Dr. Poggioli: Criminologist (The Lost Classics Book 14) Read online

  The black man who drove the car kept to the flooded roadbed by a sort of divination. He was oddly silent for a colored man; only once did he speak.

  “Mas’ Jule, one o’ dem Mendezes was at de station jes’ befo’ yo train come in, an’ he lights out dis dorection.”

  “Yes, that’s all right, Goolow.” And Julian turned and continued to Poggioli that the rainy season made hunting very good on the high lands, and that the Blackmar estate stood well above the floods.

  “What elevation have you above the general level?” inquired Poggioli, who was also making conversation.

  “Oh—eight or ten inches or more.”

  Presently the car came to the junction of another perfectly straight avenue of water amid the endless pines. As the negro turned into this private thoroughfare, he suddenly kicked on his brakes. The white passengers were annoyed at the rough stop. Blackmar rapped out:

  “Goolow, what in the devil—”

  The black man said in a scared voice: “Dey’s a washout, Mas’ Jule.”

  “Washout?” repeated the master incredulously.

  He opened the door, stood on the running-board and peered forward.

  The dark red water from the deluge moved deliberately along the drainage ditches toward the sea.

  “Get in there and wade, Goolow, and see what you can find out.”

  The black man stepped out into water that was ankle-deep on the roadbed. He splashed toward the culvert—and suddenly, without warning, went under head and ears. He came up blowing and splashing.

  “I knowed hit! I knowed hit! Dat low-down Jim R. Mendez floated huh off.” Young Blackmar made a silencing gesture. “You know nothing of the sort.

  Nobody need have floated it off. The culvert was wooden; it could have washed out or rotted out.”

  “You cain’t tell me, Mas’ Jule, what did Jim R. wait at de station fuh twell he see you-all git off’n de train, ’n’en tu’n his flivvah roun’ an’ come tearin’ back dis dorection lak a speedboat—”

  “I don’t know what he did it for—he wouldn’t want to chop a culvert from in front of our car when he knew Elora was in it!”

  The negro blinked the water out of his eyes and slapped it out of his wool. “Somebody boun’ tinkah wid dat culve’t, Mas’ Jule; hit nevah did wash out befo’.”

  “You cut some logs and float down here; we’ve got to get this car across some way or other.”

  Goolow came dripping to the car, fished an ax from under the rear seat, then swam to the other side of the ditch and began chopping down some tall cabbagepalms. Julian Blackmar slowly discarded his own shoes and socks to help his servant. Poggioli briskly followed his host’s example. The bride protested against a guest’s taking part in the labor, but both men made ready, and presently stepped out into the water. When they had waded out of earshot of the car, Blackmar said in a lowered tone:

  “Before Elora, I had to let on that I didn’t believe it was Jim R. But if he drove right ahead of us, it was him—it couldn’t be anybody else.”

  “What is Jim R. Mendez to your wife?” inquired the psychologist.

  “Why, they’re first cousins,” explained Blackmar, frowning. “Elora was a

  Mendez before I married her.”

  Poggioli stood rather at sea. “Would Mendez try to head your car into a ditch of water with his own first cousin in it?”

  Blackmar nodded gloomily. “More than that, I believe this was aimed directly at Elora.”

  Poggioli was astonished. “Why do you make such a statement as that?”

  The host cleared his throat uneasily. “Well, you see, if Elora has a child, it will inherit the Mendez groves and grazing land. That was the way the old man Jiminez Mendez willed it. The Mendez boys are living on it now, but it will finally go to Elora’s children, if she has any.”

  Poggioli was shocked. “You don’t think Jim R. is trying to murder his cousin to prevent her from becoming a mother, do you?”

  “Why, of course that’s it. That culvert didn’t just wash away. The land’s too flat. There’s hardly any current at all.”

  In the midst of this conversation old Goolow shouted a warning. The white men looked up, then waded quickly to avoid the crash of a palm top as it fell across the ditch. While they were lost in these green curtains, there sounded a puttering down the road, and a little later Goolow called in an undertone:

  “Mas’ Jule, yonder come ’at Jim R. now. As he go by, stop him an’ look at he breeches.”

