The Case of the Petrified Man

by Caroline Lawrence

  “But why ledger books?” said the Rev.

  “So they would look even on the shelf,” I said.

  Mr. William Morris Stewart shook his head and gave a half smile. “Do you need anything else?”

  I nodded. “Coffee,” I said. “Black, please. Also I am hungry.”

  And that was how I came to be here in prison, accused of committing the very crime I have been diligently trying to solve. Now it is late & my coffee is finished & both pieces of layer cake that my Lawyer brought me for dessert. Even the night jailer is asleep so I am going to sleep as well.

  I have written this account as fairly & accurately as I could.

  I will swear on the Bible to that.

  You can see that Deputy Marshal Jack Williams has got it in for me because he blames me for the recent spate of shooting affrays here in Virginia City & because I am a Misfit & half Indian.

  Yes, I confess I am half Indian.

  Yes, I confess I vanquished the previous Chief of the Comstock last week and maybe that caused some competition for the position.

  Yes, I confess that Trouble seems to follow me wherever I go.

  But, no, I did not murder the Soiled Dove who went by the name of Short Sally Sampson. It is true that I do not have an alibi for most of that night apart from the few hours I was in an Opium Den, but if you read my account of that case and also of this one, you will know that I am guilty of nothing more than trying to help a poor frightened girl & of searching out the Truth behind a dastardly deed that the Law had forgotten.

  Dear Mr. Judge and/or Gentlemen of the Jury: please judge me NOT GUILTY and set me free to solve this crime.

  Ledger Sheet 42

  AS YOU CAN PROBABLY TELL from the fact that I am now writing in ink, not pencil, I am not in Jail anymore.

  Here is how it happened.

  After I wrote the account you have just read, I put down my pencil, climbed onto the hard & narrow shelf of my cell & fell asleep upon the instant.

  The next morning I was woken by a cheerful argument.

  It was the night jailer and a new jailer I had not seen before. I guessed he was the Saturday Jailer as it was Saturday. They were debating something in the newspaper.

  One of them kept saying, “It’s true, I tell you.”

  “No, it ain’t,” said the Night Jailer. “I am telling you. It’s a big Hoax.”

  “No! They really found a Petrified Man out there in the desert. Place called Gravelly Ford.”

  “I ain’t never heard of no Gravelly Ford,” said the Night Jailer.

  “But they wouldn’t of printed it if it warn’t true.” He picked up the paper and read. “Listen to this. This is how they describe the posture of the man.”

  When he said the word posture I remembered what Jace told me & I adopted the pose as he read the description.

  “‘The body was in a sitting posture,’” began the Night Jailer, “‘leaning against a huge mass of croppings; the attitude was pensive, the right thumb resting against the side of the nose; the left thumb partially supported the chin, the forefinger pressing the inner corner of the left eye and drawing it partly open; the right eye was closed, and the fingers of the right hand spread apart.’”

  I found when I adopted this posture that I was thumbing my nose with my right hand like Belle Donne, and pulling down the lower lid of my left eye, just like Mr. Absalom Smith at Topliffe’s Theatre when he was telling a joke.

  “Thar!” cried the Night Jailer. “Look at the boy! He’s doing what the paper describes. See? That reporter is cocking a snook at us.”

  The other prisoners were laughing and nodding.

  “But they wouldn’t of printed it if it warn’t true,” repeated the Saturday Jailer.

  “Course they would. Look at the name of the fellow who wrote it.”

  “Josh?” said the other one. “What does that prove?”

  “Well, ‘josh’ means ‘joke,’ don’t it?”

  “It could be his real name.”

  “Don’t be a numbskull,” said the Night Jailer. “Those fellows hardly ever use their real names.”

  At that moment I had a Revelation.

  It was as if the Clouds of Heaven had parted and God had sent a great Sunbeam of Illumination into my brain.

  Martha had heard Sally call the Killer “Deforrest” & “Lieutenant Robards.”

  My Lawyer had told me that a “Lieutenant Deforrest Robards” was a deserter from the Reb Army.

  But why would a deserter who had escaped to a new town keep his real name?

