HOW ONE LUKE BRISTER WAS IN A SPOT—AND VARIOUS THINGS ABOUT PERSONS OTHER!
Luke V. Brister—the “V” standing for Vicksburg!—chief and only peace and law enforcer of the town of Shelby’s Bluff, but just now unfortunately marooned on Bleeker’s Island with certain and various other individuals!—knew, at this moment, that he reposed in an exceedingly ticklish position, to say the least. What he did not know, of course, was just how ticklish the position he reposed in really was! All he knew, as a downright “hard” certainty, was the smooth stony surface which pressed rigidly upward against the fleshy part of his rearmost anatomy.
For Criminological History was being written today on Bleeker’s Island!
Indeed, had a newspaper camera been set up—and properly directed—just now, at the lower end of the island, and its bulb snapped, it would have registered a strange and drama-impregnated scene that could have been the high spot, in years to come, for many magazine articles dealing with the detection of criminals, and the capture of criminals unknown; a sort of mystery novel in pictorial form, so to speak.
For “Actor” Hart—bank robber, murderer, and escaped convict—sat amongst that little group, and none but “Actor” Hart knew which “Actor” Hart was!
And the Sheriff, seated facing the big square island-marking stone—rather, its weather-eaten lettering—on the largest and most comfortable of the few flat boulders with which this island had been studded by its former owner in times past, here, staring up at him were the etched letters
ISLAND 46 VII/b
He was himself aware that this scene, of which he was a part, did constitute criminological history. Unphotographed and unphotographable history, however. He realized, moreover, that in that unphotographable picture which it made, he himself was the one drab, prosaic, and even uncolorful note, in spite of his checkered hickory shirt held loosely at the neck with his spotted blue tie, and his yellow cowhide leather half-boots, laced with thongs, that came halfway up his shins. For his homespun suit, unlike the habiliments worn by these other vividly attired birds, was a bilious, hueless, liverish brown, relieved only, at most, by the shiny silver star peeping forth from his vest, and reading SHERIFF: SHELBY’S BLUFF. But at least, he reflected, as his round red face gazed upward a moment toward the fog-screened sky above, catching however, only the brim of his flat and broad-brimmed black hat, pointed at the top—typical Midwest peace officer’s hat, that—though he might not be the handsomest man on this island—nor the youngest, either, like these four 30-year-old—or near-30-year-old—sprats facing him—he was certainly the most—In fact, gazing down at himself now, and noting how stocky and strongly muscled he was, compared to every one of the 30-year-old builds confronting him, he realized that, with that bulge under his left coat made by Shelby’s Bluff’s, police revolver, he was by far the most practical note on this island!
And now he swept his blue eyes troubledly leftwise across and about the marking-stone, thinking of the photograph which could have been made from directly behind him.
For sitting at his left—and back of whom could be seen the down-river point of the island with the two sundered streams of dun-gray water running angrily together, all being then lost in that further wall of fog—was the teller of the tale just heard by all, in flamboyant pink shirt and Mexican corduroy suit. Across from the Sheriff directly, and framed against such of the water of Big River’s outer channel as could be seen between island and ever-existing fog wall—the other’s back, indeed, but a scant 8 feet from that water—sat the man in lineman habiliments which were not the habiliments of a lineman. And again the Sheriff swung his glance. To where—diagonally out between the pseudo-lineman and a man who sat to the Sheriff’s own right—though some full 7 feet or so off from the “circle” of sitters—lay a man in East Indian costume, sleeping, his face on the palm of his hand, yet that face turned nevertheless toward the little group. And the most striking thing about that quiet Caucasian-looking face, which was a face of a man 30 years of age, no more, was that it resembled, markedly, astoundingly, the face of the Mexican-clad incumbent of the marking-stone circle. The sleep of the man on the ground was evidently a drugged sleep, for his respirations came in heavy, rhythmic, stertorous breathing, and he was one who, plainly, was oblivious to the entire world. His clothing was the most colorful of any on the island, for the silk turban about his head was bright yellow, and the long orange coat he wore not only contained ornate black braid down its front, as could be seen where an outflung corner lay upward, but was gathered together in its middle with a sash, while his peculiar boots were studded with inset, though cheap, ornamental stones of some sort.
And from where this individual lay, the Sheriff’s eyes, rising slightly and traveling straight up the utterly grassless island, came to rest momentarily on the vault—and the three gleaming life belts piled at its end—and then as quickly drew back, and rested upon the man who sat on a boulder at the Sheriff’s own right.
A man of no more than 30 years of age, yet no less than 29, either.
