Thomas Godfrey (Ed)

by Murder for Christmas

  “Well remembered, Mr. Boswell.” He stuffed the coiled paper into his capacious pocket. “Come, let us be off.”

  I bade farewell to my tea as I followed him. We found the publick room of the Three Crowns nigh empty, its only occupants being the idling tapster, and two men drinking in the ingle; but one of them was the man we sought. His companion was a likely-looking youth with a high-bridged nose, who pledged him in nappy ale.

  “Good day, friend,” Dr. Johnson accosted the maimed sailor.

  The fresh-faced youth rose quietly, pulled a respectful forelock, and made off. Dr. Johnson looked at the sailorman’s tankard, now empty, and signed to the tapster.

  Not that the sailorman’s tongue wanted loosening. Previous potations had already done the business. He was all too ready to spin his yarn.

  “Nine sea fights I come through,” he cried, “and lost my peg in the end, mort dieu, in Quiberon Bay.

  He dealt his wooden member a mighty thump with the again emptied tankard. My worthy friend, ever ready to relieve the lot of the unfortunate, once more signed to the tapster. As the can was filling, he animadverted upon the wretchedness of a sea-life.

  “I marvel, that any man will be a sailor, who has contrivance enough to get himself into a gaol; for being in a ship is being in gaol with the chance of being drowned.”

  “Ah,” said the peg-legged sailor mournfully, and buried his nose in his pot.

  My friend pressed upon him a gratuity in recognition of his perils passed. The sailorman accepted of it with protestations of gratitude.

  “’Tis nothing, sir,” replied my kindly friend. “Do you but gratify my whim, I’ll call myself overpaid.”

  “How, whim?” says the sailorman.

  “I’ve a whim,” says Johnson, “to borrow your wooden leg for a matter of half an hour.”

  I stared with open mouth, but the sailorman shewed no flicker of surprize. He unstrapped the contrivance immediately and put it in my friend’s hand.

  “Pray, Bozzy,” said Dr. Johnson, “see that our worthy friend here lacks for nothing until I come again.”

  Before I could put a question he had withdrawn, the unstrapped peg in his hand. I was left to the company of the tapster and the loquacious sailorman. He insisted upon telling me how he had made his peg himself, and how it had often been admired for its artistry.

  “Here’s this young fellow now,” he rattled on, gesturing vaguely across the common, “he thinks it a rarity, and but this morning he had it of me for an hour at a time.”

  This statement but doubled my puzzlement. What in the world could a two-legged man want with a peg-leg? Surely my learned friend was not intending to personate the one-legged sailorman? Had the high-nosed youth done so? I tried to recall the glimpse I had had of the one-legged beggar by the kitchen garden.

  When Dr. Johnson returned, he returned in his own guise. We left the sailorman, by this time snorting with vinous stertorousness in the corner of the ingle, and walked across the common back to the house.

  “Pray, sir, what success? Did you find the diamond?”

  “Find the diamond? No, sir, I did not find the diamond; but I know where it is, and I know how to lay the thief by the heels.”

  He dug from his pocket the strange strip of paper. Between the lines of Ogam he had penned the message:

  “£140 tonight 12 a clock y‘ oak nighest y‘ 3 crowns”

  “What shall this signify?”

  “Nay, Bozzy, ’tis plain. But here comes our friend Dr. Thomas. Pray, not a word more.”

  I was seething with curiosity as we supped at the Thrales’ sumptuous table. The talk turned, willy-nilly, to the strange way in which the Christmas gem had been spirited from the library. Dr. Johnson admitted himself baffled. He was in a depression from which he could not be wooed even by the blandishments of the spaniel Belle, who, spurred by hunger, begged eagerly for scraps; until a new larceny, committed against himself, restored him to good humour.

  It must be said that Dr. Sam Johnson is scarce a dainty feeder. He is a valiant trencherman, and stows away vast quantities of his favourite comestibles.

  “Ma’am,” says he on this occasion, unbuttoning the middle button of his capacious vest and picking a capon wing in his fingers, “ma’am, where the dinner is ill gotten, the family is somehow grossly wrong; there is poverty, ma’am, or there is stupidity; for a man seldom thinks more earnestly of anything than of his dinner, and if he cannot get that well done, he should be suspected of inaccuracy in other things.”

