by Rex Stout
“There’s no doubt about his being convicted,” Dan went on, “unless he manages to find some way of committing suicide before his trial, which is likely. We have a dozen corroborative items for Cummings’s story. By the way, I’m glad the district attorney has offered him immunity.”
“So am I,” Mr. Leg agreed; “but don’t try to change the subject, young man. Clever as you are, you can’t evade me. What made you first suspect Judge Manton?”
“I see I’ll have to tell you, sir,” grinned Dan. “Well, it was on account of you.”
“On account of me?”
“Yes, sir. I wondered about it from the very first, when you called me in that morning and told me the judge had assigned you to the case. I couldn’t understand it, because I know the practice in such cases is to give it to a man fairly well up in the profession. And men, especially judges, don’t play jokes in murder cases. So I knew there must be some good reason why he assigned you to Mount’s defense, and the most probable one was that he wanted him convicted.”
“But I don’t see—”
Again Dan grinned. “You know I think you’re a mighty fine man, Mr. Leg. You’ve been awfully good to me, sir. But you hadn’t had a case in ten years, and you certainly are a bum lawyer.”
Mr. Leg frowned. A peal of mischievous laughter came from behind him in Miss Venner’s silvery voice. And Dan, because he was looking at her dancing eyes and parted lips and wavy hair, and found it such an agreeable and delightful sight, began to laugh with her. Mr. Leg looked from one to the other, trying hard to maintain his frown; but who can frown at a boy and a fun-loving girl when they are looking at and laughing with each other?
And so Mr. Leg joined in and began to laugh, too.
It’s Science that Counts
“I GUESS I NEVER could learn to do that,” Peter Boley, the grocer, declared admiringly. Jone Simmons, to whom the remark was addressed, paused to clear his brow of perspiration, which came from the strenuous exercise of knocking a leather punching bag from one side to another of an inverted board platform about four feet square, suspended from the ceiling.
“It ain’t half as hard as hittin’ a man,” he observed, as one who should know.
“I’m not so sure about that,” Boley objected. “I guess you wouldn’t have much trouble hittin’ me.”
Jone Simmons seemed to find this observation absurd. “I meant a fightin’ man,” he explained. “Of course I could probably floor you maybe once a minute. But you take a man that’s had training and studied the science, and maybe I could hit him and maybe I couldn’t. I’m not what I used to be.”
“Well, you’re mighty quick at knockin’ that bag around,” declared the grocer, moving his cigar from the right corner of his mouth to the left. “I wish you’d teach me some day. I was saying to Harry Vawter last week, it’s too bad there’s not somebody in town could put on the gloves with you, and we could have a regular match at the Annual Picnic.”
“Huh!” Simmons snorted. “I guess there’s nobody would want to take that job. I’m not what I used to be, but you can see I’m still a little too lively for anybody in Holtville.”
He hauled off and gave the punching bag a smash that caused it to rebound madly back and forth against the boards.
In order to avoid a misconception, it is best to explain at once that Jone Simmons was not, and never had been, a pugilist. He ran the only hardware store in Holtville, Ohio, whither he had come three or four years before from some town up the river, and in action he was the most peaceful and easy-going citizen imaginable. Within two weeks after his coming to Holtville everybody in town knew him and liked him—all me more because his predecessor in the hardware store had been the most unpopular member of the community.
Jone Simmons had only one weakness in conversation, and that a mild one. The subject was fistic prowess, or more correctly, fistic science; and particularly the fistic science of Jone Simmons. No sooner had he got the stock inventoried and in place in the hardware store than he put up a punching bag in the back room; and Peter Boley, the grocer next door, led to investigate by mysterious and insistent thumpings which he could not logically connect with the hardware trade, had been me first to discover this curious fad of the new inhabitant of Holtville.
He found, as all Holtville did later, that Jone was anything but averse to talk on the subject. He told stories of himself. It appeared that in his youth he had been a pretty bad customer. He wished he had a nickel for every nose he’d broke before he was twenty. Now that he was twice that age, of course he wasn’t as spry as formerly, but still it was science that counted—bang! against the punching bag.
