Jay Carroll - Mike Shayne Mystery Magazine, Vol. 1, No. 4, August 1957 (British Edition)

The second time Henry talked to Colleen he had seen her father approaching before he’d been on the knoll more than a minute or two. But he had satisfied himself that he could have her, if it wasn’t for Martha. With Martha dead, and Colleen and he safely married, there wasn’t anything Colleen’s pa could do.

To-day, Henry had spent almost two hours watching Colleen through the spyglass, and now the longing for her had become too strong to bear. He took one last look at the firm, sunbathed thighs beneath the hiked-up skirt, then climbed back down the ladder and hid the spyglass in the hay...

The pickup truck pulled into the yard, just as Henry came through the barn door. There were two bloodhounds in a cage on the back of the truck, and the white lettering on the door of the cab read, Sheriff’s Office — Miller County . Riding in the seat beside the driver was Constable Jim Weber, from town. Weber and the other man got out and walked over to Henry. Weber carried a double barrelled shotgun crooked in his arm. The other man carried a rifle.

“Afternoon, Henry,” the constable said. “This here is Deputy Sheriff Bob Ellert. Bob, this is Henry Ferris. That was his field you was admiring so, up the road a ways.”

“Afternoon, Sheriff,” Henry said.

The deputy nodded and crossed his arms. He was a big man, even bigger than Constable Weber, and he looked hot and uncomfortable, in his khaki uniform with the leather leggings and heavy Sam Browne belt. “Hotter’n the hinges themselves, Mr. Ferris,” he said.

“That’s for sure,” Henry said. “I been looking for it to rain. A good rain’d cool things off a bit.”

“There’s another one loose, Henry,” the constable said.

“What?” Henry said. “Oh... you mean from the asylum?”

“Yeah. And this is a mean one, Henry. He’s one of these maniacs. He got him a meat-cleaver out of the kitchen somehow, and killed a guard with it and got loose. Next thing we hear, he’s taken the cleaver to old, Mrs. Kurtz, over Lordville way. Cut her up like sidemeat.”

“I swear,” Henry said. “You think he’s somewhere around here?”

“He just might be,” the deputy sheriff said. “We’re beating the whole county for him. The Sheriff’s Office and the State Police, and all the local peace officers, like Jim here.”

“We’re warning everybody,” the constable said. “We’re phoning some of them, and calling on the one that ain’t got phones. How’s your wife, Henry?”

Henry sighed. “She’s just the same, Jim, just the same.”

“That’s sure a pity,” the constable said.

“You see this maniac, Mr. Ferris, you call the constable,” the deputy sheriff said. “And don’t lose no time about it, either. That man chopped up two women before they put him away, and he’s chopped up two more people since. Who knows where he’ll stop, unless’n we get him fast.”

“He killed them with a hatchet,” the constable said. “The ones he killed before they put him away, I mean. I don’t know why they didn’t just up and Kang him, the way they should of done. Hell, putting a maniac like that in an asylum is just plain stupid!”

“That’s a fact,” the deputy sheriff said. “You won’t have any trouble recognising him, Mr. Ferris. He’s a big, tall old boy, with a face would scare hell out of almost anybody. He’s got him a face like a shovel.”

“That’s right,” the constable said. “I seen his picture.”

“He’s almost all jaw, that old boy is,” the deputy sheriff said. “Little scrunched-up forehead and crazy eyes, and this great big jaw jutting out there, just like a shovel.”

“Yeah,” the constable said. “It hangs out there like a cowcatcher on a train.” He patted the stock of his shotgun. “I got this old lady loaded up just right for him, too. I got me bird shot in one barrel, and buckshot in the other. If I holler halt, and he don’t do it, that bird shot ought to slow him down mighty fast. And if the bird shot don’t, the buckshot sure’r’n hell will. It’ll slow him down permanent!”

“I got my gun loaded the same way,” Henry said. “I been laying for some chicken thieves.”

The constable nodded. “Just don’t go shooting him, without you give him a chance to surrender, though.” He turned slightly to wink at the deputy sheriff. “Ain’t that right, Bob?”

The deputy grinned. “Sure,” he said. “We got to give him his just rights, like they say in the book.”

Henry grinned back, knowingly. “I’ll give him everything that’s coming to him, don’t worry.”

The constable patted the stock of his shotgun again and turned toward the pickup truck. “Well, we got to be rolling, Henry. There’s a lot of folks down the line haven’t got phones. We got to warn them.”

Henry was reluctant to give up his company so soon. He rarely had callers at all, much less for interesting reasons like this one. “I sure wish you could stay and pass the time of day,” he said hopefully.

“Some other time, Henry,” the constable said, climbing into the truck. He opened the door on the other side for the deputy and leaned back against the cushion. “Give my best to the missus,” he said. The deputy waved to Henry and started the motor.

Henry watched the truck circle around toward the rutted road that led up to the blacktop, and then he walked slowly toward the house and went inside.

Martha was sitting in her wheel-chair near the front door. She was pouring herself another table-spoonful of the patent medicine the doctor had told her was completely worthless. She paused with the spoon halfway to her mouth and scowled at Henry accusingly.

“Where’ve you been all this time?” she demanded, in her thin, — whining voice. “A body could die ten times over, for all you’d care.”

Henry said nothing. He watched Martha swallow the medicine and pour another spoonful. She was only twenty-seven, but she looked at least twenty years older than that. Since the stroke that had paralysed her legs, she had seemed to wither away slowly, day by day, until Henry could scarcely remember exactly what she had looked like when he married her.

Martha had been no raving beauty even then, Henry often reflected, and he often wondered how he had had enough stomach to marry her, even to get his hands on her farm. That was just the trouble — he’d never got his hands on it at all. Martha had let him work it for her, but she had kept it in her own name. He’d never own so much as a square inch of it until she died. The best he had been able to do was hold out a little of the egg money.

Martha swallowed the second spoonful of the medicine, grimaced and screwed the cap back on the bottle very carefully.

“Folks are talking about your never going to church, Henry,” she whined. “And about your working so much in the barn on Sundays. It isn’t right.”

“That barn ain’t no affair of theirs,” Henry said. “And how am I supposed to go to church? I’d be gone three hours or more. Then you’d really holler, for sure.”

“Not about your going to church, I wouldn’t.”

“Then, why do you nag me so about being out to the barn?”

“That ain’t the same thing at all, Henry, and you know it.”

“It sure looks like the same thing to me. It’s me not peeking in on you every five minutes that gets you riled up so much, not where I am.”

“That’s another thing,” Martha said. “What in the world do you do out in that barn, every blessed Sunday? It appears to me you spend more time out there on Sundays than you do all week put together.”

Henry stared at her, wondering whether he should tell her about the maniac being loose, just to change the subject. No — it would only set Martha off on a lot of damnfool questions, and he didn’t feel like talking to her any more than he had to. He didn’t even want to look at her.