  “Oh,” says Mrs. Thrale, not knowing how to take this, but willing to turn it against him, “did you never, then, sir, huff your wife about your meat?”

  “Why, yes,” replied he, taking a second wing in his fingers, “but then she huffed me worse, for she said one day as I was going to say grace: ‘Nay, hold,’ says she, ‘and do not make a farce of thanking GOD for a dinner which you will presently protest to be uneatable.’”

  At this there was a general laugh; under cover of which Belle the spaniel, tempted beyond endurance, reared boldly up, snatched the capon wing from the philosopher’s fingers, and ran out of door with it.

  “Fie, Belle,” cried out Mrs. Thrale, “you used to be upon honour!”

  “Ay,” replied the Doctor with his great Olympian laugh, “but here has been a bad influence lately!”

  Not another word would he say, but devoted himself to a mighty veal pye with plums and sugar.

  Yet when we rose from the table, he sought out the guilty Belle and plied her with dainties.

  “’Tis a worthy canine, Bozzy,” cried he to me, “for she has told me, not only how Miss Fanny’s diamond was spirited from the library, but by whose contrivance. Between the good Belle, and yonder strange paper of Ogam, I now know where the conspirators shall meet, and when, and who they are, and what their object is; to prevent which, I shall make one at the rendezvous. Do you but join me, you shall see all made plain.”

  I was eager to do so. Muffled in greatcoats, we crossed the common and took up our station under the great oak a stone’s cast from the Three Crowns. As the wind rattled the dry branches over our heads, I was minded of other vigils we had shared and other miscreants we had laid by the heels.

  The darkness was profound. Across the common we saw window after window darken in the Thrale house as the occupants blew out their candles. Then I became aware of motion in the darkness, and towards us, stealing along the path, came a muffled shape, utterly without noise, flitting along like a creature of the night. For a moment we stood rigid, not breathing; then Dr. Johnson stepped forward and collared the advancing figure. It gave a startled squeak, and was silent. Dr. Johnson pulled the hat from the brow. In the starlight I stared at the face thus revealed.

  ’Twas Dr. Thomas! I beheld with horror his awful confusion at being detected.

  “Alas, Dr. Johnson, ’tis I alone am guilty! But pray, how have you smoaked me?”

  “Ogam,” says Dr. Johnson, looking sourly upon the clergyman. “Trust me, you knew that was no Ogam. Ogam is incised on both edges of a right angle, not scribbled on paper.”

  “That is so, sir. You have been too sharp for me. I will confess all. ’Tis my fatal passion for Welsh antiquities. I have pawned the very vestments of my office to procure them. I took Miss Fanny’s gem, I confess it, and flung it from the window wrapped in a leaf from my pocket book.”

  “I see it!” I exclaimed. “ ’Twas thrown at hazard, and the one-legged sailor carried it thence hid in the hollow of his wooden leg.

  “Nothing of the kind,” said Dr. Johnson. “The role of the sailor and his wooden leg was quite other. But say, how much had you for the gem?”

  “Two hundred pounds,” replied the fallen clergyman. “Two hundred pounds! The price of my honour! Alas,” he cried in a transport of remorse, falling on his knees and holding up his hands to Heaven, “had I, when I stood at those crossroads, gone another way, had I but heeded the voice within me which cried, Turn aside, turn aside, lest
thou fall into the hands of thine enemy, had I but gone swiftly upon the strait way, then in truth we might at the grave’s end have met together in the hereafter...”

  Dr. Johnson heard this piteous avowal unmoved, but not so I. ’Twas a solemn sight to see the unfortunate man wring his hands and cry out with anguish, turning up his eyes to Heaven. Suddenly, however, his gaze fixed eagerly upon the darkened inn. In the same instant Dr. Johnson whirled, and ran, swiftly for all his bulk, to where a light coach was just getting in motion. I heard the harness jingle, and then the startled snort of a horse as my fearless friend seized the near animal by the bit and forced it to a halt.

  “So,” he cried angrily, “you’ll meet them hereafter at Gravesend! Never a whit. Come down, sir! Come down, miss!”

  For a moment there was only the jingle of harness as the nervous horses pranced. Then a figure stepped to earth, a tall young man muffled to his high-bridged nose in a heavy cape, and lifted down after him the cloaked figure of—

  Miss Fanny Plumbe!