  Poggioli peered out of the leaves. “Why do you want to look at his trousers?”

  “To see if dey wet,” explained the black in a low tone, “to see if he been out in de water choppin’ loose de culve’t.”

  “He might have changed his trousers,” suggested the psychologist.

  “Huh,” grunted the negro, “when Mistuh Jim R. change he breeches, he pulls ’em off, an’ when he changes ag’in, he puts ’em on.”

  The scientist nodded at the single-breeched idea and made a note to observe the newcomer’s trousers. The puttering increased, and presently a dilapidated car came plowing through the water, leaving a long “V” of waves behind it. The rusty machine stopped opposite the men, and its driver called out in a hearty nasal voice:

  “Hey-oh, sir, you-all stuck somehow? What’s the matter?”

  Julian Blackmar, halfway across the bole, seemed about to return a scathing answer when Poggioli hastened to explain:

  “The culvert’s washed out.”

  “Huh, that’s funny,” ejaculated Jim R., looking up and down the waterway, “funny it washed out on the very day Jule an’ Cousin Lory got back off their weddin’-trip....It shore is quare.”

  “We thought it very strange, too,” returned Blackmar pointedly. “Why should it float off just before we arrived?”

  “Naw, I imagine you cain’t un’erstan’ that,” agreed Jim R. sardonically.

  It was evident the two men would be in a quarrel the next moment. Poggioli interposed to say they were chopping down palms now to bridge the stream and set the Blackmar car across.

  At this Jim R. stepped out of his car into the water, saying:

  “By grabs, I don’t pass up nobody tryin’ to git his car out of trouble. Besides, Jule is kin to me now—cousins by marriage, aint we, Jule!” And with this the yokel suddenly laughed, and a moment later, as suddenly stopped.

  The newcomer fished an ax out of his car and came wading to the palm, to cut off its head and allow its bole to float down to the marooned motor. Poggioli made way for him among the leaves. The fellow pulled off his wet shoes, after the manner of an expert woodsman, then stood poised on the bole in his sock feet and fell to work with dexterous strokes. As the fibrous body notched under his labor, Jim R. found time to glance around and wink seriously and significantly at Poggioli. The scientist was somewhat puzzled at the gesture; whether it was a denial or an admission of guilt, he did not know. Within a few minutes the trunk parted; Jim R. stepped across the gap and joined Poggioli among the leaves. He winked again, satirically, pulled down the corners of his lips, and nodded across at Blackmar.

  “I don’t reckon Jule has no idee a-tall who chopped loose that culvert.”

  “You think it was chopped loose?” inquired Poggioli.

  “I shore it was. You know it didn’t float away by itse’f. They aint no current here, hardly.”

  “Who do you think did it?”

  “That nigger Goolow, nachelly,” retorted Jim R. sharply. “He driv over that culvert this mornin’, an’ he jest clim’ out an’ busted that culvert up behint him.”

  Poggioli appraised the fellow to see if this were a false trail he was laying. “Why should Goolow do such a thing?”

  “Well, two reasons,” answered the rustic: “One is them other Blackmars aint going to want a Mendez to step in an’ git a wife’s share of ol’ pirate John Blackmar’s holdin’s. Another is Jule wants to heir what his wife’s got of the Mendez lands....That’s why he married her.”
/>   Poggioli could not tell by the rustic’s wooden countenance whether or not he believed what he was saying.

  “If Goolow chopped away the culvert, why didn’t he drive the car in the ditch when he got back?”

  “Because his nerve failed him. Take it the other way, if he didn’t know it was gone, what made him stop? You cain’t see the culvert through that red water; you cain’t tell whether she’s thar or not thar.”

  This reasoning Poggioli was unable to answer, and he wondered if by any possible means Goolow had destroyed the culvert, and at the behest of whom.

  The two axmen finished their work, floated the palm-boles down the ditch and established them crosswise. Then they began the ticklish task of rolling the Blackmar car across the ditch. When the machine was finally on the other side, the master of the Blackmar estate began a cold thanking of Jim R. for his services, when the rustic interrupted to say that he would go along with them to their homecoming.

