Fletcher Flora - The First Golden Age of Mystery & Crime MEGAPACK™ - 26 Stories by Fletcher Flora

“Lemme go,” he said. “I ain’t doing anything.”

“Sure you’re not, Snuffy. You’ve never been known to do anything except smoke and chew and steal and everything else a kid’s got no business doing. Where you going?”

“Nowhere.”

“Sure you are, Snuffy. You’re going to reform school, that’s where you’re going. I’ve got a belly full of complaints about you prowling and stealing and making a general damn nuisance of yourself.”

“I ain’t done anything to be sent to reform school for.”

“Is that so? Wouldn’t you say it was something to burn Crawley Bratton’s haystack down?”

It was still a guess, nothing more, but I knew it was true the instant I said it, and it was in the same instant that I was aware for the first time of the dirty rag he had wrapped around his right hand. Under the rag, I was sure, was seared and blistered flesh. He jerked the hand behind his back and tried again to pull away and run. He wasn’t a strong kid, though, skinny and undersized. I held him easily.

“What’s the matter with your hand, Snuffy?” I said. “Don’t you know any better than to try to beat out a flame with your bare palm?”

“I didn’t aim to burn it down,” he said. “It was an accident.”

“That’s more like it. If you want to stay out of reform school, you’d better tell me the exact truth.”

“I was having a smoke, that’s all. Just stretched out there in the hay having a smoke and thinking about staying the night. I dozed off, I guess, and pretty soon I woke up with the fire blazing up beside me. I didn’t try to beat it out, the way you said. I got more sense than that. The fire just burned my hand, and I guess that’s why I woke when I did. If I hadn’t, I might have burned to death. All I did afterward was cut and run. I went into town and stayed the night with my old man.”

“It was a damn good thing for you that you woke when you did, Snuffy. No question about that. If you hadn’t, we might have had two bodies in the fire. Yours and Mrs. Bratton’s.”

“I don’t know anything about Mrs. Bratton. I heard in town that she was burned in the fire, but I don’t know anything about her.”

“That’s what you say. To me, it’s beginning to look different. Maybe you met Mrs. Bratton down here and got fresh with her. Maybe you decided to kill her to keep her from telling what you did to her. Then maybe you decided to put her body in the stack and burn it up. It’s just what a dumb, no-good kid like you might do.”

“I wouldn’t do anything like that, Mr. Adams! Honest to God, I wouldn’t!”

“I’m not so sure. Anyhow, it looks pretty bad, far as you’re concerned. Lots of folks around here have been thinking you might get dangerous, once you got a little age on you. It’s beginning to look like you might not go to reform school after all, Snuffy. It’s beginning to look like you might go straight to the penitentiary for all the rest of your life.”

He was a stupid kid and plenty scared. His eyes were wild and his teeth were chattering. Truth was, I was ashamed of myself for saying those things, which I didn’t believe, but I thought they might bring something out, and they did.

“Don’t say such things about me, Mr. Adams,” he said. “Please don’t say such things. You quit saying such things, I’ll tell you something you might like to know.”

“You tell me, and I’ll see. Chances are you’re fixing to tell a lot of lies to get yourself out of trouble.”

“I’ll tell the truth, Mr. Adams. I swear to God I will!”

“Never mind the swearing. Just tell me.”

“It was that Fergus Cass who did it. Killed Mrs. Bratton, I mean. I know he did.”

“There you go, Snuffy. Telling a damn lie already. Why would Fergus want to kill Mrs. Bratton?”

He licked his lips, and a sly expression came into his eyes and reminded me that even a stupid kid like Snuffy Cleaker can develop a kind of shrewdness within his limitations.

“They were carrying on with each other,” he said. “I’ve seen them more than once down here by the creek.”

“You mean you spied on them.”

“Well, I just happened to see them the first time, quite a while ago, and I couldn’t help it if they kept meeting here and I happened to come along sometimes when they were together.”

“That’s right, Snuffy. You couldn’t help it. You couldn’t help it if you came sneaking along through the brush. You’re nothing but a nasty little Peeping Tom, but you can’t help it any more than you can help being a thief, because that’s just what you naturally are. Never mind that, though. If Mrs. Bratton and Fergus Cass liked each other well enough to meet down here, what makes you think he killed her? Doesn’t seem to me it would work out that way at all.”

“That’s what I’m trying to tell you, Mr. Adams. Lately they haven’t been getting along so good. I heard them have a couple of fierce fights, him calling her a lot of dirty names and threatening to kill her, and then yesterday afternoon when I come along they were up the creek from here about fifty feet, under the trees where the creek bends, and he hit her in the face because of something she said, and she started to run, but he ran after her and caught her and began choking her.”

“What did she say to him?”

“I don’t know. I wasn’t close enough to hear.”

“What did you do when he started choking her?”

“I ran. I didn’t want to mix in any trouble like that. I got scared and cut out of there in a hurry.”

“Where did you go?”

“Just up the creek. Just fooling around. When I came back quite a while later, Mrs. Bratton and Fergus Cass were both gone, so I figured he probably hadn’t hurt her much, and I went up in the field to the haystack and had a smoke, like I admitted, but when I heard in town that Mrs. Bratton’s body had been in the hay and burned, I knew he’d killed her and put her there, and she’d been in the hay right while I was having the smoke that set the stack on fire.”

“Why the hell didn’t you tell somebody about it?”

“I was scared, that’s why. I didn’t want to get mixed into any trouble like that.”

He was telling the truth, all right. He’d never have told it if I hadn’t caught him and scared him into it, but he was telling it now to save his scurvy little hide, and it was just what I needed. True, he hadn’t actually seen Fergus Cass kill Faye Bratton, but he’d seen him choking her, and what he’d actually seen and what he might later remember seeing when a sharp county attorney got hold of him could damn well be two different stories.

“You’re mixed now,” I said, “and you’re mixed good. You come along with me.”

“Where you taking me?”

“I’m taking you to jail, that’s where. You’re what we call a material witness, you little devil, and I’m not taking any chances on your skinning out on me.”

“You can’t arrest me, Mr. Adams. I ain’t done anything to be arrested for.”

“Who said I was arresting you? I’m just sort of holding you in protective custody to save myself the trouble of running you down later. Come on. Let’s move out of here.”

We walked up across the field and the pasture to the car at the foot of the lane. I maneuvered the car between the barbed wire fences, turning it around, and drove up toward the house with Snuffy beside me in the front seat. When I got out to close the gate to the lane, after driving through, Crawley Bratton came out of the barn and stood there watching us. He looked tired and gaunt, his eyes darkly circled and his coarse, thick hair hanging down over his forehead from under his battered hat. Suddenly, walking toward him, I felt a sharp stab of genuine pity.