Tartly. But mostly to the first crime, the old one: the one in which Signor Canova died. He intended for that witness to be found. That’s why he didn’t bury it, hide it better and deeper. As soon as somebody found it, he would be at once and forever not only rich but free, free not only of Signor Canova who had betrayed him by dying eight years ago, but of Joel Flint too. Even if we had found it before he had a chance to leave, what would he have said?’
‘He ought to have battered the face a little more,’ the sheriff said.
‘I doubt it,’ Uncle Gavin said. What would he have said?’
‘All right,’ the sheriff said. ‘What?’
“‘Yes, I killed him. He murdered my daughter.” And what would you have said, being, as you are, the Law?’
‘Nothing,’ the sheriff said after a time.
‘Nothing,’ Uncle Gavin said. A dog was barking somewhere, not a big dog, and then a screech-owl flew into the mulberry tree in the back yard and began to cry, plaintive and tremulous, and all the little furred creatures would be moving now — the field mice, the possums and rabbits and l id the legless vertebrates — creeping or scurrying about the dark land which beneath the rainless summer stars was just dark: not desolate. ‘That’s one reason he did it.’ Uncle Gavin said.
‘One reason?’ the sheriff said. What’s the other?’
‘The other is the real one. It had nothing to do with the money; he probably could not have helped obeying it if he had wanted to. That gift he had. His first regret right now is probably not that he was caught, but that he was caught too soon, before the body was found and he had the chance to identify it as his own; before Signor Canova had had time to toss his gleaming tophat vanishing behind him and bow to the amazed and stormlike staccato of adulant palms and turn and stride once or twice and then himself vanish from the pacing spotlight — gone, to be seen no more.
Think what he did: he convicted himself of murder when he could very likely have escaped by flight; he acquitted himself of it after he was already free again. Then he dared you and me to come out there and actually be his witnesses and guarantors in the consummation of the very act which he knew we had been trying to prevent.
What else could the possession of such a gift as his have engendered, and the successful practising of it have increased, but a supreme contempt for mankind? You told me yourself that he had never been afraid in his life.’
‘Yes,’ the sheriff said. The Book itself says somewhere, Know thyself. Ain’t there another book somewhere that says, Man, fear thyself, thine arrogance and vanity and pride? You ought to know; you claim to be a book man. Didn’t you tell me that’s what that luck-charm on your watch chain means? What book is that in?’
‘It’s in all of them,’ Uncle Gavin said. The good ones, I mean. It’s said in a lot of different ways, but it’s there.’
The End
Knight’s Gambit
ONE OF THEM knocked. But the door opened in the middle of it, swinging right out from under the rapping knuckles, so that the two callers were already in the room when he and his uncle looked up from the chessboard. Then his uncle recognised them too.
Their name was Harriss. They were brother and sister. At first glance they might have been twins, not just to strangers but to most of Jefferson too. Because there were probably not half a dozen people in Yoknapatawpha County who actually knew which one was the oldest.
They lived six miles from town on what twenty years ago had been just another plantation raising cotton for the market and com and hay to feed the mules which made the cotton. But now it was a county (or for that matter, a north Mississippi) landmark: a mile square of white panel and rail paddock-and pasture-fences and electric-lit stables and a once-simple country house transmogrified now into something a little smaller than a Before-the-War Hollywood set.
They came in and stood, rosy, young, delicate and expensive-looking, flushed from the December night. His uncle rose. ‘Miss Harriss, Mr. Harriss,’ he said. ‘But you are already in, so I cant—’
But the boy didn’t wait for that either. Then he saw that the boy held his sister, not by the arm or elbow, but by the forearm above the wrist like in the old lithographs of the policeman with his cringing captive or the victory-flushed soldier with his shrinking Sabine prey. And that was when he saw the girl’s face.
‘You’re Stevens,’ the boy said. He didn’t even demand it. He stated it.
‘That’s partly correct,’ his uncle said. ‘But let it pass. What can I’
Nor did the boy wait for that. He turned to the girl. ‘That’s Stevens,’ he said. ‘Tell him.’
But she didn’t speak. She just stood there, in the evening dress and a fur coat which had cost a good deal more than any other girl (or woman either) in Jefferson or Yoknapatawpha County had to spend for such, staring at his uncle with drat frozen sickness of dread or terror or whatever it was on her face, while the knuckles of the boy’s hand grew whiter and whiter on her wrist. Tell him,’ the boy said.
Then she spoke. You could hardly hear her. ‘Captain Gualdres. At our house—’
His uncle had taken a few steps toward them. Now he stopped too, standing in the middle of the floor, looking at her. ‘Yes,’ his uncle said. Tell me.’
But it seemed as if that one expiring rush was all of it. She just stood there, trying to tell his uncle something, whatever it was, with her eyes; trying to tell both of them for that matter, since he was there too. But they found out quickly enough what it was, or at least what it was the boy wanted her to say, had dragged her in to town by the arm to say. Or at least what he thought it was she wanted to say. Because he should have known then that his uncle probably knew already more than the boy or the girl either intended to say yet; perhaps, even then, all of it. But it would be a little while yet before he would realise that last. And the reason he was so slow about it was his uncle himself.
‘Yes,’ the boy said, in exactly the same tone and voice which had declined to address the older man by any title of courtesy or deference to age; he — Charles — watched the boy staring at his uncle too — the same delicate face which the sister had, but with nothing delicate about the eyes. They — the eyes — stared at his uncle without even bothering to he hard: they just waited. ‘Captain Gualdres, our so-called house-guest. We want him out of our house and out of Jefferson too.’
‘I see,’ his uncle said. He said, ‘I’m on the draft board here. I don’t remember your name in the registration.’
But the boy’s stare didn’t change at all. It was not even contemptuous. It just waited.
Then his uncle was looking at the sister; his voice was quite different now. ‘Is that what it is?’ his uncle said.
But she didn’t answer. She just stared at his uncle with that urgent desperation, her arm hanging at her side and her brother’s knuckles white around her wrist. Now his uncle was speaking to the boy too though he still watched the girl and his voice was even still gentle too or at least quiet:
‘Why did you come to me? What makes you think I can help you? That I should?’
‘You’re the Law here, aren’t you?’ the boy said.
His uncle still watched the sister. ‘I’m the County Attorney.’ He was still talking to her too. ‘But even if I could help you, why should I?’
But again it was the boy: ‘Because I don’t intend that a fortune-hunting Spick shall marry my mother.’
Now it seemed to him that his uncle really looked at the boy for the first time. ‘I see,’ his uncle said. Now his uncle’s voice was different. It was no louder, there was just no more gentleness in it, as though for the first time his uncle could (or anyway had) stop speaking to the sister: That’s your affair and your right.
I ask you again: why should I do anything about it, even if I could?’ And now the two of them — his uncle and the boy — spoke crisply and rapidly; it was almost as though they stood toe to toe, slapping each other: ‘He was engaged to marry my sister. When he found out that the money would still be our mother’s as long as she lived, he ratted.’
‘I see. You wish to employ the deportation laws of the Federal government to avenge your sister on her jilter.’
This time even the boy didn’t answer. He just stared at the older man with such cold, controlled, mature malevolence that he — Charles — watched his uncle actually pause for a moment before turning back to the girl, speaking — his uncle — again in the gentle voice, though even then his uncle had to repeat the question before she answered:
‘Is this true?’
‘Not engaged,’ she whispered.
‘But you love him?’
But the boy didn’t even give her time, didn’t give anybody time. ‘What does she know about love?’ he said.