A true “hick”—if ever there were such! As even the Sheriff, who knew rural towns but too well, had to admit. For the other’s brilliantly greenish-striped trousers were manifestly too short for his legs, judging from merely the way they had risen, halfway to his knees, as he sat with knees drawn up and feet propped against the edge of the marking-stone. As even was his striped coat too short and tight for his torso. He seemed, indeed, like a man who had stepped forth upon an island direct from a Broadway burlesque show—the low comedian, no less!—for the newish yellow derby hat he wore came not down far enough on his bright yellow hair which, palpably, was no wig, though giving quite no proof, in spite of its owner’s naïve-looking baby-blue eyes, that it had never seen the contents of a peroxide bottle!—to keep him from looking downright ridiculous. It was, however, in the matter of his shirt wherein he resembled a true burlesque-show “rube,” for the shirt was what is known as a wallpaper shirt—in this case, green-flowered wallpaper!—splashed with a screaming and unashamed red tie that rose to an old-fashioned batwing collar.
Thus the 4 individuals from whom the Sheriff—as he knew full well—must now—now that he had heard all stories—and seen all proofs—pick out one, accuse him of being “Actor” Hart, and, most important thing of all, prove it to the satisfaction of Posterity and the great world outside.
And strangely, at this moment, a telephone conversation was going on, between two men one of whom was seated in a small office, high up in an observation tower which reared itself above the high land which itself lay just above the Cooperstown Dam, far up-river on the great Ohiuri which joined Big River at Confluence. And it was a conversation which not only set forth approximately how long the Sheriff might have to do what he purposed to do—but, in the matter of one or two asides uttered to another individual in that office, a number of interesting facts about the very men now on Bleeker’s Island. And the speaker, United States Engineer Allan Kirby, seated at a big engineer’s table, was saying into the phone:
“Why—Your Majesty!—of course I—I remember Your Majesty. For I—I don’t get chances to meet royalty—every day. And those days when certain problems concerning that historic river that flows past your palace windows was my problem are most—most vivid to me.
“No indeed, Your Majesty. It is not at all because of the fact that you speak 10 languages that I remember you. Nor, to be frank, because you are a king. It is because you were the most enthusiastic amateur student of river-control and flood problems, dams and weirs, whom I have ever encountered.
“Indeed I do hear you plainly, sir, for the long-distance lines forming part of a trans-Atlantic telephone connection contain most accurate capacity and inductance balance, you know.
“And so you have heard about the impending catastrophe even on your radio there? Well, that is interesting, to say the lea—yes, Your Majesty, I’ll be glad to hold the wire.”
And now, hand cupped over transmitter, Kirby was talking, head turned, to his assistant, William Goring.
“As in the case, Bill,” he said grimly, “of the man who was ever talking on the phone to one ‘Jim’—this is—‘Jim’!
“Why is he calling up the Midwest? Well, why not? Kings have few ways to spend money! However, Bill, my profound guess is that he has some unusual idea by which to avert this cataclysm that’s due any minute—and really he is a tremendous student of our subject—but listen—while I’m waiting—what was the latest dope you were getting on that other phone there—from Shelby’s Bluff?”
“Just, Mr. Kirby, that Mrs. Barnes—or Kansas City Fanny—has confessed all to the Mayor. She helped Hart get into the costume around midnight—assembling it, incidentally, ‘artistically’ from several of the theatrical trunks in her cellar! Also, ‘Rat’ Glover, locked up there, now adds something to his story which obviously couldn’t have been sent out over the radio today. As follows: The Rat, it seems, grew up with a deaf-and-dumb brother, and so knows lip reading. And, he now says, Hart not only gave him that signal, this morning, in criminalese sign language—the fanlike motion of the fingers, you know, held in front of the body?—but, with his lips, said—er—um—ah—well, he said ‘Scram, you goddamned bastard fool!’”
“Hm! All the labials in the alphabet were in that! I could lip-read that, myself. Well, now that Mrs. Barnes has confessed, does she cast any light at all on the mystery of how those other 2 men got out there? Or rather, on even what is the far greater mystery: how they and Hart could all three have become marooned—with only Luke Brister and the Shelby’s Bluff police launch to get off in?”
“No, Mr. Kirby. Other than that she is confident Hart wouldn’t have gone out there any other way than solo. And as we do know that the Sheriff pulled out quite alone from Shelby’s Bluff in the police launch, then it becomes plain that at least 2 boats altogether became somehow lost at or on Bleeker’s Island. If not perhaps three! So that greater mystery you speak of never will be solved now; namely, how 2 boats—or even 3 boats—could have been lost to the incumbents of the island: Hart, Brister, and the 2 unknowns.”
