‘And that’s all?’ Uncle Gavin said.
That’s all,’ the sheriff said. ‘Because it’s too late now.’
‘For instance?’ Uncle Gavin said.
‘The wrong one is dead.’
‘That happens,’ Uncle Gavin said.
‘For instance?’
‘That clay-pit business.’
‘What clay-pit business?’ Because the whole county knew about old Pritchel’s clay-pit. It was a formation of malleable clay right in the middle of his farm, of which people in the adjacent countryside made quite serviceable though crude pottery — those times they could manage to dig that much of it before Mr. Pritchel saw them and drove them off.
For generations, Indian and even aboriginal relics — flint arrow-heads, axes and dishes and skulls and thigh-bones and pipes — had been excavated from it by random hoys, and a few years ago a party of archaeologists from the State University had dug into it until Old Man Pritchel got there, this time with a shotgun. But everybody knew this; this was not what the sheriff was telling, and now Uncle Gavin was sitting erect in the chair and his feet were on the floor now.
‘I hadn’t heard about this,’ Uncle Gavin said.
‘It’s common knowledge out there,’ the sheriff said. ‘In fact, you might call it the local outdoor sport. It began about six weeks ago. They are three northern men. They’re trying to buy the whole farm from old Pritchel to get the pit and manufacture some kind of road material out of the clay, I understand.
The folks out there are still watching them trying to buy it. Apparently the northerners are the only folks in the country that don’t know yet old Pritchel aint got any notion of selling even the clay to them, let alone the farm.’
They’ve made him an offer, of course.’
‘Probably a good one. It runs all the way from two hundred and fifty dollars to two hundred and fifty thousand, depending on who’s telling it. Them northerners just don’t know how to handle him. If they would just set in and convince him that everybody in the county is hoping he won’t sell it to them, they could probably buy it before supper tonight.’ He stared at Uncle Gavin, batting his eyes again. ‘So the wrong one is dead, you see. If it was that clay pit, he’s no nearer to it than he was yesterday.
He’s worse off than he was yesterday. Then there wasn’t anything between him and his pa-in-law’s money but whatever private wishes and hopes and feelings that dim-witted girl might have had.
Now there’s a penitentiary wall, and likely a rope. It don’t make sense. If he was afraid of a possible witness, he not only destroyed the witness before there was anything to be witnessed but also before there was any witness to be destroyed.
He set up a signboard saying “Watch me and mark me,” not just to this county and this state but to all folks everywhere who believe the Book where it says Thou Shalt Not Kill — and then went and got himself locked up in the very place created to punish him for this crime and restrain him from the next one. Something went wrong.’
‘I hope so,’ Uncle Gavin said.
‘You hope so?’
‘Yes. That something went wrong in what has already happened, rather than what has already happened is not finished yet.’
‘How not finished yet?’ the sheriff said. ‘How can he finish whatever it is he aims to finish? Aint he already locked up in jail, with the only man in the county who might make bond to free him being the father of the woman he as good as confessed he murdered?’
‘It looks that way,’ Uncle Gavin said. ‘Was there an insurance policy?’
‘I don’t know,’ the sheriff said. ‘I’ll find that out tomorrow. But that aint what I want to know. I want to know why he wanted to be locked up in jail. Because I tell you he wasn’t afraid, then nor at any other time. You already guessed who it was out there that was afraid.’
But we were not to learn that answer yet. And there was an insurance policy. But by the time we learned about that, something else had happened which sent everything else temporarily out of mind. At daylight the next morning, when the jailer went and looked into Flint’s cell, it was empty. He had not broken out. He had walked out, out of the cell, out of the jail, out of the town and apparently out of the country — no trace, no sign, no man who had seen him or seen anyone who might have been him. It was not yet sunup when I let the sheriff in at the side study door; Uncle Gavin was already sitting up in bed when we reached his bedroom.
‘Old Man Pritchel!’ Uncle Gavin said. ‘Only we are already too late.’
‘What’s the matter with you?’ the sheriff said. ‘I told you last night he was already too late the second he pulled that wrong trigger. Besides, just to be in position to ease your mind, I’ve already telephoned out there. Been a dozen folks in the house all night, sitting up with the — with Mrs. Flint, and old Pritchel’s still locked in his room and all right too.
They heard him bumping and blundering around in there just before daylight, and so somebody knocked on the door and kept on knocking and calling him until he finally opened the door wide enough to give them all a good cussing and order them again to get out of his house and stay out. Then he locked the door again.
Old fellow’s been hit pretty hard, I reckon. He must have seen it when it happened, and at his age, and having already druv the whole human race away from his house except that half-wit girl, until at last even she up and left him, even at any cost. I reckon it aint any wonder she married even a man like Flint.
What is it the Book says? ‘Who lives by the sword, so shall he die.”? — the sword in old Pritchel’s case being whatever it was he decided he preferred in place of human beings, while he was still young and hale and strong and didn’t need them.
But to keep your mind easy, I sent Bryan Ewell out there thirty minutes ago and told him not to let that locked door — or old Pritchel himself, if he comes out of it — out of his sight until I told him to, and I sent Ben Berry and some others out to Flint’s house and told Ben to telephone me. And I’ll call you when I hear anything. Which won’t be anything, because that fellow’s gone.
He got caught yesterday because he made a mistake, and the fellow that can walk out of that jail like he did aint going to make two mistakes within five hundred miles of Jefferson or Mississippi either.’
‘Mistake?’ Uncle Gavin said. ‘He just told us this morning why he wanted to be put in jail.’
‘And why was that?’
‘So he could escape from it.’
‘And why get out again, when he was already out and could have stayed out by just running instead of telephoning me he had committed a murder?’
‘I don’t know,’ Uncle Gavin said. ‘Are you sure Old Man Pritchel—’
‘Didn’t I just tell you folks saw and talked to him through that half-opened door this morning? And Bryan Ewell probably sitting in a chair tilted against that door right this minute — or he better be. I’ll telephone you if I hear anything. But I’ve already told you that too — that it won’t be nothing.’ He telephoned an hour later. He had just talked to the deputy who had searched Flint’s house, reporting only that Flint had been there sometime in the night — the back door open, an oil lamp shattered on the floor where Flint had apparently knocked it while fumbling in the dark, since the deputy found, behind a big, open, hurriedly ransacked trunk, a twisted spill of paper which Flint had obviously used to light his search of the trunk — a scrap of paper torn from a billboard —
‘A what?’ Uncle Gavin said.
‘That’s what I said,’ the sheriff said. ‘And Ben says, “All right, then send somebody else out here, if my reading aint good enough to suit you. It was a scrap of paper which was evidently tore from the corner of a billboard because it says on the scrap in English that even I can read—” and I says, “Tell me exactly what it is you’re holding in your hand.” And he did. It’s a page, from a magazine or a small paper named Billboard or maybe The Billboard. There’s some more printing on it but Ben can’t read it because he lost his spectacles back in the woods while he was surrounding the house to catch Flint doing whatever it was he expected to catch him doing — cooking breakfast, maybe. Do you know what it is?’
‘Yes,’ Uncle Gavin said.
‘Do you know what it means, what it was doing there?’
‘Yes,’ Uncle Gavin said. ‘But why?’
‘Well, I can’t tell you. And he never will. Because he’s gone, Gavin. Oh, we’ll catch him — somebody will, I mean, someday, somewhere. But it won’t be here, and it won’t be for this. It’s like that poor, harmless, half-witted girl wasn’t important enough for even that justice you claim you prefer above truth, to avenge her.’
And that did seem to be all of it. Mrs. Flint was buried that afternoon. The old man was