  He would adopt a false name, like Sam Clemens who called himself “Josh” & a whole passel of other Pen Names to boot. I suddenly realized I knew lots of people with false names: Dan De Quille, Poker Face Jace, Stonewall, El Dorado Johnny, Whittlin Walt, Boz & Extra Dub. Then there was Big Gussie & her four girls: not one of them going by her real name. Even I have used different names from my Indian one, and sometimes I go by the name “Maisie.”

  In fact, I knew more people with fake names than I knew with real names.

  Lieutenant Deforrest Robards might be known to hundreds of people here in Virginia City, but not by his real name. Only Short Sally Sampson, an “old friend” of his, had recognized him & called him by his true name, in Martha’s hearing.

  Like dominoes, that revelation gave me another: that had been the motive for the murder! Short Sally had recognized the coward Deforrest Robards. Maybe she had taunted him. Maybe she had threatened to expose him. Maybe both. If he was found out he would be sent home to be tried, and then hanged or shot, because he had been an officer with men under his command.

  My heart was beating fast with excitement. Everything made sense now. It was the “dam domino effect.”

  That meant I could go back to my list of suspects.

  I pulled out my Detective Notebook and opened it with trembling hands.

  Here was the list I had compiled:

  SUSPECTS IN THE MURDER OF SALLY SAMPSON

  (Tall, Slim Men with Fair Hair & Smallish Beards Known to Have Frequented Sally)

  1. Ludwig Hamm, barkeeper, German

  2. Pierre Forote, barber, French

  3. John Dennis, miner, American

  4. Yuri Ivanovich, telegraph operator, Russian

  5. Isaac E. Brokaw, policeman, American

  6. Isaiah Coffin, photographer, English

  Others who fit the description but were not known to have visited her

  7. Farner Peel, shootist, English

  8. Absalom Smith, actor and punster, American

  9. C.V. Anthony, reverend, American

  I now knew the Killer—Lt. Deforrest Robards—was a Confederate, so that meant I was looking for a man with a Southern accent. I started to strike through the names of those who were not American, but then I stopped.

  What if he had changed his accent as well as his name?

  Then another even more terrible thought occurred: what if he had changed his appearance, too?

  After all, did I not disguise myself and use other names & accents from time to time?

  What if he had shaved off his mustache & beard & dyed his hair black?

  What if he now put on an Italian accent? Or French?

  What if he was not even on my list?

  Those thoughts made me dizzy.

  I needed to find something else that would identify the Killer. Something not connected to his name or appearance or accent. But what?

  I went to the bars of my cell & gripped them hard & thumped my head softly against the cold iron: What? What? What?

  “Stop that banging,” said the Saturday Jailer. He was sitting at the desk, reading the paper & drinking coffee & smoking a pipe.

  I could tell from the odor of his pipe that he was smoking No. 81 on my list: “Taylor Made,” which comes in a muslin pouch with a blue seal and white letters.

  Then the Lord above sent down another ray of Illumination: whiz! Right into my brain.

  This idea was so brilliant that I
whooped & did a Victory Dance around my cell.

  The jailer jumped out of his chair so fast that he dropped his pipe in his coffee & got riled & told me to “Stop that god-awful noise.”

  But I did not care.

  I knew how to identify the Killer.

  Ledger Sheet 43

  MR. WILLIAM MORRIS STEWART arrived as I was eating some slimy porridge cooked up by the jailer. I almost dropped the tin plate in my eagerness to address him. I went to the bars of the cell and gripped them.

  “Mr. Stewart,” I said. “Is there some way you can get me out of here? Even for just a few hours? I know how to find the Killer of Miss Sally Sampson but I cannot do it trapped in here.”

  “I suppose so,” said Mr. William Morris Stewart, “but someone will have to post bail.” He looked at the Jailer. “How much to bail out this little Indian?”

  “Two thousand dollars,” said the Jailer without even looking up.

  “Two thousand?” said Mr. William Morris Stewart.

  “He’s wanted for murder, ain’t he?” said the Jailer, puffing his pipe & turning a page of the paper. “Anyways, that’s what the Deputy Marshal said.”

