter’s black eyes, possessed mocking blue eyes, but, since none on this island had perused that green circular, none knew the eye-color description set forth in it! Not only were the objector’s blue eyes exceedingly mocking in mien, but his face, admittedly handsome, was insouciant, to say the least. He was dressed in the costume of an electrical lineman, except that it was, unfortunately and admittedly, a costume that had never been assembled for any lineman—by an electrical lineman! If for no other reason than that the hammered brass hooks and gleaming copper-wire loops protruding from the wide black leather belt which held up his dark trousers—which same matched not his coat—were not at all adequate to take really heavy tools aloft. Nor was there a safety-belt hanging from his hips—much less spurred climbers tied thereto; nor were such anywhere on this island! When it came to tools, so toolless was he, indeed, that not even did the handles of a pair of wire-cutters—standard tool of linemen the world over!—protrude from his outer breast pocket, or, encased within a pocket, cause that pocket to sag. Nor was the knitted black beakless cap which fit his skull tightly, and came down over his forehead, a lineman’s cap; it was, beyond peradventure, a skiing cap! As was the colored kerchief around his neck not the 5-cent bandanna which a lineman should have, but a silken beautiful thing which a gypsy woman would wear; rather, what a woman who was going to play a gypsy part would take from a trunk of dramaturgic accouterments! Though not half as chromatically screaming was that silken neck-scarf as was his shirt—which was a flannel shirt of such brilliant green that it seemed soaked with the green of all the green neon lights of Broadway or Madison Street, Chicago—and was laced together at the neck by a crimson cord—a cord the color of which would have carried to the rearmost row of seats in a theater! His shoes were not shoes, but were black leather leggings, knee-high in length, laced together with black thongs—and had, so he had desperately claimed earlier, come from the riding habiliments of a gentleman!
Thus the appearance of a stout objector to a story told by a man who was at least clad in a costume artistically correct!
And now the two—objector and objected-to!—turned their faces to the one person on this island who, because he wore the Star of the Law, was the sole arbiter as to who should ride the inevitable avalanche of water to safety—and who should remain to be drowned—even worse, his body eaten, far below river, by garfish—and become a really nonexistent human being as were already all who were on this island. Since the World “knew” them to have left it!—to have been already drowned at old Antler Head!—to have been—
And so these two virtually nonexistent men turned their attention fiercely to a third nonexistent man—a man of at least 40 years of age, if not more—a man who had—whether he was nonexistent or not!—a very existent revolver which had long kept order in Shelby’s Bluff, now millions of miles away in fog!—a revolver which, being loaded just now with six .38-caliber bullets, was enforcing law—and keeping courts of law—on Bleeker’s Island!