“Dad, in the past you have accused me of putting forth crazy ideas. I think the score is even now.”
“I’ll have that show traced,” Dad declared, ignoring my references to the stability of his mind. “Since it is coming to Greenville next week it can’t be far away now. I may find it worthwhile to call on the publicity agent and have a little chat with him.”
During Dad’s outburst, I had pulled to the shoulder of the road. I looked back up at the billboard again and read the dates.
“Dad, the show will play here during Pilgrimage Week. What a shame. It’s certain to take away customers from a much more worthwhile event.”
“There may not be any Wild West Show. Not when I get through with the outfit!”
As soon as we arrived at home, Dad called the newspaper office, delegating City Editor DeWitt to obtain complete information about the western show and to report to him. All evening he talked of nothing but his theory until both Mrs. Timms and I confessed that we were a bit weary of the subject.
“I shall write an editorial for tomorrow’s Examiner,” Dad announced. “Even if I haven’t absolute facts, I’ll drop a few broad hints about those fake stones.”
My father’s editorial, cleverly worded but with very definite implications, was composed that night and telephoned to the newspaper office. I had the pleasure of reading it at breakfast the next morning.
“You certainly did yourself proud, Dad. However, I imagine the museum people aren’t going to be too pleased. Nor certain other folks in this town.”
“Let me take a look at it,” Dad said, reaching for the paper.
As I handed the paper over to him, the doorbell rang. I went to answer it. George Roth stood on the porch.
“Good morning,” he said. “Is your father here?”
“Yes, he is eating breakfast. Won’t you come in?”
Mr. Roth walked ahead of me into the living room.
“Good morning, George,” Dad called out from his chair at the breakfast table. “Will you have a cup of coffee with us?”
Ignoring the invitation, Mr. Roth entered the dinette, blocking the doorway. From his pocket, he took a copy of the morning Examiner.
“Fielding,” he said curtly, “I’ve just read your editorial, and I demand an explanation. Do you realize what you’ve done?”
“Written a pretty fair stickful—or so my daughter tells me.” Dad smiled, to all appearances undisturbed.
“You’ve deliberately tried to smear me.”
“I don’t recall that your name was mentioned in the editorial.”
“No, but you know I expect to sell those two stones to the museum. This editorial of yours may spook my buyer.”
“Then it will have fulfilled its purpose. Those stones are fakes. If you aren’t aware of it, I suggest that you acquaint yourself with the true facts.”
“Those stones bear genuine inscriptions carved by William Hickok himself. There’s no connection with any cheap western show, and I defy you to prove otherwise.”
“Consider your challenge accepted,” my father said evenly. “I expect to publish the true facts very shortly in the Examiner.”
“If you prevent me from making a sale to the museum, I’ll sue you!” George Roth threatened. “That’s all I have to say. Good morning.”
In his anger, he turned so quickly that he ran into me. Without bothering to apologize, he brushed past me and left out the front door.
“What a dreadful man!” said Mrs. Timms, who had been eavesdropping from the kitchen.
“I rather expected him to call, although not quite so early in the morning,” Dad said, reaching for a slice of toast. “His attitude doesn’t bother me in the least.”
“He may actually sue you if you don’t make good on producing facts,” I pointed out. “How are you going to do it?”
“DeWitt informs me that the same Wild West Show is playing at Bryan this week. I’ll drive over there today and see what I can learn.”
Bryan is a small city located sixty-nine miles from Greenville. I talked Dad into taking me with him.
By early afternoon, Dad and I were at the outskirts of Bryan. Two large blue and red show tents had been set up in a muddy field at the edge of town. A band played lackadaisically, and townspeople were pouring past the ticket-taker, an ancient cowboy dressed in buckskins and a motheaten ten-gallon hat and wearing a rather rusty six-shooter in a holster around his waist.
“This all looks rather intriguing,” I said.
“Go buy yourself a ticket,” Dad said, smiling. “I’ll meet you here by the entrance in an hour.”