  “Pray, Dr. Johnson,” she said statelily, “why do you hinder us? What have we done?”

  “You have diddled your father, and all of us,” replied my companion sternly, “sending Bacon’s cypher to Jack Rice here with those letters you gave up so meekly—once you had the diamond that you might turn into journey-money.”

  The chit’s composure was wonderful.

  “Why, sir,” she owned with a smile, “you gave me a turn when you decyphered my last message by the hand of Sally; whom indeed, Mr. Boswell—” turning to me— “I no longer dared trust when she became so great with you. But confess, Dr. Johnson, my French held you off, after all, until I was able to convey a new cypher to Jack by the hand of the sailorman.”

  “And Dr. Thomas was your accomplice in making away with the gem?” I cried in uncontrollable curiosity.

  “Be not so gullible, Bozzy,” cried my companion impatiently, “trust me, Dr. Thomas knew never a word of the matter until Miss here opened her mind to him in their close conference on Christmas Day. ’Twas the hussy herself that conveyed her diamond to her lover, that he might turn it into money for their elopement.”

  “Nay, how? For she never left the room.”

  “But Belle did—and carried with her the diamond, affixed to her riband by the hand of Miss Fanny. Out flies the dog to greet her friend the neighbour lad in his mummer’s disguise; who apprised of the scheam, caresses his canine friend and removes the brilliant in the same operation.”

  “That is so, sir,” said Jack Rice.

  “Surely,” said Miss Fanny, “surely I did no wrong, to convey my jewel to the man I mean to wed.”

  “That’s as may be,” said my friend, unrelenting, “but now, miss, do you accompany us back to the house, for there’ll be no elopement this night.”

  “Pray, sir,” said Dr. Thomas earnestly, “be mollified. The lad is a good lad, and will have a competence when once he turns twenty-one; and I have engaged to make one in their flight and bless their union, which the surly Alderman opposes out of mere ill nature.”

  “To this I cannot be a party,” began my authoritarian friend. The little clergyman was fumbling in his pocket. He brought forth, not a weapon, but a prayer-book.

  “Do you, John, take this woman...” he began suddenly.

  “Hold, hold!” cried Johnson.

  “I do,” cried the lad in a ringing voice.

  “And do you, Fanny...”

  Jack Rice pulled a seal-ring from his finger.

  “I do.”

  “Then I pronounce you man and wife.” The ring hung loose on the girl’s slim finger, but it stayed on. “You are witnesses, Dr. Johnson, Mr. Boswell,” cried the little clergyman. “Will not you salute the bride?”

  Dr. Johnson lifted his great shoulders in concession.” I wish you joy, my dear.”

  As the coach with its strangely-assorted trio of honeymooners receded in the distance:

  “Pray, Dr. Johnson,” said I, “resolve me one thing. If the strange message was not Ogam, what was it?”

  JOHNSON: “Simple English.”

  BOSWELL: “How can this be?”

  JOHNSON: “The triangles and scratches along the edges of yonder paper were halved lines of writing, and had only to be laid together to be read off.”

  BOSWELL: “Yet how are the top and bottom of a single strip of paper to be laid together?”

  JOHNSON: “The Spartans, of whom you yourself reminded me, did it by means of a staff or scytale, around which the strip is wound, edge to edge, both for writing and for reading.”

  BOSWELL: “Hence your search for a staff or broomstick.”

  JOHNSON: “Yes, sir. Now it went in my mind, yonder one-legged man had a strange wooden leg, which did not taper as they usually do, but was straight up and down like a post. Was he perhaps both the emissary and the key? At the cost of a half-crown I had it of him—carried it out of his sight that he might not babble of my proceedings—and read the communication with ease.”

  BOSWELL: “This is most notable, sir. I will make sure to record it this very night.”

  JOHNSON: “Pray, Mr. Boswell, spare me that; for though the play-acting clergyman with his two hundred pounds and his Welsh antiquities failed to deceive me, yet ’tis cold truth that under my nose a green boy has conspired with a school-girl to steal first a diamond and then the lass herself; so let’s hear no more on’t.”

  You’ll be sorry you did this, Agnes!

