Charlotte Armstrong - Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 17, No. 90, May 1951

“Of course it does. And you’re left alone. Haven’t you any family at all, Cissy?”

“No.”

“Isn’t there some young man—?”

Cissy shook her head bitterly. “Who’d marry me? This is the only decent dress I got, and it’s four years old. We lived on great-grandpa’s pension and what I could earn hiring out by the day. Which ain’t much, nor often. Now...”

“I’m sure you’ll find something to do,” said Nikki, very heartily.

“In Jacksburg?”

Nikki was silent.

“Cissy.” Ellery spoke casually, and she did not even look up. “Doc Strong mentioned something about a treasure. Do you know anything about it?”

“Oh, that.” Cissy shrugged. “Just what great-grandpa told me, and he hardly ever told the same story twice. But near as I was ever able to make out, one time during the War him and Caleb Atwell and Zach Bigelow got separated from the army — scouting, or foraging, or something. It was down South somewhere, and they spent the night in an old empty mansion that was half-burned down. Next morning they went through the ruins to see what they could pick up, and buried in the cellar they found the treasure. A big fortune in money, great-grandpa said. They were afraid to take it with them, so they buried it in the same place in the cellar and made a map of the location and after the War they went back, the three of ’em, and dug it up again. Then they made the pact.”

“Oh, yes,” said Ellery. “The pact.”

“Swore they’d hold onto the treasure till only one of them remained alive, I don’t know why, then the last one was to get it all. Leastways, that’s how great-grandpa told it.”

“Did he ever say how much of a fortune it was?”

Cissy laughed. “Couple of hundred thousand dollars. I ain’t saying great-grandpa was cracked, but you know how an old man gets.”

“Did he ever give you a hint as to where he and Caleb and Zach hid the money after they got it back North?”

“No, he’d just slap his knee and wink at me.”

“Maybe,” said Ellery suddenly, “maybe there’s something to that yarn after all.”

Nikki stared. “But Ellery, you said—! Cissy, did you hear that?”

But Cissy only drooped. “If there is, it’s all Zach Bigelow’s now.”

Then Doc Strong came in, fresh as a daisy in a pressed blue suit and a stiff collar and a bow tie, and a great many other people came in, too. Ellery and Nikki surrendered Cissy Chase to Jacksburg.

“If there’s anything to the story,” Nikki whispered to Ellery, “and if Mayor Strong is right, then that old scoundrel Bigelow’s been murdering his friends to get the money!”

“After all these years, Nikki? At the age of ninety-five?” Ellery shook his head.

“But then what—?”

“I don’t know.” And Ellery fell silent. But his glance went to Doc Strong and waited; and when the little mayor happened to look their way, Ellery caught his eye and took him aside and whispered in his ear...

The procession — nearly every car in Jacksburg, Doc Strong announced proudly, over a hundred of them — got under way at exactly two o’clock.

Nikki had been embarrassed but not surprised to find herself being handed into the leading car, an old but brightly polished touring job contributed for the occasion by Lew Bagley; and the moment Nikki spied the ancient, doddering head under the Union army hat in the front seat she detected the fine Italian whisper of her employer. Zach Bigelow held his papery frame fiercely if shakily erect between the driver and a powerful red-necked man with a brutal face who, Nikki surmised, was the old man’s grandson, Andy Bigelow. Nikki looked back, peering around the flapping folds of the flag stuck in the corner of the car. Cissy Chase was in the second car in a black veil, weeping on a stout woman’s shoulder. So the female Yankee from New York sat back between Ellery and Mayor Strong, against the bank of flowers in which the flag was set, and glared at the necks of the two Bigelows, having long since taken sides in this matter. And when Doc Strong made the introductions, Nikki barely nodded to Jacksburg’s sole survivor of the Grand Army of the Republic, and then only in acknowledgment of his historic importance.

Ellery, however, was all deference and cordiality, even to the brute grandson. He leaned forward.

“How do I address your grandfather, Mr. Bigelow?”

“Gramp’s a general,” said Andy Bigelow loudly. “Ain’t you, Gramp?” He beamed at the ancient, but Zach Bigelow was staring proudly ahead, holding fast to something in a rotted musette bag on his lap. “Went through the War a private,” the grandson confided, “but he don’t like to talk about that.”

“General Bigelow—”

“That’s his deef ear,” said the grandson. “Try the other one.”

“General Bigelow!”

“Hey?” The old man turned his trembling head, glaring. “Speak up, bub. Ye’re mumblin’.”

“General Bigelow,” shouted Ellery, “now that all the money is yours, what will you do with it?”

“Hey? Money?”

“The treasure, Gramp,” roared Andy Bigelow. “They’ve even heard about it in New York. What you goin’ to do with it, he wants to know?”

“Does, does he?” Old Zach sounded grimly amused. “Can’t talk, Andy. Hurts m’ neck.”

“How much does it amount to, General?” cried Ellery.

Old Zach eyed him. “Mighty nosy, ain’t ye?” Then he cackled. “Last time we counted it — Caleb, Ab, and me — came to nigh on a million dollars. Yes, sir, one million dollars.” The old man’s left eye, startlingly, drooped. “Goin’ to be a big surprise to the smart-alecks and the doubtin’ Thomases. You wait an’ see.”

“According to Cissy,” Nikki murmured to Doc Strong, “Abner Chase said it was only two hundred thousand.”

“Zach makes it more every time he talks about it,” said the mayor.

“I heard ye, Martin Strong!” yelled Zach Bigelow, swiveling his twig of a neck so suddenly that Nikki winced, expecting it to snap. “You wait! I’ll show ye, ye durn whippersnapper, who’s a lot o’ wind!”

“Now, Zach,” said Doc Strong pacifyinglу. “Save your wind for that bugle.”

Zach Bigelow cackled and clutched the musette bag in his lap, glaring ahead in triumph, as if he had scored a great victory.

Ellery said no more. Oddly, he kept staring not at old Zach but at Andy Bigelow, who sat beside his grandfather grinning at invisible audiences along the empty countryside as if he, too, had won — or was on his way to winning — a triumph.

The sun was hot. Men shucked their coats and women fanned themselves with handkerchiefs.

“It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated...”

Children dodged among the graves, pursued by shushing mothers. On most of the graves were fresh flowers.

“...that from these honored dead...”

Little American flags protruded from the graves, too.

“...gave the last full measure of devotion...”

Doc Martin Strong’s voice was deep and sure, not at all like the voice of that tall ugly man, who had spoken the same words apologetically.

“...that these dead shall not have died in vain...”

Doc was standing on the pedestal of the Civil War Monument, which was decorated with flags and bunting and faced the weathered stone ranks like a commander in full-dress.

“...that this nation, under God...”

A color guard of the American Legion, Jacksburg Post, stood at attention between the mayor and the people. A file of Legionnaires carrying old Sharps rifles faced the graves.

“...and that government of the people...”

Beside the mayor, disdaining the wrestler’s shoulder of his simian grandson, stood General Zach Bigelow. Straight as the barrel of a Sharps, musette bag held tightly.