The Case of the Petrified Man

by Caroline Lawrence

  I said, “I reckon I would rather be pranked than threatened.”

  Sam Clemens narrowed his eyes at the box. “On the other hand,” he said. “That is a mighty ghoulish baby. Maybe it is a threat. Do we have any enemies?”

  I nodded. “Whittlin Walt’s pards.”

  “That’s right,” he said. “I forgot. I hoped they had vamoosed the ranch.”

  He opened a muslin pouch of tobacco and pressed some into the bowl of the “Pipe of a Thousand Smells.” He struck a match & lit it & puffed thoughtfully. Immediately the smell of dead critter got stronger.

  “Ugh!” cried Bee, crinkling her nose into Expression No. 3.

  “What kind of tobacco is that?” I asked. “I do not recognize the smell nor appearance.”

  “Yes,” said Bee, tossing her curls. “I would like to know, too. I will warn my papa never to stock that brand in our Tobacco Emporium.”

  “It’s called Killickinick,” drawled Sam Clemens. “It’s an Injun blend. It is composed of equal parts of tobacco stems, chopped straw, old soldiers, oak leaves, dog-fennel, corn-shucks, sunflower petals, outside leaves of the cabbage plant, and any refuse of any description whatever that costs nothing and will burn.”

  Bee was staring at him openmouthed.

  “I know it is rank,” added Sam Clemens, “but it summons fond memories. It reminds me of what I used to smoke when I was a boy in Hannibal, Missouri. That tobacco was so cheap that we used to trade newspapers for it. It was called ‘Garth’s D-mnedest,’” he added.

  “Oh!” cried Bee, covering her ears with her hands. “I refuse to stay and hear such language!”

  She marched out of the shop, stamping with the heels of her button-up boots.

  Sam Clemens watched Becky Bloomfield flounce out of the shop & puffed thoughtfully on his pipe.

  “This pipe is special, too,” he said. “You will see it is a corncob pipe. This pipe and the smell of the tobacco in it are about my only links with my past.”

  I said, “The smell of Green’s Irish Flake always reminds me of Pa Emmet.”

  “Yes,” he said, “the bond of a man and his tobacco is a sacred one. And a man’s first tobacco forever holds a special place in his heart. Like his first love.”

  At this I remained silent. I have never been in love, nor do I intend to be.

  Sam Clemens puffed and exhaled the smoke up. “Yes, a man may exchange one wife for another, but rarely is he unfaithful to his tobacco.”

  He looked at me with a kind of glint in his eye. “Do you smoke, P.K.?”

  “No,” I said. “But I am interested in different types of tobacco.” I removed the newspaper from my desk to show him my hundred or so labels with bits of tobacco on them. “This is my Big Tobacco Collection. Would you like to test me?”

  “Beg pardon?”

  “I will close my eyes,” I said, “and you hold one of these tobacco samples under my nose. I will tell you what brand it is.”

  He puffed his pipe & shook his head. “P.K., you are a very eccentric person.”

  “Yes,” I agreed. “I have many Foibles and Eccentricities. Plus my Thorn.”

  He said, “What is your Thorn?”

  I said, “I cannot read people easily. Sometimes I do not know whether they are pranking me or not.”

  “Then let me console you with this.” He gave me a pinch of Killickinick and even told me how to spell it.

  Then he departed, closing the door behind him.

  I duly wrote down KILLICKINICK on a cigarrito paper and placed the crumbs he had given me upon it. I had arranged my Collection in Alphabetical order: Killickinick came about halfway between “Aardvark” snuff & “Zepeda” cigars.

  Suddenly, a floorboard near the back of my shop creaked. All the little hairs on the back of my neck prickled again and I froze. For all this time, nearly half an hour, someone had been hiding behind my counter and I had not been consciously aware of it. Now I was.

  Could it be the person who had left the ghoulish baby?

  I leapt from my chair, pulled my Smith & Wesson’s seven-shooter from my pocket and whirled to face the back of my shop.

  “Come out with your hands high,” I commanded. “Or I will fill you full of lead.”

  Ledger Sheet 8

  AT THE BACK OF MY OFFICE are two things.

  No. 1—a counter behind which Sol Bloomfield used to stand to sell his tobacco products.

  No. 2—a door leading to a small back room, which is now my bedchamber.

  Someone was hiding behind that counter. I reckoned they had come in when I was out to breakfast. I had nothing to steal so I had not locked the door. I did not figure someone would creep in to ambush me.

  I thought, “Is it Boz back there?”

  Then I thought, “Or Extra Dub?”

  And finally, “Or maybe both?”

  I heard that floorboard creak again.

  I cocked my Smith & Wesson’s seven-shooter and repeated my warning. “Drop your weapons. Come out with your hands aloft!”

  Although my voice was firm, my heart was batting hard against my ribs.

  A head lifted up above the counter for a moment. I saw dark skin & a pale bonnet.

  The head dipped down again, real quick. It was enough to show me it was a Negro girl of about my age. Her eyes were wide with terror, an expression even I have no trouble reading.

  I uncocked my piece & said, “Do not be afraid. I am putting my revolver away.”

  I put my revolver back in my pocket.

  I was not scared anymore but my hands were still shaky.

  “Please come out,” I said. “I am sorry I threw down on you. I will not hurt you.”

  “Are you the detective,” came a trembly voice, “what finds lost animals and people and solves mysteries?”

  I figured she must have seen my Advertisement.

  “That is me,” I said. “P.K. Pinkerton, Private Eye. Do not be afraid.”

  She came out from behind the counter: barefoot & shivering in a thin cotton nightdress & matching night bonnet. She smelled strongly of some kind of pomade made of cloves, lavender & ammonia, and faintly of horse manure & straw.

  “You got to help me,” said the girl in a whisper. “He killed Miss Sal and now he is gonna kill me, too.” Her accent was about the strongest I ever heard, but I could just about understand her.

  “What is your name and who is Miss Sal?”

  She came a little closer. “Martha,” she whispered. “Miss Sal’s lady’s maid.”

  I said, “Miss Sal? Do you mean Short Sally, the Soiled Dove who got her throat cut last week?”

  Martha frowned. “She wasn’t no dove. She was a Lady. And she was strangulated, not cut.”

  I said, “Strangulated? I heard she got her throat cut from ear to ear.”

  Martha gave a kind of shudder. “Oh no, sir. I was there. I heard him do it. Saw it, too. She was a-choking an’ a-gasping.” Martha hugged herself. “It was awful. And then he came for me.”

  “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.

  Ledger Sheet 9

  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 couc
h.”

  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.

  Ledger Sheet 10