“Gad, it is a puzzler, all right. I have been wondering if—by any chance—the Sheriff himself shoved those others’ boats off into the river to isolate himself with their owners. For there seems no other logical nor adequate explanation.”
“No, there doesn’t. But, Mr. Kirby, speaking of Mrs. ‘Barnes’ again, and her confession, do you know what the last thing Hart said to her was—before he left the house—to try and make Bleeker’s as soon as the morning fog would clear?”
“No—what?”
“He told her that the one man he had to fear would be Sheriff Brister. Told her that Brister was by no means the ignorant fool the town, or anybody else took him for; that if by any chance he crossed with Brister, it would take not only the most cunning chess-playing of his career—but more likely than not, swift unexpected action, to outwit him.”
“That, I’d say, would have been true—had they not all drowned. For Brister’s face, to me, was a face that belied his brain. Though I’m no physiognomist. But I feel certain that had they not all gone into the torrent, there on Old Antler Head, below Griffinstown, and drowned, that Brister would have found that one of those men was spurious—and which! I’ll even wager that sweeping down-river together, as they were, in that scarlet police launch—after the flare signal had been sent that the island was clear—that Brister practically knew he had a criminal. But—there’s one of the strange stories of the world that can never be written. In view of the fa—
“Yes, indeed, Your Majesty, I am waiting.
“Well just, in brief, Your Majesty, for the same reason that a certain great dam in this country known as the Wyandotte County Dam, in Kansas, went down on September 20th, 1938. That is to say, the construction engineers who built this Cooperstown dam found, after it was partially up, that certain blue shale they had thought they were building on was partly blue mud—and mighty slippery under water!—and so foolishly attempted to compensate for this error by driving Sheet piling to bedrock at a number of isolated points.
“That’s right, Your Majesty! You have it exactly! At the points where this dam is virtually atop blue clay, she is in the grasp of two complicated sets of forces—one due to her obvious and manifest overweight, resulting from her peculiar cross-section—and the other the horizontal and rotational force due to the pressure of the swollen Ohiuri.
“Exactly-Your Majesty! Exactly! The rotational forces, plus the vertical forces—rather, should I say, to one like yourself who understands the mathematical terms, the integration of the δ r’s plus fv—have created tensile stresses in the non-reinforced parts of the concrete, and which concrete can of course take only compressive stresses, and never tensile stresses.
“Oh, no indeed, Your Majesty, it is not a matter of theoretical stresses! It’s—it’s now empirical! For stupendous cracks are all through this dam—increasing in geometrical proportion as to both number and depth—and, worse, according to the cube of the time. The cube of the time, Your Majesty! A progression of affairs which, plotted as a curve, can never, by any possibility whatsoever, become asymptotic to the x-axis. The going down of the dam here is, as we say in America—‘in the bag’!
“Reservoir? Yes, Your Majesty, that is just the trouble! For the great Lake Oho—an artificial reservoir, with retaining wall built on the same phon—er—false blue shale, has its so-called gate section rigidly fixed to the west edge of the dam by oblique beams, but above and under water—yes, after the construction of the German engineers. So, as the dam goes, so must that segment of the reservoir wall, already cracking, be pulled out. And not only the whole backed-up Ohiuri will sail out into Big River—but Lake Oho will keep up the down-river inundation for 23½ hours.
“The degree—of inundation? Well, of course, Your Majesty, the entire east bank of Big River—at least for miles and miles down from Confluence—is a great high bluff—and no town on that bluff—nor even the railroad along it—can be affected by this rise, any more than it has been by the flood already existing. Even the so-called unique ‘landing stages’ about which you doubtlessly have read, are pipe-sectioned bluff-affixed constructions, with vertical steel posts, and to sliding rings in which boats can be moored, and which constructions permit the people living near such to adjust their river activities to any height of water! But the west shore along that stretch of river—ah!—that’s a different thing! For the waters are spread way back in the lowlands there, and only one point—situated inordinately high—Griffinstown is its name—it has a western railroad ending at it, and a fine landing stage—is quite in the clear, and can remain that way. But in asking about the degree of inundation, Your Majesty, you have reference, perhaps, to only such levels as can be inundated—like for instance, the famous islands of our Big River. Well, the islands between Confluence and Webb City will—well, as a concrete example, I have in mind one particular island lying far out in the river off a sleepy little town called Shelby’s Bluff, which is a little town so much, Your Majesty, like that quaint little town in your country called—but I digress!—anyway, this island—which lies separated from the swamps now constituting the west shore by miles and miles of hopeless water—and from the high east shore by such a long reach of such water that, with visibility of just w-50—or even less—as existed down there this morning at and around 9:10 a.m.—no human eye can see the island—not even from a certain church belfry of this town, surmounting a grove of high trees, the one and only point from which the island can be seen on clear days—oh, of course, flares can be detected through modest degrees of fog—are often used down on that part of our big River for signaling—but with low—and falling ever lower—visibility as exists today, this island is as good as nonexiste—but have you ever, by any chance whatsoever, Your Majesty—heard of the island I have in mind? It’s called Bleeker’s Is—
“Why, yes—it is called Destiny’s Stage, Your Majesty. Because of having been, in its life, the center of so many strange dramas.