“Don’t you want to see the show, Dad?”
“I’ve outgrown such foolishness. I’ll find the publicity agent and have my little talk with him.”
Inside the tent, things got off to a lackluster start. Two groups of cowboys—most of them appearing almost as elderly as the ticket-taker and riding equally elderly mounts —ambled into the arena from opposite directions. A couple of the cowboys tried to urge their horses on to greater efforts, but the animals appeared to be collectively suffering from an acute case of equine deafness. Later on, when the explosions started, I would come to see the wisdom in choosing such hard-of-hearing mounts.
Despite their torpor, the horses were the best actors in the ring. One group of decrepit cowboys wore white hats, and the other wore black. They all carried six-shooters, which even from a distance looked more like toys for little boys than the real thing.
One of the white hats murmured something unintelligible, and one of the black hats replied with a long rambling speech only half of which was loud enough to hear. The most exciting part of his rebuttal was when one of the horses decided to answer the call of nature onto the boots of one of the other white hats who’d unwisely decided to dismount.
The upshot of the speeches—as far as I could tell—was that Wild Bill Hickok was soon to arrive and straighten everybody out.
After ten more minutes of unenthusiastic and mostly inaudible argument between the white hats and the black hats—and a second horse deciding to do his business—another cowboy entered the arena.
I immediately recognized this new arrival as the ancient ticket-taker, although he’d added an item to his costume. Stuffed beneath his moth-eaten ten-gallon hat, he now wore a bright red wig, cut into a fashionable bob. The wig looked like it had been purloined from a department store mannequin and then rolled about in the dust and stomped on a few times in a futile attempt to make it look less absurd on the head of a wrinkled old man dressed in buckskins and a fringed vest.
“I’m Wild Bill Hickok!” shouted the bewigged cowboy. “Prepare to die, you yellow-bellied, lily-livered no-good—”
I could see why the ancient ticket-taker had landed the starring role. His delivery was wooden, but at least I could hear every word.
Unfortunately, his performance was marred by a fit of coughing, so we never did discover what further insults Wild Bill intended to heap upon the heads of the assembled white and black hats.
The old cowboy hauled a bandana out of his vest pocket and proceeded to direct explosively productive coughs into its wrinkled recesses. I wondered how long this would go on before someone would step in and deliver the remainder of his lines on his behalf, just to keep the show moving along.
In the end, I never did get to find out how his speech turned out. From somewhere beneath the stage there was an explosion like a firecracker being set off.
I expected at least one of the horses to rear at the sound, but instead, they continued to placidly nose about in the straw. Clearly, exploding fire-crackers in the vicinity were pure routine for these indifferent beasts.
After a delay of about five seconds, one of the white hats fell gingerly from his saddle and slumped on the straw, half-heartedly writhing and clutching at his heart.
A trifle late, Wild Bill then raised his six-shooter and trained it on the white hats, all the while continuing to hack uncontrollably into his handkerchief.
Another firecracker went off beneath the stage and one of the black hats—inexplicably, I thought, seeing as Wild Bill’s gun was pointed at the group clustered on the opposite side of the arena—slipped from his horse clutching his head.
After that, there was a volley of explosions, and the remaining cowboys were shot dead in rapid succession.
Several of the last to be shot did not even pretend to fall but jumped down and then carefully lay down in the straw. One lay directly on top of a deposit left behind by one of the horses earlier in the proceedings.
A black hat, fulfilling a double role as ringmaster, hauled himself to his feet, brushed himself off and listlessly announced that this was intermission and delicious refreshments—headlined by Calamity Jane’s World-Famous Chili Chow—were for sale at stands outside the tent. He then ominously added that no refunds would be offered to those who were regrettably unable to return after intermission to enjoy the promised “thrilling return of Wild Bill Hickok to fight a murderous band of rebel scouts.”
