The Case of the Petrified Man (5 page)

“The man who strangled Miss Sally knows you saw him do it?” I said.

She nodded. “He saw me and chased me. But I got away to a place he don’t know about. I been laying low for a long time. This morning, early, I hear some men talking about you. They say you’re a detective what finds people even though you’re just a kid. They say you are up on B Street and you have a Sign supposed to be an Eye. So I come uphill and find that Sign with an Eye but I think he is following so I sneak in and lay low. I can’t pay. But I got this.” She reached up and undid a clasp at the back of her neck & held out a little black & gold
cross on a gold chain. Her hand was shaking. “You got to find him and tell people he done it.”

“Don’t worry about paying me now,” I said. “Just tell me his name.”

“I ain’t sure,” said Martha. “Miss Sal, she call him different things and I can’t recall right now.” Her lower lip trembled.

Then she caught sight of the cigar box on my desk & her eyes went so wide you could see the white all around them. “What is
that
?” she said.

“Don’t take any mind of that ghoulish stone baby,” I said, taking the box off my desk and putting it on the floor. “It was just a prank.”

But she was not listening. She had seen something else. Something in my oyster-can waste bucket. She put the gold cross on my desk & bent down & pulled out an old brown apple core.

“Ain’t you gonna eat this?” she said, holding it up.

“No,” I said. “But it is dirty—” Before I could say another word she had devoured it.

“Are you hungry?” I asked.

She nodded. “Powerful hungry,” she said. “I ain’t had nothing but a little barley and raw oats for days and days.”

I said, “Why don’t you come along with me to the Colombo Restaurant? I will buy you breakfast. Or lunch. Or both. You can tell me what you know about the killer.”

“No,” she whispered. “He might see me. Every time I go out I think I see him following me.”

“Who?” I said. “The killer?”

She nodded. “When I was trying to find you just now I feel him after me. So I sneak in and I hid back there.”

I said, “And you cannot remember his name?”

Martha nodded & chewed her lower lip. “Miss Sal, she call him something. I remembered it yesterday…but now I disremember.”

“Do not worry,” I said. “It will come to you. And you are sure it is the killer who is following you?”

“I ain’t sure. I can’t see faraway things so good.” She shuddered. “But I
feel
it is him. I was laying low for so long I thought he’d of gone. But he hasn’t and he is after me, I am sure of it.”

She began to cry.

I gave her a handkerchief & said, “
Fortes fortuna iuvat.
That is Latin for ‘Fortune favors the brave.’”

She said through her tears. “I’m an orphan and I got nobody now. How can I be brave?”

I said, “I am a double orphan. And I don’t have anybody either. That is why we have to be brave.”

She looked up at me with wide eyes. I could not read her expression.

I said, “If you can’t remember his name, can you maybe tell me what he looks like?”

She nodded. “He was tall and slim, with yellow hair and one of them li’l billy goat beards.”

I took out my Detective Notebook and wrote down:

Short Sally’s Killer: tall & slim & blond with a billy goat beard.

I was about to ask her what the killer had been wearing when from outside came a sudden volley of gunshots.

Martha doubled forward with a gasp, clutching her stomach.

The world seemed to stand still & I went cold all over.

Short Sally’s Killer must have followed Martha here.

And now he had shot her.

WERE THOSE PISTOL SHOTS?
asked Martha. Although still doubled over in pain she was looking up at me wide-eyed.

“Yes,” I said. “Where are you hit?”

“I ain’t hit,” she whimpered. “Just hungry. My stomach was asleep but that apple roused it up. Oh!” she gasped again as her stomach cramped.

“Praise be,” I said, “but the person who fired might be the man who is after you. Get back behind the counter while I check.”

I ran to the door & grabbed my hat & as I opened the front door, Martha called out something about a Forest and a Bear, or maybe a Bar.

“Stay!” I commanded. “I will be right back.”

She nodded and sank down out of sight behind the counter.

I went out, closed the door & quickly locked it behind me.

B Street resembled a
Tableau Vivant
with all the carts & wagons & pack animals at a standstill and people staring with open mouths & upraised arms. A cloud of gunsmoke still hung over the scene. As I jumped down off the boardwalk, everybody started to move towards a figure lying in the street.

It was a red-haired, red-bearded man in dark trowsers and a brown & burgundy patterned vest & a rusty black coat. Nearby, his plug hat lay half squashed by a wagon wheel. The man lay on his back, but as I watched, he propped himself up on his elbows & looked down at his patterned vest.

“He shot me,” said the man. “He shot me thrice.”

“I had no choice.” This from a man with 2 smoking revolvers & an English accent.

He was tall & slim & blond with a billy goat beard!

Was he Short Sally’s killer? Had he followed Martha here? If so, then why had he shot the red-bearded man?

His next words answered my question. “I was not looking for trouble. You threw down on me.” The Englishman holstered his guns, a pair of Navy revolvers with ivory grips.

The lying-down red-haired man had three smoking holes in his patterned vest and I saw that some blood was starting to ooze out. He looked at his chest and then back up at the Englishman.

“You shot me thrice,” he repeated. He had an Irish accent
like Mr. O’Malley who had been on Ma & Pa Emmet’s Wagon Train. “Did I hit
you
at all? Did I at least crease you?”

“Afraid not,” said the Englishman. He removed a pipe from his pocket and tapped it on the bottom of his boot.

“At least tell me I’m shot by the famous Farmer Peel,” said the Irishman. “You
are
Farmer Peel? I saw the bullet scar under your eye.”