  “I have nearly fifteen hundred dollars in my account at Wells, Fargo & Co.,” I said.

  Mr. William Morris Stewart shook his big head. “We’ll still have to raise over five hundred. Do you know anybody who could lay their hands on five or six hundred dollars?”

  My first thought was Jace. He certainly had thousands & he would bail me out in a flash. But he had vamoosed to Carson City & I did not know when he would be back.

  Then I had another idea.

  It was a long shot but worth a try.

  “Do you know a Boarding House owner called Big Gussie in a brick house down on D Street?” I asked.

  Mr. William Morris Stewart gave me Expression No. 4: Surprise. Then he said, “Course I know Gussie. Everybody knows Gussie.”

  I said, “She told me to call on her if I ever needed anything.”

  He said, “I will go down there as soon as you write me a note of release to Wells, Fargo & Co.”

  He was as good as his word and within an hour he was back with a heavy pouch full of gold.

  “I withdrew fourteen hundred from your account,” he told me as he made the Saturday Jailer sign a Receipt. “Big Gussie and her girls raised the remaining six hundred. They are mighty fond of you down at the Brick House.”

  “That is good,” I said. “For that is where I am bound right now.”

  “I am a student of crime and punishment,” said Mr. William Morris Stewart, as the Jailer unlocked the door of my cell. “Mind if I accompany you?”

  I came out of the cell and looked up at him. “I like to work alone,” I said, “but you have been a Friend to me this day so, yes, you may come.”

  As we walked out into the crisp and clear October morning, I told Mr. William Morris Stewart my reasoning.

  I told him how Martha had hid out for days at the only place she knew apart from Sally’s: The Flora Temple Livery Stable. She had lived on oats and water from the trough and hid in a pile of hay. But she got more and more desperate. Early one morning, she heard the men at the Flora Temple Livery Stable read my Advertisement in the Enterprise.

  Hunger & desperation outweighed fear and she made her way up to my office.

  “But there are not many dark-skinned girls here in Virginia City,” I said. “She had the bad luck to be spotted by Robards, the very man she had been avoiding. He must have followed her to my office,” I said. “When I went out to get her some food, he came and peered into the window. Maybe rattled the door. I had locked it, but Martha panicked and went out my back window and down a rickety ladder and then doubled back up to the stables. Robards lost her trail but he loitered near my office and followed me instead. I believe he hoped I would lead him to Martha so he could kill her, she being the only witness to his terrible deed. I thought I lost him but I must have been wrong, because when I finally figured out where she was hiding and went there, I led him straight to her. He tried to burn the place down.”

  “Yesterday’s fire at the Flora Temple Livery Stable!” cried Mr. William Morris Stewart. He thrust his arm out to stop me jumping down onto C Street in front of a Stagecoach.

  “That’s right,” I said, as we waited on the boardwalk for the stagecoach to drive past. “But Virginia City’s finest were quick to quench the blaze and no one died.”

  “That poltroon!” exclaimed Mr. William Morris Stewart, as we crossed over. “He was willing to burn down a whole stable—nay, an entire town!—just to keep his secret safe. And you say she did not even get a good look at him?”

  “That’s right. But he does not know that.”

  “Where is Martha now?”

  “In a Safe Haven,” I said. As we turned down D Street I continued explaining. “This morning, when the Jailers were reading that article about a Petrified Man found over by Gravelly Ford, one of them said reporters hardly ever use their real names. That is when I realized that Robards might be using a fake name, too.”

  “Great Caesar’s ghost, you’re right!” cried Mr. William Morris Stewart. “Plenty of people here in Virginia have fled the war, but Robards is a special case. Not only is he a Confederate officer, he is a coward who froze under the pressure of battle and caused the deaths of many men.”

  “But Short Sally did not know he was a deserter when she caught sight of him up at Topliffe’s last Friday night,” I said. “And he was not going to risk her finding out and betraying his secret. Or telling people his real name.”

  “So that’s why she was murdered,” said Mr. William Morris Stewart.