Bewigged Wild Bill might be obliged to return for the final act of the show and pick off murderous rebel scouts one by one if he could manage it between locating a clean handkerchief and hacking up his second lung, but I was not likewise obligated to remain. I followed the stream of disgruntled townspeople streaming down the bleachers and exited the tent in search of my father.
Dad was not waiting at the entranceway as I had expected him to be. After loitering about for a time, I inquired of a workman and learned that my father was in one of the small tents close by. The flap had been rolled back, giving me a good view of a sharp-faced man of about thirty who sat at a desk piled with papers.
“Is that the show’s publicity agent?” I asked the workman.
“Yep, Bill McJavins,” he answered. “He’s sure put new life into this outfit. We’ve been packin’ them in ever since he took over. ‘Course the crowds a mite bit punier the second half, but that don’t matter once the ticket’s paid for.”
Within a few minutes, Dad came out of the tent and joined me, and from the expression on his face, I immediately guessed that his interview had not been successful.
“I take it that Bill McJavins didn’t break down sobbing with remorse and confess to the error of his ways?”
“He denied any connection with those stones found in Greenville,” my father said morosely, “but in the next breath, he admitted he knew all about them and intends to capitalize on the story. I gather the program consists of a historical pageant of sorts.”
“That would be a flattering name for it,” I said. “The entire first half was taken up with a very poorly coordinated gunfight between a rather elderly Wild Bill Hickock wearing a lady’s wig and two feuding factions of cowboys. I strongly suspect that Wild Bill might benefit from a lengthy stay at a sanitarium until he gets his lung ailment under control. I would have stayed for the promised thrilling conclusion, but it was so pathetically amateurish that I couldn’t help feeling sorry for the actors.”
“You can feel all the pity you want for the cast of the show, but I wouldn’t waste a shred of compassion on their publicity agent. It’s my guess that McJavins hopes to boost ticket sales by capitalizing on the finding of those rocks near Greenville. I think he was banking on the discoveries stimulating renewed interest in the local legends involving Wild Bill Hickok, and it seems to be working. It’s a cheap trick, and the hoax would have been exposed a long time ago if museum authorities were awake.”
We returned to Greenville in virtual silence. It was exactly noon when we reached the newspaper office where I left Dad to his editorial duties. He declined my invitation to lunch with me downtown.
I crossed the street to have a sandwich at a quick-lunch cafe. As I reached the restaurant, I observed a familiar figure coming toward me.
“Abigail Whitely, what are you doing downtown this time of day?”
“I’m skipping my chemistry class. I said I had a dentist appointment, but that’s not the truth. Mr. Coaten expects me to meet him at the Fischer Building. Can you tell me where it is?”
“Three blocks straight down the street,” I told her. “It’s none of my affair, but I do hope you’re not agreeing to Mr. Coaten’s proposal.”
“The adoption? Yes, I am, Mrs. Carter. I’ve tried to hold out against them all, but I can’t do it. Ted signed the papers two days ago. Since then I’ve had no peace. Ted keeps after me, the Sandersons want me to do it, and Mr. Coaten says I’m selfish to keep making him wait.”
“We both know Mr. Coaten intends to profit in some way at your expense.”
“I do feel that way about it. If only I dared stand firm—”
“You must,” I said. “You’re to break that appointment and have luncheon with me. I’ll assume all the responsibility.”
Chapter Twenty
Abigail allowed herself to be dissuaded from meeting with Mr. Coaten, but not without grave misgivings. As she lunched with me at the Dolman Cafe, she painted a gloomy picture of what lay before her.
“You don’t understand how it is,” she said, slowly stirring a cup of hot chocolate. “I really haven’t a good reason for refusing to consent to the adoption. If I had one scrap of evidence against Mr. Coaten, it would be different.”
“Can’t you write to someone in Texas and inquire about him and his friend?”
“I did,” Abigail said. “The answer came back that Mr. Coaten was unknown at the address he gave the Sandersons.”
“I should think that would be sufficient reason for distrusting him.”
