A Copy of Beowulf by Harry Stephen Keeler

Author:Harry Stephen Keeler
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: mystery, detective, sleuth, murder, classic
Publisher: Wildside Press LLC
Published: 2017-03-14T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER XIII

The 6 Yellow Sheets

Pardoll Leatherberry, in his woven willow wheelchair at the end of the big capacious screened-in front porch, and smoking his huge calabash pipe, watched curiously the man in the purple corduroy trousers and belted-in blue shirt who worked away at the long unpainted, unfinished porch table at the further end.

A daily leaf-calendar facing Pardoll from that end of the porch gave forth the date of June the 9th, and the generous fringe of cool shade lying out from the porch on the sunbaked grass outside showed the hour to be well past mid-afternoon.

Pardoll Leatherberry himself was in his grey-corded faded blue bathrobe, extra long so as to shield his lower legs, withered from early infantile paralysis; he was cleanly shaven, and his greyed hair was brushed back from his brows. The visitor worked at the porch table just underneath Pardoll’s long bookshelf of Beowulfs, with his one side only thus towards Pardoll—worked with sheets of yellow paper laid out in a horizontal row—one Beowulf—and one atlas!

Outside the screened-in porch flowed the life of a small town. For the street outside was but of dirt, and the sidewalks of neat wooden planks. Across the way were voluminous wooden houses painted a brilliantly clean white, all of them, that one color which can persist only in a small town. Boys going past, chiefly in one direction, barefooted all of them, hickory shirted too, floppy of straw hats, carrying homemade fishpoles on their shoulders, shouted “Howdy, Mist’ Leath’berry,” at regular intervals. And now and then an elderly lady, with sunbonnet on head, and carrying clean white eggs in a clean basket, no doubt going depotwards, went by nodding, and saying, “Evenin’, Pardoll”, since only in a small town is afternoon “evening”!

As the young man working at the table suddenly blew out his breath in irritation as some clue apparently evaporated, Pardoll ventured to make an amused comment.

“No results yet, eh, Mr. Lindo?”

“Not yet,” said the other, gazing frustratedly along the line of 6 yellow sheets laid out in front of him.

Pardoll took a puff on his calabash pipe.

“Those six sheets hold, I take it, the six lines you’re confident must contain the coded state and town? Now mind you,” he added quickly, “I’m asking no questions. All you’ve told me is that an actor once spied in one of the lines of the book—a line such as he would have liked to have uttered on the stage!—the letters in sequence comprising the city and state which held—alas, you’ve told me no more, but my guess is that he had a safety-box somewhere in that city, and that today his wife—perhaps your sister?—wants to locate his private papers?”

“Not a half bad guess, Mr. Leatherberry,” said the man Lindo, facing about. “I suppose, you being so kind, whilst your mother is visiting in the next state, I should have given you all the details, and—”

“Nonsense,” said Pardoll Leatherberry. “A man who went clear to Liverpool only to have to come back to Middletown, would—man, what a hop!—no wonder you pounded your ear so religiously from 11 P.

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