  I nodded. “It might be that he disguised himself, too,” I said, “and if he changed his appearance once, then maybe he did it again after he killed Short Sally.”

  “So how will you find him?” said Mr. William Morris Stewart. “Sally Sampson was the only one who knew him in the South and now she is dead.”

  I looked up at him. His head appeared to me as a beard topped by a slouch hat with a big Cuban cigar sticking out between the two.

  “A friend of mine claims that a man’s tobacco is his first love,” I said.

  “So?”

  “So a man might think to change his name & even his appearance but it might not occur to him to change his brand of tobacco as well.”

  “Quite right,” said Mr. William Morris Stewart, nodding. “It might even be a comfort to him. A familiar comfort in a strange new world.”

  “Yes,” I said. “That is why we are here at Short Sally’s crib. She had not had any Gentlemen Callers in nearly a month. Plus, Martha swept the crib every morning until it was speckless. The Killer, Lieutenant Deforrest Robards, must have been the last person to visit her. My idea is this: all the furniture might be gone, but the Killer might have left a cigar stump or a shred of tobacco.”

  “But what good would a shred of tobacco be?” said he.

  I smiled. “I can identify over one hundred different types of smoking, chewing and leaf tobacco. And I can do it with no more than a shred or two.”

  “Great Scott! But how?”

  “Partly my Indian tracking skills,” I said, “and partly that I like collecting things. Ma Evangeline called it one of my Eccentricities. I have an extensive tobacco collection back at my office. You are smoking a cigar called ‘La Honradez.’”

  “Great Caesar’s ghost! You are absolutely correct!”

  “I can tell by the color and shape and the smell of it, too,” I said.

  We had reached Sally’s Crib with its yellow door. Outside stood a horse and a wagon loaded with furniture.

  The door of the Crib was open.

  It was clear what was happening: a new Nymph of the Night was moving in.

  I ran inside.

  A pretty Lady in a dark green velvet dress & matching hat stood with her hands on her hips, looking around. “Great Mary Mother of God,” she said in an Irish accent. “They have not even swep
t the place.”

  “Hallelujah!” I said. Then I got down on my hands & knees and I began to sniff around at the dust & fluff still lying at the edges of the floor where it met the wall.

  “What in the bejeezus are you doing?” asked the pretty lady in the green velvet dress.

  “That there is P.K. Pinkerton, Private Eye,” came the deep voice of Mr. William Morris Stewart. “He is just nosing around for clews. Found anything, P.K.?”

  “Just a moment,” I said, holding up one hand. Then I resumed my sniffing.

  A moment later a scent in the southeast corner of the room stopped me short. Could it be?

  Yes, it was.

  All the little hairs on the back of my neck stood up.

  I carefully picked up two small shreds of tobacco and placed them in the palm of my hand. They were the right color and texture.

  I stood up & turned & faced the front of the room.

  Mr. William Morris Stewart stood there, flanked by the Lady in Green. Big Gussie had appeared, along with her four girls: Irish Rose, Honey Pie, Spring Chicken and Big Mouth Annie.

  “Do you know who done it?” rasped Gussie; she had a broom and dustpan in her hand.

  I looked down at the two little shreds of tobacco in the palm of my hand.

  “Yes,” I said happily. “I know who done it.”

  “You know from that?” said Mr. William Morris Stewart, stepping forward and peering into my hand.

  “Yes, sir,” I replied.

  All the Boarding House Girls crowded around, saying “Ooh!” and “Ah!”

  Only the recently arrived Irish Lady kept repeating, “Who done what?”

  “P.K.,” said Mr. William Morris Stewart. “I am mighty impressed with your deductive skills. But even a great lawyer such as myself might need more than two shreds of tobacco to convict a man of desertion and murder. Do you have anything else up your sleeve?”

  I thought for a moment & then nodded. “Yes,” I said. “I believe I do.”

  Ledger Sheet 44

  I WENT BACK TO MY OFFICE & got in a disguise so I would not be followed by Deforrest Robards who was still at large. Then I let myself down the rickety ladder at the back of my office & went by a roundabout route to see Martha in her Safe Haven.