“Mr. Coaten explained it away by saying that his family just moved to a new house and that he inadvertently had given me the wrong address.”
“Did you ask for the second one, Abigail?”
“Yes, and he gave it to me. But so far I’ve not had time for a reply to my second letter.”
“My advice is to stall for time,” I said. “If we have even a few days more we may dig up some information.”
“Mr. Coaten will be furious because I didn’t keep the appointment. He’s certain to come to the tourist camp tonight and demand an explanation.”
“Just tell him you changed your mind and refuse to say anything more. I wish I could talk to him.”
“So do I. Why not have dinner with us tonight—if you can stand our brand of hospitality.”
“Well, I don’t know. Florence and I plan to go to Mrs. Covington’s place directly after she gets off work at the library—”
“Oh, I wish I could go with you to Roseacres. I never have had an opportunity to finish my sketch. Mrs. Covington is such an interesting character, too.”
“You don’t know the half of it,” I told her. “You’re welcome to come along. I think Mrs. Covington will be willing to share our secret with you.”
“Secret?”
“No questions now, please,” I said, capturing both luncheon checks. “We must hurry, or you’ll be late getting back to school.”
Later that afternoon, when the three of us called at Roseacres, Mrs. Covington seemed to scarcely notice that Abigail was an uninvited member of the party. At once she began talking of the missing pearls.
“Imagine finding a tunnel leading from the old wishing well to the house,” said Abigail. “Take me through it. Show me everything.”
“Perhaps you can find the pearls,” I said. “So far, Florence and I have failed.”
“They’re supposed to be hidden somewhere near the old wishing well,” Florence said. “That’s the only real clue we have.”
“I suppose you looked under the flagstones?”
“I did that many days ago,” answered Mrs. Covington. “In fact, I don’t think there’s a single place I haven’t searched.”
“The roof of the well?” Abigail suggested.
“We never once thought of that place,” Florence said. “But how could the necklace be secreted there?” She frowned as she stared at the steep-pitched, shingled covering which formed a protection over the we
ll.
“It’s worth looking at anyhow,” I said. “I’ll get a ladder if I can find one.”
Mrs. Covington directed me to the woodshed, and I soon returned carrying a dusty stepladder. It was a trifle ricketier than I would have preferred, but I braced it against the well, clambered onto it and began to inspect the roof.
“Find anything?” Abigail asked.
“Two birds’ nests. There seems to be a hole under the edge of the roofing—” I broke off as I ran my hand into the narrow opening. “Yes, there is something here! It feels like a tiny box.” I withdrew my hand from the hole and triumphantly held up a small leather case.
“Might this be it?”
“Oh, yes, yes!” Mrs. Covington was beside herself with delight. “It is the old jewel case. The pearls must be inside!”
In my haste to climb down from the ladder, I missed one of the steps. Abigail seized my arm, saving me from a hard fall. When I’d recovered my balance, I offered the jewel case to Mrs. Covington.
We clustered around Mrs. Covington as she ceremoniously opened the lid. In a nest of yellowed silk lay a string of large and lustrous matched pearls.
“The famous Covington pearls,” the widow murmured at last. “This necklace brought only unhappiness to our family. Now, however, they shall serve a useful purpose. I shall sell the pearls. They represent a small fortune, and by disposing of them, I’ll be well-provided for in my old age. It won’t be necessary for me to pinch and skimp. I’ll be able to hold my head up in society—live like a human being again instead of a recluse.”
Mrs. Covington snapped shut the jewel case and smiled at us.
“I never should have found the pearls by myself. To tell you that I am grateful scarcely expresses my feelings. You’ve saved me from poverty.”
“Abigail did it,” I said. “Florence and I never would have thought of searching the roof of the well.”
“Do come inside,” Mrs. Covington said. “We’ll have tea in my kitchen. It’s not much to offer, but I did bake a little sponge cake this morning.”
Jane Carter Historical Cozies: Omnibus Edition (Six Mystery Novels) Page 83