Then Jone would produce an old number of the Police Gazette containing an article by Bob Fitzsimmons on the relative merits of the uppercut and the half-swing.
When midsummer came Jone’s fame was such that he was invited to give a punching bag exhibition at the Eleventh Annual Picnic of the Holtville Merchants’ Association, and the performance had proven so popular that it was repeated the two following summers.
It must not be thought that Jone made use of his prowess in any unjust or cruel manner. He was no bully. Two or three of his fellow townsmen had at one time or another put on the gloves with him to learn something of the defensive art, but they had frankly been scared half to death by Jone’s professional attitudes and gestures, and he had merely dealt them gentle taps on the chest as they danced around with their hands waving frantically to and fro in front of their faces.
Nobody in Holtville wanted to “go up against” Jone Simmons.
One afternoon in the early part of July Pete Boley, the grocer, entered Simmon’s hardware store with his face alight with the excitement of discovery.
“Hello, Pete, where you been since noon?” called Simmons from the rear of the store, where he was wrapping up a package of nails for Mrs. Pearl’s little boy.
When the customer had gone the grocer approached and said with the importance of one who brings news:
“Jonas, our picnic is going to be a bigger success this year than ever before.”
“What’s up?” demanded Simmons, stopping to pick up a nail and throw it in the bin.
“Something new and good,” declared the grocer. “I guess they won’t be sorry they chose me chairman of the entertainment committee.”
“You goin’ to have a circus?”
“No. Wait till I tell you. I was just down to Bill Ogilvy’s store. Went down to get some muslin for the Missis. You know, Bill has a new fellow in there clerkin’ for him, a fellow named Notter that he got from Columbus about a week ago. Well, this Notter waited on me, and I noticed he lifted down a big bolt of muslin, must have weighed thirty pounds, just like it was a feather.
“ ‘You must be pretty strong,’ says I.
“He just nodded, measuring off the muslin. “ ‘Funny, too, because you don’t get much exercise in a job like this,’ says I.
“ ‘I don’t need it,’ he says, looking at me. ‘I’ve always been strong. I’m an athlete. I was amateur champion of Columbus once.’
“ ‘Champion of what?’ I asked.
“ ‘Why, just champion,’ he says. ‘Lightweight champion. I licked everybody in town under a hundred and forty pounds.’ ”
At this point the grocer broke off his narrative to ask the other abruptly:
“How much do you weigh, Jonas?”
“About a hundred and thirty-seven,” Simmons replied. His voice was rather low.
“I thought so. Well, this Notter got started talkin’. Bill Ogilvy came up and he told both of us about how he was champion down at Columbus. That was some years ago. There was one man he knocked clear out of the ropes, he said, and he was unconscious for two days. Of course I was thinkin’ of you all the time.
“Finally I says to him, ‘Well, Mr. Notter, I’m mighty glad you come to Holtville. You’ve come just in time to give us a boxing match at our Merchants’ Association Annual Picnic’
“ ‘But there’s nobo
dy in Holtville to box with,’ he says.
“ ‘Oh yes there is,’ says I, ‘there’s Jone Simmons that runs the hardware store. He knocks a punching bag two hours every day. You ought to see him! He’ll box with you and welcome.’
“ ‘Well,’ says he, ‘I’d just as soon knock his block off as anybody else’s, but I have to be here in the store every day and evening too, and I wouldn’t have time to train.’
“ ‘That’s all right, Mr. Notter,’ Bill Ogilvy puts in. ‘I reckon I can hold the fort here an hour or so every day so you can have time for training. I’ll be more than paid for it by seeing you and Jone Simmons box.’
“So we fixed it up,” the grocer concluded. “Bill and I didn’t know anything about the rules or anything, but Mr. Notter helped us. It’s to be a match for ten rounds, with six ounce gloves. I told ’em you’d have some in the store. To tell the truth, Jonas, I don’t like this fellow from Columbus very much, and I’ll be right glad to see you kind of hurt him a little.”