  “You know,”—and he nodded his oily black head in open good-fellowship— “I thought some of Lory’s fam’ly ort to be here to welcome you-all back.”

  There seemed no way to order the fellow off after he had been of such service with his ax, so the interloper swung on the running-board, and the car moved forward.

  Once in the private thoroughfare the water grew shallower under their wheels, and presently the motor rolled onto a wet sandy road elevated a few inches above the surrounding water. This was the highland of the Blackmar estate. A mile or two farther on lay an ancient house set back behind a scraggly wire-andboard fence that somehow gave an impression of a barbed-wire entanglement before a fort. Behind the house itself arose the densest mass of vegetation Poggioli had ever seen.

  The old automobile presently stopped in front of a gate; the cracker swung off the running-board, and with the helpfulness natural to a Florida rustic took one of his cousin’s bags out of the car. Everyone got out. Jim R. maneuvered with the bag beside his cousin and started with her for the house. The girl could hardly get away from him without giving offense. Why Jim R. was doing this, Poggioli could not guess; whether it was affection for his cousin, impudence, or an overture to some deviltry, he did not know. By way of passing over his unspoken thoughts, he said:

  “That’s quite a jungle behind your house.”

  “Yes; my grandfather, Captain John Blackmar, was a college man, the same as I am. His hobby was botany. He collected all sorts of trees when he went to Cuba in his cattle schooner.”

  “Yeh,” put in Jim R. dryly, “collected trees—and other things.”

  “His main interest was trees,” repeated Julian coldly; then with a change of tone: “You’ll love it, Elora; and you, Mr. Poggioli, as a scientific man.”

  In the midst of their conversation Jim R. lurched with the suitcase and gave a sharp blow to the bride. The girl, whose nerves must have been at a tension, screamed and staggered away. A sudden horror flashed through Poggioli that Mendez had stabbed the woman, but the next moment he saw the fellow perform some grotesque leaps in the uncut grass.

  Julian had rushed to punish the assailant of his wife, when Jim R. made a sudden catlike dive and pinned something in the thick grass. The next moment a dry whirring set up—and the group, horrified, saw Mendez straighten with his fingers gripping the neck of a rattlesnake. The reptile was corded around the cracker’s arm as it strained to retract its head through his grip.

  Mendez himself bent his arm swiftly toward his mouth; and to the horror of the watchers, bit the vertebræ of the creature just back of its triangular skull. The coils loosed, and Mendez tossed the twitching rattler into the grass, and spat.

  Elora screamed; Poggioli blew out a breath of nausea and ejaculated: “My God, man, how could you do that?”

  The rustic turned sharply.

  “Why, it was about to strike Cousin Lory. I had to do somep’n!”

  Julian put an arm around his wife, who appeared half-fainting, and supported her to the house. Goolow picked up the bag which Jim R. had dropped, and followed his master. Poggioli remained with the cracker in the uncared-for grounds of the Blackmar estate. Mendez appeared at his wits’ end.

  “Well, I guess I cain’t foller her in the house an’ see what they got rigged up ag’in’ her there.”

  “Rigged up against her—what do you mean?”

  “What I say, of course. Didn’t that Goolow chop away the culvert to drown her, and then didn’t he tether this rattlesnake where Lory would shore tramp on it as she come past?”

  “Tether it?”

  “Yes, with a hoss-hair, aroun’ its rattles.”

  “Do you mean you can tether a snake with a horsehair?”

  “Shore. I’ve done it many a time when I didn’t have no box.” Poggioli dismissed the technique of snake-catching.

  “You really believe that negro is trying to murder Mrs. Blackmar?”

  “Oh, he’s doin’ it fer somebody—maybe Jule hisse’f, to git rid of her and git her proputty.”

  Poggioli was disgusted. “How can you imagine him so depraved and bloodthirsty?”

  “Imagine him!” cried Mendez disdainfully. “Why, he comes from that kind of folks. His granddaddy, ol’ pirate John, was the thievin’est, murderin’est ol’ devil that ever sailed the sea.” He checked his own violence and asked: “Look here, you goin’ to be aroun’ here for a while, aint you?” Poggioli said he was.