“Well, that historic island—as an exact example—will, 30 minutes after the dam goes, be covered with water to an extent of 10 feet—and for a period of 23½ hours, as I said. Though none of these things will even be viewable, downriver there, along the high east bluff side of Big River—with or without binoculars!—with or without telescopes!—because that ‘lowered visibility’ I spoke of fell so—so darned far today, Your Majesty, that the readings are now minus on the Markheim scale!—and the Valley is at present immersed in a fog so hopeless—and one due, say our weather experts, to hang till at least tomorrow—that ’twould make London, that city so familiar to Your Majesty, think she was in a summer-morning cow-pasture mist! And—
“Oh!—now I do understand why Your Majesty called me up! But unfortunately, Your Majesty, it would not—and could not—work!
“Well, because—well, now, Your Majesty, you are, you say, sitting there with a Geogar Geodetic Map of the United States before you. Well, I know that little, yet mighty scientific map. Indeed, the man who drew it up and designed the unique plates from which it was printed lives well down Big River in a town called Marysville. Lived, I should say, for at last report he was dying in a hospital in his state capital.
“Yes, Your Majesty, Professor Geogar, retired. And the same one indeed who has been inventing—creating—this new type of seismograph—the Geogar Hyper-Seismograph, yes—he has been backed, in fact, by a man who lived up-river from him, and who owned this very island of which we were speaking.
“Why, yes—I’m reasonably sure I could get you the Hyper-Seismograph when Geogar dies—though its creation isn’t complete because it has never been calibrated. And I take it that an uncalibrated scientific instrument would be quite useless?
“No! He and his backer—a man named McCorniss, who but recently died—had intended to calibrate it, as a public occasion, at the time of a certain Marysville Centennial which takes place at the end of this month—right out on the Public Square, you know?—the scale and needle thrown, sometime after dark, on a huge motion-picture screen? After which the thing would have been ready to patent and also to manufacture in quantities for laboratories.
“Why yes, Your Majesty, that’s quite easy to explain to you. And you would, as you say, need only to follow the identical procedure on your side, though with a trained geologist to interpret needle deviation in terms of equational distance—if you get me. You would need do only what McCorniss and Geogar had intended to do. Which was as follows: On the day before the Centennial Mr. McCorniss would have installed—intended to, in fact—on his island, a so-called unit-detonator. Yes, I can get you the exact U.S.A. governmental specifications of such, and you can have it made up on your side. It consists, I do know, of a large flat steel plate of such-and-such area, with a so-called unit-charge of some given explosive held in an iron box on its underside, and an iron conduit projecting from it, at right angles, some 7 or 8 feet from the other surface of the plate. In that conduit must be a fuse, and on its end a screw-cap to keep the fuse dry. The plate must be buried flat, to just the proper number of feet that the conduit sticks 2 feet out above ground. McCorniss had intended to install one of these on the day before the Centennial; and then, seated on his island, alongside the vertically projecting pipe, stop watch in hand, ignite the uncapped fuse at the moment the instrument in Marysville would be focused on the screen. This would have given a ‘unit shock’ which could have been put into an equation for distance, and, with the instrument deviation, turned into a calibration. It so beautifully happens, I may say, that McCorniss’ island is a certain even number of meters from Marysville so as to fit exactly into this complicated equation.
“No, Your Majesty, you would have to carry it entirely through yourself. For Fate dictated differently here, killing off poor McCorniss, and putting Geogar into the hospital where he’s now dying, and was, at last report, delirious. But one thing I do know: McCorniss and Professor Geogar would both have been highly gratified to know that you were to complete their great experiment, for the very last thing McCorniss said, on the subject, was said to a cousin of mine who’s a mining engineer, and who visited him in Shelby’s Bluff a few days before his death and offered personally to install the thing for him the day before the Centennial and carry through. For McCorniss said: ‘Thanks, Thane Kirby, but with Geogar dying—as I probably am myself—there wouldn’t be any use of anything. I only hope that somebody else with a scientific mind eventually gets the results of our joint work, installs his u.d.—and carries through.’ So that betrays, you see, his profound wish for somebody to complete his and Geogar’s work.