The grocer finished. A silence followed. Simmons had opened a showcase and was carefully picking an assortment of files and wrenches from a box and putting them into another one exactly similar. The operation appeared to interest him intently.
“What kind of a lookin’ man is this Mr. Notter?” he asked finally, without looking up.
“Oh, medium-like,” was the reply. “About your size, I guess; maybe a little bigger. He’s got a mustache and he looks kind of pinched in the face, but he’s got a good muscle on him. He rolled up his sleeve and showed us.
I should say he’s about thirty-eight or nine, maybe a little older.”
Simmons was silent.
“Of course you’ll have to train,” continued the grocer. “He’s goin’ to.”
“Of course,” Simmons agreed. His tone was entirely without enthusiasm. After a moment he added thoughtfully: “You know, Peter, maybe it wouldn’t be wise to have a boxing match at the picnic after all. It’s a mighty brutal thing, and all the children will be there—it’s a bad example—”
“But it’s not exactly a fight,” the grocer protested. “It’s an exhibition. It’s more like science. You ain’t exactly goin’ to hurt each other.”
Simmons shook his head dubiously. “I don’t know. Of course I know it’s science, but you must remember there might be an accident. For instance, say I aim an uppercut for his cheek and it happened to hit his jaw instead. The jaw’s a dangerous spot, Peter. It might kill him.”
“Shucks, you’re not going to hit as hard as all that,” the grocer snorted. “You ain’t going to be mad.”
“No,” Simmons agreed slowly, “no, we’re not going to be mad.”
“It’ll do me children good,” declared Peter Boley heartily. “I’ve often heard you say every boy ought to know how to fight without pullin’ hair and kickin’. I tell you, Jonas, it’ll be the greatest attraction we ever had at Holtville. I stopped in at Riley’s, and Harry Vawters on the way up and told ’em about it, and they each gave five dollars more for the refreshment fund. Why, people’ll come from all over the county just to see it. Holtville is going to be proud of you, Jonas!”
And at that, fired by this flattery and rosy vision of the glory to come, Simmons closed the showcase with a bang.
“All right, Peter,” said he, firmly. “I’ll begin training tomorrow.”
By the following afternoon the boxing match between Jone Simmons and Bill Ogilvy’s new clerk was the only topic of conversation on Holtville’s street.
Almost at once, much to Peter Boley’s painful surprise, opposition made itself felt. The Ladies’ Reading Circle, at their weekly meeting on the following Wednesday, passed resolutions condemning the projected match in unmeasured terms. The most striking phrase of the document was that which referred to the affair as a “brutal, inhuman and degrading exhibition of the lowest instinct in man.”
In a body, reinforced by the pastor of the Methodist Church, they carried the resolution, carefully typewritten by the pastor, to Peter Boley in his capacity as Chairman of the Entertainment Committee of the Merchants’ Association at Holtville.
Poor Boley was flabbergasted out of speech. By pure luck Harry Vawter, the druggist, happened to be there at the time, and he spoke as follows:
“Ladies, this isn’t going to be a fight. It is a scientific exhibition by two gentlemen, one of whom has been known and respected in this city for three years. There will be blows struck, but purely in the interests of science. There may even be a bloody nose, but that happens when your little boy falls against the woodbox, so it cannot justly be termed brutal. Mr. Boley and myself, as a majority of the Entertainment Committee, must respectfully refuse your request.”
The indignant ladies departed to argue the matter with their husbands over the supper table, where they met with no better success.
The following morning about nine o’clock the citizens of Holtville were astonished to see a man with his legs bare to his knees and his arms and shoulders entirely so, clad apparently in white muslin drawers and an abbreviated shirt of the same material, run down the length of Main Street at a goodly pace, looking neither to right nor left, and turn at the end into the lane that led to the country. His hair streamed in the wind behind him and his bristly moustache poked ahead.