  Plum pudding is one of the best known, but least sampled of Christmas dishes. It is very difficult to prepare properly, as it takes much time and patience. It was never made with plums ('plum' probably coming from a word meaning plump. ) Instead it is made from porridge, meat, raisins, currants, rum, brandy, flour, sugar, butter, eggs and a variety of spices. Several objects like a button or a ring would be mixed in with the pudding, which would have a special significance to the finder. A poorly prepared pudding could be a great ordeal for the diner……

  A Chaparral Christmas Gift - O. Henry

  The legacy of O. Henry is the American short story. Eight years after his death, the American Society of Arts and Sciences founded an award in his name that is given to the best American efforts in that form each year. English professors have coined the term “O. Henry twist” to describe the sudden ironic turn of events that often conclude his stories. He drew on every aspect of American life, from Manhattan to the frontier—places he had known first-hand.

  Perhaps the most arresting fact about O. Henry is that almost all his stories, thirteen volumes in all, were written in the last six years of his life. When he died, he left enough unpublished material to fill four additional collections.

  Porter spent much of his life travelling. He even served some time in jail on a charge of embezzlement. By the time he got around to setting his stories down on paper, he had probably told them many times over. Although he could be ironic and fatalistic about situations, he was never bitter. His stories had a folksy, humanistic touch that made him a durable storyteller, one of America s best loved.

  “A Chaparral Christmas Gift” comes from the collection Whirligigs, published in the last year of his life. It is a thoughtful story, well told, about the West that Porter knew in his younger days. American crime fiction owes much to the style and substance of O. Henry. His influence can be traced through succeeding generations of writers as diverse as Damon Runyon and Dashiell Hammett, to works on which the ink is yet undried.

  The original cause of the trouble was about twenty years in growing.

  At the end of that time it was worth it.

  Had you lived anywhere within fifty miles of Sundown Ranch you would have heard of it. It possessed a quantity of jet-black hair, a pair of extremely frank, deep-brown eyes and a laugh that rippled across the prairie like the sound of a hidden brook. The name of it was Rosita McMullen; and she was the daughter of old man McMullen of the Sundown Sheep Ranch.

  There came riding on red roan steeds—or, to be m
ore explicit, on a paint and a flea-bitten sorrel—two wooers. One was Madison Lane, and the other was the Frio Kid. But at that time they did not call him the Frio Kid, for he had not earned the honours of special nomenclature. His name was simply Johnny McRoy.

  It must not be supposed that these two were the sum of the agreeable Rosita’s admirers. The bronchos of a dozen others champed their bits at the long hitching rack of the Sundown Ranch. Many were the sheeps’-eyes that were cast in those savannas that did not belong to the flocks of Dan McMullen. But of all the cavaliers, Madison Lane and Johnny McRoy galloped far ahead, wherefore they are to be chronicled.

  Madison Lane, a young cattleman from the Nueces country, won the race. He and Rosita were married one Christmas day. Armed, hilarious, vociferous, magnanimous, the cowmen and the sheepmen, laying aside their hereditary hatred, joined forces to celebrate the occasion.

  Sundown Ranch was sonorous with the cracking of jokes and six-shooters, the shine of buckles and bright eyes, the outspoken congratulations of the herders of kine.

  But while the wedding feast was at its liveliest there descended upon it Johnny McRoy, bitten by jealousy, like one possessed.

  “I’ll give you a Christmas present,” he yelled, shrilly, at the door, with his. 45 in his hand. Even then he had some reputation as an offhand shot.

  His first bullet cut a neat underbit in Madison Lane’s right ear. The barrel of his gun moved an inch. The next shot would have been the bride’s had not Carson, a sheepman, possessed a mind with triggers somewhat well oiled and in repair. The guns of the wedding party had been hung, in their belts, upon nails in the wall when they sat at table, as a concession to good taste. But Carson, with great promptness, hurled his plate of roast venison and frijoles at McRoy, spoiling his aim. The second bullet, then, only shattered the white petals of a Spanish dagger flower suspended two feet above Rosita’s head.

  The guests spurned their chairs and jumped for their weapons. It was considered an improper act to shoot the bride and groom at a wedding. In about six seconds there were twenty or so bullets due to be whizzing in the direction of Mr. McRoy.