  “All right—will you do me a favor?”

  “If it isn’t something against Mr. Blackmar. I’m his guest, you know.”

  “Oh, it won’t be against him. It’ll be a favor to him, too.”

  “In that case, what do you want?” Mendez’s eyes narrowed.

  “Jes’ tell Jule, I’m goin’ to be aroun’ here: and if anything happens to Cousin Lory, the same thing, only a thousan’ times wuss, will happen to him....Jes’ tell him that from me.”

  Poggioli was shocked at the man’s intensity. “Now, that’s all right, Mr. Mendez; don’t work yourself up over this. I can promise you nothing will happen to your cousin.”

  “Oh, you promise that?”

  “Yes, I feel I can promise that.”

  “Do you mean,” inquired Jim R., looking hard at Poggioli, “do you mean yore skin will answer for anything that happens to Cousin Lory?”

  An uneasy feeling went over the psychologist. “I mean I am simply giving my best opinion as a psychologist and a student of human nature, that Julian Blackmar is in love with his wife, and will do everything in his power to defend her,” he explained precisely.

  The rustic turned with a shrug. “Huh, a feller that won’t back up his opinion with his hide, aint very shore of what he says....Well, you jes’ carry Jule my word; that’s all you’ve got to do with it.”

  Then without further adieu, he turned and started back to his own car on the public road a mile or two distant.

  Mr. Henry Poggioli turned and walked slowly toward the ancient house of the Blackmars, rather disturbed at the belligerent chivalry of Jim R. Mendez.

  He was glad he had postulated himself out of Jim’s reach. As he approached the house, he was surprised to see the girl herself out on the piazza with a basket on her arm. He called to know if she would not better go back and lie down; but she called out that she had heard of her grandfather Blackmar’s fruit garden all her life, and for Poggioli to go with her, and they would see it together.

  With this the girl picked her way around the wing of the ramshackle two-story house, to the dense tangle of vegetation in the rear. As the two entered the heavy draperies of green, the girl took Poggioli’s arm:

  “You know, this scares me a little, to go in here.”

  “I imagine it is a left-over from tales you have heard about it as a child,” suggested the psychologist, who was beginning to catch the drift of neighborhood gossip.

  This observation seemed to comfort the girl.

  “Maybe that is it.” She started to ask a question, then thought better of it and kept silent.
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  In the garden there was nothing to be frightened at. Its dense, struggling growth was decorated with exotic fruits; red banana plants upholding their scarlet candelabra; an Australian fig with its round globules spewing straight out of its bark; Kaffir oranges from the West African coast. Such dank crowded proliferation charmed the botanist in the guest. As Mrs. Blackmar began filling her basket, she asked in an intimate tone:

  “Mr. Poggioli, do you know yet why we wanted you to come here?”

  “I think I have an idea, Mrs. Blackmar....It is undefined—”

  “We wanted you to look at this estate and house and garden, especially this garden, and tell us what you really think about Julian’s grandfather.”

  “What I think about him?”

  “Yes. A lot of people claim to believe that he was a—a freebooter, a very terrible man; do you believe that was possible, if he were so cultivated and scholarly as to make a collection like this garden?”

  It was an odd but very earnest interrogation. The psychologist put a question in return:

  “Of what weight would my opinion be, Mrs. Blackmar?”

  “Oh, you are a criminologist and a psychologist. You know how people’s minds work. If you should say that a man of such scientific taste as Grandfather Blackmar could not be a sea rover, it would have very great weight.”

  “With the people here in the neighborhood?”

  “No; that’s envy. I mean with me and Julian.”

  Poggioli perceived the couple really wanted their own confidence buttressed.

  “Well, if you must know, Mrs. Blackmar, I think your deductions are exactly right,” he comforted. “It would be incompatible for a man to lead a lawless life and at the same time pursue the higher law of botany with such a painstaking collection as this.”

  Poggioli divined that this sentence was just cloudy enough to sound very profound and comforting to the bride, and sure enough it was. She said earnestly and gratefully: