The Oakdale Affair Read online

amongthieves?

  But the longer he watched the heavier grew his lids. Several times theyclosed to be dragged open again only by painful effort. Finally came atime that they remained closed and the young chest rose and fell in theregular breathing of slumber.

  The two ragged, rat-hearted creatures rose silently and picked theirway, half-crouched, among the sleepers sprawled between them and TheOskaloosa Kid. In the hand of Dopey Charlie gleamed a bit of shiny steeland in his heart were fear and greed. The fear was engendered by thebelief that the youth might be an amateur detective. Dopey Charlie hadhad one experience of such and he knew that it was easily possible forthem to blunder upon evidence which the most experienced of operativesmight pass over unnoticed, and the loot bulging pockets furnished asufficient greed motive in themselves.

  Beside the boy kneeled the man with the knife. He did not raise hishand and strike a sudden, haphazard blow. Instead he placed the pointcarefully, though lightly, above the victim's heart, and then, suddenly,bore his weight upon the blade.

  Abigail Prim always had been a thorn in the flesh of her stepmother--awell-meaning, unimaginative, ambitious, and rather common woman. Cominginto the Prim home as house-keeper shortly after the death of Abigail'smother, the second Mrs. Prim had from the first looked upon Abigailprincipally as an obstacle to be overcome. She had tried to 'do right byher'; but she had never given the child what a child most needs and mostcraves--love and understanding. Not loving Abigail, the house-keepercould, naturally, not give her love; and as for understanding her onemight as reasonably have expected an adding machine to understand highermathematics.

  Jonas Prim loved his daughter. There was nothing, within reason, thatmoney could buy which he would not have given her for the asking; butJonas Prim's love, as his life, was expressed in dollar signs, while thelove which Abigail craved is better expressed by any other means at thecommand of man.

  Being misunderstood and, to all outward appearances of sentiment andaffection, unloved had not in any way embittered Abigail's remarkablyjoyous temperament. She made up for it in some measure by getting all thefun and excitement out of life which she could discover therein, orinvent through the medium of her own resourceful imagination.

  But recently the first real sorrow had been thrust into her young lifesince the half-forgotten mother had been taken from her. The secondMrs. Prim had decided that it was her 'duty' to see that Abigail, havingfinished school and college, was properly married. As a matchmakerthe second Mrs. Prim was as a Texas steer in a ten cent store. It wasnothing to her that Abigail did not wish to marry anyone, or that theman of Mrs. Prim's choice, had he been the sole surviving male in theUniverse, would have still been as far from Abigail's choice as thoughhe had been an inhabitant of one of Orion's most distant planets.

  As a matter of fact Abigail Prim detested Samuel Benham because herepresented to her everything in life which she shrank from--age,avoirdupois, infirmity, baldness, stupidity, and matrimony. He was aprosaic old bachelor who had amassed a fortune by the simple means ofinheriting three farms upon which an industrial city subsequently hadbeen built. Necessity rather than foresight had compelled him to hold onto his property; and six weeks of typhoid, arriving and departing, hadsaved him from selling out at a low figure. The first time he foundhimself able to be out and attend to business he likewise found himselfa wealthy man, and ever since he had been growing wealthier withoutpersonal effort.

  All of which is to render evident just how impossible a matrimonialproposition was Samuel Benham to a bright, a beautiful, a gay, animaginative, young, and a witty girl such as Abigail Prim, who caredless for money than for almost any other desirable thing in the world.

  Nagged, scolded, reproached, pestered, threatened, Abigail had at lastgiven a seeming assent to her stepmother's ambition; and had forthwithbeen packed off on a two weeks visit to the sister of the bride-groomelect. After which Mr. Benham was to visit Oakdale as a guest of thePrims, and at a dinner for which cards already had been issued--so surewas Mrs. Jonas Prim of her position of dictator of the Prim menage--theengagement was to be announced.

  It was some time after dinner on the night of Abigail's departure thatMrs. Prim, following a habit achieved by years of housekeeping, setforth upon her rounds to see that doors and windows were properlysecured for the night. A French window and its screen opening upon theverandah from the library she found open. "The house will be full ofmosquitoes!" she ejaculated mentally as she closed them both with a bangand made them fast. "I should just like to know who left them open. Uponmy word, I don't know what would become of this place if it wasn't forme. Of all the shiftlessness!" and she turned and flounced upstairs. InAbigail's room she flashed on the center dome light from force of habit,although she knew that the room had been left in proper condition afterthe girl's departure earlier in the day. The first thing amiss thather eagle eye noted was the candlestick lying on the floor beside thedressing table. As she stooped to pick it up she saw the open drawerfrom which the small automatic had been removed, and then, suspicions,suddenly aroused, as suddenly became fear; and Mrs. Prim almost doveacross the room to the hidden wall safe. A moment's investigationrevealed the startling fact that the safe was unlocked and practicallyempty. It was then that Mrs. Jonas Prim screamed.

  Her scream brought Jonas and several servants upon the scene. A carefulinspection of the room disclosed the fact that while much of value hadbeen ignored the burglar had taken the easily concealed contents of thewall safe which represented fully ninety percentum of the value of thepersonal property in Abigail Prim's apartments.

  Mrs. Prim scowled suspiciously upon the servants. Who else, indeed,could have possessed the intimate knowledge which the thief haddisplayed. Mrs. Prim saw it all. The open library window had been but aclever blind to hide the fact that the thief had worked from the insideand was now doubtless in the house at that very moment.

  "Jonas," she directed, "call the police at once, and see that no one,absolutely no one, leaves this house until they have been here and madea full investigation."

  "Shucks, Pudgy!" exclaimed Mr. Prim. "You don't think the thief iswaiting around here for the police, do you?"

  "I think that if you get the police here at once, Jonas, we shall findboth the thief and the loot under our very roof," she replied, notwithout asperity.

  "You don't mean--" he hesitated. "Why, Pudgy, you don't mean you suspectone of the servants?"

  "Who else could have known?" asked Mrs. Prim. The servants presentlooked uncomfortable and cast sheepish eyes of suspicion at one another.

  "It's all tommy rot!" ejaculated Mr. Prim; "but I'll call the police,because I got to report the theft. It's some slick outsider, that'swho it is," and he started down stairs toward the telephone. Before hereached it the bell rang, and when he had hung up the receiver after theconversation the theft seemed a trivial matter. In fact he had almostforgotten it, for the message had been from the local telegraph officerelaying a wire they had just received from Mr. Samuel Benham.

  "I say, Pudgy," he cried, as he took the steps two at a time for thesecond floor, "here's a wire from Benham saying Gail didn't come on thattrain and asking when he's to expect her."

  "Impossible!" ejaculated Mrs. Prim. "I certainly saw her aboard thetrain myself. Impossible!"

  Jonas Prim was a man of action. Within half an hour he had set in motionsuch wheels as money and influence may cause to revolve in search ofsome clew to the whereabouts of the missing Abigail, and at the sametime had reported the theft of jewels and money from his home; but indoing this he had learned that other happenings no less remarkable intheir way had taken place in Oakdale that very night.

  The following morning all Oakdale was thrilled as its fascinated eyesdevoured the front page of Oakdale's ordinarily dull daily. Never hadOakdale experienced a plethora of home-grown thrills; but it came asnear to it that morning, doubtless, as it ever had or ever will. Notsince the cashier of The Merchants and Farmers Bank committed suicidethree years past had Oakdale been so wr
ought up, and now that historicand classical event paled into insignificance in the glaring brilliancyof a series of crimes and mysteries of a single night such as not eventhe most sanguine of Oakdale's thrill lovers could have hoped for.

  There was, first, the mysterious disappearance of Abigail Prim, theonly daughter of Oakdale's wealthiest citizen; there was the equallymysterious robbery of the Prim home. Either one of these would have beensufficient to have set Oakdale's multitudinous tongues wagging for days;but they were not all. Old John Baggs, the city's best known miser, hadsuffered a murderous assault in his little cottage upon the outskirtsof town, and was even now lying at the point of death in The SamaritanHospital. That robbery had been the motive was amply indicated by