“Yes, Your Majesty, I will inquire of both the Geogar and McCorniss Estates—for both, naturally, will be involved. But the trustees, I know, will undoubtedly pass the device to you for further development. And I, of course, will forward on to you the exact specifications for one of those unit-detonators, since all I really know about one, alas, is that its upper end sticks out of the earth by exactly 2 feet—neither a millimeter less nor a millimeter more—but only heaven knows how far down lies the element which gives the vertically dampened concussive shock—much less the kind of explosive used. Nor do I—but I fear, Your Majesty, we have gone off on a sort of—of tangent, for we were in reality discussing not Geogar, but the Geogar Geodetic Map you have there in front of you now. And which map I well know! And its scale, I regret to say, is too deceptive to make feasible the idea you set forth. For it appears that you have quite no conception of the real distances here in America—as for instance—between Cooperstown, on the Ohiuri—and that Missivazoo Dam on the Lower Big River by-pass. Now a blowing up of the Missivazoo Dam, as you suggest, Your Majesty, would not—in view of the flood over the whole Missivazoo swamp—make itself felt backward up on Big River—or at, to take a specific point as an example for discussion, this Bleeker’s Island to which we were referring—for days, because such withdrawal of water as the removal of that dam would create would be traveling rapidly downstream! Whereas the avalanche of water resulting from the breaking of this dam here would be at Bleeker’s Island within 30 minutes—due to the fact that it too will travel downstream! Though in reality this comes about because of the relative—and the intrinsically huge distances involved, with respect to these 3 points. For whole states, Your Majesty, lie between Cooperstown and Missi—
“That’s the trouble, Your Majesty. That the map you have doesn’t show states. And is deceptive. To one used to British and European distances. For instance, Your Majesty, exactly how far do you think, on that map, Chicago—which is at the tip of that vertical lake—Lake Michigan—is from New York, which I believe is marked?
“You—you can’t estimate, you say? But you do know—that people commute daily—from Chicago to New York? Oh—no—Your Majesty. I—I regret to say quite not. They—they do not even commute between those 2 cities—by air—which by our fastest planes takes 4 and 5 hours. Yes—so that will give you an example of what you are looking at. That area in front of you is as big as China—and there are hundreds of miles between Cooperstown and Missivazoo Dam. Indeed, I talked over this very point, not so many minutes ago, with the President of the United States—though as a matter of pure hypo-theory! I might say, moreover, Your Majesty, that we do not have the powers in this country—such as you have in yours. To—to blow up private property! For even if the blowing-up of this Missivazoo Dam could have any ameliorating effect on the situation at all—which it can’t—it just couldn’t be willy-nilly blown up until condemned—because it is a privately owned power-dam—and with a congress which contains many men inimical to any move our President could make, that dam couldn’t be condemned until at least 40 courts had passed on the matter! Which would be around 10 years from today. Perhaps the next great Big River flood—yes!
“Yes, Your Majesty, I know that you will be able to see this crash at a private showing of any of your newsreels over there, just as we, who are waiting here in the observation tower to see the godawful thing take place, will see it. For there is no fog to speak of way up here at Cooperstown on the Ohiuri, and at least a dozen newsreel motion picture cameras are set up on the high dry side of the Ohiuri—with telescope lenses, of course—and everything cleared and roped off between them and the dam—waiting to grind! There are even a dozen radio-broadcasters with their microphones hanging from every possible sort of thing, including in one case, a bramble bush!—and all with powerful binoculars trained on the general site of the expected crash. And one of them, who is connected by short-wave with Europe and England, is your own countryman!
“How long, Your Majesty? Well—I just talked to the newsreel and radio-broadcast men by phone—and gave them what I am now glad to give you. And so I will say—don’t leave your radio at all! If you want to be absolutely certain to hear graphically described a catastrophe that will be one more thing added to your remarkable knowledge on dams and weirs, and mark millions of dollars of work destroyed in a few minutes. How lo—well, Your Majesty, one hour—at the very most, I would venture. I may be in error, yes, one way or the other—but I’ll average my errors—by calling it one round hour. So stand by, Your Majesty, if you wish to hear—yes, I will—thank you—and good-by!”