Sure enough, I saw that the Englishman bore the scar of an old bullet hole under his right cheekbone.

“Don’t call me ‘Farmer,’” he said. “My name is Farner with an
n.
Langford Farner Peel.” He was filling his pipe & I saw from the label on the pouch that he smoked Red Lion tobacco. He lit a match and got it going.

“Stand back!” said a voice. “Make way for the doctor.”

A man pushed through and knelt down beside the injured man.

It was Doc Pinkerton—no relation—who had mended my arm a few days before.

“Oh joy!” drawled a familiar voice behind me. “A Scoop at last. A duel in the street at high noon.” The familiar voice was accompanied by an even more familiar smell of dead critter. Yes, it was Mr. Sam Clemens again.

“It ain’t high noon, Sam,” said another familiar voice. “It is only eight thirty a.m. and this story is mine.”

I turned to see Mr. Dan De Quille had joined us. I recognized him by his long face, dark goatee and sticky-out ears. He smelled of printer’s ink.

“What do you mean, it’s yours?” said Sam in a low tone. “I was here first.”

“That may be,” said Dan, “but I got seniority. All shootings are reported by me. Hands off.”

Like Sam Clemens, Dan De Quille was a reporter for the Territorial Enterprise, but he had been there longer. I judged he was also about five years older than Clemens.

“That ain’t fair!” said Sam Clemens. “I need to fill another two columns today.”

“It may seem unfair,” replied Dan De Quille, “but there it is. Nothing can change it. If you want some gruesome deaths,” he added, “why don’t you waltz on down to the Coroner’s office?”

“I just might do that,” replied Sam Clemens. His eyes were narrowed and he was blowing his pipe smoke down. From that I knew he was riled.

Doc Pinkerton stood up. “This man may live if he gets immediate treatment,” he said. “Somebody help me take him inside.”

Four men stepped forward and each took an arm or a leg.

“Outch! Outch! Outch!” cried the wounded man as they heaved him aloft.

The four men started to take him into the Shamrock Saloon, which had recently opened across the street from my office.

But a burly man on the boardwalk barred their way. He wore an apron around his waist and Expression No. 5 on his face. “Don’t you even think of bringing Murphy in here,” he said in an Irish accent. “I won’t have him bleeding all over my brand new floor.”

“Where, then?” said Doc Pinkerton. “I must get him out of the thoroughfare.”

“I say, bring him in here!” said an English-accented voice. “I have a couch.”

We all looked up to see my neighbor Isaiah Coffin standing in the open door of the Ambrotype & Photographic Gallery next door to my shop. He was hatless & smoking his meerschaum pipe. I realized that he was also
tall & slim & blond with a billy goat beard!

Then I looked around the crowd and saw two other men who fit Martha’s description of Short Sally’s killer.

I thought, “Finding Short Sally’s Killer is not going to be as easy as I expected.”

Then I thought, “I had better ask Martha what he was wearing.”

And finally, “But first I have to get that starving girl some food.”

I headed towards the Colombo Restaurant, walking behind the four men carrying Murphy. They were going the same direction as me anyway.

“Outch! Outch! Outch!” cried Murphy as his friends stepped up onto the boardwalk and carried him into Isaiah Coffin’s Photographic Gallery.

I lingered for a moment outside the open door, then remembered my mission and hurried on to the Colombo Restaurant. All the customers had come out to see what the shooting was about. Now they were shuffling back inside. Some of them still had napkins tucked into their collars or newspapers under their arms.

Gus, the Mexican waiter, gave me a plate of beans & bacon & still-warm biscuits that a customer had left without
touching because the sight of oozing bullet holes had destroyed his appetite. Gus did not even charge me.

Before I went into my office, I peeped through the open doorway of Isaiah Coffin’s Photographic Gallery.

They had put Murphy on a buffalo skin on the couch. Doc Pinkerton was sitting on a chair & bent over him. I could see the four friends & Isaiah Coffin & his Chinese assistant, Ping. I wanted to watch, too, but I had a client to attend to.

My first client.

A poor starving girl who was being hunted by a cold-blooded killer because she was an Eye Witness to murder.

But when I unlocked the door of my office and went inside, I made a distressing discovery.

My first Genuine Client had disappeared.

THE FRONT OF MY OFFICE
opens out onto a boardwalk and street like a normal building in a normal town.

But Virginia is not a normal town. It is built on such a steep mountain that the fronts of the mountain-facing houses are level with the street they face, but many of their backs are often propped up on stilts. Mine was one of those west-facing buildings, with its backside dangling over thin air.

My office is also peculiar in that it has no rear entrance. In the back room there is only a sash
window overlooking the roofs of the buildings on the west side of C Street and that two-story drop between.

When I went back to my bedchamber to search for Martha, I was astounded to see the lower half of the window was wide-open. Had Martha jumped onto the roof of the Washoe Exchange Billiard Saloon? There was a gap of about a yard and a half between the backs of our buildings, but the saloon’s wooden roof is also about six feet below my window.

I could not imagine a terrified girl like Martha making such a leap.

But she had not flown away, so she must have jumped.

I took a deep breath and climbed up onto the sill and gripped the sides of the window frame and prepared to leap.

I was just about to launch myself into space when I saw a wooden ladder nailed to the wooden-plank side of the building below my window! I had never noticed it before, probably because I had never stuck my head out so far. I judged it to be some sort of escape in case of fire.