Cleopatra's Tears by Harry Stephen Keeler

Author:Harry Stephen Keeler [Keeler, Harry Stephen]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: mystery;crime;sheriff;classic;western
Publisher: Wildside Press LLC
Published: 1933-02-15T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER XVI

QUESTION BEE!

“Wal, boys,” commanded the Sheriff, with an attempt at blasé nonchalance which he personally feared was a fiasco, “set—all o’ you.” The derby-hatted last comer was dropping sprawlingly on to the rock at the Sheriff’s right, glancing curiously back of himself at the back of the turbaned individual who was prying forth a flat-topped round boulder some five or six feet off from the circle of rocks. “Fur,” the Sheriff continued, doing his best, “now that I’ve talked privately ’ith this man I pulled out’n the cyclone-slot, I know at last—and fur sartin—that ‘Actor’ Hart ain’t on this hyar island.”

All gazed at him with eyes puzzledly narrowed, and, it is to be admitted, a shade of relief visible in all.

“Yes,” the Sheriff went on, “he’s tolt me—mo’ or less confidentially, however—who he is—and why he come out hyar. And—what’s most impo’tant—proved it conclusively. And thar’by knocked in the haid our on’y chanct to have mebbe had ‘Actor’ Hart in our midst. So, onder the sarcumstances, we mought as well all be friends now—all of us—and fergit all our suspicions o’ the last few hours today.”

“But what, Sheriff Brister,” asked the man in the derby hat, “are we going to do—on the matter of lifebelts? We’re still shy—shy one—for us four. And so–”

“But we ain’t shy no more,” declared the Sheriff, with as much of a show of joviality and confidence as he could muster. “Fur this man—yes, Frodel, set thar—atween Hick and Blake—they ’ont mind yore feet stickin’ atween ’em—this man, P’of—um—Mister Frodel—Adrian Frodel—has a’ready b’en in the vault whar McCo’niss’ body lays—and they’s a lifebelt in thar with McCo—”

“But hi, Sheriff,” expostulated the man in the lineman costume, “you told us this morning, don’t forget, that you’d been in there, to retrieve that pin—and been in long enough, moreover, to uncover it where it was pinned under McCorniss’ burial garment—and you said not a damned word about any lifebe—”

“I know—I know,” the Sheriff put in hastily, and garnered into his tones all the soothing qualities he could. “I know, Blake, that I said this mo’nin’ I’d b’en in—and found so much as that the pin’s thar on McCo’niss’ body—onderneath his burial garment. Yes—I said that. On’y—I hadn’t b’en in. I said that to put a stop to the—the fool argiment by Mex, hyar, that mebbe Hart wan’t on the island—and that we could prove that by findin’ the pin gone—which’d mean he somehow got hyar in the night. I didn’t want fur to hear no fool argiments like that—fur I knew no man kin git to this island in the night; and—and so I scotched all sich ’ith a argiment that ’uz better.” He paused impressively. “But,” he continued, “this man hyar at Hick’s left has b’en in the vault—yes, afore I come on, o’ co’se—and thus we’re gettin’ the glad tidings—we’d ought to be glad, anyway!—that in the vault with McCo’niss is one lifebelt. Pore man!” The Sheriff shook his head with all the commiseration he could engineer.

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