Holtville gasped.
“It’s Mr. Notter getting up his wind,” explained Slim Pearl, the barber, standing in the door of his shop with a shaving mug in his hand. “Looks like he’d have to take off eight or nine pounds.”
Jone Simmons, letting down the awning in front of his hardware store, stopped and turned to watch the runner go by. Then, happening to encounter the grin on the face of Peter Boley, whose grocery was next door, he hastily turned away and set to work fastening the awning ropes.
An hour later the grocer came in to find his neighbor, naked to the waist, standing before the punching bag with a frown on his face and a book in his hand.
“One thing I’d like to know,” said Boley as he sat down on a nail keg, “how does it help a man to fight to go runnin’ around the country in his underwear?”
The reply was a terrific smash of Simmons’s fist on the punching bag.
“I think that’s it,” said he, disregarding the other’s question. “It says that a full swing on the ear should be landed with one foot drawn back and the body weight thrown all on one side. Watch, Peter. Does this look right?”
He stopped the punching bag from swinging, stepped back, trailed his right foot, lunged forward and swung on the bag with all his might.
“I don’t know whether it’s right or not,” said the grocer feelingly, “but it looks mighty dangerous. I hope, Jonas, you ain’t going to hit Mr. Notter as hard as that.”
“I may not hit him at all,” the other returned gloomily. “I tell you, Peter, I’ve got to have a sparring partner. Nobody ever trained for a fight without one.”
This expression of a need on the part of Simmons led no later than the following afternoon to a regrettable occurrence. Since no one suitable for the position of sparring partner was to be found in Holtville, Peter Boley decided to sacrifice himself for the good of science. They put on the gloves in the back room of the hardware store. Within the first ten seconds Simmons landed a savage swing on the grocer’s nose, and the blood spurted out as from a miniature fountain.
“Good Lord, Jonas, why did you hit so hard?” groaned Peter, holding his face over a basin of water.
“I got to train, haven’t I?” demanded Simmons. “You should have dodged, Peter. You should have sidestepped and countered with your right. Didn’t I tell you that was the defense for a body swing?”
Thenceforth Simmons was forced to get along without a sparring partner. He spent hours daily with the punching bag, and he also indulged in an exercise which he found explained in detail in a chapter of his book on pugilism. Entering the rear of the hardware store one afternoon, Peter Boley found its proprietor, stripped to the waist, dancing madly around in front
of a large mirror, making a bewildering succession of lunges and swings and uppercuts at his reflection in the glass.
Simultaneously he skipped agilely from one foot to the other, jerking his head with wary quickness to the right or left and throwing now one arm, now the other, in a defensive position before his face.
“Good Lord, Jonas, what you tryin’ to do?” exclaimed the grocer, halting in astonishment.
“Shadowboxing,” returned Simmons grimly, without stopping to look around.
Thus the month passed, and the eve of the picnic arrived. On that Friday night, a little after ten o’clock, which was quite late for Holtville, Jone Simmons sat alone on a box in the back room of the hardware store, holding his chin in his hands and gazing broodingly at the darkness in a corner of the room. It had been a strenuous month. He had trained hard and long. Lively tales had run down the main street of the town concerning the past glory of the career of Mr. Notter.
The expression on Jone Simmons’s face as he sat there was not one of pleasurable expectation.
“Amateur champion of Columbus,” he mused finally, aloud.
Another brooding silence followed. After a time he rose to put out the light and go upstairs to join his wife in bed, and as he gave a vicious kick at the box on which he had been sitting he spoke again aloud:
“And Columbus is a mighty big town, too!”
The following day all Holtville was up early. The Annual Picnic of the Merchants’ Association was the great outdoor event of the season, having even become of more importance than the Republican Rally. Wellman’s Grove, a little over two miles from the center of the town, was the spot which had served as the scene of festivals for many years, and thither, in wagon and buggy, by auto and on foot, Holtville and the whole countryside made their way on this bright July morning, having first locked their doors and windows and put out the cats.
